Another Week: Number 92

A couple of weeks behind schedule, the weather is becoming slightly more fall-like. We had rain on Sunday and again on Tuesday, breaking the dry spell. On Thursday, the outer edge of Hurricane Helene‘s remnants got close enough to bring us clouds and northeast wind. Once again, our meteorology has been exceptionally beautiful — even as we watch people devastated by climate catastrophe in other parts of the country.

Meanwhile, the Republicans’ Project 2025 plan calls for the demolition of the NOAA and the National Weather Service.

I feel a disturbance in The Force. The dark side is flexing.

Our national disconnect has taken an ominous, more dystopian turn as we revolve into October. Battleground polling finds the presidential race in a dead heat. Republican ads are pressing all the hate and fear buttons over transgender Americans and violent immigrants. Adjudicated rapist Donald Trump is howling about invading rapists.

Meanwhile, crime rates keep dropping — as they have since the 1990s. Inflation is nearly perfect, stocks keep hitting record highs.

Because my indoor TV antenna is useless for receiving Chicago’s CBS station, I was forced to watch the Chicago Bears lose to the Colts on Sunday on my little AM radio as if this were 1963. WMVP’s signal was frustratingly weak — much like the Bears’ performance. As Tom Thayer diplomatically put it, “There were a lot of correctable instances.”

My first season of WNBA fandom snapped shut Wednesday night as the Indiana Fever lost their second playoff game to the Connecticut Sun. TV coverage has mostly tiptoed around it, but there’s been a sickening swarm of MAGA-flavored hatred leeching onto rookie superstar Caitlin Clark this season, despite her attempts to swat it. During this final game, she had to call security to remove a spectator from his seat.

Meanwhile, in the Middle East, Israel’s response to a year of Hezbollah rocket attacks has escalated from the remote detonation of pagers and walkie-talkies last week to Friday’s bunker-buster bombing of a building in Beirut that killed Hassan Nasrallah while Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in New York addressing the United Nations.

The building was an 11-story residential apartment complex.

On Saturday, at a rally in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, Donald Trump declared Kamala Harris “mentally impaired.” It was his feeble attempt to blot out her kicking his incompetent ass in front of 67 million debate viewers who know what they saw.

The former American president also complained that Fox News “shouldn’t be allowed” to air criticism of him.

Meanwhile, Republicans are sending mailers to my house addressed to a family that hasn’t lived here in 23 years. It’s not the family we bought our house from, but the family before that.

Maybe Project 2029 should start with buying a better list.

Twice this week, a Blue Jay visited my backyard birdbath. We used to get a trio of them many afternoons 15 years ago — but then, I think, West Nile Virus reduced their numbers.

On Thursday, I walked 2.98 miles.