It's a Bad Precedent

Had a nice chat with my pop on the way home.  I almost didn’t.  I called his landline on Tuesday.  Left a message.  Called today and, once again, left a message.  His cell usually has shitty connectivity but today, when I tried him, he picked right up and, pedaling along, we got into it with how-ya-been, where-ya-been?

He’s been enjoying walking down to the pond near his place where the beavers play.  They go into large, mature deciduous trees and drop them just so, to create their watery homes.  Given the polar blasts they’ve been enduring back home these must be some particularly frozen environments they’ve created.  Looking off to the wooded area to my right I sighed and told him to enjoy what he had.  We, I mentioned, have no winter animals, save two:  sparrows and magpies.  I don’t think I’ve seen another living creature in my “suburban” neighborhood this winter, save those two birds, alley cats and dogs on leashes. 

He was not glad that the Starbucks’ Howard Shultz was running for president.  (I had to look up the billionaire's first name.  A bad sign, for him?)  It occurred to me that overnight, seemingly everyone and everything I’d read was not welcoming of his candidacy.  It would seem to be a particularly bad time to pitch oneself as a billionaire “outsider”, who was going to use business acumen to “fix” the broken system.  If we didn’t need that two years ago it sounds like farce repeating tragedy after twenty-four months of Trump.  My pop said he’d vote for Bloomberg.  I considered this.  I could imagine that.  But I think I’d rather the next occupant in the office was not a billionaire.  Sorry Michael, sorry Howard, it's a bad precedent.   

A call just now with Israel.  A call in one hour with Brazil.  My natural curiosity, the waxing centrality of China and the enervating checker-player-trade war we’re in, have me searching for and working with companies well beyond Silicon Valley these days.  It’s the end of January today and at 5:15PM it's still light out.  The morning light comes earlier too.  By the end of Chinese “Lunar” new year it will really feel like spring is close at hand.   We haven’t had a drop of precipitation all winter.  I wonder we’ll get a flake or two later in February. 

Wednesday, 01/3019