April 10--rain again, with possible interludes of sun

I am already irritated by the new. The three stories dominating are the Gaetz mess, the Chauvin trial, and Prince Philip's passing. I am utterly sick of the puerile shenanigans of Former Guy's sycophants. I don't need a blow by blow account of the latest sensational trial on police violence. And we wondered how long Prince Philip would last after his last hospital stay. So the amount of time is a waste. We have already turned off the cable and gone to our stock of DVDs.

Something else that irritates me is the political gridlock in Washington. David Kaiser has an interesting take with a dismal forecast for the possibilities for Biden's program. The sad part of the stand off is that most of the program gets high approval numbers according to polls, even among Republicans. Kaiser's comparison of the situation leading up to the Civil War and through the rest of the 19th century is one I have read often of late. But there is another instructive piece of history--Poland when it was a kingdom before being partitioned between Russia, Prussia, and Austria. The King had little power and was elected by the nobility. Legislation had to pass an assembly of nobles in which each individual could block any measure--a librum veto. Given the close divide in the Senate now each Democrat has what amounts to a librum veto. Joe Biden's search for bipartisanship in the Senate is chasing a ghost of past Senates so he has continued the pursuit by appealing to the polls. I don't think that will work either.

Several articles including this from the Miami Herald report that NOAA has predicted another "well above normal" hurricane season with a possible 17 named storms and 8 hurricanes of which 4 will be major.

This Gizmodo article reports on new information from Antarctica's Thwaites (a.k.a., Doomsday) Glacier. Not good news for forecasts of sea level rise.

France has had a major frost that is going to impact all of their agriculture. This will reverberate throughout the EU and UK.

I found this interesting piece this morning which I haven't seen on any of the mainstream media. I have seen a few stories about western fires already but hadn't realized that the midwest is having a spate of fires also. The strange winter that didn't provide much snow cover which melted very quickly. January, February, and March were all had above normal (if that has any meaning anymore) temperatures. April is shaping up the same.

 A rainy April 8

It is cooler today though not uncomfortably so and wet. No gardening today. But I noticed that several of the plants are doing very well. The valerian has almost doubled in size in the last couple of days. I will have to move it back against the fence and move the rose forward. Valerian is a tall plant--much taller than a miniature rose.

When we did our trip to the dairy and stopped off at the close supermarket to get a couple of items we forgot (even with a list!!) earlier this week I saw pots of spring plants out. Tempting--but not yet.

Have any of you seen the story about the toxic pools of waste water in Florida one of which was threatening to burst taking the other two with it? Well, state officials authorized the massive release of the toxic water into nearby waterways averting the bigger disaster if the other pools also ruptured--that water had radioactive materials as well as toxins. As it is the pollutants in the released water may cause fish kills and toxic algae blooms. Has anyone heard anything about the "superfund" sites that were all over the headlines twenty+ years ago? They are still out there, still highly polluted and still not fully cleaned up. Some aren't even partially cleaned up. The "superfund" cleanup was anything but super funded. Does anyone know what happens to bacteria in a petrie dish? The population grows spectacularly--and then dies spectacularly. The population crashes long before the nutrients in the medium are gone because of the waste the bacteria produce. This is our "petrie dish", folks.

 April 7

Sunny again today after an absolutely beautiful day yesterday. Temperature yesterday was in the low 80s and today's is expected to  be in the high 70s. I have already been out in the gardens today. I took apart the tower planter. I moved the middle planter to the bottom with its nice growth of chives. The other two I simply dumped--the lowest planter had a growth of fungus and I wanted to wash it before refilling it and the other had oregano the roots of which simply filled whatever space was there and made a good start on invading the planter below it. That oregano hadn't survived. The other oregano in the window box style planter had survived but I plan to move it to the front of the house and fill it with flowers. The survival wasn't worth the effort to move to another pot since I don't plan on doing much in the way of herbs this year. I plan to prune the roses which did survive nicely. I am thinking of adding other roses if I find ones I want. I might try a blueberry bush again. I tried roses and blueberries before but they didn't survive. I changed from buckets with bottom drain holes when those began to breakdown (after about 15 years of use) to new ones in which I put drain holes around the sides about six inches above the bottom. They drain better after being frozen in winter. The old ones became waterlogged. I will get what I can done today but we expect rain starting tonight and extending through the weekend. Next week is forecast to be cooler (50s and 60s) with lows in the mid 30s.

