Screamin' Cold

      As the bitter cold and deep snow goes on and and on, I find myself less willing to get out and deal with it.

     Oh, deal with it I have, from shoveling and snow-blowing and running my car a little up and down the alley on Sunday to jouncing out into the ruts on Monday to get to work.

     Monday, I carried a snow shovel.  Just in case; but our neighborhood streets had not been plowed, and I had my suspicions -- suspicions that were confirmed when I returned home.  The city had called in their contract plowing services, which mostly consist of people who own large trucks with a snowplow blade on the front, with which they pick up some extra winter cash clearing parking lots and driveways.  They're fast and enthusiastic in response to the city-funded windfall, and one of them had plowed up a nice wall of snow at the entrance to our alley some time after my neighborhood SUV drivers had all returned home.

     I turned around at the nearest intersection and parked with my headlights on the alley entrance and flashers running, wrapped my heavy scarf around my face and got out the shovel.  A couple of slow passes in each direction got a car-width of the wall knocked down, and after one more, it wasn't any higher than the ridge of snow between the ruts.  I backed my car off, made sure it was in "winter traction" mode, swung wide and took the snow as square-on as I could manage.  My old Lexus mini-SUV plowed right through!

     My tolerance for that kind of tiny adventure is fading.  I'm leaving the house with four layers of tops under my coat, double socks, multiple pairs of gloves so I can keep warm spares inside my coat or between the heated car seat and my legs, and there's just no margin for trouble.

     We're now in the coldest part of the week and I think I'm out of heavy jeans.

Compare And Contrast

      An unpublished comment accused me, "I remember when you were all giddy about the righteous shooting of Ashli Babbit."

     "Giddy," was I?  Well, you can see for yourself; this was the core of the main piece:

     Here's the situation: you and your extended family have gathered in one room of your large house for some all-hands-on-deck thing you do regularly but not frequently -- working out income tax returns, watching The Wizard Of Oz, whatever.  Your family isn't especially popular, and even internally, it has split into two groups that rarely see eye-to-eye.  But you're all there, doing the thing.

     Other people gather in a big group outside on the lawn and start yelling.  Some of them break into the house.  Some adult family members gather the kids and old folks, and get them to a place of safety.  The mob reaches the (now barricaded) French doors that lead to the room you'd all been in.  Some have signs.  Some are shouting.  Others just mill around.  You shout, "Stop!"  You draw your sidearm and point it at the threat.  One of the members of the mob batters out the glass in the door.  Another of them starts to climb through the breach.  You shoot.

     Are you a murderer? 

     What if a similar thing happened at your workplace and a security guard shot a member of the mob that had broken in while they were coming through a just-breach[ed] internal barrier -- is he or she a murderer?

     I addressed it at least two other times, here and here.

     Tl;dr on January 6 is that the mob initiated force; they broke into the closed Capitol building by force, attacked police, broke through doors, damaged public property and smashed out windows, including the internal window Ms. Babbitt launched herself through, toward the muzzles of guns in the hands of Federal officers defending Congress, resulting in her death.  You can find video of the incident.

     In Minneapolis a few days ago, Alex Pretti was recording Federal officers on his phone and more-or-less directing traffic as those officers were doing some kind of immigration enforcement along public streets and sidewalks.  A woman was (apparently) protesting and an officer shoved her to the ground.  Pretti helped her up, standing between her and the officer, and was pepper-sprayed and wrestled to the ground by at least a half-dozen federal agents.  The agents get him face-down and it appears that one removes a gun or gun-shaped object from his waistband and moves away.  An unknown number of the other agents shoot Pretti in the back, at least ten rounds striking him, resulting in his death.  You can find multiple videos of this incident.  Pretti did not initiate force.

     Ashli Babbit and Alex Pretti were both shot by Federal officers.  But Babbitt was an attacker; Pretti was a defender.  Babbitt initiated force.  Pretti did not.

     All deaths are tragic; all avoidable shootings are tragic.  But don't lose sight of who is going after whom.

     And don't call me giddy. 

It Did Snow

     That's right around nine and a half inches of snow on the picnic table.  It was still snowing when I took the photograph, and we may have as much as a foot of the stuff now.

     It took me about an hour to shovel the back walk to the garage, get out the snowblower, clear around my car and out to the alley, and sweep the car mostly clear.  There were tire tracks in the alley, not fresh; I backed into the alley and drove up and down a little ways.  I went far enough that snow started to pile up under the car.

