Category: OCF

For Prospective Guest Contributors

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For folks out there who are interested in contributing some content and want to know what I think will work best for this site here are some of my thoughts and some information.

  1. First off it’s not a paid arrangement.  Anything that is provided is for free.  All I provide is a venue.
  2. I categorize all the content from each guest contributor separately.  If for some reason you decide you’d like to remove all or some of your content from the site I will do so without hesitation.  In fact, I’ll e-mail you the data for your own use gladly.
  3. Approving content is my job.  It has to be something that fits the site.  Politics  from a non-leftist perspective, family friendly culture, Americana, history, religion, military stories, uncontroversial photography, science and technology, energy, hunting and fishing, guns, cars, human interest stories, life stories, movie reviews, tv reviews, music reviews, book reviews and even fiction writing if you have the knack would all be good.  In terms of the politics I’m sort of a civic nationalist but dissidents are allowed to voice their opinions but must keep it in the range of polite discussion.  Threats and disparagement of any groups you don’t like probably won’t be a good fit for the site.
  4. Send the content in an e-mail and I can then evaluate it and let you know what I think.
  5. I have been interested in getting some female contributors to write about child-raising, home schooling, cooking and other family subjects.  So far no luck.
  6. I would prefer the posts to be between 500 and 2000 words.  If it’s much less it might be better off as a comment to another post.  If it’s much more I’d think about splitting it up.

So I’ll leave this up on the header for those interested.  Thanks for your attention.  If you need to ask any questions just send an e-mail to orionscoldfire at charter dot net

Best regards

photog

20OCT2022 – The Dunwich Complainer

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Very interesting week here at the epicenter of the Great Old Ones’ Realm in New England.  I put out my Re-Elect First Selectman Cthulhu sign up on my lawn next to a slaughtered goat carcass ritually adorned with wheat germ.  I watched the latest feed from my trail cam and noticed that the werewolves have all begun to wear skinny jeans and carry BPA-free water bottles on their belts.  None of them look like they could take down a girl scout in a fair fight.  Without a doubt, these are times that try men’s souls.

This week at the official induction ceremony I was named Deputy Election Reanimator.    Now this a misnomer.  The Reanimator doesn’t really have a deputy since only the primogeniture descendant of Herbert West has the moxy required to bring back the dead, especially during a rush-rush mass ceremony on election night.  My job would probably be more accurately described as Deputy Election De-Reanimator.  You see the reanimation procedure takes place at the graveyard and apparently is not selective by party affiliation.  So, my part is to stand at the gate with the old voting records and stop the Democrat voters from leaving the graveyard.  Or at least to make sure their heads don’t leave the graveyard.  So, in addition to the lists, a sharpie and a flashlight I’ve got a reasonably sharp machete.  This year they modernized my gear by getting me one of those headlights that you can strap to your forehead.  That helps quit a bit.  I don’t have to ask the deceased to hold my lists while I’m fumbling to cut his head off.  Much more dignified and much more ergonomic.

I really hope I’m not asked to help clean up the grave yard on Wednesday morning.  I think the volunteers should handle that.  I mean, I’ve paid my dues and now I’d like to let the system do its thing, if you know what I mean.  Of course, the volunteers do a pretty bad job.  Every election night I see mismatched heads on the reanimated voters.  It’s kind of an embarrassment.  But still, I can’t be expected to do everything around here.  At some point the kids just have to be allowed to sink or swim.  ‘Nuff said.

In the real world I attended the latest meeting of our local Republican Town Committee and was surprised to hear that even in the cobalt blue New England state that Dunwich is embedded in the Stupid Party candidates have a fighting chance of winning for once!  I could tell the rest of the folks there were almost shocked by the situation.  I was quite amused.  Maybe I’ve underestimated the people in this country.  Could there be a limit to their willingness to endure progressive insanity?  Even here?  Well, we’ll see.

I will be working on Election Day in an official capacity which is interesting and annoying at the same time.  I’ll have to figure out if I can bring my laptop and go on-line when I’m on my breaks.  Not being able to follow this election on OCF would be unfortunate.

It should be fairly interesting to be involved in the election.  I’ll finally see how the sausage is made.  I suspect my town is one of the more boring and honest operations.  And maybe the rough stuff happens higher up the ladder in the crooked states that we saw on tv in 2020.  I remember those films in Philadelphia where they threw everyone out around midnight and all the skullduggery occurred behind closed doors and blacked out windows.  It’s kind of sad to know that after all that went on in plain sight that nothing has been done in some of those states to prevent a replay this year.  Well, as I’ve said this is the Day of Reckoning coming up.  We’ll find out where we stand and that is valuable in and of itself.  So, bring it on, bring it on, bring it on.  And where did I put that sharpening stone?

