If it's Not One Thing...

...it's another. With my energy returning, we decided to take the hike up the hill and around the mountain to Spike's Meadow. The hillsides have been mowed, either by motorized implements wielded by humans, or by goats, who do a better job. The goatherd's trailer is still parked above this sign but we haven't seen the goats inside their portable electric fences in awhile. The grass is full of lethal foxtails and other fuzzy seeds and stickers, all of which can get caught in fur  (or socks). The foxtails are lethal because they have sharp points and one-way hairs that assist in driving them into noses, ears and paws, but don't allow them to be shaken out. Later on in the summer it will be too hot to even consider trudging up there, and now the rattlesnake sign has appeared. 

Rattlesnakes aren't aggressive but they will strike if inadvertently stepped on, or sniffed out by a dog's nose. The last rattlesnake we saw was in our own lot behind the veggie gardens. Gophers have replaced ground squirrels. Our field is riddled with gopher holes and tunnels. They are also prime fare for snakes.  If we heeded all the warnings, Spike would never get a walk anywhere, but we did keep him on the lead and out of the meadow itself this morning. 

After a three day heat wave a couple of weeks ago, which hastened the drying of the grasses, already tall from a wet spring, the weather has been more seasonally 'normal' for the last week...cool foggy mornings and warm pleasant afternoons...and evenings, since the sun doesn't set until about 9pm.

I read a lengthy article in the New Yorker on 'the rise of the oligarchs'. Oligarchies have been around since the dawn of time and the article details how the current administration is a prime example of a group of people with money (lots of it) being able to take over the government and through a combination of graft, greed and corruption concentrate even more of it at the top. It does offer some hope though. Bernie Sanders generated huge crowds on his tour through some of the most conservative bastions of Republican voters, and there are signs that some of the people who voted for Trump because he promised them lower prices and smaller government are realizing that he is doing neither and are getting angry. We need more of that....rallies and demonstrations seem to be the best way to get the word out. Sanders is 83 years old and shouldn't be the one who has to do this, but he was apparently pleased at the size of the crowds he, along with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, were generating.

The latest twist in the saga of insanity is, of course, the fact that the world is consumed with the public fight between The Felon and (f)Elon. Musk overstepped boundaries and overstayed his welcome and wound up leaving the White House on the same day that the NY Times documented his heavy drug use, prompting him to announce that he thought Trump's BIg Beautiful Bill is 'a disgusting abomination'. 

Much speculation has ensued about what Musk's intentions are, and whether the rift will help or harm the Republican party.

That any of us have to care about the messy breakup of these two massive narcissists--and that they both individually wield such massive power--is an indictment of our political system and further proves the poisonous influence of Big Money on our democracy 
--Economist Robert Reich