/Friday, February 27, 2026. Daylight. 7am, est. Cloudy. 61 degrees F. Predicted to rain off and on all day.

I’m still thinking about Nicholas Maduro, who awaits some kind of sentencing in Brooklyn, NYC. His wife, Celia Flores, is also there. It inspired me to read up on Venezuela, and on Cuba, Fidel Castro and Nelson Mandela.

Friday, February 20, 2026. Noon. 80 degrees F. Sunny.

Tuesday, February 17, 2026. Noon, est. 63 degrees F. Sunny.

Saturday, February 14, 2026. Valentine’s Day. 11 am est. 61 degrees F. Sunny.

Thursday, February 12, 2026. 11 am est. Sunny. 53 degrees, F.

Today, Oliver the cat has just come to greet me. My sister’s cat likes to visit in the afternoons, when it’s sunny, and to relax at my feet and in front of the space heater in winter. The sun’s glare is too much outside, so the cell phone must stay indoors.

Tuesday, February 10, 2026. 5 pm est. 68 degrees, F.

I’m still thinking of Maduro, who was Hugo Chavez’ designated successor to the leadership of Venezuela. Chavez died of cancer in 2013, and Maduro was his protege. He made the mistake of mocking the Trump “team”, which retaliated by kidnapping him and his wife, Celia Flores, in the wee hours of the first weekend of January 2026. Trump’s “team” then stole Venezuela’s oil tanker that was headed northward to Cuba, and then for sale in Europe or Iran.

We’re not sure what happened after that. Trump’s “team”, VP JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and federal Attorney General Pam Bondi are busy distracing us with Jeffrey Epstein’s client list. Meanwhile, the Superbowl has come and gone. I didn’t know who was playing, but I know the half-time show got lots of comments on social media.

Bondi supports the Trump “Agenda”, outfitted in video clips emphasizing low-cut necklines and a Christian cross hanging between cleavage. She is blonde, with long hair, maybe dark roots.

Meanwhile, distractions abound. The US of A is divided, as it has always been. The “news” is focusing on the files of Jeffrey Epstein, the supposed Israeli spy who knew everyone important to the power elite.

Saturday, February 7, 2026. 58 degrees, F. Clear but hazy below.

Wednesday, February 4, 2026. 10 am, est. Cloudy. 50 degrees, F.

In April of 2016, I made my own ballot, and registered it under the name of my own independent country of one. At the time, I adopted bumper stickers I liked and used them to promote my campaign platform. $World’s Only Free Market Capitalist$ Support our Troops. Bring Them Home. My Doctor. My Choice. I love my country. It’s the government I’m afraid of! Ignore the media. Think for yourself. Destination Sun: I drive like you do.

Afternoon on Wednesday, Feb 4, 2026, the world has shifted again. The US empire is trying to maintain its status, while its Front Man, Humpty Trumpty, is teetering on the edge of his border wall.

I guess Trumpty is spread too thin. He got his thugs to capture Venezuela president Nicholas Maduro, but our oil execs say Venezuela’s infrastructure is in shabby shape. They want no part of it, since Trumpty’s “team” bombed the port at Caracas, Venezuela’s Caribbean coast.

I have never visited Venezuela, but, I would like to go there. I have visited South America twice, and liked it. Loved the food in Peru, and was impressed by the ruins in Machu Picchu, the Iguazu Falls at the triangle between Argentina, Bolivia, and Uruguay.

I need to learn to speak Spanish. The US of A speaks a variation of languages, but English is mostly used. It’s a dialect characterized by slang, neologisms, and media-generated abbreviations, like ICE, (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).

Meanwhile, Trumpty wants to buy Greenland, but Greenland doesn’t want to be sold. It remains a protectorate of Denmark, and by extension, is covered under the EU, and NATO.

This smacks of cancerous growth. The Disunited States of America wants to expand its territory in all directions, but it is aiming to undercut sovereign governments elsewhere, often through covert or shady means. The US public only learns later what its elected and unelected bueaucracies have spawned, until more truth comes out. The ICE shootings in Minnesota recently show how the federal government has created its own problems.

There are moves to abolish ICE. TV news and journalism, based, mostly in the DSA (DisUnited States of the USA) are all over the board. In Minnesota, ICE shootings of civilians are getting attention. The governor of Minnesota and Minneapolis mayor, Tim Walz and Jacob Frey, are taking heat because civilians were killed during an ICE raid to uproot “undocumented” Somalis, who have perched in the city.

Funny thing is, the US of A used to welcome immigrants. There was a need for labor, to work fields, to run machines, to lay railroad tracks, and to mine for gold and silver ore, and for coal. These people have been compartmentalized over time. Color or language contribute to the filtering out of different ethnicities, sex, or family groups.

I don’t know. I’m not on the scene, and don’t want to be there. Like most others, I hear gossip, otherwise portrayed as “news” through media.

A smattering of pictures from my files. These represent books I have read over the years. Today, I saw a podcast with a Somali refugee, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose book I read many years ago. She explains the attitude of Somali natives in places like Minnesota, which is experiencing troubles with ICE, citizens, and other authorities in that environment.

Today, late on Friday afternoon, I’m suffering from the damp cold, here on the SE coast of GA, US of A.

Meanwhile, Oliver, the Ambassador cat, from my sister’s house next door, just returned from outside. He nuzzles me with his wet whiskers, and plops his wet self on my lap.

Oliver speaks for the animal kingdom. Animals put up with human miscreants, thank Heavens, more than we put up with ourselves.

The Herman and Chomsky book, “Manufacturing Con (s/t) ent,” pictured here, was published originally in 1988, with a second printing in 2002.

It’s an analysis of US media, spanning 150 years, beginning at the Crimean War, in around 1850 through 1860.

The US of A had barely formed then, but it was undergoing growth pressures. Railroads became the rage in the 1830s, worldwide. The US, operating under the aegis of “Robber Barons” wanted to expand its rail networks to the West Coast, and newspapers quickly followed.

It’s almost noon here now. Things are warming, and I want to take my cold coffee outside, to check the tide it’s cooler inside than outside now, but my sore back likes the chair.

“Truth is the first casualty”   of any war, claimed Philip Knightly, in his 1977 book on the history of the war correspondent.

In fact, variations on that statement have been repeated through the ages.  It was first attributed to Greek tragedian Aeschylus in 400 BC.   Knightly’s book ascribes   it to Hiram Johnson, a California senator, at the outbreak of WWI.

Friday, January 16, 2026.  1:30 pm est.  45 degrees F.  Sunny and warming.

Wally’s birthday is today.  My father would have been 126 years old.  His birthday is engraved in my memory as the date in the US of A when Prohibition took effect:  January 16, 1920.

Interestingly, my father was a teetotaler, but he smoked heavily and died of a massive heart attack at 59 years old.  He liked thinking of himself as a scientist, and passed on to his daughters his gift of relentless curiosity. 

But today, I am thinking about water.  Not only do Ilive in a humid climate, but water, or lack thereof, is contributing to multiple geophysical problems.  I guess drought is contributing to Tehran, Iran’s political problems.  Flooding and fires are  plaguing the US Pacific northwest, and worldwide, ice is receding in places while building up in others.

While water is the foundation of life itself, and dominates the planet, it brings mixed blessings.  First, it has the adaptability of “phase change”, meaning it can exist in three different forms: liquid, solid (ice) and gaseous (steam), without changing its basic structure.  H2O is its chemical formula, which many children learn in elementary school.

Now, in the topside (northern hemisphere) winter of 2026, we see the best and the worst of water.  Ice in the northern regions, but fires and flooding in the northwestern and midwestern US of A.

East of us, in Iran, there is severe drought.  The government is afraid it will have to evacuate Tehran, but you don’t hear much of that while protesters are setting fires and calling for the shah to come back.

Today, I read up on Iran.  I guess the US and Britain helped overthrow the democratically elected leader,  Mohammad Mosaddegh  in 1953, and to reinstate Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as an absolute monarch and close US ally.  In 1979, the shah was overthrown by the Iranian Revolution, and replaced by the  Ayatollah Komeni, who established a theocratic republic. Reza Pahlavi’s son has been living in the US of A, but word is he may want to return to Iran to deal with its worsening crises in water and civil unrest.

Meanwhile, the polititical news has moved on.  The world is in crisis, and our president is stirring up more trouble.  There are protests in Iran, but it’s not clear what they are about.  I think there’s a drought, but protesters are screaming for the shah, who was deposed in 1979.  His son thinks he can lead, and Donnie the Would-be Savior, wants to help.  He doesn’t like it that he can’t make it rain, I guess.

Sunday, January 11, 2026.  Hazy. 59 degrees F.

The news has moved on.  Maduro has fallen out of the headlines.  Now Trumpty wants to buy Greenland, and ICE has gotten in trouble in Minnesota and other places.

ICE, the bureaucratic and enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security, stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  Both are relatively recent additions to the US government mess since Baby Bush (George W) was elected in 2000 and took office in early 2001.

New York’s catastrophe, on September 11, 2001, when the twin towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, NYC imploded, has led to enormous US paranoia.  Theories and conflicting stories abound.  The result for LilOleMe is that the US of A is still busy infighting over speculations, with no one confident of our direction.

  There are protests in Iran, possibly exacerbated by drought, and the Peanut Gallery -mostly within the US of A, or English speakers elsewhere – have judged the Iranian government for forcible control measures against protestors.  Most of us are aware that Iran is a “theocracy”, meaning religion, Islam, is the state-supported religion.