07OCT2022 – OCF Update

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Today was a day of hard labor.  Camera Girl cruelly tasked me with completing my various long neglected yard projects.  I was like some kind of medieval serf sweating in bondage and there was no reprieve until all was done.  But I will confess it’s a relief not to have that stuff gnawing at the back of my mind.  I even put up some signs on the road for the Dunwich Republicans.  Chances are Cthulhu will eat them the next time he’s walking down my road but hopefully the metal posts will give him gas.  When I finished there was barely time for a shower before dinner.

Dinner was splendiferous, only partly because I was starving.  It’s really impossible to overvalue a wife whose a good cook.  I think the Bible says something about worth her weight in rubies.  Well maybe that wasn’t specifically about cooking but I’m sure the Lord was throwing that into the equation too.  After all God invented woman as a helpmate for Adam and what’s more helpful to a tired working man than a good home-cooked meal?  Of course he could have made them a little less observant of our faults.  But all things considered I’ll take the package as it stands.

Afterward, I was too tired to write a post so I watched a Japanese ghost story (actually four stories) from 1965 called Kwaidan.  It’s very long and very weird.  Now I’m staring at the computer screen and thinking, “I got nothing.”  So I think I’ll retreat upstairs and get some shut eye before the weekend.  I’ve got no chores to do and no errands to perform so I can produce some clean copy tomorrow.

So tomorrow I’ll be tanned and rested and I’m sure that Biden or Kamala or some other blithering idiot will provide the fodder for a withering attack that I’ll frame in 500 words or more.  Have a good night.

Seasonal Activities

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So today is the last official day of summer.  Tomorrow is the Autumnal Equinox but here in Dunwich fall is well advanced.  The crickets are hiding under stones and digging down to avoid the chill well before sundown.  Their chirping is becoming slower and weaker each day.  The frogs are still enthusiastically croaking and piping in the swamp but even they haven’t got too much longer to go.

We’ve gotten tons of rain in the last couple of weeks so the grass is green again and growing.  But the vegetable garden is on its last legs.  There are some peppers and eggplants almost ready to pick and a couple of butternut squash in a race to ripen before the death of the vines they’re on.  And the flower gardens are down to a few new cone flowers and some black eyed susans that haven’t given up the ghost yet.

Even the dragonflies are so lethargic that I think I could catch them with my hands if I tried.  Camera Girl saw a hummingbird a couple of days ago but they must be ready to head south already.  I haven’t seen any butterflies in the last couple of days so maybe they’re all gone.

So, it’s officially time to shut everything down and winterize the grounds.  All the lawn and pool furniture has to be stored away.  My fence repairs will have to be completed before the ground freezes.  And there are some incidentals.  I have to install a tree swing for Princess Sack of Potatoes.  I’ll use my weight as a test for the branch we’ve selected.  It’s in an odd spot because of a slope but it’s the only convenient branch.  I’ve also got to replace the transmission on my snowblower.  The parts are in but I’m hemming and hawing because I don’t want to do it.  It’s supposed to be straight forward but you know how that is.

Then there’s the rotten wood that needs to be replaced.  I’ve been stalling on that too.  Realistically I can skip this year but I promised myself I’d get the ball rolling and tackle one or two problems before winter.  At the least I should cover the problem areas with some tarps to avoid additional damage.  Maybe I’ll flip a coin.

The shorter days are already noticeable.  After dinner the sun is behind the hill in the west.  The light is gone by seven o’clock.  But the good news is that I mourned the end of summer on the last day of July.  After that I’ve already skipped ahead to thoughts of winter and any incidental good weather is all gravy as far as I’m concerned.  So here I am concentrating on Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas to get me through the end of the year and into the new one.

This year I have the elections to distract me from the shortening days and cooling temperatures.  The horror of Biden, Pelosi and Schumer along with their henchmen in the Deep State and the Media should provide stimulation that can’t be overlooked.  After all we could be looking at the official end of the republic as a legitimate political institution.  That’s got to be a noteworthy event to live through.  And even if we are saved by a shocking Republican victory I don’t think that will be something to sleep through.  And who knows, World War III might be in the wings if Biden keeps poking the Russian bear.

And I have a long list of tasks that I can perform indoors.  I’ve got a ton of pictures that need adjusting and all kinds of writing that has to be done so I’ll be anything but bored.

