Sunday Morning Coming Down

Yesterday morning I walked the dog past the lift station.  I did not hear the tinkling of water from flushing toilets or showers.  The red light and horn warning did not sound and the formerly working pump did not start.  It had been running as of Sunday PM, the last time I checked. The new guys who worked on Friday were called as soon as I returned to the house and Kenny the new guy was able to repair an electrical connection that had gotten loose. Pump working, alarm possibly not working but there were promises to check everything out later that morning and do any needed repairs. Tuesday evening the pump was working but was unsure about the alarm. Tuesday 10:00pm I got a return call asking if the alarm had been fixed.  And so it goes.

 On the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, Bullwinkle would say "Fan mail from some flounder" in response to "Look Bullwinkle a message in a bottle". Dana Milbank of the Washington Post reported that Gallup Organization reported that "just" 27% of Americans reported confidence in their institutions."  This was the lowest level of confidence expressed in the fifty years that question has been asked. Flounder may be a fish, but it is also a verb meaning to struggle helplessly or clumsily. And these days, if you are asked is the country is going in the right direction? It's a tough question to answer.  Yes, or No should be followed because the answer might be both yes and no.  Joe Biden beats Trump 44-41 in a recent poll.  I'm surprised it's close. Things are confusing and competence in a lot of fields is overwhelmed by folks just being angry, misinformed, and struggling.

Joni Mitchell is from Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada and she escaped the fridged winters as a song writer and singer and moved to California.  Whether it is "don't it always seem to go" or "we can't return, we can only look behind, we seem to have forgotten our political history. The Watergate Hearings lead to the resignation of Richard Nixon and people went to jail. Donald Trump was elected without a mandate or a majority of the popular vote in 2016 and impeached twice, but not convicted.   January 6th Select Committee is the actions of a president who lost an election, who cried foul before, during, and after the election and promoted the biggest of lies that he won the election, but it was stolen by people in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Yesterday's hearing clearly showed that Trump ignored the fact that he lost and rallied his followers to scuttle a process of electing our president that needs bi-partisan support to recover. The div...

 I live in a neighborhood with a lot of Tesla cars. The immediate area doesn't seem to have a lot charging stations and there are none at any gas stations I frequent. Obviously, owners of these cars have plug in chargers in their garages and this may become the new standard in the new houses as the older ones are replaced. I have some questions about costs of these vehicles, when everything is factored into their cost, but strategically they make sense with the price of oil so high and the war in the Ukraine.  The impact on the environment is not clear to me, as my perspective may be a little shorter than most. For most of us, the alternative is public transportation. It's marginally better than driving if available, but it is also an adjustment. If the price to park your car was taxed in some fair way, we might be able to change some behaviors that are costly and friendlier to the environment. Go to a dealer and you will have "sticker shock" and a car payment which c...

Politics is a lot of things and a big part of stuff political is ambition. You start out doing scut work, mailings, door hangers (I'm old), showing up at the campaign office to do whatever they ask you to do.  Shortly after finishing the MPA Program at West Virginia University, I was called by somebody who worked in Jay Rockefeller's staff, who asked if I would like to work in a campaign to elect Rockefeller the next governor of the state. I would be a paid staff member coordinating his campaign in an eight-county region in the northern part of the state and have a car and a small salary of $300 @ month and the promise of a much better job if "we" won. I would need to return to Charleston from sunny South Florida and asked the guy on the other end of the line if being a current resident of Florida would be an issue.  I told him I was in Miami, had developed a "Florida Tan" and in my opinion the candidate did not need another out of state person in his campai...