Interesting Times

      I hate living in interesting times.  Bring back the dullness my parents enjoyed!  Occasionally for whole months at a time!

      Dammit.  Some "golden years" I'm hurtling towards.  Thanks a lot.

Unexpected

       I have been working on what I refer to as a "bathtub MFA."  I have some back problems and spend a half-hour or more soaking in a tub of hot water with Epsom salts several mornings a week.  If I've got to be in there anyway, I might as well be doing something.  The TV doesn't fit, podcasts are hard to follow with both ears underwater and I have drowned (and had to replace) a lot of paperback science fiction through the years.  In the past few years, I have been buying used books about writing to read in the tub.

      Most recently The Art Of Fiction, by the late John Gardner.  He was a college professor and he wrote like one, a bit stuffy, a bit speaking from On High, but he seems to have been a pretty good guy for all of that; he's not especially stuck-up on art vs. craft or serious literature vs. popular trash; he cites SF authors by name and is as comfortable using Captain Marvel comic books graphic novels as an example as the works of James Joyce.

      He opens with a series of long essays about narrative fiction and the writing process, high-level but good.  He delves into the need to engage the reader in a kind of dream -- and to not knock them out of it though clumsy work.  By the fourth chapter, he discusses non-traditional forms: metafiction and suchlike.  Being a college professor, he begins by looking back at stories that don't have a traditional narrative arc or characters: Beowolf, the Iliad, The Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost and others.  Gardner notes they all come from strongly authoritarian times, in which rulers were held to be inherently better than other people and fiction was seen as a vehicle of instruction: "It is hard to speak fairly of authoritarian ages, both because they're naturally repugnant to the democratic spirit and because they are forever watching from the wings, hoping to seize the stage again."

      That's from 1983, published after his death in a motorcycle accident in 1982.  He was an interesting man and his career was not without controversy.

      "...forever watching from the wings, hoping to seize the stage again."  Indeed.

No, Look--

      Is it too much to ask for a thread of internal logic?  For just a scrap of sense instead of overwrought emotion?  Having a search warrant carried out on your home can be disruptive, intrusive, off-putting and intimidating.  There's no question about that, and it's why -- barring exigent circumstances -- law enforcement isn't allowed to go searching on a whim; they've got to convince a judge there's good reason for it, they've got to say what they're looking for and where.

      These are all true things.  And in ill-intentioned hands, search warrants have certainly been abused.

      But having the FBI show up with a duly executed warrant and go looking for papers you were supposed to have left in the office, papers that were never your personal property, papers the Feds had been asking to have returned and which you or your people had been equivocating about for months is not "A political attack on America."

      Assuming the worst, there's still no way to spin it as an attack on the country.  Hey, let's caveat some combination of Congress, or the Biden Administration, the Department of Justice and/or the FBI Director Mr. Trump personally appointed to the job is out to get him.  For the purpose of analysis, say that they trumped up the warrant and sent a gaggle of FBI agents down to the winter home Mr. Trump was not at, to gnaw the locks off a storage room and chew their way into a safe, and grab boxes and boxes of files that had originated in the Trump White House.  Say they did it to screw him over, ruin his chances of running for the office again and just generally mess with the man: grant all that, and it's still not "A political attack on America."

      "L'etat c'est moi" has never been the way things work in the United States of America.  In fact, the Founders and Framers were very directly opposed to that notion.  No man embodies The State here -- and while the President is the closest we get to one person standing for the whole, A) it's not especially close and B) the role goes with the office, not the man.  At the end of your term(s), back you go to the plow or whatever, just like Cincinnatus and George Washington, who are supposed to serve as good examples of how the thing is done.

      The available evidence I have seen and read, going way, way back, tells me the Federal government, whatever its failings -- and they are many -- is not in the revenge and retribution business against former Presidents.  But even if it was, that wouldn't be an attack on America, political or otherwise -- it would be domestic politics, ugly, damaging and unwise.

      But that's a thought-experiment.  The reality is, whatever his intent, Mr. Trump (or people acting on his behalf) did take paperwork that belonged to the Federal government when he left office, including some "burn before reading" material,* and the subsequent talks, subpoenas, letters and other legal back-and-forth did not produce results that the Feds believed were adequate or timely.  A judge agreed, the warrant was executed, and now there's a lot of sound and fury from Mr. Trump's side and a little noise and bustle from the government side, and we still don't know the whole story.  Maybe this was all about securing the files.  Maybe they're ginnin' up for an indictment.  We'll find out when we find out -- if we find out at all -- and not a moment sooner.  Nothing on social media is going to speed that process.  This is no more opaque than any other case at the same point and the only reason it makes headlines is it was an (extremely voluble) ex-President who had his house searched and items seized, and not an ex-truckdriver, ex-con or current farmer.
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* I continue to maintain that most such secret stuff is deadly dull -- which doesn't keep  it from being deadly deadly, too.  Knowing our spy satellites can spot things the size of a gym locker but gets fuzzy about stuff as big as a breadbox is valuable to hostile nations.  Learning what we do and do not know about needle-bearing production in Enemyistan can reveal who our sources are in their home-grown bearing industry -- and get that person killed.  And so on.  The devil is in the details and it's not always obvious which ones. (P.S., our spy satellites are way better than that.  How much better?  I don't know.  It's a secret.)

