The View from the Hermitage, Day 300

In news we should have heard or read long, long ago, Twitter has banned The Lame Duck permanently. His followers and/or minions will no longer be able to hang on his every word, capitalized or not. He will have to find new means of venting, which I guess might not be a good thing. Can he be encouraged just to play golf for the next 12 days? Golf may be why he is now supposedly heading to Mar-a-Lago rather than Scotland on January 19. January is not golf season in Scotland even if you own the course. 

The Democrats in the House of Representatives are still talking about impeaching The Lame Duck on Monday. I assume that they would dispense with hearings such as they heard the first time The Duck was impeached and forward articles of impeachment to the Senate as quickly as they can. Moscow Mitch McConnell has said, however, that the Senate's schedule would not allow for a trial before the Inauguration. Could they even hold a trial once The Lame Duck is no longer President?The Lame Duck's remaining as President until Inauguration Day frightens me, as do thoughts of what havoc his minions might try to wreak in conjunction with the Inauguration. I seriously hope someone, anyone can keep him from pushing the wrong buttons.

One priority for the Senate before the Inauguration should be confirming some of Uncle Joe's Cabinet picks. I'd never really thought about it, but most Presidents have several Cabinet members confirmed and ready to go on Inauguration Day. I think Uncle Joe has now named all of his choices. I would say that State, Defense, and Justice would be the most important to have confirmed as early as possible, with Health and Human Services following closely given the pandemic.

Moving away from politics for now, 2020 was not a good year in terms of climate-driven catastrophe in the US. There were 22 major disasters, a major disaster being defined as one causing $1 billion or more in damages. Those 22 major disasters caused at least 262 deaths and more than $95 billion in damages. The previous record was 16 major disasters. 

Lots of numbers in that last paragraph. I like numbers, and have been called a data nerd. Speaking of data, The Professor and I cheered out loud last night seeing a clip in which Dr. Fauci said, "The data indicate ..." It probably dates me, but I grew up with "data" as the plural of "datum" and still cringe when I hear "data" used as a singular noun. 

I'm not sure I'd want to own stock in Boeing right now. A Boeing 737--not a 737-Max--went down in the sea off Jakarta, Indonesia only minutes after takeoff. Debris has been spotted though it has not been confirmed as having come from the plane. There were also reports of an explosion heard about the time to plan went down. As The Professor just noted, Boeing has its fingers crossed that terrorism rather than mechanics was the cause of the accident. 

Probably because I ordered bulbs this fall, I received the Prairie Moon Nursery catalog yesterday. Prairie Moon specializes in "native seeds and plants--wildflowers and grasses for restoration and gardening." Perusing the contents of said catalog, I discovered a plant named Hairy Beardtongue. Its Latin name is penstemon hirsutus. Hairy Beardtongue sounds like a Tolkien character or someone in a Dungeons and Dragons game. If I could draw decently, I'd see what I could make Hairy Beardtongue look like. 

No unpacking and putting away today, but I did make bread and work on a small prototype of my pandemic quilt. It's going to be sufficiently detailed that I want to make mistakes now so that I will know how to avoid them when I start on the real thing. I made several of them today and hope to make more when next I work on it. Much as I prefer somewhat "liberated" designs in which the goal can be less than perfect, this is going to require more attention to detail than I am used to paying.

I do like Hairy Beardtongue as a character name.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 260

As I typed the "260," I thought how close I'm getting to there only being 100 days left to get to one year. At times, it does not seem as if the hermitage has been occupied for as long as it has been. I've actually had days--and climate change isn't helping here--that I have to remind myself that it is not still summer, that it is, in fact, a month that ends in "ber." I'm getting better at knowing which day of the week it is; I guess the next accomplishment will be knowing which month it is. I certainly hope I don't have a head injury that means medical personnel will be asking me what the date is.

Dr. Deborah Birx of the White House's coronavirus task force basically said that Americans who gathered for Thanksgiving, especially if that gathering was in a large group, should assume they've been infected and get tested. That's not going to help the looming shortage of testing supplies. Can we please go back to the mentality we had in March or April, before corona fatigue set in, back to the days when people respected the virus? I wonder if corona fatigue started to set in with the suggestion that people wear masks, or was it about the time governors started reopening their economies. Did it hurt or help that the NBA, WNBA, NHL, and MLB were able to bubble and finish their seasons? I don't think the NFL read the after-action reports on those seasons to see what a difference the bubble made. It's not clear to me that the NFL will finish its season all the way through the playoffs and Super Bowl, and if so how big the asterisk will be by the name of the 2020-21Super Bowl winner. 

