The View from the Hermitage, Day 307

I've had better days. I heard from my brother this morning that his wife's just-discovered cancer is at such an advanced level it's not clear if the side effects of chemo are worth it in terms of the quality or length of life it might give her. I responded to his email noting that I wasn't sure there were words for this situation. 2021 was supposed to be better than 2020, but last year's suck is continuing smoothly into the new year. An insurrection at the Capitol. Sister-in-law's cancer. The very real threat of violence tomorrow into the Inauguration on Wednesday. 2021's first two weeks and two days leave a hell of a lot to be desired. 

On the coronavirus in Virginia front, the numbers from yesterday elicited a gasping, "Holy shit!" when I checked them this morning. The number of new cases yesterday was the highest yet, and by almost a thousand. They need to change the y-axis on their chart. I fully expect yesterday's number of 6,757 to be exceeded this coming week; 7,000+ is coming. The question is if this is the New Year's bump or the second generation of Christmas bump. I hope the governor and his minions are paying attention to this, but now that we have vaccines.... Actually, I would expect them to be thinking about insurrection violence right now rather than covid.

The Professor and I have registered with our local health district to be notified when they are ready to start vaccinating the group we're in, the 1B folks. There was nothing on the registration form about whether I need to take any proof of my underlying condition(s); I imagine they will tell me before I show up whether I should bring something. 

One in three residents of Los Angeles County, California has been infected with covid-19. Not a place I would want to be living right now. The national death toll is over 389,000; I expect we'll go over half a million in February. Globally, the death toll now exceeds 2 million. We're at the top of the list in terms of how much each country contributes to the total. Yes, America has been made great again. We're followed by Brazil, India, Mexico, and the UK. 

The Lame Duck will now depart the White House on the morning of January 20. He would like a military sendoff. The Professor expressed hope that the aim of a military sendoff was not to spark a massive demonstration that offered an excuse for declaring a national state of emergency that required martial law to put down. The My Pillow founder was at the White House yesterday. A Washington Post photographer got a photo showing the papers he was carrying. Magical magnification revealed that they did cover the imposition of martial law. Any other year I would likely tell The Professor that he was overreacting, but not this year, or should I say "decade"?

Last night's sweet potato soup from the Instant Pot was delicious. Son #1 had the leftovers this morning and requested the recipe. I'll definitely make it again. I'll also make it using other vegetables which was actually the draw of the recipe. The recipe calls for "2 pounds vegetable or combination of vegetables of your choice." A lemon meringue pie is in the refrigerator. I'll do the meringue right before we want to partake of it. I've made lemon meringue pie before, but this recipe, from the book Pie Academy, was simpler. I expect I would use this recipe again, though I won't know for sure until we've sampled it.

I gave my lower back a bit more rest than planned, but today I went for a walk without the dog. This means I can walk faster and with no pauses for smell or bodily functions. I only went 1.5 miles and I did it slowly, but it felt good. I'm not going to rush my way up to the six or seven I was doing every day before the back issues started, but I am going to try to walk some most days now. There's a lemon meringue pie in the refrigerator for incentive.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 306

We appear to be fucked in both a pandemic and a politics way. Federal prosecutors have said that the people storming the Capitol wanted "to capture and assassinate elected officials." Really? some of the Republican members of the House of Representatives who voted to impeach The Lame Duck are hiring armed escorts and buying body armor. Peter Meijer, from Michigan, explained, "Our expectation is that somebody may try to kill us."

If that's not enough, this afternoon I read an article in The New Yorker that flat-out scared me, "Among the Insurrectionists." (The link should work if you haven't read your limit of free articles for the month.) After reading the article, I wondered what the death total might have been had the insurrectionists been more organized with plans for who was going where when, in other words that I hate to say about my home country, death squads. Would someone have yelled, "Stop!"? And if so, would they have stopped? I hope we never find out the answer to those questions. 