Surveying world events reminds me of how little I know  While I’m stuck on US history, the Mexican War of the 1840s, and President James Polk’s “expansionist” policies, the Americas, North and South, still claim my attention.  I’m still thinking of Maduro, his mentor, Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013 of cancer; and of Isabel Allende, of Chile, whose father, Salvador Allende, was “disappeared” by Augusto Pinochet’s coup the early 1970s.

I’m still adjusting to time and political gestures.  Trying to read old newspapers and burn the excess.  Gunners are blasting southwestward, and a dog is barking uphill.

The US of A likes its politics, I guess.

Friday, January 9, 2026.  9 am est.  60 degrees. Cloudy.

I fell asleep early this morning thinking about Nicholas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.  Before that, I had looked into decades-old reports about Libya’s deposed and eventually killed leader, Muamar Gaddafi.  The Libyan militant leader was murdered and sodomized in 2011.

This morning, I re-visited the online “facts” about Muamar Gaddafi.  He lived from 1942 until 2011, when he was killed in an riot within his own troops.  Online news is always suspect.  I would have different memories, had I been there, but it only happened through all the news “filters” broadcast to the US of A.  Online news sources say Gaddafi was brutal and helped overthrow King Idris I, then govered Libya as a revolutionary chairman, Secretary General, and “brotherly leader”. He authored a “green book,” which outlined his unique political philosophy”.

 NATO got involved.  I heard about Gaddafi after Obama was elected in 2008.  Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.  I remember talk of Bengazi back then but was only superficially interested.  Today, I heard that Benghazi’s attack on the US embasy and separate CIA office on September 11-12, 2012, were separate.  The Islamist militant group, Ansaral-Sharia, claimed responsibility.

Thursday, Jan 8, 2026.  11AM, EST.  Cloudy.  63 degrees F.

Online news.  All talking about Trump’s “capture” of Venezuelan president Victor Maduro.  Ron Paul uses my word, “kidnapping”.  Others use the word “arrest”.

I’m trying to finish this blog.  I’m researching other US transgressions throughout history.  Mostly, I’m interested in Cuba and South America.  I’ve been to South America twice  Remember Peru–liked the food–Chile, liked the coastal strip, but remember a long stretch of cars waiting in the drizzle for the ferry headed north; and Buenos Aries, on the other side of the Andes, before we drove with Walter to Iguazo Falls. I got sick off the hotel food at Iguazo Falls, after spending time at the tiny beach in view of three countries. Argentina, where we were, Brazil, and Uruguay.

Wednesday, January 7, 2026.  3 pm est.  72 degrees, F.  Cloudy. What a year 2026 has brought so far.  Trumpty and his henchmen kidnapped Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores, in the middle of the night.  The two were hauled off to New York City to face unspecified charges in Brooklyn.

Tuesday January 6, 2026.  Midnight. 52 degrees F. Cloudy.

Inspired by dictator Trumpty’s capture of Venezuelan president Victor Maduro last weekend,  I’m looking into the history of US of A aggression since before it distanced itself from Britain in 1776.

Last month’s journal notes show dates and people of significant historical interest. Old newspaper accounts strike a familiar chord. Trumpty’s unilateral swiping of Venezuelan leader Nicholas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores,  reminds me of Chile’s “dissappeareds” during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in the 1970s.

The first casualty of any war is truth, claimed Phillip Knightley, in his 1977 book about the history of the war correspondent. The Crimean War, in the 1840s, gave rise to the professional war correspondent. But the US’ “Civil War” drew British interest, too. Britain at first favored the South, because many of its products, like cotton and tobacco, came from the South, but Britain was uncomfortable with slavery. The Brits profited from the slave trade, and appreciated the goods it produced, but then they outlawed slavery for themselves. They allowed it in their Empire, though, and allowed their Indian subjects to grow rice and spin silks and grow poppies for their “China Trade”.

Knightly begins his book with descriptions of the US civil war, which interested Britain. While the Brits initially favored the South, this conflicted with its posture against slavery.

Interestingly, “The First Casualty” quote was attributed to California Congressman Hiram Johnson in the book, but was most famously used by Greek tragedian Aeschylus in 400 BC.

“Truth” is subjective, according to the book’s premise.

Today Trumpty wants to buy Greenland, but he hasn’t dispensed with Maduro yet. First, he has to export Venezuela to New York City, where the Trump family has made its mark since the 1880s. He needs to import the oil, too, that inconveniently rests off the South American coast. He’s trying to block Venezuela from selling to anyone else.

Today, I learned that oil execs are not eager to join in Trumpty’s piracy of Venezuela’s oil fields. They feel the political situation is too unstable now for investment. Maduro’s second-in-command, Delcy Rodriguez, has been sworn in, for the moment.

Saturday evening.  Dark at 10 pm est in the US of A.  Temp is dropping from 57 degrees F to about 43 degrees before morning.

Trumpty is acting like he owns the world.  The world is bowing down to him, or they are too cowardly to resist.  New York State has now received Venezuelan leader Nicholas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, who were apparently abducted by US military team Delta Eight and were sent to New York State, US of A. The US Attorney General Pam Bondi, Trump’s “explainer” uses legalese to justify her Boss’s actions, as she is paid to do.

I’m waiting for the New Year to be happy, but there is only strife in the VibeSpace.

Time tangles, showing repeats of familiar scenes and circumstances, but in evolving contexts.  I compare current news headlines with “old news” from old newspapers, books, and magazines.

According to Trumpty, Maduro was behaving inappropriately. “Narco-terrorism”, a new word, is being used liberally across the various media, but I haven’t heard it defined. One can assume it refers to “narcotics”, like opium or its derivatives, like heroin.

Before his abduction, Maduro was shown mocking our esteemed president by dancing in public and taunting him in front of international cameras. He has acted independently of US “sanctions” and sold oil to Cuba and China, maybe even Iran.

Our “commander in chief” is directing this Reality Show in Real Time. But today I hear his latest budget has been approved by the US Congress.

Meanwhile, I’m looking into Liberia. Why? It is the site chosen for repatriating US slaves to Africa, in the 1840s, during the dispute over slavery in the US. The plan was supported by Yankee abolitionists and by Southern sympathizers, like Henry Clay of Virginia. Liberia’s capitol is Monrovia, after James Monroe, 5th US president, who proclaimed his Monroe doctrine in 1823.

The US of A media ignores the old rules of journalism:  to state the 5 W’s in the first sentence or close to it. Who. What. Why. When. and Where.

LilOleMe relates current events to historical ones, with unflattering implications. I recall Andrew Jackson’s Trail of Tears, in which thousands of Native Americans were uprooted from the US South and marched across the Mississippi River to Oklaoma and beyond, to make room for European and other immigrants.

The “trail of tears” was the result of Jackson’s approving the so-called “Indian Removal Act” in 1830.

Davy Crockett, a congressman from Tennessee at the time, was so repulsed by this kowtowing to white speculation that Crockett joined the “lone star state” of Texas, which had declared itself an independent republic.

Crockett has become legend, since he died in the Mexican War at Texas’ outpost called the “Alamo.“ Texas became a state in 1845, after the Mexican War was ended by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

This is the Fransiscan Mission at Guadalupe Hidalgo.

January, 2026

Happy New,Year, 2026!

January is derived from Janus, the god who has two faces, one old, one young, looking in two directions.  Edith Hamilton, a renowned classicist, wrote her book “Mythology” in the early 1900s.  She was born in Dresden, Germany but grew up in the US of A in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She attended Bryn Mawr College, where she received both BA and MA degrees, then started teaching. In 1930, she published her interpretation of ancient Greek culture.  The Greek Way was followed two years later by The Roman Way.  

Hamilton says Janus was a Numina, and the “god of good beginnings,”, which are sure to result in good endings, wrote Hamilton. Janus’ chief temple in Rome ran east and west, where day begins and ends, and had two doors, between which Janus’ statue stood n the center. The doors were closed only when Rome was at peace. In the first 700 years of Rome’s existence, the doors were only closed three times: in the reign of the good king Numa; after the first Punic War, when Carthage was defeated in 241 BC; and in the reign of Augustus.

Thursday, January 1, 2026.  Late afternoon.  Sun setting over hazy skies.  64 degrees F.  Going down to 43 degrees by 5 am tomorrow.

Happy New Year, all.  The new year starts in January, by social convention, but this spinning globe waits for no clock or calendar.  Time is a human invention.

Thus begins my speculation about human constructs.  The month of January comes from Janus, the Roman mythological figure who looked in both directions – the past and future – but never in the present.

Wednesday, December 31, 2025.

10 pm est.  44 degrees.  I hear fireworks townward.  New Year celebrations have started.

It got cold here last night, but temp is rising from 32 degrees over this sunny day.

I spent the morning reading an old WSJ (Jan 25-26), 2014 about Isabel Allende, a Chiean-American author, rellated to the former president, Salvador Allende.  It’s unclear whether Salvador Allende was assassinated, in 1973, or whether he committed suicide with an AK-47 rifle given to him by Fidel Castro.  It’s possible Allende was murdered by insurrectionist Pinochet’s supporters.  Chile was undergoing lots of unrest at the time, as was the US of A.  Nixon was president, just inaugurated for his second term.  That year, Spiro Agnew was vice president, but he resigned later that year, and Gerald Ford replaced him.  Nixon himself resigned the following year

Monday, December 29, 2025.  10 am est. Overcast. Temp 70 degrees F. 

