May 30

Only one more day left in this month. I managed to get some work in the  ball  done. I transplanted the lemon and managed to get the chamomile with its rootball into a different pot. I also have two more five gal. buckets partly filled. Yesterday I constructed a trellis for three other large buckets which I hope to plant with squash tomorrow. Like most of my gardening and housework nowadays it is small steps at a time with frequent rests. 

We turned the news off very early today. The only stories covered were the Uvalde massacre and Ukraine. I am heartily sick of both. I am even more sick of the Repthuglican talking points that absolve the over abundance of assault style rifles in our society while blaming everything else (violent video games and movies, parents, etc.). Cancun Cruze suggested "hardening the schools." He insisted that school shootings would end if only they had only one door in and one out and had heavily armed guards at the entrance. It doesn't take any great intellect or imagination to visualize how that might end. Take a look at this site for the Our Lady of the Angles school fire in 1958 where 92 students and 3 nuns died when fire and toxic smoke cut off their only way out. More were injured jumping from windows 25 ft above the ground. So instead of an asshole with an assault weapon we might have an asshole with molotov cocktails??

I wonder if he also thinks we should "harden" grocery stores since only two weeks ago a similar asshole in Buffalo murdered 10. He didn't quite have the death wish the Uvalde shooter had so the cops took him alive.

I can just visualize out future. Mom and Dad work from home which is a hardened structure with cameras recording everyone who comes in and goes out and with the added security of bullet-proof windows, very efficient fire suppression system, and an added "panic room." Mom gets the two kids ready for school fully equipped with a kevlar backpack and body armor in their jackets. They get on a bus that is armored like a military armored personnel carrier for their short ride to the school. Nobody walks any more because they might be hit by random gunfire. Mom then drives Grandma to the grocery store (in one of the family's own armored cars) and parks in a secure parking lot surrounded by high chain link fence topped with razor wire after checking in with the guard shack at the entrance and having her license plate recorded. They walk into the store under the gaze of more guards at the only entrance. After gathering their groceries they pay with a card because, of course, cash is just an enticement for would be robbers. They are escorted to their car by store personnel who help them load everything into the car and then go out the only exit, also through a gate manned by armed guards who make note of their license again. The records will be checked at the end of each day. At home they drive directly into their own underground and fortified garage where they unload. Some of the family's friends live in high-rise apartments that are equally hardened. Some of the adults who have to travel to work do so in company provided armored busses.

 That of course is only life for the well to do. Those who aren't that well off will have to brave the shootings, carjackings, and robberies on streets that aren't well patrolled which many are thankful for since the "officers" they meet seem to view them with deep suspicion. Their kids go to school, when they go, in concrete bunkers and receive zoom lessons so the teachers can be safe at home.

I wonder if anyone would wonder why they have to live in a prison state so all kinds of guns can be available to anyone who wants one for any reason at all.

May 27

 Last Friday of May. Damn how the year has flown. We have had intermittent showers and sun. That pattern will continue for most of the coming week. However, I did get the oregano and the rosemary planted.  Only the Meyer lemon remains to get into a different pot. Our seasonal market opens up a week from tomorrow. I originally put the empty pots that go in the top of the fence pot hangers but took them down because of some high winds. One of the pots flew out and, luckily, landed on our neighbors' patio. I retrieved it but I don't want any more flying away.

I finished a cross-stitch table runner yesterday but found I didn't have enough of the thread I used on it to do the matching table topper. I am trying to reduce my stash which remains more than enough to last me well into my next life. When I didn't have the exact colors the pattern called for I pulled good substitutes from my collection. It was enough to do the runner. Instead of making more substitutions I decided to get enough new thread to do the entire topper with consistent colors. So I still have three embroidery projects on hoop or frame, three crochet projects on hooks and a quilt on my piecing board (which I haven't touched for a couple of months.) I seem to get more done than our elected representatives do--without the mealy mouthed platitudes designed to say nothing and offend nobody.

