Good morning. Hello. How are you? #365
Chatham's 250th anniversary along with its water woes, union woes, court packing woes, buying my first post-pandemic concert ticket and an edition blissfully free of Joe Manchin.
Good morning! Hello! How are you? I am pretty good. Nice sunrise. It seems like it rained last night, a little bit at least, so maybe the pollen is down a bit. Looks like it’ll be a lovely day. Here is your sunrise-behind-the-cherry-blossoms photo of the day:
Happy Founders day! Today is the 250th anniversary of the founding of Chatham County, so, hey, that is exciting. Pre-revolutionary. They’re having a big celebration in Pittsboro today. They’re making a time capsule! God, I love time capsules. There is/was one in front of my high school that my mom was responsible for. It had Pop Rocks in it. I wonder when they are going to/did open that thing. I remember my mom said she wanted it to be opened in her lifetime. I bet they already did it.
Speaking of Pittsboro, our county seat recently made international news for having some of the worst water in the United States. Consumer Reports and the Guardian has a big feature on American Water systems, and it is… bleak. They tested the water in some 120 towns and cities around the US and Pittsboro was one of the worst. It was the worst water system tested in the country for PFAS contamination. Pittsboro has been aware of the problem for a couple years now. The article is an interesting read. Spends a lot of time talking about a bunch of potential sources of PFAS downstream from Pittsboro — which is important, and a huge deal for Wilmington, for example — but then goes on to say they don’t actually know what’s causing Pittsboro’s contamination, since it would obviously come from upstream, and they are still trying to figure it out. Terrifying.
Pittsboro and the greater Chatham County around it have two different water systems. Pittsboro takes water directly from the Haw River, whereas the county system, on which we are on, take its water directly from Jordan Lake, thus diluting the PFAS, and has a much more sophisticated filtration system. Still, the whole thing is terrifying. Janet wisely put in a whole-home filtration system when she got her house. We only drink from filtered taps — we have one on each floor — but still. We brush our teeth in it. I probably mess up and take pills with that water.
It’s so ridiculous and depressing that this is such a widespread problem in America. Biden’s infrastructure plan has money to deal with the lead pipes in American water systems, but not this.
Oh and stay away from Whole Foods brand water. And Topo Chico. Though they’re getting better. But not enough so. That one is heartbreaking. It was really had to quit Topo Chico.
Amazon workers voted against unionization. Sadz. It wasn’t even close. I read this really interesting article at NPR on why and how the union drive failed tactically. It was enough to make me believe that it could have succeeded, that they could succeed somewhere else. Once again we find that digital doesn’t cut it — that you need to go door-to-door. We saw this in the presidential election as well. It’s interesting to me, a digital native and someone who’s worked on the internet forever, how there are still people who think that digital is a decent replacement for IRL. It’s obviously not. But it feels like instead of more and more people realizing that, more and more people come to believe that it can be a replacement. The internet is still onboarding optimists long after the optimism is warranted. I also found it interesting that you don’t call your vote until you have not just a majority of support in your polling, but a majority of support who is willing to be public about their support. If you don’t have that yet, don’t vote yet. That’s the rule. Bessemer didn’t do that. Reading this article makes it seem like Bessemer never had a chance. Makes it seem kinda dumb that they went for it this early. But, then, you know. Before yesterday I didn’t know any of this, so I guess who can blame them. But let’s not chalk it up to a widespread antipathy toward Unions. Americans still support them.
Biden is kicking off a panel to study the expansion of the supreme court and I am so into it. Not because I think he’ll do it. The panel doesn’t even have to make recommendations. But I am into it because it’ll make Roberts et al sweat a bit. It’s funny. Just a day before the panel was announced, I saw some headline about one of the justices — Breyer — saying that they didn’t think expanding the court was a good idea. And I thought “huh, there’s an idea whose ship has sailed since the election.” And the very next day, boom. I love it. Any student of Supreme Court history knows that FDF did fail at packing the court, yes, but the act of trying to pack the supreme court was enough to give Chief Justice Hughes a bit of a push in the direction of swinging the court back in the mainstream. Well, along with a bunch of lucky well-placed retirements (this is a great book if you are into such things). Maybe that can work here. Roberts, at least, seems to want to keep the court in the mainstream and relevant. While I find it unlikely Roberts could be a Hughes, never say never. Of course, Kavanaugh, Amy Covid Bash, they’re young. The court’s more out of whack now. More activistly conservative. Activistly should be a word. Anyway, keep em on their toes, at the very least. Dare em to make a few radical decisions that will sway the public perception, and the recommendations of the panel. Roll the dice that the Dems can’t keep the senate or even pick up seats in the midterms (it’s not as impossible as you think!).
