January 26

 After a rather hazy morning the sun is now out fully. Still cold but the "warm up" is coming. I brought out the in-process-tablecloth printed for embroidery. I hadn't touched it for a couple of weeks as I worked on the crochet pieces and thought about what I will do with the cross stitch piece (when it is finished). I got a new Herrschner's sale catalog and was very tempted to order several of the pieces--very tempted. However, I finally decided not to get any. I really do have enough pieces to do and there will always be another catalog. And I, sometime this coming week, get the pieces to a quilt top I should get back to. I have also an idea of how to continue with it.

I am still in scan mode on the news on line and still am trying to keep the news off the TV. I don't need to know details of what the "neon god" is doing or how the "(once upon a time) greatest deliberative body in the world," a.k.a. the United States Senate has lost its collective mind and its collective spine. Not that long ago, as pundits gasped over the multiple failures of the Russian military once thought to be second only to the U.S. military, I had a stray thought: the U.S. military hasn't really been unequivocally successful since the end of WWII. We just haven't had an unequivocal defeat. Now we have an inexperienced, financially inept, and morally defective Secretary of Defense who's only redeeming characteristics are Trump likes him and he looks good on TV. Not a good omen for the future of the "greatest and most powerful military" in history.

Considering the coverage of Trump's visit to the disasters in North Carolina and California I am really glad Melania didn't wear that Jacket she was wearing when they took off to fly to see the damage of a hurricane and which she decided to remove before they disembarked from the plane, or someone had the good sense to advise her to remove. Do you remember the phrase printed on it: "Do you care? I don't." Trump used the North Carolina appearances to criticize the federal agencies involved in the recovery effort and suggest that FEMA should be dismantled. He spent the California phase condemning California and playing the mob boss: "Such a shame you suffered this disaster. I will be happy to help you but first you need to do what I want." We have exchanged the "comforter-in-chief" for the nitpicking extortionist-in-chief.

Ireland, Scotland, and parts of the north of England were hit by winter Storm Éowyn as described here on BBC. The wind speeds set unbelievable records and the Weather Service issued TWO red flag warnings, one for Northern Ireland and one for Scotland. That level of threat warning is not issued frequently--maybe once a year. The Weather Channel noted that this was a "bomb cyclone" that developed over cold water. Also very unusual.

Another story on the Weather Channel noted the opening of a snow crab season in Alaska after a two year moratorium. The snow crab population has begun to recover after suffering a 90% loss two years ago that was attributed to unusually warm waters in their normal areas.

A small snippet of news appeared in a site that provides some information significant in my area: people from Michigan are coming into Indiana to get eggs because of the high cost in Michigan. The bird flu has evidently hit the supply as the flocks of chickens are euthanized as they test positive.

One of my e-mail feeds had a piece on the consequences, for others, of Trump's hiring freeze. It showed a screen shot of a post by a man who described his distraught wife as her new job with the VA disappeared. She is a nurse. The writer described how they had sold their home, bought a new one in the area where the job was located and had spent several thousand dollars in the process and the strain the family now faced. At the bottom was a plea for help. But what had me shaking my head was the description of their fervent support of Trump and MAGA. They couldn't believe that Trump had actually done that to them. He insisted that it had to be accidental, that Trump hadn't intended their pain; surely they would have been spared given their support. Why in the hell did they think that they would not feel the pain of what Trump intended? Elon Musk promised that "you" would experience a lot of pain in the new regime but "you" would "eventually" have a new promised land of plenty. He didn't promise that only the anti-Trump faction would suffer, or that he and others in his orbit would share the pain, and he also didn't give any time frame for the "eventual" new paradise.

Paul Kingsnorth posted this on his Abbey of Misrule site about his family's experience in Galway during Storm Éowyn. He describes what happens when you lose everything usually available with a push of a button. We here have had blackouts but they have never lasted long. And they never came as a result of the most destructive storm in memory. We have often wished we could get a generator considering how crazy the weather has become but we rent and there is no safe place to put one. Like Kingsnorth we do have candles, flashlights with batteries, and an oil lantern. But in a really serious event--we would don't have too many alternatives. We would have to hope the weather wasn't too cold or too hot. Then we would have to decide if we could stay put or would have to gather the cats and necessary personal effects and go somewhere else.

An interesting side note here: shortly after reading the Kingsnorth post and thinking about his comments about sitting by his fire with a drink and DONING NOTHING while the kids read real, physical books my mother remarked how odd she felt in having nothing to do. I reminded her that we both lived a long time in a world that pushed you to always be doing something. Both of us sometimes feel at odds when we really have absolutely nothing that needs to be doing. And we have found that a lot of things don't actually need to be done.