Ahistorical, Antifreedom, Agitprop

     Indiana's Lieutenant Governor is at it again: Micah Beckwith is making things up, claiming the Founders and Framers who set up a secular government were all about Christian Nationalism.

     He's talking nonsense.  These men represented a mix of beliefs -- Unitarian, Quaker, Congregationalist, Universalist, Deist, Methodist, Catholic, Judaism and others -- and they knew history.  They had read of and in some cases observed the damage a State Church can cause.

     And they were open to the good religious faith can create, too.  You'll find them writing of the "public utility" of religion as a beacon of individual morality.  They had no problem with individual legislators looking to their own beliefs for guidance -- but they were wary of any faith leading the government, and of any government running and requiring adherence to a church.

     This is not a difficult concept.  It's not at all hard to find in the historical record -- and even then, a few men wanted one religious sect or another upheld and enforced -- or suppressed.  (John Jay was an ardent advocate of Christianity in government -- and bitterly opposed to allowing Catholics to hold office, vote or even immigrate, calling for "a wall of brass around the country for the exclusion of Catholics.")  Their views did not prevail then, and should not prevail now.

     Look to your faith to your heart's content.  Express it in your words and deeds.  But don't use the blunt instrument of the State to make everyone else do so -- or claim it, and it alone, should be enshrined in our government.

     America's tradition of religious freedom and tolerance was a rare and precious thing when the country was new, and it still is.

Naw

      Why beat a dead horse?  Look, I'm just worried that we've got people headed out for a trip aound the Moon in one of the dumbest times in U. S. history, and the bulging brains in Washington are gonna decide trigonometry or calculus is too "woke" and then smash 'em into Earth or the Moon by trying to get some slop-ass AI to do the trajectory calculations and issue course corrections.

     "Yes, I see what I did wrong there and it was of course an error to send the Orion in on a straight ballistic reentry and delay parachute deployment by five minutes to get a better photo op, but you have to admit, it looked beautiful in the moments before it impacted the water at seven miles a second and broke apart.  I'll be sure to be more careful next time."

Yuck

     I woke a little after midnight with a headache, and never got back all the way asleep, wandering instead through a series of half-lucid nightmares, hurting and hoping to fade into real sleep.  I knew I'd hurt worse if I woke all the way up, and sure enough, when the alarm went off at six, the 10 Watt bulb in my reading light was too bright and the phone was too hard to work to turn the alarm off.  I stumbled my way through feeding the cats, clumsy as a dancing bear, took a couple of acetaminophen and went back to bed with the light off.  I finally got a couple of hours of real sleep but my head was still a mess, achy and dizzy.  And I was still unsteady, klutzy.  I called in sick.  There's no way I should be operating a motor vehicle.

     Hours later, I'm still unsteady.  A couple of round of OTC painkillers have taken the edge off, but walking still feels like trying to rollerskate, and I'm not a skater.

     Not recommended.

     Clumsiness is a sure-enough migraine effect, and I get it sometimes, but this bout is especially bad.

Pop Goes The Starlink?

     I'm reading this morning that another Starlink satellite has fallen apart in orbit, cause unknown.  Just a sudden cloud of debris.

     It's not believed to be of any risk to the Artemis circumlunar mission set to launch soon -- but every loose bolt in orbit is a potential problem until its orbit decays and it falls back to Earth (if it ever does), usually burning up in a blaze of glory.  Starlink satellites orbit low enough that a few shooting stars are the most likely outcome -- but I have to admit, more and more, it appears that heedless fools are filling up the sky with overly-fragile junk, and that's not a good situation.

     And none of them are more prolific at it -- or more heedless -- than Elon Musk's SpaceX.  Look, I wish he was a combination of Tony Stark and Robert Goddard, too, but the reality is, he's a talented promoter who isn't otherwise qualified to do so much as polish either man's shoes, fictional or real.

     Progress advances on the backs of flashy mountebanks at least as much as it is carried by brilliant engineers and scientists, and some men are even both at once.  (Edison, Tesla, this part is about you.)  But we need to be clear-eyed about it; one interval of tetraethyl lead was way more than enough.

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     As for the Artemis mission itself, I wish them godspeed and good fortune, but I'm not kidding you, I'm going to worry the entire time from launch to splashdown.  There's a reason the term "moonshot" is a synonym for high risk/high reward ventures.

Over $5.00 A Gallon

     I had put off filling up my car.  I started out the non-war war with a full tank and who knew, maybe it would all be over before I ran out.

     It isn't.  I nearly did.  I had too much fun this weekend to remember to get gas, and when I set out for work today, the tank was much lower than I like.  The only name-brand station on my way downtown that I'm comfortable at is at 49th St., and it's rarely the cheapest.

