taking care of business and the continued decline of the republican party

Well, it was a comedy of errors with two fools but we eventually got it up.

Previously Pam had ordered a pop up canopy to give her shade loving plants in pots some shade since she has none at her house but the high wind and 8” of rain last week cratered it,

so I offered her the use of our 'show' tent that Marc used for sandblasting the glass when we did the A&M job and it's been packed away ever since so Friday we, literally, dragged the bag with the top and sides and the bag with the frame pieces over to where she wanted it and set about erecting it. My knot tying skills (yay, I still remember how to do it) from my river guide days came in handy when we secured the frame to the concrete weights she had from a previous life, back when her husband was still alive and they were doing the farmer's market out here.

Before that though, we went to an estate sale. I bought two screwdrivers for the toolkit I'm putting together for over at the shop so I'm not taking the ones from the house, cost me a whopping $1.50. We used to go on Thursday mornings when they start but that was before I started volunteering at SHARE.

Today I went to the “farmer's” market to get tamales and honey and some ground beef from local pasture raised cows.

This was probably the most vendors they've had so far this season and no produce (freeze set everyone's gardens back). I'd guess at least half the vendors were selling baked goods...bread, cookies, pastries, cupcakes, muffins, desserts. The rest was a varied assortment of crafts, canned goods, baby chicks, eggs, the local rescue outfit had kittens, the meat, local honey.

Then I tackled my project for the day...moving all the brick piles from the side of the garage where they were sinking and covered by devil's tongue and liriope and grass and weeds and leaves into the barn. Now I can see what I've got.

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So now there's a whole right wing trope about the stimulus money and restaurants and some other businesses not being able to hire enough staff or workers. The trope goes like this...nobody wants to work because they are getting all that free money with the stimulus and the enhanced unemployment insurance. It came up on the local chat FB page and another guy and I called bullshit. Some people were complaining that they had been to a couple of local restaurants and they had only one server and one cook and the wait was long. Maybe if they didn't pay starvation wages they wouldn't have this problem. Maybe if they offered a living wage they could keep employees. Maybe some people are choosing not to go back to work as long as they can get the unemployment which isn't making anyone rich, just enough to cover basic necessities. And I don't blame them a bit. I doubt any of the people complaining about low wage workers not returning to their jobs would give up a brief respite to go back to making less than they needed to survive and yet they are so quick to cast aspersions on an entire group of low wage workers.

At SHARE last Thursday, it came up again...twice. Hanging out with the guys, one of them repeated the BS. It's a myth, I told them, and I read later that research does not support the lie. Later, sitting with some of the other women (it was a slow day), someone else repeated the same trope. I kept my mouth shut because these are all religious republicans with one or two exceptions (republican, not the religious part) who are doing what their religion requires of them, helping those less fortunate and I do like volunteering there. Finally I put forth that if that was the case then maybe these employers should offer better wages. I got a grudging nod from one.

So, while on the one hand republicans are trashing the stimulus as destroying worker initiative, and at least three states are refusing to implement the enhanced unemployment thereby forcing their citizens back to work for starvation wages, some republican congresspeople are going out to their constituents and promoting how the stimulus package is helping them, as if they actually voted for it. Not a single republican voted for the American Rescue Act. Not one. And, big surprise, McConnell has recently stated that his sole focus is making sure this administration does not succeed. Think about that. A high ranking member of Congress is doing his best to make sure that Biden does not succeed in making the lives of ordinary Americans better.