It’s 54 degrees outside right now, but that’s not supposed to last long. Drizzle is supposed to turn to snow by 10:00, and it should be in the 20’s by the time I get home from work. In other news, the owner of Syracuse China (Libbey), is closing the plant. And they’ve got the audacity to keep the “Syracuse China” brand, though they won’t even be making it the United States, let alone Syracuse.

It’s yet another in a long line of successful local businesses (they’ve been around since 1871, and I’ve eaten off their dinnerware in places as far away as Ireland, and in ‘high class’ joints like the Mayflower Hotel in DC) to be bought out and closed, radically downsized, or moved away. Not because they weren’t making money, of course, but because they weren’t making enough money.

So, another 275 jobs will be gone from here in about four months. The way things are going, there’ll be nothing left here but shopping malls – and I don’t know who’s going to have enough money to do more than wander around zombie-like and look at all the empty stores. Not to worry. I’m sure our government officials will fix everything as soon as they’re done bailing out the financial services industry.