March 11

 Sunny and warmer today. It looks, according to the Weather Channel, like we will have a week of 50s and 60s. Good. I can get some more of the patio cleaned up and begin rearranging the containers. We had to return the old modem to the Xfinity store and Mom has an appointment tomorrow so I guess I won't get to it til Wednesday at the earliest.

Stray thought: Lindsey Graham (Sen.-Mar-a-lago) suggested that any aid given to Ukraine should be in the form of loans citing the $34Trillion national debt we have. WTF--how does he expect to repay loans any time in the foreseeable future? Especially since the price tag for rebuilding the country when the war ends is almost as much as our national debt last time I heard. And no one really knows where the resources for that will come.

A second stray thought: I have a nasty, suspicious mind listening to the news stories about our plans to build some kind of pier to get relief supplies from ships to Gaza. I could just see Netanyahu deciding to bomb that pier on the excuse that the supplies are going to Hamas.

James Howard Kunstler writes some thoughts I have had about how our high tech world depends on fragile and aging power systems. John Michael Greer and Gail Tverberg have also written on this theme in their various blogs and talks about catabolic economic collapse. About twenty years ago I read news stories about Alaska's government basically pruning most of higher education--actually completely up rooting it--except for the University of Alaska itself which was also pruned. The state was facing a serious budget problem as some of the oil revenues dried up. The University system in Ohio also suffered a similar cut back for the same reasons at about the same time. Yesterday I read that Duke is planning to close its Herbarium, a world renowned collection of plants and printed materials, because the cost ($25Million) to rehouse the collections in a suitable modern building was too much. (My own snarky question is how much their sports facilities cost and which would be more valuable to Duke's supposed purpose of education.) All of those stories center on the flow of money which seems to be slowing. Several months ago I described my shock at the condition of a city nearby which I remember from 50 years ago. It has lost population and, with population, tax revenues. The result was a scene that could be the set of a post-apocalyptic movie. Street lights were replaced by stop signs. The streets badly needed repair and the sidewalks were broken. The flow of money has slowed to a trickle. Under those conditions governments, companies, and individuals choose between expenses cutting those which are as good but not as critical as others.