But it’s funny.  Once it gets chilly at night, say in the forties, we close the windows after dark.  And then there’s no outdoor sounds to hear.  No frogs, no owls, no coyotes even.  And that’s a big change.  You become detached from the natural world and plugged into the artificial one.  Electric light takes over and you tend to go to bed later and get up later.  Well, not Camera Girl.  She’s plugged into the dogs’ schedule and they’ll get her up at 6 am even if the apocalypse descends on us.  But I start to stay up later and read too much and watch too much television.

But that’s normal.  We compensate for the change of season as we do.  And there are family activities coming up.  Kids’ soccer games and birthday parties are in the offing.  And it’s almost time to drag out the Universal Classic Monster movies and introduce the youngsters to the hokey joys of Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolfman.  I think I’ll indulge in some popcorn for that film festival.

Okay, Autumn 2022, let’s see what you’ve got.

17SEP2022 – OCF Update – This’N’That

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Busy day.  Had lots of yard work to get ready for the end of warm weather.  I even cut the grass today.  I didn’t notice how long the grass had grown on account of all that rain.  Man, what a mess the clippings made.  But soon enough all that will be done with.   It was nice to get out and look around the fields.  There were tons of honey bees on the goldenrod.  Now that I’ve renewed my interest in keeping bees, I was looking at the varieties of bees that were on the flowers.  And I noticed they were almost exclusively Italian bees.  These are a southern bee and they don’t fare well in cold winter areas.  But they’re the kind of bees that people get when they buy a package of bees from one of the big breeders down south.  So most likely these bees aren’t feral bees but some beekeeper’s hive.

Funny, I got a little annoyed that someone was encroaching on my goldenrod.  What the what!  The only advantage of the Italian bees is their mild tempers.  They’re the least likely race of bees to sting you even if you’re in their nest messing around with the frames full of honey and brood.  So, knowing there are a lot of apiary hives around me was a little bit of a downer.  I’m hoping to catch a swarm next spring.  But if there are a lot of apiary hives in the area chances are that the swarm will come from one of them.  That means the bees will be southern bees and most probably also bees that have been living under a regimen of chemicals to ward off varroa mites and other plagues.  I won’t be using those chemicals so the bees will have to depend on their natural robustness to survive.  But since they’ve been dosed with various chemicals, they may be quite weak.

That makes me think that I may as well purchase a bee package from a breeder who keeps northern bees under a natural beekeeping regimen.  I know there are several breeders in Vermont who have this type of bee.  I’ve read about these northern bees.  They’re known either as Russian bees or dark bees.  They are extremely cold hardy and are specialized to collecting a large amount of nectar in order to survive the long cold northern winter.  Of course, that might mean a very long drive back and forth to Northern Vermont.  That’s a hike.  It’s possible they’ll mail the bees but maybe not.  Anyway, interesting things to think about today.

While I was working on the garden, I saw both grasshoppers and katydids that were so worn out that I was able to go up to them and pick them up by the wing covers.

Even the few butterflies I saw, some fritillaries and painted ladies, were flying very slowly.  And they were much less skittish than normally when I approached them while they fed.  Of vertebrates, there were some turkeys in the yard, a few small frogs and a vole that shot out of the garden and headed into the blueberry bushes when I approached.  I managed to get some shots of the turkeys as they noticed me and retreated into the forest.

Then I walked over by the swamp.  It was looking very beat up.

But this time of the year has its charms.  A good day out in the air.

CFPM in Action

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Here at the Compound, in the soggy land of endless wet, our water comes from a well.  And in between that well and my alimentary canal is a large capacity sediment filter with a nominal 25-micron rating.  And when they say nominal, they mean that’s a make-believe number your supposed to take with a grain of salt (which would also pass right through it).

This filter comes with a filter life rating of six months.  Now in as much as I’m an engineer who has a very intimate relationship with filters from reverse osmosis pore size that can restrict the passage of atom sized particles up to bag filters that stop more or less nothing, I feel qualified and even privileged to insert my own factor onto this rating.  And the factor I used turns out to be twelve.  It was about six years ago that I installed the last edition of this handy household protective device.

I know, I know, I’m a monster.  I’m endangering my plumbing, my heating system, the well pump and the very fabric of space-time in the general vicinity of the Compound.  Fine, guilty as charged.  But look at it from my point of view.  I’m terminally lazy and keeping track of all the stuff I’m supposed to care about is just too much.  My system of maintenance is called the catastrophic failure panic method or CFPM for short.  Under this nifty protocol I more or less let things run on their own until catastrophic failure or the fear thereof concentrates my attention on some terrifying effect, like flood, fire or downed power lines crackling and buzzing like a giant nest of angry hornets.

