Diary

The book I'm reading is long, and my reading has been curtailed further by another round of renovation in the house, which makes it too noisy for me to do anything that requires concentration. That should be over soon, and I hope to progress through the book I'm reading at a faster pace and then move on to a different book which I may prefer. We have transitioned into a true spring environment, similar to May of 2011, in which we visited Middlebury for the first time, loved it, and bought the house. After October, May is probably the best month here. Then, if you like snow and cold weather, January and February are pretty good. However, with climate change, we seem to be getting the most snow in March now.

William is mellowing with age, but still can be demanding for a pet. He likes to go out every day, no matter what the weather is, and is primarily nocturnal. When it was twenty below outside, one of his ears must have frozen, and it remained bent for a few months, but it seems to have straightened out now. I bought him a water heater designed for rabbit hutches so that his outside bowl of water won't freeze. During the warmer months he stays out almost all night; I let him in for a snack at 2:00 or 3:00 A.M. and then he goes back out again. He catches mice and brings them unharmed through his cat door onto the porch so that he can play with them. Then, in the morning, if we're not careful, they can run into the house when we open the door. He is friendlier toward us than he used to be but is still violent on occasion. Loud noises scare him, and he hides in the basement when he hears a truck coming.

I would like to take up new topics but am not finding much inspiration at the moment. Some of the ideas that I've written about on this blog seem to be confirmed repeatedly by current events, and, since it is impossible for me to change anything, the news is more depressing than encouraging. Specifically, the Trump presidency is a clear-cut case of human folly, and not only is he remaining in office, but when you look at the history of the American presidency, there is not much likelihood that he will be succeeded by anyone significantly more competent. All of the presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt seem mediocre, and even Roosevelt had conspicuous human weaknesses. Besides the foibles of presidents, in a democratic system there is no escaping the stupidity of the public. For example, John McCain is currently gaining public sympathy simply because he is ill and patriotic. It is important to him to oppose state-sponsored torture, because he was tortured, and it is important to him to defeat evil, since he envisions himself as having fought evil when he was injured during his military service: this is all emotional nonsense that has nothing to do with competent governance. As far as I'm concerned, McCain is just an emotional guy who thinks that he should have been rewarded for his sacrifices and is angry that he didn't get to be president and will soon die. Most of his ideas are based on his sense of self-importance and entitlement, and no matter how long he lived he would never be a good president or a panacea for the feeble political process here.

My readership seems to be dwindling at the moment, though there are still about three regulars. I am always getting hits from across the world, and the hits seem to be determined by the titles I choose for my posts. I could increase my hits dramatically simply by writing catchy titles, but there is no point to that, since I don't want a wide audience and prefer the current semi-private, calm atmosphere. For unknown reasons, "Robert Hughes on Andy Warhol" is very popular now. I don't mind not getting any comments from random people who happened to reach the blog by googling something, though occasional comments from people who have actually read my posts can be stimulating and encouraging. I think most readers prefer soft topics such as fiction and poetry, and, since I probably won't be writing about those again for some time, the blog may be less appealing to them.