We did our regular shopping yesterday. That has gone down to every two weeks for both the grocery and the dairy instead of every week. We also had to fill up the gas tank and got sticker shock to see the price at a tenth of a cent below $3/gal. We haven't even come to the seasonal shift in the blends to the summer gas which is always more expensive. Some of the pundits I read are expecting more increases and in groceries as well as gas. We try to keep an eye on such things and are always looking at "what if" situations. So far we haven't had to make changes because of a tight budget but we are always prepared for that possibility.

I found another survival in the gardens. I think it is dyer's woodruff.  I will let it go and see how it blooms. One of the two mums that had survived the worst of the winter did not make it through our last really cold spell. I should have given it some protection but I didn't.  Although one of the oregano sort of survived I pulled it anyway. I will put something else in that pot.

 April 5

Damn--I almost wrote March instead of April. I wonder if I did that over the weekend. I just checked and I didn't. Sometimes we just loose our place in time unless we have to be somewhere which isn't often. Today we have to go to get Mom's lab work going for her next doctor's appointment. That was another case of losing track of the schedule. She thought it was two weeks later that it actually is. Thank goodness her doctors call to remind us. Normally we have no problem because we make notations on our calendar. But for some reason our sense of time got screwed up.

Yesterday was an absolutely lazy day and I got just about nothing done. However, my mind has been working. I have been getting an itch that it is time to scratch. I did a lot of quilting several years ago but haven't recently. It is time.

Evidently Spain is going to try a 4-day work week with no reduction in take home pay. That last bit--without reducing weekly pay--has always been a sticking point. Companies don't want to pay someone 5 days wages for 4 days of work. And workers can't afford to lose 1/5 of their wages no matter how much they would like to have the time for themselves. I once did have a job with a four-day work week. Since I made $10/hour the $1600  for a four week month (before taxes) I would have earned for 40 hour was only $1280 (again before taxes) for 32 hours. After taxes that was abut $950 per month which is almost $200 less than my social security check is now. Also at no point would I have been able to live anything above a hand-to-mouth pay check to pay check existence either way.

Naked Capitalism has a good post today. I have been following the handling of the Coronavirus pandemic and the various responses. We have had an unfortunate situation in that the Former Guy and his faux "administration" saw the health crisis that morphed into an economic crisis as a political problem--one that threatened him directly. They strove to dismiss it as inconsequential or as a problem that they at the lofty level of the Federal Government shouldn't be concerned about. The result was mixed messaging which turned innocuous recommendations (masking and distancing for example) into political bombs. And as the author of the linked post noted local/state officials did everything from nothing at all to imposing lock-downs, school closures and quarantines. We have no real measures by which to judge what was beneficial/harmful or to what extent. China imposed stringed lock-downs in Wuhan and the surrounding provinces. Italy followed suit as did the rest of Europe and we followed them. It seemed like a reasonable idea. But I wondered: what if we had had a serious, concerted effort to persuade people to wear masks, to keep distant, to curtail their travel and limit family gatherings; what if we had provided conditions that would allow sick people to stay home without losing the pay checks they depend on.

 April 4

The temperatures have gone up. Yesterday was in the 60s and overnight we didn't go much below 50. I got out in the gardens and pulled some of the dead stuff. I plan to go out later today and do some more. I think I found another survivor--the oregano in the window box planter. I will take a closer look and see if it has survived and if it is worth keeping.

David Kaiser had another good article that reflects some of what I have been thinking watching the move in Republican controlled states to place new procedures to "secure" the electoral system even though concerted and repeated efforts to find fraud. The real problem is that people voted in large numbers who they think shouldn't vote because they aren't likely to vote Republican. Though the argument has largely been couched in terms of race (too many black and brown people endured all of the hardships heaped on them to vote) in truth poor people of all ethnic and racial groups (including) white are also subject to the new restrictions. Class is also an issue. I wondered if the Republicans were considering property qualifications like those in place in the early Republic.

It has been a bit over three weeks since Mom and I got out "jab" and a little longer since my niece got her last dose of whichever 2-shot vaccines she got so we were glad when she called to ask if she could visit. It was a good visit and we look forward to more now.

