Continued Confessions

ad infinitum

This morning my very first confession is that I just cut my grass (half of it anyway). I was really going to try the “No Mow May” edict to save the bees or whatever it was about. But my neighbor has her yard tended to every Thursday, and we share an embankment which looks very silly if I don’t keep up. So I have now taken to going out once her guy leaves and doing my bit to improve the view from her window. It actually sprinkled with some raindrops as I was a pushing my gas mower around, but I was rather glad of the cooling. And very thankful that I can still do it myself. I shared on Casey’s Catch substack that mowing is a chore I really enjoy. Only ironing gives me the same sense of satisfaction. Other household chores, not at all. So after seeking absolution from my readers, I will continue on.

The next topic I want to cover is from the book I am reading for Asha Rangappa’s course at “The Freedom Academy.” I found a passage on page 100 of LET THEM EAT TWEETS that sums up very nicely how I feel about this current moment. The subtitle of the book is “How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality” and the authors Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson are academic political scientists who have written a number of books together as well as separately. The book is Copyright 2020 and in looking for that information I read that I should write for permission to Liveright Publishing Corporation to “reproduce selections from this book.” So there goes my ability to produce a verbatim transcript of the words the authors use. But basically they confirmed my sense that we are all overwhelmed these days and finding it increasingly difficult to rely on the sources we used to trust. The book is full of AHA moments for me when I realize thankfully that there are very smart people who do understand that fostering a distrust in mainstream media is part of the plot to turn us all into a nation of sheep.

My darling grandson has now passed his nine-month mark and is crawling rapidly towards that momentous first birthday. I have a couple of smallish gifts for him which I was handed down from my Mum (and her husband Jack who originally made the investments I think) but baby won’t be particularly thrilled with stock certificates. His Mum will be glad to get them out of my hands, however, before they are used for some other what she would deem nefarious purpose. I hope we’re all still muddling through by his birthday in August.

After my outdoor adventure, it’s now time for some coffee and chocolate. I had smoked neckbones, collard greens, and rice for breakfast much earlier. You might wonder, why? Well, another confession comes spilling out. On Monday, I somehow lost the phone cover that included my debit/credit cards, so I have frozen all of the accounts for seven days while we search around. But on Tuesday I went and turned in a bag of cans and ended up with $3.50 in cash. I took that into the store where the can machines are located to see what I could get and lo and behold a package of smoked neckbones was $3.37 (no tax on food here). They sat in the fridge until last night when I stuck them in the crockpot before going to bed. Well, that delicious smell in the morning could not be denied. And I had a package of rice ready to cook and some frozen collards. Who says you have to wait until dinnertime?

Another lovely happenstance this morning was when I came across a card I had purchased a few years ago by local artist John A. McGuire of an old-fashioned sailing ship coming past the City of New London. The card is still in its original plastic wrapping, but I had inserted the answer to the Cryptoquote puzzle which I had clipped from our local paper. The quote is attributed to my idol Katharine Hepburn and says: “I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun.”