Hell of a year so far

One of the major functions of blogging, like the diarists of old, is street-level history written as it happens. I've neglected that responsibility. Left it to the social media microblogging platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Bluesky, where so much of the record is subject to redaction by the site owners, or will be buried pebble by pebble under an avalanche of trivial crap.

But street-level history has become dangerous. Write the wrong thing - about ICE, about the Epstein files, about the Trump regime, about whatever is deemed a forbidden subject - and you'll be arrested, banned entry into the country, or find your passport has mysteriously disappeared from the system.

So. Shall we talk about the weather?

Winter settled upon Northeastern Pennsylvania early in December with substantial snow and cold temperatures. Snow covered the ground until shortly before Christmas - we actually had a green Christmas this year and no one complained. A day or two after Christmas we had an ice storm. This was followed by more snow and more freezing temperatures throughout January. The ground stayed snow-covered until Sunday, January 25th, when twelve inches of snow dropped on Nanticoke. (We were fortunate to avoid the ice and freezing rain that fell on top of this snow in other areas.) We are still digging out in some places. Temperatures have generally been in the teens and single digits since then, and we're not expecting anything in the 30s for at least a week. Word is that this isn't a reversion to typical weather patterns of decades gone by, but is rather the result of a disrupted polar vortex, with a region of unusually warm air sitting over the North Pole pushing the polar vortex that rings the pole to points south - specifically, the midwest and northeast of the U.S.

The upshot of this is, we're going to be cold for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, citizens and non-citizens alike are being snatched off the streets, out of their cars, from their schools, from their workplaces, from their places of worship, from their homes. ICE and CBP are murdering people in cold blood. Society continues to collapse into an authoritarian dystopia, with a ruling class straight out of Pasolini's "Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom." 

Once again, I'm glad my mother is dead.