October 28

 Still dark outside because it is only a bit after 5am. Supposed to be sunny so I will try to remember to go out and sweep up leaves and tidy up outside. I say "try to remember" because I often get to doing something and forget something else I planned to do. Thankfully, nothing I forget is really vital or needs to be done now.

Only a week and a half of this phase of our never ending election cycle left. We have seen more canvassers this year than in any previous years. I have noticed that none of the candidates state their party affiliations explicitly. The only reason I know that the trustee candidate who came by yesterday was a Democrat was he included the flyer for our Democrat Representative to Congress in the campaign literature. I used to split my votes but that was when the Republicans hadn't gone bat-shit crazy. They had policy positions we could evaluate and values beyond a lust for power. I plan a straight Democrat ballot this year. Looking at the Republicans I think about the description a character in a novel I like gave of another: he wants power very badly and would use it badly when he got it because he had no value beyond power.

A bit earlier I saw the best definition of the political polls: mood altering statistical drugs. It is seems to be most effective at altering the moods of the leaders of both parties.

I have seen the amazing endorsement of Hershel Walker by Senator Lindsey Graham several times. I say amazing because it is so demeaning to Walker specifically and blacks more generally. Walker is as much a statue as the Heisman Trophy he won once upon a long time ago. He is the political equivalent of the trophy wife. The perfect n-word. If I were a betting person I would take odds that if Walker gets in the Republican will put up a white candidate next time and abandon him. Right now they are using him to take out a creditable, accomplished black man. That is his only value to them.

Robert Reich posted the first part of a series he calls The Great Power Shift. He writes about the shift over the last forty years that concentrated political/economic power in corporate/financial elites to the detriment of the rest of us. Pay close attention to the self-serving definitions of "the market" and how public policy has skewed power (and revenue) toward the upper 10%.

Had a bit of a laugh during a segment on the news about the political/economic situation in the U.K. The reporter said that the political parties are fracturing to the point where neither party will be able to do anything they don't all agree on "which isn't very much." Sounds very familiar. Our electorate can't even make a reasonable choice among our alternatives because one party refuses to put out either policy or philosophy.

October 27

 We had a full day and a half of good rain which ended around noon yesterday. The temperature barely got up to 50F. The last of the trees went from green to fall color almost over night. The high winds on Tuesday blew a lot of leaves off trees. At time it looked like yellow snow falling because of the number of leaves falling.

I found this sad report almost first thing this morning. That so many Republicans would favor declaring the U.S. a Christian nation even though the Constitution prohibits the establishment of an official religion. One big question: which variety of Christianity would be the official Christianity of the U.S.? But expand the question a bit and ask: what about non-Christians under a declaration the the U.S. is (some form of) Christian nation? That is what this post on the Atheist Revolution asks. The answer should scare us.

Another sign that fall has definitely arrived: when the sun rose we saw frost, heavy frost on the rooftops. Not yet on the cars or grass.

I had a thought that I doubt the politicos would like: the volatility in the electoral process with narrow margins in so many areas, the shift in voter sentiments among groups once reliable voters for one side or the other, the switch of once reliable areas like the formerly Blue Wall of states all tells me that neither party has anything to offer the electorate. The Republicans are simply nit-picking the Democrats while not putting forth any concrete policies. Mitch McConnell's response to a reporter who asked what their plans were: we'll tell you after the election. Essentially they are following the dictum Robert Heinlein put into his character's mouth in TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE: in a government of the people, by the people, for the people, don't tell the people. The Democrats did pass some legislation and used executive orders that will help people if they retain the House and the Senate and if the courts let some of it stand. They promise to extend those and to enact more to cure the chaos the court has produced with the cancelling of Roe but that depends entirely on keeping and, maybe, extending their majorities. We are in for a very bumpy ride no matter what.

October 25

 Good Morning. It is still dark since it isn't yet 6am. My patio is finally accumulating fallen leaves which I will sweep up and use as mulch around the plants I hope will come back next year. The cooler days and cold nights are taking a toll on the remaining annuals. The impatiens are gone. I haven't yet pulled out the plants but will do so soon. The hardier plants I leave in as ground cover to prevent hard rains from splashing soil out of the pots. I need to rearrange some of the pots (with perennials planted) so that when spring comes they will get sun and warmth sooner.

