I’m having a grumpy night. It’s a night off from Richard II rehearsal so I used it to try and get a jump on my clinical work so it wouldn’t all be hovering over my head this weekend. However, no sooner did I sit down to try and work through various inboxes full of issues that really don’t require physician input when I fell into a doze and woke up about two hours later out of sorts. I did get the stuff I needed to fet finished done but getting ahead will have to wait for another day. My feelings of fatigue continue and it probably didn’t help that we were hit by a major thunderstorm just about then which passed directly overhead. There’s something about the sound of pouring rain that always wants to make me sleep.
Richard II is coming together. Five more rehearsals until it is presented to the public. The cast are starting to get their lines down. Characters and performances are pretty much there. The set is done. The props are done. The costumes are in progress and should be done this weekend. Sound and light cues are at least understood and we’ll try to get them all programmed into the system on Saturday. I hope that my vision comes across clearly and that people understand the show as I understand it. I guess I’ll find out. I’m preparing myself mentally for people to hate it as it is very nontraditional and because it comments on modern politics. It’s somewhat dicey to do that in modern Alabama. Fortunately the sort of people who are likely to attend Shakespeare performed in a church basement are likely to be intelligent enough to get what we’re doing.
The drain line on my washing machine backed up this past weekend and caused a major flood in my main hallway. There was already some minor damage from a previous flood from the HVAC line six months ago but this one did a real number on the parquet with a lot of the tiles buckling. I’m waiting for it all to dry out thoroughly so I can take stock and figure out what it’s going to take to repair it. It’s always something. Fortunately I have an emergency home repair fund squirreled away, having learned a few things from bitter experience. Water/plumbing issues have been the bane of my existence since moving in here five years ago. I’ve had to have the kitchen sink drain line repaired, the shower hot water line fixed twice after it kept backing hot water up into the toilet, the HVAC drain dealt with, the two year saga of redoing the drainage on my deck, and now the washing machine drain. All I need is an exploding toilet to get a Bingo on my card.
I did a little noodling around covid data this week. Numbers are increasing, but not by a lot. It’s becoming harder and harder to find reliable sources of information as the federal government continues to try and rewrite the pandemic narrative for political reasons. Acute phase covid doesn’t appear to be the major risk at this point. Long covid, seems to be the major issue moving forward with significant cardiorespiratory and neurological problems becoming more and more prevalent but as money is being diverted away from these sorts of public health issues, it’s really tough to figure out what may be going on. Beware of just googling. More and more of the hits appear to be from pseudoscience organizations with political agenda who are trying to make the health issues all about vaccines and vaccine side effects rather than the actual disease. I’ve gotten to the point where I just don’t engage anymore. It just sucks up my time and energy to no avail.
There are all of the usual political outrages. Other people analyze them better than I do. I’m not a historian, a social scientist, or directly involved in politics myself. The trends I find most concerning, besides the undermining of the health system and the advancement of knowledge, are the steps being taken to muzzle news reportage and the flow of information. Both CBS and NBC are under major fire from the administration for reporting news in a way that the administration does not regard as favorable and with threats to broadcast licenses etc., they are backing off. The way things are going it won’t be long before all of the major media outlets news reportage will be parroting administration talking points and unfavorable stories will be buried. And does something actually exist if we don’t know about it? There will be independent sources and investigative reporters who take their jobs seriously but that information will be relegated to the fringes of the media landscape and difficult to find, especially with the loss of net neurtrality.
Emil Bove, Turmps personal lawyer, was confirmed to a seat on the third circuit federal court of appeals. Bove has made no bones about his adulation of an authoritarian executive and that he thinks it’s perfectly OK to act in an illegal manner and to ignore court rulings in order to achieve that end. The SCOTUS confirmation of absolute presidential immunity for official acts has given the cover necessary for him and his ilk to move forward. Now that he is on an appeals court, I expect either Clarence Thomas or Sam Alito to step down from the supreme court opening up a seat and dollars to donuts, Bove will be the nominee and in a position to move the judicial levers even closer to the executive for the taking.
And then there’s the ever rising cost of living which current policies are not going to address. I have a number of much younger friends who are being decimated financially by skyrocketing rents and food costs. As these are being driven by forces of vulture capitalism, and not by the presence of immigrant communities, the administration’s focus on shipping people out, no matter how valuable they may be to our society, isn’t likely to help. The administration has been crowing about the amount of tariff revenue they’ve brought in. The MAGA movement still doesn’t understand that that was money we paid in higher prices of imported goods. It wasn’t paid to us by entities outside of the country. Apparently basic economics hasn’t been taught in American high schools for the last forty years.
Twenty-one months….
Life, The Universe, and Everything 