Oh!, and Happy Easter to those who observe the holiday. I almost forgot about that.

 April 2

Nice and sunny today and a bit warmer. I saw one of the lawn care crew the landlord retains picking up downed tree limbs and twigs and generally cleaning up. I would love to get out and do some of my own but I really don't want to freeze doing it. I will wait until later in the coming week when we should get warmer temps. I gather from the news last night that March was warmer than normal continuing the pattern for the January and February, in spite of the cold snaps. The snow we had yesterday, I think, has disappeared. Actually none of the snow we had really lasted long except where it got piled up from the shoveling and plowing.

Yesterday was opening day for baseball. I have dear friends who will be very happy. They have truly missed it. I saw clips of the Cleveland opener which featured snow showers. They got some of what we got: lake effect snow just a different lake. I can't tell you what the score was. I don't follow any sports at any distance. The information I get is just in passing.

I read the headline that the CDC has decreed that those who are vaccinated can travel now. I didn't read the entire article. I have noticed that quite a number of people frankly don't give a damn and are traveling whether they have been fully vaccinated or not. And I keep seeing bloggers and other writers up in arms over the proposed "vaccine passports." The most vocal of the QAnon representatives in Congress calls them Biden's "mark of the beast." We know it is spring because the blooming idiots are out in full force.

Last day of first quarter of 2021--DAMN!!

 Well, at least it is sunny--but it is way too cool and a bit windy to do any garden work. I am not toon anxious since I hadn't intended to really start on the garden chores until April. However, I recognize the signs of what one blogger calls IPS--impatient planter syndrome.

Happy April Fool's Day

Mother Nature is providing the joke--we have light, intermittent snow. Well we do have next week with the possibility of 70s and maybe a bit more. So no gardening today. Instead I will alternate reading and some needlework.

I have been listening to the talking heads debate the current administration's policy on Afghanistan and the pull out Former Guy (a.k.a., #45) agreed to sometime ago. They always talk about several of factors: whether an orderly pull out is possible in the month we have left on the agreement, what effect our leaving will have on our allies who also have troops there, whether pulling out will open the way for the Taliban to take over and what would happen to vulnerable Afghanis, especially female Afghanis. One of them today wondered if we have the resolve for an indefinite stay to keep the status quo. I think they are not asking the right questions. First, if we decided to stay indefinitely would we really stabilize the government we recognize. Or would we really just postpone an inevitable outcome we find very distasteful. Second, would our leaving simply open things up for a new "terrorist" center in Afghanistan that would threaten the U.S. or Europe? In case anyone has forgotten, the Taliban didn't conduct the 9/11 attack. That was Al Qaida and most of those who carried out the attack were Saudis. All the Taliban did was allow Al Qaida to set up on their territory. One day we might realize and accept responsibility for the growth of terrorism in the Middle East. Third, I find extremely "conservative" and "fundamentalist" Muslim groups as repulsive as I find "conservative" and "fundamentalist" Christian groups. However, what power do we really have to force other cultures in other countries to tow the line we dictate? We have a long history of triggering regime change and trying to remake nations in our image. That hasn't really worked out well and we have been dealing with the blowback and will be for some time. This is another area where we really need to creatively rethink our actions in the world.

Well, we finally have a real "infrastructure week" courtesy of the Biden Administration. Of course the Republicans have suddenly regained their suspicion of debt, deficit, and large spending programs. We didn't hear a single mewling squeak from them during the Former Guy's administration which added trillions to the deficit and debt with massive tax cuts that benefited the wealthy few and big corporations greatly without doing much for the rest of us. But I noticed that the critics of the plan have a very narrow view of "infrastructure." Basically they want it restricted to traditional energy systems, roads, airports, and water and sewage systems. No alternative energy, limited support for electric vehicles, and almost nothing else. And almost all of it directed to either private companies or to public/private "partnerships." I put that word in quotes because those partnerships usually mean that the public pays, the consumer pays and the private "partners" get a windfall. What is really sad is that voters generally, including Republican voters, appear, from various polls, to support various parts of the program by 60% or more.

Take a look at this for a bit of levity in a time when a laugh is worth a lot.