As the weekend begins, I worry about Son #2 and DiL= who live in our state capitol, Richmond. I am not sure how close they are to the capitol building, but I know they aren't far from the Robert E. Lee statue on Monument Avenue. I hope the weekend turns out to be, as some say, a big nothing-burger. I don't want to get my hopes up that nothing will happen, nor do I want to assume the worst. We are floating on an ocean of unknown and will be, I fear, for quite some time. 

To take my mind off things political and pandemical, today and tomorrow are for my New Years' resolutions to make a monthly pie and to use my Instant Pot monthly. I plan to make sweet potato soup in the Instant Pot, based on a recipe in Wednesday's Washington Post Food section. In the case of the pie, I amended the resolution to hold that I do not use a recipe I have used before. In that vein, January's pit will be lemon meringue. Not typically a winter pie, but The Professor loves it. Besides that, there is the meringue on the top that will require attention with a small blow-torch. I'm not sure it gets any better than that without thermite.

A short post, I know, but I do not want to dwell too long on things about which I am worrying. Sometimes a hole in the sand is the best place to lay one's head.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 305

It appears that Virginia is following the national guidance to move people 65-74 or with risk factors up in terms of when they might get vaccinated against covid-19. This puts me in Virginia Group 1B rather than 1C. Given that the local county is still handling Group 1A, it will likely be a while. Still, it's nice to know I might get vaccinated sooner than expected.

In my skimming of news sites this morning, I actually had to scroll way further down to get to any coronavirus news. Between impeachment and inauguration, there wasn't much room for covid. For some impeachment humor, The Lame Duck has now been impeached more times than he has been elected to office, and the same number of times as he has lost the popular vote in a presidential election. I gather he is not laughing about any of this, which is as it should be. It had been announced that Rudy Giuliani and Alan Dershowitz would defend him in any impeachment trial, but it appears that Rudy is not in The Duck's good graces at the moment. The Duck has stopped repayment of the expenses Rudy incurred traveling around the country challenging election results. Ouch!

It appears that a couple of House of Representatives Republicans may have taken organizers of the Capitol demonstration/protest/insurrection on private tours of the Capitol the day before the shit went down. If that can be proven, it's a big thing, a very big thing. I would hope that the House would at least censure them if not impeach them. Or perhaps Justice can lay some federal charges on them.

The fact that 10 House Republicans voted for impeachment is seen positively by a lot of people. However, 93 percent of the House Republicans voted against impeachment. And two-thirds of  House Republicans voted against certifying Uncle Joe's election even after the Capitol insurrection. (I think I like the sound of that better than "riot.") And in other, wider polling, 64 percent of Republicans say that they support The Lame Duck's recent behavior. Did I put enough stress on "recent"? And 57 percent think he should be the Republican candidate for President in 2024. Only 17 percent think that he should be removed from office.

As long as we're on polling results, people were asked if they would agree that America is falling apart. I was actually a bit surprised that more Republicans agreed than Democrats, 83 percent to 78 percent. Seventy-nine percent of Independents agreed. 

Info is coming out about the events of Inauguration Day. I was particularly interested in Lady Gaga's singing the National Anthem. I really hope she doesn't glam it up as some artists do. I think it's safe to say that she won't do the Roseanne crotch grab.

As I said, it was actually difficult to wade through the politics to get to the pandemic. As evidence that it takes a while for a vaccine to be effective and/or two doses might be critical, the Representatives who got covid from hiding with unmasked colleagues had gotten their first of two vaccine doses in the two days before the insurrection. With needing a second dose comes remembering which vaccine you got. The second dose of the Pfizer vaccine should be given 21 days after the first, while for the Moderna vaccine, it's 28 days from first to second. 

In general coronavirus news, we're still fucked, possibly more than ever. There may be a variant strain of covid in the US, slightly different from the one in England. Pandemic fatigue appears to be growing. People are tired of masks and social distancing. Some will still keep practicing those, but more will toss the mask and get shoulder-to-shoulder or, worse, face-to-face with each other. That there is now a vaccine may be a factor as well. It may not matter to some that a vaccine only works after it's given (in the right dose, on the right schedule), and there's no real treatment other than treating whatever symptoms with which someone presents. 

