4/16/23

 Sunday, April 16, 2023

In bed after midnight, up at 7.  53℉, rain expected, thunderstorm @ 10, high of 54℉ already past, temps falling all day to a low of 33℉, almost an inch of wintery mix expected all day, Swind at 9 mph, 3 to 19 mph during the day, gusts up to 31 mph.  Sun rose at 6:06, sunset at 7:35, 13+27.

Mind a Blank This Morning.  Up too late, too many pss.  Losing interest in everything lately, including this journal.  I need to start painting or drawing, using brushes or pencils on something.

I'm focused on the folly of spending time reading newspapers and watching news on tv, wondering what the news will be tomorrow and the day after that, and the week and months after that.  (1) Israelis and Palestinians continue to kill one another.  (2) Republicans risk (and succeed) in decimating retirement accounts by defaulting on the national debt. (3) More workplace and school and church mass shootings with AR-15-type weapons. (4)  Support for Donald Trump strengthens (or weakens) but stays strong among GOP base voters. (5) Ukrainians and Russians continue to slaughter one another, with neither side gaining significant territorial gains.  (6) Cracks deepen in NATO and EU regarding support for the Ukrainian war effort. (7) US and allies pressure Zelenski to negotiate a truce/ceasefire with Russia, to give up on Donbas and Crimea.

Question marks:  (1) Will the fascist crowd finally succeed in forcing a default on the national debt or will Biden prevent it?  If the latter, what will he compromise on to achieve the result?  (2)  What if anything will lead to a cessation of armed conflict between the Russians and the Ukrainians?  (3) When will the political bombing, shooting, ambushes, and arsons in America start?  (4) When, if ever, will Special Counsel Jack Smith indict Trump and for what crimes?  (5) When, if ever, will Atlanta DA Fani Willis indict Trump and for what crimes?

Spring Weather in Milwaukee.  The other day we hit 80℉ and I was complaining about heat and humidity.  At 6:30 tonight I put a log in the fireplace with the temperature at 40℉ and on its way down to 30℉.

Lord Spoda channel on YouTube: What I Saw.  I watched the half-hour visual "Gary: The USA's Most Dangerous City?"  Showing the results when US Steel pulled out of Gary.  Capitalism.  Gary's population is 78% Black, 10% White, 9% Hispanic, 3% Other.  From Wikipedia: "The Gary Works remains Gary's largest single employer and a key element of the city's tax base, but employment levels have fallen substantially since the mid-20th century; the plant and allied facilities employed over 30,000 people in the early 1970s, but only 6,000 in 1990, 5,000 in 2015, 2,500 in 2021, and 2,246 in 2023.

Lila by Marilynne Robinson.  I've just begun it on Kindle.  More of the theme of loneliness, separateness, not-fitting-in, perhaps except for the two preachers, Ames and Boughton.  Jack Boughton was the almost pathological epitome of alienation and apathy from the time he was a boy, but Glory suffers from it too, unhappy about her present life and about her past life, with little hope for her future life, though she is not as apathetic as her brother.  Now we have Lila, described by the author as an uneducated "farmhand" married to an educated, thoughtful Congregational minister and living in a Midwestern, middle-class Iowa town but feeling very much an outsider.