Start the battle against pantry moths as soon as you see one

I don’t want to alarm you, but do you realize how easy it is to bring bugs home?

I bought a bag of rice at an ethnic grocery store. At home, I poured the contents from the paper bag into a Ball jar. When I opened the jar some time later, insects flew out that I learned were pantry moths. The bag of rice must have contained eggs or larvae. I threw out the rice and washed the jar, whose sides were covered with the telltale webbing that identifies pantry moths. 

Afterward I saw a moth so infrequently that I naively didn’t think about the moths reproducing. But when an occasional moth still appeared months later, action was past due.

One scam after another after another

For years I’ve rarely shopped in physical stores except grocery and drug stores. But I’m annoyed enough with online shopping to think about going back to brick and mortar businesses.

Trying to separate the person from the politics

Raising the socialism bugaboo, a reader asked to be removed from my subscriber list after my last anti-Trump post.

I’m not a socialist. In fact, when I took the Pew Research Center’s political typology quiz, there were three political typologies to the left of mine, which was “Order and Opportunity Left.”

What bothered me more than being mischaracterized, however, were my feelings. The scorn I felt toward the unsubscriber (whom I know) made me feel bad about myself and prompted self-examination. That led to thinking about how I speak about Trump supporters in general — with condemnation, ridicule, “How could they?” disbelief.