And to take your mind off politics and pandemics, the CIA says that it has opened all its UFO documents on theblackvault.com. I'm not sure I need to clear my mind that badly ... yet.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 304

One week until Inauguration Day. The intervening weekend could reveal much about what might happen on Inauguration Day, but then again it might not. Will the type of gatherings--peaceful or not--in state capitols this weekend mean that the same is coming for the inauguration? Not that I'm thinking the weekend will be peaceful. Already various states are contending with a level of behavior not seen before in this country. A guillotine was erected outside Arizona's state capitol. Lawmakers evacuated capitol buildings in Georgia and New Mexico as crowds gathered outside. Crowds in Idaho cheered as reports of the Capitol riot came in a week ago. Oregon's governor was burned in effigy. Some demonstrations, though, were peaceful including the one in Kansas. And in Nevada, supporters of The Lame Duck drank beer and listened to rock music. 

The FBI has said that some of the Capitol rioters arrested will face sedition charges. To be clear about what that meant, I looked up "sedition." Dictionary.com gave two definitions. First, "incitement of discontent or rebellion against a government." Second, "any action, especially in speech or writing, promoting such discontent or rebellion. The way I read the second one, The Lame Duck did commit an act of sedition in his pre-riot remarks last week.

The latest report I heard said that 20,000 National Guard troops would provide security around the Capitol for the inauguration. They will be armed. The crowds will not be as large as they were when The Lame Duck was inaugurated. Between the threat of violence and the pandemic, crowd size in the hundreds makes much more sense than that in the thousands or millions. Former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is turning on The Lame Duck. He is backing impeachment in part because impeachment will make it easier to purge The Lame Duck from the Republican party. 

The folks planning security have to consider every possible scenario. Some of the worst ones being considered are people with firearms trying to attack dignitaries, "suicide type aircraft," and drone attacks on the crowds. I'm sure they're considering suicide bombers as well as a dirty bomb, too. I wonder if there's a table around which people sit and throw out ideas of what might transpire. I'd really like to be a fly on the wall if that's the case.

On the coronavirus front, the US set a new record for the number of people dying in one day. I saw several numbers, but all were in the neighborhood of 4,400. This number of deaths in one day exceed the total number of deaths in South Korea or Japan since the pandemic began. The national death total is over 380,000. Could we have 400,000 by the end of the month? Your guess is as good as mine. 

Japan has widened its state of emergency due to the coronavirus, and there is real concern over the Olympic Games set for July. If the Games cannot be held this summer, they will not be held at all. One concern is whether overseas visitors can be allowed. This decision needs to be made by March to give adequate time for travel plans to be made. Even with no spectators or no spectators from overseas, there is the question of whether the Olympic Village could become another super-spreading event. With no overseas visitors, might they spread the athletes out more? They could put some in the Village and the others in the empty hotels. It might be interesting to be a fly on the wall when the go or no-go decision is being discussed.

Fasten your seat belts and shoulder straps. It's going to be one hell of a week.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 303

There seems to be more political than coronavirus news right now, but the two can and do overlap. Three Congresspeople have now tested positive for covid-19 in the wake of the Capitol riot. One was quite up front about blaming Republican colleagues who, when offered masks, declined and expressed scorn toward those wearing them. I'm not sure what number or percent of cases is needed for super-spreader status, but it sounds as if the Capitol riot is on the way.

In other coronavirus news, three gorillas at the San Diego Zoo have tested positive for covid-19. They are believed to have caught it from an asymptomatic zookeeper. Both gorillas and zookeeper are expected to survive. These are the first covid cases reported among great apes. 

Random other news before digging in to the political pile: I never thought I'd be saying positive things about Bill Belichick, the coach of the NFL's New England Patriots, but that was before he declined to accept the Presidential Medal of Freedom from The Lame Duck, saying that he had to stay "true for the people, team, and country I love." He cited the summer's racial equity protests as opening the door to new and needed dialog for his team.

