About Yesterday’s cartoon…

Like most Americans I find myself being whipsawed between two completely opposite views about COVID-19 and all of its variants. Both were on full display yesterday in the comment feed of a cartoon I posted on Facebook. Any summary of these opposing belief systems that I might attempt will not satisfy anyone, but I will give it a try anyway.

One group is convinced that COVID-19 is nothing more than the flu, and all of the public health recommendations from the vaccine to social distancing to masking are at best nonsense and at worst a naked power grab by government to rob us of our liberty and eventually usher in Communism. It is believed that the vaccine is dangerous, kills people and might even contain deliberately toxic elements intended to facilitate future government control over us (microchips). The wearing of masks is useless, possible harmful, and only serves to divide us. In addition, the public health workers in this country are only making their recommendations based upon their pursuit of money and power, and are intentionally and knowingly working at cross-purposes to what is best for the American people. 

The second group believes that the vaccine is safe and effective. Although the CDC has been all over the place on many of their recommendations, this group generally complies with whatever the latest guidance is, figuring that as more and more is learned about the virus, changes in protocols are inevitable. Some in this group are strict about the social distancing, others not so much. Some are ruthless when it comes to mask wearing, others are hit and miss. But generally, this group tends to accept the consensus of opinion of the world’s epidemiologists and scientists who have devoted their lives to the study of viruses and pandemics. These folks tend to think that government actions during this pandemic, while often maddeningly confusing and ham fisted, have been taken out of the desire to save lives.

There is a third group, although smaller in number than the other two. This is the group of poor souls who have been sequestered in their homes for 18 months paralyzed by fear, convinced that they are one unguarded deep breath away from death.

The one thing that everyone has in common is that we all hate wearing masks. All of us hate social distancing. Nobody likes to get shots. Everyone hates the disruption of business, the loss of income and jobs that shutdowns bring. Nobody likes to be quarantined.

My own views on COVID have gone through many phases over the past year and a half. In the beginning I was a bit suspicious, to be honest. I personally knew exactly no one who had it. Being a natural skeptic made me question the original shutdown. I thought it a terrible overreach, not to mention an unprecedented attempt to bring the world’s largest economy to a grinding halt. I was fearful more of the impact on my business than I was on my health. But then my young, healthy neighbor got it. She became deathly ill and was down for over a month. Another neighbor who works as a nurse in a COVID unit at one of the local hospitals told me about what her days were like, of the marathon running guy in his early 50’s who died after being on a ventilator for two weeks. It was a sobering story of death. Then I learned of people I knew who had lost their lives, some older but many middle aged with no serious health problems. then I began to watch the numbers explode. Then, just yesterday while my Facebook feed was alive with this debate, a friend tells me of his 40 year old neighbor who died last week of COVID, his wife deathly ill in ICU, and their two children having been sent to Ohio to live with relatives. If this whole COVID thing was a hoax, it sure seemed to have a ton of co-conspirators. So, I began reluctantly to take the thing seriously. Pam and I both got the vaccine as soon as it was available. We wore our masks when that was the prevailing advice. We attempted the social distancing thing with less success…it is so hard to stay six feet away from other human beings!! But, when the numbers began to drop and the guidance changed, we happily went back to our normal lives, grateful for the miracle that was the vaccine. So, put us in the second group.

But now comes this Delta thing. Now comes the possibility of more mask wearing, perhaps a booster shot, more social distancing…and I hate the very thought of all of it. But I have a decision to make. Do I allow myself to believe that all of the official protocols by Federal, State and local public health officials are a plot to bring Communism to America, and that every single doctor and scientist making these recommendations is on the take and drunk with power? Or do I trust that they are doing the best they can to fight a complex virus on the fly and do what they say? For me the decision is an easy one. In life, it is vitally important that human beings stay in their lane. I know a little bit about a lot of things. I know an awful lot about a few things. But I know virtually nothing about epidemiology, biology, pandemics or medicine. I think it best to defer to people with specialized knowledge. If this makes me a sheeple, thats a chance I will have to take.