Found this NYT story that provides more evidence of how screwed up our economy is thanks to consolidation and long supply lines. As with so many other products, the contrast dye used in CT imaging comes from China and the Shanghai lockdown has put a squeeze on supplies. Earlier it was computer chips automakers needed to manufacture new cars. During the early days of the pandemic we had shortages of medical equipment and those mayors and governors who could get in supplies often had to face Federal agents stealing appropriating commandeering shipments the cities and states had paid for for redistribution to favored allies of the Former Guy. Illinois Governor Pritzker got his in by not disclosing when and where the shipments were coming. And the baby formula shortage shows us what is likely to recur in an industry dominated by only a few companies (four in this case) when a contamination issue forces a recall and the shut down of the largest production facility of one company that dominates just shy of 50% of the market.

May 25

 Well, here we are ten days from the massacre in Buffalo  during which ten mostly elderly black shoppers at a supermarket (the only supermarket in an area which was otherwise a food desert). They haven't even had all of the funerals there and now we have the Uvalde, Texas shooting which (so far) has cost that community 19 children and 2 teachers. The Republicans are either silent or mouthing the usual pap of "thoughts and prayers." I wish one of the survivors would confront Ted Cruz and the others who won't do anything about the epidemic of violence in this country and tell him "take your thoughts and prayers and shove them so far up your backside that they choke you." I noticed that the events both in Buffalo and Uvalde show up the mantra "all that stops a bad guy with a gun is good guy with a gun." Both the shooters were confronted by "good guys with a gun" and one of the died; several others among the Texas officers were hurt. So much for that bit of NRA crap. By the way, I was once a member of the NRA and engaged in target shooting which I enjoyed a lot. I thoroughly enjoyed mastering, at least to an extent, a skill.

I had another thought listening to the coverage: we should reconnect the parts of the 2nd Amendment that the Supreme Court separated some time ago. As originally written it reads 

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

I suggest that all Americans, when they turn 17, are enrolled in the National Guard and they stay in the guard for ten years while they get training, learn discipline, and are available, as the militias of the early Republic were if they are needed. But nowadays few serve in either the Guard or the military. From what I have seen in the news many of the shooters had minimal familiarity with their weapons beyond how to load, point, and pull the trigger.

I just had another thought: perhaps, somehow, we should follow the policy the American occupation officials in Germany after WWII, after the concentration camps had been liberated, of forcing local German officials and local residents to tour the camps and see the worst of what their government did. Make Ted Cruze and others to tour the school and to view the bodies of children whose parents had to provide DNA samples in order to get a positive identification. I would (almost) pay to watch some of our politicians barf up what ever they recently ate.

May 20

 Well, I think my gardening day is done. It started sunny and I hoped that the temperature on the patio wouldn't get too hot too soon. But the clouds moved in and now it is raining. I intended to just come in for a bit of a rest however the clouds encouraged me to put the vermiculite, potting mix and fertilizer in the shed. Normally I would have left everything in place so I could would be there when I started with the next container. Our temperatures are bouncing from very early spring cool to mid summer hot. We had a three or four days when it was cool enough for jeans and long sleeves. That followed almost a week when shorts and short sleeve t-shirts were almost too hot. And that is where we are now.

We had to go out to get a couple of items we couldn't get Wednesday and stopped at the garden shop hoping to fill out the gardens a bit. I found a variety of pepper I grew last year and loved as well a patio sized tomato which I, impulsively, decided to try out. That wasn't my only impulsive purchase. For the first time I can remember, the shop had Meyer lemon trees. I bought one hoping that the cats will leave it alone when I bring it in for the winter--if I haven't managed to kill it before then. I was looking for the small transplants of lavender and rosemary but only found larger plants. I almost decided not to buy any but finally picked up one of each.

May 17

 Very chilly today and with a brisk breeze it feels even cooler. I am seeing clouds moving in which goes along with our forecast predictions of rain coming in late today into tomorrow. I got the little rose planted, and retrieved the last 10 small pots that fit into the fence potholders and on the fence. They aren't filled yet because I am still looking for small plants that are drought/heat tolerant and like full sun. Also got the hose connected so I can more easily water plants when necessary.