On the political front, only the gods and goddesses know what the next eight days hold. The state capitols are on high alert after calls for actions in all 50 capitols on Sunday, January 17. The attorney general of Michigan has already declared the state capitol to be unsafe and advised the public to stay away from it. The FBI has distributed a bulletin warning of armed protests at all capitols. January 17 also opens several days of protests, culminating in the Million Militia March in Washington, DC on Inauguration Day. Heide Bierich, co-founder of the Global Project against Hate and Extremism said, "I don't want to be an alarmist, but I worry about a mass casualty event at the Inauguration."  She's not the only one. I think the chosen inaugural theme of "America United" may be very wishful thinking. 

The responsible powers that be are considering various scenarios for the days around the inauguration. One of the more troubling ones being considered is insurrectionists forming perimeters around the Capitol, the White House, and the Supreme Court, blocking Democrats from entering. I can see how this could quickly evolve or devolve into the mass casualty event mentioned above. 

Further complicating planning for the unknown is that several Capitol Police officers have been suspended, and more than a dozen others are under eight separate investigations for things such as social media messages of support for the rally turned riot. One officer allegedly posted "inappropriate" images of Uncle Joe that have now been deleted. Rumor has it that some military personnel are also being investigated. In other words, there may be foxes guarding the chicken coop. 

I spent the summer of 1975 on a study-abroad program in Madrid, Spain. Taking a walk on my first night there, I was taken aback by the sight of soldiers or police patrolling the streets carrying uzis. This was when Basque terrorism was a very real concern. In Vietnam, there were soldiers in guard kiosks outside government buildings with rifle barrels visible sticking out of the windows. Taking photographs, even of something across the street from a government building, will get you up close and personal with one of the soldiers (don't ask me how I know this). I am not ready for those sights here. The Capitol surrounded by a chain link fence--or a functional rather than decorative fence of any kind--makes me wonder if we will ever recover from these past four years. What happens in the next eight days will tell us a lot.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 302

Yesterday I said I would have some photos of my infamous (well, to The Professor and Son #1) pandemic quilt. Here's the inspiration:

The Virginia Department of Health updates this chart by 10:00 every morning. It reflect numbers reported by each health district by 5:00 the evening before. I check the numbers every morning. Somewhere along the way I decided that this should be a quilt. There are limits, though, so I decided I would just do the six months between my July 1 birthday and December 31. That's 184 days, so I decided to do four days to one inch. That means the bars will take up 46 inches. The counts range from just over 500 to a ways over 5,000, so I decided to go with 50 cases to one inch. My bars will then range from 5+inches to 50+ inches.

I knew that if I tried to just sew lines, they would not be straight and while I can handle a bit of wonkiness, that would be too much. I found striped fabric with quarter-inch stripes on Etsy and have been playing around with it. Here's the current model: 

I wanted to see just how difficult the lines were going to be. I tried straight machine stitching, hand embroidery, and, finally, fancy machine stitching. The Xs above worked best. I need to go slow and not stop along the way since that bunches two Xs together. I've got a few more lines to do here, after which I'll add the yellow line that represents the seven-day rolling average number of new cases. I'll then add batting and backing and see if my idea of quilting the outline of each bar works. I also want to figure a way to mark select dates such as the first of each month and holidays. 

It may end up looking like crap and not be at all noteworthy, but it will remind me of checking the counts every morning and seeing just how much we were going to be fucked. I'll hope that the quilt names itself without using the f-word. This is unlike anything else I've done, so it will at least be an interesting challenge.

Speaking of the state health department (well, I did up near the beginning), there is now a registration system for covid vaccinations. Both The Professor and I will be in the 1C group; the health department will let us know when that is beginning locally and how to make an appointment. In terms of underlying medical conditions, asthma was listed but with the detail of "moderate to severe." Since mine is not in that range, I went with hypertension or high blood pressure. There was nothing to indicate how I would prove that, but I could always show them the prescription drug I take for it.

In news of The Lame Duck, the PGA has moved its 2022 PGA Championship (one of golf's fouir major tournaments) to somewhere other than New Jersey's Bedminster Golf Course owned by The Lame Duck. The business organization bearing The Lame Duck's surname is, as expected, upset and threatening to sue for damages to cover the work they say they've done to get the course ready. I'm glad the PGA was willing to take the risk of doing this. Once The Lame Duck flies out of office, the less attention he gets, the better.

