Saturday, Deccember 17, 2022
In bed around 10, up at 5:55, 3 or 4 pss, one cognac. No wake-up by Lilly. Minnow bucket thoughts, mostly of Geri, Lilly, Christmas. Snow flurries dropping through 25 degree temps with a SW winds at 15 mph making it feel like 10 degrees. Lilly's outing was short.
Lilly w/o Geri. She ate almost all her food yesterday though I'm not sure when. It looked like her breakfast hadn't been touched when I added her dinner to her bowl, adding more topping than I usually do. At some point she ate it all. I expected to have her at the side of my bed waking me up for an outing at some point but the point never came, making me hope she didn't relieve herself indoors. [Didn't] I'll inspect a little later. She shows no signs of anxiety and it's hard to tell if she's got some depression. I don't think she gets depressed every time Geri goes off to a store or some other errand. She did stay by herself a lot during the day, mostly in the sunroom, but jointed me in the TV room for most of the evening.
Climate Change, Colorado River, Water Crisis. There is a conference occurring in Las Vegas now, a negotiating session really, about how to allocate water from the Colorado River among the Upper Basis states (CO, UT, NM, and WY) and the Lower Basin stats (CA, AZ, NV). Water levels in Lake Powell behind the Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Mead behind the Hoover Dam are at crisis levels. Lake Powell hydroelectric plant may cease generating electricity by this July, Lake Mead's system within 2 years. This crisis has been brewing and building for years and for years there has been talk of diverting water from the Great Lakes to the Southwest. I wonder at what point there will be more than talk about this. The two biggest contestants in the fight over water are agricultural interests and cities. It the Lower Basis, the ag companies apparently have more rights under Water Law than the cities do, based on years of use and water volumes consumed. What does this mean for places like the Phoenix and Las Vegas metro areas? From what I could observe on visits to Kitty, new development never stops in the Phoenix area, water scarcity notwithstanding. The developers keep gobbling up more and more of the desert to put up condos and half-million dollar homes, all leading to increased water consumption (and of course air pollution). And I have to assume that federal, state and municipal political authorities encourage this development , actively or passively, through tax laws, permitting practices, whatever. Isn't this lunacy? One of the reader comments following the article in the WaPo railed about the failure to hold people "accountable" for the crisis. "Hold accountable" seems to have become the euphemism for "punish." I wonder just who the commenter would have punished: members of Congress, presidents, people in the Bureau of Reclamation, or the Interior Department, the Energy Department, state legislatures, state water agencies, county boards, city mayors, departments of development, common councils? Farmers, snowbirds, golfers, people with swimming pools? There is a lust for "holding people accountable" in our culture, for finding someone to blame, when for most of our problems responsibility is so widespread it's impossible to come up with rational standards for assessing and allocating blame. For many problems, we're probably all to blame, all complicit to some degree, including all the 'snowbirds' flocking to Phoenix, Tucson, Santa Fe, Las Vegas. Looking for people to punish, to "hold accountable"seems like a foolish waste of attention and energy.
Pussy Riot retrospective in Reykjavik. "I asked Alyokhina what the prime ministers of Iceland and Finland had said to her during their meeting. “They were listening,” she said. “I told [Finnish Prime Minister] Sanna Marin about the importance of an embargo. This [war] is all made on European money. It’s so clear that without European money, [Putin’s] machine will not work. If Europe and the U.S. had imposed heavy sanctions in 2014 after the invasion of Crimea, 2022 wouldn’t have happened."
Alas, Angela Merkel's 'palling around' with Russian energy.
An eggs-cellent question: Whatever happened to double-yolk eggs? This morning's WaPo. Answer: nothing.
Looking out my window: 3 white-tails scampering across the lawns across the street. Wondering if there is a horny buck in the area.
The Banshees of Inisherin is a beautiful film but hard to believe. It's a tale of a sudden withdrawal of a long term friendship between a simple-hearted Irish farmer (Padraic) and his neighbor, an older, more complex personality, occupation never revealed, though he compses music and plays the fiddle (Colm). Seemingly out of the blue, Colm grows profoundly weary of Padraic's endless chattering about matters of no importance to Colm, like Padraic's pony's manure. Colm says "I don't like you anymore" and attempts to cut off all communication with his former good friend. Padraic refuses to disappear and Colm threatens to start cutting off the fingers of his fiddling hand if Padraic doesn't stop talking to hm. Padraic doesn't and Colm does, eventually severing all of his fingers. Padraic is so shattered by Colm's rejection of him as , if not a dullard, at least dull that he worries if everyone thinks he's dull, maybe even a dimwit like another friend Dominic. He changes from being a "nice man" into a nasty man, hurtful of others, eventually burning down Colm's thatched-roof cottage. The only innocent characters in the film are Dominic the dullard and Siobhan, Padraic's sister. The film is well written with lots of humor and beautiful scenery and cinematography. It's set in 1923 during the Civil War and filmed on Achill Island off Mayo and Inish More, off Galway. I enjoyed the movie a lot, especially the acting by the lead characters and the actress who played Siobhan. The miniature donkey in the story reminded me Robert Bresson's "Balthazar Au Hazard" and also of the term 'pig shit Irish', a reference to Irish peasants keeping their valuable pig in their cottages, not to be confused with 'lace curtain Irish.' I need to do some thinking about this movie, the ubiquitous stones, the masks in Colm's house, Colm's despair. Colm's threat to harm himself if Padraic doesn't leave him alone reminds me a bit of Cleavon Little's threats to shoot himself in "Blazing Saddles." I'll probably watch the whole thing again just to enjoy the dialog and the scenery and especially the role of Siobhan. For a person whose life centers on music and fiddling, it seems a form of suicide. Maybe the self--mutilation and the masks will become clearer to me - or not.
No comments:
Post a Comment