The View from the Hermitage, Day 265

And so we begin to see the effects of Thanksgiving travel, and they are not good. Yesterday's cases figure here in Virginia was the highest yet, and not by a little unless 620 cases is a smaller than I think it is. The previous record that did not come with a downtime asterisk was  3,173; yesterday we were up to 3,793. Perhaps more troubling is that the percent positivity which is a rolling average of the last seven days is up to 10 percent. And 10 percent was the number we had to drop below before anything could be reopened. I doubt, though,that they will start to close some things down if the percent positivity continues to rise.  I expect that we shall see over 4,000 new cases one day this week, and it may be earlier in the week than we think.

Son #1 said he'd seen the minutes of some of the early White House Task Force meetings in which 240,000 was mentioned as the upper limit on the number of deaths there would be. According to the CDC COVID Tracker, we're at 277,825 deaths so far. I'm thinking we'll hit 300,000 deaths before 2021 rolls around, though I would not be surprised to see us hit that many deaths before Christmas. 

If those numbers are too depressing, ponder what it might mean that of the 249 Congressional Republicans, only 26 acknowledge that Uncle Joe legitimately won the November 3 General Election. I cannot wrap my head around those numbers. I would expect that the other 223 are not stupid; they did, after all, win elections against not-stupid people. How can that many supposedly not-stupid people be sucked into The Lame Duck's maelstrom of lies. How does one person hijack a political party that they did not start? I don't expect The Duck has dirty information (photos?) about all of those Congressional Republicans in which case they would be supporting him out of fear rather than for real.

The direction in which the country is moving scares me, and that statement has nothing to do with the novel coronavirus. I honestly think that we will conquer the coronavirus and covid-19 before we repair the divisions in our fundamental beliefs. I am lucky in that moving north to Canada is a readily available option given The Professor's dual citizenship. Do I want to move north? Not really, but then I don't want to live in a society in which there is but one true god and differences are not celebrated, nor do I want to live in a society in which the haves lord over the have-nots. I want to live in a society that recognizes the existence of the Holocaust. I want to live in a society that respects the scientific method. If we begin to drift too close to the negatives above, I guess I will be outa here then.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 264

The Professor and I are sharing the house but separately. There is no way around sharing the air, though, so we wear masks inside at all times except when eating or drinking. If I'm going to wear a mask all day, it has to be one that does not fog up my glasses with every exhalation. The solution is a bit intimidating, but it works great.

Pay no attention to the wet, stringy hair. I'd just washed it. Not really realizing that it would still hang down and get in my eyes, I had not put on a headband. I did that after taking this photo. Fortunately, there's no one around to see that state of my hair whenever I take the mask off to ingest sustenance. I will not wear the mask while sleeping. The master bedroom is on the second floor and is where I'm sleeping. The Professor is sleeping in the guest room which is in the basement. I think there's enough air between us especially given that the door to the basement will be closed. 

The Professor's test kit will arrive tomorrow. He'll do the test on Monday. If it's negative, he'll need to continue the quarantining. If the test is positive, I pack as quickly as I can and move to Son #1's house or Son #2's cabin. The house here in town would be preferable, but I would just need not to be in the house with The Professor. 

It's tiring, mentally, to manage staying apart, coordinating schedules so that I'm outside when he moseys from his upstairs office to the downstairs guest room, or be in the master bedroom while he picks up his dinner from the kitchen. I'm sure that a portion of the fatigue is rooted in worry over the what if hanging over our heads.

All the numbers--local, state, national, not sure about world--seem are headed in the wrong direction. What concerns me most right now is the the seven-day rolling average of the percent of those tested who test positive is 9.5 percent. Way back when (or so it seems) when reopening the lockdown was first proposed, nothing could happen until that percent positivity was under 10 percent for two weeks. What does it say that it's on its way back up to 10 percent? And we need to stay tuned, because the post-Thanksgiving surges could easily start this weekend. Will those keep people from traveling at Christmas? Not bloody likely.

Away with numbers and serious stuff! The two Christmas decor photos I could not put up yesterday made it to the laptop today. Here's my two Christmas touches so far.

Also of note is that I finished re-making the wreath I did several years ago of doll heads and body parts. I also made a new wreath with doll heads as holly berries. The local quilt guild has a "show and tell" page on which members can post things they are working on or have finished. I put up the two photos below, and only one person has clicked for any response. I think they've always wondered about me, and this may have them wondering even more. Here are the wreaths in question.

I'd have liked to have formatted them a bit better, but that was vexing me, and I'm tired. So here they are, up close (to each other) and personal, not centered nicely as the decor photos above are. 

It's funny to be missing someone who is just upstairs.