Several news stories over the last few days have reported that children's hospitals are close to capacity with an upsurge in RSV infections. This is an early start for this type of respiratory virus but the medical experts are expecting a COVID surge (with at least two new variants) and a declining vaccination rate especially among those who are most vulnerable, and the flu season in Australia, which often presages what will happen here, is bad.  That is in addition to other colds and such. This morning one of the reporters called it a "triple-demic". Most pundits attribute the increase to the end of COVID restrictions (especially masking and social distancing) and low vaccination rates. We both got our COVID and flu vaccines (we are both over 70 and Mom was hospitalized in January with viral bronchitis) but what will happen next year is a question mark for now. Phizer has announced that their vaccines will now cost $130/dose. If Medicare continues to cover the yearly boosters we will probably get the next one next fall. If not we will have to think about it more. The same for the flu vaccine especially if some of Republicans take control of the House and Senate. They may not be able to get rid of Medicare (or Social Security) but, considering how they crippled the ACA over time, they can do a lot of damage.

Well, the UK has a new Prime Minister, the third this year. Liz Truss, if the reports are correct, made a major miscalculation with her proposed fiscal program. She catered to her own hard core supporters and when the S--- hit the fan didn't have the support of the rest of her party. When the proposals first came out I thought she was channeling Maggie Thatcher and wondered if the electorate could remember their grandparents suffering under Maggie's Ayn Rand inspired austerity. One of our  Republican politicians, I can't remember which, gushed enthusiastic over the Truss policy and thought it a perfect blueprint for us. 

October 21

 Sunny again today with fall-like temps. Supposed to be the same for the next few days.

This morning two segments caught my attention. The first concerned a focus group among registered Republicans where all said they all believed, still, that the election was stolen for Biden. The second concerned Ohio Senatorial candidate John Fetterman whether medical history (currently recovering from a stroke) should somehow disqualify him from being elected to the senate.

I am not at all surprised that the Republicans remain wedded to their beliefs. I saw a post title that claimed our politics have become a religion. I have said that before about economics and politics. The numbers of adherents in traditional religions have fallen over the last three or four decades while the arguments for economic theory and political postulates have been shrilly shouted with the same fervor and the same heated disparagement of alternative theories and postulates once reserved for alternate religions and sects. I read an interesting book, The Perfect Nazi. The author's grandfather was German and no-one would talk about him. Curious, he went in search of his grandfather's story and discovered the man had been a Nazi before Hitler came to power and was one of the few high placed Nazis who escaped efforts to arrest and prosecute him. But, and this is the point, he never wavered in his belief in the righteousness of the Nazi program. Similarly, the followers of William Miller in the 1830s held to their belief even when Christ failed to appear on the several dates Miller predicted. You can find details of the Millerite movement in When Prophecy Fails. How many Southerners discarded their beliefs in the righteousness of their "cause" when the South surrendered in 1865? Not many, and their descendants followed them to the present.

The discussion of Fetterman's capabilities struck me as terribly "ableist." And they took a leap in their assumptions from a difficulty formulating a thought in a spoken sentence to being unable to understand social/political/economic concepts and dealing with them. I always thought The Former Guy was incredibly inarticulate more often than not. Joe Biden sometimes stumbles on his words. Every now and then I sit here trying to drag a word or a name out of my brain. I am in their same age group. I have a friend from one of my stints in college forty years ago who worked harder than anyone I saw to master the course work. She listened to the lecture, wrote out her notes, read the book, listened to her recordings of the lectures, read her notes and amended them, re-read the book. Often she repeated the process several more times. Shortly before we graduated she was diagnosed as dyslexic. She not only finished her BA but completed an MA and has had a career as a teacher/librarian in a local school district. I haven't seen anything that says Fetterman can't function as a senator. Given some of the current members (whom I won't name) I think Fetterman would pass for a genius.

October 20

 Cool but sunny today. They expect warmer temps starting tomorrow. The nights have been cool enough that the impatiens are just about done for the year. I am beginning to think about next year's gardens and how I will rearrange things. Thankfully this is the slack time of the year and I don't have to do anything but think. 

I caught a mention of this story yesterday. Every time I think the Republicans have reached the bottom of their callousness and cruelty, they sink even lower. Rather than take active measures to restrict the availability of weapons that belong only on a battlefield (if they belong anywhere), they will gladly give out DNA kits so that when the children are shredded beyond recognition they can still be identified. 

