Tag: Events of the Day

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How do you measure, measure a year…. (Something for Thursday)

 One year, give or take, more or less.

There’s a famous song from the Broadway show Rent, called “Seasons of Love”. The song talks about the measure of time, specifically, a year:

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?

In daylights, in sunsets
In midnights, in cups of coffee
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife
In five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure, a year in the life?

That’s how many minutes there are in one year: 525, 600.

As I write this (a few days before I’m publishing it), the COVID-19 death toll in the United States, according to the CDC website, is 519,064. We’re just under a death a minute from this disease, over the last year.

“How do you measure, measure a year.” Indeed.

I’m not sure when I consider the COVID-19 virus to have really “begun”, in terms of being a major concern in my personal world. Maybe it was when the World Health Organization declared it a pandemic (March 11, 2020). Maybe it was when Tom Hanks announced that he and his wife, Rita Wilson, had tested positive (March 12, 2020). Maybe it was when the National Basketball Association had to start canceling games because players were testing positive (the same day). I remember watching this segment on John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, which aired on March 1, 2020, a few weeks before everything went haywire. The segment is worth watching again, because it’s astonishing how wrong everybody was at the beginning…but even given that proviso, note Larry Kudlow confidently saying, “We’ve got this thing contained already.”

What strikes me most about that video–and this was not only before vaccine development was even at a hopeful stage, but when our best science still hadn’t homed in on COVID-19’s respiratory nature and was still not really endorsing mask use and was instead focusing on rigorous hand-washing and avoiding face-touching–is what Oliver says at the 18:25 mark:

“At this point, you may be wondering, how scared should you be? And the answer is probably, a bit. A bit. I don’t want to be alarmist here, but I don’t want to minimize what we might be facing here.”

It turned out that we should have been a bit more than a bit scared, but then, we didn’t know then what was to come or how Americans would react to it all. Those first weeks, though? Those were…incredible.

It’s all a bit hazy right now, but as COVID-19 began to take hold in the US, and as we all realized that Mr. Kudlow’s lying aside, we most certainly did not have this contained, and as we all saw in the news stories of massive lockdowns in China and Italy and other places with soaring case and death counts, Americans started to panic. For those of us who work in grocery stores, that panic turned into something pretty epic. The run on cleaning supplies was obvious, as were the runs on a number of food staples. People were suddenly wondering: Are we about to be locked in our homes for weeks on end? Are we going to be forbidden to go outside? Will we not be able to buy food or other supplies?

By the end of those first days, the shelves at The Store looked like…well, I struggle to come up with a metaphor, but we’ve all seen the pictures from grocery stores in the South when the hurricane that’s on its way has been upgraded to Category Four. Our delivery schedules were thrown into serious awry as individual stores were suddenly ordering two, three, four times as much supply as they usually did; this surge got passed on to corporate warehouses and then to suppliers. Some brands disappeared from our shelves and have yet to show back up, even now. Buyers scrambled to get stocked with brands we’d never heard of (and if I may say so, Sugardale pepperoni is really tasty!), and of course there were the buying limits that seemed to go on forever. One can of beans. One jar of peanut butter. One package of toilet paper.

And oh, toilet paper. Somehow that one item became the “poster child” for the pandemic’s early run of panic shopping, didn’t it? I came in to work on Saturday morning for a sixth day, just to assist our overwhelmed Grocery department, and the first thing I did at 6:45 am was to pull a pallet of toilet paper out onto the sales floor. The entire pallet was emptied by eager customers in minutes. So was the second one. So was the third one.

At that point, no one had any real idea of how to best combat the virus. The best advice was to wash your hands constantly and avoid touching your face. My hands were absolutely raw after all that washing, and that’s when hand lotion became an indispensable part of my life. We didn’t know yet that the virus was mainly transmitting via respiratory droplets, but that became clear pretty quickly (I remember a horrifying story about a choir someplace in Washington that had a rehearsal that led to nearly all the choir members becoming infected), and then…masks were upon us.