Laundry, Meeting, Cooking

      Saturday: we enjoy the morning cartoons on Me-TV, I do laundry, there's some kind of a cooking project (pork roast with vegetables again, and why not?) and today, the third Saturday of the month, one of the writer's groups meets on Zoom. 

      Not the worst way to spend the day.  I helped with my ailing friend's cats, too.  A couple of them have decided I'm really a pal.  They follow me around, chirruping and meowing and getting attention. Pretty flattering!  One is a tall, young mostly-black tomcat, full of mischief.  He was one of the first to make up to me back when all this started.  The other one his opposite in many ways, for all their coats are alike.  He's an older tom, small, one-eyed, wary.  When I first start feeding the cats, he would lurk behind the washer and dryer, peering at me from safety.  It was months before he'd come out when I was around and even then, he was careful to have something to duck into, under or behind.  He'd watch my activities with interest -- as long as I didn't make a point of noticing him.  If I said anything to him or even looked at him too directly, he was off to cover.

      He slowly got closer and closer, especially at feeding time.  One day, he smoothed on my ankles.  Pretty soon, he was raring up to get petted and making the most amazing rusty-hinge sounds of pleasure as he got attention.

      Maybe it's a small thing, but I'm happy he decided to trust me.

Yech

      Just sick enough all day that all I accomplished was office work.  At home.  Something I ate wasn't happy.  I blame oatmeal cookies.

Ever Notice...?

      Have you noticed how much political talk involves resentment at someone else's good fortune?  From communism's class warfare to conservatives griping about student loan forgiveness, it's not even so much that the complainer (or worse) has gotten a raw deal as it is that someone else has done better, by chance, skill or government whim.

     It's whiny.  It's immature.  Even when people pushing such notions try to give them some sort of moral or socioeconomic justification, it's still a child vexed because Billy-Sue across the street has ice cream and they don't, or a primate screeching because another member of the troop found ripe berries first and ate them all.

      A boon to others is not the same as a harm done to you.  Is it fair that somebody gets something nice and you do not?  Nope.  Life isn't fair.  Nature isn't fair.  And the better angels of our nature do impel us to work for fair and proportionate outcomes for our fellow humans.  But the part of us that wants to throw a tantrum because we didn't get what that other person has got is in no wise a better angel.  It's an undisciplined child.

     (A lot of comments coming in of the "Why should the rest of us pay someone else's barber-college bill?"  I dunno.  Nobody consulted me on it.  I have never been entirely sure why I had to pay for foreign wars I didn't want or government programs I disapproved of, either, but as long as I want to live under this flag, them's the breaks.  Federal debt is already an enormous burden on every taxpayer -- so huge that adding the loan payoff barely registers.  IMO, Uncle Sam now has every reason to turn and go after getting money back from colleges and trade schools that pulled in unprepared students for that sweet, sweet student loan money. Not that they will.  But in the grand scheme of things, do you want the beauty-school dropouts and community-college failures knocking over liquor stores and running phone scams to pay off their loans or dodging them forever in the shadow economy, or do you want them working jobs nearly as honest as yours and able to pay a little tax?  Remember, if you line them up and march them into the sea, those loans will never be repaid at all!)

Ha!

      A sure sign of age: I went to the doctor and passed my blood pressure test by a lot -- and it makes me happy.  (Always relax and think happy thoughts.  It's not cheating!)

I Tried

      The never-ending din of plain wretched news -- war in Europe, dysfunctional U. S. politics, ongoing bad weather (can't call it climate without starting an argument) and so on left me with nothing to say Monday, especially given that the day started with ongoing worry over our sick neighbor, who I'd been unable to reach at all Sunday.

      At least she resurfaced late Monday morning, possibly after another minor misadventure: it's difficult to be physically frail, and a lot more so if you're unwilling to admit it.  The moral dilemma involved for others is acute: if someone can (barely) get along by themselves and they refuse help, at what point is a well-meaning bystander obliged to step in?  Where are the lines between pushy meddling, kindly helping, letting people have as much independence as they can hang onto and craven indifference?  I don't know; they're not easily drawn except at the extremes.

      Much the same could be said of national and global affairs, though at least there I can take a certain cold comfort in my own relative powerlessness: I'm voting with votes and economic choices for the future I want -- but the future we'll get will the be result of everyone's choices.  That's a lot easier to face than someone in deep trouble right down the block, but it's got the potential to be every bit as grim.