My mother’s birthday.  She would have been 100 years old today, had she lived.

I dedicate this blog post to Rhea, whose symbolic name comes from her own mother, also Rhea. In Greek and Latin mythology Rhea is the wife of Cronos/Saturn.  In mythology, the Romans co-opted Greek folktales, changed names, and created their own stories about how Rome was founded. 

Mama a Capricorn, gave short shrift to my interest in astrology, astronomy, or mythology.  She was practical, but for her varied, brief, and eccentric hobbies.   Devoted to “doing the right thing”, she had her own definition of “right”, as we all do.

Time moves us, or we move time.  I haven’t decided which.  

“Mama’s Precious Papers” still show her versatile but scattered mind.

On a single yellowed, typewritten page labeled “THOUGHTS”, with many corrected typos, she first asks, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?  The egg.  From the eggplant.”

“The minority is now the majority.  In order to be in the majority these days, you must join a minority group.”

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Friday, December 26, 2025.  Afternoon. Cloudy. 

Christmas has passed.  The US of A remains stuck in its political machinations.  I just heard on YouTube a statement from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Venezuela is not cooperating with US policy on “narco-terrorists”.

It’s already tomorrow in India.  Temp is rising.  74 degrees now. 

I remain focused in the here and now, but have access to other viewpoints through Artificial Intelligence.

Current president of Cuba is Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez.  He became president of Cuba after Fidel Castro died, then his younger brother, Raul, retired in 2021.

I got curious about the recent history of Cuba, because I haven’t heard much since the Castros departed. I read online that the new president has had to contend with a major power outage, since the island was hit by a hurricane since he took office in 2021.  Meanwhile, the US arrested at least one oil tanker full of Venezuelan oil earlier this month.  I guess that tanker was re-directed to Houston, Texas.  US president, Trumpty-Dumpty says he wants to keep the oil.  Nobody has openly claimed the tanker itself.  I guess it may be Iranian, but flyIing a Panamanian flag.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, are standing silently behind Trump, but few have publicly ctiticized this flagrant violation of international law or principle.  Republican Louisiana Senator John Neely Kennedy is making some noise about borders and ICE raids on cities, like Chicago and Los Angeles

I guess the oil Trumpty stole was pre-purchased by China, with part of it pre-sold to Cuba.

LilOleMe thinks Trumpty is tampering in places he doesn’t belong.  In psychiatric terms, we call that a problem with “boundaries”.

Interesting that Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s family comes from Cuba.  His grandfather fled to the US of A when he saw the Cuban Revolution coming, when Fidel Castro led the uprising that toppled Fulgencia Batista in 1959.

The US of A has sanctioned Cuba and the Castros for years.  The US has tried to pretend Cuba didn’t exist after Fidel Castro came to power.  But Cuba has been a model for education, medicine, and subsistence living ever since Walter Reed and William Gorgas pegged mosquitoes  as the vectors for malaria and yellow fever, in the early 1900s,  during the Panama Canal’s construction.  The US of A’s Army Corps of Engineers had taken on the project after the French abandoned digging it because of disease.

Time does tangle.  How does the US of A claim this hemisphere for its own?  It has refused to associate with Cuba, since Fidel got uppity, so Castro began selling his sugar and agricultural products to the USSR.  His regime also started supplying doctors to third world countries during Fidel’s long lifespan.  He died in 2016.  Younger brother Raul succeeded Fidel, but promised to serve only one five year term, which he did.  In October, 2021, Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez succeeded the Castros. He is an engineer and politician, who is the first Cuban leader outside the Castro family since the Revolution of 1959.

But Trumpty is leaving Cuba alone, for now, but for stealing oil committed to China and Cuba.  The oil tanker seized by the US Yes-People is going to Houston, Texas, I hear, or it has arrived, but that’s old news.  Few are looking at Houston, now, and my sources are sparse.

You don’t hear that ports on both sides of the Panama Canal are leased by China, as part of its trade packages, but the US of A  is claiming all of upper South America is an enemy.  Columbia, too, is implicated in the “narco-wars”.

Wars of religion and over religion are about land, too.

I’m not familiar with other religions, and I’m only vaguely familiar with Christianity. It saddens me that people choose to fight over religion, or any set of beliefs.  I choose to love, not fight.  Christ emphasized love, so I guess that makes me Christian.  I don’t know enough to say whether other teachers spoke so clearly about loving enemies or doing good for those who hate you, but these guidelines are enough for me.

Time is set by outside events, our relationship to them, and our interpretations. Humans have various ways of gauging the passage of time.  No can say when time began. We don’t know how animals percieve it, but some people study animals or plants and make generalizations based on their observationss.   I respect their interest.  I understand a fondness for cats, or chickens, or animals whose characteristics I have known personally.  I have a general appreciation for the changing tree leaves in the fall, and I know about raking them.

My point is that I have lived long enough to have seen repetitiveness in the seasons, yet no two years are the same.  This gives us infinite variety, inside patterns mature people have experienced repeatedly.

Weather is one experience we all share.  Animals and plants know, somehow, and adapt.

As evening approaches, and the day turns to night, I spread my goodwill for all life on earth.  We are an interrelated mass of life forms, all of us, and we cooperate in this experiment of living together.

Time tangles speak to the bundles of interconnections life brings our way.

Wednesday, December 24, 2025.  9 am, est. Christmas Eve. Sunny, with humid haze rising. 

I was raised believing in Christmas.  It seemed natural, but my extended family celebrated on Christmas Eve.  After my Norwegian grandfather, Pa, died in 1960, we continued the ritual of meeting to exchange gifts and dinner on Christmas Eve, but the ritual had lost its spirit for me.  Pa held the family together, but I didn’t realize it at the time.

Only later have I come to see that Christmas is a celebration of life, renewed life after passage of the winter solstice.  Although it is associated with Christ”s birth in December, that is a religious symbol, claimed by Christians, but the solstice predates Jesus.  Before his birth, the “Saturnalia” was also a festive time, when the planet Saturn, the outermost planet in the visible sky, defined why we humans believed Saturn defines the boundaries of our solar system.  Saturn remains the planet associated with timing, as symbolized by his Greek name of Cronos, from which we get  words like “chronology”.

Tuesday, December 23, 2025. Morning.  Clouds have covered the morning sun. 

My personal life has been chaotic, with practical problems, like a full septic tank and plumbing problems.  But I’m walking, talking, and breathing.  Why?

It seems the whole body of the Earth is in chaos.  Weather patterns have changed the course of rivers, lakes and human settlements, sometimes intentionally, or forced by others.

Sunday, December 21, 2025.  Sunny at 10 am, est. The winter solstice.

This marks the end of our annual year, a time revered in religions and cultures around this oblate globe of ours.

Saturday, December 20, 2025. PM.  Dark.  Temp 60 degrees, F.

Today was cool but pleasant.  Sunny for much of the day. The solstice marks the time of year when the earth’s wobble points its North Pole most directly toward the Sun.  I belabor this point, because I don’t fully understand it myself.

The winter solstice is a time for celebration, a time for endings and new beginnings.  It is historically significant, yet modern creatures have little cognizance of its import in our annual cycle.

Our US president, Humpty Trumpty, is bombing Syria, online news hints.

Trumpty has just stolen, with the help of his Yes-People, an oil tanker belonging to Venezuela.  Trumpty claims Venezuela is shipping “sanctioned oil”, or some such.  Few speak out against this unilateral act of theft.  I guess the US Coast Guard is chasing another oil tanker towards Cuba.  I don’t know.  It feels wrong, to me.

  I don’t recall any authorization to bomb a nonbeligerant oountry Over There, in Europe.  I suppose Trumpty and his Right Hand Man, Pete Hegseth, from Minnesota, have decided we have too many bombs that need to be used.

Thursday,  December 18,  2025.  6 pm est, getting dark. 63 degrees F.

Current news says US president Donald J Trump has stolen an oil tanker from Venezuela, and has directed it toward Houston, Texas.  He says the Disunited States of America plans to keep the oil.  Current media only gives partial information.  Most news reports are speculation and opinion.  Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth is responsible for US acts of war, which Venezuela’s President Nikolas Maduro says was a provocation.

LilOleMe, a powerless citizen of this leaderless mass of human confusion, says oil in Venezuela belongs in Venezuela, unless they choose to sell it or give it away to those who agree to take it.

Once again, I stand alone in my opinion of right and wrong.  

I can’t keep up with the clock.  I know the earth spins  fast.  To watch the shadows as a day goes from dawn to dusk shows a world alive with motion.

After we passed the winter solstice  Monday, December 22, we can expect days to last longer, in the northern hemisphere.  The solstices, winter and summer, define the two times of year when the earth’s polar axes reach their most direct orientation towards the sun. The other two points in a solar year are also times of seasonal changes.  The spring equinox in March, and the fall equinox in October, when day and night are of equal length (near the equator, anyway).

In the Southern Hemisphere, the solstices are reversed.  

The winter solstice is a time for human celebration and thankfulness for the fruits of spring, summer and fall.  The solar year is ending.  Different plants and animals also have ways of adjusting to the annual changes.  Some animals hibernate.  Some migrate.  Some grow thicker fur or otherwise  ready their bodies for the colder winter season above the equator.

Tuesday, December 16, 2025.  Afternoon.  Sunny/hazy.  57 Degrees F.

