Blossom on a tree

What, oh what to play for the first earworm of the new year?

Why, I think it’s Nina Simone, singing “Feeling Good”. After reliving all the horrors of a year ago, I believe we all need some of this voice and this sentiment.

 

Yahrzeit

Let me just say that I resent the absolute fuck out of the Kleptocrat and his knuckle-dragging, gap-toothed, mouth-breathing, moronic cultists—and all their Republican enablers—for turning the Feast of the Epiphany, the culminating event of Christmas, into one of the worst days in American history.

They literally smeared shit on the walls of the Capitol and bragged about it. They mauled the outnumbered US Capitol Police who were defending the peaceful transfer of power and strutted through the streets of DC like putschists. They carried Nazi and Confederate flags into the seat of government and howled for the blood of other Americans.

For the past week or so, news media have been running retrospectives on that ghastly event; you can’t escape it unless you unplug from everything. Which I can’t do, as my job kinda requires it.

But today I’m going to do my best to set the MEAL Team 6 fuckwits aside and think of Orthodox Christmas, el día de los tres reyes, presents, feasting and the best that humanity can do. I know that, in my lifetime, 6 January is always going to bring up this vomit of White rage. But I don’t have to let it cover me. It's Epiphany.

 

 

Out on a limb

I posted some pix yesterday of the whiplash winter storm we got; I say “whiplash” because Sunday it was over 60F and yesterday it barely hit 30F.

I’m fortunate that my neighborhood experienced no power outages, but the snow weighed down and broke a lot of tree limbs.

There was—for the first time since I’ve been here—an arborist out in the afternoon, cutting branches that were either cracking or dangerously low. Viz:

 

Whiplash

Welp, 2022 is…a thing. Viz:

I shot these pix on Saturday.

Sunday it was 55F when I went out for my walk; got up into the 60s in the afternoon.

And here was yesterday, at 29F.

 Sun came out in the afternoon and everything turned magical. (Except for no ploughing in my cluster.) Still 29F, but magical.

Sun came out in the afternoon and everything turned magical. (Except for no ploughing in my cluster.)

 

Gratitude Monday: They shot it into a tree

 Sadly, we’re going to have to try to make it through 2022 without Betty White, who died Friday just three weeks shy of her hundredth birthday. This will be a strain on a world already exhausted by virus and RWNJs, but we owe it to her to try our best.

We are, however, lucky—and I am grateful for it—to have a multi-decade body of her work. Today I give you “The Great Herring War”, which White apparently improvised. Watch as Bea Arthur and Rue McClanahan break up as White just keeps on keeping on.

I don’t make many resolutions, but here’s one: I’m going to try to work “After that, no other herring would do it” into at least one meeting a week in this year.

Thank you, Betty.