We live in an age of greatly diminished trust. Nobody trusts anything or anyone anymore, and for good reason. But thats a horribly unsatisfying way to live. Believing that everything that you disagree with is a plot against you being waged by faceless, nameless villains is exhausting. If I might mix metaphors..when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail…But sometimes a duck is just a duck.

Again, I always prefer humor and sarcasm to make my points for me rather than cold, dull logic. So, I will end this blog with two great memes I ran across yesterday…

God bless you all and have a great weekend.

An Ongoing Process

How do plants comfort each other when they're sad?

….they…

….photosympathize

I hope all those firefighters from around the world that are rushing to help with Greek wildfires brought chemicals extinguishers and not just hoses…

Everyone knows You never use water on a Greece fire.

I got hit by a frozen raindrop this afternoon…

It hurt like hail.

That’s all I’ve got folks. Haven’t written anything since I’ve been back home, not because I’ve had nothing to say, its just that being back in the real world — 

when that world is 95 degrees — saps the initiative. By next week I’ll be totally back and clicking on all cylinders. For now, its an ongoing process.

But, I still have my pictures…

Maine by the Numbers

Got back today around 1:45 after 40 days in Maine. The drive home took longer than the drive up by about an hour, roughly 14 and a half hours vs. 15 and a half hours. Both trips took their toll on my back and hamstrings, but we made it without incident. Tomorrow will be all about work. I will get into the office around 7:30 or so to face the music. But this evening I wish to recap Maine 2021 by the numbers…

3275 miles driven

52 miles paddled in the kayak 

Over 50 fish caught

Two rounds of very bad golf played

Three puzzles completed. This one by just Pam and me…

Half a dozen hook accidents while fishing, one which required me yanking the embedded hook out of my finger with a pair of pliers while in my kayak.

Dove into cold lake approximately 40 times, give or take

One broken toe

Five lures lost in an assortment of trees due to casting errors

$1925 spent in Mid-Coast Maine grocery stores

$1275 spent in a plethora of dining establishments 

Seven books read

Over 40 naps taken

Read over 500 email alerts from Zillow and Redfin informing me of houses for sale in Maine that I might be interested in.

Number of houses that I was interested in? Zero.

Number of times either Pam or I complained about how much our hips hurt. 176

Percentage of meals eaten on the screened in porch at the house. 100%

Highest temperature endured over entire 40 days in Maine? 82. Actually, we counted only two days in the 80’s. The rest of the time it was in the 70’s and even several days in the low to mid 60’s

Lowest morning temperature at Quantabacook? 48.

Number of days before we return? 54…and counting.

I Don’t Get It

Our Maine adventure is sadly drawing to a close. We only have three more days, two of which will be cloudy with a bit of rain. No matter how long we stay here, we are never ready to leave. There is only one thing that I will not miss when we finally drive away from this house, these guys…

Manny, Moe and Jack here have been watching our every move for nearly three weeks now. I sit here every morning knowing that I am being watched which is a bit disconcerting. For three weeks I have looked up at these guys and marveled at the concept of hanging the busts of dead animals on the walls of a house. I have many friends who do this. They are perfectly wonderful people. But for the life of me I cannot comprehend what the attraction is of immortalizing animals that you have…killed. 

You’re out in the woods hunting, which best I can tell, involves long stretches of silent boredom punctuated by short bursts of manic action involving gunfire. You see your prey out there fifty or even a hundred yards away. You lift your rifle slowly, bring the beast into your sights and then squeeze the trigger. If successful, the animal staggers then falls to the ground. You and your buddies gather around the freshly dead creature and congratulate each other. That’s basically the extent of your interaction with the recently departed. You had no prior history, no past experience that bound you together. It was just in the right place at the wrong time and you shot him from your hidden place at a considerable and safe distance. 

I’m not a hunter, but I don’t have a problem with anyone who is a hunter. My extended family is full of them. I have dear friends who love everything about hunting. But who on earth was the first guy who thought after shooting a buck, “I know what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna pay somebody a ton of money to slice the torso off of this thing, fill it full of God knows what to preserve it for eternity, attach it to a plaque and hang it on the wall over the fireplace. The wife is gonna love it!!”