     But an $85.00 refill is painful.  Gotta have it, and it's not like I can't cover the cost, but it's a bigger bite than I'm used to and indications are that the price of oil isn't done going up.  Almost anything that happens in the Middle East right now, especially around Iran, is going to reduce the availability of oil.  Some events will have longer lasting results, but over the next thirty days, you can count on the stuff costing more, even if there's a sudden outbreak of peace, goodwill and brotherhood: damaged refineries and seagoing traffic jams don't get sorted out overnight.

     My present bet is that we're headed for a recession at best.  Oh, our country and the planet keep lurching towards them, and dodging at the last minute by shoving one industry or sector into the mud for awhile as everything else goes roaring past; but sooner or later, someone's going to miss a step, and the damage will become widespread.  Wars, declared or not, have a tendency to break the rhythm.  That can be helpful if things are already really bad; but if they're on edge, not so much.

     Me, I'm going to get my motorcycle tuned up, and shop for saddlebags so it can be more a commuter vehicle.  Mechanic's fees are a one-time cost; gas just keeps on going up.  The motor scooter will follow -- I love it, but 10" wheels and Indiana roads after a harsh winter aren't a great match.  Unlike my car, the motorcycle and scooter will burn regular gas, too.

Fencing the Fences

      Or maybe I should title this "Dancing With Termites, Mold and Rot."  I have now spent part of the last two weekends working on the fence around Roseholme Cottage's back yard (and clearing away underbrush on the fencelines, too).

     The long fences along the property lines belong to my neighbors, one of whom knows it.  But the short runs that connect those fences to the house and garage, each one with a gate, are mine and they're in sad shape.  Over the last two weekends, I have hammered in reinforcing bars for the two wobbly posts in the stretch that has the gate we use most and it's stable enough to last another year.  Maybe two.*  Today, I trimmed the bottom of the gate where it was scraping the sidewalk, and reset the latch and padlock hasp.

     Then it was off to the big gate in the back fence.  The gateposts are massive; I replaced one last year, and the other one is a 6"x6" and still solid.  But it's got a tiny bit of fence hanging off it, 15" to a 4"x4" post and that post has an airgap at ground level.

     Or it did.  When I realized what was going on, I looked around and found they make yard-long tapering spikes, with a socket at the top for a 4"x4".  I bought one spike and a pressure-treated post, and proceeded to hammer the thing in where the old post had stood,  It ended up far more solid than I expected.  The company that makes the spikes warns you to not expect too much, but once I replaced the 2"x4" cross ties near the top and bottom, linking it to the gatepost, it was very stable.  I screwed the old fence boards in places and it looks as good as it ever did -- only it doesn't sway.

     With all that accomplished, I reset the latch and hasp on one more gate, and refastened more crosspieces and boards that had come loose over the winter. 

     It was hours of work, but the fence and gates are in better shape now.  In celebration, I aired up the tires on my highwheel bicycle, got it out, and...  I can't mount it.  My knees have been bothering me for some time, and I'd about worn myself out with the outdoor work.  I just couldn't get it up to speed and make the big push to get in the saddle.  I aired up the mini-highwheel instead, and give it a quick run up and down the alley.  Clearly, I have some conventional bicycling and honest exercise ahead of me before I can climb up on the big 36" wheel and go for a ride.
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* I have two different versions of these in place and they're clever, four-foot-long steel bars that you hammer in between the wobbly post and the concrete or packed earth it's set in.  You end up with a bit more than a foot of it exposed, which has a zigzag pattern of holes for long screws to hold it to the post.  Set them on three sides, and unless there's nothing but mud under the post, it's pretty steady.  It's not as good as digging everything out and starting over, but it's much better than the other fixes I have tried.

Hoppin' Turkey?

     It's Rich Person's Hoppin' John, with a lot of meat and a whole array of vegetables, and it's what I had for supper Saturday.

     There's a strip of bacon in there, and a couple of mild Italian sausages squeezed out of the casing, but also a pound of ground turkey, because they had it at the grocery and why not?  That got Cajun seasoning and some curry powder sprinkled on it while it all browned and the fat was drained off.

Shown right before adding the bay leaves and covering it to simmer.

     Then  it was step by step: diced carrots, slices of celery, some dice red, orange, yellow and green bell pepper (at least two pepper's worth; the grocer sells it sliced), followed by red onion; each addition was sauteed in the center of the cookpot before being stirred in and pushed to the side.  Then a couple of cans of mild Hatch chilies, some sliced organic (low salt but flavorful) Kalamata olives and a couple of big hot/sweet pickled okra, followed by a box (the equivalent of a large can) of crushed tomatoes and a can of blackeyed peas with about half the liquid.  All that got to simmer with three bay leaves, some dried garlic flakes, a little more Cajun seasoning and some this and that.

     It was almost too good.  I ate a bowl and a half and would have had more, if I had even less self-control.