Yesterday I looked into the history ot the Crimean Wars of 1854-1856.  The British and French were aligned against the Ottoman Empire, which was falling apart.  Crimea is in present day Ukraine, with ports on the Black Sea.

The Hanged Man is a Tarot card, from the Aleister Crowley deck. I chose this to represent how I feel, powerless to change my situation, or that of my world. Note the man is upside down, hanged, but by one foot.The left foot crosses the right knee. The explanation says the Hanged Man is congealed in his beliefs. He is stuck, unable to use his body or limbs. But his mind is free, I say.

Thursday, December 18, 2025, Afternoon. Cloudy. 63 degrees, F.

I’m confused about timing. I just found out today Savannah is on the same latitude as Nagasaki, Japan, almost 180 degrees apart. This is relevant in Savannah, because Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan were bombed on August 6 and August 9, 1945. These bombs, were the first nuclear bombs knowingly dropped by anyone, by the US of A.

Monday evening.  December 8, 2025.  Dark. 51 degrees, F.

I’ve never seen a scorpion, but the zodiac includes “scorpius” a constellation that has a bright star, Antares, at its heart.

A scorpion plays a central role in “The Pearl”, a 1946 novella by John Steinbeck.  I choose this book, because Steinbeck, an American born in Salinas,  California in  February, 1902  wrote about the underprivileged and the poor in coastal California in the early 1900s. 

“The Pearl” tells of tthe scorpion that stings  baby Coyotito.  Coyotito is the first child of  pearl diver and fisherman Kino and his wife, Juana. 

Tuesday, December 9, 2025.  Early afternoon.  Cloudy.  Temp 48 degrees, F.

I guess the weather over my head is clearing, finally.  I hope for some sun later today, maybe a chance to find some dry wood for the wood stove. Lollipop the cat has disappeared, since he threatened Carol’s cat, Tuxie, three days ago.  We’ve had no sunshine for days.  I hear about weather patterns across North America, but I’m only interested in immediate surroundings.

Old news keeps returning, with different faces, but the story is similar.  The Sept. 11, 2016 issue of the NYT, faced with a presidential election that November, touts the “September 11 tapestry” and seeks the 10 faces, still unaccounted for in the “Gallery of Grief, Loss, Life and Joy”.

In September, 2016, the NYT also printed front page stories about “Trump’s Putin”, and the U.S. Extradition”, which “benefits Warlords from Columbia”.

At the bottom of that front page,  the NYT claimed Pittsburg became Uber’s Test City with self-driving cars.  Then it informs us that “Officers with Troubled Pasts Often Wind Up Back In Blue”.

Thursday, December 11, 2025. 9 am, est.  49 degrees F.  Sunny.

Yippee! Sunshine in my immediate world.  The yellowish haze is rising from the marsh, but skies are clear.  My world and attitude have improved, despite worries that I’m almost out of propane.

The winter solstice comes Monday, December 22 this year.  Astrologically, that is the first day of Capricorn, the goat.  

Today the news is about the US of A and its anger with Maduro, president of Venezuela, who is contesting US dominance of Venezuelan oil reserves off its coast.  This is not obvious.  The US has seized an oil tanker headed for Cuba, apparently, but it also boasts shooting down fishing boats in the Caribbean, so it says.  Social media, a new force in the world, chimes in, too.  Mucky Mucks in the US have used Social Media to confuse and to broadcast opinions worthy of the Loud Mouths of History.

I have nothing new to say.  At least today is sunny.  The winter solstice approaches Monday, December 22 this year.  Days will start getting longer.  

We shall see what we shall see.  This month the earth is wobbling toward its north polar axis pointed most away from the sun, a “perigree” position, as shown on the star chart here. A time of harvest in the northern hemisphere, a period of feasting and of celebration in all northern cultures.  The earth will complete its move away from the sun and days will get longer, if God (or the gods) will it.  Happy holidays for all

Friday,  December 5,   2025.  Afternoon, est.

It’s drizzly and feels cold, colder than the 51 degrees on the thermometer.  I hear rain on the skylight, getting heavier.

I survived Thanksgiving, and am thankful for that.  Astrologically, the heavens have shifted to orient towards Sagittarius, the Archer.  Mythologically, Sagittarius is the would-be killer of the Scorpion who killed Orion,, the Hunter, whose belt is visible across the skies in summer months.

Wednesday, November 25, 2025. 11 am est.  72 degrees.

Astrologically, it’s late to post about Scorpio.  The sun “entered” Sagittarius November 23. Symbolically, the Archer hopes to exact revenge on the scorpion that killed Orion, the Hunter.  That’s why Orion is not visible in the autumn sky.  He, and his famous “belt” of three bright stars, are on the other side of the heavens, far away from the scorpion and presumed dead.

Mythologically, and practically, the zodiac is a ring of constellations that circles the earth near the equator, meaning those constlations are thousands of light years away, but useful for gauging timing of the earth’s wobbly orbit around the sun.

For instance, Antares, the brightest star in Scorpio, is 170 light years from earth.  A light year is the distance light travels in a year.

Yesterday, I spent the pre-dawn hours with space heater on, drinking coffee and thinking about the winter solstice, coming later this month.

The winter solstice is the time in the northern hemisphere when the sun’s rays at noon reach their lowest point on the earth’s oblate ball.  This occurs in a ring 15  degrees north of the equator, called the Tropic of Capricorn.

Astrology is a “woo woo” discipline, from the modern perspective, but it is historically relevant all over the world.  Before the Catholic and other churches labeled it as pseudo science, it provided guidelines for explorers, and reference points for timekeepers.  

Today, Tuesday, November 24, 2025, 3 pm, est.  Hazy. 69 degrees F.

The sun has moved from Scorpio into Sagittarius.  I should point out that the sun and the earth have a dynamic relationship, as celestial bodies do.  While the sun and earth both move, they are part of the same “solar system”, one of billions of systems that make up the universe we know.

To say the sun is moving is to recognize that from an earth perspective, positions of the sun appear to change in an annual cycle that is consistent with history and millenia of observing the heavens.  The zodiac we refer to in the western hemisphere is a band of stellar configurations that have been assigned traits or appearances that conform to mythological stories.

The stellar configurations we use to chart  Scorpio and Sagittarius are derived from the myth of the scorpion, which killed Orion, the hunter. Orion is opposite the two configurations designated to the Archer  (Sagittarius) and the scorpion.

Saturday, November 22, 2025. Mid morning.  Hazy, but blue skies bove. 76 degrees, F.

Trumpsky is getting on my nerves.  I’ve had a “wait- and-see” attitude so far, and even I am no defender of the sloppy US Constitution, but Humpty Trumpty is pulling the  typical New York stunt of bowling over the rest of the country, just like Alexander Hamilton did when Thomas Jefferson was off seeking French loans to pay Revolutionary War debts.

Today I read online that Trumpsky is using the US Military to annoy Nicholas Maduro of Venezuela.  He has sent warships to the eastern Caribbean, and drones to attack fishing boats.  Secretary of War, Peter Hegseth says that is fine.  We don’t need proof that these fishing boats were carrying drugs.

The Big Bully US of A, is flexing its muscles, again according to me, a lone voice for sanity in a world gone crazy over drugs and military one-up-man-ship.

Shifty Donnie, the lawsuit-attracting criminal international player, is now at the top of the heap.  No one dares oppose his will.  Even Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican Congresswoman from Georgia, my home state, has decided not to run again.

At least Senator John Neely Kennedy, of Louisiana, is keeping a sense of humor about the “loon” wing of the so-called “Democratic party”.  Kennedy is fighting on a couple of fronts, but he is outshouted by Yankees.  Is his son really suffering from pancreatic cancer?  The media says so.  I wish the family well.

Now, Xi JinPing of China is standing up to the US, by forming retroactive tariffs to fight Trumpsky’s tariffs on China.  Meanwhile, China is buying oil from Russia, and working out deals with PM Modi of India for their “Belt-and-Road” initiative, to bypass the US of A in trading around the world.  Guess Trumpsky is mad at Columbia, too, because Columbia, on the Western border of Venezuela, is funnelling drugs, too, to the US.  Now it’s fentanyl, but before that, it was opiods, and cocaine.  The US has been trying to control the drug trade since the Roosevelts, Rockefellers, Carnegies, and Vanderbilts indulged in the “China trade” before the opium wars of the early 1850s.

Thursday, November 20, 2025.  4 pm, est.  Low haze. 73 degrees, F, and dropping.

In my constant de-cluttering mode, I’m finding old news to burn in the wood stove.  I just returned from the gh, where I found more old newspapers. Looking through these issues, mostly of the NYT, I see the repetitiveness. The Agenda shows how the same facts rise over and over.  I get the point.

On Saturday, Sept. 18, 2018, we learn Taiwan felt frozen out of the UN, as its general assembly convened in New York.  Taiwan is a large island  and port on the southwestern coast of China.

Why is the UN building located in NYC?  The UN evolved from the “League of Nations” the aborted attempt by Woodrow Wilson to create world peace at Versailles after WW I.  The UN building was donated by the Rockefeller family,   John D. Rockefeller, Sr. was a Baptist and a savvy businessman. He  created Standard Oil, but his activity stimulated the first Anti-trust litigation in the US, in the   early 1900s.

It’s too much for me.  US history is such a mess of fighting each other, Spanish, French, British, Natives, and their descendents, that I can’t keep up.  The “melting pot” is now a cauldron, boiling over.  Somebody should turn down the heat.