It can’t be any emotional attachment, right? If that were the case we would pay a taxidermist to stuff our dogs when they die, but nobody does that because…it would be creepy and weird. But its nothing to walk into a lake cabin and see beasts of all kinds hanging all over the place. 

All I know is, when I glance up at the moose up there and see that giant, hulking mass of fur and antlers, I just hope he’s not plotting revenge!

The Very Bottom of the Dad Joke Barrel

For her birthday, I took my wife to an orchard and we stood there looking at the trees for half an hour.

…not the Apple Watch she had in mind apparently.

I quit my job as a personal trainer because the weights were too heavy.

I just handed in my too weak notice…

Know why the Jedi don’t have a navy?

Because sailing is a path to the dockside…

What did the digital clock say to the grandfather clock?

“Look Grandpa, no hands!!”

What do you call a crowd of chess players bragging about their wins in a hotel lobby?

Chess nuts boasting in an open foyer.

I had to call the IT guy at work because of a tech issue on my laptop. He says, “Have you tried disabling cookies?”

I said, “Well, there was that one time when I bit the legs off a gingerbread man…”

“I wonder when they close?”

It is currently 7:16 pm eastern time on Monday evening, August the 2nd. My wife just announced that dinner would have to wait until she returned from her evening sunset paddle. She gave me vague background on what she intends to fix, clearly hoping that I would summon some initiative if she is gone more than an hour. I am ambivalent on the subject, my initiative gene having disappeared since the kids left. Pam isn’t much better. We have basically been flying by the seat of our pants with no plan whatsoever. Last night, for example, we were enjoying our dinner out on the screened in porch when suddenly Pam brought up the subject of ice cream, in particular, the hand made variety served up at the Wild Cow Creamery in Belfast which we had discovered mere days ago during an excursion with our kids. Since Pam’s iPad was on the table, (don’t judge us), she pulled up their website and began regaling me with tales of their ice cream creation process, what with its small batch, all natural, home made, ethically sourced, free range etc etc etc…I made the mistake of saying…to no one really, “ I wonder when they close?”

The website said 8:00 pm. It was 7:30. It’s a twenty minute drive. It was then that my wife shot me a dangerous expression, as if she was planning a raucous march through the Seven Deadly sins. Before I knew what was happening, she was literally stuffing a bite of her half finished hamburger into her mouth while getting up from the table, “You get the keys and your wallet, I’ll grab a jacket.”

Anyone who knows Pam knows that she is the sort of woman who always looks completely put together even if its just a quick trip to the grocery store. But there she was, no purse, no make-up…no problem. “Floor it, we only have 25 minutes!”

When this woman gets it into her head that its time for ice cream, I am here to tell you that it is time for Ice Cream. I put the dog-tired Hyundai Santa Fe through her paces and we made it with 8 minutes to spare…

Of course, the down side of all this hand made natural crap is that they only sell whatever they have made that day! So, all the flavors we were salivating over scrolling through their webpage weren’t on the menu. We had to chose between a variety of eclectic offerings…

The long line began to creep forward. The pressure started to mount. You get one shot at this thing, you can’t choke when it’s your turn. After nearly 25 minutes of soul-searching and self evaluation…we were up. Pam ordered…

“I’ll take the Cosmic C3 in a sugar cone, and my husband will have two scoops of the Pecan Turtle.”

It was done. We would have to live with our choices. The anticipation was borderline manic. Finally we were handed our ice cream. Since we were parked illegally, (sadly, not one of the seven deadly sins), we felt it wise to eat it in the car so we could make a hasty getaway should any of Belfast’ finest show up. My ice cream was delicious beyond my powers of description. Pam loved hers so much she almost choked on it. Seriously, the poor girl inhaled a fleck of coconut down the wrong tube and proceeded to cough her head off for 15 minutes, complete with tears. But, my wife is a gamer. In between coughing jags she quickly licked her cone, not letting a single drop go to waste. Thats what the great ones always do…overcome adversity. She could easily have given up on her ice cream and concentrated all of her energy on like…breathing, but no way. This was home made, small batch organic ice cream we’re talking about. She wasn’t going to let something as mundane as choking stop her from enjoying every bite. 

That’s why she’s the champ, ladies and gentlemen.

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.