Took The Day Off

      Other than cooking, cleaning, changing the sheets, doing laundry and fretting over my aching lower back, I took the day off.  I ignored the Sunday morning talking head shows (Meet This Week's Press Facing The Nation!) and played with the cats.

      I sure needed it.

Oh, The Thrills

      Yesterday afternoon, after doing what work I could from home and preparing to leave, I found myself ill with the sort of gastrointestinal unpleasantness that arrives with little warning and leaves you wondering if it will strike again.

      So I unpacked and found more work to do.  Early evening, visiting the smallest room, I flipped the light switch and the light came on bright, flickered, and dropped to a dim glow.  Rats, dead bulb.  I turned it off -- and the light stayed on.  Switch didn't feel right, either.  Floppy.  The fan and its switch worked; the GFCI on the same circuit was happy.   I made my way to the basement and killed the breaker.

      The electrical in that room was one of the few things I hired done when I was moving in here at Roseholme Cottage.  It needed an exhaust fan and the only convenience outlet was in the light over the lavatory, controlled by the same small pull-string switch as the light.  Inconvenient, not on a GFCI, and shring the same branch of the same 1920-vintage wiring* as the overhead lights in the "private" part of the house.  So, a new circuit from the breaker box and a nice quad box to one side of the medicine chest, with a protected receptacle and dual switches for the fan and light.  That was fifteen years ago.  The little switches that fit the footprint of a duplex plug are typically marginal and apparently, the bulb failure had taken one out.

      I felt well enough to make a closing-time dash to the home-supply store and came home with a pair of replacement switches, ivory rather than white, with a new wall plate to match.  But I decided to wait for daylight to replace them.

      This morning was a reminder of why my (limited) experience with commercial power wiring isn't ideal prep for residential wiring.  At work, our stuff is in conduit, nearly always stranded wire, and we use crimp-on lugs, generous service loops and finish with a wrap of black tape around the device; you can remove them from the box hot (but you shouldn't) and everything is easy to get to.  The residential electrician has a tougher time: solid wire is standard, the boxes can be no deeper than the wall space, and there's no room to cram much extra wire behind the receptacles and switches.  None of it is arranged for convenient servicing.  There's a reason residential electrical work is rarely low-priced: you're paying for a highly specialized set of skills and an uncommon degree of patience.

      The circuit was still off and a non-contact voltage indicator confirmed it.†  I gathered up my gumption, pulled the plate, unscrewed the switches and pulled them out.  It became clear the the GFCI had to come out, too, in order to get to all the connections.  Much fussing and fighting with solid wire followed, along with peering at clearances as I put it back together.  Finally I had Tam watch the thing while I cycled power on and off quickly -- okay -- and then turned it on.  The bulb was still bad, but at least it shut off with the switch off.  A new bulb fixed the light, the new plate got Dymo labels for function and breaker number and I was reminded once more that the legend on the breaker box is more like mythology than documentation.
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* At this point, the overhead lighting, the outdoor/porch lights, the radon fan and a floor lamp in the living room are the only things left on the old tube-and-knob/flex.  All the lights on it that we use are low-draw CFL or LED.  The wall outlets are all modern plastic-sheathed 14/2 plus ground back to the breaker box, but the previous owner just refed the original four lighting circuits when he updated the electrical.  I get it; replacing tube and knob wiring to switches and receptacles is a lot of work for no visible change, but it's eventually going to have to get done.  Modern bulbs literally take a lot of load off of it and as long as the 1920s electricians used the right flux when they soldered -- well, there's a degree of wishful thinking and thin resources in keeping it in service.   
 
† This is the cheapest $8.50 or less you'll ever spend.  They tend to the occasional false positive (check with a meter!) but these little voltage probes will tell you in a hurry what's safe to touch -- or not.  Worth owning if you do any AC power work, and worth storing with batteries out so it won't be corroded to uselessness the next time you need it.  Ask me how I know....

They Swear An Oath To The U. S. Constitution

      That's how it works for the military; they swear to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies first and then to "obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice," a formulation making it clear that said orders to obey are from the Presidency and not the President as a man: it's not an oath of personal loyalty to him but to the office he holds.

      Based on behavior, the previous President wasn't very clear on that distinction.  It's an important one.

Oh, Grow Up

      You can keep leaving crazysauce comments intimating partisan political violence all you like, Mike, but they're not going to be published.  I will, however, forward the more overt ones to Federal law enforcement.  As you are so fond of hinting around, we're playing for realsies now.

      Grow up.   The standard highly-online person, well past 40, well over optimum body mass and well likely to be on one or another prescription drugs for their blood pressure, cholesterol or something even worse, will be among the first to suffer if things break bad.  And it's not going to make any difference how many rounds you've got boxed up in the crawlspace.

      I'm sick and tired of loudmouths and posers, living in a fantasy world.