Another Week: Number 154

So now we know.

The early 9-inch snowfall we woke up to on November 10 was a portent, not a quirk. A similar batch was dumped on us early Sunday morning, and the Polar Vortex slid over us on Thursday morning, dropping the temperature down to 7 degrees.

Winter is here. I’m not a big fan, but I’m fortunate enough to have a furnace, a parka, and six decades of experience.

The big news item this week was all the reverberation from a Washington Post story last Friday regarding the U.S. military’s September 1 attack on a speedboat off Venezuela’s Paria Peninsula. Reportedly, two of the boat’s 11 crew members survived the initial airstrike, and so were targeted and killed by a second strike —known as a “double tap” in the innocuous jargon of bombing.

Most of the coverage focused on the execution of helpless survivors as a war crime. Never mind that the United States is not in any declared war with Venezuela. Never mind that the boat posed no apparent threat to U.S. armed forces. The absurd phrase “war on drugs” was trotted out as justification.

Donald Trump has claimed that with each one of these extrajudicial executions, “we save 25,000 American lives.” In 2023, 105,000 persons in the U.S. died from drug-involved overdoses. So far, we have carried out 22 such strikes, so we should have already won the war on drugs five times over.

Meanwhile, alcohol kills 178,000 Americans per year and I have not heard of any airstrikes on local taverns or liquor stores.

Shovelwax: my case study

Prepping for this week’s snowfall, memories of the last one haunted my mind. The November 10th show was heavy and wet, and it stuck to my shovel each time I tried to throw it. Due to my particular driveway situation, I need to throw many shovelfuls up to 15 feet, so these failed throws can add up to a lot of shoulder discomfort.

I have always thought that some sort of wax would help. I have tried Turtle Wax without great results. People have also suggested Pam cooking spray and WD-40, but those both seem messy.

So, as the forecast unfolded, I Googled “shovel wax.” Lo and behold, the exact product I sought was at the top of my search results: Shovelwax™ Brand Shovel Wax. With a little more time, I could have had it delivered by Amazon to my front door. Instead, I drove 23 miles south to the somewhat dumpy Ace Hardware in Waukegan, Illinois to score my miracle blocks.

Shovelwax is a hard, gray, oddly coffin-shaped chunk of soy wax, candelilla wax, carnauba wax, beeswax, and graphite. I brought my shovel indoors to the basement to warm up, wiped it off, and applied the Shovelwax directly to it, using a small rag to hold the wax bar.

It worked well. The show released easily from my shovel and flew as desired.

Subsequent shovelings have shown that the product wears off over time and should be reapplied. Application is clumsier than a spray would be, but snowboard spray wax is pretty expensive.

Death By Lightning (2025 Netflix series)

It’s not always convenient to watch a series with my mom, but this one was just four episodes in all, each under an hour — and the historical aspect hooked her.

Death By Lightning concerns the 1881 assassination of President James A. Garfield, played here by Michael Shannon. Succession‘s Matthew Macfadyen co-stars as his eventual assassin, Charles J. Guiteau.  Nick Offerman portrays Garfield’s vice president, Chester A. Arthur.

It was an engaging series. Mom was intrigued by the behind-the-scenes corruption of Arthur and Roscoe Conkling (Shea Whigham). I enjoyed the cast and the sets.

As for the plot — well, Garfield is a reluctant and impossibly well-intentioned president, and Guiteau is a mentally ill con artist with delusions of grandeur who rips off his own sister. These traits are underlined repeatedly as Guiteau is drawn closer and closer to the center of power.

Johnny Carson: King of Late Night (2012)

I recently grabbed Bill Zehme‘s biography of Johnny Carson — Carson the Magnificent — for my Kindle. When I mentioned it to my mom, knowing how much she admires Cason, she said, “Maybe sometime you could find a documentary about him for us to watch.”

Presto!  YouTube offered Johnny Carson: King of Late Night, which first aired on PBS in 2012 as an American Masters installment.

It’s a solid profile of a fairly solitary superstar, including plenty of great clips while picking gently at the sore spot in Johnny’s psyche that never quite found fulfillment.