March 8

 After a nice sunny day yesterday it is cloudy today. But the temperatures have been about 10-15F above normal. I noticed the beginnings of growth in the pot with asiatic lilies. I saw something starting in a second pot. If that grows I plan to consolidate the bulbs into one container after they finish blooming. I need to start sweeping up the dead leaves and the seed hulls the birds have scattered over the winter. It is also time to start my yearly reorganization of the patio pots.

Politico has a good article: We're not prepared for the next public health crisis. The main problems the author says are lack of workers and lack of trust. People are leaving and the exodus involves both older people who can retire and younger workers who are fed up with working conditions. Given the cost of getting the basic education and then keeping up the credentials, I don't wonder that new workers aren't coming in. Trust, or lack of trust, goes well beyond the COVID pandemic. Forty years ago the number of people who didn't trust vaccines started going up. I think that skepticism has spread to other medical procedures as well. I know we here take in the advice we get and consider it very carefully before making any decisions. I had a thought as the author labeled this as a crisis of our public health system: do we really have a "public" health system? Mostly we have a private health industry that is focused on profits above all.

Ives Smith posted this article asking "how stupid do they think we are?" When the story of the sabotage of the NordStream pipelines first came out, I easily thought of at least three state actors that would have liked to take it out if they could do that with deniability: U.S., Ukraine, Russia. Disrupting the energy supply going to Europe would reinforce European dependence on Russian oil which would benefit Russia and perhaps soften European (and NATO's) support of Ukraine. The U.S. has for a long time now harped on the dependence of Europe on Russian oil and the interruption, which looks like it will be long term, reinforces that. It also opened up the markets in Europe to U.S. oil and gas. Ukraine would also like to drive home the message that Russia is an unreliable partner they should wean themselves away from and once the bully on the block takes out Ukraine he will go on to another victim. My thought hadn't gone to the idea of private actors (supported or not by government(s)) might be responsible. At the moment, the situation remains the same: not enough hard evidence and a lot of fuzzy speculation.