I won’t claim that this lifestyle choice doesn’t have some difficulties.  It’s definitely expensive in the long run.  But it goes hand in hand with my belief that I live a charmed existence.  Somehow, I’ve managed to sidestep the consequences of my negligence and laziness pretty much entirely.  Sure, I have to pay a lot of money to fix the things I neglect but not worrying about all the things I should be taking care of and concentrating on the things that interest me has meant that life is a wonderful adventure with just enough excitement (or fear) to keep it interesting.

Take this filter thing as an example.  I remember about three years ago Camera Girl said to me that the clear plastic filter housing looked really gross.  Now gross is her layman’s term for filled with silt and rust.  And she may have thought that I ignored her warning.  But she couldn’t have been more wrong.  Her words were recorded and analyzed by my subconscious and became a part of the enormous algorithm that is my brain’s response to the great big wide wonderful world that I imagine surrounds me.

And at precisely the right time I remembered that filter and so about a week ago I looked at that filter and was repulsed at how gross it looked and some other part of my brain measured the pressure drop that the water system was experiencing coming from the well to my faucet (well indirectly, actually I was noting the lower flow rates I’ve been seeing lately).  And my fear of catastrophically destroying the well pump triggered CFPM action and I bought the new filter and installed it today.

The system works!

You might think, “What the hell is wrong with this guy?”  Many laymen confuse the CFPM with complete imbecility.  But there’s nothing complete about it all.  After all I brush my teeth every day and that’s annoying so I definitely have my limits.  But this whole thing has made me think I should change my factor from twelve to two.  After all, an annual event would tie it into the celestial cycle and trigger my interest in all things occult.  Just as the Druids sacrificed captives at the Autumnal Equinox (okay maybe I made that up) so I could celebrate the changing of the filter as a sacrifice to the great gods of pressure drop; Moody, Fanning, Darcy and Reynolds.

Well, it’s been a taxing day.  I ‘m going to go relax before tackling the last episode of “The Terminal List.”  Camera Girl’s initial reservations about the show have evaporated due to her love of cinematic blood-thirsty violence.  But this brush with disaster has made me more thoughtful.  Maybe I should take a look at that gage on the propane tanks.  I’d hate to run out of fuel for the generator this winter.  Ahhh, there’s plenty of time.  I’ll just make a mental note.

Waiting for Significance

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You may have noticed I haven’t had many political posts in the last few days.  I scan the headlines every day.  After all, railing against the outrage of the day is sort of my schtick.  But for the last few days all I see is “same old, same old.”  The FBI raids Trump associates.  Political polls from Left and Right claim advantage for their side in the mid-terms.  Economic indicators and business events reinforce that we’re in a recession and statements from politicians on both sides confirm that we hate each other’s guts.  You, see?  Same old, same old.

There have been some stories about CNN firing some frothing at the mouth Trump-haters.  That I consider newsworthy.  That’s something different going on.  So that’s an example of the kind of thing I’m looking for.  New developments.  News!  When I see a story about someone on the Left waking up to the anti-freedom excesses of the current regime, I think that is newsworthy.  Anytime I see some establishment type waking up to the reality of what our government has become that’s sort of newsworthy.

But outrage for the sake of having something to say is becoming boring and even painful to write.  We all know it’s bad.  Only the brain dead could miss the fact that things are awful.  Only the hopelessly clueless don’t see where the awfulness emanates from.  Only a Democrat flak can listen to a Joe Biden speech and pretend that what he is saying resembles reality.

But what I write has to have some freshness, some life to it.  Even for me it can’t just reiterate the same old thing.  So, you may see some days when my post will be a review of a movie or a book.  Or it may be about something else I’m interested in like photography or beekeeping or some aspect of science and technology.

And this is all to the good.  Just banging the same old drum doesn’t really accomplish anything except wear out the reader’s patience.  There are always plenty of things going on in the world and there are even the beginnings of alternative cultural and social organizations doing things in the world.  These will give us things to talk about.

So don’t be alarmed if I haven’t ranted in a week or so.  It’s simply that there’s nothing new worth saying about life in Oceania.  I can’t record every last word and deed of Big Brother.  I may have to say I love him but I can’t claim he isn’t boring as all hell.

