Post 687 - December 3, 2024

A walk in the woods. In New York City, Central Park is a convenient stand-in for the real thing. It’s just down at the end of the block from our apartment. There are no televisions, newspapers, or scrolling news tickers in the woods. There are mostly just trees and paths. Many winding, wandering paths.

I find myself being drawn to the park these days rather than out into the streets. Ordinarily, I like the bustle of human life but as the holiday season draws closer, the crowds can become oppressive. There aren’t as many people out in the park. The relative solitude gives me a chance to let my mind scatter.

All the reprehensible and unqualified people being floated for cabinet positions seem to have one goal in mind: the dismantling of the federal government. Without that federal oversight, regulatory responsibilities will then fall to the individual states. Each of the fifty states will behave differently.

Take education. Without a national guideline, each state will mandate for themselves what will be taught in their classrooms. That means that in New England and the Western coastal states, children will be taught English, Math, Science, and maybe even a foreign language. In the Midwest, kids will be taught Bible stories, whitewashed history, and nothing else.

After a very short time, the divide between our blue and red populations will grow even wider than it already is. We will eventually not be able to speak to each other.

Some states will preserve their wild places and some will begin exploiting them. You’ll be allowed to dump whatever you want into the waterways in the red states, but not in the blue states. Eventually, the garbage the red states allow to be thrown in will contaminate all our water across the board.

I remember as a kid that airplanes had a smoking section. If you wanted a cigarette, you had to sit in rows, say twelve to sixteen. The rest of the plane was non-smoking. Of course, that didn’t stop the smoke from going everywhere. One cigarette could fill a plane with it. That’s what will happen when some of the states repeal their air-quality controls. We will all get the smog whether we want it or not.

As control of American manufacturing becomes further consolidated into the hands of fewer oligarchs, those wealthy White men will move their factories to the places with the fewest restrictions. Who will work in those factories remains to be seen. With the rise of AI, perhaps a workforce won’t be necessary.

The lives of wealthy White men likely won’t change very much in this scenario. Women’s lives, however? Women’s rights will vary wildly from state to state. In some places they will remain as people, in others, they will become merely possessions.

The divide between us all will grow ever wider.

Is that what the Oligarchs want? If all this is all being driven by their greedy desire to acquire ever more filthy lucre, is what’s being proposed going to give it to them? The Christian Right and the MAGA base will be happy that they will be able to teach their offspring stories from their holy book instead of all that blasphemous science, but how will that make the men at the top richer?

At some point, the oligarchs will have to cut themselves loose from the Christian right. The MAGA base has been useful in getting them this far, but eventually, they are going to end up being a drain.

The leaves on the ginkgo trees in the city all turned yellow last week. A friend of mine in Japan has been posting pictures of the trees there but I think ours in New York managed to give them a run for the money. It’s been a relatively dry fall so far, so our foliage season has lasted longer than usual.

In a few short days that burst of color changed. All the ginkgo leaves are now on the ground in canary yellow pools surrounding the trunks. It looks as if the trees had been wearing gorgeous ball gowns but now, the pretty dresses are all on the ground around their ankles.

The President-elect seems to have a different agenda than either the Christian right or the would-be oligarchs. He wants revenge and retribution. Anyone who has ever done anything against him is in danger of being singled out. People will be punished.

Authoritarian regimes throughout history have always simply erased their opposition. They make people disappear. At the moment, there is a list of about sixty people firmly in the crosshairs. After them, there will be more.

President Biden just pardoned his son Hunter after saying that he would never do that. There’s no question that Hunter was guilty of several transgressions. He’d been tried and convicted and was awaiting sentencing.

Had politics not gotten involved I believe that the President would have let all that stand. He would have expected his son to accept whatever came his way. Hunter Biden, however, was going to be dealt with in a way that was not befitting the crimes he committed. He was going to be made a public spectacle. No fines or parole for him which is the expected punishment for what he did. He was going to be thrown in jail to rot. The Republicans had tasted blood, and they were not going to leave him alone.

The G.O.P. is beside themselves that Hunter’s been saved. They had been whipped up into a frenzy at the prospect of a public lynching and that’s been taken away from them.

President Biden did exactly the right thing.

The January 6^th insurrectionists are all about to be set free when the incoming President pardons them. The Lord only knows which other criminals will follow them out to freedom. There are going to be many prison guards who find themselves with nobody left to watch. I hope the President pardons a few more people before they get destroyed.

Summer always feels as if it lasts forever, but when winter moves in, most years, it lingers on far beyond its welcome.

I enjoy winter. I love curling up with the cat under a blanket trying to keep warm. When it snows in the city, it’s magical. Central Park under a layer of snow looks like another place entirely. If I’m still I can hear my feet trudging through snow drifts in the park in my memory: the steady pulse of my breath against the sharp crunching notes of my boots breaking through the crust of ice.

In the autumn, now, is the sound of my shoes kicking through the layer of fallen leaves. I can smell their musty, earthy tang as they begin to decay. Yellows, reds, and oranges are slowly turning a uniform sepia. I can’t quite see my breath yet, but that’s coming.

I paid ten bucks for a dozen eggs yesterday. They were organic and from free-ranging chickens, but even so, that was a lot. Michael had given me a short list of things to pick up on my daily walk. I had to go to the Westerly on 9^th Avenue to pick up something else, so I got the eggs there too. Had I shopped around, I would have been able to find them a bit cheaper elsewhere. It was getting dark, though, and I was missing the couch.

Avian flu has contributed to the rise in egg prices. The nation’s flock is down about 3% because of it. Particularly hard hit have been California, Oregon, Nevada, and Washington which mandate that their chickens be free ranging. Those eggs are now harder to find and more expensive when you do. Eggs from states that allow their birds to be confined in tiny inhumane cages are still somewhat cheaper. For now. If the immigrant farm workers all get deported as planned, we can look for that to change.

Usually, as I am out walking, I let my thoughts take me where they will. I suppose it’s like a kind of meditation. If something’s pressing on me, I will let it churn around for a while until it works its way out.

The other day I suddenly got an idea about how to renovate our bedroom closet to make more room for both Michael’s and my clothes. I designed different options in my head and when I got home, I sketched out a basic idea. Michael was not averse to the idea, but he pointed out that if we were going to spend the money redoing anything it should be the bathroom.

We probably won’t do either for a while, but it was fun to think about.

Winter’s coming. So is something else. What that is going to be, nobody knows for sure. There will be changes. There will be loss.

It seems to me that the people who triumphed in this last election all want different things. They used each other to win, but what’s going to happen now? Much of what these factions fought for can’t exist at the same time in the same place. You can’t lower consumer prices by getting rid of the workforce. You can’t allow the prices to rise and hope to make a profit from people who can’t buy luxury goods.

There doesn’t seem to be anyone coming into this new Administration smart enough to balance what all these different people want to achieve. Will they be able to make any of it come to pass?

Who knows? Let them fight amongst themselves. In the meantime, the sky is a brilliant blue. There’s a cloud or two, here and there, but no rain to spoil the day.

It’s time for another walk in the woods.