CHANGING TIMES

We have no snow! Oh, perhaps a teeny patch here and there. It doesn't look much like Christmas. That is okay with me. I have seen enough snow in my almost eighty four years on Planet Earth. When I was a sprat we had several snowless Christmases. It was especially problematic when Santa Claus brought us skis or a sled for Christmas. We didn't expect snow until January. We had some early snow, like the 1940 Armistice Day blizzard. I was five and in first grade. My Mom let us go to school with just sweaters because it was so warm [fortyish F]. We resisted wearing coats when we could. I don't know what kind of weather reporting they had in those days but I am sure they were aware of what was developing in the West via radio stations. In any case they let us out of school by Noon and our walk home was through sleet or pelleting snow. By supper time we were snowed in. My Grandpa worked downtown [a load dispatcher for NSP]. He didn't get home for a couple days. His relief couldn't get to work. The streetcars weren't running.

Getting snow for Christmas was iffy until the fifties. I was fifteen in 1950 and I remember a switch in the weather pattern. We started getting snow before Christmas. And lots of snow. I remember riding down rural roads and it was like going through a tunnel. The snow was so high on the side of the road one couldn't see over it. I shouldn't generalize that was probably just one year of the fifties. The images from childhood stick and grow.

I will accept whatever weather comes our way.

I am enjoying this mild entree into Winter. I am just now recovering well enough that I can get around outside. It would be nice if it continued until it was feasible to begin our pining for Spring.

I would really like to talk about the World condition but it is so deplorable, so confusing, so depressing, so dark I don't want to. I have come to the conclusion that nothing reflected in the media holds much truth. There is such great division. Yet all sides are out of their minds. No....no I won't go in to it.

Some of you know I have an interest in broad economic events. I more or less look at the ups in downs of the economy over time. I look at the stock market trends [world wide] several times a day. I study the rise and fall of the world currencies. I am interested in how nations interface economically.

I have made predictions a few times and I am always wrong. Actually, the prediction is usually correct but my timing is off. The economy is always more durable and the status quo more resistant to change than I anticipate. With that in mind, we are again at a point where the stock market could take a severe beating. The thousand point recent drop is nothing compared to what could happen. The market is more speculative than it was in 1929. There are tech companies that are valued in the billions that haven't earned one dime. Flush, cash rich institutions are betting on the come. It doesn't always work out in poker and it is not likely to work out now. There is a crumbling at the core of many huge financial institutions. The EU could come apart. The empire is rotting away. The East is rising the West is passe. We are in for some interesting times.

Despite all the insanity in the world, I believe sanity [loving common sense] is also on the rise. It is going to arise in countries and regions of the world that we don't expect.

The propaganda narrative is so turned around and distorted, we don't know what is happening in the world.

We will be okay! Let us keep our center, stay in the moment, make all of our decisions in the most loving way possible. The Earth may shake. We will be okay.

Love and Peace, Gregg