This may make my RBF worse. #Mask

I never liked wearing masks as a kid, not even as part of a Halloween costume, so this took me some time to get used to. It took me a bit of experimenting to realize that the best masks for me were the ones where the straps or cords go around the head and not around the ears, and I bought several masks online from makers who knew what they were doing (i.e., not cheaply-made single-ply thin cotton ones). A year later, I’ve mostly become accustomed to wearing the mask, though I do consider myself fortunate in that my job affords me ample opportunity to take the mask off when I’m alone in my own work room. But even so, I have to admit to being shocked and dismayed at the reaction to masks by an awful lot of Americans.

I’ve seen people wearing masks with anti-mask slogans printed right on them, which strikes me as deeply weird. One said “This mask is USELESS!”, and naturally, it was, given that its wearer had it below her nose. Another said “Worn by FORCE, not FEAR!!!”, which is just goofy. I do not for the life of me understand that macho American attitude toward “fear”, as if self-preservation is a non-manly thing to want. I periodically see snark online: Why would you wear your mask when you’re DRIVING BY YOURSELF, sheeple! Well, speaking just for myself, I’m making several stops in one trip and I don’t want to bother with putting the mask on, taking it off, putting it on, taking it off, each time I stop someplace or come outside. And don’t get me started on the people who will, upon exiting a store or office, rip their mask off and take in a giant deep breath as if they’ve just broken the surface after a deep dive in the sea beyond the limits of their lung capacity.

I’ve reached a point where much of the time I’m wearing a mask, I don’t even think about it and barely notice that I have it on, to the point that I’ve actually caught myself trying to do things like blow a bit of hair off my phone or take a sip of coffee while masked. I cannot understand the sheer levels of anger something so simple as a face mask has inspired. I am once again confronted by the degree to which a great many of my own fellow citizens hold beliefs with which I cannot even begin to remotely empathize…but this is not that post.

As crises go, it’s been very strange for me that this one has been fairly well tailored to suit my particular lifestyle. As an introvert who is quite happy to live a mostly inner life, this pandemic has not been that hard to live with. I miss eating out with The Wife, and the festivals that we love visiting were all canceled last year: no Nickel City Con, no Sterling Renaissance Festival, no Erie County Fair, no Ithaca Apple Harvest Festival. But I still got to go on nature walks with the dogs, and while eating in restaurants hasn’t been a thing in a very long time, we’ve had a lot of wonderful takeout meals. But we don’t find ourselves missing out on desperately-needed human contact; we don’t find ourselves starved for hugs and we don’t find ourselves aching for a return to “normal”. I would, in fact, be lying if I did not admit that some small part of me finds a bit of satisfaction in seeing the world’s extroverts, so many of whom act like introverts like me are somehow problematic, being forced into my way of living for a little while.

Still, though: it’s been a year, and it’s been a hard year, a bad year, a terrible year. It’s been a year that was always going to be bad, but didn’t have to be as bad as it was (and I have a lot more to say about that, whether or not I actually do decide to say any of it). But there were moments along the way, moments of light, moments of goodness, moments that made me think that maybe, just maybe, this entire experience would be a learning experience for enough of us–a critical mass, if you will–that maybe we can still build a future to come in which we put aside the notion that we’re all in this alone, that we’re all marked for our individual fates and that our purpose here is just to serve as our own tiny cogs in the great machine that we call The Economy.

As the light grows at the end of this tunnel, I hope and pray that we take the lesson with us that nothing had to be this way, and that our world can be better. If a crisis does nothing else, it affords us an opportunity to look deeply at our society and ask serious questions about why we do certain things the way that we do. A “return to normal” would be so incredibly disappointing, wouldn’t it? I don’t know about you, but I was never in love with my “normal”. I dare us to do better.

And I think that those 525,600 people–one for every minute, and counting–dare us to do better too.

