1210

 Saturday, December 10, 2022

In bed by 10, awake at 5:50, up at 6, 6 pss, and one cognac.  34 frigid gray degrees with a wind chill of 27, the wind blowing in off the lake.  The driveway looks icy, my big winter fear -ice.  Irish oatmeal simmering on the stove, good neighbor John out walking in the near-dawn dimness.  Red-bellied woodpecker, juncos, and squirrels filling up on seeds.

New Neighbors have started their move-in to what was Cherie and Howard's house across the street.  Will this be a significant event in our lives or a non-event?  Will they, or any of them, become friends as well as neighbors or just folks to wave to and say 'hi' as we retrieve mail?

Property tax bill arrived yesterday, an increase over last year's, as expected.  $600 of the increase is attributable to the Nicolet High School referendum that passed.  I figure it's $150 per grandchild who attends or will attend Nicolet.

Right-wing attacks on Brittney Griner prisoner swap have begun.  I guess her "value" as swap bait isn't high enough.  She's Black, lesbian, a mere pro athlete, and worst of all, a known liberal, or "America hater" according to Tucker Carlson.  The other Russian prisoner, Paul Whelan, is White, a former Marine, and a conservative who voted for Trump.  The Russians said they weren't willing to let him go because he was a 'spy,' but they would swap Griner for the arms trafficker Viktor Bout.  According to the fascisti Biden was simply favoring a female Black liberal over a male White conservative, betraying his political biases.

Russia:Ukraine::United States:Cuba  The NYT headline is ‘Cuba Is Depopulating’: Largest Exodus Yet Threatens Country’s Future.  We Americans piss and moan and clutch our pearls when Russia cruelly imposes its will on Ukraine, displeased that Ukraine aspires to join 'the West,' become a member of the EU and ideally a member of NATO.  Ever since Fidel Castro won the Revolutionary War in Cuba, the US has engaged in a similar kind of imperialism with respect to Cuba, not with the kinetic violence of bombs and missiles (at least not since the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs) but by slow ruthless economic strangulation.  In the Land of the Free, we are not free to travel directly to Cuba, nor are Cubans, desperate to flee from the wreckage America has made of their homeland, free to travel to the US.  “This is not rocket science: If you devastate a country 90 miles from your border with sanctions, people will come to your border in search of economic opportunity,” said Ben Rhodes, who served as deputy national security adviser under Mr. Obama and was the point person on talks with Cuba."  The critical clause is "if you devastate a country . . .", a reference to what we have done to Cuba and the Cuban people.  We make life barely livable for them on the island and then work to keep them imprisoned there.  We rightly call the Russians barbaric; what are we?