Odds and Ends

1. Today is Candlemas Day (40 days after Christmas), but it’s a day more celebrated in books than in life, I suspect. It’s also Groundhog Day, and my understanding is that the groundhog in Pennsylvania did indeed see his shadow this morning, prognosticating another six weeks of winter. Originally, in Germany, it was a badger who made this prediction, but when German settlers came to the coal mines of Pennsylvania, they found no badgers, so they had to rely on groundhogs for information. And now, we have the Internet! Up here in Point Roberts, we have neither badgers nor groundhogs as far as I know, but we have lots and lots of voles, and voles were not seeing their shadows this morning, so maybe Pennsylvania gets six weeks of winter and Point Roberts gets spring right away. I’m okay with that; and last Saturday made spring seem like a reasonable prospect.

2. For the past six months, reading the events of the world, I have pondered from time to time whether Point Roberts is a good place to sit out the arriving/already here bad times. I can’t say that I’ve progressed too far in my thoughts. It doesn’t seem like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is going to be much of a guide to action, but Point Roberts does seem like as good a place as any if you don’t have a lot of debt and do have a little ground in which to grow vegetables. However, last week’s New Yorker (January 26, 2009) has a fascinating article on ‘The Dystopians,’ describing the 'forward thinking' (as the financial types speak of predictions) of various non-religious types’ apocalyptic visions. Unfortunately, the full text isn’t available on the Net, but there is a summary of the article here. These are all people who are getting licenses for pistols, I note, are living on boats, or cataloguing their gold acquisitions. All pretty interesting if you’re not someone who is too susceptible of imagination. In any case, it made me think Point Roberts might be a good place with respect to lack of weapons: a nice gated community and with the gate operated by Homeland Security. Oh, we could end up being grateful to the border agents just as we could end up being grateful to the bulk mailers. We’re not done with irony yet, I guess.

3. With respect to on-going bad times, I find myself checking the status of Sterling and Banner Banks each day as demonstrated by their stock prices. Both have continued to plunge, and at $1.53 (Sterling), plunging much more could be very painful. Banner dropped too, but not quite as hard; now at $2.99. I have no idea what happens when a stock has no value at all.