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 So, on Monday I made a post here, invoking the Les Miserables song “One Day More”, as did many of my left-leaning friends on the Internet. And why not! It’s a song that so ably lends itself to a Monday before a major election. In the show, all of Act One is building and building and building to a group of events, and then Act One concludes as the entire company gears up for the big day to come: Tomorrow we’ll be far away,Tomorrow is the judgement day; Tomorrow we’ll discoverWhat our God in Heaven has in store,One more dawn,One moreDown the rabbit hole….

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This is the photo I took on the morning of Election Day, 2016. It seemed like a bright and optimistic day. I captioned it on Instagram: “Looks like a nice morning to make some history happen!” The next morning, in the midst of reeling with the eventual result of that election, the hulking husk of Bethlehem Steel, the old steel plant on the shore of Lake Erie south of Buffalo, caught fire. The blaze was enormous, and I was able to take this photo of the smoke cloud from the roof of The Store. It was hard even then toDown the rabbit hole….

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 Specifically, I did the democracy thing the other day, on Saturday, when early voting started in New York State. I got to the polling place (a local community center) about ten minutes before it opened, and at that point there was already a line, which extended into the parking lot. This was strange; the building is big and is surrounded by very ample sidewalks, and yet the people queued up in the parking lot. It took a cop to come along and tell everyone to queue on the sidewalk instead of the parking lot. People are weird. I waited inDown the rabbit hole….

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In Larry McMurtry’s great Western novel Lonesome Dove, for much of the novel the point of view changes between the main story (a group of Texas cattlemen leading their herds north for selling) and a secondary plot in which we follow the nasty adventures of Dan Suggs and his brothers, who are a murderous trio of guys, killing and robbing their way across the prairie. About two-thirds of the way through the book, our lawful cattlemen meet Suggs and his brothers, and they manage to subdue them quickly and make ready to hang them from the nearest tree. But toDown the rabbit hole….

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 Obviously there is zero chance that I will vote for anybody other than Joe Biden this November (or October, really–early voting, here I come!), but I do want to highlight this segment of his acceptance speech last night. How strange a time it is, that we have to celebrate the very notion of electing a President of the United States who can feel genuine human emotions. Let’s go, Joe. I’m ready. Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

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Every Pizza Hut restaurant in Western New York has permanently closed. I’m not going to pretend that this is a loss, except in the sense that this is a few hundred jobs down the drain. I worked for Pizza Hut back in the 1990s, when we lived in Olean, NY, and I posted years ago what that was like. It wasn’t a horrible place to work back then, but it sure wasn’t great, either; pay was a joke, and for all the lip service paid to the idea that Pizza Hut was supposed to be a step above fast food, itDown the rabbit hole….

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So, among everything else, 2020 has become The Year We All Wear Masks. Or it should be that, but an awful lot of people are proving wildly resistant to the idea, on various bases. There are the always-entertaining libertarian types who are loath to follow any governmental guideline, no matter how wise or just or sensible, because it’s from the government. There are the fact-challenged skeptics who refuse to believe that the COVID-19 pandemic is real, or they accept that it’s real but overblown, or they simply believe themselves to be relatively bullet-proof and take a “Let’s just roll theDown the rabbit hole….

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Of all Independence Days, this one is something else, isn’t it? I personally find it hard to celebrate this year, for oh so many reasons. About the most positive feeling I can muster this year is a grim resolve, the vow that no, this ain’t over, not by a damn longshot. I’m not giving up on my country forever, but it’s hard right now to see it ever becoming the land to which it aspires (and, for a certain population, believes it always was until something went awry, hint hint wink wink nudge nudge as to what that might be). Anyway. HappyDown the rabbit hole….

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Well, you can’t escape what’s been going on. You can’t ignore it, short of completely disconnecting and retreating to the wilderness somewhere. And that’s the point, isn’t it? Anyone who has at least the possibility of escaping what’s going on, even in a momentary dream, is a person indulging the perk of privilege. Random stuff. This is in no particular order. ::  I’ve never actually met Roger Green, but he and I have been mutual blog-friends for years, and with the recent ugliness I’ve been thinking a lot about Roger and his family. What a hell of a world itDown the rabbit hole….