Current Events | Playing for Time

Hey, it’s Monday… page 165

14 Dec 2020 2 Comments

Day 274 – 12/14/2020

It was 16º out when Kim got up so he postponed his walk and turned the heat on for the first time – the fireplace has been handling it okay ’til now but the cold made it all the way inside overnight. It’s the height of privilege to sit here in my little world with a silent space heater keeping my toes warm while I commune with friends online, read the latest news long enough to raise my heart rate, sip my coffee, and stay outta everybody’s face while Kim fills the spa tub. My self-orbit affirms that we humans really aren’t worth all the effort.

Sweet surprise this morning – Katie (cousin) called to wish me a Merry Christmas, catch up a little, and ask for directions. Emily & Savannah (daughter & granddaughter) are in Dodge City, America, of all places, on their way west and want to find the farm where Katie’s and my grandparents homesteaded and where I grew up, along with the family cemetery. Confusion and hilarity ensued for 15 minutes as Katie, in Florida, typed directions into her phone while I reconstructed the miles in my head. I think we ended up with a usable map but I’m also pretty sure Savannah will Google Earth it and they’ll be golden. Can’t wait to hear the………. rest of the story. And hopefully see some pics – I don’t know when I last saw the old neighborhood.

A cool find this morning – we had relatives in Sheboygan, and after visiting there when I was 3 or 4 years old the name became a treasured part of my vocabulary. Sheboygan… so delicious to say.

**Strong waves at the lakefront, Saturday, December 12, 2020, in Sheboygan, Wis.**

Routine used to be a four-letter word to me but with only upheaval everywhere I’m seeing its better side, which is comfort. Today’s Monday so I know what we’re having for lunch and that The Voice 2020 wraps up tonight and tomorrow, which is Tuesday so I know what we’re having for lunch then, too. The Amazing Race finale happens Wednesday night, and I’m not bothered by the fact that I have no idea what food I’ll be stuffing into my face that day. Space… options… comfort.

Comfort… that would be this man right here. I posted his picture the other day holding an elderly patient who was crying for his wife. Everyday heroes taking it to the stratosphere.

This is my 274th day isolating, starting in mid-March. For every one of those days I’ve spent in my perfectly great space whining and fretting, with tiny forays to see Rita or keep a doctor’s appointment, this human being has been at the hospital. His license plate reads CVD HNTR. Dr. Joseph Varon, a 58-year-old physician and chief of staff at United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, has been hunting covid-19 for 270 days straight. He has not had a single day off since March. “I was meant to do this,” he says.

From The Washington Post: “Born and raised in Mexico City, and with specialties in pneumonology, intensive care, internal medicine and geriatrics, Varon was particularly well-equipped to wage war against a virus that has killed more than 290,000 Americans.” [Now over 300,000, post-WP publication.] His personal experiences, he said, prepared him for this moment.

In 1985, he was working as an intern in one of Mexico City’s largest hospitals when an 8.1-magnitude earthquake leveled the building. He watched many of his colleagues die that day. “I have seen disaster up front all of my life,” he said. “The only thing that scares me is corona” — a disease he calls “short-term AIDS” — and its unpredictability.

Mid-interview, Varon had to duck out. He followed up with a text: “I just admitted 6 covid patients in the past 60 minutes,” he wrote. “It is absolute madness.”

As the medical staff at UMCC witnessed the psychological effects of isolation in patients, Varon instructed staff to wear large photographs of their faces hung around their necks, so that patients could recognize the person who was caring for them behind those “space suits.” One day, he went in to see patients with a picture of Brad Pitt attached to his personal protective equipment suit, eliciting laughter from even those who were the sickest.

“Other doctors stay behind the lines, they do not get their hands dirty,” said Tanna Ingraham, an ICU nurse at UMCC hospital, who was also hospitalized with covid-19 for 12 days. “He is totally hands-on and treats every single one of his patients as if they were his family members.”

Everyday heroes… 💙

Today, December 14, 2020, clusters of everyday heroes are gathering in State Houses across the country to do the right thing on behalf of democracy, speaking in the prevailing voice of the American people. We will owe them our future and our lives.

