Lazarus

 Two days without a post...well, enough of that.  Actually, yesterday I was incredibly busy, but Friday... I was just a sleepy boy and crashed.  I did have an early day at the food pantry Saturday (I wanted to be sure I was there before 8, and I was), and we were swamped... 143 was the count, and we had a steady stream all day, with a big crowd early and late.  Oi.  I tried to keep people in the cars, mostly, but of course, people are conditioned not to, and... we gave out 90% of the produce (we had a lot, remember) and most of the bread, but someone came Friday and delivered more, so... well, still have more.  The big pile of mac and cheese is still there.  On the one hand, it looks like nothing went, but there are a bunch of boxes missing and we probably gave 100 people stuff -- not everyone wanted it.  One of the managers took 6 cases for his parish food pantry, which was MORE than fine.  Funny; we had about 20 walkers and most of them reported they were homeless so they didn't want some items -- especially stuff you have to cook, like that.  We are out of carts AND can openers.  Carts do come in (people seem to think we have a limitless supply, and that we can give them replacements if they lose them, which we cannot), but someone will have to get more can openers, and I think we all know who that someone is.  Sigh.

In other news... the demise of the Pac-12 depresses me; not only for the tradition, but also for the brazenness of it all.  Yes, they had a crappy money deal, but a century of tradition down the crapper... hard to believe the remaining schools will be lucky if they get into the Mountain West.  I guess a school could remain independent for a while; in some ways it is sad that Stanford has been meh lately, given their academics and private-school status.  I am not sure the ACC would really gain anything from WSU and OSU, but... they might go there as well.  If the MAC or Sun Belt had any sense of publicity...

I will finish The Panic of 1907 today.  Very interesting; hard to believe now that one man -- J.P. Morgan -- was able to stave off a crisis.  Nowadays we would never imagine asking Elon Musk, Bezos, Gates, or Buffett to do anything (save for jawbone); heck, I can only conceive of Elon trying to do anything, but back then, it was all done with a handshake and an admittedly friendly contract, with little -- if any -- government intervention.  Not sure THAT is the system we should have, of course...