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Onward Cultural Warriors, slipping on banana peels!

 In this week’s entry in Right Wing Insanity, we have…Dr. Seuss.

I shit you not. This one has been amazing in its dishonesty and stupidity all at the same time. Here’s the summary I put up on Facebook:

1. Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the private entity that owns the copyrights to Dr. Seuss’s books, makes a decision to remove six books from the market, because the books contain racist imagery typical of their time.

2. The FOX News crowd freaks out about “cancellation”, even though, once more for the people in back, this was a market decision made by a private entity. (These are the people who usually claim to love “freedom” and “the market”, but invariably lose their shit when “the market” uses its “freedom” to recognize realities they don’t like.)

Now the funny part:

3. FOX News fans buy Seuss books en masse, thinking apparently to show support for the cancellation-in-progress author, thus giving buckets of THEIR OWN MONEY to the very private entity that made the market decision in the first place.

Let’s not forget that these are the same people who think the election was stolen, that masks are useless, that climate isn’t changing, that tax cuts raise revenue, that trickle-down works, and so on.

That’s about it. “We’re so mad about this thing that we’re gonna shovel money at the people who did the thing we’re pretending to be mad about!” It’s like deciding to prank the people down the street by ordering a dozen pizzas to be delivered to their house…but paying for the pizzas with your own credit card.

And why do I say “pretending”?

Because nobody in the media, no matter what Tucker Carlson or Ben Shapiro or any of the other talking heads on FOX News, is actually upset by this. It’s just pretend nonsense, as cynical an attempt to whip up the base as anything I’ve ever seen. FOX News, for all its beating of the drum, won’t even show the offending images on teevee; and here you see a Republican MAGA weirdo Congressional candidate spouting a staggering amount of lying for a single tweet:

Note that Ms. Bish is pretending that some cherry-picked random thing from Dr. Seuss is what is actually the issue, and also note her mention of President Biden as if he has the first thing to do with any of this. Hey, Ms. Bish! Want to show the offending pictures of African or Chinese people, and tell us why you think they’re perfectly fine? No? Didn’t think so.

The rubes have got to stop falling for this shit, and what’s more, it would be helpful if they’d start to ask themselves: If they’re being this dishonest in trying to fire me up, what else are they lying through their teeth about? That, friends, would be a far more profitable rabbit hole to explore than whatever nonsense the QAnon people are floating on any given day.

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Liberatopia isn’t seeming like much of a topia these days

 Former Texas Governor and former US Secretary of Energy Rick Perry was quoted the other day as saying this:

“Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.“

Well, now.

This, right here, is a perfect illustration of why I have always rejected libertarianism.

Whenever I ask how social issues and problems will be solved in a libertarian system, the answer always starts with what I call “the Soft Libertarian Formulation”: the market will solve all problems. Freedom will solve all problems. In all cases, the markets in their free wisdom will always be better suited to solving specific social problems than the government.

My reply to this is always, “But what if it doesn’t?”

No, really. Think about it. What if something, some problem, some disaster, comes down the pike that the free markets just can’t fix? And what if that problem just persists, going on and on, getting worse and worse, possibly even to the point where people are dying?

The market will solve all problems better than the government…but what if it doesn’t?

This possibility is never admitted, never considered. There is simply no problem that can’t be fixed through freedom and markets and zero government interference!

But now, look what’s happening in Texas. They wanted to be free of federal interference. They wanted their own power grid, with their own authority to manage their electrical needs in any way they wished. And they got their desire! Only problem is, they did it in the finest capitalist free-market way, taking the cheap way out at every opportunity. Texas does have winter storms now and then, so obviously it would be a good idea to winterize things, right? Only, that would cost money, and what rich capitalist wants to spend money they don’t have to, right?

And now Texas is in a world of hurt.

Here comes Rick Perry, presumably asked if maybe Texas’s weird obsession with energy independence from Washington policy makers has proven a bad idea.

Because here, Mr. Perry, is a bad social problem that the Free Market not only can’t solve, it actually created.

And Mr. Perry says, “Nope, we’re good being without electricity for days on end if it means we stay the way we are.”

This is a version of what I call “the Hard Libertarian Formulation”: It does not matter what problems come along. The Markets and the Freedom are so inherently good, all by themselves, that preserving them is preferable over any alleviation of human suffering by way of government. By way of collective action.

It’s my experience that eventually every libertarian will eventually land on this position. Collective thinking is always bad. No problem can ever be approached in any kind of collective way, and if a problem arrives that can only be solved through collective action, through government, well then: the problem must not be solved. Individuals should simply swallow their emotions and live–or die–with the new facts of life, because nothing, nothing, is more important than avoiding government and collective action.

This is, incidentally, why I think you find climate change denialism so strongly ensconced in the political right: because climate change actually is a problem that has no solutions coming from the free markets, and they know this. Because libertarianism cannot be wrong, there can be no problem that libertarianism can’t solve. And if there is, then the problem must not exist.

This isn’t the first time Perry has said things like this. One time he said (I think he was running for President at the time, maybe in 2012) something along the lines of “No government has ever created a single job.” This will, of course, come as news to anyone living in a city with a major military base. Or in a town with a state-run college. Or…in Washington, DC.

(I wrote this two nights ago and have had it in drafts since then. In the meantime, news is coming out that Texas’s utility companies, in the great and wonderful tradition of unregulated capitalism, are gouging the hell out of their customers by issuing electricity service bills totaling in the THOUSANDS of dollars. People who are without power, heat, water, and easy access to food are getting electric bills for up to $10,000. This is what unfettered, unregulated capitalism will get you, each and every time. It continues to amaze me that people who don’t have a prayer of ever being in the small club of capitalists who get to benefit from its inherent tendency to funnel wealth upward still advocate for its adoption, because of the Hard Libertarian Formulation.)

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When the House had a filibuster (a Repost)

Since the filibuster is back in the news–and hopefully because it’s about to die, once and for all–I’m reminded of the passage from Barbara Tuchman’s THE PROUD TOWER, which I excerpted back in 2009. Here it is again.


A number of the liberal-leaning blogs I read have been arguing of late that the filibuster in the US Senate needs to be done away with, as it is a fundamentally undemocratic thing whose use has become so frequent and entrenched over the last few years as to render the Senate into a body which de facto requires a supermajority in order to pass anything. (Example.) I tend to agree with this argument; the filibuster’s main virtue seems to be that it’s been that way forever, and that, in itself, is never much of a reason to keep doing anything.

But I’m reminded of a historical episode I read about in a wonderful book by Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower, in which she describes a similar problem faced once by a Republican Speaker of the House named Thomas B. Reed, at the end of the nineteenth century.

He [Reed] was determined, on taking up the gavel as Speaker, to put into effect a plan on which he had long deliberated, consulting no one, and on which he risked his entire political future. He knew that the fight would focus upon him the nation’s attention and also that if he failed his Congressional career would be over. The stakes were high: he would either break “the tyranny of the minority” by the which the House was paralyzed into a state of “helpless inanity”, or he would resign. 

The system Speaker Reed had decided to challenge was known as the silent – or disappearing – quorum. It was a practice whereby the minority party could prevent any legislation obnoxious to it by refusing a quorum, that is, by demanding a roll call and them remaining silent when their names were called. Since the rules prescribed that a member’s presence was established only by a viva voce reply to the roll, and since it required only a majority of the whole to constituted a quorum, the silent filibuster could effectively stop the House from doing business.

… 

To Reed the issue was survival of representative government. If the Democrats could prevent that legislation which the Republicans by virtue of their electoral victory could rightfully expect to enact, they would in effect be setting aside the verdict of the election. The rights of the minority, he believed, were preserved by freedom to debate and to vote but when the minority was able to frustrate action by the majority, “it becomes a tyranny”. He believed that legislation, not merely deliberation, was the business of Congress. The duty of the Speaker to his party and country was to see that that business was accomplished, not merely to umpire debate.

…

He reached his decision to attack the silent quorum, and planned his campaign, alone, partly because no one else would have thought there was a chance of success and partly because he was not sure that even his own party would support him. There were indications that they might not. Because of Reed’s known views on the silent filibuster it was clear that quorum-counting would be an issue in the new Congress. REED WILL COUNT THEM, predicted a headline in the Washington Post, and the story beneath it said that even Mr. Cannon, Reed’s closest lieutenant, was, opposed to the attempt. The Democrats were manning their defenses. Ex-Speaker Carlisle let it be known that any legislation enacted by a quorum which had not been established by a “recorded vote” would be taken to court as unconstitutional. 

Reed, however, had satisfied himself that he would be upheld if it came to law, and on the attitude of his own party he was prepared to gamble. He shrewdly judged that the Democrats in their rage would provoke the Republicans to rally to his support. When the first of the contested elections appeared on the schedule for January 29 he was ready. As expected, the Democrats raised a cry of no quorum and demanded a roll call. Reed’s moment had come. Without a flicker of expression on the great white moon face, “the largest human face I ever saw”, as a colleague described it, without any quickening of the drawling voice, he announced, “The Chair directs the Clerk to record the names of the following members present and refusing to vote,” and began reading off the names himself. Instantly, according to a reporter, “pandemonium broke loose. The storm was furious…and it is to doubted if ever there was such wild excitement, burning indignation, scathing denunciation and really dangerous conditions as existed in the House” during the next five days. Republicans were wildly applauding, all the Democrats were “yelling and shrieking and pounding on their desks” while the voice of their future Speaker, Crisp of Georgia, boomed, “I appeal! I appeal from the decision of the Chair!” The explosion was “as violent as any ever witnessed in any parliament,” a member recalled later. “Mr. Blanchard, Mr. Bland, Mr. Blount, Mr. Breckinridge of Arkansas, Mr. Breckinridge of Kentucky…” 

Up jumped the Kentuckian, “famous for his silver hair and silver tongue.” “I deny the power of the Speaker and denounce it as revolutionary!” he called. 

The resonant twang from the Chair continued unregarding, “Mr. Bullock, Mr. Bynum, Mr. Carlisle, Mr. Chipman, Mr. Clement, Mr. Covert, Mr. Crisp, Mr. Cummings” – through hisses and catcalls and cries of “Appeal” irresistably rolling down the alphabet – “Mr. Lawler, Mr. Lee, Mr. McAdoo, Mr. McCreary…” 

“I deny your right, Mr. Speaker, to count me as present!” bellowed McCreary. 

For the first time the Speaker stopped, held the hall in silence for a pause as an actor hold an audience, then blandly spoke: “The Chair is making a statement of fact that the gentleman is present. Does he deny it?”

It’s a fascinating tale. It doesn’t end there with that one act of Reed’s, of course; few things of this nature ever do. The Republicans would later lose Congress so badly that the Democrats were able to raise a quorum by themselves, and they then restored the silent quorum. This backfired after the next election cycle, however; the Democratic majority was greatly reduced such that now-Minority Leader Reed was able to frustrate Democratic legislative aims by using the silent quorum himself, until the Democrats finally relented and allowed the silent quorum to end forever.

(The Proud Tower is one of my favorite history books, by the way. It is a large-scale picture — a historical snapshot, if you will — of the state of the the world as it was moving inexorably toward World War I.)

ADDENDUM FOR 2021: If my views aren’t clear enough, here it is: To hell with the filibuster. It was never a great wonderful thing to begin with, and now it has become something utterly perverse. Democrats should kill it, pass their legislative agenda, and then let Republicans try to run in 2022 not on Democrats’ failure to pass anything, but on promising to repeal what they passed.
Oh, and the prospect of Mitch McConnell being rendered impotent is a truly delicious one.

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Dear 45 (an Open Letter to the President of the United States)

As I write this, you are still President, for another 47 minutes. I guess it’s time to reflect a bit. Here’s part of what I wrote to you four years ago today: 

I do not support you, and I do not expect good things from you. I do not expect good policy choices, nor do I expect good outcomes. My expectations for you are astoundingly, confounding low, because that’s where you put them. You did it by appealing, day in and day out, to the very worst instincts in the American psyche, right from your campaign’s opening address when you warned us all about the steady stream and rapists and murderers surging into our country from across the Rio Grande.
You did it by lying day in and day out, so much that reporters had trouble figuring out how to report that you were lying. You lied so much that you were eventually lying about having lied in the first place. You ran the most dishonest presidential campaign I have ever seen, and yet somehow you managed to reap the benefit of an opponent whom most people seem to think is also a huge liar, even though she isn’t.
You did it by cheering on the expulsion of people from your events of people who don’t like you or who say things about you that you don’t like.
You did it by several years ago making your first big claim to political fame by pursuing the stupid fiction that Barack Obama was not a natural-born American citizen.
You did it by showing on FOX News repeatedly to scoff at the very idea of global warming and climate change.
You did it with idiotic policy proposals like building a wall between the United States and Mexico, and then compounding this stupidity with the idea that Mexico will somehow be forced to pay for it.
You did it by filling your administration with people who are clearly on the take, people who are clearly going to make out like bandits, people who are obviously going to set to the tasks of destroying the missions of the agencies they are heading, and people who are simply downright ignorant (an Energy Secretary who didn’t know what the department even does, or a HUD secretary who believes that the Egyptian pyramids are grain silos).
You lowered my expectations by attacking people left and right on Twitter, by egging on your bizarrely rabid followers, by threatening your opponent with investigations and prosecutions, and by scoffing at one’s obligations as a citizen by saying “It makes you smart” that you managed to avoid paying income taxes at one point.
There is literally nothing you have said or done over the last eighteen months that gives me the smallest reason to think that you might be a good President. You have shown no curiosity about issues or insight into them. You have shown zero respect for the work of the job or the norms that surround it. You have demonstrated no foreign policy acumen aside from chest-thumping and Russo-philia. I can think of no issue that stands to improve for your having addressed it, and I can think of no aspect of American life that will be better for your having been President.
And the thing is? You’re going to fail. No matter what. You’re going to be able to do a lot of damage, and you’ll ruin a lot of lives. Hell, if you and your cohorts in Congress repeal the ACA without a “replacement” (and let’s be honest, none of you has the slightest idea what kind of “replacement” you’ll offer), you might just kill people. But it won’t matter. Not in the long-run, it won’t. You’re not going to reignite American manufacturing so that towns once more have big factories employing ten thousand people. You’re not going to be able to push all of the queer people back into their respective closets. You’re not going to make the young people like you.
Ultimately, though, I don’t even think you care that much, and that may bother me most of all. You seem to expect the Presidency to be this easy thing that you can almost do on a part-time basis, and that your business experience is one hundred percent applicable to the challenges you will confront as President. As to the latter, your business experience isn’t the unbroken run of amazing success stories that you often say it is, and that experience is not always applicable. What might be OK in a board room is not OK in a cabinet meeting.
In short, I expect your Presidency to be a time of awful policy making combined with amazing levels of corruption. The last administration that paired deep disengagement in policy and facts with willingness to profit from events did not result in good results. Your judicial appointees will be terrible people, and our Congress will rubber-stamp your stuff and you’ll rubber-stamp their stuff. The idea of national government in the hands of you, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell fills me with many emotions, none of them happy and most of them angry.