****************************************************

Image by Judy Smith

Round and ’round… page 163

12 Dec 2020 Leave a comment

Day 272 – 12/12/2020

In a world-changing pandemic, it’s a bonus to live with someone who likes to see me smile, and he hass hiss vays. Like this morning’s omelet extra-full of beans & cheese… and the flowers he brought me after yesterday’s errands.

Since he made the Saturday Breakfast on Friday, I lobbied for omelets for today and got to have it my way, of course. I mean, why not? Sunday could be pancakes, who knows?!

It’s 36º right now, feels like 27. Just gonna be a damp gray Saturday and we’ll stay tucked in. The omelet will take me to at least mid-afternoon when Kim could have a couple of smoothies up his sleeve, as sometimes happens.

Our two big crises are still hanging over our heads… and which one demands priority? In order for democracy to survive intact, DJT will have to exit the stage very soon. But more pressing hour by hour is that in order for our human population to survive he must turn the virus exigencies over to the experts immediately. Two crises, closely intertwined, each a threat to our existence on its own, and now doubled in adverse impact by the psychopathic efforts of seditionists in government.

**Not even his having pre-packed the Court** **could force them to break the Constitution.**

The other half of the nightmare is what coronavirus is doing to us every day without let-up, and it’s rapidly accelerating. This map is from two days ago, December 10th, and the numbers have only gone up since. It gives me a hint as to why parts of the country are seemingly blasé about the whole thing, and might I just add, check out Georgia. Damn.

The planet only grows stranger and more hostile while we humans try to figure out how to stay alive upon it. A lot of things are still waiting for answers…

But let’s paint a happy little bird right here and make it all better… and on with the Christmas spirit.

Image by Judy Smith

Saying thanks… page 160

09 Dec 2020 2 Comments

Day 269 – 12/09/2020

Woke up to a gentle sunrise, feeling grateful… just a quiet knowing that good finally wins out.

I’m thankful for the sunshine. This is our fifth day in a row of fair skies and milder temps, and that helps with absolutely everything. After today it’s winter again for a while, as is to be expected in December, but this has been good.

Kim took the photo above on his walk this morning of a window on Mass Street, and brought me a bagel, both of which made me smile and feel the thankfulness.

I just read through some of the comments on my blog and was teary-eyed grateful for so many genuine human beings who talk to me, here and on other social media. You’ve been my steady friends through all the crises, and I hope I’ve been yours.

I’m deeply grateful for writers, here and everywhere, who take me through the days in boxes filled with brilliantly-organized words. When you sit at your keyboard, and open a vein and bleed, it lets me into your world and all those beyond and I see you. You should feel seen.

I’m grateful always for Kim, in all things. His commitment to this household, formed from the two of us, goes above and beyond. I don’t deserve him but if he weren’t here I’m not sure I’d be ANYwhere.

I’m very thankful that Rita lives just across town, listens to my rants, loves me unconditionally, and is THERE. I’m undeserving of that after all the crap I pulled on her when we were growing up.

My gratitude, appreciation, and love for John know no limits. I can’t find words for the magnitude of my respect for him, and my deep thankfulness for his caring. Best. Ever.

I’m thankful, grateful, indebted to the people out there who’ve been fighting both coronavirus and their fellow citizens for nine months, with no good end in sight until truly effective vaccines can be delivered and administered in such numbers as to slow the roll and finally stop it. We don’t deserve those people at all, and without them we mos def would not be around much longer.

Kim’s psychic photo reached out and grabbed me this morning. Some people call melancholy souls *feelers* and on occasion feelers have been known to know things. You don’t really know… you just KNOW. It’s a curse because when you feel in your bones that something’s going to happen and nobody believes you, what are you supposed to do with that?