The number of new covid-19 cases and the seven-day rolling average in Virginia actually went down in the numbers posted overnight even as the percent positivity rose to 7.5 percent. Statistics from the local university have never seemed legitimate, and they may be more so now that students have left campus not to return until spring classes start on February 1. 

As for the federal executions mentioned in a previous post, I read today that there were only three federal executions in the previous 50 years. I know one was Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, but I have no idea who the other two were. The Lame Duck's administration, though, has managed to carry out eight executions in less than five months and are looking to carry out five more before the Duck's term ends. I'm not sure what the rationale is here. Does it make The Lame Duck feel as if he accomplished something real? Something there is no question about--the person was alive before the execution and dead after, no ifs, ands, or buts about it? If I had more time and were so inclined, I would see if I could find out whether the push for five more executions before January 21 was made before or after November 3. As Arte Johnson used to say on Laugh In, that's very interesting.

A volcano erupted in eastern Indonesia. I don't think there were any casualties. Does this omen foretell the earthquake and tsunami coming as icing on the cow-pie cake that is 2020. I really should put the earthquake and tsunami out of my mind before I will them into existence. 

On a more interesting and possibly humorous note, there have been anti-government rallies in Thailand lately. The symbol of the resistance is a giant yellow rubber duck. A discussion of how that came to be as well as how Ralph the Rex t-rex costumes figure can be found here. Somehow, rubber ducks seem a better thing for protestors to carry than bricks or Molotov cocktails. They also add a layer of levity at least when viewed from afar.

I continue to receive multiple daily text and email messages seeking funds for Democratic or left-wing political purposes, chiefly to help support the Democrats in the Senate run-off races in Georgia. We made several political donations during the fall, some to election winners and others, not. Can we have a moment of silence, please?

The View from the Hermitage, Day 182

Twenty-six weeks, six months, half of one year. My hair is six months longer and a wee bit darker without the trims and highlights. My body is 15 pounds lighter, though that's not directly coronavirus-related. My mood is probably more variable than it was before the life shut-down. The number of days on which the lows seem lower probably outnumber the days on which the highs seem higher. I expect that part of that is the general disarray that accompanied all the work we've had done on the house this year. It's going to be a while longer before I feel as if there's not something major still to be put into place.

Speaking of the house's still being re-assembled, I promised photos of the new rugs. We've only put the one in the living room down so far. It needs to sit until tomorrow before we put down the adhesive squares that will hold the rug tiles together. The faint lines you see here will disappear once we've done that and it's all relaxed a bit.

Once this rug is finished and the one in the dining area is down, I can start thinking about curtains in some light neutral shade. Given the 35-year-old sofas, our house will never resemble anything staged. I think of what our house looks like as immediate-post-graduate-school chic. I don't think we'll ever have what looks like an for-real-adult house. 

We took the usual Sunday morning walk in the park. This week's walk along the river was punctuated by older son's turning around and telling me to stop and back up. He knows my almost-phobia of snakes, and there was a snake lying at the side of the trail. It was not clear what kind it was, and I did not want to look closely enough to find out. I backed up and went around some bushes to go around the snake's snoozing spot. Older son noted that this was the first snake we had encountered, and we've been going there almost weekly in the last ... yes ... six months. I'd be okay with not running into another one for another six months. 

The Western fires continue seemingly unabated though some are at least partially controlled now. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be there. One of the news shows noted that atmospheric effects had been noted as far away as Ohio. I'm waiting for smoke-polluted air coast to coast, not that climate change's being a major contributor will register at all with HWSNBN. He is supposed to visit the fire zone tomorrow, and I almost dread seeing and hearing how his visit goes. In reshelving books, I came across the storybook that Stephen Colbert's staff put together in the wake of Hurricane Florence, Whose Boat Is This Boat?: Comments That Don't Help in the Aftermath of a Hurricane. Maybe the sequel can be whatever he says about the fire. Speaking of hurricanes, Sally is aiming right at Louisiana. Do they really need another cyclonic visitor?

I'm making another one of my found-during-the-pandemic recipes for dinner tonight, Fresh Corn and Tomato Fettuccine. You can find the recipe here. I need to try it using canned or frozen corn since I'm not sure how much longer the corn on the cob will be usable. I've lost track of how many times I've made this one since I found it several months ago.

New university covid-19 numbers tomorrow. Will we start seeing the effect of Labor Day gatherings?