Mabon (Fall) and the Harvest Moon
Thursday gratefuls: Oops, forgot to write yesterday. Great workout. Faint dawn. Pinkish gray Sky. Spinning back into Great Sol’s line of sight. Vince and the decks. Figuring out the workout. Moving closer to the October surprise. Kamala and Tim. Gabe. The Shaggy Sheep. Guanella Pass. Vikings 3-0. Their game against the Packers. Muir Woods. Sequoias.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: finishing up the 529 transfer
Kavannah: Yirah
One brief shining: Richard Power’s new book Playground has an amazing jacket; as I read, just outside the edge of the page, it glimmers like the Ocean, an immersive feeling as if the book itself, about the Ocean, rests within its broad expanse, floating its narrative on gentle waves while underneath those waves giant Manta Rays, schools of colorful Fish, and creatures so bizarre as to be unimaginable if not observed float in its depths.
Got up late yesterday. Talked to Tom, turned in an extra good workout, read Power’s new book for a while, watched some TV, and Ancientrails slipped away from my notice. Rare. But it does happen.
On Tuesday I made another visit to Safeway, picked up my grocery order. While I waited, I thought about the map of grocery store chains in the morning’s Washington Post. The business logic of an Albertson’s/Kroger merger, at least in the West, is there to see. It would allow Albertson’s to dominate the urban West while Walmart takes care of the rest.
It would affect us in Conifer. With King Soopers, a Kroger grocery, and Safeway, of the Albertson family-our two grocery stores-we’ve been notified our Safeway would close. I used to shop at King Soopers and could return there. With my budget the need for careful comparison between the two is unnecessary. If, however, I had a family and watched the pennies, I’d feel cheated. Especially in this time of inflated grocery costs. I hope the FTC turns down the merger.
Tom told an interesting story about the SR-71, a retired spy plane hanging in the Air and Space museum outside Omaha. The docent who gave his group a tour said the titanium needed to build it, a lot, came from Russia during the cold war. How did our cold war enemy agree to something not in their self-interest? They didn’t. The CIA set up several shell companies around the world ostensibly making titanium cookware. Guess the Ruskies never checked how many pots and pans got made. BTW: The SR-71 had a top speed of Mach 3.5 or roughly 2,600 miles per hour.
I mention this because it seems the Israelis pulled off a similar feat with the pagers that exploded in Lebanon. They set up a company in Hungary that made and sold pagers and other small electronic communications devices. That’s a real long game. Explode the pagers to diminish Hezbollah’s ability to respond. Then assassinate leadership through targeted air strikes followed by more air raids aimed at munitions and missiles. An involved plan.
Just a moment: An election. Here. Soon.