Thursday, November 20, 2025.  10 am, est. Hazy. 68 degrees and climbing.

The sun is moving out of the sign of Scorpio.  It will enter Sagittarius Tuesday, before Thanksgiving, on Thursday.  Before the earth’s wobbly path takes it toward the winter solstice next month and beyond, I want to comment on the symbolic meaning of this star pattern only visible after the sun goes down.

The sign of the scorpion stretches across the sky in spring, in the northern hemisphere.  The sun is “in” a sign during the time of year when the sun’s brilliance obscures the star pattern behind it.

Today, the sky is hazy.  Clouds are gathering in the south.  Temperature has risen ten degrees since last night.  US Americans are dickering about Epstein files.  As with Hitler in the 1940s, there is talk that Epstein escaped from his prison cell in New York,  but the media claims he hung himself.

No one seems to know, or to admit knowing, what really happened.

Hitler is said to have committed suicide rather than be caught in the subterranean bunker where he holed up after WW II.  Nobody ever saw the evidence of his cremation, when American forces raided his hideout.  President Truman, had just replaced FDR, after Roosevelt’s death in April, five months after winning his fourth term as president of the US.  Germany had surrendered, supposedly, but Japan was still fighting in the Eastern hemisphere.

Monday, November 17, 2025. 10 am est.  60 degrees F.

The Sun will be “in the astrological sign Scorpio” another few days.

The online news today is full of blah blah about Donnie Trump and his shenanigans.  His team of yes people is hanging fast, but there are outliers who don’t approve of his tactics.  Lots are saying he’s bad because he’s cut federal funding to some universities, like in California.  He is cutting federal funding to food programs (SNAP), but I can’t keep up.

This has been going on since Trumpsky’s first presidency.  I was reading old newspapers in preparation for burning in my wood stove this winter.  Local pecan growers were complaining then about  possible retroactive tariffs from China.  Sound familiar?

Sunny Sunday afternoon, November 16, 2025.  76 degrees F.

We are midway between the astrological sky pattern of Scorpio, and nearing the pattern of Sagittarius.  This means the earth has moved in its elliptical orbit closer to it’s perihelion, which comes in early January.  The winter solstice is in Demember, around Monday, the 22, 2025.

but the Scorpion hides during the day, as it is prone to do.

Saturday night. 10 pm est. 61 degrees F. 

I spent most of today cleaning and organizing at home. I wanted to read about scorpions.  I’ve never knowingly seen a scorpion, but one of these nasty viviparous arachnids stung little Coyotito in John Steinbeck’s 1947 novella, The Pearl.

The Pearl is set in a beach community along the upper Mexican coast of the Gulf of Mexico.  Kiko, the protagonist, is a  local fisherman, married to Juana.  Their first-born child, an infant son, Coyotito, is stung by a scorpion which falls from the rope that holds Coyotito’s hanging basket. 

One thing leads to another, in my circuitous searches.  

Saturday, Nov. 15, 2025.  Sunny afternoon.  Some haze eastward.  Over 70 degrees, F.

Lollipop is on the porch, in the shade.  This stray cat showed himself immediately when I got up today.  He disappeared yesterday before C&S went to Athens for their twin granddaughters’ birthday.

I started re-reading John Steinbeck’s The Pearl the other day, because that book was my first introduction to scorpions.  I’ve never seen one, but apparently they were a nuisance to Mexican Indians in the 1940s, when Steinbeck first published this book.  I learned from the book’s flap copy that Steinbeck, born in the Salinas Valley of California, was a lifelong traveler.  He earned this story from a Mexican-Indian folk tale, based on the Baja region of southern  California, which now is now a part of Mexico.

The mind works in mysterious ways. I guess God does, too, but He’s never told me in words.

The Scorpion is a glyph representing the constellation of Scorpius in the night sky.  A scorpion also figures prominently in John Steinbeck’s 1945 novella, “The Pearl”.

While Steinbeck’s book and the actual poisonous insect do not seem connected, the story shows how they both are linked to the constellation in the night sky.

On Friday, November 14, 2025 at almost noon, est:

It’s sunny and almost 60 degrees here on the southeast cost of the US of A. I think of the astrological meanings of the scorpionic personality. First, Scorpio is a fixed water sign, but in nature, it is a desert creature. It hides in dark, cool places, protected from the sun. There are multiple types of scorpions, ranging in size from under an inch to almost a foot long. They live on every continent except Anarctica.

The sign of the Scorpion in the zodiac puts it astronomically in the ecliptic ring of twelve constellations that divide western, earthly time periods of the solar year.

Astrologically, those born this month, in November, carry the characteristics of the scorpion. They are mysterious, secretive, and passionate, but superficially calm and composed.

The Beaver moon on Wednesday, November 5, 2025.

 

Wednesday, November 12, 2025. Almost noon.  Sunny.  48F.

The world is divided into Lumpers and Splitters, said my college professor.  There are those who want to group characteristics into one category;  and there are those who want to find differences between groups.

Today, almost 50 years since Dr. Kalat made his assertion, I still think of his wisdom.  His class was on animal behavior, but he wasn’t referring to animals, except human ones.

Humans can distinguish animals by different markings, or bird calls, plant characteristics,  or fossil remains, but they also tend to lump or split other human beings into groups by similar physical features, language, culture, gender, or place of origin.

Monday, November 10, 2025.  Sunny.  Noonish.   Tide coming in.  About 60 degrees, F.

I think it’s important to chart time’s movement.  Unlike Einstein, I believe time is gauged by movement.  The sun, moon and the earth’s rotation tell time.  Biological and vegetative life on earth are marked by phases of life. Humankind, in its self-designated role of puppet-master in life’s dramas, believes the human role is one of directorship.  That’s human hubris, think I.

Tomorrow is Veteran’s Day in the Disunited States.Veterans’ Day is a national tribute to those who fought or participated in war since the first World War.  World War I, as it is known, was an effort to destroy buildings and people in Europe.

Germany, the loser in that war, was required to pay reparations, which caused the German economy to suffer and its people to resent western Europe’s participation with “allies”, like Great Britain and France to put everyone in harm’s way. 

Today I read a blog about veterans from various US wars.  Few are still alive from WWI. More fought in later wars, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Iraq.  Now we have veterans or “mercenaries” paid to fight in US “proxy wars” all over the world.  There are US mercenaries paid to fight Arabs in Syria, Lebanon, Africa, or Iran, to name a few.

I lose track of who’s fighting whom, for what, or what their incentives are.

Meanwhile I picked up an old NYT (New York Times) from November, 2022 that had an obituary for Evelyn de Rothschild, who had died at age 91.  It gave some historical details about his family, a dynasty of bankers and financiers from the 1600s, at least.  

Sunday, November 9, 2025.  Afternoon.  Sunny. 77 degrees, F.

A beautiful day, here on the southeastern coastline of the US of A.  I’m sitting indoors, with cares that are not political.

Saturday, November 8, 2025. 9 pm, est.  Dark.

The title of this blog post  has not changed.  The frustration with AI has only blossomed and matured.

The Christmas season is upon us.  Season’s greetings are due.  In the US of A, Thanksgiving is linked to Christmas.  I don’t know how they became connected in the commercial world, but both align with the winter solstice and the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere.

It seems important to note that these holidays are linked to religion.  Even the time is tied to religious observations.  Time of year is dependent on the sun’s annual apparent moton through the skies, but astronomers know this is backwards.  The sun moves, but not around the earth.  Our entire solar system is only one small arrangement of matter among vast quantitie of dust in the cosmic order.

I’m not familiar enough with other religions to say how they honor the winter solstice.  Seems all recognize the seasons of harvest and festivals associated with it.  The topside of the planet – otherwise known as the northern hemisphere – is linked to European and supraequatorial measurements, plus a grid fashioned by early explorers, astronomers and mapmakers.No one really knows how humanity got here.  Archaeologists and modern equipment can speculate about prehistoric beginnings, but no one can say definitively when time began, or if it began at all.  We perceive passing time, we think. Night follows day in orderly sequence, it seems, but without  human technology, artifacts, and evidence of human endeavor, we can’t prove that we exist or that there will be a tomorrow.

Saturday, November 8, 2025.  Overcast. 71 degrees, F.  Tide going out.

Things are quiet where I sit.  I continue to pour over old news.  Amazed at the repetitiveness of the issues.  The US of A continues to meddle with foreign territories, including Venezuela and Columbia, blaming “drug cartels” presumed to supply illegal drugs to US Americans.

I can’t keep up with Trumpty and his numerous distractions from the business of the country.  What is the “business” of this country?  Good question.  Can anybody tell me?  Donnie serms to believe we need to protect US citizens from unapproved drugs.  Congress is divided, as usual, with the “right” and the “left” polarized regarding national borders, especially the US southern border with Mexico.

Friday, November 7, 2025.  Sunny.  57 degrees F.  Tide high.

My wars with AI continue.  The human world appears to be in chaos, but animals seem oblivious.

Good news today: Lollipop showed for supper.  He didn’t eat much, but he’s present, alive, and reliable.  Sort of reliable, for a cat.  I’ve been feeding that animal four years, but he won’t let me touch him.  We maintain a cordial relationship.

Thursday, November 6, 2025.  Afternoon. Almost 70 degrees, F. Mostly clear.