     There was plenty left to freeze in three meal-sized bags for later.

March

      Oh, frustrating March!  Warm days, some even sunny, and then today was blustery and chilling.  In the afternoon, it was partly sunny and looked great -- until I went out without a coat.

     But the first few flowers are out, the days are longer and Spring is getting all wound up, ready to go off in a flurry of blossoms and leaves.  I'm ready for it.

Agog

     I admit it: I'm watching history reel past, shocked.  I had thought the rule of law and the strength of tradition were stronger in our government; and if anyone was going to break them, I didn't think it was going to be the Republicans.

     Sure, the occasional Republican or Democrat would try to bend the rules, and more often than not get slapped around for it; or sometimes Congress or the Courts would change the rules in a way that bugged me, and not all of that got reversed down.  But the wholesale abrogation of the separation of powers, the meek rollovers from the House and forelock-tugging of the Senate and the absolute partisanship-over-law on the part of some members of the Supreme Court stuns me.

     Historically, representative governments don't last (no form lasts forever).  The first few decades are the most risky.  But if they get past that, they usually last for centuries.  Two hundred and fifty years is pretty weak.

     Maybe we'll pull back.  We've done it before, more than once.  That's what I'm hoping for and voting for.  But it's a long way from being a sure thing. And there sure are a lot of citizens cheering for it to go the other way.

The Churn

     In the novels and TV series The Expanse, spacecraft mechanic Amos Burton makes many references to "the churn," a period of time when everything is in flux before it settles into a new normal.  There's even a novella in the book series and an episode, part of a narrative arc, in the TV series with that title.

     It's an inflection point, a place where the slope of the curve changes.*

     It's where the United States is now.  Up or down?  Authoritarianism or our imperfect-but-striving republic?  War or diplomacy, guns or grain?

     This is not one man's decision, no matter how much the figurehead who's tried so hard to nail himself to the prow of the ship of state may smirk and preen, no matter how much his enablers, handlers and flacks claim otherwise.  We're coming up on critical midterm elections, and it's a time for choosing.

     What do you want?  More imperial presidency, and not just from one man or one party, but a growing trend like the one that twisted ancient Rome?  Or back to the brawling, boisterous and, yes, flawed tripod of American Constitutional government, with a noisy, arguing Congress, an overworked Executive bound by law and a court system that is not open to the highest bidder?

     Our country prospered under the system we put in place 237 years ago.  We'd gotten ourselves well shut of kings, and we needed something that was almost unheard of at the time, a system suited to growing cities, the sparks of industrial production, hard-headed farmers and romantic pioneers.  It was never perfect but the general trend was to make it more accessible, more evenhanded, less corrupt, more free.  It shouldn't be given up without a fight.
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* Strictly speaking, it's where the curve reverses, but the metaphoric use is considerably looser than the mathematical one.

Frustrating

     It's nice to be published.  Another one of my short stories made the grade in an anthology by a new publishing company formed by four writers and academics during the pandemic, and it's a good-looking book, full of fiction, photography, poetry and art with strong links to Indiana.  It pays in street cred and an author's copy, but hey, it's not like anyone else was running after my typewriter, waving cash.  The fictional stereotype aside, writing isn't a job so much as it is something to do while starving (unless you have a day job, in which case you do the day job instead of writing).

     The publishers have a launch party coming up, which promises to be a nice time with a little public (or at least peer) recognition for the contributors.

     It's at very much the wrong time and place for me -- over an hour away, on a day when Tam has a paying work commitment to be elsewhere.  So I'm going to have to miss it.

     The event would have been difficult.  I prefer to be a background lurker, a listener and not a talker.  On most subjects, I couldn't carry my end of an in-person conversation even if I had a spare hat to carry it in.  But it would have been useful, a chance to observe people interacting while claiming to work for the caterer or cleaning crew.*

     Oh, well.

     NOTE: Due to my employer's strict social media policy, I cannot share the title of the book.  This blog only exists because I have been able to maintain reasonable anonymity.
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* True fact: my work ID badge carries the title "Maintenance Technician," and if I forget and wear it outside the building, when people ask about my Exciting Media Job, I explain that I help clean the place up.  It's, er, not untrue.

In A Nutshell

     Here's the problem in all its nuttiness: when you could lose this document among online postings from members of "the Manosphere" and various flavors of "Integralists" and "Christian Nationalists" with no discernable difference, then what you have is just a big stack of things that are all, really, the same thing -- and it ain't the inherent-rights-based representative democracy the Founders and Framers tried to build.

     Yeah, they didn't quite get there in many aspects; but they knew what they were reaching for, and it wasn't jackbooted bullshit marching around, waving a flag and a cross and shouting slogans.

     It's better to fall short reaching up than to succeed punching down.