The View from the Hermitage, Day 336

The view out the dining room window of the Hermitage is a wee bit different from what was there yesterday or even this morning. There's less snow. Tree branches have shed the ice that weighed them down this morning. One icicle still lives on the eave outside the basement sun room and appears to be hanging on for dear life. A monotonous dripping announces that what was frozen on the roof is melting rhythmically. I expect tomorrow will show even larger changes. 

The more things change, the more they stay the same here in my week 48 of the pandemic. Xpot is still Xpot and has beaten the rap one more time. The novel coronavirus stays novel; the UK variant has been found locally. Countries do what they think best. Germans has tightened its borders, banning travel from some Czech regions. New Zealand has locked down Auckland while three cases in one family are investigated. One of the cases worked in the laundry department of an airline catering company. Here in the US, most things are still left up to the states. There may be a national mask mandate governing interstate travel, but individual states can follow that but have no other mask regulations. Montana just dropped its mask mandate; the governor told Montanans to be vigilant. How the heck can you be vigilant against something you cannot see or feel until it's too late.

An investigator on the World Health Organization team investigating the start of the coronavirus says that China refused to hand over key data, leading a US national security adviser to say he had "deep concerns" about the initial findings. The WHO investigator said that the team requested raw patient data but was given only a summary. The importance of the raw data stems from the fact that only half of the 174 initial cases had exposure to the Wuhan wet market where China says the virus was initially detected. 

I finally remembered today to ask my mom if the sense of smell she lost during her October bout with covid-19 had ever returned. She said it had not. People in the hall still know when she's snacking on microwave popcorn, but she says she smells nothing. Now I need to remember to ask her if losing her sense of smell has made things taste different. I told her that at least she is not a restaurant critic. I read of one such person who could no longer do his or her job having lost both a sense of smell and a sense of taste. 

I could depress myself by commenting on the impeachment verdict and other things political, but I now have evidence that I have been paying too much attention to political news. A crossword clue this morning was "______ King of Maine." I moved my pen to fill it in, but "Angus" was too short. Okay. What could it be. Several minutes later, I got the letter T from a cross clue and realized the King of the clue was Stephen, not Angus. The Professor said that the same thing had happened to him. I will endeavor to get back to more popular culture than political culture. 

One more snow and ice photo. I love the patterns that branches can make.