Elections have passed.  The “Beaver moon” passed on Wednesday.  Daylight Savings Time has ended for 2025, Saturday night/Sunday morning

The moon was bright, made hazy by humidity.  How many measurements must enter into the equation to assess the present?

Tuesday, November 4, 2025..  Election day the US of A.

Trumpty is getting on my nerves.  He has expanded his ego to the bursting point and nobody is stopping him.  All his yes-people are supporting his egregious claims to unseat Maduro of Venezuela, which he has tried before.  Now he’s threatening to invade Mexico, presumably to protest International drug cartels from competing with the US drug cartel run out of federal agencies, like the CIA, CDC and the FDA.

Is Trumpty willing to go to Venezuela and fight Maduro himself?  At least the erstwhile “leaders” of the US of A- before it devolved into a not-so-united amalgamated group of individuals with disparate interests – fought their wars openly.  George Washington and Eisenhower were military men themselves.  Even Andrew Jackson allowed the second central bank to expire  Not Trumpty.  Apparently he got a 4F deferment from the Vietnam war and didn’t have to fight.  Other notables, like J. P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie, paid substitutes to fight the Union’s war against the South in the 1850s.  The Dis-U was disunited even then.

At least Morgan made profits on the War of Yankee Aggression.  He bought a stash of army rifles and sold them back to the army at a profit.  Maybe it helped the Disunion trample the southern states.  Then ole JP engineered the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.  Then he died.  Now we have valueless money, because our government prints money to fight its wars, instead of paying off old debts.

Trumpty approves of this policy, apparently, and uses it himself.

No wonder the Disunited States are still disunited. Trumpty wants to drive further wedges into the illusion of stability.  Trumpty is a blowhard, according to me.  What has he done well?  

 I’m busy recycling old writings.  As usual, I’m fighting AI.  This spoof, written in 2007, on old equipment, lamented the constant upgrades in technology that only confuse and distract.

I give up.  My perfectionist tendencies can’t compete with technology that insists on changing everything behind me while I’m trying to think ahead.  It wants me to go back to correct unintentional corrections.  The obnoxious paperclip “Wordy”, has been written out of the program, or constant upgrades succeeded in surpassing my expertise.

Never mind.

I’m starting over.  I guess other people fight technology too, in individual ways.  My trajectory has lasted since the early 1980s, repeated upgrades and repeated changes in programs, techniques, competition between those who want “market share” and sales, resales, and various accoutrements that enhance the producer’s recognition  among cronies

AI continues to plague me with its intrusive, methods. The headline for this post stems from a February, 2007  complaint about the paperclip Wordy, a Microsoft animation programmed to help writers with their creative ventures.  Today, it proves, yet again, that human beings surpass Automated Technology in creative thinking.

But today, on Thursday, July10, (what year? – I’ve forgotten.  It doesn’t matter)  at almost 8 am edt, AI can’t compete with the sunrise.  A white bank of clouds on the eastern horizon gives way to a patch of blue above. I hear the chirp of birds over the fan’s whir.

AI tells me the US Postal Service can’t keep track of its own employees.  Money sent through the mail is disappearing. No surprise to me, a seasoned USPS customer. I don’t send money through the mail.

The title of this blog has given way to more recent annoyances, all with artificial intelligence and its presumptious belief that it is smart.  It is smart in some ways.  Machines are all smart.  Big deal.

Today blooms anew. Tide is out.  Sun is high.  It’s not warm enough for my delicate sensitivities, but the rain has stiopped, temporarily.  I sense the Lumpers and Splitters are Lumping and Splitting with abandon.  Without a television, I have to wait for world news later.  Hope no bombs drop on me today, or no tree branches fall.

There is hope.

 

Tuesday, November 4, 2024. Noon. About 70 degrees F.

This blog keeps getting longer.  Life goes on.  So does evolution.  Today is election day in the US of A.  My cell phone tells me so. These are mid-terms.

Sunday, November 2, 2025. 11 AM.  Sunny.  About 70 degrees F.

Success!  I’ve lived through yesterday and last week, when my world seemed to collapse at once.  I am walking, talking, and breathing, but there are moments when I wonder why.  There must be a God, think I.  I must not be done living, yet.  Still something useful to do . .

Friday, October 31, 2025.  Almost noon.  Sunny.  57 degrees F.

All Saints Day has historical and religious implications.  Halloween refers to the evening before All Saints’ Day.  It is also associated with harvest time in the topside hemisphere of our planet.

In the evolution of my thinking, I find inspiration in voices from the past, human voices that speak from long ago.  My deceased mother is one.  “Give it the light touch”, she used to say.  My sister doesn’t remember telling me she has used the idea of waiting for everything she has wanted, but I remember.

Today, inspiration has come from reminders on the Internet of favorite authors, like Viktor Frankl, whose “Man’s Search for Meaning” was published in 1969.  I read the book in the early 2000’s, when I worked in a temporary job in a federal men’s prison, among “lifers”.  These were men who were condemned for life, for some horrendous crime. 

The psychologist there had formed a reading group.  The group was reading Frankl’s book, so I read it, too.  Frankl had survived serial incarcerations in German prison camps during WW Ii.  He believed the survivors of those camps had specific reasons for living.  Some hoped to be re-united with lost relatives or friends.  Others wanted to finish something they had begun. 

Frankl surmised that people need a reason for living, to have hope.

Kurt Vonnegut, who died in 2007, had also survived imprisonment. Vonnegut was an American POW who survived the bombing of Dresen during WW II by the British Royal Air Force bombers.   A group of POWs were housed in a German meat locker.  A few days later, they were released to clean up the dead bodies and debris from the fires.  From that experience Vonnegut’s  novel “Slaughterhouse 5” was born.

Thursday, October 30, 2025.  Sunny.  Noon. 57 degrees F.

Finally, finally, finally the sun has  shown its face. Tide is out.  Mud flats tell me nothing outside.

I’m trying to reconcile time with space.

The time it takes to Do Things does not fit well with the space that expands to accumulate the implements required. I believe, unlike Einstein, that time and space are unrelated parameters, if one has to deal with both.  Time and Space each take separate paths.

Time is variable.  So is energy. By its nature, time moves, as the sun shows.

Tuesday, October 28, 2025.  AM. Dreary. Tide coming in. 54 F.

Tuesday night, almost 11 pm edt.  Temp 56 degrees F.

This week is Halloween, Friday, 0ct 31. Traditionally, this represents the evening before All Saints Day, a Catholic day of recognition for the saints in the Catholic Church.  In the US of A, Saturday evening or Sunday morning, Nov 2, is the appointed time for discontinuation of Daylight Savings Time for 2025.

No wonder I can’t keep up with the date and time.  I still know when the sun rises, and the moon, when skies are clear.  I know when tides are coming in or going out, because I can see from my window when the marsh is wet or dry, but mostly, the flat mud tells me nothing.

So goes evolution, think I.  Everything evolves and changes.  A few minutes ago, I took pictures of the river outside today.  I utacould* determine the direcion of the tide by observing the main channel’s flow, but that has now changed.

*ustacould – a term.used only by me to explain what I could do in the past

Monday, October 27, 2025 afternoon.

I keep returning to this blog draft, trying to finish it.  Instead, George Orwell’s classic, Animal Farm grabs attention and demands re-visiting.

Orwell, a pen name for Eric Blair, was a student of Aldous Huxley, of the famous Huxley family in Britain.

Orwell wrote Animal Farm before he published his signature work 1984, in 1949, then died from tuberculosis in 1950.

In Orwell’s view, animals have heirarchies, just as people do.  When given the chance, they will claim rank.  In Animal Farm, the pigs became dominant, after they expelled their human masters.

Thursday afternoon. October 23, 2025.

The weather has warmed, to 73 degrees F, but I still feel cold.  Maybe the chilly air, sliding downhill into the mud, encircled by marsh, exacerbates the feelings of despair.  I have nothing major to say or do.  My health is fine.  I’m lazy.  Who cares?

Thursday, October 23, 2025. Sunny morning. 62 degrees F.  Tide coming in.

Ideas, the earth, and populations of people and animals evolve over time.  Plants and insects also gravitate to more conducive habitats.  The flows seem natural and normal, like water flowing downhill.  Until water freezes or changes into vapor.

Wednesday, October 22, 2025.  Afternoon.  Sunny.  Temp 79 F.

Evolution of ideas?  Today, Monday, October 20, 2025.  Almost 10 am, edt.  Sunny and scheduled to reach the 70s F this afternoon.  Tide is almost high outside the window.

I read online that the US of A is in chaos, politically.  So, what else is new?

Meanwhile, I continue pouring over different “old news” from my stacks of stuff.  In the Psychiatric Times, from February, 2014, The leading article asks if suicide is “immoral”.

My notes on that article, written in the margin, ask whether psychiatry has lost its relevance.

I also comment that it’s about time someone addresses the issue of morality.

Seems people remain divided about the concept of evolution. Charles Darwin proposed that animals mutate over time, leading to a “survival of the fittest” strategy among vertebrate beings.

Charles Darwin, a British biologist, scientist and philosopher, lived from 1809 until 1882.  His most famous work, from the standpoint of the popular culture, was “On the Origin of Species”.

In 1925,  a Tennessee high school teacher named John Thomas Scopes stood trial for teaching evolution.  His case was advertized by mass media (radio) and publicized by the American Civil Liberties Union. The so-called “Scopes Monkey Trial” raised religious and ethical questions that are still being debated, and may continue to arouse ire for years to come.