So you write, you spill all of that between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place angst onto the page and leave it screeching in its death throes while you walk away… and pity the poor soul who happens upon the steaming pile. For an anxiety-ridden little lump of flesh, practically from birth, it’s possibly odd that I prefer to deal in nothing less than truth. Hit me with it straight on, I’ll sort it, and I’ll do what has to be done. And having put it out there that way, I see that dealing with life head-on is how I handle my built-in anxiety – just do it. There are facts hitting us in the face every day now that we can’t run from and they aren’t going away, so I look, absorb, adjust, and carry it ’til bedtime. Thank the universe I sleep like the proverbial dead.

**Since this was created the events of 9/11 have dropped at least two places and within a week will no longer be on the graph at all.**

Image by Judy Smith

Sunny Saturday… page 156

05 Dec 2020 Leave a comment

Day 265 – 12/05/2020

Some morning in the next year… or the one after that… I’ll wake up and check the news and not cry. That’s going to be a good day. Second story I read today was about Kansas health officials walking away from their careers, not because of the 80-hour work weeks but because their families are being threatened with violence. The Reno County Health Director resigned in July after having local police watch his house while his wife and kids were home alone, saying the stress and worry simply weren’t worth it. And he isn’t the only one – in the past nine months 27 Kansas county health officials have left their posts, many because they’ve been physically threatened or politically scapegoated. To quote Nick Baldetti, Reno County, pictured in a red MAGA cap, “By the end of the day, you just felt like you were on an island by yourself,” he said. “Whatever decision I made, 50% of people were going to be upset because it was too ‘restrictive’ and the other 50% were going to be upset because it wasn’t restrictive enough.”

That’s the same ratio that says Joe Biden either did or did not win the presidency, despite the facts, including that the popular vote margin has now exceeded 7 million:

Oddly enough, the half of the country that wants to believe Donald Trump won is the same half that’s threatening not only health officials but medical doctors and other personnel for requiring measures against the virus, and simply for representing something they refuse to deal with. That’s so beyond the pale I can’t believe it’s happening in America’s cities and small communities. So I cry. Every day. I guess it helps… I eventually put on my big girl face and get on with it. But I no longer know, nor feel I can trust, about half the people in my life because of the visceral hatred I’ve seen in familiar faces, along with the lack of any willingness to address what’s happening to us as a nation, a people, a family of humans. The pandemic and political divide are breaking us.

But it’s Saturday, the sun’s shining, we just had The Breakfast, and Kim might get to play at SPL or Lyons today. Our little neighborhood is full of dog-walkers and a tiny house finch is perched outside my window. Time to adult-up and savor the weekend…

Image by Judy Smith

Perspective… page 153

02 Dec 2020 2 Comments

Day 262 – 12/02/2020

Passivity has taken me to a severely rudderless point… how ever will I right the ship again and head for true north? Some days it simply isn’t worth chewing through the restraints, and that’s not even a whine, just a fact. So I’ve been on a hunt this morning for things that take me outside my ridiculous self and break the ennui, this first of all for its x-ray vision:

**This from an Australian beach. Wha… ?**

**Mothballed cruise ships and other vessels, in Greece I think. Some look quite longterm.**

HOUSTON, TX – NOVEMBER 26: Dr. Joseph Varon hugs and comforts a patient in the COVID-19 intensive care unit (ICU) during Thanksgiving at the United Memorial Medical Center on November 26, 2020 in Houston, Texas. According to reports, Texas has reached over 1,220,000 cases, including over 21,500 deaths. (Photo by Go Nakamura/Getty Images)

The year 2019 was dicey and 2020 has broken me. So grateful that music and its people still heal us.

Credit to Kim Smith for photo at top – 12/02/2020

Image by Judy Smith

Black Friday… page 150

27 Nov 2020 2 Comments

Day 257 – 11/27/2020

Can’t remember why it’s called Black Friday but I’ve never done one and this year would be an incredibly stupid time to start. Kim said Mass Street was quiet this morning so the stores didn’t open early for sales – maybe #lfk isn’t going to the dance this time around.

I’m seeing lots of Twitter comments about crying jags and teary breakdowns on The Day After. I have a feeling we stayed home and did it right, all brave and stiff-upper-lipped, and today the knowledge of everything we’ve lost is proving too heavy. Will there ever be a road back to what we knew and believed to be real?

