Image from The Day the Earth Stood Still (not the Outer Limits)

Despite the similarity of titles, this isn’t about Steinbeck’s novel. In fact I’ve never read The Winter of Our Discontent, and I can’t read it now because I’m slogging through the midpoint doldrums of Fairy Tale, a recent Stephen King publication, a six-hundred-page monster that I selected to combat exactly what I’m going through now. I can’t seem to finish a book. Someone online called Fairy Tale a page turner. It’s not.

My writer’s group friend Cyn gave me a copy of her brand-new novel the same day I started Fairy Tale. I’m sure she’s awaiting feedback, and she probably thinks no feedback is bad feedback—at least that’s what I would think. Her book sits unopened, next in line, but still queued behind three hundred potentially dull pages of King’s self-indulgent rambling.

I awoke early today, Saturday, for a yoga class. My weekday alarm rings at five. Since I slept until five-thirty today, I guess you could say I slept in. The temperature was two degrees when I woke up. And that’s not two degrees above freezing most of the world might expect. It was two degrees Fahrenheit, thirty degrees colder than freezing, at least on our silly scale.

The whole winter has been like this. Single digits, negative digits, snow fell three weeks ago, and it snowed some more last week. None has melted. Inches of snow cover all surfaces except the streets and some of the sidewalks. I’m sure this is common in the northern states near the Canadian border. In southern Pennsylvania, it’s rare, and I’m sick of it. My fingertips are split open and bleeding. With care over several days, one split begins to heal, but another one opens. My hands hurt all the time.

The news cycle is the other thing a casting a chill this week. When I cracked open my laptop this morning, I saw that Pete Hegseth is our new defense secretary. Has a less qualified person ever been nominated for this position? Two staunch conservatives, Mitch McConnell and George Will, don’t think so. Hegseth’s only qualification for the role seems to be his desire to bring a ‘warrior culture’ back to the Pentagon, whatever that means. Regardless, through his comments, writings, and podcasts, it’s apparent that Hegseth only wants warriors who are straight, white and male.

The concerns McConnell and Will raise about Hegseth’s credentials ignore the unresolved accusations of excessive drinking in public settings, sexual assault, spousal abuse, infidelity, and financial malfeasance while overseeing two separate nonprofits. Essentially a laundry list of all the things that bar a normal government employee from getting a department of defense security clearance. Also in the news today, Kristi Noem, the dog assassin, is now our homeland security secretary.

The astonishing speed that the Trump administration is blowing up the country makes my head spin. In one day, he pardoned 1,600 violent criminals, began deporting our working class, silenced our health agencies, eliminated an accepted path to citizenship, froze the federal workforce, antagonized Mexico, withdrew (again) from the Paris Climate Treaty and the World Health Organization, and invited Elon Musk onto a global stage so he could give a Nazi salute. Since then he mused about eliminating FEMA and threatened to withholding disaster relief funds to force California to comply with right-wing initiatives.

The universe, knowing I needed a break from the cold offered up a day just below freezing yesterday, the warmest day we’ve had in weeks. As I headed out for an evening run, I strapped on a headlight. The bar of LED lights that spans the width of my forehead and the red taillight on the back of my head do little to illuminate the street. The point is mostly to let cars know that a pedestrian is nearby. My wife Susan once encountered me on a run. She assured me that she could see the bouncing red light from a block away, but it took her most of that block to figure out what the heck she was looking at.

As I passed an older man (older than me), he shouted out “Hey, you look just like that guy from the Outer Limits.” I knew the image he was referring to, so I guess that makes me pretty old as well. Just before I got home, a pair of dogs bounded out of the dark and dodged in and out around my running legs. After they clipped my heels three or four times, I decided to walk before I fell. I shouted into the night “HEY, WHOSE DOGS ARE THESE?” but no one responded. Susan saw them a few minutes earlier and decided they we probably on a Disneyesque puppy adventure.

Weather Underground tells me the temperatures will rise next week well above freezing. Maybe the past few weeks was the extent of the deep winter freeze for this year. I’m looking forward to the spring thaw. It can’t come soon enough. Now if I could only do something about that guy in the White House.