08SEP2022 – OCF Update – This’N’That

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So, I finally bit the bullet and began post-processing my Yellowstone Trip photos.  I’m surprised at how many nice wildflower shots I got.  I know, I know.  Wapiti and bison and bears, oh my.

But the landscape and flora stuff are good too.  Many of the flowers are very different from the vegetation in the northeast.

And some of the wildflowers are the cousins of perennials that we plant like lupines and monkshood.  It adds another dimension to the trip.  I’ll probably spend the winter looking up the flowers to identify them and then do a post on my favorites.

With the grandkids already back in school Camera Girl is not as insanely busy as usual so I told her we needed to find a new tv series to watch.  I had heard that the “Terminal List” with Chris Pratt was pretty good so we watched the first episode last night.  Well, Camera Girl told me there’s too much killing.    Since Jack Reacher is one of her favorite fictional characters, I found this very surprising.  It turns out that when civilians are the victims, she processes the killings differently.  So, we’re going to watch the second episode tonight.  I suspect she’ll be more comfortable with the violence when it’s just bad guys getting offed.

And at last, it stopped raining.  So, we got out for a walk in the forest.  And the lake has almost reached back up to the spillway height.  The sun was warm but we could feel that the summer heat is waning.  The afternoon shadows are already hiding half the fields from the sun and the butterflies and dragonflies are on their last legs.  But just as a last gasp of summer Camera Girl found a Spicebush Swallowtail Butterfly caterpillar.

I set it up in a net cage with some sassafras leaves and it almost immediately metamorphosed into a chrysalis.

Well, that’s another natural history project for Princess Sack of Potatoes.  I’ve got to hand it to Camera Girl she has sharp eyes.

I was thinking today, it’s almost beyond belief to think that Joe Biden could actually be President of the United States.  I mean he’s a congenital liar, a dimwit and a sexual deviant.  The only answer that makes sense is that we’ve gotten way stupider as a country.  Or possibly we really have reached that tipping point where more than half the country is being bribed by a something for nothing program.  Then again maybe it’s a combination.  Maybe if you add up all the dimwits and all the loafers it’s 51%.

Well, whatever it is, it’s damn discouraging.  I mean he’s such a sleazy crook, that it’s embarrassing to be associated with a constituency that would have him.  I wonder if a good campaign against him in 2022 and 2024 could appeal to people’s sense of shame at allowing such a pathetic loser to be their leader.  What could be the slogan?  How about, “Joe’s a moron.  If you vote for him, you’re a moron too.”  Or maybe, “What grown man showers with his twelve-year-old daughter?  What kind of man raises a son who has sex with his dead brother’s widow?  What kind of man sniffs the hair of women and girls during a White House ceremony?  Is Joe Biden President of the United States or Caligula?  Anyway, it’s a thought.

Well, now that the rain has stopped, I can get some more of the outside projects finished.  Soon we’ll be putting all the yard equipment indoors for the winter.  And Camera Girl has started putting up the Halloween decorations.  I thought it was a little early but she says Princess Sack of Potatoes really likes scary stuff.  I can’t argue with that.  I guess it’s time to bust out the Universal Monster Movies.  Well, there are some consolations to the end of summer.

Cry Havoc and Let Slip the Puppies of War

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So, what to write about today?  Creepy Uncle Joe buying votes in the mid-terms by canceling student loans?  Meh.  Handicapping the mid-terms?  Boring.  Now there were a few headlines that caught my attention.  Donald Trump implores the senate Republicans to dump Mitch McConnell as leader when they take back the Senate.  Now that’s a great headline.  And it’s good advice.  But what’s there to say about it other than it’s a good idea.

And my current personal projects aren’t really that universal in their appeal.  Right now I’m trying to learn enough PHP and MySQL coding to automate some very time-consuming changes to my website.  The book I’m working from is about a thousand pages long and I’ve just gotten past the introduction so it’ll be a tough slog.

I haven’t read or watched any interesting stories in the last few days.  And I’m way behind on my photo work and the fiction writing.  The whole system is falling apart.

So, what’s causing all this havoc?  Well, we’ve been overrun for the last week (and will be into next week) with grandkids.  The little devils have successfully invaded the Compound and are monopolizing Camera Girl’s time.  Worse still they’ve subjugated me too.  When I’m not overseeing their infestation of the swimming pool, I’m forced to play chess with one of them or read stories to another.  And they even have me ferrying them around to the neighboring towns for tennis practice or school open house or whatever.