Meanwhile, I’ve pulled out a college text about Indian beliefs.  Printed in 1970, entitled Man in the Universe:  Some Cultural Continuities in India, the book is a series of essays by W. Norman Brown.

The question of whether evolution exists remains unanswered.  I believe ideas evolve.  People evolve during their lifetimes, and maybe before and after they live on earth.  Whether a god or gods are involved remains unsettled, for many or most. Which god or religious symbol you trust or believe in depends on the individual.

I’m not going to settle this question for anyone except myself, and I don’t have an answer, until I get there.  I know there are as many attiudes as there are people, or animals, or any sentient beings.  All have a belief in something outside themselves.  Something that motivates them to keep breathing, or respirating.

Interestingly, the Indians of North America, misnamed by Christopher Columbus in the 1400s, had viewpoints similar to the India Indians, in that they respected nature and life itself.  Different tribes or groups approached it in different ways, but they emphasized cooperation and sharing within their groups.  Trading with other groups also predominated, when there was scarcity or an outside threat.

The idea of evolution takes different guises, depending on culture, language, and environment.  There are similarities between or among cultures.  Distance geographically or culturally only fuels the need for understanding.  Cultures, or individuals evolve over time, as a child grows, or an animal or plant.  To suggest differently provides opportunities to find common ground.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, is the full moon.  Called the “beaver moon”, it signifies a time when beavers go into their dams to rest for the winter.  I haven’t seen beavers around here, so I guess they are resting someplace else.  Sleep well beavers. Hope you wake up refreshed next spring.

 

Monday, October 27, 2025. Cloudy. AM.

“I think I can.”  I woke up this morning with that on my mind.  It referred to a children’s book I read in the second grade, when I was about 7 years old.

Never mind that the story has been told by numerous authors since, adapted for film, and reclaimed as a classic children’s tale of motivation.  It has remained with me.  It inspires me when the “To Do’s” seem overwhelming.

It is raining again now.  Weather predictions say the rain should stop this afternoon.

Oct 26, 2025. Late afternoon.

Hazy. 70 degrees, F.

Still trying to make progress in my mind and on this TechnoGadget, commonly known as a cell phone.

Between all the interruptions and Demands from Real Life, I’ve now forgotten what I wanted to say.

Never mind. The pile of Stuff at my feet reminds me that Reality exists in the Present.

First, I found a WSJ article from May, 2013 referencing Jamie Dimon, of J.P. Morgan.

In the past few years, J.P. Morgan has merged with Chase, which was known as Chase Manhattan when I lived in NYC in the mid-1970s.

JP Morgan, Sr. died in 1913, the same year the Federal Reserve Act was passed. He was instrumental in that endeavor, working through subordinates linked to the Rothschilds in Europe. “The Robber Barons”, by Matthew Josephson (1932), describes how Morgan operated. Also, David M. Griffin’s book, “The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve” details the history of money and banking since the middle ages, including the first Rothschild in the 1700s.

Friday, October 24, 2025

Today I went through old stuff, mostly old newspapers and writings that have caught my interest in the past few years.
First, I found that in his first term as president, from 2017 through 2021, Trump fired the acting AG, Sally Yates, after she refused to defend in court his refugee and immigration ban. This from the Savannah Morning News on January 31, 2017.
The same issue of the SMN describes Trump’s “inner circle” picked within 10 days of taking office. He added a senior political advisor to the National Security Council and cut cabinet secretaries from decision making on top policies.

Meanwhile, in 2016, The New York Times (NYT) reported on pesticides and herbicides manufactured in Britain, but only for export. Pesticides and Herbicides are two heads of the same hydra. Various articles from 2016 mention paraquat, a pesticide/herbicide made by Syngenta, a company based in Basel, Switzerland but owned by Sinochem, a worldwide agribusiness.

In 2016, Britain exported paraquat to Brazil, Columbia, Ecuador, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Panama, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan, Uruguay, Venezuela and the USA. It is also manufactured in China.

In 2016, Paraquat was used on over 100 crops worldwide, including oranges, coffee, and sugar cane. It is linked to Parkinsons disease.

Today, I’m trying to reconcile old news with what I’m reading and seeing lately. Venezuela is still in the news. Maduro, the military leader, a protege of Hugo Chavez, has consolidated power against Trump and allies. Venezuela has been identified as holder of vast oil resources off its coast. Exxon has already claimed extraction rights to some of this oil. But the devil is in the details, because the refineries are in the US, near Houston and along the southern end of the Mississippi River.

Oops. The US of A wants energy independence, it claims. But the Disunited US can’t get along with itself. It has already fought the Mexican War and lost, when the US Army chased the Mexicans to Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. The Mexican War was settled by Army generals, who sent a message to President Polk. The treaty gave the US territory in the Southwest corner, including California.

And I’m done with old news. It is only new news, rehashed in various contexts and guises since the US government started stirring up trouble, back when they declared independence from Britain.

At almost 3 pm, edt, I’m going to post and take a nap.

Friday, October 24, 2025.  Sunny afternoon.

I’m reading old news today, plus dealing with passwords by AI.  I’ve lost my emails.

 

And Thursday, October 16, 2025.  Afternoon. 76 degrees F.  Clear, with clouds rising in the south.

It seems fitting that Trumpty is facing insurrection in the ranks.  This morning, I had the brilliant notion to pull out my copy of “Open Veins of Latin America”, by Eduardo Galeano, published before the author died in 2015 in Montevideo, Uruguay, of lung cancer.

Galeano contended that Latin America was threatened by “conquistadors” from the north and from Europe, including Hernando Cortez, who bested the Mexican natives, and Pizarro, a contemporary of Cortes and related to him.  Pizarro destroyed the Incan civilization.  Both sought gold and jewels.

Today, Wednesday, October 15, 2025, it remains sunny, here on the SE Ga coast. About 3 pm, clouds are appearing on the southern horizon. It’s about 75 degrees, F. But this could change.  A spate of gloom and doom, weather-wise, has kept my mood low.  But I’m rallying now.

First, Lollipop showed for breakfast.  This is the stray cat I’ve fed for over four years.  He disappeared awhile two years ago, when that tree fell on my house, during a hurricane.  He has kept a low profile again since I returned from Colorado this past summer.

I have lived without a television since my last one failed.  My rationale was I never turned that noise-box on, so why have it?

I used to buy newspapers, magazines, and books, but no more.  I’m busy recycling and disposing of “old news”.  This includes old newspapers, which have a mysterious tendency to repeat themselves through the years.

Last evening, I burned old copies of the Savannah Morning News and the New York Whines.  The NYT, the New York Whines, from Prez Trump’s first stint in the White House, used every pretext to undermine him.

I’m not a fan of our Prez. In fact, I have a “wait-and-see” attitude since his first try at this “commander-in-chief” role in 2016. Even with a break, during Joe Biden’s try at the Executive Office from 2020 to 2024, Trumpty has lost favor with me.

Of course, no president could do as good a job at running this chaotic mess of a country as I could, but at least I wouldn’t ask people to change the clocks twice a year. Native American tribes in Arizona or New Mexico do a better job of telling time. Like the sun.

I know the sun has set now. The waning moon has yet to rise. Congress can’t change that.

It’s now Wednesday evening, October 15, 2025. It is dark outside, at 8 pm, edt. I’ve done very little today. Blame the waning moon. Or my inertia.

Back up in time. As long as I’m fiddling with concepts of time, it passes.

 A postcard in my piles of stuff. This was sent by my mother to her parents, from Guadalupe Hidalgo, a church in Mexico, in the1940s.

Friday, July 18, 2025. 12 am edt. Temp 82. Dark.

News clips from all over the world say nothing new to me.  Yawn. People still acting like people.  Ho hum.

Thursday, July 17, 2025.  11 am edt. 83 degrees, F. Now 4 pm edt on Thursday.  89 degrees F. Hazy.   This TechnoGadget can’t harass me outdoors, where I took my overdue breakfast this afternoon.

Humpty Trumpty is getting on my nerves, using Executive privilege to get the DOJ to protect the federal government from lawsuits filed by state US governments.

Current Attorney General  Pam Bondi is Trump’s latest appointee to head the federal DOJ.  Before that came a string of AGs appointed by Joe Biden, and a couple from Trump’s first term as president.

Bondi dresses well for the cameras and shows a cross around her neck and cleavage.  I guess she’s a lawyer, too. She performs well for male viewers on TV.  She spouts the Trump party’s line.  The Trump party is an unofficial mixed bag of MAGA and oddball spokespeople who represent themselves and various interests.

The title of this blog post reflects personal experience with managing psychiatric patients  confined to padded cells.  I observed them while in psychiatric internship at the University of Florida. The Veterans’ Administration facility stood across the street from Shands general hospital in Gainesville.

This is pertinent to the state of Florida’s socio-political orientation with respect to the New York yankees who have invaded the South, like Trumpty. 

I then completed residency at Emory University in Atlanta, where the Woodruff Foundation endowed Emory with the CDC. Now I note Trumpty  is  splashing around in Coca Cola. He has dictated that real cane sugar be used now in coke products. Real cane sugar is grown in Cuba, for one thing.  It, like Cuban cigars, was popular in the US of A before Fidel Castro became head of state and made a mockery of the US.  He died in 2016, and his brother Raul, took over, but he agreed to retire after two terms.  I don’t know where Raul is, now.  Cuba has a new leader, I guess.  It’s not making much noise.

