What, No Monday?

     I was up late Sunday night for no good reason, and slept in a little Monday -- but I have to admit it, the strangeness and unpleasantness of current events leaves me spoiled for choice and lost in the noise.  Which strain of awfulness is so dire as to invite further comment, and what stands on its own, inherently horrible?

     There's a giant hurricane headed toward Jamaica (and Cuba afterward), the eye moving slowly but circulating wind gusts inside the storm in excess of 200 miles an hour; at the same time, Indiana's Lieutenant Governor Micah Beckwith, who has picked up a reputation for condemning every rainbow flag or lapel-pin listing pronouns as "grooming," has found himself right next to a real case of felony child exploitation charges involving the son of his podcast partner, and has nothing whatsoever to say about it.  Both of these are tragedies, one of unthinkable scale, the other of unspeakable harm, and yet they're nearly lost in headlines clamoring things just as bad, if not worse.

     Most of it defies easy remedy.  If you want to do something, donate to your local food pantry -- money, time and/or food.  With SNAP and WIC funding unavailable (and the Feds too busy dreaming up new Hatch Act violations to find creative solutions) and Federal employees not getting paid, they're about to be hit by a flood of need far in excess of their resources.

     We are careening towards a precipice -- and there are many, all far too near: economic, weather (or climate; go argue with the dead about terminology), politics, and that unlovely extension of politics, war, all of it on both national and global scales.  Which will pop first -- and how many of the rest will follow -- is a fool's bet and will eventually be a career for historians.  "Events leading up to..." and we are in the middle of them.