The Weekly Sift

I’m on vacation this week, the first time I’ve slept away from home since February of 2020. So I’ll be taking it a little bit easy this morning: There’s no featured post, in spite of several parts of the weekly summary that are getting a bit long. As you read this, picture me sitting on the deck of a time-share condo, gazing out at the Berkshires and listening to the morning birdsong.

Wait. Where was I? OK, the weekly summary: The saga of the infrastructure bill or bills continued this week, and is likely to keep having its ups and downs for several months. That high-rise condo building in Florida collapsed for no obvious reason, making me wonder about this third-floor deck that I’m sitting on. (All over the country, I imagine, Americans are thinking about construction details they used to take for granted.) The Catholic bishops appeared to be about to deny communion to President Biden, and then backed down when the public focused more on the bishops’ greatly diminished moral authority than on Biden’s unwillingness to toe their line. The New York City mayoral primary happened, but due to ranked-choice voting, we may not know the result for some while. It was a bad week in TrumpWorld, as the Big Lie started to crumble on several fronts at once and the Trump Organization was warned about possible looming indictments. Derek Chauvin was sentenced. We found out just how bad Trump’s bout with Covid was, and how far his treatment diverged from what you or I would have received.

That should be out by 10 EDT, assuming I don’t lose too much time to the mountains and the birds.