The View from the Hermitage, Day 222

First, apologies to Lesley Stahl for misspelling her first name yesterday. I did wonder as I typed it whether it was "ie" or "ey." I shall try to remember to check next time. It certainly would not have been difficult to do so.

Evidently, last night's Presidential debate was oh so much better than the first one. The moderator of the first one, Chris Wallace, complimented last night's moderator, Kristen Welker. Lest you think her success was due to one or the other mic being off at times, she was not the one controlling the mute switch. And the mics were only turned off for the initial two-minute statements by each candidate when the topic to be discussed changed. According to Son #1, Uncle Joe even let loose with a "Malarkey!" at some point. The Orange Foolius again cast himself as having done more for people of color than anyone else other than Abraham Lincoln. And the novel coronavirus will soon be a thing of the past. If you believe those last two things, we should probably end our conversation right now.

Yesterday's "Local Living" section of The Washington Post had an article with advice on how to form a "pod" to help make it through winter. "Pod" here has no connection with the pods in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (the original or the remake). Son #1, The Professor, and I are a pod. We do not live together, but our principal interaction is with only the other two people. I tried to think of other people with whom I'd like to be pod-mates.  There aren't a lot, and I don't really know anyone keeping themselves as much of a hermit as I am. And the potential pod-partners all live a ways away, and I'm just not that into going other places these days. 

Public schools in the city are staying all online for the time being; public schools in the county will start hybrid instruction for preschoolers through third graders on November 6. Kids will go to school in person two days a week and work at home the other three. There will be two groups in each class attending alternately. Some 187 teachers, or about 15 percent of the county teachers, requested to keep working remotely. Of those, 51 requests are related to the Americans with Disabilities Act and will be granted automatically. The other requests will be considered individually and may or may not be granted. Three teachers requested a leave of absence, while two teachers retired. I can't say that I blame the ones who would prefer to stay online. Some may have elderly parents living with them or spouses with compromised immune systems. It will be interesting to see which type of requests are granted and which type are not.

The 2020 election is but a week and a half away. This will be the first election of any kind--general or primary--since the 2004 Presidential election at which I will not be working. I'm going to miss it, even if it is going to be an hour longer than it has been. The polls will now be open in Virginia from 6:00 am to 8:00 pm. Arrive at 5:00 am and hope to be on one's way home by, now, 9:00 pm. I'll be insisting the husband sleep in the guest room the night before, though I may wake up at 4:00 am on my own. I expect that the official results in Virginia can be certified by noon on Friday, November 6, but this year you just don't know. 

The state health department did not update its key metrics page for October 21 until it put up the today's October 23  update. The numbers were not good. There were 1,332 new cases on the 21st, and another 1,180 on the 22nd. The seven-day moving average is at 1,023. Those numbers are getting perilously close to the highest ever in the state. Offhand, I wonder what the new case number will be for Election Day.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 221

The final Presidential debate, airs tonight at 9:00. I hope to be asleep not long after 9:00 pm, though Son #1 has said he will phone if there is anything debate-related we should know before morning. The phone is on my side of the bed. I expect I will hear it ring even if I have my working ear pushed into the pillow. I expect that The Orange Foolius will react negatively to the fact that mics will be turned off during each candidate's opening statement. And if both mics are open while one or the other candidate is answering a question, I expect that The Foolius will again attempt to talk over both Uncle Joe and the debate moderator, Kristen Welker. I watched an unedited tape of the Foolius's interview with Leslie Stahl for this weekends 60 Minutes. The Foolius spent much of his time there talking over Stahl's questions before he ended the interview early. When given the five-minutes-remaining alert, The Orange Foolius said he thought enough had been done and rose to leave. I was more hoping for a rage quit, but that probably was too much to hope for. 

My attempt to save Halloween for the neighborhood kids is working! Only one family has specifically said they don't want to participate, and it's perfectly understandable. Their driveway is one of the longer in the subdivision, plus the female resident is recovering from a stroke and broken hip (she broke her hip when falling down during the stroke). The families that have been silent about having candy or not are older, retired people often with long driveways. 

As I typed that last sentence it hit me that I, too, am now among those retired and, yes, older folks. I guess because The Professor continues to profess and I hadn't worked full time in some 30 years, I don't really feel retired. It may be, too, that I've been too occupied with redoing the house to have the amount of free time most of the retirees I know have. While I am glad I'm not just sticking things back anywhere but trying to decorate as much as I ever have, it's taking a whole lot longer than it otherwise would have. 

