Happy Birthday to the US of A!

 

It's been a weird year already but we've just got to keep working on it trying to improve things.  Who would have thought that the year would start out with a bunch of idiots breaking into the Capital?  On the health front heaven only knows what the Delta variation of Covid is going to become.  I'm hoping not so much but that is based on hope not knowledge!  And there is the Black Lives Matter movement; it looked for a time that there might be a bit more racial equality coming to our country; now all I'm hearing is how state legislatures are making it more difficult to vote.  They aren't doing that with old white guys like myself in mind.  All this racism, fear and negativity is depressing.  I have always thought that this was a country that was "conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal".  Bah, humbug!

I'll change gears here.  My wife and I bought a few extra things at the grocery store last week so we could just stay home on the weekend of the 4th.  Fireworks are legal in our county and we have three stores that sell nothing else.  Of course this is their big day but apparently they do just fine all year long.  They sell plenty of fireworks to out-of-town folks who want to make a big noise elsewhere.  We don't hear or see much around town.  A couple years ago I drove over to Las Vegas, where fireworks are limited to sparklers, etc., and saw 4 highway patrol motorcycle cops each with a car pulled over with illegal fireworks visible in the back seat.  Like most towns we have a fireworks display every year to celebrate the 4th; we watch it from our front yard.  That's plenty of excitement for us.

We've been working on taking a walk 1st thing every morning.  These days it is 75F (25C) when we set out; waiting for it to get warmer just doesn't make sense!  I liked this view of the mountains west of us when we set out.  The sun was being blocked by some clouds and it almost looked like snow.

Since those mountains are only about 4,000 ft (1,200m) and it is getting to 110F (43C) down here at 2,500 feet (760m); I'm pretty sure it's not snow!  

Well, thanks for stopping by.  Keep washing those hands!

Not bad!

All that traveling last month and I come home to sunsets like this:

 maybe I should just stay here and take my camera out more often!

I read a very interesting post over at another boomer's site that talked about the idea that things are getting worse for the poor in this country.  He quoted someone else who suggested that things had gone downhill during the Obama years and then continued to go down during the Trump years.  That person suggested that it was the fault of "Wall Street".  Hmmm, I'm not sure I go along with that but I certainly agree with the boomer that there is plenty of fault to go around.  I'm not a socialist but I do feel that people ought to be able to support a family without having three jobs.  

I just read where Target is paying a minimum wage of $15 an hour.  That means that a new person is making $600 a week if they are working full time.  In Las Vegas, our closest city, a three bedroom apartment can cost $1,600 a month.  So a guy with a wife and small child can be working for over two weeks to pay for the apartment.  That leaves only $800 for everything else.  He's got to be hoping that his wife will be able to get a job at Target as well but then we are talking about child care expenses.  Not good.  Minimum wage in Nevada is $9.75 which is higher than the Federal  minimum of $7.25 BUT it hasn't been changed since 2008.  I'm thinking prices have risen more than a bit in 12 years.  

LIke I said, I don't know the answers but I sure see the problem.  Maybe the Biden years will be golden.  I sure hope so.  Take care & keep washing those hands.

Quiet times

We have always liked going out to lunch so now that the quarantine is loosened a little we have been visiting our favorite restaurants again.  Some are clearly doing better than others with the new restrictions. One of the restrictions here in Nevada is social distancing which basically means the restaurant has half as many tables as it used to have. Most have recovered reasonably well but one in particular has become slow as molasses. It is too bad because it is a nice little place and they are going to lose the business of working people. We retired people can put up with an hour and a half lunch but not people who have a job and an hour lunch.

This whole racial problem has my wife and I just dumbfounded. My wife is more than vocal about the problem of inequality for women but at least she is a white woman. I guess that as a white man I've just been blind to what is very obviously a huge problem. Somehow I thought that the changes made years ago had fixed things. As a programmer and manager I worked with black men and women; not a lot of them but some. I was always more worried about the quality of their code than the color of their skin. Clearly there should have been more opportunities for people of color.

A couple days ago a story was revived about another black man, 50 years old, was killed by police back in September but this one was in Las Vegas. He was stopped for riding a bicycle at about 6 a.m. without a light. Then he ran! Granted he had illegal drugs on him but, really? We take our morning walk before 6 a.m. Should we have a light? What B.S.! You can be darned sure that if we ever see a cop when we are walking we won't be running away!

Then we watched Samantha Bee on tv the other night. She had quite a piece on the fact that a lot of equipment is based on a standard male figure. I don't remember the exact numbers but it was about 5'9” and 150 lb. This figure is used to determine sizes for things; everything from face masks to seatbelts. Therefore, a woman who is 5'2” can't get things to fit right. She had two female doctors on the show who spoke about dealing with Covid-19 patients while their masks didn't fit their faces properly! Talk about a nasty situation. She also had a statistic about the much higher likelihood of a woman being injured in a car crash than a man.  That link claims women are somewhere betweeen 50% and 73% more likely to have serious injuries!  Jeez!

Well, sorry about this being such a serious post.  I'm going to try to go out and take pictures of flowers or something for next time.  Take care & thanks for stopping by.