Maybe I'm wrong but as I look around to develop a scope of the epistle, I keep bumping up against what seems to be a rock hard brand of short sightedness. It is dangerously so, it appears to me. There is a common denominator as well, money.
As a nation, actually as nations of the world, we make choices.
- Business profits or clean air and water. (Lower costs with fewer regulations vs a future of poison)
- Funding for education or prisons. (Only so many tax dollars available-where do they go? What has the greatest value?)
- Profit or public safety? (Think airbags or ignition problems and the calculus of cost of recall vs cost of litigation and pay out if a problem occurs.) Too many corporations choose protecting the "bottom line" over doing the right thing and undertaking recalls and product replacement. The culture seems to approve.
- Repairing infrastructure or kicking the problem down the road?
- The six WalmWart heirs control as much money as the bottom 42% of the American public, somewhere around $89 billion. Some 45-50 million Americans live poverty. Why is the divide so high? Why is the middle class disappearing? How has this new "Gilded Age" happened?
shadow lace
flowers for Ruth
An allegedly intoxicated driver struck a parked car with such force it shoved it across a parking lot into a crowded coffee shop and village gathering place. Walls tumbled down, furniture was tossed and broken and 5 people were injured. One of them was our friend Ruth Armstrong.
Ruth was one of the first people to greet us when we moved to Cambria more than 10 years ago. She made sure we met new people and made friends. She is an artist and one of the village's most indelible people. Her leg and ankle were broken in several places. Ruth walks from one end of East Village to the other end of West Village, perpetually it seems. We are all hoping for a quick rehab because main street seems unadorned without seeing Ruth in her unique gait observing and monitoring Cambria village life.
self inflicted wounds
The Trump gang just can't get it right. They hire a good speech writer who crafts a good address which the bossman reads as though he believes what he is saying, but then....
- We learn the Attorney general either lied or withheld information about his own Russian ties and a new storm begins...
- Kellyanne's bunkhouse posture seemingly ignoring the history and prestige of educators in the oval office sets off another storm...
- It is revealed the highest sources at the White House lied to a group of network news anchors doing a deliberate sleight of hand deception so as to trick positive press coverage. Reich minister Bannon may have won the day but further eroded an already tenuous assignment of truth or trust to this White House.
See you down the trail.
