And Now, the News

This was the scene as Olga and I lay on the grass yesterday afternoon. I was reading and Olga...wasn't.

I finished "The Bluest Eye," which was poetic and beautiful and sad. There is no reason on this earth why that book should be banned from any library. I can think of much, much more troubling and prurient books. It's so weird what these book-banning types focus on. I think the fact that it's by a black woman and is essentially about racism probably amplifies whatever sexual offensiveness they perceive in its pages.

There's been some interesting stuff going on in the news lately:

1. The Titanic submersible story was horrible, but I'm comforted now to learn that the passengers apparently died instantly and early on in the ordeal. It was much worse to imagine them trapped two miles below the surface of the ocean in a cold, dark tube with dwindling air. It reminded me of the sinking of the Kursk more than 20 years ago, which gave me nightmares at the time. (Psychologically, I don't do submarines.)

2. I've seen a couple of stories about Tucker Carlson's former producers leaving Fox News. (Does anyone doubt they're going to work for him in some capacity as he ramps up his own fake-news production company?) What's interesting in these stories is the repeated, stated emphasis on the fact that Fox's executives are women. Carlson's own quote, following the appearance of the chyron that called Joe Biden a "wanna-be dictator," was: "Inside Fox, the women who run the network panicked...First they scolded the producer who put the banner on the screen." The Gateway Pundit called them "the ladies in charge." It doesn't take much imagination to pick up on the misogyny -- those panicky, scoldy women!

3. Here in the UK, our economy is said to be in a "growth doom loop" following the catastrophe of Brexit and decades of underinvestment by Tory governments. All that austerity did us a world of good, didn't it? Even pro-Brexit voters think leaving the EU has been a shambles, but of course they blame the politicians for screwing it up, rather than admitting it was a terrible idea from the get-go.

4. The median age in the United States is now 38.9 years, the oldest it's ever been. I immediately suspected this was the result of the aging of the Baby Boomers, which I believed to be the largest generation. But apparently my info is out of date. The Millennials are actually the largest generation, followed by something called Generation Z (born after 1997). Then come the Baby Boomers in third place. I knew my generation, Generation X, was smaller than the others, but it's not that much smaller. Anyway, the U.S. is apparently getting older primarily because there are fewer babies.

5. Finally, did you see that Teresa Taylor, a drummer for the punk band the Butthole Surfers, died? This is significant to me only because she's the public face of the early '90s movie "Slacker," pictured on the posters and DVD case. This was a seminal movie for Generation X, supposedly portraying our malaise and lack of direction. Her death makes me feel old. (By the way, I'm not thrilled about putting the word "butthole" on my blog, but if The New York Times can put it in a headline, I suppose I can tolerate it.)
 

This was my big project yesterday. I moved the foxglove seedlings from the seed tray to individual pots, so they can grow on and get bigger. I tried very hard to plant a minimum of seeds so I didn't wind up with too many plants, but I still have 18 of them! It's so hard to control those tiny seeds, which are like dust. (Two of those plants I don't think are foxgloves, but I repotted them anyway just to see what they become.)