The efforts to ban books was ridiculous to begin with and is getting progressively more so. Found this on Crooks&Liars linking to an NBC story. Both libraries and schools are moving to digital catalogs quickly. I wondered how our Neo-Puritans would handle that and this pretty much outlines the strategy--force the libraries and schools to suspend the e-reader systems their patrons/students use. I just checked our local library and they use a different e-reader/catalog system. If I relied on the library for my reading matter I would be mightily pissed. I still have the resources to buy e-books from anywhere which is a good system for me since I generally read several books in increments and the reading might take considerably longer than the time limits libraries impose.

May 16

A cool but sunny day today after a long rain over night. I don't know if I will do any gardening today but I don't think it is an urgent project. I got the two marigolds and two Lewisia. That last is the plant I mentioned but didn't remember the name. They are drought tolerant and like full sun, and, since they are a short plant, they are in small pots in the pot holders on the fence top. I know where I will put the spearmint and peppermint--in medium-large pots where they will be contained. I checked the plant I thought was one of my rosemarys and discovered it is in fact lavender. So I will get one more lavender and two rosemarys when we go to shopping later this week. Having green plants, some blooming, has improved my mood fantastically.

May 14

Well, we went out on Thursday and visited a couple of our favorite garden centers. I got the petunias transplanted in the three-tier tower yesterday and one of the hibiscus. The hibiscus is already blooming. Today I got the two dahlias put in before I ran out of steam. I don't force things any more so the rest will get in as I get the in. I still have basil, sage, oregano, spearmint, peppermint, a miniature rose, two marigolds and a couple of other plants I forget the name of which I haven't grown before. I know I said I wouldn't put in roses again after the problem I had last year with the mosaic disease. However I like roses so I think, if necessary, I will treat them as annuals. It looks like the clouds are moving in so we might get the rain this morning's forecast promised.

The news is all about the baby formula shortage. Mothers are going bonkers (none of the fathers were interviewed) often going to multiple stores and coming up empty. Axios has a long article on the situation. We had a couple of offbeat observations on the problem. First--people, it seems to us, have become too dependent on being able to go to a store at any time and pick anything the need or want and have no idea of how to work around not being able to find it. Several years ago, before the pandemic, we often found it difficult to find some items we especially like or use frequently in  our usual stores. Our response was to check out other places that might carry them. And, just in case, I checked out how those items might be made at home. We also started carrying a couple of extras so we were less likely to run out. Second--people are overly dependent on expert opinion. I am old enough I was never fed formulas. When we lived in southern Illinois with my grandparents, Mom fed us raw cow's milk from the cows our grandparents raised. Experts today would be horrified and one this morning strongly recommended not feeding a baby cow's milk. I did a quick search and found several sites with recipes for using goats milk (liquid and powdered) and canned milk using additions we used to keep on hand at home. Nobody seems to ask what people did when they didn't have the modern convenience of powdered specially concocted formula for their babies.

Just saw this Crooks&Liars post which doesn't surprise me at all. Throughout the pandemic commercial interests wanted their workers on the jobs and their businesses open at all costs (to others). How often did we see the stories hailing the "essential" workers who were also the most underpaid and could least afford to be absent whatever the risk to themselves and their families and friends? Some employers did give a "hazard" pay bonus but rescinded it as quickly as possible. 

I saw a report that Justice Clarence Thomas insisted that the court shouldn't be "bullied" into making decisions that simply agree with popular sentiment. He also bemoaned how the respect accorded our institutions, including the Supreme Court, has eroded. However, I think his attitude is a patronizing one of telling all of us "shut up and sit down." I don't care much for patronizing men telling me what they think is best thereby short circuiting my decision making. I have always resented religious bigots who want to impose their religiously based standards on me and that resentment has only intensified in my old age. As so many commentators have remarked laws against abortion didn't abolish abortion and the new laws being passed in anticipation as well as the zombie laws still on the books won't either. The same way Prohibition didn't abolish alcohol but just drove it underground. As Ken Burns said in his miniseries, we became "a nation of scofflaws." As the last two years of COVID regulations and mandates showed that spirit is still alive and vigorous.

