Opinion

Early in December, I start watching for my most wanted and needed gift. I never know what it will be, until it drops in my lap like a feather falling from heaven. When I see it, I always smile and shake my head.

Congress recently passed $1 trillion for infrastructure. What a nebulous term for what we used to just call roads and bridges, sidewalks and ditches, airports and sea ports.

First, the good news. “Given what we went through, the economy’s rebounded much faster than we expected.” That’s Frank Lenk, director of research services at the Mid-America Research Council.

This past weekend I got the pleasure of meeting a man with a very interesting story. While making small talk with him he mentioned he owned a concrete recycling company. Having never heard of such a service, I was intrigued and asked him to tell me more about what they do, and exactly how they do it.

In 1936, human rights advocates pushed for a boycott of the “Nazi Olympics,” two years after Adolf Hitler seized power and began persecuting Jews. Some critics claimed the move was hypocritical given the ongoing discrimination against Black people in the United States.

Tomorrow, my husband and I hope to get a Christmas tree. We will decorate it with a flock of fake red birds, some snowflakes that my grandmother crocheted long ago, and a few tacky, but treasured, ornaments.

We have launched a spacecraft – like a bottle rocket challenging a pterodactyl – far into space to crash into a small asteroid. The idea is to nudge it to a slightly different course and learn more so someday, if needed, we could do the same thing to an asteroid big and bad enough to take out the planet.

Have you ever come across the British cartoonist Heath Robinson? His drawings were of fabulously weird and wonderful inventions that could never in a million years actually work, but they are so brilliant you just wish they could. Look him up – I know it will please you.