This day feels ponderous to carry so I’ll have to break it up into livable chunks – sixteen unbroken hours of staying awake for it is unmanageable. Tried not to write about it, but I can’t go all day without breathing. Tried not to talk about it to Kim but he’s the only one here. Looking for a diversion in the bottom of the toy box that will take me outside myself and into the sunlight. Feels like it will be a long winter, with days and days of isolation and uncertainty, so I gotta figure it out, I can’t whine my way through another year of this. And by the time a vaccine gets final approval, a distribution system is in place, and we’ve all received our two shots with a month between, it will most likely take that long. Then we’ll have to keep wearing masks and social distancing until we achieve community transmission reduction. Long haul ahead, Mama, pull up your big-girl undies.

Image by Judy Smith

How’s the weather?… page 148

24 Nov 2020 Leave a comment

Day 254 – 11/24/2020

Kim’s photo of yesterday’s sunrise gives me all the feels – it’s clouded over again this morning but without the drama. All things considered, I’m not ready for winter this year, the early dark, the wind, the cold permeating the building – the weather becomes my jailer. One attitude adjustment on backorder – they’re temporarily out of stock.

Totally blah this morning. Everything on the inside feels the way it looks outside – dull and gray. Things are moving forward on the political front, but we still have two months of limbo to get through while the country and its people continue our slide down the garbage chute. Two more months for those supposedly in charge to ignore the massive loss of life every single day. It’s hard knowledge to reconcile.

The sun’s always out there, though. Kim’s photo of Watkins Museum yesterday morning…

And a random street…

Image by Judy Smith

Moody Blues… page 147

23 Nov 2020 2 Comments

Day 253 – 11/23/2020

Everything from the sublime to the ridiculous makes me cry now. For months into the pandemic I couldn’t keep my head corralled long enough to read a book, and since I got back to it every one I’ve picked up has made me shed good tears, from Alice McDermott’s After This, to Barlow Adams’ Appalachian Alchemy, to the book I finished today The World Without You by Joshua Henkin, which had me sobbing more than once. Even when I have trouble sticking with them, I can’t imagine a world without all the books we want to read – they’re the best thing for taking us from here to there, and I have a big need for that.

It feels all wrong for this to be Thanksgiving week when it should still be summer. Since we’ve never made a big deal of holidays beyond our first Christmas together, the solitude of this holiday season will affect us less than most. And they’re 24-hour days like any other – they pass. Blessings on them all, I malign no traditions.

At least once a week someone asks on Facebook or Twitter “Do you personally know anyone who’s died from COVID?” Rod A, who was a year behind me all the way through school, died a few months ago, and last night I was notified that Loren D, a friend from another lifetime, had died of the virus in Hutchinson’s Stormont-Vail Hospital. There have been friends of friends, parents of friends, but these two I knew well. The longer it’s allowed to rage uncontrolled the more people we’re going to lose and my sense is that it will become real to every one of us before it’s over.

Wet out this morning and just above freezing. There are days when the gray skies put me under. Hope this won’t be one of them.

Image by Judy Smith

Beyond frustrated… page 146

22 Nov 2020 Leave a comment

Day 252 – 11/22/2020

Wondering just how many wet mackerels to the face it might take for the world to wake up. This attempted coup isn’t a game, certainly not entertaining, and won’t succeed, but in the meantime people are dying in ever greater numbers while the Pouter-in-Chief plays golf and abdicates from everything but the shenanigans. The president-elect is being shut out of transitional resources that would enable him to address the pandemic, while Pretend President refuses to lift a finger himself. It’s been life and death for eight months running, medical people the world over are bone tired and sick of the resistance to sanity, and the numbers are only increasing. Please allow the medical community a minute of your attention:

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Since about half the country considers itself above health guidelines and standards, here’s a heads-up from the battlefield…

Congratulations, America, you’ve nearly succeeded in pushing our Hippocratic Oath contingent over the cliff. That takes some nuclear-grade ugly shit and they’re catching it in spades. Beat me up for caring, you can’t touch me.

