Welcome to November--

Hope you all had a good Halloween (or Samhain or what ever you call the day). We had no trick-or-treaters--at all. We haven't participated in the tradition for several years. After the last big scare over contaminated or sabotaged candies the numbers of children coming around dropped precipitously. Instead various civic associations and parents put together alternative parties--which I think was a good thing. Covid, of course, put a nail in that coffin last year. But also we don't like having left over candy--even candy we like. Our tastes have changed and most isn't as enjoyable as it once was.

I have remarked in political conversations here that we are entering a post Enlightenment era. That age has been dominated in our faith in reason and the ability of the human mind to understand anything. The United States Constitution was the epitome of that philosophy. It was the result of the application of reason the the problem of how people should be governed. That whole ethos is disintegrating. David Kaiser's latest post is primarily a summary of the latest Covid data but his last paragraph basically says what I said in slightly different words.

The early morning news/talk show we watch noted that the Oxford English Dictionary people have announced their word for 2021: Vax (or Vaxx). Given how the Covid vaccines roll out and controversy over them have dominated the news for this year, that is appropriate. About a month ago I mentioned that we might be as glad to see the end of this year as we were to see the end of last year. I just wish I felt next year would be better. It will be different but not necessarily better.

The Rittenhouse trial  starts today. The Judge decided that the victims can't be called victims or alleged victims but can be called rioters, looters, or arsonists (if the defense can produce proof). That last is a restriction without real teeth. I will make my summation here: that 17 year old crossed a state line with a gun he had no legal right to have in the state to which he traveled, proclaiming he was "protecting" people and businesses though he wasn't in any way authorized to do so (in other words he was a fucking vigilante, and when three people try to stop him (at a time when no looting, arson, or riot was taking place) he shoots them killing two and wounding one, and his lawyers are claiming "self defense." By the way the three victims had no weapons. I think the judge's ruling is a way to stack the deck so the little F-ing idiot gets a free pass.

We just finished a small shopping trip. We were out (or almost out) of several kinds of meat we use quite frequently and we needed lettuce for todays chef salad. We noticed that the meat prices were a bit higher that we have seen in the recent past. Not a surprise. This Financial Times article gives a good recap of trends we have been seeing in other media.

I haven't seen it in a long time but I remember an auto repair outfit whose ad finished with "You can pay me now or pay me later." That is the basic message of this ProPublica story "There Is No Cheap Way To Deal With The Climate Crisis." I heard a bit ago that we had already had 18 $1billion+ weather/climate events in this country as of early October. I tracked down this piece from NOAA to check my memory. Another article had a graph which indicated that this year has been the third most expensive year ever behind only 2005 and 2017. But the projections indicate worse to come and the price of doing nothing and merely repairing some of the damage (because not all of it will be repaired).