10:20 – We finished watching Amanda Foreman’s The Ascent of Woman last night. After it ended, I commented to Barbara that I thought the whole series could be summed up as, “A few women spoke out; almost no one listened to them; they died a horrible death; and nothing much changed.” I do agree with Foreman that one important metric by which a society should be judged is how it treats its women. On that basis, I think English-speaking and western European countries set the standard. Despite what progs claim, women in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and most of Europe have full equality. These women are better off than women anywhere or anywhen in the history of the world.
Barbara is out preparing for a mulch delivery. She planted bushes in front of the porch on the driveway side. She’s also going to make a bed on the other side of the stairs in which we’ll plant herbs. The guy at the nursery confirmed that our last freeze date up here is typically mid-May, so we’ll keep our baby herb plants in pots on the deck until then. If it’s to be very cold, we can just bring them inside.
When I took Colin out at 0645 this morning, he pulled me down around the side of the house, went into his alert stance, and started stalking the dozen or so gigantic squirrels he’d spotted right along our back fence. I explained to him that those were Black Angus squirrels, and that they’d stomp the shit out of him, given half a chance. He reluctantly abandoned stalking them and came back up into the front yard to do what he’s supposed to do.
When Barbara read my page yesterday, she said, “No more flour.” I hope to convince her that every guy has to have a hobby and mine is collecting bulk staples. It’s a pretty inexpensive hobby, after all.