Fraying at the Edges

I don’t talk politics here on the blog, for several reasons. First of all, I am not tribal. I have a wide variety of friends, with diverse personalities and interests, and their political beliefs are the least interesting thing about them. Secondly, I have no desire to have someone else control my life and call the shots. A bureaucrat thousands of miles away has no idea what is best for me. Why should I cede that power to someone? Lastly, I think the majority of politicians are crooks and robbers, and that includes members on both sides of the aisle. One team is no holier than the other one.

Despite the fact that I would prefer smaller, more localized government and much less central planning, I am forced to acknowledge the reality of our current situation. Do not take any of what I say next as some kind of endorsement or approval of that reality.

I drove to Missoula yesterday for an appointment at the IdentoGo office for my TSA Pre-Check interview. I don’t fly often, but when I do, it’s usually out of Seattle, and Sea-Tac has had major problems lately with security line backups. This was a two-hour drive for what was supposed to be a five-minute process. I arrived about ten minutes early for my 1:20 pm appointment and was met by a very flustered receptionist who informed me that I “might have to wait” because their system was malfunctioning. She pointed me in the direction of a waiting area and I took a seat.

After about 40 minutes, during which time it became clear that none of the half-dozen people ahead of me in line had moved, several of us went back to the window and asked for an update. The two employees admitted that they probably weren’t going to get the system up and running soon, and I had a two-hour drive back to Kalispell. I chose to leave and have rescheduled the appointment for the end of January.

Two weeks ago, the wholesale supplier of electricity to our local electric co-op shut down incoming power to protect the grid in Washington state during a deep freeze. That, in turn, damaged internet service for a section of the valley. We all know what happened after that.

Has your mail been arriving in a timely manner? Have any packages gone astray? Some years ago, in the interest of “efficiency,” all of Kalispell’s mail started going to Missoula to be processed before coming back here to be delivered. Unless I drive my Kalispell-addressed mail to the main post office and deposit it in the local delivery box, it will travel from here to Missoula and back before being delivered. I thought we were worried about climate change? Surely using all that fuel to transport mail 240 miles round trip is contributing to climate change? No?

Did your travel—especially air travel—go well over the Christmas holiday? Were you treated as a valued customer or were you crammed into a flying cattle car with your fellow passengers? Yes, weather is a factor in travel delays, but so are outdated scheduling systems, lack of staffing, and other issues.

When was the last time you went to a business and didn’t have to wait for help? Were you shocked at last month’s grocery bill? Did you die in the ER waiting to be seen? (That happened to someone we knew a few weeks ago.)

Appliances that used to last 25+ years now have trouble reaching their third birthday without failing. The Diva’s transmission blew up at 70,000 miles. I’ve now made it to 129,000 miles—with a few thousand dollars of additional repairs—and the side mirrors are malfunctioning. They will move, randomly, such that I find myself driving down the road looking at the sky in them instead of the road behind me. The husband says this is a known problem and the mirror motor contacts need to be cleaned, which he will do this weekend. Not everyone is fortunate enough to have their own BMW mechanic, however, and I am determined to get a couple hundred thousand miles out of that car, at least. I like that it gets 40 miles to the gallon and it’s fun to drive when it’s working.

Thomas Massie, Congressional representative from Kentucky, pointed out that the aid package to Ukraine worked out to be approximately $200 million dollars per congressional district in the United States. Ask yourself: What could my congressional district have done with $200 million dollars? Made the roads and bridges safer? Bolstered the electrical grid so it could withstand periodic increases in power requirements? (How on earth are we ever going to power electrical vehicles with such a fragile grid?) I am not opposed to helping others. I am opposed to helping others if it means hollowing out our own country in the process. I’m also not convinced that sending aid to Ukraine isn’t ultimately some kind of money-laundering operation designed to assist members of Congress in becoming multi-millionaires on $170K a year salaries.

Last spring, this article appeared on the Lew Rockwell website. I was pulled in by the title—”Americans Brought Down to the Level of Slovaks”—because my great-grandmothers came to the US from Slovakia in the early 1900s. This piece speaks to much of what we are experiencing. I expect to become a grandmother at some point, but I have no desire to become the kind of Slovak grandmother caricatured in that editorial. It is a daily battle, however.

[I will say here that if you want to plop a conspiracy-theorist hat on my head, feel free. I am not going to protest. I see things, and I have a long enough track record of being right about so much of this stuff that I trust myself first and the husband second. Everyone else comes in a distant third.]

Look around you. Turn off the TV. Talk to your neighbors. Don’t let politicians and pundits tell you what to believe. Don’t treat “getting to know conservatives” (or progressives) as some kind of cultural-exchange exercise. Don’t accept what is happening as normal. And for heaven’s sake, don’t help it along.

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On the way down to Missoula, I listened to the recent podcast interview between David Collum and James Howard Kunstler. David Collum is the Betty R Miller Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University—no lightweight there—who writes an in-depth Year In Review every December. He takes everything apart, analyzes it nines ways to Sunday, and puts it back together. It is not a quick read, but it’s informative and entertaining. He admits when he misses the mark, but that doesn’t happen often.

And I will recommend again the Living Free in Tennessee podcast, which sits at the top of my list of favorites. Nicole Sauce has years of experience as a corporate trainer and in the first podcast of 2023, she explains “how to use the #my3things method to become more successful, productive and to build the life you choose on your terms.”

The trip to Missoula was not a total bust. I stopped in at a store there to get a new Amanda Murphy hexagon ruler and as the owner was ringing up my purchase, he mentioned that they are moving to a much larger store in the same strip mall in a few months. I had talked to them previously about doing classes, but they grew so quickly in their current small space that they had no room. The new space will have a large classroom area and he is very interested in having me come teach serger classes there. I do have to be realistic about my teaching schedule, though. I would probably teach quarterly in Spokane, monthly in Missoula (at most), and most frequently here in Kalispell.

I also checked out the mystery fabric remnant racks at three Wal-Mart stores—one on the way down and two in Missoula. The selection was either meager or full of fabrics in colors I don’t wear. I came home with a two-yard chunk of a lightweight sweater knit in hot pink and that was it.

I am home today with a full to-do list. After I get all my paperwork squared away, I am going to work on this:

This is the serger Christmas stocking from the Gail Yellen class in early December. I prepped it last week when we didn’t have internet. I bought a small (24”) TV to put in DD#2’s bedroom, where the cutting table and serger reside. We have a TV in our bedroom, but I’m often working in the cutting room and want to be able to watch YouTube videos at the same time. I’ll queue up the Gail Yellen video so I can watch her class and make the stocking. I am starting with the serger-only version. Ideally, though, I’d like to make the coverstitch version, too. If she releases the stocking as a standalone pattern, I might want to teach it next fall.