April is the cruelest month

I readily concede that I won’t be the only blogger this month to use the opening line of T.S. Eliot’s ground-breaking 1922 poem The Waste Land, but I may start a subset by saying “April 20th is the cruelest day”. It is abysmal outside here. It is so rainy and windy that it is re-raining. I’m certain that some of the raindrops that just blew past my window are the same ones I saw just a minute before. Our century-old farmhouse is creaking and groaning in protest.

It is not lost on me that April 20th is rapidly gaining recognition as a hippie holiday. CNN knows about it. Its website has a clip of Statistics Guru Harry Enten pointing out that last year Americans spent $30 Billion on legal weed and a mere $18 Billion on (presumably legal) chocolate. Even ruby red Missouri, home of the legendary James-Younger Gang, has legitimized it.

So what’s an old hippie to do during inclement weather? I’ve cleaned my office enough that substantial patches of the floor and other flat surfaces are now visible. I’ve arranged my audio cassettes alphabetically by artist (with a separate collection of mix tapes). I’m keeping up with LSU baseball, the NBA playoffs and reruns of Frasier and Northern Exposure. I’m watching enough U.S. news to know it’s no longer safe to attend a party, stop for directions, pick up your siblings or chase a basketball.

Senseless shootings aside, I’m fascinated by the efficiency of the GOP in dismantling itself. As various real issues, like the looming budget crisis, loom ever larger, Jim Jordan chose to obstruct the NYC AG case. Marj T. Greene, bless her heart, became so strident in a House committee hearing that Committee Chair Ron Greene shut her down. Ron DeSantis is losing big donors. House Repubs just passed a anti-trans bill that they know will die in the Senate. And George Santos.