I am wondering if there is a reason that the state covid-19 counts that are normally updated at 10:00 am have still not been updated. Was there something as simple as a date glitch, or are they trying to cover up anything? The local university's numbers have not been updated either, but the cutoff time there is 4:00 pm or not too long ago. 

Speaking of covid-19, the local university has announced its plans for the spring semester. Students on campus will go home on November 24 for Thanksgiving holidays. All exams will be given online only in early December. Students do not return to campus until February1, with classes as they are this semester, mostly online. The last day of classes is May 6. They will announce by March 15 whether there will be a graduation ceremony. The class of 2020 was supposed to get theirs a week after the class of 2021, but if one doesn't happen neither will the other one. The Professor is looking forward to the semester. He will teach two sections of the same subject but only online. This means that he tapes one lecture, but two separate classes watch it. His devilish chuckle when mentioning that to me should perhaps have been more disturbing than it was.

The university's covid-19 case numbers were just updated. Students showed half the number of new cases as yesterday, 8 to yesterday's 16. The daily average of new cases is still higher than last week's and scratching at the heels of the number from the week before last. I should see if I can find the number of students living on campus. Wait for it. Forgetting the percentage of students who live on campus (it's 39 percent of undergraduates), I just had a trip down memory lane on the website of the office from which I retired. Several things I was responsible for updating have not been updated, and we're not talking things delayed by the pandemic. Not my circus and not my monkeys. They're on their own now.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 219

We are almost to the end of Tuesday business hours on the East coast, and so far The Orange Foolius has not withdrawn from Thursday night's debate. I figured that once the organizers committed to cutting off the Candidate A's microphone while Candidate B was delivering his opening statement, The Foolius would call foul and go sulk in a corner. I do like the sound of the format, though I know many people don't. The 15 minutes each on different topics will, I hope, give some focus to the discourse, though I expect The Foolius won't let himself be limited to the topic at hand. And I fully expect him to interrupt post-opening comments as long as his microphone has been turned back on. Of course, if this debate mirrors the first fiasco,we may not have candidate debates in 2024.

And here's a headline I grabbed off the Facebook feed of The Washington Post: "Most Trump supporters believe the president is dismantling a sex-trafficking ring involving top Democrats." They may know nothing about QAnon but simply believe whatever the Foolius or his associates tells them. How they can take this at face value without seeing any evidence boggles my mind. It also frightens me. These people are allowed to vote, and likely will in large numbers. If The Foolius wins a second term, I fully expect we will move uncomfortably close to being a police state, though some may say we're already there. I'm not sure we'll get to martial law because military leaders may balk even if the person giving orders is the Commander-in-Chief. So much uncertainty, too much uncertainty.

We got an expedition catalog today from Hurtigruten, the company that runs the mailboat along the Norwegian coast. We did their 12 day Bergen to Kirkenes back to Bergen a couple of years ago during the Polar Night (the opposite of the Midnight Sun). They do expedition trips to Antarctica, Svalbard in Norway, and the one that I might think about were I to win the lottery, the Northwest Passage from Nome, Alaska to Halifax, Nova Scotia. The "if only" thought didn't last long; it was replaced by the thought of when we-I might feel safe going on such a trip or any cruise, actually. Or a plane. The CDC is now recommending against any sort of public transit if you don't stay masked and at an appropriate distance from the other passengers. I'd even be nervous about hopping in the car for a trip that would involve spending an overnight in a hotel. The idea of being with even a small group of other people  scares me. 

I went through a couple more boxes this afternoon. My kindle continues to elude me. I made a visible dent in the pile of stuff outside the door to my office/studio. Tomorrow I will likely deal with boxes in the master bedroom/bathroom. There are decisions still to me made about just how many pairs of weird earrings I need to have. The handcuff, marijuana leaf, and razor blade (not real  razor blades) ones will stay, definitely, and some of the dinosaurs, but how many dinosaur pairs do I need, really? I actually don't know how many such pairs I have. That might be a good place to start tomorrow.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 218

A variety of sites come up if you Google "pandemic poetry." The first few appear to have been done back in late spring or early summer. It's not the first party to which I've been late. As I walked this morning, pandemic poetry arose in my thoughts. Haiku seemed too difficult to compose while walking and listening to music (Michael Franti and Spearhead), to I turned to a limerick. It doesn't suck, but it could definitely be better. 

There was a virus that came from Wuhan | In spite of the China travel ban | What to do? we did ask |      Stay apart; wear a mask | To me, that's a very good plan

I typed it the way I did because I was lazy and didn't want to hop around figuring out how to format the space between paragraphs. Notice that there is no direct mention of The Orange Foolius, just a hint at his ban on travel from China. Maybe on tomorrow's walk I'll attempt something more scathing with him in mind.