The Bible, being it’s Sunday, says “Love not the world.” Trust me, not a big problem on my part, most of what I see and hear only makes me want to burrow further back into the cave. The year 2020 has brought us a lot of things, most of them distressing and shocking, but none worse than the knowledge that half of us can’t even be taught to care what happens to the other half.

Want Pollyanna back? Somebody stop the idiocy, call a halt to the election charade, and let the adults into the room to address what confronts the nation. Every hour squandered means hundreds more lives lost. And contrary to popular opinion, each one matters.

Image by Judy Smith

An important truth… page 145

21 Nov 2020 Leave a comment

Day 251 – 11/21/2020

To all the people who get it and have from the beginning… we’ve been here for each other and that matters. Written by my friend Philip Grecian…

Y’know…we’ve all been locked down.

We’ve washed our hands until they’ve cracked.

We’ve washed our groceries, our mail, our door handles.

Lots of us have lost our jobs, our incomes…we’ve had friends die and not been able to attend their funerals.

Trips for groceries have become adventures in survival.

There has been a good deal of despair.

*****

But one thing I’ve found is this: I know you better.

I’ve held your hand through the Internet, and you’ve held mine.

We’ve kept each other buoyed up.

You were there at the very moment I’ve needed you…and I’d like to believe I’ve been there when you’ve needed me.

Even as we are farther away…I think we’ve come closer.

We have taken the time to realize how much we care about each other.

*****

Stay safe.

Please.

Image by Judy Smith

Ah, sweet limbo… page 144

20 Nov 2020 Leave a comment

***

Day 250 – 11/20/2020

So the Cult of Trump has decided to shoot for the moon, overturn what election officials are calling the most secure election in modern history, impose herd immunity/mentality on the nation, and continue ruling from the minority because they say so. The inauguration of Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris, who have been duly elected by a margin of 6 million votes and an insurmountable electoral total, is constitutionally set for January 20, 2021. It remains to be seen how desperate Donald Trump is to keep that from happening, not a happy thought to entertain since he holds the power to burn it ALL down on his way out.

So far, most of the serious GOP discussions available for public consumption have followed this template…

It’s been hard to sort things out post-election, but a couple of areas stick out to me in the puzzle department…

**Actually worth fighting a war in the streets over**?

We have to recognize that voting isn’t what it used to be. We’d put an X by the person we preferred over the other one, usually two decent human beings, wait for the results, and work to make our party better if we lost. That innocent landscape has changed since I first cast a vote in the 60s, and the current state of the union means that when one candidate is a genuine quality human being and the other is not, our vote becomes a personal statement of our code of ethics and life view and we don’t even have to tell anybody what box we marked – it’s apparent from our choices, our loyalties, and how we live out our lives.

This perpetually-hopeful Pollyanna is more convinced than ever that we’re not only two nations, we speak two different languages and live in separate realities, primarily because we follow two diametrically-opposed news feeds and retain what we see and hear. Trust and respect have been lost between us and we don’t know how to talk to each other anymore.

Hope tells us we could fix it all somehow, but hope seems to have taken a hike and wants no part of it. Even hope can’t breathe without communication, and it’s a slow death. 🖤

Image by Judy Smith

Rollin’ on… page 143

19 Nov 2020 Leave a comment

Day 249 – 11/19/2020

We’re headed for 76º and sunny, so if it isn’t too windy for PickleBall Kim will get a reprieve from the four walls – plus his walk and a bike ride. He already took pictures at the river this morning.

I updated my iMac to Big Sur OS and it wouldn’t boot back up so I left it because I’d already clocked out for the day. This morning Google and I found the key and we’re in business again, whew! This baby’s my lifeline for the foreseeable.

“Lawrence’s hospital is projecting a more than 500% increase in COVID-19 inpatients in the next two weeks, Douglas County Health Officer Dr. Thomas Marcellino, an infectious disease expert, said Tuesday night at a town hall meeting on the pandemic.” – Lawrence Journal World

I’m really not cranked about any excursion that requires packing a diaper bag.

