April 6

 We had periods of heavy rain thunder, lightning and wind yesterday, and were under tornado warnings off and on. Today it is nice and sunny with some clouds. I hope to get my spade out to see how easily the containers will dig. I hope they are all thoroughly defrosted.

After the last week of The Former Guy coverage I am giving the news a rest. We'll see what else I find to comment on.

Bill Astore has a new piece on his substack site about "The Need to Confront Reality." He cites a Phillip K. Dick article from the 1970s where Dick writes about the "spurious realities" created by corporations, government, the media. It reminds me of a book written by Daniel Boorstin, The Image. That was written in the mid 1960s. And it is getting worse in our "facts aren't facts" age. Or as, I think it was, Kelly Anne Conway said of TFG's administration's lies "We have alternative facts."

And here is another change resulting from the pandemic: hotels are no longer cleaning rooms every day of a guest's stay. Much of the changes seems geared to the luxury tier the hotels fall into with the top tier still providing full housekeeping but the lower levels offering fewer services. Somewhere a long while ago I read an article which described the ways in which companies made customers perform many tasks that employees once did. They then lowered prices a little bit and reaped the benefit of lower labor costs (not as many employees needed.) Anyone remember when you would drive into a gas station and the attendant filled your tank, washed your windows and checked your oil? A pundit just recently predicted that "self checkout" would soon be the industry norm for retail and grocery stores.

The Erin Brockovich Report features a new book by a woman doctor recounting the 1978 Waverly Tennessee train wreck that devastated her town. It had be wondering just how many train crashes occur in the U.S. each year and found a Wikipedia page with a listing. First thing I noticed was that there hasn't been one single year since 1980 in which there has not been any crashes. NOT. ONE.SINGLE.YEAR. Second, the numbers of crashes each decade have been increasing.  I can't say anything about the consequences in property damage or lives lost because I only looked to see how many crashes and didn't focus, for the most part, on severity. Also the list includes all kinds of rail accidents including at least one monorail and several trollies.

This seems to have been gaining traction over the last few years. More and more over the last 25 years I have thought that the 20th century after about 1930 was an aberration. Much of what we consider normal would have been unthinkably strange to people before then. My paternal grandfather graduated from 8th grade and the state considered him qualified to teach. Neither of my parents graduated high school. My father enlisted in the U.S. Navy before his graduation date and my mother got married. Even though she had all of the credits for a diploma the authorities refused to give her the diploma because she was only 16. Later she did get a GED because she needed it to enroll in her nursing degree course. Of my generation only the oldest of us siblings finished high school. Later my younger sister also got a GED to pursue a social work degree. School was normal not paid labor in heavy industry. By the 1970s my mother could get credit and bank accounts in her own name without a husband or other male relative's signature. That was not normal in an earlier age. Unions had won an 8 hour day, 40 hour week with vacation time, overtime pay, pensions, and health care that often included dental and vision care. Since about 1980 much of that has disappeared. We are regressing.

This sounds distressingly familiar. Interesting that a supposedly "fascist" Italian government sounds so American Republican.