     Tamara took on the front walks after I was done, and that was another hour of work.

     Tomorrow is probably going to be a slow process of driving and shoveling.  It was 13°F when I was working and I managed to work up a fair sweat* anyway, so at least my cold-weather gear is adequate.  Or it was; it's supposed to get down to -5° overnight, and the morning will warm up slowly. 
____________
* I'd like to tell you I glowed or perspired, but no. It was heavy work. It was sweat. 

Saturday Dinner

      I'd made Hoppin' John early in the week, a big pot of blackeyed peas, ham, red, yellow and green bell peppers, a big onion, canned crushed tomatoes, sliced fresh carrots, diced fresh mushrooms, canned chilies and a couple of piparra peppers.  The store was out of Cajun seasoning and so was I, so I bought some berebere, which is the next best thing and sometimes better.  Simmered for an hour and a half, the dish was a nice treat on a cold evening.  And there was plenty left; I divided the remainder into a couple of freezer bags for later.

     Leftover Hoppin' John is Skippin' Jenny, and she skips all the happier with a little this and that added to the pan.  Last night, I squeezed a big chorizo sausage out of its casing and browned it, then sauteed sliced celery and a leek, and poured in a small can of tomato sauce.  With one of the batches of Hoppin' John thawed and stirred in, it cooked up nicely. Tam and I enjoyed it as the snow fell...and fell, and fell.  It's still falling.  There's about half a foot right now.

     Life goes on.  The Federal government is busy chipping away at the Bill of Rights, but you've still got to eat supper.

I've Been Quiet

     I've been quiet.  What am I supposed to do or say when federal forces are operating as an army of occupation in a major metropolitan area?  When they are shooting people and spinning tales about the circumstances, narrative not corroborated by video recordings of the same events?

     These are bad times.  And they are not improved by a never-ending litany of distortions, sneaky language and outright lies from the federal government -- especially the Executive Branch.  They're arresting, abusing and killing protestors, despite a stated intent to round up illegal immigrants, supposedly concentrating on "the worst of the worst," a category that apparently includes five-year-old children.

     If the idea was to go after people in this country without due authorization, why wouldn't the effort start in a red state with a large population of such people, like Texas or Florida?  With a cooperative state government and a population that voted them in, wouldn't the process run much more smoothly?  And would it not a be a model program they could use to demonstrate their predicted benign effects to the entire county?  Instead, immigration enforcement has been deployed as a kind of punishment, in a state under the governorship of a former opposition party Vice-Presidential candidate, in a city that previously erupted into violence in the wake of a suspicious police killing.  It appears to be intended to create exactly the kind of chaos and harm that is making daily headlines.

     It's an authoritarian display, one that does the country no good and one that, despite press conferences increasingly askew from reality, appears to be backfiring on the President's party.  And yet it looks like their plan is to continue and intensify the beatings until things improve for them.

     I wouldn't bet on that happening.

     Here's a little more on the topic from The Bulwark.

Lost Keys

     I stopped at the store on my way home last night, to pick up a little supper and this and that.  It was around seven p.m., dark and near 25°F.

     A chicken salad sandwich, some sliced deli ham and a bag of coffee beans for later, I was back at my car, reaching for my...  No car keys.

     After misplacing keys for years, I started keeping my house and work keys on a lanyard, clipped to my purse with a little clip like a double carabiner.  My car key and its ring go on the same clip.  Sometimes I fumble it, and it ends up jumbled in my purse.

     I did a quick dig-through in the main compartment of my purse.  Nothing.  I looked over the area around my car, very carefully.  Nothing.

     Back into the store, eyes on the sidewalk and floor.  Nothing.  I retraced my steps through the place.  Nothing.  I found a quiet corner and checked through my purse again, as well as I could without emptying it.  Still nothing.

     I let the manager know I had lost a key, in case someone turned it in, and texted Tam: Lost my car key.  Walking home.

     It's a brisk walk in good weather, several blocks.  In the dark and cold, it's lousy.  Still, I was layered up under a warm coat and I had my heavy gloves; any more, I carry a pair of thin, nice-looking leather gloves for working keys and doorknobs, and windproof motorcycle gauntlets for when  I don't need to do fine manipulation.

     Switching to the warm gloves and settling my hat firmly on my head, I set out for home.  It's not much of a hat, a beat-up denim gardening hat with a wide brim, but it's better than nothing.  Double-time up the alley to the next street north, where a gust of wind blew my hat off as soon as I rounded the corner.