What does a padded cell have to do with the state of the US of A, or with the world?  Only that the coincidences abound.  Trumpty is exceeding his authority, according to me.  I’ve never met the man, nor do I support his stances on much of anything, at least not lately.  

But the instances of our Prez’ misbehavior irritate me.  Where does he get the authority to make such absurd claims?

I don’t drink Coke, or any carbonated, sugary beverage, but the secret formula was developed in Georgia.

Now Trumpty is promoting real Coca Cola, made with real cane sugar, I’m told.

The Woodruff Foundation, which endows Emory University in Atlanta, is downhill from the CDC,  on Peachtree Street.

Robert Winship Woodruff, Jr. , born in 1889, in Columbus, GA, was an outdoorsman, according to Wiki.  He and his wife had no children.  Before he died in 1985, he endowed Emory University  with 105 million. Atlanta itself has swelled like a cancer during my lifetime.

Wednesday, July 16, 2025. Evening.

Tuesday, July 15, 2025. AM, edt.

Partly cloudy.

Monday, July 14, 2025.  Late afternoon. It’s hot and humid, but not raining.

Skies are clouded over.  Temp is 89 degrees F. Calm. 

I have been thinking about government, ours specifically, in the US of A.

Lots of people are squawking about various abuses of federal power, but there is little concensus

We seem to have leadership by confusion.

Saturday, July 12, 2025, 11 pm edt, 75 degrees F. Cloudy.

I’m writing from the East Coast of the US of A.  My latitude is almost the same as that of San Diego, CA., but the climate is different.

The interior of this vast land mass has notable geological variations, including two major vertically aligned mountain chains in East and West, with the Mississippi River between.

US gossip tells me Trumpty wears diapers.  Doesn’t surprise me: He looks like he should,  to protect the floor from overloaded bodily cavities.

Padded cells

Padded cells are useful, if you must monitor irresponsible or dangerous adults.  You must  be the adult, to protect the irresponsible person from self harm.

These containment rooms come with myriad conditions imposed by delegated authority, like government employees.

A padded cell is convenient for caregivers, and safe for the detainee, if nothing bad happens. Therein lies the dilemma.   A person can sleep or thrash. But he can’t choke on spit. He must ask for help to perform routine bodily functions.  He needs to be watched.  A seizure fom alcohol withdrawal can be life-threatening. Common parlance refers to DT’s, or Delerium Tremens. DTs are often managed in hospitals, emergency rooms, or detox centers.

How does this explanation fit the blog title?

The vertically aligned one-dollar bill depicts a number of symbols related to the US, Mexico, and current border disputes between  countries.  National boundaries are geopolitically decided.  The current line between the US and Mexico was established after the Mexican-American War in 1848, in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

The news lately has made a big deal over Prez Trumpty’s rearranging the world to suit himself.  He wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.  He wants to build a detention facility on or in the Everglades, a swamp in Florida.  King Donnie’s EgoMania is angering large swaths of  US Southerners, including many Floridians, who debate on Facebook about the Everglades’ contribution to the environment.  

US Expansionism

The Disunited States of America has a long southern border.  The tip of Florida to the California coast stretches along the south and southwest almost 3000 miles.

The US has been squabbling with Mexico since the geopolitical borders were first formed.  That was why the Alamo became the flashpoint that killed Davy Crockett in 1838, after Texas seceded from the US of A and earned the distinction of being the Lone Star State, after President Andrew Jackson allowed the first 20-year charter for a central bank to expire after two renewals. 

President James Madison had wanted to allow the first contract to expire, when the British invaded Washington DC in 1812  and burned the city. Madison and his wife Dolly escaped the White House with what they could carry.  Among them was a portrait of George Washington, painted by Gilbert Stuart.  When the central banking contract came up for its third renewal, President Andrew Jackson, a slave owner in  western Tennessee and commander of theTennessee Militia that had fought in the back woods for the US of A, became commander of the Davy Crockett contingent. Then Davy Crockett split with Jackson over the Indian Removal Act of 1830. .Crockett joined with Texas and fought with Texas troops against the Mexican Army.

Then, the Mexicans took the Alamo, near what is now San Antonio, Texas, but they were chased down to a Franciscan mission in Guadalupe, Mexico by the US army, based on information communicated to President Polk by one of the envoys, and escalated by hearsay to declare war against  Mexico in 1846.

The Disunited States of America have been fighting Mexico ever since over territories claimed by both Mexico and the US of A.

The size of the Disunited States of America has swelled to the implosion point since the state of New York set the tone of US government when the first 13 states sent delegates to the Constitutional Convention that named George Washington its president.

On April 19, 1775.when fighting started in. Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts.  No one knows who fired the famous “shot heard round the world” that day, but it doesn’t matter.  The American Revolution had begun.

Where do we stand now?  What do we stand for?

Humpty Trumpty, a typical New Yorker, has maximized the sales acumen of his ilk. 

Tuesday, October 7, 2025 Noon edt.  Sunny.

It was raining this morning, when I woke up.  The sun has come out now, but skies are still white.  The tide is going out.

Tuesday, September 30, 2025, 10 am edt.

It’s morning, still.  The sun is trying to shine through the clouds, here in the muggy swamps of coastal GA.  The tide is out.  The moon is in a waxing phase, so they say.  But the phases of the moon are unrelated to time of day, season, or century in the US of A.

I’m trying, as usual, to coordinate times listed on calendars and clocks with times around the world.  This task becomes more difficult, as we now have Daylight Savings Time in parts of the US.  DST is supposed to end in late October, meaning clocks are supposed to be set back an hour to save daylight.  “Fall Back”.

I’ve written about this semi-annual Clock Fiddle before, and it still makes no sense to me.

Granted the US has its own way of doing things.  It adopted the Gregorian Calendar in 1752, to conform to the British acceptance of Pope Gregory’s restructuring of time.  This was to replace the Julian calendar, devised by Julius Caesar before Christ’s birth, in about 44 BC, before Caesar was assassinated in the Roman Senate.

Poor Caesar.  He didn’t know Christ would be born 44 years after the “Dictator for Life” died  two months after he was granted this questionable honorarium.  He thought his term as dictator would last a little longer, but he was already in trouble in Rome, having made himself scarce through campaigns in Egypt and other places, where he studied the Egyptian calendars and the mathematics of time calculations, based on stellar coordinates.

Caesar reformed calculations of the year, and added two months to update the calendar.  July and August are named for him, born in July, and for Augustus Caesar, who came later.  This modification allowed for our current 12-month annual cycle. A 360-day year approximates the 365 1/4 days of the actual earthly orbit around the sun.  The remaining days are spread out through different months, with a “leap year” every four years.

Then, along came Jesus, born in about 4 or 6 BC, according to Copernicus, who calculated Christ’s birth time, based on mathematical approximations of planetary positions. Copernicus, a Polish mathematician and astronomer, was excommunicated for his efforts.

The Catholic Church was later faced with a dilemma.  Not only did the seasons shift away from traditional celebrations, like on Christmas and Easter, but the timing put these farther and farther away from the winter solstice and spring equinox.  Pope Gregory had to do something to make the calendar conform to Christian theology.  He changed the calendar to reflect what the Church thought it should show.

The US of A was barely getting born in the 1750s, so American calendars from that time show our “founding fathers” have different birthdates, depending on the change in calendars.

Who controls the time?  A little study reveals different cultures mark time differently.  Many, like the Chinese calendar, are based on the lunar cycle.

In the US of A, Congress now controls DST, but some Native Cultures operate under their own systems.  They don’t follow Congress’ dictates.

Does anyone really know what time it is?  Does anybody really care?  Only if you have to catch a bus, train, or plane, apparently.  Otherwise, the sun and moon still rule the time.

Friday, September 26, 2025, pm edt.

The days and hours fly by. I can’t keep up with the date, hour or year. I just had a birthday last month, but it means nothing.

The world is shifting all around. Am I crazy, demented, or losing touch with reality? Whose reality?

August, 2025 has ended.

September peeks back over the summer’s highlights. Keeping up with human changes remains challenging.

Who can say more?

It’s rainy here in Colorado. I hear of rain and storms in other places, too. Wildfires have singed the Western United States. Some areas are still burning. Hurricane season threatens the East.

HumanLand creates its own drama.

The hit of the summer, for me, was the election of Pope Leo 14 to lead the Catholic Church. Pope Leo is younger than I am. I’m not even Catholic, but have many Catholic believers in my circle of relatives, friends, and associates.

 On Sunday, September 13, 2024, at almost noon, mdt, the sun is shining brightly.

And already, September is almost over. My time in the mountains of Colorado has ended. I’m back home in the swamps, facing a fall full of hurricanes and nasty weather, but fall is generally pleasant in Georgia. Few biting bugs. On September 26, 2025, a Friday, life has returned to normal, whatever that means.

I live without TV, relying on the internet to tell me of the political happenings Out There. Nothing much has changed. Our melodramatic President is galavanting around the world, wheeling and dealing with other Mucky Mucks internationally. I guess he is still trying to Make Deals, but he’s receiving some resistance from China, Russia and Poland, among others. Argentina has joined the Belt-and-Road initiative, concentrating on the Global South, where there is less land but more oceans. Australia and New Zealand come to mind.

And I’ll end here, with the month of September, tonight. The future remains a mystery, as always, until it happens. Stay tuned to Planet Earth. Things continue to be interesting.