76. Depths--and hope

This Christmas Holiday, some crazy in Nashville set off a huge explosion that rocked the city and the region—there’s speculation that his mad was for AT&T. The president, still fuming about the election, has refused to sign a bill that would  extended unemployment benefits to 14 million Americans for a few months—enough to get millions a bridge beyond Covid-times. In California they are running out of Covid ER beds.

 

And my granddaughter’s car, stolen on Christmas Eve in Portland, holding work clothes, presents, and a paycheck, has not been found. 

 

It’s hard not to focus on the meanness in the hearts of so many, the total lack of empathy and the black holes in their hearts, as we finish what has been a very hard year.

 

Calendars are just measuring sticks, but their days and numbers have meaning. There are paydays, workdays, holy days, schooldays, and the days that have been marked to memorialize the birth of a holy person, the end of a war, and right now, the end of a year. 

 

Years—the days that it takes for the earth to circle our sun, could start at any point along that circle, but in the distant past someone decided to start a few days after the shortest one, as the daylight—at least in our hemisphere—again grows longer.  

 

I have never heard so many say that they are ready for one year to end and another to begin. I too am counting down to the Wallowa Lake Plunge on New Years Day, the January days to inauguration of a new president, the days to the slowing of this pandemic and days to my own Covid-vaccination.

 

* * *

It’s hard not to wish ill towards offenders: to want the people who refuse to wear masks to get sick; to want the Trump empire to fold and his family to be overwhelmed with a cascade of the legal tangles that have made them money and hurt others; to want the car thieves to drive off a bridge. 

 

It’s more reasonable to ask that all of the above be subjected to the law.

 

Small chance, big hope, that the president will turn magnanimous and sign the bill, and that the thieves will see the look on some poor child’s face, give her one of the presents, and drop the car off at a local church or shopping mall.

 

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74+ Brilliant, nasty, and totally narcissistic (dec 23)

It hit me like a baseball bat this morning; Donald Trump’s video, released last night, attacking the Congressionally hashed out Covid Relief legislation, is all of above.  

There is pork and garbage in most bills voted on in Congress. Most of us—probably most Senators and Representatives—never see the pork and garbage. If anything we wink at it and concentrate on the meat, the primary provisions and purposes of the proposed legislation. Trump chose, at a minute so final that he can pocket veto it into the new Congress, to expose the legislation’s innards.

 

And he floated a big, fat, $2000 out there in front of everyone—Democrats and citizens who want it; and cost-conscious Republicans for whom even the $600 was a hard compromise. 

 

Senators and Representatives, many already gone home for the Christmas break, must quickly scurry and filter a dozen different scenarios to find one that will allow the legislation to pass. They’ll all—even McConnell—wince at the garbage, and Republicans will have to decide whether to defy Trump and stand up for it, or cave once again to his narcissistic demands.

 

Trump is back in the headlines, watching his minions sweat, weighing signing, vetoing, or pocket-vetoing in his own puffed up mind. Which will excite the most obsequious behavior? How many toadies can he count? 

 

Where’s there a thought for anyone else?

 

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55. Covid comes to my house

The virus has been circling around Wallowa County and hit friends directly and indirectly for weeks, but yesterday it came to my house. Grandson Trey, who has been living with his mother in Portland for the past 3 months, unwittingly brought it home. There had been exposure in his mom’s house, but she and two boys had tested negative—she said she couldn’t get Trey tested. No problem; I could get him tested here. I picked him up at the Pilot station at milepost 188 on Sunday, brought him home to join me and Aidan, another grandson whose hurried trip from Ohio brought him to Joseph a couple of weeks ago. 

 

We ate a good beef stir-fry Sunday evening, and I took Trey in for curbside testing Monday morning; he tested positive. We scrambled, got better masks, sanitized, talked about dividing bathrooms and spaces in the house. The medical people said I should wait before testing—either on symptoms or in 4 or 5 days, when the nasty virus has had time to work.

 

I mentioned the day’s events in an unrelated phone call to friend Rick yesterday--Monday.  An hour later he called back to say that he and others had decided that the house was too small for the three of us, and as I am the 78 year-old, I needed to get the hell out. He had already made arrangements with another friend for a summer rental house at Wallowa Lake.

 

It’s quiet here—no dogs barking or cars screeching, as they do even in the small town of Joseph. Quiet snow fell this morning on trees already heavy with it. I checked with the boys by phone. They’re fine, although Trey says he doesn’t have much energy. I wonder if he unconsciously knew he had it all along, and his gut had told him to come home. Trey changes the subject, tells me that I don’t have any excuses—I have to write my book.

 

I’ll try. Meanwhile, I read the papers and find a new explosion of positives out of the White House. My hunch, that the Trump campaign had raced against Covid with personal appearances in the last days before the election, betting that any outbreaks would not happen until after November 3, becomes conviction.

 

The cavalier attitude towards Covid-19 pisses me off. Wear your masks; keep your distance; limit your travel. And don’t bet against the virus.

 

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52. The Election and Covid-19

I write this on Wednesday morning, with Biden ahead of Trump 238-213 in the Electoral vote and seven states still not declared for either side. Four of the seven are leaning Trump; three leaning Biden, but the light reds and light blues have shifted back and forth for hours, and might well do so again today—and tomorrow—before they move to bright red or bright blue. The popular vote—Biden up by 2,300,000—is tucked away for another day and discussions of electoral reform. 

 

One thing is certain: millions of Americans have decided that the Covid-19 threat is less important than the economy, or that it is overblown. Last night, as the vote counts spilled across the TV screen, commentators commented on the president’s whirlwind appearances in the last week, and the enthusiasm of his crowds. “The economy” was cited by many voters. 

 

There was little talk last night of Covid-19, no talk that I heard of the spread of the virus from polling places or rallies. No fears in voting lines—although most seemed masked and distanced. And the newspaper and radio pundits I’ve heard this morning make no or little mention of the disease. It’s as if the election took our minds away from something that has been with us for too long.

 

Millions of Americans have explicitly or implicitly decided that Covid-19 is not as serious a disease as advertised, or that it is not a personal threat because of their age or station, or that if they happen to contract it, they will bounce back as the president has, or that a herd immunity and the imminent arrival of a vaccine will soon reduce Covid-19 to a historical footnote.

 

Meanwhile, the disease is raging again in many countries as experts quibble over a second or third wave, and 1199 Americans died of it yesterday. There were 94,463 new cases announced, with our largest yet hospitalization census—50,176.

 

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