We can’t save people from themselves, we can’t even save ourselves from them. They seem bent on killing us to prove a point, although that point is elusive – the actual why. Simple health protocols have become too difficult for Americans – what was it that generated this visceral lack of concern for the human race? What has incited nearly half our population to this level of animus toward the ones who try hardest to save us from ourselves, and to literally keep us breathing? What activates that desire to inflict harm, to punish other humans for being? It’s in all of us, we want to be right. We want to have our voices heard, whether we’re saying anything or not. We want to be justified in our choices and decisions. And most of all, we don’t want anyone telling us what to do. And we’re losing the fight for life.

Kim’s photo of the granite bedrock below the dam is talking to me this morning. Took it millions of years to get that way, and man’s machinations don’t affect it much. Granite will still line the riverbed millions of years from now if nobody pushes the red button. So is the lesson simply to BE THERE? To hang in for the long haul? To let it all wash over you and on to the ocean? Mr. Granite Slab does well with that – feelings aren’t part of his chemistry, Mr. GS don’t care. The rest of us are on our own.

Photo Credits: Kim Smith 11/19/2020

Image by Judy Smith

Feeling it… page 141

17 Nov 2020 4 Comments

Day 247 – 11/17/2020

Emerging into the sunlight today, thankful for hot water and long showers. And Asian food. And people walking dogs in the sunshine. This epoch, with its endless hours available for thinking, is bringing it home for me in so many ways… and one semi-detached observation is that I’m clearly not evolving upward for the long haul, so I have to fix that ASAP.

That’s not even the half of it. I’ve “dialed” a wood-encased crank phone on the wall – our ring was one long, three shorts. My playlist back in the day, before transistors and recorders, came from Les Paul & Mary Ford 45rpms spun on a 32-volt player because we had to generate our own electricity on the farm via a windmill and a wall of batteries until rural electrification finally came along and changed everything. Our tiny black & white TV didn’t show up ’til I was in 6th grade and we had one channel, mostly snow, and a max of three channels in the end. Out there in the country, we didn’t know steps were for counting – they just got us from here to there while we blew the stink off. I see food as legitimate art, but nobody told us we were supposed to be documenting it in photos, so the world missed seeing some killer hotdogs and salmon cakes.

It isn’t that I’m feeling old, just succumbing to road-weariness. We have the great relief that Joseph Biden has been elected president of the U.S., balanced by the fact that DJT intends to follow the norms in the same manner he has from the start, which is to say not at all. So the news is good, but everything continues unresolved. In the meantime, nobody seems to be on the job at the White House, nor in any way managing the COVID pandemic while it rages and replicates by the hour. That’s the only reality that matters right now – until we tame the virus, all else suffers. The virus doesn’t move, we move it… and that’s the rub.

Sometimes humans have a hard time believing in things we can’t see, hear, smell, touch, or taste, so the pandemic is a true challenge, but it’s out there and it’s having its way with us. Kansas right now is #1 among nine states in rate of case rise. People are dying of an illness they deny exists with their last breath and they don’t stop yelling abusive crap at nurses until they’re intubated. It’s a challenge to deal with that kind of idiocy, but it’s here, it’s real, and are we going to let the experts jump on it before it wipes us out? That’s really the question now.

**Or just ooh & ahh over the cool Christmas bling?**

Image by Judy Smith

The process… page 140

14 Nov 2020 2 Comments

Day 244 – 11/14/2020

Foggy and gray this morning. Great breakfast, and now I’m drinking iced coffee ’cause my tummy likes it better that way. Farmers Market is set up in the wet chill – I think they run until the week before Thanksgiving – so there are people back and forth. Life rolls on.

With everything that’s been going on in the past few weeks, I accidentally spaced off my fibromyalgia meds and brought on a nasty flare. By now I’m wondering if I’ve kicked myself out of remission through my own stupidity, which will truly disgust me. Hello purple gremlins, please play nice.

