Cloudy, drizzle and fog — another Sunday here on California’s north coast, though, the normal pedigree for this neck of the woods. Started out about the same yesterday, but near-noon sunshine came and everybody went home happy.
Reportedly, we’re in for temperatures in the 70s tomorrow, and maybe after see-sawing during the week, temps climbing way up near 80 next Saturday.
Here-abouts that’s considered a heat wave.

Folks might be more happy, at least for a little while, who’s to know for sure about that kind of shit.

(Illustration found here).

Living in these parts is an acquired taste, however. The weather about the same year-round, a bit colder in the winter for a stretch, but a day in January can be way-easily confused with a day in July. And behind the Redwood Curtain there’s a certain difference that can’t be readily explained unless you’d lived here awhile, yet this dissimilar attitude can sometimes be easily understood by certain strangers.
An odd place to say the very least — a depressingly-oriented happy.

People are odd themselves nowadays, at least as the world flips on new marriage/work standards. Women appear most-likely the winners, but…
From the New York Times yesterday on :

One reason for this decline may be that women with greater earning power have greater economic security that allows them to leave bad marriages.
Yet another possibility is that many men seem to be clinging to a social norm from the “Mad Men” days: that the husband should be the primary earner in a family.
There is an obvious disconnect here.
Those men who spent their teenage years goofing off and their college years drinking beer shouldn’t be surprised that women who consistently received higher grades and continued further in school might now be earning more money as well.
But the evidence suggests that while men tend to applaud their spouses when they help to bring home the bacon, husbands aren’t always as enthusiastic when women start bringing home the filet mignon.
And it’s especially troubling that these old-fashioned social norms about gender identity appear to be adversely affecting family formation and stability.

My underline for emphasis — in the modern world that old ‘Me Tarzan, You Jane,’ just ain’t gonna cut it.
White men are unhappy, old white men are frightful-sad. The study from above also found:

…that traditional views of gender identity, particularly the view that the right and proper role of the husband is to make more money than the wife, are affecting choices of whom to marry, how much to work, and even whether to stay married.
Suppose that both men and women are happier — all else being equal — the more money their spouse makes.
In such a world, couples wouldn’t care whether the man or woman earns more, so the population of couples would have what we call a “normal distribution,” and would be captured in a bell-shaped curve.
But that’s not what we see in the real-world data.

Not much happy in the real world.

As we start the summer season (almost), living in the grandest country in the world doesn’t necessarily leave one in high spirits — in survey-form-fact, a goodly chunk of us are unhappy (via UPI):

Only a third of U.S. adults say they are very happy — minorities show particularly pronounced declines in the past two years, a U.S. survey indicates.
A Harris Poll of 2,345 U.S. adults surveyed online April 10-15 by Harris Interactive found certain groups, such as minorities, recent graduates and the disabled, trended downward in the last couple of years.
“Our happiness index offers insight into what’s on the minds of Americans today and is a reflection of the state of affairs in our country,” Regina Corso, senior vice president of the Harris Poll, said in a statement.
“While the attitudes on the economy may be improving, we’re seeing that this is not translating into an improvement in overall happiness.”
…
Americans earning under $50,000 per year were less likely to qualify as very happy than in 2011 — down from 33 percent to 29 percent among those earning less than $35,000, and from 35 percent to 32 percent among those earning between $35,000-$49,999.
Those 50 and older were more likely to be very happy than younger people.
Thirty-two percent of political independents were less likely to qualify as very happy than members of either the Democratic or Republican parties at 35 percent each.

Us old folks are happy, huh? If I thought getting old was this much fun, I’d started sooner.

Despite this being the USA, we aren’t all that happy about it — ‘We can’t get no satisfaction.’
Via USAToday and last week’s release of the new Better Life Index report:

The Better Life Index rates the 36 OECD countries in 11 areas that aim to cover every aspect of life, including income, education, health, work-life balance and life satisfaction.
…
Dropping three spots this year, the United States is tied for 14th in life satisfaction.
This is in spite of the fact that the it had the highest disposable income of any country measured and a high rate of self-reported good health.
Given how well the country does on most measures, it suggests that life satisfaction encompasses more than simply income or even health.
Mexico, which had among the lowest scores for many indicies, still reported among the highest life satisfaction.

Dude, Mexico? Eleven young people were kidnapped from a bar in downtown Mexico City the other night, a drug war like a regular war going on forever, beheadings and whatnot, yet…
Also from that Index report, a look at that two-word-umbrella phrase, ‘leisure time,’ and how us Americans are working hard and going seemingly nowhere.
From The Atlantic:

You might think the increase in leisure would be highest among the rich, since nations have generally earned more leisure time as they’ve become more productive.
But strangely, it is the least educated and poorest men who have seen the highest gains in leisure.
This has created what economist Eric Hurst, among others, calls, “leisure inequality,” which mirrors income inequality.
Poor working men have more leisure time than ever, but the highest educated men have less downtime than they’ve had in 50 years.

Just being alive is happy, but watching the end of an age on my laptop is kind of unhappy, but nevertheless, it’s obvious and inevitable, so there’s a spark of cheer there.
And Monday ain’t here yet.