Now, before you get your knickers in a twist, Old Joe is the name of an asteroid, not just an agist slam on Joe Biden, whose 81st birthday occurs Monday, 20 November 2023. With vast numbers of Americans, even Democratic supporters, leery about Biden’s ability to continue four more years in the notoriously high-pressure job due to his age, the point seems an increasingly apt celestial moniker to represent the 46th President of the United States.
On Wednesday, 25 October 2023, the peace of a Down East autumn evening was shattered by gunfire which took the lives of at least 18, wounding 13 more. At this early date (October 26), names of the victims have not been released, and police are engaged in a statewide manhunt for the suspect, 40-year-old Robert Card, missing after separate attacks on a bowling alley and a restaurant bar. Card, who has been dealing with mental illness, has a military background and worked as a firearms instructor; his car was found abandoned in nearby Lisbon, but there is no trace of the suspect. [Author’s note: Robert Card was found dead, an apparent suicide, late on Friday the 27th.]
US Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) passed away peacefully at her Washington DC home on 29 September 2023, bringing an end to an era. Her health had been in decline for some time, but the death itself was sudden and unexpected. At 90, with some thirty years in the Senate, Feinstein had become a Washington institution, initially elected in 1992 as California’s first female Senator, and first female Jewish Senator in the US. Reelected five times, in recent months ill health had kept her absent from Judiciary Committee meetings for long periods, imperiling the Democrats’ fragile majority and delaying numerous judicial appointments. In February 2023 she announced she would not run for reelection when her term expired in 2024.
After a grueling nine months as Speaker of the US House of Representatives, attempting to herd the mangy strays of the GOP caucus, on September 3, 2023, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) lost the job he had coveted all his adult life, as a motion to vacate passed by 216-210, booting him from the Speakership. Eight MAGA Republican radicals joined Democrats to remove McCarthy from his lofty perch, the first time ever that a sitting Speaker has been fired.
I like to think of myself as a fairly tolerant person. At least when it comes to other species (with humans, I’m not always that patient). I far prefer a policy of “live and let live.” There are exceptions. I will not suffer a mosquito to live in my presence (buy, hey! they started it!). And an ant discovered in the kitchen has a very short shelf life, though I often turn a blind eye to scouts I find elsewhere in the house. Silverfish and my library don’t mix, and thousand leggers skeeve me out, to the point of hysterics, so I am usually unable to take direct action against them. I positively cosset spiders of all kinds, which help me deal with other unwanted insects (sorry, spiders, I know you’re actually not insects, but arachnids; it’s just easier to phrase it that way).
On 1 September 2023, word came of the death of singer/songwriter Jimmy Buffett, who passed away at his Sag Harbor, NY home, surrounded by his family, friends, music, and dogs, after a four-year battle with an aggressive, rare skin cancer. Buffet was best known for his patented brand of “tropical rock,” celebrating a back-to-the-beach, “island escapism” aesthetic, especially epitomized by “Margaritaville” and “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” from the 1970s. But Buffett was also a gifted businessman and entrepreneur, with a net worth at his passing of over a billion dollars, making him one of the richest musicians on the planet, albeit most of his wealth stemmed from these other sidelines, and not record sales.
