What to do About the Delta Variant

One of the best things about being in Maine for five weeks is the escape it provides from the ubiquitous news cycle. I’ve read exactly one newspaper since I’ve been here, a rollicking publication called The Camden Herald, which has been keeping Mid-Coasters up to date on tide charts and the quality and quantity of the lobster harvest for 150 years now. But, other than local gossip, there’s no real news, which is exactly how I like it. There are televisions in this house, but they haven’t been turned on. The only thing we listen to on the car radio is a country music station ominously called The Bear. Of course, we still have the internet, so I do have access to the news, I’ve just chosen not to go there.

…Until this morning.

It appears that the COVID-19 sequel…the Delta Variant…is in all the theaters now and is getting decidedly mixed reviews. There’s talk of reinstating mask requirements, demanding vaccination passports, the return of social distancing, etc. along with the predictable blowback this talk was bound to generate. After reading a couple of summaries of the business from relatively reliable sources, I began searching for the views of several smart voices I normally read during confusing times. One of those is Andrew Sullivan, which for me is an admittedly odd pairing. I disagree with a lot of what he writes. He’s a gay, liberal who worships the ground that Barack Obama walks on. But, he is one helluva fine writer and can be depending upon to make me think. Anyway, I found a piece he wrote about all of this and in it was what follows. These couple of paragraphs perfectly reflect my thinking as of this hour:

“We are at a stage in this pandemic when we are trying to persuade the hold-outs — disproportionately white Republicans/evangelicals and urban African-Americans — to get vaccinated. How do we best do this? Endless, condescending nagging won’t help. Coercion is not an option in a free country. Since the vaccinated appear to be able to transmit the virus as well, vaccine passports lose their power to remove all risk. Forcing all the responsible people to go back to constraining their everyday lives for the sake of the vaccine-averse is both unfair and actually weakens the incentive to get a vaccine, because it lowers the general risk of getting it in the broader society. 

So the obviously correct public policy is to let mounting sickness and rising deaths concentrate the minds of the recalcitrant. Let reality persuade the delusional and deranged. It has a pretty solid record of doing just that.

The government cannot be held responsible for sickness and death it has already provided the means to avoid. People are responsible for their own lives. The government can do some things — like making vaccination mandatory for federal workers and contractors, and especially in the military as George Washington did in the Revolutionary War for smallpox. It could offer money — or entry into a lottery, as many states are doing. All good. But the most potent incentive for vaccination is, to be brutally frank, a sharp rise in mortality rates. The more people who know someone who has suffered and died the likelier they will see the logic of taking measures to avoid the same fate. In other words: if people recklessly refuse to face reality, call their bluff.

Those who live in denial, who have somehow convinced themselves that the virus is a hoax or a deep-state plot or a function of white supremacy or whatever, will experience what everyone in denial eventually experiences: reality. And reality is the most tenacious influencer I know.”

So, there you have it, my first and last serious take on the news since I have been in the great State of Maine.

Have a glorious Sunday, everyone.

Crushing News for Nats Fans

Two years ago the Washington Nationals were the world champions of baseball. This morning, they are a triple AAA team. Fame is fleeting.

Baseball, like all other sports, is a business and as such must be run with an eye towards the future, not just the present. I understand and fully accept this fact. This year’s team is eight games under .500 and going nowhere. So management decided on a fire sale. Overnight, they traded away their best starting pitcher and future Hall of Farmer, Max Scherzer. Then they traded away their two best relief pitchers, Daniel Hudson and Brad Hand. But they were just getting warmed up. Next on the block was Kyle Schwarber, a fan favorite who earlier this year went on a home run hitting streak that was one of the most prolific of all time. But the last trade is the one that has National’s fans crying in their beer. Trea Turner has been the most consistent player on this team for the past three years and one of the best 15 or so players in all of baseball, and unlike some of these other guys who got traded, he’s young. He is on a Hall of Fame pace through the first seven years of his career. Now, he’s gone.

I wonder what Juan Soto is thinking this morning? Poor guy wakes up and learns that all the best players on his team are gone and he’s left surrounded by a bunch of stiffs. 

But, what did the Nationals get in return for all this talent they dealt away? One word…prospects. Mostly a bunch of guys you’ve never heard of, primarily because most of them have yet to play a single game in the big leagues. 

