We have quite the divide in our union, the United Association of Plumbers, Pipefitters and Sprinklerfitters. Many of the rank and file, and I mean many, supported the Orange Baboon in the last election, despite the UA leadership endorsing Biden. What the Magats didn’t know is that the leadership personally interviewed all the candidates prior to their endorsement. My son, Jeremy, sits on the Interview Committee. They were blown away by the commitment by the Biden/Harris team to help rebuild union membership across the entire workforce. Naturally, they endorsed the winner.
One of the first things Biden did through executive order was stop the Keystone Pipeline, which put 3,500 members of our union to work. Our leadership knew this going into the election, but decided that the interests of the 370,000 members were more important than the 3,500. Still, the Magats protested over the loss of 3,500 jobs as a way of uplifting the Chosen One. It was a ballsy thing to support Biden because the leadership is up for re-election in August and I’m sure there will still be a lot of sore feelings, but I’m glad they did the right thing.

I think I’m a “why” person. When I first started at my last job I was obsessed with understanding how my responsibilities and tasks fit into the larger picture. I may have a little “how” blood in me as well. I’m definitely a squiggly line guy!

I braced myself for a diatribe about the news of the world, but this was a surprisingly uplifting post. “We have only our faith in ourselves, our ability to remain humane and courteous, our tenacity at remaining sane even in a social vacuum, and our commitment to accomplishment–if only to survive.” That is a great statement of the human spirit and relevant to the large and small challenges of every age. Thank you for this humane, courteous and inspiring post!

I read To a Mouse–and did not remember the famous lines ‘the best laid plans of mice and men…’ were from that poem. I had to read it side by side with an English translation! Thank you for reminding me of that poem, and for your interest in seeing more of mine. I should use these long winter days to organize my papers!

Thanks or no thanks to the pandemic, this is becoming more relevant all the time. But the pandemic also complicates things because you can’t use the available space to bring people together. Our church fellowship hall has been repurposed as a classroom during the covid crisis, which might lead to creative thinking about other uses for that space when the school district doesn’t need it anymore.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Meanwhile the population grows and the phosphate rock dwindles. Small miracles: forget the chemical warfare and thank God for Fritz Haber and his process. Nuclear fission, glorious pinnacle of immediately-post-colonial Science that it may be, cost us a lot more and gave us a lot less.

Speaking of nuclear weapons, the major drawdown of U.S. and Soviet/Russian stockpiles (and the major financial strain facing both of us, somehow) has resulted in a serious deficiency of the versatile, critically-important isotopes tritium and helium-3 (only obtainable by the decay of tritium, or mining the surface of the damned moon, which is apparently even more expensive than waiting for reactor-bred tritium to decay.) That the global fleet of CANDU reactors is approaching end-of-life doesn’t help the situation one bit. An argument for rearmament? Of course not, but without that spur it seems the U.S. has little interest in continuing investment in the H3/He3 supply chain. Which is too bad, because we’re the only source the Western world has for that stuff.