starting the stretch

So it’s Day Two of meteorological winter, my least favourite fourth of the year. Its only high point for me is the winter solstice on December 21st — The Return of the Light — when we start to get a minute or so more daylight every day until it reverses on the summer solstice.

My most reliable weather website predicts the first half of the month will be tolerable, with quite a bit of rain but no snow. This would match last year’s pace, when we had no snow until we got clobbered in January.

I’m halfway through my main outdoor chore, raking up the leaves from our maple trees to use as mulch for the blueberry bushes. It’s a decent workout for a senior citizen, giving me time to fret about world events like the collapse of the San Francisco 49ers’ season. They stunk up the airways last night, fumbling, stumbling and bumbling their way to a thorough thumping by the Bills in a Buffalo snowstorm.

Their Bay Area brothers, the Golden State Warriors, are faltering as well. They started the season with a torrid 12-3 pace but have lost their last four. Oh, well. My favourite college team, Kansas, is 7-0 and ranked number one nationally.

I’m watching much less news. I accept that Trump won and won legitimately, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get beyond the fact that a majority of the U.S. electorate chose a man who tried to violently overthrow the government, who caused untold needless deaths with his slow response to Covid, and who will not be held accountable for stealing hundreds of classified documents simply because they want cheaper gas prices.

And they likely won’t get even that when his tariffs take effect.