I guess it would be that I’m engaged in the moment, and listening. That’s what I’d like, in an ideal world– that I can hold peoples’ attention, that people find me worth talking to and taking seriously.
Frozen
The weather is getting harsher, colder. Winter is coming. So, it’s the perfect time for Putin and his goons to target the electrical grid and other infrastructure, along with civilian targets like apartment buildings in Kyiv.
There are no words. How does one begin to plum the depths of misery and despair, or the level of depravity on display for over three and a half years now? People suffer because a small man with old dreams deems them, or the ground they live on, as rightfully his. No thought for self-determination, or autonomy—those concepts are anathema to such an animal as Vladimir Putin and the war hawks shouting in his ear.
Peace is anathema. War is good for business, keeps the oligarchs happy.
There’s no respect or thought for human life, no heart. Just a return to some former glory where power resides in a handful of people, and citizens are subjects and pawns, left in the cold, out of the loop, at the mercy of the rich and ruthless.
What the hell is the matter with Russia? They have everything they need in their 11-time zone land mass. They could be a great country, a leader in the world. But they seem to only ever squander it, entrenched in the muck and mire of suspicion and paranoia, in the coldness of a Siberian winter. Just corruption and old thinking and a dim view of humanity.
How About One At a Time
There are a few in progress on the iPad– Abundance by Ezra Klein, Who Is Government? by Michael Lewis, Murder the Truth by David Enrich, and Startalk by Neil deGrasse Tyson. I also downloaded The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway. It’s been a while since I read that one.
I’m finding it difficult to read books on the iPad, though, and I think I get carried away with its highlighting feature. There’s something about having a harcover copy in my hands that feels more normal, somehow.
Or maybe my attention span is just shot to hell.
Useless
The thing is, more and more people are wising up to Trump’s numerous deficits. As a nation, we’re growing tired of his flippant, often wildly irrelevant rhetoric, his rare attempts at trying to appear engaged.
He’s an old man, nods off in the middle of meetings, either because he’s an old man or he’s bored to death. Either way, he needs to up his game, though an increasing number of us grow unsure he’s capable of such effort.
He’s in it for himself and for the rich bastards who seem willing to continue propping him up.
Now that the Epstein case is front and center again, we all have to be concerned with what the next distractions are going to be. A war with Venezuela? An uptick in law enforcement and military presence, along with a harder line, in Boston or Chicago or Portland? Or Charlotte? Further indictments of those who investigated January 6th? Taking Seth Meyers off the air? Leveling the West Wing?
What’s it gonna be, Donald? We’re on to you, but you’ll probably figure out ways to keep upping the ante. Instead of governing.
Oh, right. You have no idea how to do that.
No Big Move
Somewhere that had four distinct seasons, probably not northern Maine or North Dakota, though they’re both beautiful. I think I’d probably stick around the current neck of the woods, somewhere north of I-80 in Pennsylvania. I’ve come to like the location, the temperate climate, the lay of the land, proximity to family.
It’s not like we can’t jump in the car or get on a plane if we want a change of scenery.
In a little over two years, I will have spent as much time in PA as I did in MA. It’s growing on me. Besides, I can’t imagine living anywhere but the U.S., despite the current ugliness in D.C.
Stuck
I have this image of whole families who harbor anti-Trump sentiments sitting around the RCA Victor, waiting for word about the damning evidence in the Epstein files, but that evidence never comes.
Well, it comes, but it doesn’t make any difference. It’s just another hurdle Orange Jesus somehow manages to negotiate and emerge from unscathed.
You have to figure, though, that something is being hidden, that the efforts to foot drag and avoid release of documents means that there’s something in those documents that Trump and his supporters really don’t want us to see.
You’d think by now they would have had time to redact and disappear the bad stuff, wouldn’t you?
At this point, I don’t feel as though there’s anything that could bring him down, other than his own health and mental acuity, or a well-deserved mutiny.
A Substantial Trinket
I found a good sized rock, maybe milky quartz or something similar, on Mt. Washington, and carried it down with me. For some reason, I wanted a souvenir of the climb, and this fit the bill. I’m not sure I realized, at the time, that it was probably frowned upon, or maybe illegal, to remove pieces of the mountain, but it was such a cool-looking specimen and I figured no one would miss it.
There’s probably something else, but it’s not coming to mind at the moment.
Let’s see…
Daily writing prompt
What part of your routine do you always try to skip if you can?
I don’t really have a routine, other than at the Y, and I maintain that with a certain zeal and consistency. I might skip out on certain leg exercises if my knee is bothering me.
Actually, I do have a first-thing-in-the-morning routine that I try not to ever skip: up at 5, coffee, then writing, then breakfast. That much of my day has been happening for eight years now. The rest of it is up for grabs.
Dilution
What is happening at SNL? It’s not funny anymore. The premises for most of the skits this season are sophomoric and stilted, and it seems like the writing staff has been taken over by a bunch of high schoolers. The tongue-in-cheek edginess is gone for the time being.
Weekend Update is still OK, but even that doesn’t deliver the same punch. Maybe when enough players leave, the dynamics and chemistry change and it takes a while for the new cast to find their stride? I don’t know, but right now, it’s just a cheap late-night product hardly worth watching.
I really hope they aren’t looking over their shoulder for Trump.
Sadder By the Minute
Who does that? Who thinks this way, besides a demented, aging egomaniac?
Oh, I get it. Trump is still trying to outrun the whole Epstein thing. So why not get the media to traipse down another rabbit hole, pushing and shoving each other in the crush to run a story about how he wants the new Commanders football stadium to be named after him. That oughtta occupy ‘em for a couple days.
What’s next? Will we find out that the new “ballroom” will be more than just a place for dignitaries and wannabes to hang out and be seen? What’s gonna be built underneath it?
3 Cents' 