March 23

 Two-thirds through March. The weather is definitely spring like. We should have temps in the 40s and 50s for the next ten days with intermittent rain/thunderstorms. Hopefully, non will reach the level the South had over the last couple of days.  I checked plants in the gardens and several look like they might come back--both mums, the chamomile, bee balk and valerian are showing signs of new growth. The Asiatic Lilly might also come back. I got things tidied up out on the patio last weekend. The leaves and other detritus have been swept up and the main pots rearranged. We are still two months away from our average last frost date so no planting yet. The equinox arrived Sunday so the gardens will get more reflected light and heat off the fence as the shadow of the house contracts.

I have been avoiding the news as much as possible. Most of it is very repetitive--the curse of a 24-7 news cycle. That was especially the situation yesterday with so much attention given to the confirmation hearings for Judge Brown-Jackson. I had no desire to watch the grandstanding by second rate politicians but very little else was on. Mom thought the hearings were better than nothing; I disagreed vigorously. Finally we shut it all down at 6:30 and were in bed by 7. The hearings are still on today so I have Pandora playing and will shift over to the History Channel so we can watch re-runs of Forged In Fire for the rest of our day. The news this morning said something about today being the final day but I was a schedule which said the mess goes through tomorrow. If so I will put on several of our movies.

The news from Ukraine is just as repetitive and even more gruesome. And the commentary is just as often irritating. The discussion of where the "red" line might be with respect to the Russian offensive is inane. They keep talking about the possibility of inciting WWIII if we push Putin too far. My thoughts circle around two scenarios--one fictional and one historical. In the Two Towers, when Gandalf advises Theoden to ride out and meet Saruman's hordes Theoden replies that he "will not risk open war." Aragon tells him that "Open war is upon you whether you will it or not." For the Ukrainians the war started almost 30 days ago and they did not "will it." The other is the months before WWII broke out when diplomats fell all over themselves trying not to piss-off Hitler and bring about a war. They didn't do anything when Germans marched into the Ruhr valley. They didn't really do anything when Germans annexed the Sudetenland on the pretext that they had to protect the German speaking population. Is Ukraine our version of the Ruhr? Or the Sudetenland? Zelensky has already made the case that we may be in the opening phases of the next world war.

Our politicians on the international level have spent the last 80 years trying to construct a system of law and institutions to govern the relations between countries. The effort has done fairly well for Western Europe: no major international conflicts and stable borders. The devastation of modern war has been confined to the non-European world or to the edges of Europe like the Balkans. One of the commentators had a very astute observation: Putin is trying to destroy that order so he can reconstitute the dominions Russia controlled before 1991. 

March 9

 Almost one third through March and the weather feels more like early April. I haven't done anything in the gardens though with growing struggle not to be premature. If it is warm today I might get out and sweep some of the debris that has blown in and get some of the rearranging of the containers. Otherwise I simply look out on the patio thinking about what I might put in where.

Going on to other things: I an no longer amazed at the Republican hypocrisy. I am simply disgusted. Over the last couple of days both the Republicans and Democrats urged President Biden to ban Russian energy shipments but now that he has done so the Republicans are bemoaning the effect on the U.S. consumer and blaming Biden solely for what ever pain the move might cause. Ever since George W. Bush told Americans that their patriotic duty was to go shopping, consumers have been treated as though they were incredibly delicate unless they were "essential workers" who were forgotten almost as soon as the pandemic seemed to be over. The rest of us are batted back and forth for the political benefit of the politicians--they hope.

I am surprised at how many American International companies have decided to either exit Russia or suspend their operations in Russia. The oil companies have made bans on Russian oil a moot question. What oil they might have been able to ship to points outside Europe has been stalled by shipping companies refusing to pick up cargo or by people on the receiving end refusing to unload. A couple of the economics commentators noted that the economic hit on the companies might not be as significant (Even for McDonalds who are trying to continue paying their employees and supporting their suppliers) as expected because the ruble has lost so much of its value.

The stock markets have gone up and the oil markets have gone down. The comments say the moves are on the hope that some resolution to the Ukrainian situation is in the offing. I haven't seen anything to support that hope.

March 6

 How convoluted our business ties have become. When we try to punish Russia for its horrible behavior we often end up hurting ourselves or our allies as this article shows. I have been tracking the gas prices locally. Yesterday all but one station had gas for $3.90/gal and that one had raised their price to $4.00. Today all gas stations (the ones that are listing their prices--some aren't) are selling their gas for $4.00. The news yesterday mentioned that another Senator had introduced his own bill for a ban on Russian oil and the reporters featured interviewees who commented on the pain of higher prices but considered it worth given the circumstances in Europe. One of the featured analysts made the mistake of minimizing in a rather condescending way the effect of the price increases on "average" Americans (if there is such a category) which was received with a good bit of sarcasm here.