     I managed to grab it before it got away and tightened up the chinstrap.  It quickly became clear that I was well-bundled -- except for my ears.  They got cold and stayed cold, but as long as I could still feel them, they were okay, right?  Step, step step.  I kept moving.

     As I approached Roseholme Cottage, a tall person was coming towards me, all bundled up, moving purposefully.  Closer, closer....  Tamara!  "Where you headed?"

     "The store!  I don't want to have to report your car missing."

     "Do you have the spare key?"

     She frowned at me.  "No."

     "I'll get it and catch up."

     "We still have to find your key."

     She was right.  I headed on home.  Tam went the other way.

     At the house, I put groceries away, spoke to the cats, and, as a last resort, dumped my purse out on the bed.  No keys.  I checked through my purse just to make sure and at the bottom of the open compartment where I keep a couple of spiral notebooks for work and two sets of clip-on sunglasses (also cough drops, a pocket rule and a magnifying glass; don't judge), there was a key-shaped lump.  It was wedged into a corner.  And yes, it was my car key.  Oh.

     I texted Tam, Found it, grabbed a fleece ear-warmer and a knit muffler, got coat and gloves together and set out again, quick as I could march.  I was facing the wind part of the time and it wasn't fun, but the added insulation kept it from being entirely miserable.  My bad knee was throbbing slightly, but, hey, what's a little exercise?

     Tam was headed out of the store as I headed in.  I asked, "Did you get my text?"

     "No."

     "I, uh, found my key."

     She gave me a Look.

     "Thank you for your help!"

     "I didn't do anything."

     "Hey, moral support.  It counts."  It does, too.  I hadn't been looking forward to the cold walk back to my car, and even less so to having a car key floating around in the great unknown.  We got in my car and returned home uneventfully, me to dinner and Tam back to her warm bed.

Hot Dog Soup

     It's Depression cooking.  Experts say it's not good for you.  It's unreasonably tasty, far more than the components suggest: Hot dog soup.

     You take whatever kind of canned vegetable soup you've got handy, and whatever kind of hot dogs.  Slice up two hot dogs per can (or three if you're using condensed soup), bring it barely to a boil, back the heat off and let it simmer.  Yuu just cut them into coins, between and eighth and a quarter of an inch thick.

     It's better with fancy soup and good hot hogs -- I had a can of Amy's Chunky Vegetable (low fat, it says right on the label) and Nathan's hot dogs.  I also had a half-dozen fresh mushrooms, which I diced and cooked in a little olive oil with truffle powder before adding the soup and slicing in the dogs.

     But it's good even with generic vegetable soup and store-brand hot dogs.  Especially on a bitterly cold winter evening.  It'll keep you going.

So, The Latest Stuff?

     It's too crazy.  "I want Greenland because I didn't get a Nobel Prize," is the upshot of the letter Present Trump sent to Norway's Prime Minister and shared with the international diplomatic corps in Washington, DC.

     Arctic-trained troops stationed in Alaska are on standby, ostensibly to possibly be deployed to Minneapolis-St. Paul in Minnesota in support of the heavy-handed federal round-up, supposedly directed at illegal immigrants but sweeping up native-born and naturalized citizens, protestors and anyone else unlucky enough to be in the wrong place or the wrong color.  Of course, they'd be handy for a quick raid on Greenland, too, so...?

     It's all too crazy.  I'm watching it, but it's unfixable in the short term and a nightmare on any scale.

About Those Borders

     Y'know, I used to play along -- "Good fences make good neighbors" and all that.  But the more I think about it, the more I'm not very concerned about border security.

     We've got effective police agencies in the United States; we've got a criminal justice system that works pretty well.  They catch criminals, especially violent ones, especially the "worst of the worst," and they generally convict them, too.  That includes criminals who aren't U.S. citizens and who didn't follow the rules when they visited.

     On the other hand, most of the offenses that involve sneaking one's own self in -- not smuggling other people or items, just ducking under the fence or overstaying a visa -- are misdemeanors.  They're crimes like parking violations or speeding tickets are crimes.  In the past, they've been handled by sending people letters or sending a single officer to go knock on a door, and by and large, it has worked.  The supposed "flood" of nefarious people without authorization to be here is propaganda-driven puffery.

     None of it justifies having masked, heavily-armed men going house to house, pounding on doors (or worse) without judicial warrants, rousting citizens and non-citizens alike and demanding to be shown proof of citizenship or legal residence.

