December 18

We have snow right now. I don't know how many pulses have come in over night. This round is very light but driven by high winds. The wind chimes have been tinkling away all morning. The snow is a grapple kind--you know, the type that resembles little balls of styrofoam. Oh, well--it has only been a few minutes and the snow is heavier now. We don't have any errands planned until Thursday (maybe) so the snow should be almost gone (we hope).

The little birds, the type a blogger from Montana calls LBJs (little brown hobbies), try to avoid actually flying. The spend more time diving into the remaining plants. So far the lavender, mints, and sage still survive. I think a couple of the mums are hanging on. Several others have died back to ground level and will emerge in the spring.

Organic Prepper posted this about one of the elements of the COP28 meetings: encouraging the incorporation of "novel" proteins (read insect) into our diets. Of course the participants stress food shortages and the "overconsumption" of meat in the industrialized countries. The author does a good job of demolishing the overconsumption argument. I would add that much of the food shortage problem is due to conflict, government action (or inaction) and climate disasters. I resent the con job/gaslighting the food processors and some governments are perpetrating. Somehow they want us to believe that any reduction in consumption (or change in diet) in industrial countries would benefit the less developed countries. It resembles the old tactic some parents indulged in when I was young telling their kids the eat their broccoli (or what ever food they hated) and remember the starving kids in China--as if the rejected food would be teleported around the globe. 

David Kaiser posted "The Fall of the American Empire" over the weekend. His conclusions fall in line with some other authors I have been pecking at for a while. The stack starts with Andrew Bacevich's AFTER THE APOCALYPS and continues with Henry Kissinger's WORLD ORDER, Alfred McCoy's TO GOVERN THE GLOBE--among others. I think it was James Howard Kunstler who wrote on his CLUSTERFUCK NATION blog the The Former Guy (whom he supported) was the first American president who actually acknowledged America's changing fortunes with his slogan "Make America Great Again." But that slogan suggests getting back to the "Eden" of the American Century (if it was such a paradise) requires conditions (economic, political, and social) that I don't think actually exist anymore.