So, was this trading frenzy a good or bad move? Too early to yell. Right now, it means that the Nationals are going to be God awful for the next couple of years. But if this batch of prospects pans out, we might look back on it later and call Mike Rizzo a genius. Still…its going to be painful to watch the Dodgers win the World Series this year with Max Scherzer and Trea Turner in their starting lineup. 

Go Sox!!!

The Excursion

Finally got to go on the Puffin Cruise after the fog had cancelled us the previous day. This time it was beautiful…

We left from the adorable village of Port Clyde awash in sparkling sunshine. Soon, we were out in Penobscot Bay on the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by what seemed like a thousand little islands like this one, Franklin Island…

This particular lighthouse was commissioned by none other than Thomas Jefferson when he was President. It’s still in service.

We were curious why our vessel, the LauraB flew this flag…

Our very cool tour guide informed us that this flag can only be flown on boats that have seen military action. Turns out that the LauraB first served in the U.S. Navy in the Solomon Islands during WWII, at which time it sported two machine guns and a cannon!

Jon, naturally was in his element, since the ostensible purpose of this voyage was to spot the elusive Puffin, which we did, but with no definitive photographic evidence, you’ll just have to take my word for it. We did see several eagles…

Of course, no vacation excursion would be complete without my daughter taking the most unflattering picture of her father…

Looks like somebody needs to lay off the whoopie pies…Thanks for the reminder, Kaitlin!!

A Disturbing Reminder

Two of my kids are now back home. Patrick and Sarah made it safely back to Nashville yesterday, ending their time with us. Kaitlin and Jon will be here through Wednesday, then it will Pam and me for another week or so. Amazing how fast time passes up here. Today was supposed to be a complete washout but woke up to calm water and patchy sunshine, so I hopped in the kayak and paddled over to the next cove where I caught five beautiful bass in a matter of minutes. The mist was still roiling across the lake when I arrived back at the dock. By then it had started to rain, more like a soft, polite drizzle. Kaitlin and Pam decided that a trip into Camden for a clam chowder lunch at The Deli was essential to our happiness and well being. Mine came with a Reuben sandwich and one of those delightfully intense dill pickles. By the time we finished lunch, the rain had become real, coming down steadily while the high temperature hovered in the low 60’s.

While the rest of my family wandered off for pointless browsing in the many lovely shops on Elm street, I stepped into The Smiling Cow on a mission from God. Every year, I buy gifts for all of the ladies at the office, those poor souls who are forced to put up with my workplace harassment and high-jinks all year. I partially make it up to them by bringing them treats from Maine. They receive them with a very high level of entitlement, figuring that it’s the very least I could do.

Then there’s the matter of the sweet pups who live next door to us back home, the three Garland kids, Cash, Kennedy, and Sully. These wonderful kids have served as my grandparent-training guinea pigs, which means I get to spoil them with treats from Maine too. Their long-suffering parents go along with this spoiling for the most part, although I thought I detected an eye-roll from Jamie last year when I bought Cash a cool pirate knife with a disappearing blade and a collection of practical joke tricks he could use to terrorize his sisters. So, this year I scaled back the asshattery a bit, going with slightly more educational gifts. I hope they aren’t totally crushed.

Anyway, the point of this blog was to tell you about a disturbing message I received from my son this afternoon that actually sent a brief wave of nausea sweeping over me. He sent me this…

We might have two more weeks left up here but we are under no illusions about what awaits us back in Short Pump. This screenshot served as a disturbing reminder. Nevertheless, going home isn’t all bad. Take a look at my Grandpup, Frisco. Somebody missed his Mama!!

Wonder

It was around 7:00 in the evening. Patrick and Sarah were rattling around in the kitchen preparing dinner. Pam was in the shower. Jon was getting a fire ready for later while Kaitlin was sitting on the dock reading a book. I was in the living room reading book number four of this trip, when I got to the end of a chapter and thought to make myself a cup of coffee. As I got up I glanced through the big windows that face the lake and noticed a bright splash of color in a straight line across the surface of the water that seemed to be pointing straight at Kaitlin. It stopped me in my tracks. “Look at that on the water…what the heck?” Then I noticed Jon hustling down the path towards the dock. I thought to open the door to our bathroom to tell Pam that she might want to take a look. Then I too ran down the path until I realized that what I was seeing from the upstairs of the house was a reflection of the thing and not the thing itself…