May 10

Another nice, warm and sunny day starting here. I plan to look at the garden centers on our next shopping day. I don't see any freezing temperatures for the next two weeks so it might be safe but I will keep some of the protective caps just in case.

Found this on Treehugger this morning. When I read something that advocates what some author thinks everyone should do to ease the climate crisis I always look for what they aren't saying. When those advocates pushed for pushing for solar and wind power on a massive scale I noticed they were stopping their "analyses" with end users: how much energy the individual could "save" by shifting to wind or solar. They said nothing about the energy and resource demands for creating the solar panels and wind turbines which both pull on fossil fuels massively. They also didn't talk about what to do with the panels and turbines when their useful life is over because they contain non-recyclable materials (or materials that also require massive fossil fuel inputs to break them down to a recyclable state.) The proposed shift from beef to chicken (and even to a completely vegetable based diet) has similar problems as the article outlines very well.

We noticed this morning that our federal officials predict a fall surge of COVID that will see 100k+ cases. We decided sometime ago that we would have a booster for COVID as well as the flu shot in fall. Both of us are over 65 and Mom had a bout of viral pneumonia in January which wasn't COVID for which the hospital tested. This article from the BMJ (British Medical Journal) postulates a vaccine booster to prevent the winter surge they expect and that such boosters will become a yearly ritual for the foreseeable future. If the "past is prologue" we will be seeing the same on this side of the pond.

This NY Times article provides a number of articles on COVID including one which parallels what the TV news stories this morning. I noticed the headline on one indicating Taiwan is moving away from its zero-COVID policy and finding a way to "live with COVID what ever that might look like. And we now have a budgetary tug-of-war over continuing aid to provide sufficient vaccines for fall. The Republicans, as usual, are stonewalling on it.

Infidel753 has a nice list of aphorisms today. Ones I especially like: 

Some people, it is said, see retirement as the end of a meaningful life.  I see it as the end of a meaningless life.  No more spending eight hours a day doing things so inane and irritating that they literally need to pay me to do them.  Retirement is the time to bloom.  Most jobs wilt you.

Better my own road to Hell than someone else's road to Heaven. 

 Ah, how nice to have Bloglovin' back to some semblance of normal. I am still keeping my blog list handy--for the next time.

So Musk has announced he would end the Former Guy's exile from what used to be his favorite megaphone if he (Musk) succeeds in buying Twitter. I am not on Twitter and don't read Tweets unless they are cross posted by people whose blogs I read. I was totally annoyed my the exorbitant amount of attention the regular media. So far the Former Guy has insisted he won't reenter the Twitter arena because he has gone on to his own site: the so-called Truth Social which started and which hasn't done very well so far.

For a bit of humor follow this link to see the end of the life cycle of the Russian Tank.

May 8

 Good morning on a nice bright and, likely, day. The weather people predict temps in the 80s which is not at all typical in this area. Thankfully not the triple digits or 90s in the south west. The garden shops are ramping up for the season. Ten years ago I would already be looking then we had several years when we had cold snaps, hard rains and other weather that would have destroyed plants put out at this time. For the last two years I didn't start putting plants in until the end of May and didn't finish filling in until the end of June. I plan to look at my seeds and see what I will plant directly today.

David Kaiser has a long post this morning including, in part, a post he wrote 18 months ago. His key conclusion is one that has been rattling around in my mind for sometime. Both Republicans and Democrats have relied too much on the legal system, and the Supreme Court specifically, to achieve the aims they couldn't gain by political means. Although a large number of people, perhaps even a majority, might agree with what ever decision has been handed down, another large number of people will be galvanized to oppose. Somehow both sides have to move these questions back to the political stage and we are going to have to learn to respect different opinions. Right now too many of us see something we don't like or are morally opposed to insist on putting the rest of us in their straight jacket.

I haven't Been able to get onto Bloglovin' for the last week. This is the second stretch in a little over a month and it irritates me. After the last time  I made a list of the blogs I normally get through that service so I can go in to those sites directly. Not as quick and not as convenient but then I have wondered frequently over the last few years about the unexpected costs of "convenience." Update: I got on a bit ago and had difficulty because I kept getting the notice that the servers were overloaded. It was very frustrating but I did get my list cleared. I might just forget Bloglovin', purge my list to my favorites and keep going in directly the ones I keep.