Emma and I had a very nice birthday. We got in the car and drove away. We went to Moe’s, which, if you know Emma, makes sense. Also it had outdoor seating. We ate burritos outside. It was nice. Nice to get an hour or so alone. Nice to go on a drive. Later that evening we watched the new Melissa McCarthy Octavia Spencer film Thunder Force, which was just fine. I am into this new genre of Melissa McCarthy and her husband gathering a bunch of friends and making a comedy with a sci-fi bent. It’s obvious everyone is having a great time. It’s obvious the thin plots are just there on which to hang the really-very-funny jokes and improves. It seems like a very nice life, taking a reduced salary, only making a mil for the pic (I am guessing), and another mil for your husband to direct it (I am guessing) and hanging out with a bunch of friends and making some funny shit. She has a good thing going. These films don’t get super high ratings from Rotten Tomatoes et al, but so what. Thunder Force is better than the last one, Superintelligence, and that one was just fine. There ought to be a new ratings system for these: “Viewers of Superintelligence rated Thunder Force 1.5x as good.” That’s how I would rate it.
Speaking of movies Top Gun 2 is now coming out in November, in an actual theater, and while I’m glad that this movie, delayed since 2019, is finally gonna come out, I’m pretty annoyed they’re just pushing it again instead of putting it on a streaming service. It should go on the Paramount app. You could probably do worse than go long on media stocks based on their commitment to their streaming platforms.
And speaking of events far off in the future, Godspeed You Black Emperor! announced their tour dates for 2022 (!) but still – there is a show scheduled by GYBE! at Cat’s Cradle and I am so excited. It’s the first new show announced, I think, there that I really want to go to. I bought tickets! It is so exciting! That is gonna rule. I suspect it won’t actually be the first show I go to, but it was still exciting to buy a concert ticket for the first time in over a year. By then I’ll probably be so sick of going out and just skip it because it’s a fifteen-whole-minute drive to Carrboro.
Okay, well, time to get gardening. SO much to do. The new soil arrived so I am good to go. Lots of planting. I am going to get at least 50 plants in the ground today, just you watch. I am mildly annoyed because Amazon lied about the ship time on my gardening bench. I didn’t want to order it from Amazon, but Gardeners.com and everyone else were all sold out and had ridiculously long ship times, but Amazon didn’t. So I ordered it from there and of course the ship time was a lie. Because virtually everything about Amazon’s 3rd party products are a lie. It really amazes me they put up with it. So many people are continually pissed off at Amazon because of lying third parties and they just keep letting assholes make shit up on their platform. Grr.
BUT ANYWAY. Not gonna let that get to us today. IT IS GARDENING DAY. I will take pictures for you. It’ll be fun.
Mix time! Goth mix! OLD GOTH! Big news: The Doctor Death compilations from C’Est La Morte Records have appeared on Spotify! This is very exciting to me. They have some of my favorite songs ever on them, and I have been wanting them to show up for a long time. This goth mix has one of them - an instrumental by Beautiful Pea Green Boat. Rest of these are the usual suspects. Oh, I guess the Essence is on the more obscure side. I really like that song. And Hope Blister doesn’t get enough credit - everyone said it was a pale shadow of This Mortal Coil but I think Ivo was going for something different with it, and it has aged really well. Consider giving The Hope Blister a second chance.
Okay! Enough chitchat! Time get out into the garden! Hopefully by the next time we talk, we’ll have some GREAT gardening content for you. Hopefully it’s lovely and warm and sunny where you are this weekend too and you can get outside. If that’s your thing. But if you’re a goth, I understand. Cover the windows with tinfoil and stay inside. It’s lovely too.