December 8

Sunny but very cold this morning. I haven't seen much on the e-mail and blog feed so far. But I spent more time this morning getting back to Spanish lessons on Duolingo and time on Ancestry. My youngest brother started his efforts a while ago and then Mom wondered what happened to her father who left when she was very young. So far I have got our family traced out to six generations. It will be more difficult from there but we'll see what I can find. For a bit later I have three new books of cross-stitch patterns and a Herrschner catalog to look through. But for now I am clearing my e-mail.

Stray thought: we used to say that you know you're getting old when the music you loved when young is now Muzak you hear in the background while shopping. This morning I was amused reading a bit which talked about seeing the candy colored Macs from 20+ years ago and how "aging millennials" are reflecting on their past which included said computers. I had one of those myself but they don't appear in my reflections. I am an aging Boomer and my memory goes much farther back. I reflect on using paper and pencil, using the library card catalog, and browsing the physical bookstore.

Pawel Moscicki has a longish post about the "Class Warfare (On the Top)". Our class war isn't so much a matter of the privileged against those lower on the economic pyramid  but of the factions of the upper-upper fighting over which cabal controls the distribution of the spoils. The ripples of that struggle of course affects those lower down. However, what Moscicki says reminds me of a segment on this one of the news/commentary shows which went through examples of how the Trump relations and allies "repo-babies" are feasting at the government trough. It tells you where some of the money they "saved" by taking that DOGE chainsaw to the government agencies.

I noted yesterday that the end of an era sneak up on you in small things but this article by Richard Haas shows that such a change might feel like a sharp slap across your face.