Actually, it’s kind of great.  My third oldest grandson is becoming a pretty decent pool player and a very good chess player to boot.  And tonight, my little granddaughter asked for three extra bedtime stories from her old grandfather instead of from Camera Girl.  It seems that she likes the same stories I read to her mother more than thirty years ago.

Really the only downside to all this babysitting is the lack of time.  It turns out I really do need time to write the stuff I post here.  There’s no way to multi-task while you’re refereeing young children at play.  They’re just too dynamic and need to be monitored pretty closely to prevent bickering from exploding into fisticuffs.  I have to rule with an iron fist.  Well, it’s probably more like a lot of haranguing by me but you get the idea.

But honestly, the political scene is just status quo.  After the FBI’s gestapo tactics against Trump there’s not much to say.  We know where things stand and we’re just waiting to see whether the electorate repudiates the Democrats or acquiesces in our new status as a banana republic.  So that just leaves me cultural and general interest topics to write about until the feds do something even more outrageously unconstitutional.

And of course, that’s bound to happen in the next week or so.  Biden is desperate to change the story away from runaway inflation.  He’ll attempt to bribe some other constituency with another illegal executive order.  The only question is whether it’ll be transgender polo players or normalizing monkey pox at America’s gay bath houses.  So, bear with me.  Things will return to normal soon and I’ll be back to decrying civilizational collapse again before you know it.

The Final Summer Spree

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Yesterday we had the end of summer family party.  The weather has been remarkably nice with temperatures in the eighties, beautiful blue skies and kids, grandkids, nieces and nephews filling the swimming pool and old folks smiling at memories of summers long past.

There was some politics thrown in here and there.  After all, it’s in our blood.  I joked about my impending campaign and how I’ll need at least ten million dollars to assure my victory.  But no checks were forthcoming.  But most of the day and evening was taken up with grilling meat, containing grease fires, eating fattening foods and sitting around talking about the best parts of the recent vacations, kids going off to college and whose arthritic joints hurt worse.

One of my sisters-in-law was marveling at all the various butterflies that were flitting around the aptly named butterfly bush that Camera Girl employs me to keep well-watered.  And it was interesting that they had selected the party day to come out in full force to get the last nectar from this plant resource.  It was one last reminder that nature rejoices in the summer almost as much as I do.

By the time the last guest had left and I had assisted Camera Girl in wrapping up the leftovers it was 11pm and it was time to walk the dogs and lock the doors.

Today we had the kids and grandkids back over to finish up the food and go swimming again in the pool.  I grilled up the last of the burgers and we stuffed the kids with pie, lemonade, ice cream and cake.  Remarkably, they never seem to get too full or groggy from all that sugar.  They just head back to the pool or play some badminton or soccer.

I was talking to their parents about school.  They start school a week from tomorrow and the grandkids were not happy at all by this talk about it.  I could see their faces fall at the mention.  So, I quickly added that the pool won’t be closing up until the day after they go back to school and they could come over every day they were allowed to if they liked.

But it struck me that I remember feeling exactly the same way when school was looming over us like that.  It was an awful feeling and at that moment I remembered what nine-year-old me felt like.  Ah, the persistence of memory.

We haven’t had any real rain in over a month and the state is declaring a drought.  My water comes from a well and since I live next to a swamp, I figure there’s probably a trillion gallons of water still in there.  Maybe a trillion and a half.  That’s what we call an engineering estimate.

But the fields are as dry as a bone.  I’ve been watering the vegetable garden and the flower gardens pretty religiously but a lot of the flowers have given up the ghost.  But that’s what late August is; the beginning of the dying time.  I guess I should be unhappy about the drought and the straw-like grass.  But I’m not.  I always hope that summer will stretch into September.  Sure, an inch or two of rain would be fine.  But eighty-degree days and blue skies are as close to heaven as I can imagine.  And soon enough the days will shorten and cool.  It’s inevitable.  So, another week or two of summer looks good to me.

I notice the Democrats are laying it on pretty thick about how the arc of history is bending toward their mid-term success.  Blah, blah, blah.  And the predictable Republicans are panicking about all this.  “Oh no!  The Trump selected candidates will go down in flames.  Quick, make friends with the progressives!”  Feckless losers.  People are telling me we must move to the middle.  And I tell them there is no middle.  There’s getting what you want and there’s folding like a cheap suit.  Pick one.

But the result will be upon us soon and I can deal with either eventuality.  A true binary is upon us.  We either win or lose.  And I can deal with either result.  But no more uncertainty.  Either the American people throw off the Democrats or they don’t.

What a beautiful sunset tonight.  It’s a joy to see a day this beautiful.