David Kaiser has a post which touches on several points that have been rattling around in my head since crisis began. I had been thinking this morning about the fact that no conventional, large scale war has been fought in Europe since the end of WWII. Wars since have been confined to third-world countries and were often insurgencies or civil wars that were proxies for our "great" power rivalries.  Kaiser doesn't draw many conclusions about that. I am thinking about the levels of suicide and/or drug addiction among our "volunteer" soldiers and the repeated scandals concerning the substandard medical treatment many received for their wounds.

Kaiser does remark on the loss of respect for governmental authority in both the former Soviet Union and in western democracies. He is a bit vague about the causes of the loss of respect in either country except for the blame he casts on our educational system. I could point to the high cost of wars of choice that yielded far few if any benefits ordinary Americans could see. I can't speak to the Russian situation but I seem to remember a "joke" that passed around during the time their government was expending a lot of blood and treasure in Afghanistan: they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work. Makes me wonder just what their economy was doing then. About that time (the 1980s) the income of middle class Americans stagnated and the only things that kept most families enjoying a middle class lifestyle were women entering the work force and easy credit (student loans, home equity lines of credit, etc.).

I will leave you to read the last couple of paragraphs for yourself. Some of the conclusions indicate that whatever "normal" will come after the dust finally settles won't be the old normal.

About 30 years ago I read Dmitry Orlov's work regularly--before it went behind a subscription wall--and I was reminded of one piece where he explained why he thought that Americans would do worse in case of an economic/social collapse than the Russians did during their 1991 collapse. Russia had a large number of people who survived WWII or who grew up during the hard times in the post war period and remembered what they did and applied those memories to the new crisis. Americans had fewer people who remembered the hardships of the Great Depression and WWII. Most of us have no memories or experiences to draw on to help us through such times. I was thinking of that during the discussions of the effects of the sanctions on the Russians and on us and I wondered it Putin was betting that his people would weather the privations better than our people would. I wonder how that bet will play out.

March 4

 First thing I saw this morning was a post whose author said that gas prices had gone up 0.50/gal overnight. I thought I would check our prices locally and saw the prices here range from 3.80 to 3.90/gal. That is 0.30-0.40 higher than we paid two days ago.

Then I found this. What I have read so far today Ukraine and Russia dodged a bullet--the reactor is intact and no radiation has leaked. However, the reactor supplied power to about a quarter of the country and the Russians can now cut that off. I don't chalk up the result (the fact that the reactor was taken intact and relatively undamaged) to precision given how many of their missiles have hit civilian targets though they claim they are not deliberately targeting civilians.

I love the first two posters leading off this Treehuggers post. The first is the WWII original and the second a modern remake. I have read that Joe Manchin and Lisa Murkowski have introduced a bill to ban imports of Russian oil. I don't know where it will go but I agree even though it might make our budget a good bit tighter. I always am deeply suspicious of depending on something someone else can hold over me. I remember the problems women in my bootcamp company had when we suffered a company punishment couldn't smoke because the "smoking lamp" was off. I remember in "A" school when the woman in charge of the women in the class threatened to take us to her "barber" if we didn't follow regulations on our hair styles. I immediately cut mine off in a pixie cut even shorter than hers. It make no sense to me that, as a society, we don't produce what we absolutely need within our own borders. As a tit for tat the Russians have prohibited the export of rocket engines our space program uses.

I just had another thought--officially banning Russian oil might not mean that much because quite a few major western oil companies are divesting of their investments in Russian oil.

March 2

 Welcome to March and the start of meteorological spring. We have three more weeks til the Vernal Equinox and astronomical spring. I only put that in because I always mix up the two. This is the time when the emotional part of me really, really wants to get out and garden while the rational part yells "not yet, you fool!" At the moment the rational side is winning.

We did most of our grocery shopping yesterday and filled the car. The gas was $3.54/gal--twenty cents higher than a week ago. I expected the rise because oil prices have been creeping higher since before the before the Ukrainian situation blew up. The prices aren't yet disturbingly painful only because we don't drive much--maybe once a week for groceries. If they go to that point we have our strategies in place to deal with it. Last year we our shopping trips to once every two or three weeks and can do that again if we must.

I noticed in the news blurbs that the oil/gas companies are trying to use Russia's war of choice against Ukraine as an excuse to drill more and to persuade the government to relieve them of some environmental restrictions. I don't think they really need such action from the government since the oil prices are now over $100/barrel. It would serve us better if the government advocated and subsidized renewables for home electricity and conservation measures. 

And oil isn't the only price going up (hence the increase in gas prices) food has also been going up. It amuses me that so many people haven't connected the dots between the droughts, heat waves, and floods afflicting so much of the world's agricultural land and the high prices.  We saw the drought, heat, and floods in the Northwest and into Canada and said "watch the beef prices." But guess what?--chickens and hogs don't do well in those conditions either. Neither does corn or wheat. And Ukraine is considered Europe's bread basket. Together with Russia it produces about 25% of the world's wheat.