 

The View from the Hermitage, Day 263

How many deaths were there yesterday from covid-19? That sounds a bit impersonal, so let's rephrase it. How many people died yesterday from covid-19? We're not talking about "deaths." Deaths of what? We're talking about people here. The number of people who died yesterday who probably would not have died otherwise. People. The answer to the initial questions? 3,100 (one source said 2,777, but I'm going with the 3,100). Three thousand one hundred people who were alive on Tuesday are not around today, Thursday. That's frightening. Perhaps more frightening is that that number of deaths, no, that number of people dying, is the most ever. More than died on any one day when we watched the novel coronavirus lay waste in a way to New York City. More than died on any one day back when taking the coronavirus seriously was not that difficult, when every story on the front page was virus-related, when the numbers seemed to mean something.

Other records were set in terms of the number of new covid-19 cases, no, the number of people with covid-19. Yesterday, 205,000 people were diagnosed with covid-19. And there were more than 100,000 hospitalizations. But let's get personal again. More than 100,000 people were admitted to a hospital yesterday due to covid-19 symptoms. People. 

I wonder if all this would be taken more seriously if all the stats were expressed in terms of the number of people affected. I can hope.

As for people, one person in the house, The Professor, learned today that someone with whom he spoke for less than 15 minutes, both masked, and more than six feet apart on Tuesday has tested positive. The local university says the exposure was so little that The Professor really wasn't exposed. Really, local university? Really? The Professor and I are negotiating quarantine principles, since the university said he didn't really need to quarantine given that he was not really exposed. (They at least will send him a test kit.) 

More than you wanted to know possibly. Definitely more than I wanted to learn today.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 262

I took photos of my two or three Christmas decorations, but something is acting up on emailing them from phone to laptop. I put a Christmas tablecloth (made by my stepmother) over the table on which we might put a small tree. I also put together a Let It Snow banner Son #1 was given. That's strung along the mantle. I've also started posting Christmas cards along the mantle, which is either the second or third decoration depending on how one counts. 

The governor held another covid-19 briefing today. I did not learn about it until it was nine minutes in, meaning I missed anything about the rising covid-19 numbers. I did find out that it's gonna be quite a long while before I can get vaccinated. Virginia will pretty much follow the schedule recommended by the CDC, meaning that the first two groups to be vaccinated will be health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities. Virginia expects to get 70,000 doses in the first shipment; they estimate that health care workers plus long-term care residents equal about 500,000. And everyone will need a second vaccination three weeks after the first. I should probably start planning the party to mark the 365th day of this blog. 

The Lame Duck is up to his usual no-good. He is contemplating and has asked advisers about preemptive pardons for The Duck Junior, Junior's little brother, The Duck Daughter, and Duck Daughter's Spouse. Preemptive pardons are not often given but they are legal. Gerald Ford included a preemptive pardon for Richard Nixon. Evidently, Rudy Giuliani would like a preemptive pardon as well. Presidential pardons, of course, only apply to federal offenses. They offer no protection against state offenses such as that being investigated by the Manhattan District Attorney's office (every time I write that I hear the theme music from Law & Order).

There is a new investigation into the pardon business the White House is running. There is apparently some evidence that pardons are being sold to the highest bidders, those bids being donations to a political fund that may well help The Lame Duck waddle again in 2014. This is not the first time that pardons are said to have been sold. I think one of the pardons issued by Bill Clinton was said to have been done in return for something. This sounds a bit more involved than that one was. Sad to say, it did not surprise me at all that pardon purchasing might be going on, not at all.

I wonder if Rudy Giuliani might pay for a pardon with whatever money The Lame Duck's campaign is paying him to file election fraud lawsuits. He supposedly asked for $20,000 per day, which would have made him one of the highest paid lawyers in the world. It's not clear that is what he is being paid, but his pace in filing suit after suit may indicate a desire to stretch things out as far as he can. At least that's what I'd do if I were being paid that much--or even less--each day.

I am being informed by The Family Dog that if I am not going to give her her evening kibble early, the least I can do is sit on the couch and scratch her. She can be quite persuasive.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 261

On the morning walks, I see more and more outdoor Christmas decor going up as well as decorated, lighted trees inside, visible through a window. I addressed more Christmas cards yesterday and even put some international ones in the mail. Today, I've put a Christmas tablecloth on an end table in the corner in which we usually put the tree. The Professor is at his office at the moment and said he might actually look at tree lots on his drive home. Probably the highest priority item right now is wrapping and packing The Professor's brother's Christmas present, a needle-felted scene of the Northern Lights. I'd left it unwrapped to show to Son #2 and D-i-L Equivalent on Thanksgiving, but did not wrap it on learning they would not be coming. 

On the quirky Christmas side, I retrieved the pieces of a wreath I'd made from dismembered doll parts. The paint on some had been chipped away, and the glue was weakening to the point of not holding them on. I've repainted all the parts green. Tomorrow I will paint fingernails and toenails gold and eyes, red. Then it will be time to glue the body parts back onto the light wooden wreath circle, affix a bow to the bottom, and hand it outside the door. Some people, upon learning I do this or having seen a photo of the wreath, "get it." Others, unfortunately, don't. I do enjoy the looks on their faces, though.

