November 17

Rainy and windy today. Did some embroidery this morning and read a bit of 1666: Plague, War, and Hellfire. That is a history of the devastating year when London experience a major outbreak of bubonic plague, the second Anglo-Dutch War and the Great Fire. I read in bits and pieces nowadays. In addition I have Bar Harbor Retirement Home For Famous Writers and Retrotopia.

This morning the early news had a segment, dripping with sarcasm, about the reaction of some TikTok posters who found something "existentially" meaningful in Osama bin Laden's Letter to America written in 2002. Newsweek has a long article which covers it fairly well and with the same tone of sarcasm and distain. I read over the "letter" just like I have read some of Theodore Kaczynski's (a.k.a., The Unabomber) manifesto. What most of the commenters ignored is the fact that a person might be a murderous SOB and right about something. As the old saying goes "a stopped clock is right twice a day." Our actions in various parts of the world have not been beneficial (except perhaps to the military-industrial complex's profits) and the role of technology in our society hasn't been in our society either. But there is a serious myopia which refuses to examine either honestly. For discussion of these issues read Blowback by Chalmers Johnson and Too Much Magic by James Howard Kunstler.

The new plant hardiness zone maps are out. Over the last fifteen years or so, since I started gardening on our patio, I have noticed that the temperatures have risen and the maps follow that. We used to be solidly in the 5b range. Then it shifted to 5a and today most of Indiana is in zone 6. The article says that, for the first time, the lower part of Indiana along the Ohio River is in Zone 7. I expect that my mints, the valerian, and Japanese indigo will all come back. If we have a mild winter perhaps my lavender and sage might also survive. Last spring both of those tried to come back but a late freeze took them out.

Naked Capitalism has a long article about the push by the IMF and several national banks to implement a digital currency. Just from our own experience with on-line banking and engaging with local stores I hope it will be a long while before anything like that is established. One of our vendors doesn't accept either checks or credit cards. They are a small operation and either payment method charges them a fee just for normal operations. That goes up if payment is declined. Then they have to get legal help to recover the funds. We have gone back to cash for most of our transactions. Or I use my debit/Visa to buy gas. Mom has found on-line banking and the few credit cards she has more frustrating over the last few years. 

Last stray thought of the day: I remember the 1960 Presidential election. It was the first time Presidential debates were televised. I don't remember the arguments but I do remember the visual on TV. Kennedy was cool and collected and, as I learned later, well made up for TV while Nixon was sweaty, appeared nervous, and with a "five o'clock" shadow. Kennedy won inspire of the fact he was Catholic. I also Remember Ronald Reagan's campaign. I wasn't so impressed with him. I remember a lot of the discussion by pundits was about his status as a DIVORCED ACTOR. Who would have thought that our politics would have devolved to the point where we have had a TWICE divorced THRICE married adulterer who cheated on each of his wives with the women who succeeded them and whose whole life is a massive grift. And a worse grifter is, I hope, soon to be expelled from the House of Representatives. But the worst part of that--the fact that the Republican conference refused to do anything because they wanted to keep a slender majority. In other words, they valued power over principle.