It could be worse

 In America, according to the CDC, teenage girls are experiencing a 60 percent increase in violence, sadness and suicide risk.  In Iran, girls at more than fifty schools appear to have been poisoned.  

In Springfield, Ohio, another Norfolk Southern train derailed yesterday, this one with no toxic leakage (residents are assured).  In Tempe, Greece, two trains collided head-on, killing 57 people and leaving about sixty unaccounted for.

Ukrainian forces continue to defend the besieged city of Bakhmut, where the one ray of hope is that the Wagner mercenaries seem to be running out of ammunition.  The inhabitants are living in cellars without heat or electricity.  A couple snorkeling in Hawaii are suing the tour company they say abandoned them in the sea, forcing them to swim back to Maui.

In Kentucky, where the legislature has ended covid food supplements, people are lining up at food banks.  In the UK, where Brexit has allowed people to "take back control," thousands of warming centers accommodate those who can't afford heat or food.  

All right, six of one, half a dozen of the other.  Maybe there is a Special Relationship among people who vote against their own best interests.

On a related note, the latest irrelevancy is Joe Biden's attendance/non-attendance at the coronation of King Charles III in May.  For a host of reasons -- internal strife in the royal family, unpopularity of the king and queen, general broke-ass condition of the country -- it's expected to be a much scaled-down version of the last one in 1953.  President Dwight Eisenhower did not attend but sent four special emissaries -- Secretary of State George Marshall, General Omar Bradley, Chief Justice Earl Warren and Fleur Cowles, author, artist and editor.  Here she is:

And here's one of her paintings: