Waukesha

Today is the day for enjoyment as a part of the state of truth, for with it we attain many kinds of balanced states.

On this day in 1963, as I was boarding a bus coming home from a day of elementary school, the driver told me that President John F. Kennedy had been shot and killed in Dallas.  Impermanence is swift. Kennedy had been shot by assassin Lee Harvey Oswald during a motorcade through the city, and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as the new President afterwards. On that same day in 1963 that Kennedy died, British writers Aldous Huxley and C.S. Lewis also died, and exactly 30 years later, British writer Anthony Burgess died on this same date.  Synchronicity is just as swift.

It's Scarlett Johansson's birthday!  Marvel's Black Widow turns 37 today.

Closing arguments are being heard today in the trial of three white men for the 2020 lynching of an innocent, unarmed black man in Brunswick, Georgia.  Russia is amassing troops on the Ukraine border with the apparent intention of an imminent invasion.  Although the average number of new covid cases in Georgia is remaining steady at about 1,000 cases per day, the number is increasing in other parts of the U.S., especially New England and the upper Midwest just as we're approaching Thanksgiving weekend, a likely superspreader event.  The average number on new cases increased by some 42% in the past two weeks in Wisconsin alone.

But in the worst of all possible news stories, a man - a career criminal with a long rap sheet and out on bail for domestic violence charges - ran a large SUV through a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Five people died (so far), and many more are in the hospital with injuries.  For some 12 hours, the nation collectively held its breath wondering who had committed this heinous act and why.  Was it a radical Islamic terrorist?  Was he somehow protesting or retaliating for the recent Kyle Rittenhouse acquittal in Wisconsin?  Was he a white supremacist feeling somehow empowered by the Wisconsin acquittal?  As it turns out, he was just a very stupid and very callous criminal fleeing the scene of his latest crime, reportedly another domestic violence incident, and chose to just drive through the crowd at high speed rather than stop running or find a separate route.  I don't think the man is going to be treated very kindly in prison.

Poor Wisconsin.  A cold, stony land with a history of violence, you deserve better (yes, I'm aware that the footage in this video is not all from Wisconsin).

Sunset in Georgia will be at 5:30 p.m. We're all Waukeshans today.