May 5

 What a chaotic week we have had so far. We went to our local dairy yesterday and the cashier asked how we were doing. We know her fairly so I simply quipped that the answer depended on what aspect of things she referred to. She mentioned the Supreme Court leaked draft decision and I summed up my feelings: we're fucked. I skimmed the decision and noticed several things about it. Alito tried to diminish the impact by insisting it wouldn't affect other "unspecified rights" such as the right to obtain contraception, the right to marry someone of a different race or the same sex, to begin with. If I am being polite I would say he was disingenuous. If I am honest I would say he is lying. If I give voice to my feelings I have to say the bastard is spewing shit from the wrong orifice. All of the decisions concerning "unspecified rights" (unspecified in that they aren't specifically enumerated in the Constitution) rest on the same arguments concerning the same Amendment. In my state, the senator who isn't up for reelection has already said he wanted to see gay marriage and interracial marriage go the same way. And this morning some red state politicians are taking aim at contraception. I think of the scene in the movie Elizabeth where the future Lord Burleigh tells Elizabeth's ladies-in-waiting they are to show him her sheets each morning so he could know all her "proper functions" and, when they demure, tells them that the Queen's "person and body are no longer her own. They belong to the state."

Also, I think Alito was throwing a sop to Chief Justice Roberts by saying that these issues should be decided by elected representatives in the states. That, however, would mean two things: first that there would be no assurance that a couple married legally in another state (heterosexual or homosexual) could move to another state which doesn't recognize the validity of their (mixed race or same sex) marriage in that state. Second, any attempt by the federal legislatures to set a federal standard could be struck down because the Court has held that the states have jurisdiction in spite of the doctrine of supremacy of federal law over state laws. Any one remember the conclusion of Orwell's Animal Farm? "All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others." 

May 2

 Welcome to May. It has been wet and cool for the last couple of days so no gardening. Our primary election is tomorrow but we hear more about the more dramatic elections in other states than anything here. I have seen only one candidate from whom we receive a mailing every couple of days. It is always the same with the same generalities about what she will do for us but her first point ensured my vote will go elsewhere. She strongly supports "families and the unborn." And yes, she is a Republican. We live in a largely Democratic county in a largely Republican state which is generally unsatisfying. However, I will say our city Republican mayor has continued his predecessor's work on the infrastructure improvement the city has needed.

Tom Englehardt has an interesting post this morning. It appears to be a reissue of one from 2015 but I think I missed it. As I understand his regret that he didn't ask questions about his mother's life before he was born. My mother is still alive and her recollections are a joy to listen to. Someone once said that modern society, unlike previous societies, are rootless and cut off from their history. That person thought the root of that disconnectedness was because so much was changing so fast the experience of the older generation lost value. We often talk about how things have changed. Mom remembers not having a telephone (the landlady allowed residents to use hers in an emergency), radio but no TV, no computers, no internet. I remember having a phone in the house and my dad complaining about me monopolizing it, our first TV, looking up books in the library card catalog, using a dumb terminal to play a game on the university mainframe located miles away, the first desk top computer my advisor got for his lab, getting my first cell phone, my own first desk top computer (and later first lap top), and the internet from efforts of two universities I attended to connect to the present when we (Mom and I) are on from early morning to evening. Younger relatives take those changes for granted and use the technology very differently. There is little I can offer on that. But in the process the value of non-technical knowledge has lost value.

David Kaiser's post this morning doesn't have anything I haven't seen before. I have one question: what does the conclusion that no western nation has managed a "successful" fourth turning mean? What would a "successful" transformation look like? By whose standards? It reminds me of all the articles (most of which I haven't or wished I hadn't read) telling us how to "age successfully." At 73 I am decades older than most of those authors who were writing for readers only a decade or two older than they. It means zip for me--like advice for saving/investing for retirement after you are already retired and what you have is what you got. I have read Strauss and Howe's Fourth Turning and it resembles a very vague road map to an unspecified destination.