Two oddities with which to end this post. I'll start with the coronavirus one. The covid relief bill passed in December included a clause that gives US intelligence agencies 180 days to tell Congress what they know about " unidentified aerial phenomena" otherwise known as UFOs. The article in which this gem was included ended with "A spokesperson for the Office of National Intelligence confirmed the news to the fact-checking website Scopes." So, yes, this is real even if the unidentified aerial phenomena might not be.

They found a fossil that suggests baby megalodons (giant prehistoric sharks) were as big as human adults if not bigger. There was also evidence that the species practiced oophagy, in which embryos get stronger by feeding on the unhatched eggs of siblings in the womb. "Oophagy" is pronounced oh-OFF-schwa-jee. I wasn't sure how to use the upside-down-backwards lower case e that is the character for the schwa. Besides megalodons, great white, thresher, and mako sharks practice oophagy. I now pronounce you ready to make small talk at a future social engagement. 

 

The View from the Hermitage, Day 301

I meant to start writing this over an hour ago, but my Apple watch decided to play mind games in terms of storage space and software updates. Then The Family Dog requested an outdoor walk. Then the watch needed more attention. Life can certainly get in the way of life at times. But I apparently have my watch under control now, and The Family Dog has been walked and fed. The Family Cat does not go outside, but she too has been fed.

On the home covid front, The Professor heard today that he'll get more and official chances to be exposed. All people who conduct a certain type of research that The Professor happens to do have to be tested twice weekly for the next three weeks. Once the semester starts on February 1, the required frequency drops to once weekly. The Professor has been limiting his trips to his lab to once weekly at most. Now he gets to go to the university twice and, in the process, be around a lot more people than he otherwise would be. Even more frustrating to The Professor is that one of his collaborators is a retired professor in his 80s who only darkens the door of the lab every so many weeks when his presence is required in person. That no longer matters; he, too, must go in twice weekly for the next three weeks and once weekly after that.

On the home quilt front, I am making progress on the sample for my pandemic quilt. I am learning something new with each session. The amount of top stitching required is incredible, as is the attention required to keep the lines for each day straight. I'll try to remember to take a photo of it tomorrow to put up here, along with a screen shot of the inspiration. 

No news is good news on the national political front. All that means is that I have not read or listened to news since first thing this morning. The Lame Duck may well have done something newsworthy, but if he has, I haven't learned about it. Ignorance really can be bliss. Unless The Professor wants to watch the evening news, I can stay in blissful ignorance even longer. My morning read of select news outlets did tell me that The Lame Duck has yet to call the family of the police officer killed in the Capitol riot. VP Pence has called, though. I've never really liked VP Pence, but he's been redeeming himself lately. He has not spoken with The Duck since Wednesday morning, before the Capitol riot. Finally, a second Republican Senator, Pat Toomey of Pennsykvania, has joined Lisa Murkowski of Alaska in calling for The Lame Duck's resignation.

On the national coronavirus front, the concern remains about front line workers choosing not to get vaccinated. Up to 40 percent of frontline workers in hard-hit Los Angeles County are refusing the vaccine as are 60 percent of the care home workers in Ohio. In December, 55 percent of New York City firefighters surveyed said they would not consent to be vaccinated. The president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association (the union) collected questions from 8,200 members and had a virologist friend answer the questions in a 50-minute video. That video has now been viewed some 2,000 times, and the union has received several dozen phone calls and messages from members that say the video has changed their minds about the vaccine. It seems that ometimes ignorance is not bliss. Pope Francis has called covid vaccinations an ethical obligation and said that refusal to be vaccinated is suicidal. Given that the Catholic Church views suicide as a major sin, the Pope's statements are noteworthy. 

I expect to pay more attention to news local and beyond tomorrow. Even though I'm retired, there's something about the weekend that makes me want to ignore things. Ignore as in ignorance as in staying in bliss a wee while longer.