New View Askew

  AI-Free Every year I say I am going to give up my affection – some might say obsession – for the winter solstice. It appears, however, I just can’t abandon this minor personality disorder. That tiny pinprick of hope at this dark time of the year always draws me back.   For me,  s hortly before June 21st,  i t starts  simply  as low spirits.  Then hour by hour, as the night begins to eat into the days, I  descend into a type of melancholy. Not a wholesale breakdown, mind you, just a Nordic glumness. Somehow, it seems to really hit home in earnest right after the day light saving time change. Is it the earlier sunset that dims my mood? Anyway, the encroaching  darkness throws its ugly shadow over the northland and the cold dreary gloom seems endless.   Yet oddly, like a person clinging to a life raft waiting for a ship on the horizon, I  strangely  look forward to this moment each year.  As they say, it is darkest before t...

If a Picture is Worth a Thousand Words . . . . . . How Many for 14 Charts? AI Free  T his was going to be my post  last month but I thought it was important  to  i nstead  swap in that  rather dark, gloomy view of America today  (Although a little less gloomy after the recent election?)  I'm sure you found it  either  frightening, unbelievable or irritating.  Perhaps all three.  In any event, h opefully you will find this one light, entertaining yet informative. Or at least one of the three. Don't be like Rat, read View Askew If you can’t decide how things are going in the world . . . you’re not the only one. To help with that  I chose these  14 charts (all but one) from a  series  curated and shared by a  journalist and podcaster named Derek Thompson. Hopefully you will find some of this information helpful, some surprising and some will confirm your suspicions. Perhaps some are all the above. First up...

  This seemed like perfect timing after attending yesterday's the  "Hate America Riots" as they are  called  by our Republican friends. (Pictures below) In January, shortly after the inauguration I had a post expressing my concern for what I felt was going to happen.  This is a follow up after 9 months. Some people t oday  don't  believe that the current administration holds any threat to our democracy which, of course, is their right. Others may suspect that it does but choose to ignore it for their own peace of mind which is also understandable.  This post in intended to offer some blunt information to help folks of any view make their decisions about our country's path.    (Well, that's the plan anyway.) For the last 249 years we Americans have been very fortunate. We have survived and thrived in good times and troubled times. We have had good and bad administrations, both Democrat and Republican. For 249 years, we could be ...

  Is   Our National Tolerance of Annunciation Tragedies   Why You Don't Need an Assault Rifle Like many people, I’ve had some time to think about the Annunciation horror. (Not that I wanted to.) In the brief interim there have been several more school and mass shootings so one might ask, is there any point to talk about this sort of thing anymore? (Although apprently I can't help myself, here’s a link to a very brief excerpt of a post of mine from 2023.)  April 2023 Excerpt Seriously, I’m amazed that we still talk about this stuff at all. But we must.  Sadly, this national psychosis is nothing new for us (after all we are a notoriously violent people.) The first recorded school shooting in America was 1840 and then one every few years thereafter with one or two kids killed - until 1966 when Charles Whitman killed 18 people at the Univ. Of Texas. There were several more, of course, until the next big one, Columbine High School in 1999 where 16 people died. ...

 . . . To   Whatever Comes Next Sep 1 st , Last Day of Minnesota State Fair                                                                                                                                                                                                        Sept 2nd   Okay, a bit of an exaggeration but that’s what it seems like .     Note: I am not commenting on the horrific tragedy that occurred at Annunciation Church last month at this time. I sim...