October 16

 Good Sunday to you all. We had a nice day yesterday but changes are on the way for a very cool (almost cold) beginning of the week through next Friday. The meteorologists on the morning news is warning viewers to dig out the hats and coats because kids as the school bus stops will need them tomorrow morning. Thankfully we only have errands on two days this coming week.

I hope you all don't have a passion for snow crab or red king crab. You will be miserable if this story is accurate. I wish I could say that this is an anomoly but over the last 20 years I have read reports of several cancelled seafood harvests on both coasts as the water temperatures have risen. A couple of those cancellations involved toxic algal blooms resulting in toxic shellfish.

The morning TV news indicate that orange/orange juice lovers should be prepared for price increases because of the damage from Hurricane Ian. According to interviewees, the citrus farmers in Florida were just getting back to some level of normal after Hurricane Irma 5 years ago. If they replant damaged/dead/dying trees tomorrow it takes about 5 years for a fruit tree to mature and produce fully.

This CBS report asks the recurring question that comes up twice a year when we have to shift our clocks. We are three weeks away from the "fall back" part of that ritual. I have never taken that well being out of sorts and tired for a couple of weeks to a month after while my biological clock adjusts. My cats have never adjusted well either. The whole thing has been compared to a person who cuts six inches off the top of a blanket and sews it to the bottom insisting it makes the blanket is longer. Once upon a time it might have had an economic benefit but that was before we became a 24/7/365 economy. I really hope that the politicos decide on either standard time or daylight saving time (not that daylight really can be "saved").

This was good news for me: Social Security will get a hefty (by comparison with past) increase. I have seen a couple of stories complaining that it isn't keeping up with inflation which is true since the annual inflation to date is 9.2% and our increases over the last few years have been well below the inflation rate. My mother and I get along because we both get Social Security otherwise we couldn't afford just our rent much less the car, or utilities, etc. At least, according to the TV news, we won't have to fork over any of the increase for Medicare.

October 15

 We have a very chilly morning (temperature in the mid 30sF) and sunny. We had a good rain last night which is good because I disconnected the hose and would have to bring out my large watering can. I have a couple of plants I want to take out. Otherwise don't have much to do out in the gardens. Soon the patio should get covered with fallen leaves which I will sweep up for mulch around the plants I hope will survive the winter.

I found a couple of articles that reflect the conditions in higher education. As this one notes the current conditions have been brewing for a couple of generations and is now reaching a peak of dysfunction. If, as the author contends, half of GenZ is forgoing college, it marks a significant sea change our media and pundits haven't yet caught up with. The local news has continued to tout all the local kids who get scholarships and service organizations that provide those scholarships. An interesting poiat is the claim that our society has economic incentives in the situation beyond the profits garnered by the student loan industry and the colleges/universities. It keeps large numbers of young people out of the labor force and uncounted in the unemployment statistics. That reminds me of assertions by some historians about one of the causes of the Crusades: it got a large number of aggressive men armed with sharp pointy things out of Europe and doing their damage elsewhere on other populations.

I have seen several articles about the NYU teacher or organic chemistry who was fired recently. This is one that brings up some interesting points most of them missed by most accounts. Organic chemistry is a hard subject as I know because it took me two tries to get a C average in the subject. My instructor gloried in flunking most of his students. I also got a C in Biochemistry from a even more stringent prof at another school on the first try but my numerical score would have given me a B+ or A- in any other course. The real problem was, and is, the use of these courses to weed out students. I had classmates who would have made excellent doctors but they couldn't get past Organic while a couple of others who had all the empathy of a rock got in because the aced the course. One of those latter students  was admitted to the medical program which would lead to an MD but rejected from the MD/PhD program because he scored abysmally on the English portion of the entrance exams. Degrees have simply become a credential that may or may not have relevance to whatever work one will do later. I remember the story from more than a decade ago about a law firm which insisted all employees have at least a bachelor's degree--even to work in the mail room.

What both stories underline is the way students have become consumers and colleges are just another service that has to cater to their customers' whims, complaints, and ambitions. 

