Setting some markers at the end of the year. After the playoffs, DirecTV is out of here. Rediculous price increases for no reason. The playoffs are directly tied to my tax prep; hence the delay. There are now streaming sources for the three networks. We can see the local news on delay. This is the marker for the switch to total streaming.

This is a marker for where the country is in the wave of flirtation with authoritarianism. I think we are just down from the top of the wave and that the elections in 2024, powered by Roe rage and young voters, will sweep the maga movement, which is essentially a white christian nationalist movement in response to demographic change, into the dustbin. The maga hat will go into the attic along with swastikas and the confederate flag. Marker: the bravery of Shenna Bellows. Still, it will be a nerve wracking election year, with public trials, supreme court decisions, crazy online talk, all the stuff that used to be "unprecedented." The mystery will remain as to how good people embraced such a narcistic, twisted, crazy criminal like Trump. Books will be written about that.
I think before the presidential election, Biden will radically change the US policy toward Israel. Our country shouldn't be a party to apartheid and genocide. The Israeli government is not the people; Netanyahu has to go. The world will help Ukraine outlast Putin. Europe's war to save democracy is an actual war; sending weapons is the least we can do.

This is a high water marker; the big storm that knocked out power for a week brought the lake up to the landing. The storms will be more frequent and more severe. Our internet (marker: we got upgraded to fiber about a month ago) came back right away and our whole house generator kept us comfortable. The library and the high school had no internet for a week. Our online library auction had a quieter than usual final bidding day because many people still had no power or internet.

tech marker: returned the $7,000 hearing aids, decided that I have more like $2,000 worth of hearing loss; bought the over-the-counter Jabra latest model with better battery charging. I am used to evaluating electronics and listening devices. And I need my bluetooth connections for other things.

As to library markers, I hope to land two grants (as we did this year), set up our endowment fund with MCF, replace the lighting in the children's room, switch from Udemy to LinkIn Learning for online courses, add a couple of bookcases, sponsor a contradance, start our library of things, gain a couple of volunteers, invent some new activities, and hit 11,500 catalogued items.

I don't remember a weather week like this one. We got 8 inches of snow on Monday and then it stayed sub-freezing with no wind for the rest of the week; everything stayed in place in brilliant sunshine; it was a little December gift. The lake was "caught" as they say about the first freezing over, and made odd ice crystals and loud sounds somewhere between whale song and a passing train. On one of the coldest nights we did our bus trip to the lights in Boothbay: sunset over China Lake, lights in Wiscasset, a million lights at the garden, the good kind of trolls, cocoa with peppermint schnapps, people bundled up on a cold school bus off on an adventure, their home fires feeling especially cozy later that night.

People send us pictures and they go on the fridge; nothing ever comes off; ten percent of the people in the pictures are deceased. I like seeing their pictures and I never remove friends who have died from my phone's address book; I like seeing their names. When my sister told me that Katie was dying, I walked over to the fridge and looked at this picture of my niece Melanie and her best friend Katie after I got them to ride bikes around the lake 20+ years ago. We found a lost kitten on the ride and brought it home. They are 40 now; Melanie is expecting a baby girl in January and Katie is dying of an aggressive untreatable cancer. Leaves you with nothing to say. Someone is always dying; someone is always being born.

I graduated from my 10 year stint on the planning board this week. It's in good hands. I hate night meetings in the winter. When it's dark at 4, my brain shuts down by 6 at which time I need to be in my happy place with a book in one hand and a sazerac in the other. Last night at a selectmen's meeting, an EDC idea was prematurely on the agenda; we haven't even discussed it in committee yet. The idea is to build a solar racking system on land behind the town office and let businesses/organizations buy their own panels to go on it. Small scale community solar. We'll see where that goes. We would love to buy some panels for the library; for the cost of one year's CMP bill, we could have our own power for decades. I can't think of any better return on investment.