Hot, Windy, Dusty

 Kind of another bleak day yesterday, with plenty of wind and dust in the air. And now it turns cooler. April in Lubbock is not a pleasant season. Does Lubbock and the surrounding area ever have a pleasant season? Not really. Most of the time it's pretty grim. 

And with the average annual rainfall on a steady decline, I expect it to become grimmer and grittier every year. The small towns around here will bite the bullet first. Most of them are astoundingly dilapidated. You have to wonder how they go on. Their economies are frequently tied to cotton/farming and ginning. And the lack of rainfall is hurting agriculture. Rural life in this part of Texas might well be on a death spiral. You look at some of these towns, and the decline is very evident. 

Sunny

 Sunny and warm but windy enough for that ever present dust today, and that's not unusual. Another project completed, and now I can kick back for a while. Unless something comes out of left field I've done all the heavy lifting I plan to do this year. But I've got something on the agenda for next year, assuming I live that long. To give you some idea of how I look at things, my slant on life in general, maternity wards are profoundly depressing and fill me with sadness. Graveyards are places that give me hope. Get it? I never had children. I feel good about that.

I've made a lot of mistakes but at least I never made that one. 

Nice Weather!

 We had a few rain chances yesterday but we got nothing but dust. Par for the dismal course. Rapacious property tax hikes again this year. The tax assessor's office seems to have gotten a license to kill, and they are enjoying the carnage. As far as I'm concerned it's whistling in the wind, because I don't think Lubbock has much of a future. It's the water, stupid. 

As far as Texas goes, it's the stupid, stupid. I fully expect to see our bottom feeding governor mandate a science curriculum in all schools and universities based on young earth creationism. On top of that, a social science curriculum based on Hitlerian racial theories and white Christian nationalism. If Abbott knows anything, he knows who votes for him...

Not So Cold

 Nice and sunny and we'll have a warm afternoon with winds that will be moderate-- for us. Some bits and pieces I'll need for the next project, a little one, arrived. I think I'll do that one tomorrow. 

I've decided to read through some of my journals, starting with one that is fourteen years old. I try to understand how one event led to another. I could go back a lot farther than that but "recent" history is more relevant to me. It's interesting that in the mid-eighties I made a kind of wish list. Some of those things seemed a bit out of reach-- not very realistic. But in one way or another, sometimes in surprising and unanticipated ways, I got everything on that list! And more! Rather amazing. 

Somewhat Cold This Morning

 But it's sunny and it didn't freeze. Probably this will be winter's last swat. A bit late now for freezing temps, snow, or ice storms. 

I need to try to find a copy of D.H. Lawrence's "Apocalypse". I am currently reading, along with Sue Grafton's fine fiction, Bart Ehrman's "Armageddon". I highly recommend ALL of Bart Ehrman's work. James Tabor's too. There are so many excellent scholars out there, with so many excellent books on so many interesting subjects. That's wealth, and that sort of wealth is available to all. Public libraries are still a treasure. I buy my books but many can't afford to do that, or can't buy online, as I like to do. The book burning/book banning crowd should themselves be burned. Never burn a book, but instead burn those who would burn books.