October 8

 Well, here we are at the end of the first week of October. Our overnight temps dipped into the high 30s. Areas west of us got their first frost or freeze. None of the remaining plants on the patio had any problem. We had to go out yesterday and saw, maybe, a dozen flocks of geese heading to wherever they will feed before going further south. I unhooked the hose last week and tried to coil it up. I say "tried" because it is so heavy and stiff. I had tried the flexible hoses about five years ago and was disappointed because none lasted more than one season. One survived into the second summer and then burst. However, I am now five years older and figure that the cost is about the same as one of the more showy plants I get each year--so I think I will give them a try again. I haven't figured out what I want to put in. I will try to resist the temptation to put peppers and tomatoes in. I got a few of each out of the two plants, one each of peppers and tomatoes, but not enough to devote limited space to. Several customers at the dairy reported that their tomato yield was disappointing both in quantity and quality. We suffered through high temperatures from late June through most of August just when the plants should be setting fruit. Neither likes temperatures above 90F for that. And when the air temperature gets that high the temperature on the patio is 110+. And once the patio temp gets higher than 85F about all outside is water the plant before I am driven inside.

The politics are still crazy. Every once in a while some talking head says on air what I have said here. When Hershel Walker was put forward as a senatorial candidate in Georgia I said the power-that-be in the party once called Republican simply wanted a black face with some name recognition and numerous flaws to counter a black pastor who had already won the seat once. Somehow the hypocrisy of a  man with four kids, none of whom he is helping to raise, with four different women one of whom claims with documents to support that he urged her to have abortions and who now claims to be anti-abortion with no exceptions. The Former Guy smeared the Republican Senate Minority Leader and his wife using what some of his more unhinged followers might think was a license to kill and anti-Chinese  words but no one on that side of the aisle (including the Minority Leader himself) called him out. The politicos of both parties are now at home campaigning and the Republicans are continuing the hypocrisy by touting the benefits their areas will get from legislation they voted against. I wish I could say I am optimistic about things changing but I am not.

The news commentators, for the last few days, have spent a lot of time dissecting Putins threat to use "all" his options, including tactical nukes, in his "special military operation." He has ensured he can claim an existential threat to Russia with his ersatz referendum in the occupied areas of Ukraine and his subsequent annexation of Ukrainian territory--an annexation even his allies aren't recognizing. Most of the analysts have repeatedly gnawed the "will-he-or-won't-he" bone usually coming down on the side of he won't because there isn't any evident advantage to Putin to carry out the threat. I hope those guys are right. However, this is a prime example of the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) doctrine. It works if and only if both sides are singing from the same hymnal. Thirty years ago I wondered what would happen if one side or the other was operating on assumptions the other couldn't fathom. What if one side figured that in any such exchange of doomsday weapons they would win if they had more survivors than their enemy. Or if one side said "F##k it. Kill 'em all (or as many as we can) and let God (or Allah, or Whoever) sort 'em out while we are welcomed into heaven, or paradise." Or if a leader thinks his position is so precarious that he has to go to a grand and utterly necessary gesture.

Hurricane Ian has handed us and the people in Florida a hell of a clean up and reconstruction. The death toll is around 135 as of this morning second to the Katrina total 12 years ago. I have heard at least 1 property insurance company has folded and more might. But after every one of these storms the remaining companies either pull out or hike their rates to previously unheard of levels. De Santis called it a 500 year flood event but it is at least the third such event in the U.S. this year. For much of the last week the unspoken assumption was that they would rebuild though someone toward the end asked if they should given the increased likelihood of more such storms in the near future.

One of the bloggers I read wrote e the "quiet quit" phenomenon in which younger workers decide that the ethos of doing whatever their employer wants whenever it is demanded, of doing some tasks off books, and sacrificing family/friends whatever is no longer worth it. I have read accounts of similar attitudes in European countries and the author of the blog reminded his readers of the Japanese phenomena of "hikkikomori" and "arubaito" the later of which I wasn't aware. Both reject the normal expectation that people will work hard for the promised rewards of a "good life" in the future. Many are realizing that the "good life" is always just out of reach and most won't ever get even close to it. The Chinese government is dealing with a similar phenomenon in the "lying back" and "let it rot" movements. During my lifetime the world of work has gone from "working hard to make a living," to "working hard to barely scrape by", to "working yourself to death to not make a living at all." And through it all the blame has been placed on the individual not on the society/economy. Many individuals are recognizing the con and not playing the game any longer.