Too Hot to Look Perky

The thermometer says 105°F...something north of 40°C. Too hot to even step out the door for a picture. This is a pot of Gazanias just outside the back door. They are very satisfactory flowers and bloom almost year around despite considerable neglect. Today they were looking a bit wilted and who could blame them? Even the birds have sought shelter somewhere.

Amidst daily Covid statistics (not good) and a story about Trump defunding the post office so that they won’t be able to handle the volume of mail-in ballots (how is this supposed to help him win this election? Is this even legal? Does anybody care that he’s destroying the US Post Office so he can cheat people out of voting? Does he really have so little self respect that he would brag about winning this way?) there was an article entitled “Who Would Replace Harris?”

Couldn’t we just get Biden elected before we start conjecturing about his demise?
Now that I look at it I realize that I misread that headline. The question is...If Harris and Biden are elected, who will replace Harris in the Senate? This job would fall to our governor, Gavin Newsome, who insists that “choosing her successor is not what I’m focused on right now.”

Thank goodness... the propensity of the press, even what I consider to be the ‘responsible’ press and the political strategists, to focus on anything in any kind of depth for more than five minutes is really beginning to get me down.

I have to admire Newsome for saying, the choice of Harris’ successor “is not what I’m focused on right now...” and for god’s sake, how far back do they have to parse Harris’
ancestry? Is it not slightly demeaning in some way to say that she is the “first Black woman of Indian and Jamaican descent to be selected as a presidential running mate?” Is it not enough to say that she is Black? I’m waiting for the day when we can refer to people’s accomplishments without referring to their color at all. First things first, I suppose...