December 29

 Good last Friday of the year. Cloudy and some rain along with more normal temps. My Burpee's seed catalog arrived yesterday and will look at it over the next week.

I spent about three hours with an embroidery piece this morning. The little blanket is done except for weaving some ends in. I need to do the end of project tidying up. At present I have one project using the zoom loom, four embroidery/cross-stitch projects on hoops, and one piecing project for some kind of quilt in various stages of completion. I am trying not to start another just yet. That usually works as well as trying not to start another book before I have finished one already started. I have about a dozen on the metaphorical stack (metaphorical because the books are on my I pad) in various stages of completion.

I have had a feeling of deja vu over the entire year. That isn't new because I have had that feeling annually for the last five years. The Rude Pundit has an obscenity laden post on that. I like his rants because he so often speaks what I think but I am trying to break the habit of swearing at the political inanities. I think I need to expand my vocabulary of maladicta.

I just had to check a headline I saw earlier about rivers in Northern Europe flooding due to heavy rainfall. I had a twinge in the back of my mind thinking that earlier this year much of that area was drought stricken with the rivers at or near record lows. One entry in This Week in Collapse reminded me of that. So I haven't lost my memory yet.

Lyz at Men Yell At Me has given awarded Ken Paxton, Attorney General of the less-than-great State of Texas, with her "Dingus of the Year" award. I think it is well bestowed since the year has been well supplied with "dingii." Paxton is indeed dingus enough to stand out in the crowd.

Robert Reich continues his series on "Why American Capitalism So Bad" with an entry titled "Why the hell is Trump rising in the polls?" Part of his answer which resonates with me and mirrors some of my own thinking: the "American Dream is disappearing?" People of my generation (Boomers) could expect to equal or exceed the level of economic wellbeing and educational attainments of their parents. But many of later generations have found the escalator into that dream is broken. And they are angry. The histories I read of the Populist Movement of the 1880s noted that it was propelled by people who seemed to be comfortably well off but who looked at an economy that was leaving them behind with very year that passed. History does rhyme.