The interior decorations are up at the White House. The First Duckess coordinates the interior decor every year. I've seen excerpts from a book written by a (now) former friend of the First Duckess in which she said the First Duckess really had no interest in this aspect of First Ladyency. I can't say I blame her. Decorating a large public space would not be high on the list of things I'd enjoy doing. I would never want to be married into that sort of "job" description. I often told The Professor that it was probably best that he was never appointed department chair or any other administrative position that might require me to be more adult than I am comfortable being. 

From FLOTUS to POTUS, the Attorney General has said publicly that there was no election fraud. I pondered how long the AG might have before The Lame Duck fires him, until I read the suggestion that the AG might have info related the Jeffrey Epstein's supposed suicide that The Lame Duck might not want known. Blackmail of a sort. With no evidence of electoral fraud, will people finally stop donating money to The Duck? He's evidently taken in something like $170 million. Now he could use that money to pay off the debts he has outstanding from various rallies, but that doesn't fit with everything I've read or heard about his business practices. 

What do Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Utah, Arizona, Alaska, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida have in common? That's a too-easy question. None have a statewide mask mandate. Some do allow municipal governments to impose mask mandates of their own, but there are no restrictions or guidelines that cover the entire state. I would say that these states are the current covid-19 hot spots, but looking at counties nationwide, it might be more accurate to say that the US is a hot spot. 

And what do Oregon, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Utah have in common with Denmark? Outbreaks of coronavirus at mink farms. In Oregon both minks and humans who work with them have tested positive. There is no word on zombieminks in the US, but they did worry about those in Denmark. A zombiemink is one that rises from the ground after being buried improperly. You may have thought 2020 could not get much weirder, but I can't think of too many things weirder than zombieminks.

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 259

Day 259, Week 37, call it what you will, there's still no real end in sight. It's not clear there will be by the time 2020 rides off into the sunset either. Will the old year leave in the same flaming dumpster it settled into last March? When I look ahead to 2021, I try not to think of the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 that killed nearly 230,000 people. Mother Nature does not observe holidays. If she gets in a bad mood, all bets are off. In other words, we are not out of the 2020 woods just yet.

On the very local, household, front, I have abandoned the search for curtains or drapes via retail establishments. Finding the same thing in different lengths became too vexing. We are also trying to patronize local businesses where possible, and there are several local custom window treatment places. I know that we'll pay exorbitantly more than we would at some place such as Wayfair or Lowe's, but we'll be supporting a local small business. Since I don't feel comfortable having someone come into the house right now, we'll put the old curtains back up for insulation and wait until life is more stable.

Locally but not at my house, the city had its third murder in a month yesterday morning. It's the fifth murder so far this year. I've heard few details, though it sounds as if around 30 shots were fired in the incident based on the number of shell casings recovered. We've got a month still to go, so a sixth would not be out of the picture. Also, the county school system reported its first student covid-19 cases, five at one elementary school. It sounded as if one student tested positive with contact tracing pointing to five other students with whom they had contact with away from school. Four of those students tested positive. All are isolating. A couple of adults at the school also tested positive, though it wasn't clear to me whether the adults were exposed to the student(s) or in some other way. 

The seven-day rolling average of new covid-19 cases in Virginia may go past 2,600 today after dropping a bit on Friday. Thanksgiving Day was, as might be expected, not a day for an overly large number of new cases to be reported. It sounded as if the governor did do a briefing last Tuesday, but it was more of the same be-careful-you-can-do-this song and dance. Other states are tightening what they can to lessen exposure. I don't view stopping alcohol sales at midnight as tight enough. It may be the the covid-19 cases the governor and his wife had were mild enough for him to think it's not that big of a deal. Guess what, Ralph? It is!

The Washington Post had an in-depth article this morning on what The Lame Duck has been doing in the time since the election. What was reported was not reassuring. I would compare it to something such as The Count of Monte Cristo but in that work the character wanted to leave his imprisonment. The Lame Duck is the opposite. He has no desire to leave the prison of the Presidency. Interestingly, I recall one mention of Jared Kushner in the article but no mention of The Lame Ducklings, Don, Eric, or Ivanka. Are they perhaps trying to distance themselves from Daddy Duck?

The Post also had an interesting column by Ruth Marcus on the pros and cons of prosecuting The Lame Duck once he is no longer President. Central to such consideration is whether pursuing charges would further divide an already-very-divided country. That consideration slowed by knee-jerk response of, "You have to ask? Of course we should nail his butt to the wall!" Would the Proud Boys stand back for that or are they standing by just in case that happens? What message does it send not to prosecute him, say, for crimes committed before he became President? That you really can stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone? That having half the country support you absolves you from any and all offenses committed at any time? There's a lot to think about there, which I imagine various prosecutors are doing right now. 

Back to the here and now. I have lost track of the number of Facebook pages I have seen showing the Christmas trees and decorations people have put up (some before Thanksgiving!) or are putting up this weekend. It's not as if I'm hosting any visitors any time soon. We live somewhat off the main roads, so it's not as if people will be driving by and admiring our outside decorations which end at putting up icicle lights around the front porch. I have at least addresses ten envelopes for Christmas cards. I call that a good enough start at Christmas.