They’re both true

You look pretty good down here.

I hope your day is the wonder of the dark side of the moon.

Well it's been a week of highs and lows out here in the world. From moon shots (has anyone told NASA that DEI is over? Because this is the most diverse crowd to share a space-age shoebox yet) to unhinged threats of genocide.

Talk about your cognitive dissonance.

Safe to say that the thing that's making life bearable this week is dreaming of space; from Artemis II to Project Hail Mary, everything seems better among the stars. Humans have always been escapists.

(This animation of human migration shows just how hard it is for us to sit still.)

You know, NASA kind of seems like a fun place to work. Who, for example, has the job of deciding what song wakes the astronauts every morning? I found the full list of wakeup songs that have been used ever since the space program began. It’s on Spotify and yes I have issues with Spotify but I’m doing the best I can over here.

Which leads me to think about whether, in general, I’m making the best of things, or am just kind of too lazy to make bad things better.

Example: This morning I used no less than three types of creamer in my coffee. It approximates the single type of oat milk creamer I like, but as far as I can tell there is only one place in Portland to purchase said creamer and it's a 20 minute drive on a good day. So I haven't picked any up in weeks.

On the other hand, I have three different kinds of coffee supplements in the fridge: The one that I bought accidentally (it’s the brand I like but it's sweetened 😝 which is not my preferred flavor for coffee), the other oat milk that I thought would be a decent temporary replacement but just isn't, and then there's good old half and half, and once upon a time that was the gold standard but alas, no longer.

But it turns out that a combination of the three isn't bad. And of course I can't waste all these perfectly good coffee completers just because I'm too lazy to go get the one I like, right?

So I guess I'm making the best of a bad situation (and yes I realize it's a pretty good bad situation) but also, it’s a circumstance of my own making. So you tell me - am I making the best or being the worst?

I saw a post by Greta today (that's Thunberg, of course; at our house we just call her Greta).

She was asking why no one is reacting to the president's rather surprising statement that he would wipe a civilization off the map. And from my perspective EVERYONE is reacting to it. I've seen nothing but reactions.

But I guess it's true that no one seems to be doing anything about it, which is likely what she meant.

And while I’m pretty sure we've hired and are paying a bunch of senators and reps for positions that have “checks and balances” in the job description, it's a bit of a cop-out to just wait for them to do something.

I mean obviously I didn't vote for the creep but he is my president for better or worse.

So a big part of me is (silently) screaming and thrashing about and thinking that I'd better just buy a one-way ticket to D.C. and stand outside the White House with my coffee (hope they have good creamer!) and a rotating assortment of signs and refuse to leave until something changes.

But that seems... Well, expensive, for one thing, and I’d have to quit my job, and honestly, unless literally millions of others were to join me it feels fruitless. So I keep watching Tom Holland do Umbrella on Instagram and considering my options.

Which are: Bury my head in the sand or take advantage of my Canadian citizenship and move north.

Surely there are other less extreme scenarios, but this feels like the time for a grand gesture if there ever was one, and I find I just don't have the wherewithal to make the commitment to a huge move of any kind.

Which I guess is making the best of a bad situation? But also feels kind of lazy.

Like many of us, I spend a lot of time thinking about 1938 Germany, and wondering if people there felt like this; like, it's terrible, but is there anything we can do about it? And I guess we all wish they'd done more to stop it before it got that bad.

So I'm just sitting here wondering what we should be doing now, because the history books are going to have a field day with this whole situation. And it's not really about legacy, but rather that if you take the long view things will most certainly get worse before they get better.

And with hindsight will the pundits suggest all manner of things we could have done to intervene before it got this bad? I mean, aside from refusing to allow felons to run for the highest office in the land?

So! Sorry for the downer but please, if you have a moment, let me know if there is a thing you would be proud to have done to stop the madness that is our current situation?

(By which I mean climate change and billionaires and autocrats and all the rest of it.)

Well, the sun is shining and the flowers are blooming. I’m listening to the NASA playlist, I've finished my coffee and I guess I've got about three more days of my Frankencreamer left. It's high time I got off the couch and drove to Natural Grocers and bought some damned oat milk.

That's not going to save the world, but it will remind me that I am capable of making things a little bit better in my own life so maybe a couple of phone calls to D.C. are possible as well.

Ok love you bye!

Julia

PS - How cute are these four in their eclipse glasses?

Ben Abraham knows that things can be terrible and wonderful at the same time, and so does this email. Forward it to someone who's feeling conflicted.