December 21--Happy Winter Solstice

--though it doesn't feel like winter. We still haven't had any real snow--some flurries that didn't stick. And the temperatures are between 15 and 20 degrees (F) above normal. 

I just saw the news that the Omicron variant has now become the dominant variant in the U.S.--in only 2 weeks. And the first death related to Omicron in the U.S. I read this morning that my state has identified its first case 2 days ago. A number of the talking heads sounded almost despairing while commenting that we seem to be back where we were a year ago--before we had vaccines and before new treatments proved effective. Well, some of the more thoughtful commentators have mentioned those facts. And at our level we know very well that this is not then. Last year we read about the pandemic but it hadn't really hit us. Our shut downs were't as severe as some I read about. We could still go out and get what was needed. I made our own masks--the first six were two layer but all the next ones were triple layer as are the ones I am sewing now. I don't think we will be putting masks aside soon.

But over the last year the pandemic has come closer. My brother, his son and a grandson, and a niece in another branch of the family have all had COVID (ages range from about 12 to 70). None died. The woman who works at the little farm store associated with out small local dairy told us that she is hearing from a lot of their customers that this has already been a bad season and not just for COVID. Many have had serious cold and flu that have hit hard. Mom just got out of the hospital after a five day stay getting treated for viral bronchitis. Not COVID--they tested. I think I mentioned a statistic I saw that the death rate for a group of "respiratory" infections (COVID, flu, and colds) is, nationwide, 17.5%.

Listening to the accounts over the Manchin public F-you over the BBB talks--and make no mistake that is exactly what he did--I have several thoughts. First is recognizing how utterly fractured and, worse, infantile our politicks have become. Manchin had a reasonable concern that the White House statement which included his name (and his alone) was justified. Reports of death threats and harassment of politicians come almost daily and reveals the infantile and emotionally inflamed environment we are living with. But deep sizing the bill he and others had worked on, negotiated on, for months strikes me as another infantile move. And then there is the account which said that Manchin had expressed misgiving about those poor recipients of the child tax credit using the funds for drugs or some of his West Virginians misusing their family leave to "go hunting." OMG--shades of Hillary talking about "deplorables" and Obama talking about those desperately clinging to "God and guns." If true, Manchin indulged in a spate of sanctimonious moralizing. Another thought: so many of those both politicians, voters, and other Republican allies express a "concern" over the way the measures in BBB would change American culture and society. Unfortunately, those same people fail to recognize that our culture and society have changed drastically over the last century thanks to economic changes and it isn't going to go back to the 1950s (or 1930s) any time soon.

 December 13

Well, it is half past December and less than two weeks from our yearly exercise in mass gluttony: Christmas. And just more than two weeks from the end of another miserable year--one not quite as bad as last year but certainly not a good one. I wish I could say I look forward to 2022 and expect better--but I don't.

Why not? Because all of the economic, social, political and legal trends so strong this year are still in play and have much further to go before they hit bottom. David Kaiser has a good post this morning that reflects my own thoughts and illustrates our current condition through his commentary on a classic film: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. We both here remember the film. Mom saw it when it first came out and I from its re-runs on TV. It is indeed a good metaphor for the last 90 years.

The news just announced that COVID has claimed a little over 800k Americans. That is within the range the heads of the health agencies were predicting at the beginning of the pandemic and a far cry from the optimistic predictions (50-100k) if we, in the words of Dr. Debra Berx, "we do everything right." I doubted that we could get enough of our fractious population to agree on anything to manage to get "everything right."

 December 11

Rainy and windy this morning. I have been thinking of changing out our door autumn door wreath for the winter wreath. It just doesn't feel like winter yet. We did get a smidge of snow that stuck around for a few hours but nothing significant.

I found this item on Crooks & Liars this morning. The writer is most worried about right wing agitation for an Article V convention but given how much discontent (to put it mildly) on both sides of the political divide we might worry about the left wing as well. About 30 years ago I heard the same notion from a colleague (a black woman) and mentioned that once that convention met many of the rights we have come to rely on might be excised or drastically rewritten, for instance voting rights for minorities or property ownership for women. She blithely claimed that "they wouldn't dare." However, we said the same thing about Roe v Wade until the latest Supreme Court decisions.

Just woke up to the horrific news of the tornado storm that has cost at least 50 deaths in one city alone. The story keeps getting worse as the emergency services can now work in daylight. We looked at the initial story, which hadn't yet incorporated the damage and death info, and noted that this is a springtime pattern. I commented that just as the west now doesn't have a discrete "fire season" the Tornado Alley states no longer have a discrete tornado season. The meteorologists and reporters have made similar observations and noted how abnormal the weather pattern has been.

 December 9

Well, it has been a while. I have busily ignored most of the political news. It looks like half of the politicians in Washington are very happy to stymie all activity so the majority party and Biden won't have any more achievements the voters might favor--while they tout the benefits of those achievements Biden has as if they themselves were responsible though none of then voted for the measures that benefit their constituents. The other half are increasingly frustrated with the intransigent opposition some of which comes from their own.

Pundits keep talking about the "labor shortage" or the Great Resignation, as some call it. Most attribute the phenomenon to "overly generous" government support (most of which have ended over the last few months). Of course, in the Repthuglican political theology, those lazy bums won't work unless they are hungry, or need some hovel to crouch in, or some rags to wear. Jan In SanFran quotes from a New Republic article on doctors who are both moving from their traditionally Republican orientation to Independent or, heaven forbid!!, to Democrat. The author made a point that most doctors are now employees of medical conglomerates and not independent small business people. We have watched that shift happening in our area. And that though half of medical school graduates are women they suffer from the same gender pay gap that afflicts women in other sectors--something like 30% of the pay their male counterparts in the same specialities with similar education and experience. Most of the pundits want to ignore those inequities. Nor do they want to recognize the difficulties of balancing familial obligations (a.k.a., child care or elder care) which fall most heavily on women. The old normal, where women worked outside the home and the family could afford child care, isn't going to come back. People are fed up with the notion that they should work themselves to death to make a living in an economy in which that has become work themselves to death to not make a living.

And the situation is made worse by widespread theft. I don't mean the recent spate of mass invasion of stores by gangs of shoplifters who make off with goods worth an amazing amount of money. Nor with the individual shoplifters like the one featured in this article. The article is only tangentially about that shoplifter. The far more egregious theft is from workers in the form of wage theft. (In case you wonder, I don't approve of theft on either scale. Whether "only" hundreds or thousands of dollars is involved or millions, the theft is wrong. But it is sad that the latter goes both unreported and, often, unpunished.)