     Could you prove you're a citizen, if you were suddenly stopped on the street?  I might -- if they'll accept a "real ID" compliant driver's license, which ICE and Border Patrol have an inconsistent record doing.  I'd have to get someone to fetch my passport and birth certificate from home if they didn't.

     That's not us.  That's a bad movie cliche, with gimlet-eyed baddies in flashy uniforms clumping down the aisle of a traincar or stopping people on the street, demanding, "Papers!"

     If that's the price of rounding up a lot of gardeners, construction workers, pea-pickers and sweepers along with a few gang members and cheaters who were already liable for regular arrest, it's too damn high a price.  It's turning the home of the free and the brave into an ugly, ugly place, where innocent people are shot or yanked screaming from their cars for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or for having a smart mouth.

     While today, it's mostly funny-talking foreigners and people with purple hair, tomorrow, it could be you or me.  Turn down the wrong street in the wrong town, and it could be you this afternoon.

     Spare me the harrumphing warnings.  I'm 67 years old.  I've been poor more than once.  I've had guns pointed at me by criminals and I have had guns pointed at me by cops.  I get that life can be hard, and dangerous, and that our fellow humans are the cause of most of that difficulty and risk.  Don't tell me about those "hard men" who "stand between me and horror;" they mostly haven't been there when I needed them and have occasionally been the source of my troubles.  Arrogant, sexist, racist assholes have been more trouble to me than illegal immigrants ever have, and almost exactly as much bother as actual criminals.

Back To It

     After more than a week of distractions, I played catch-up after work today today with my hobby writing -- or, as it happens, with other people's writing.  I still had a couple of manuscripts to go over before the critique group Saturday!

     The writing in the group remains pleasantly competent.  After several years of beginner's classes, it's nice to review work in which the flaws are mainly typos and occasional infelicitous phrasing.  And this month, a new thing: a screenplay!

     Formatting a TV or film script is like writing a haiku, or perhaps a sestina: the format is fixed, inflexible and tricky.  The usual advice for new screenwriters working "on spec" is to do a slightly expanded stageplay script instead, with all of the dialog and a few hints as to scene, setting and blocking.  (Like a Shakespeare play.)  After all, the final script is always a group effort, and, as I said, the format is tricky.  --And the one I just critiqued is, as near as I can tell, a very fine example of a full shooting script, in all its conventions.

Too Much Circus, Too Many Clowns

     It is difficult to keep up with the various actions of the Executive Branch's collection of malevolent, semi-competent goons, thugs, ideologues, accelerationists and ambitious nitwits.

     In the last 48 hours or so, they yanked all federal funding to addiction-treatment programs and then abruptly restored it, after a day in which people across the country scrambled frantically to come up with some way to go on.  The grants covered a wide range of programs, and anyone inclined to do so can probably come up with a few that are kinda squishy; but the common goal of all of them is to get people off drugs, and steer them into productive lives -- instead of importuning passers-by for money, engaging in various kinds of theft and dying lurid deaths at public expense.  It's cheaper to get 'em straight, and tends to improve neighborhoods.

     This is just one corner of the churning, ill-considered mess we've got for a federal government.  Congress is still staggering around, largely ineffective, and the courts are overloaded and divided along partisan lines.

     Anyone who tells you things are going great is telling lies.

Nobody "Has It Coming" Like That

     People are sharing shocking videos on social media -- protesters yelling at DHS enforcers, getting pepper balls or spray at close range, shoving and being shoved, ICE agents falling on slick pavement, a protester taking a "beanbag" round from a couple of feet away and being badly injured.

     And the comments run to a mix of, "Aint it awful," and, "Serves 'em right."

     Yes, it is awful -- and no, it's not right.  This kind of rough confrontation is an American tradition dating back to before the Revolutionary War and it doesn't come without risk, but that's not the same as justice, which often (but not always) comes later.

     Nobody's "Got it coming" in that way.  That's what prosecutors and grand juries and defense lawyers and courts are for.  That's what probation, fines and prisons are for.

     Okay, when Wile E. Coyote's scheme to catch the Roadrunner goes wrong and traps him instead, he's got it coming; and so, too, perhaps, when a real person sets a murderous trap and then falls prey to it themselves.  But otherwise?  Stop cheering when people get hurt or killed.  Even when it's people you don't like.  That's utterly immoral.