Nice to Look At

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

-John Ruskin

So this started happening around 1 a.m.

Seven-and-a-half hours later, and it's still coming down steadily. Hence my evening worry and cursed insomnia, knowing P would need to drive in the un-shoveled or plowed places to get to work in the predawn darkness.

I worry a lot about P, about this phase of life. Will some cancer or heart attack lightning bolt, or a slip on an icy sidewalk, end this amazing season we've had over the last few years? When you're forty it's some unhappy, far-off thing. In your sixties it's an artillery barrage that's only going to get closer to the foxhole you're crouching in together, trying not to let the thought of that inevitable day when the other pillow will sit vacant suck the joy out of this moment.

So there I was, every hour or so arising from the covers to glance out the window and see how much snow was accumulating around P's car.

I took this photo a little after P left (giving away the end of the story, I suppose). The snowy F-150 is last week's purchase.

We set the alarm for a little earlier than usual so I could bundle up and poke around in the basement for a shovel and some salt. I emerged into the cold, brushed the piles of snow off P's windshield and windows, and scooped two tracks down the hill to the alley, salting them after I finished. Then I walked to the end of the alley to shovel the grade where it meets Chemung Street. Our concern was that neighbors in the new condo, which sits perched on a slope, reported being unable to stop during past blizzards, and sliding down into the neighbor's garage across the alley. I made a point of digging the tracks to curve away from that garage and toward the street.

Once completed, I came back upstairs to make P a nice latte and set out her breakfast. Then we both went downstairs so I could help marshal her out of her parking place and into the tracks I'd dug, although I manifestly am not much for providing directional guidance because she mostly missed the tracks. That didn't seem to cause any harm, as she glided crunchily out to the street and I wondered whether the whole shoveling exercise had been a waste of time.

In today's sort-of political news, there seems to be a movement afoot to disinter Justice William O. "Wild Bill" Douglas from Arlington National Cemetery.

https://abovethelaw.com/2025/12/why-are-conservatives-trying-to-dig-up-william-o-douglass-bones-in-2025/

Why dig up a Supreme Court Justice who's been below the sod for over four decades? Surely not the fact that he authored Griswold v. Connecticut, which found a constitutional basis for the right of privacy the far right seems eager to set aside. Or some of the other liberal positions the Great Dissenter took during his extended tenure on the Court. Rather, they claim to want him gone because he was a womanizer and an alcoholic, thrice divorced and known generally not to give a shit what anyone thought of all that. Oh, and they claim (falsely, it appears) that he misrepresented his service in the military.

One almost gags on the irony of it all. The disciples of Cadet Bone Spurs, an adjudicated rapist and philanderer, eager to desecrate a grave over some personal failures. Frankly, one has to give Douglas a little grace if drunkenness contributed to his moral foibles--at least it constitutes a somewhat weak excuse, I suppose. The Cheeto Messiah doesn't drink, and knew full well what he was doing all those times.

This is clearly about advocating for the most disgusting attempt to own a libtard who died before there was such a thing. No place in our national pantheon for anyone who wouldn't be a featured guest on Tucker Carlson's show. From "lock her up" to "dig him up"! Simply disgusting. They'll be coming for Lincoln next--dig them all up, and let the living know who's boss.

The good news in all of this, I guess, is that it suggests a certain desperation associated with a growing sense that the game is up. Two U.S. attorneys disqualified in the last week. A bilateral push to investigate our orgy of murder on the high seas that could well lead to criminal charges against those responsible. The special election in Tennessee's seventh congressional district now too close to call--a district DJT won by 24 points barely a year ago.

Better hurry up with that backhoe, boys. It's looking like your days are numbered in red cap country.