Warm and clear, might be a nice day. Yesterday was mostly overcast and a bit on the warm side later in the day.
I’m still feeling a bit goofy which seems to happen when I take powerful antibiotics, but they are doing the job. Finger is almost back to normal. Missed one pickup yesterday but made two. All stuff for the BOL.
Spoke with a septic system engineer about my issues, and he’s willing to come and design a new system. He said I shouldn’t rule out an anaerobic system, he’ll do the tests and look at the site and see if it’s possible. I ended up spending a couple of hours putting together a package for him that included annotated pics of the site, the original plat with dimensions, and our desires… I will probably have to go up and meet with him on Saturday.
It’s always something, and there are a couple of peculiarities to working out in the country. One is that there may not be a lot of choice for who does the work. It comes down to who is out there, or is willing to work out there, who has the crew, or the tools, or the reputation or the time. The other is that people are busy. There is a stereotype about country folk being relaxed and moving slow, but it just ain’t so… at least so far, and with the kind of people I’ve been meeting.
Title of the post refers to the change in our current state of affairs. The sense that hard times are coming, that there may not be enough food, that something bad is just around the corner. I hear it from people I interact with doing auction stuff, from people in stores, and in the online world. There is not a sense of optimism, of fun, or of good times. People are noticing gas prices. They are noticing shortages and increased prices at the store. They are noticing that violence and crime are up. And I’m beginning to feel them start to withdraw their consent, as in “the consent of the governed”. Whether that means politically, or by the polite rules of society, or by the conscious and unconscious rules of western civilization, they are withdrawing their consent. Circles are shrinking. Focus is more local.
Taken to extremes, it’s back to the clans and hamlets of the middle ages. Whether that’s figurative or literal IDK yet, but there is certainly a balkanization going on. The unifying idea of Americanism is broken.
And that is a really unfortunate state of affairs, as the American Experiment, American Exceptionalism, and American Imperialism brought unbelievable wealth and progress to the world. I know people will have a reaction to that statement, some very vehemently opposed to it, but – for decades we fed the world. Computers, the PC, the internet. Space travel and satellites, GPS. Medical procedures, drugs, MRI, CT scans, the modern EMS system.
There was a unique spirit, and I’m afraid it’s broken beyond recovery.
So stack it up. To quote Yoda, “Save you what can.” There are still people living in Rome. There will still be people living in “America”. But would they be recognizable by the originals?
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