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I didn’t write a blog last night and I could easily claim Christmas as an excuse, so I am going to.  We celebrate Christmas Czech style, with a dinner of carp and potato salad and opening all the presents on what I grew up thinking of as Christmas Eve, i.e. the 24th.
So, today is the morning after Christmas, but….whereas yesterday was damp and sodden, rainy and kind of miserable, this morning the ground, and all the trees and rooftops, are covered in snow, so it’s a bit of a white Christmas after all.
We’re at the cottage, in the north of the Czech Republic, in the foothills of the Krkonoš mountains, and snow is fitting and appropriate.  It’s a tiny village, like something from a Josef Lada painting.
Anyway, it isn’t that we were so busy celebrating that I forgot to write my blog.  I just forgot to write my blog.  We’d finished opening all the presents, and the kids were happily watching “Home Alone” for the millionth time (it still works, because it’s like a 3 Stooges Film – there is something intrinsically hysterical about seeing people get knocked down stairs, hit on the head with heavy objects, and getting whacked in the cojones by a swinging object), but I think that’s kind of a strange message for a Christmas movie.  It’s like Die Hard, for little kids.
Anyway, I started reading the book I got for Isabel, which was “A Wrinkle in Time.”  I read it when I was probably about her age, and had pretty much forgotten it, so it was good to read again.  We’re not going to watch the movie until she’s read it. (at least that’s my plan – we might be waiting a while)

I felt it was a bit too Jesusy in parts (and am reminded that my mother objected to it on those grounds as well), but saw in the afterword that fundamentalists had objected to it because of ‘witchcraft,’  but those people are just nuts.  They didn’t like Harry Potter, either.
I rationalize it all as a story of the struggle between Good and Evil, and it’s kind of remarkable how if you drop one letter out of Good, you get God, and this is probably deliberate.  The religion which exists in our collective consciousness, like a malignant fungus, is deeply rooted.
But, it really is a good book, and I hope to see the film soon.

The best suggestion I saw today  on  Facebook was a post that said “NY should rename 5th Ave. as Barack Obama Avenue because then  that  would  be  the address of Trump Tower forever.”
It’s doable.  Sure, 5th Avenue is an internationally known brand.  It’s been mentioned in songs and films galore.  There’s a perfume by that name.  But it’s only a number and streets get new names all  the time.  He was  a  U.S. president, and generally a popular one, especially  in New York.  And it’s a New York City  government decision, so  it’s politically  conceivable.
There would be people who object.  I  don’t like  it  that there’s an airport named for Ronald Reagan, but there you have  it.  Once, when I  was working as an airlines reservation agent, I got a customer who  refused  to fly into LaGuardia because (in his words) “LaGuardia was a goddamned communist!”  So,  both sides get it.
Of course, if  we were to be sensitive to everybody’s opinions, probably no streets, or airports, or High Schools should be named after politicians because some people hated them.  Look at the controversy over Confederate Monuments.
Maybe that would be better.  But, you know  it would just eat Donald Trump alive if they did name it after Obama and, for that reason alone,  I hope it happens.

Well, that’s twice this week and I am as amazed as anybody.  Trump did another good thing.  He signed a farm bill which includes legalizing hemp, which is long overdue and will be nothing but good for the economy.
It was only illegal in the first place because it looks a bit like marijuana, therefore confusing the police, who are not necessarily botanically literate.  That is  really  a bone-headed and wrong reason for something to be illegal.  Are they going to make laundry detergent illegal because it looks like cocaine?  Are you going to have to be 21 from now on to drink water, because it looks just like vodka?

No.  It was a stupid law from the start, it  costs nothing at all to reverse it, and provides farmers with one more possible  cash crop, which  doesn’t help much, of course, if we’re tariffing everything so that they can’t sell  anything at all abroad because of reciprocal  actions in  other countries and there’s a limited amount of money you can make from manufacturing rope.

Anyway, that’s two points for Trump this week.

Of course, he’s still willing (eager, if you listen to his statements of a week ago and not what he said today) to shut down the government and make lots of people lose money and others have to work without pay, and maybe some do without vital services, just because congress doesn’t want to authorize $5 billion to build a stupid wall that everybody but his supporters thought was a fantasy, perhaps a rhetorical flourish, but not a real suggestion because the concept is laughable.
Well, nobody’s laughing now, but there’s no reason anybody should have to pay for it, either.  We asked him during the campaign who was going to pay for  it, and he never once said it should be the American taxpayer.
He’s still as crooked as the day is long, is using the office of the presidency for his personal gain, and should be impeached.
He’s still a mental incompetent with the social skills of a 4 year old, and not one of the good 4 year olds.
But, credit where it’s due, legalizing hemp is  a good move and so is getting out of Syria.

Now is the solstice, the darkest night of the year.  We don’t think about it much, living in cities the way  we do, and in houses with electricity so night does not hold the terror it once did.  I wouldn’t have noticed it at all, except I’ve got  so many new age star gazers and wiccans at various degrees of taking it seriously on my Facebook page that there have been posts galore.

It’s true, though.  Night time is scary.  Most horror films takes place at night.  It’s Night of the Living Dead,  because Mid-Morning of the Living Dead just doesn’t quite have that same ring to it.  It’s Nightmare on Elm Street because Daydream on Elm Street sounds like a romcom, and not a particularly good one.

Darkness is scary.  You can’t see what’s behind the next  tree and what’s behind the next  tree might kill  you.

In Northern Climes, where the sun is gone completely this time of year, it would have been even more terrifying, and not just because of impaired vision.  What if the Sun didn’t come back?  This is back before anybody knew what the Sun was, mind you, and when you believe that the sun is a super being in the sky riding  around in a chariot or something, I don’t know, maybe the Norse God of the Sun rode on a reindeer, which  would explain some things, then it’s  pretty easy to believe that he got pissed off with the other gods and buggered off to another part of the world all together, and you and everybody you knew were looking at certain death.

You would  be pretty darn relieved after a couple of days, when the Sun started to poke it’s nose out again.  You might even drink some mead.  Start a fire.  Sing.  Go nuts and drag a tree up to the cave and start decorating it.  That mead is strong stuff.
Birthday of Christ, my ass.

Of all the headlines in all the news, the ones I like best are the ones that start with “Scientists Discover…”  It’s much more pleasant than some of the most common first two words of headlines, such as “Florida Man…” which you just know will end badly, or “Kidnappers Demand,” “Terrorists Threaten,” or the all too common “Hundreds Dead.”
Despite all  the problems of the world, progress continues to be made, on one front, on another front, and eventually the world will be wrapped in  an informational Dyson Sphere, if that makes any sense at all.
A quick Google search a few minutes ago with those two words and a filter for articles with the last 24 hours revealed new knowledge in many fields.  Alzheimer’s research, as “Scientists Discover New Brain Activity at Early Stages” which is really great because the more they know, the sooner they’ll find a cure.  The next hit was Scientist’s Discover Solar Systems Farthest Object” which they’ve named “Farout” because the people at NASA are all giant Nerds, they really are.  The third hit was “Japanese Scientists Discover Ice on Asteroid” and I  don’t think that’s actually  a first but the story seemed to focus more on how they did it, so as we’re discovering new things in  space, and more and more water asteroids, you can’t have too  many, really, we’re also improving the technology of research itself.
It doesn’t matter  what  Trump tweeted today.  There is still hope for the world.