The Orange Foolius spent much of today's phone call berating Dr. Fauci. I particularly liked his comment that if he'd listened to Dr. Fauci's advice, more than 500,000 people would have died of covid-19 by now. And how many fewer would have died of covid-19 had the general populace had a good example of the value of wearing a mask? The Foolius is just worried that someone will make a deal out of the fact that Dr. Fauci's ratings are higher than his depending on how you define ratings. 

The final debate is on Thursday night. It doesn't start until 9:00, so I don't expect The Professor and I will watch any of it. The moderator will be Kristen Welker of NBC, about whom The Orange Foolius just tweeted on Saturday "She’s always been terrible & unfair, just like most of the Fake News reporters, but I’ll still play the game. The people know!" Here's hoping she takes after Savannah Guthrie rather than Chris Wallace. I think a female moderator bothers The Foolius. Why should he have to answer to a mere woman?

Trying to minimize my exposure to potentially depressing or angering political news is keeping my stress level lower but doesn't seem to give me as much to write about here. I'll see what I can come up with tomorrow.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 207

It sounds as if the real winner in last night's vice presidential debate was the fly who spent some minutes sitting on Mike Pence;s white hair. I did see one headline that spoke of what a brazen liar Pence has become. This, I suppose, was in response to his defending HWSNBN. Speaking of HWSNBN, he says he will not participate in the virtual debate planned for next week because the format makes it possible for his microphone to be turned off. I really hope the Presidential Debate Committee does hold a debate with only Joe Biden present so that it becomes pretty much a Biden town hall. And because HWSNBN declines participating, I don't think the equal time rules would apply. This just adds to my amazement that there are people who would vote for such a thug. 

I saw an article reporting that Nancy Pelosi is looking into the 25th amendment, worrying that HWSNBN is not in good shape to carry out the duties of the presidency. I doubt she can get Mike Pence to go along with it given his statements in last night's debate. I seem to remember that the VP is required to sign on to any declaration that the President in unfit to serve. And then there are Cabinet members to line up. Still, it's about time someone raised the question.

On the covid-19 front, I hope that the number of new cases put up today in Virginia is not for real. At 1,844, it was second only to the 2,015 that turned out to have some cases from two or three other days added in. If it's a real number, things are worse than I thought. Also on the covid-19 front, it appears that while the local university has a number of student cases, they have not really transmitted those to members of the local communities. Two of the women's sports teams--volleyball and soccer--have had to cancel or postpone matches due to covid-19 and, at least in the case of one, injuries. I heard rumors of a wild party held by the soccer team but do not know how true said rumor was.

The temperature was in the 80sF again yesterday. Although I in general prefer hot days to cold ones, yesterday's heat made my morning walk harder. I cut it short to be available for a call from the vet and ended up not going back out. I made up for a bit of it today, walking 7.65 miles. If the seventh mile weren't didn't seem so hard, I'd go for eight. Not right now though. The upside to the walking is that I've now managed to lose the extra weight I put on in the aftermath of three major joint surgeries in 2014, 2016, and 2018. I at several points have joked that my goal for 2020 was to not need a major joint surgery. So far, I've been good and given the pandemic wouldn't go into a hospital now except for emergency care.

I ordered curtains for the two windows in the kitchen. It's my trial run before I order them for the dining room and living room. Fortunately, nothing was repainted in the bedroom, so I don't need to replace those curtains. I am going to get new curtains for the master bathroom since the ones I had there for 30-plue years were cheap plastic ones, sort of like the material a shower curtain might be. Those may be the next ones I order. I'm not brave enough yet to order everything at once. 

On the unpacking front, I have cleared off enough of the desk in my office that the standing desk I used to have there but gave to the husband can to back. The husband decided that his home office desk was too small for the standing desk unit, so it's been sitting in the hallway between his home office and the bedroom. I also moved some more books to try to consolidate my fabric books. I have four bankers' boxes of books pulled out of the storage bedroom that need new shelves. It maybe a while before those get done, so I need to find a new place to stack them. There's always something. I should go do that now while I'm thinking of it. Otherwise, I will next think of it at a most inconvenient time.

 

The View from the Hermitage, Day 200

Day 200 sounds like a good reason to open the second bottle of champagne tonight. I didn't do anything special to mark Day 100, but I might have if I had had an extra bottle of champagne then. Maybe I'll get party horns for Day 300 and add streamers for the one-year mark. On an interesting side note, I have been copying all the posts and comments into a stand-alone Word file. Through Tuesday, Day 198, the length of that document stood at 199 pages.

Facebook offers me memories the first time I log on in a day. The last couple have been from 10 years ago. The first one mentioned that my dad was improving and I was looking forward to the Fall Fiber Festival coming on the weekend. The other one mentioned that I would be at the festival for two days then heading to Florida to visit my father. He had been admitted to the hospital following a routine visit with his primary care physician. Dad was a survivor of prostate cancer and was battling multiple myeloma. He had been improving, but on the night before festival setup, I got an email from my stepmother saying that I should come sooner. After coordinating with my brother in Maine, I did festival setup on Friday, worked on Saturday when the booth owner could not be there, then took the o-dark-thirty flight to Orlando Sunday morning. 

Midweek, Dad's condition was not improving, and he moved from the ICU into a hospice facility. Given the flexible nature of my job, I was able to just skip the flight home I had booked and stay on as long as I wanted. Dad passed the middle of the following week. Those last days were very special. I had taken with me my Macbook which held pretty much my entire music library. Fortunately, my library included a number of Frank Sinatra CDs, and Frank was one of Dad's all-time favorite artists. We would sit, saying nothing, but listening to Sinatra. I will admit that I still have trouble listening to Sinatra because of the memories certain songs bring up.

I think I may have said it before here, but I am actually glad that my dad passed before the days of HWSNBN began. He had always voted Republican but in 2008 seemed to veer even more to the right. He sent me a photo of himself (they weren't called selfies then, were they?), smiling, with the yard sign he had re-done to list Palin at the top of the ticket and McCain as her running mate. I don't know how much communication he and I would have had in the last five years, starting with HWSNBN's 2015 announcement that he was running. And somewhere along the way, Dad re-invented his life story to include a PhD in organic chemistry as opposed to the EdD in science or biology education he really had. I'm sure he had his reasons; I just can't imagine what they were.

The debate fallout continues. Will there even be more presidential debates? I have not heard any chatter about canceling next week's vice presidential debate. I certainly hope that Pence and Harris stick to whatever rules are announced for their debate. I actually just read that HWSNBN does not want the rules of the debates changed since he so handily won the first one. I so do not like the direction in which we are headed.

Something like 28 states are seeing covid-19 rates increase. We will not be out of the woods for some time. New case numbers in Virginia seem to vary a lot from day to day. We were down to 450 new cases yesterday, the lowest since early July. University numbers also fluctuate quite a bit. One never knows at what point they insert the athlete cases into the overall ones. It does not seem to be the same time at which they announce them.

The husband, older son, and I all had flu shots this morning. It was my first time out around general other people in about 200 days. I wore two masks and gloves and touched nothing anyway, so here's hoping I dodged any viral particles floating in the air at CVS. I am not that optimistic about what the intersection of covid-19 and influenza might hold. And if someone tests positive for flu, will they also test them for covid-19? Or will there have to be a specific covid-19 symptom since as loss of smell and/or taste? I think it's been about 34 years since I last had influenza, but I remember it well. I do not think I have ever felt so generally miserable. I do not want to go through it again, even with no complications. 

Time to start thinking about when to pop the cork. I will raise a glass in honor of all who happen to read any of this. I do enjoy the comments, finding them thought-provoking and enlightening. There is a lot that differs between places and people, and also a lot that is the same. I'm learning a lot from this whole daily blogging process.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 199

Had I thought to write about my morning walk yesterday, I would have commented on fall's approach. No deciduous tree was clad solely in green; all had some hints of color. Leaves had not really begun to fall; no raking would have been necessary. This morning told a very different story. The trees were still mostly green; however, yesterday evening's briefly torrential rainfall had carpeted the shoulder and one lane of the road with mostly yellow and brown leaves. Fall has gotten a wee bit closer, it appears.

What can I say about last night's debate? Not much because I went up to bed at 7:00, answering the invitation of the family dog. I planned to sit in bed and read while I petted her, but by 7:30 we were both sound asleep, me in my bed while she was in her bed on the floor beside me. The husband said that when he checked on us at 8:00, neither one of us stirred even a little.

Older son had not planned to watch the debate, but did. His email sent on his way to bed post-debate noted Biden's good response to the final question about accepting the results of the election. It also noted that the debate overall was "a hot mess inside a dumpster fire inside a train wreck." He said that that statement was not his opinion but that of a CNN announcer, who turned out to be Jake Tapper. Even better was Dana Bash's comment that because she was on cable she could say that the debate was "a shit show." The excerpts I watched online supported those assessments. I have to say, though, that much of the blame should be placed on the shoulders of the moderator, Chris Wallace. Did he not have the means to mute one of the candidate's mic? 

As for HWSNBN's comments on white supremacy, could he have been any clearer about what his views are? He as much as invited the Proud Boys to take action on or after election day. His demeanor harkened back to his good people on both sides comment about August 12, 2017, in Charlottesville. (I used to have to tell people that I live in Charlottesville, Virginia; since August 2017, I don't need to say the state. People worldwide know of Charlottesville.) As for sending someone into each precinct as a poll watcher, as long as the regulations regarding poll watchers are met, there would not be a problem here. The precinct chair at "my" precinct is, I know, more worried about trouble breaking out outside between the Democrat and Republican contingents separated by only a sidewalk.

I saw a news note this afternoon that the bi-partisan committee that handles the debatesis looking into changing the format to keep things under at least a little control. Ideas from here include not having the candidates on stage together but in separate rooms or locations, with the other candidate visible only on a monitor. Each candidate could hear what the other one said but would be muted from making any interruption. 

Older son noted that he was impressed that despite all the back-and-forth, interrupted-or-not dialog, Biden never had a trace of the stutter with which he grew up. Older son said he thought that would have given the Republicans new ammunition in terms of trying to alter voters' perceptions of Biden. I commented that I hoped the young man who had spoken at the national convention was watching. A good example to see of someone having worked hard and overcome stuttering. 

Finally, while HWSNBN's family and staffers apparently entered the auditorium wearing masks, once inside they removed them. Jill Biden and Biden's staffers left theirs on throughout the evening. It's quite clear who is more concerned--correctly, I might add--with the seriousness of covid-19. Would HWSNBN change his opinion or action if someone close to him caught covid-19? That question assumes that he really cares about those who appear close to him.

Maybe I'll go to bed later on the night of the next debate. I could always turn in at 8:30 if debate coverage did not begin until 9:00.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 197

Fortunately, the day got better after its beginning. The husband logged on to his email first thing to find a message thread from his department about one of the grad student lab instructors having tested positive for covid-19. Apparently, the student had recently had a meeting with the other three lab instructors, and the university would not test them. Also, these instructors teach the physics majors lab class, the only lab class being offered in-person. The husband got in on this since he is the faculty member responsible for assigning and overseeing the teaching assistants, which includes lab instructors. There were several directions this incident might take. By mid-morning, it was clear there was no real panic. The university would not test the other grad students because they were not together with the  one testing positive for more than 15 minutes. That appears to be, at least to the folks in charge here, a critical length of time. The lab sessions will be done via video for the next two weeks, just in case one of the other instructors develops covid-19. Before lunchtime, the husband said everything was hunky and dory, and all was well. 

Also on the covid-19 front, HWSNBN's new favorite advisor has been pushing for the US to go the same route as Sweden and try to hit herd immunity. Other more knowledgeable doctors are noting that because it has been demonstrated that people can get reinfected with covid-19, herd immunity cannot be attained. Does that matter to HWSNBN? Probably not a snowball's chance in hell.

We will not be watching the presidential debate tomorrow evening. It does not start until 9:00, which is when we're usually heading to bed. I have various friends planning debate bingo or some form of a debate drinking game. I suggested they take a shot of whisky every time HWSNBN misleads or lies. Several people said the problem was that they'd pass out before much of substance had happened. We will read about the debate Wednesday morning and discuss it with older son as we walk the family dog. That's about as close to the debate as I want to get. 

Last night, The New York Times began a series on HWSNBN's tax returns. In 2016 and 2017, he supposedly paid only $750 in federal income tax. He claims that that is an indication of how great a businessman he is; I would say it shows how much he's manipulating the system. It was heartening, though, to read that he has loans totaling in the hundreds of million dollars coming due in the next several years, all of which he personally guaranteed. In other words, if his businesses aren't generating enough income, the payments will come out of his own pocket if indeed there is enough spare change there. 

There was a photograph of the Bidens as a couple along with one of HWSNBN and his wife. HWSNBN was sitting on the bench of a grand piano dressed formally. Mrs. HWSNBN was lying seductively posed on the top of the piano, one leg raised, and wearing a formal gown. The Bidens were sitting on a garden bench with their two dogs sitting in front of them. I commented that what sealed the deal for me was that HWSNBN has no pets. That says a lot about his character, in my humble opinion.

I made a bit more progress unpacking and putting away. I think I have all my knitting, felting, and weaving books gathered and on shelves which likely means that this weekend, I will discover another box with enough books to require total reorganization. I have yet to find even one of the three more staplers I know we had. I still have not found certain t-shirts and sweaters. They may have been packed together in one box, but I don't recall for sure. It's probably more likely that the pandemic will pass than I finish the unpacking. Right now, finding one of the missing staplers would be golden.