1020

 Thursday, October 20, 2022

IN bed at 9:30, awake at 5:30, upas 5:40, 4 or 5 pss, 1 snifter.  Woke up thinking of Barbara Chase-Bidoud in Rome in 1957 at age 18, Italian men, bella, bella, bella, only 'colored person' or "Negro' in sight,, wondering whether she preferred Rome or Paris.  Geri and Lilly came out around 6 and Lilly started loud barking and low growling when she looked out the living room window.  Geri thought it was probably a deer and went outside with the flashlight.  Mating season has begun with the males at high testosterone levels and the females beginning estrus.  Not a time for Lilly to be challenging big guys with antlers.

0745

36 degrees, overcast, dark,  Little action at the feeders, but snowbirds and a young female cardinal rooting around on the ground.  Reading opinion pieces in the morning NYT.  Ai Weiwei's piece "No, Capitalism and the Internet Will Not Free China's People" and Carlos Lozada's "A Good Faith Examination of Bad Faith" - each makes me think hard about our culture and our economy and our politics, about my own pessimism, defeatism, fatalism, proneness to righteous certitude and smugness. Ai Weiwei's essay has me thinking of the commonality of dominant, dominating social-economic-political cultures, thought control, mind manipulation, Bib Brothers - China's dominated by the Communist Party and Xi Jinping and America's dominated by Wall Street, Madison Avenue, and Silicon Valley.  Lozada writes of "The Rhetoric of Reaction" by Albert O. Hirschman, a book I should try to read.  Lozada: " . . . Hirschman was not merely wishing for a more civil public square. He viewed democratic pluralism as a shaky bargain, based not on a consensus over shared values but on a recognition by competing sides that none could achieve political dominance. “Tolerance and acceptance of pluralism resulted eventually from a standoff between bitterly hostile opposing groups,” Hirschman wrote. Democracy is not what partisans prefer; it is what they settle for." (emphasis mine, not his).  As I have long believed, at bottom, none of us is all that committed to democracy, majority rule, or the so-called rule of law.  As Woody Allen infamously said "the heart wants what it wants.  There's no logic to these things."  Re "bitterly hostile opposing groups":  "We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them.”  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Democracy Now

Liz Truss has resigned after 6 weeks in office.  Two disastrous PMs in a row.  Third PM in four months.  Tories will decline to call a general election because they would be trounced by Labor.  Again, the British electorate will not select the next PM; the Conservative Party members will.  Thatcherites are in deep dung in Britain; Trumpites are probably about to take over Congress in the US.  What will this development mean in terms of Russia and Ukraine?

5-inch or 6-inch gutter guard; uselessness

We need leaf guards for our gutters.  Costco has a sale on them but they come in 2 sizes, 5-inch and 6-inch.  Don't know which we need and can't climb a ladder to do some measuring.  Useless around the house except in the kitchen. . . . .  Went to Costco on way to West Bend Stifel conference, bought 2 boxes (36 ft. each) of the 5-inch variety.  Fingers crossed that they'll fit or that we'll be able to exchange them.

Conference with Jake Bain/Stifel

TMI, too fast talking.  Called upon to make a decision about sticking with our 'brokerage account' with Stifel to an 'advisory account.'  The maintenance fee for Stifel would increase from  .64% to about .92% but, according to Bain at least, the increased return would more than cover the difference.  Would involve moving away from the Washington Funds family to a mixed bag of Vanguard, Scheewab and other funds, with the 70/30 conservative allocation staying the same.