I lifted this First Nations poem from my friend Paige…

And these words from 89-year-old Dan Rather went straight to my heart…

“COVID is sadness. Profound sadness. It is suffering, and sacrifice. It is perhaps the greatest abdication of presidential responsibility in American history. I have seen a lot of death and tragedy in my lifetime. But this shakes me to the core, completely and irrevocably.”

Life is never linear, thank goodness… but some things move the graph so far they have to be processed in small chunks. That’s probably what the gray days are for…

Image by Judy Smith

It’s our lucky day… page 139

13 Nov 2020 1 Comment

Day 243 – 11/13/2020

Today is Friday the 13th in the year 2020 – what could possibly go wrong? In truth it feels like a lucky day to me and I’m expecting good things to happen. Or maybe I’ve finally gone ’round the bend and this will be the day the meteor hits. If so, we’ve had a good run.

Our human connections help define us, and without them for so long I’m drifting a little – the people I love help anchor me, and sometimes I miss The Before when some of us didn’t know each other so very well. I miss our three boys and nothing yet indicates when we can be together again. A cousin was going to drive across several states with her daughter for a visit and I had to tell her no, one of the hardest things I’ve done. All because of a “so-called pandemic” that was really only a hyped-up flu, participated in by the entire world as a fvck-you to Donald Trump… that didn’t magically disappear the day after the election like a massive caravan of invaders from Mexico… even now, after all the math says Biden & Harris have won.

Instead, because conspiracy theorists and grumpy-ass naysayers politicized a virus and the idea of protecting ourselves against it, America is in the middle of a humanitarian crisis that’s spiraling out of control. We have a medical system that’s overburdened across the nation and personnel who are burnt beyond even talking about it.

It’s going to be an uphill battle for President-Elect Biden to bring this wholly unnecessary disaster under control, but we know he won’t throw up his hands, slide it off onto states that didn’t vote for him, and absolve himself of any responsibility – because he’s an adult, he knows how this works, and he’s the man of the hour. I cannot wait for sanity to be the standard operating system again. Even with a vaccine on the horizon, we’ll likely be into the 3rd quarter of 2021 before doses can be delivered worldwide and infection rates fought to submission, while the isolation becomes fallout that has to be addressed on its own… and already has. Had America simply paid attention in March… April… May… and taken the guidelines and mandates for what they were – an effort to save lives and our economic viability – instead of interpreting the benevolent wisdom as a ruse to somehow steal their freedom… we wouldn’t find ourselves at this frankly terrifying juncture now.

We’re losing a 9/11’s worth of American lives every two days, and soon it will be 2,000+ people every single day. That should be a difficult statistic for even the most jaded among us. They’re running out of refrigerated morgue trucks in El Paso, turning away car accident victims at Utah hospitals, burying entire populations of nursing homes plus their caregivers, repeated ad infinitum across the nation. Aside from our temporary lost standing in the world, the racial injustice and warfare in our streets, and the wreckage of our economy, a non-response to a global pandemic, with its resulting carnage, seems a very high price to pay for the demand to be right and make the liberals cry.

It’s 10am and the sun’s shining bright on a 33º morning, so I need to soak up every minute of it… the days are short, and losing the light by 5pm lets the melancholy creep in and dim my inner lights for a while every evening now. My optimism is increasing hour by hour and the knowledge that the grown-ups are finally stepping in cheers me, but the flip-side is knowing how much opposition is out there to truth, progress, innovation, freedom of expression, and room and opportunity for every kind of human. But ya’ start somewhere…

Image by Judy Smith

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Playing for Time

Hey, it’s Monday… page 165

Round and ’round… page 163

Saying thanks… page 160

Sunny Saturday… page 156

Perspective… page 153

Black Friday… page 150

How’s the weather?… page 148

Moody Blues… page 147

Beyond frustrated… page 146

An important truth… page 145

Ah, sweet limbo… page 144

Rollin’ on… page 143

Feeling it… page 141

The process… page 140

It’s our lucky day… page 139

Judy Smith

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