Soon, all of us were on the dock, faces aglow with wonder, snapping photographs which were destined to disappoint. In a particularly delightful moment, my wife appeared, her hair bound up in a turban, having stepped out of the shower, camera in hand, determined not to miss the experience. Dinner would have to wait. next thing I know, Pam and Kaitlin were off chasing another sunset…

It’s very easy to romanticize our memories. Fond memories can easily become myths with the passage of time. How many of us have had warm memories of some childhood experience that when revisited 40 years later disappoints? But this rainbow is exactly the kind of thing that always seems to happen up here. Each new day up here brings to life the dormant capacity for wonder that is cooked into our DNA as human beings, but is largely neutralized by the relentless slog of our routines. Quantabacook inspires wonder like no place else for me. It reminds me that the world is a beautiful place. Up here, beauty isn’t an abstraction, its the air you breathe.

After we finally finished dinner around 9 o’clock, we gathered around the fire, mesmerized…

Pride Goeth Before a Fall…

I don’t believe in karma, but yesterday’s events at the dock gave me pause. 

 

It was an especially warm afternoon in the upper 70s (ha!), so Patrick and Sarah and I decided to break out the floats and attempt a “floatilla” for the first time since the start of our vacation. Patrick scanned the dock for the best place to lower himself onto his float and realized the ladder was too unwieldy for a smooth takeoff. The only alternative was to somehow hop onto the float from the dock’s edge, which rests a solid 18 inches above the water. He bravely decided to give it a go and lowered the float into the water. Without pausing to think too much, he hoisted himself off the dock and crashed onto the float like a bowling ball, cross-legged and facing the wrong way. Like a good sister, I pointed at him and cackled.

“Why did you get on it backwards?!” Sarah asked.

“How else could I have done it?” Patrick responded, paddling furiously and tipping dangerously to the right.

The float suddenly flipped and Patrick tumbled into the water. This was funny enough as it was, but the funniest part was watching him try to get back on. As I sit here remembering it, I am giggling all over again. Every time he gained purchase, the float would flip him off again with a big splash, and he would pop up like a buoy, his arms flailing and his glasses cockeyed on his face.

The contrast was stark between Sarah’s reaction as his wife and my reaction as his sister:

Sarah: “Are you okay??? Please tell us if you need help!”

Me: “BAHAHAHAHAHA. Can we sell tickets to this? Somebody pop some popcorn!”

Eventually he figured it out and stabilized himself on the float. At this point we had secured the ladder properly, so I wiped the tears from my eyes and sashayed over to the dock’s edge, ready to show him how it’s done.

As a three-time winner of the Least Valuable Vacationer award, I am a seasoned float launcher. I slipped my feet through the hole in the foot of the float, walked down a couple rungs of the ladder and then gracefully lowered myself onto the raft, pushing off from the dock with my toes. I waved at Mom and Patrick as I floated away, self-satisfied and serene. 

Then, without warning, a great POP echoed across the lake. Generations of lake-dwellers will tell their children of the great POP of July 20th, 2021. Mom tells me that my confident smirk evaporated in an instant. My float deflated faster than I thought possible, and before I knew it, I was the flailing, sputtering, chagrined Dunnevant sibling. 

I can often hear Nanny’s voice in my head, reciting one of her favorite Scriptures: “Pride goeth before a fall!”

Quite literally, indeed.

Grateful

Yesterday was Pam’s birthday so we did all of her favorite things. That meant blueberry pancakes at the Camden Deli, several hours of casually pointless shopping, a lobster roll lunch at Hazel’s, a paddle board excursion with Kaitlin and Sarah tagging along in the kayaks, a delicious dinner which she insisted in preparing which featured lots of laughter and conversation and ended with whoopie pies. Then, Sarah handed out special gifts she had bought for the occasion…

It should be noted that my daughter-in-law did not buy the boys matching pajamas, a fact for which I will be eternally grateful. Suffice it to say that my wife had the best birthday ever. Yesterday was one of those days you dream about where everything seems right with the world. It’s why you work. It’s why you plot and scheme and calculate. It’s the reward for all the grinding, the relentless slog through meetings and paperwork. To be able to gather your family together in a place like this and hear their voices, see their happy faces…

Then, this morning, I wake up at 5:30 to this…

Grateful…