Not only was none of this wrong, you somehow managed to be even worse than I expected. I expected George W. Bush levels of incompetence, disengagement, and bad policy, but not only did you manage to crank up the settings on all of those, you added to the mix a casual type of cruelty that wasn’t terribly surprising, but it was still unnerving. You seemed to take actual delight in the sufferings of the American people whom you were elected (if only by the deeply bizarre set-up we Americans have where someone with fewer votes can still be elected) to lead and serve.

I never had any expectation of you growing in office, but damned if you didn’t seem to shrink to the occasion, each and every time. I knew that your general approach to policy would be terrible, and my only real hope was that things would somehow manage to not get super bad in America by the time we got our chance to vote you out.

Of course, this hope was in itself dangerous, since Americans don’t tend to take a very long view of policy, which made it a very real risk that we’d hit 2020 with things just king of bubbling along, like they were for the first three years of your term, and Americans would look at the state of affairs and say, “Meh, he’s doing OK, I guess.” The inertia of history takes a long time to shift, and it often takes bad governance years to manifest in terrible results that hurt millions. Likewise, it takes good governance years to repair terrible results, which is where America often gets into trouble: we get frustrated when the Democratic Presidents we elect to get America out of the ditch that Republican Presidents like you steered it into don’t quite get the job done in 18 months, and then we fill Congress with Republicans who have zero investment in doing anything other than keeping us in the ditch.

But here we are: you put the country in a calamitous position, by pursuing things that were unimportant and ignoring things that were. You ignored the warnings about likely pandemics, and then when one actually arrived, you dithered and you dallied and you ignored experts who were telling you what you didn’t want to hear and you installed charlatans who told you what you did, and now here we are, four hundred thousand deaths and counting later, and we’re a country that can’t get on the same page about something so simple as wearing masks to protect each other.

No, you didn’t create the climate in America, but you took advantage of it and you poured gas on its embers and fanned the flames at every opportunity you had. You used the power of your office in the most brazenly and transparently transactional way probably in history, and what of that? You’re still heading off to face all manner of legal troubles, and the idea of anyone giving you giant sums of money to build some tall building someplace is laughable. (Maybe Boise will try; you could end up with Trump Tower Boise being the tallest building there, but then, in Boise, twenty floors will get it done.) You gave your ear to the Stephen Millers, Steve Bannons, Seb Gorkas, and Michael Caputos of the world. I expected your administration to be a Rogue’s Gallery of the worst people in America, and you certainly met that expectation, head-on.

Meanwhile, our country’s economic inequality continues to grow, student loans continue to break the backs of millions, our infrastructure (which of all things I expected you to do something about, even if it was a half-assed grifting something) is still crumbling and well behind the rest of the world, and we have lost another four years that we didn’t have to fight climate change. I am not exaggerating when I say that there is no aspect of American life that is better for your having touched it. Yours is a perverse kind of mirror universe Midas touch, in which everything with which you come in contact is either terrible to begin with or becomes terrible because you touched it.

Well, while there is still the enormous problem that many millions of Americans still support you, and that a significant portion of those do so on the basis of irrational nonsense conspiracy crap that wouldn’t even make an interesting X-Files episode, I can still take comfort in the fact that of the many problems America is facing today and in days to come, one of them has been definitively addressed.

You, Mr. Trump, are no longer America’s problem. May the wind be forever in your face, and may the road crumble before you with each step you take.

Sincerely,

–An American citizen who has no more time or inclination to think about you at all.

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“Common Ground”

 Of all the images from the failed coup the other day, there’s one that I can’t stop thinking about. I especially think about this image as I consider all the people who keep telling me that we need to “come together” and we need to find “common ground” and that both sides need to figure each other out if we’re to prosper as a nation.

That image is this one:

It’s just one of the rioters, right? Scampering through the House chamber. We’ve seen lots of images like this, and a whole lot of folks have tried passing all of this off as the adult version of the fantasy we all has as kids of getting free and unsupervised access to the school.

But…look closer.

That guy is holding a bunch of cable-tie handcuffs.

This is what law enforcement uses as hand restraints nowadays.

This guy showed up for the riot prepared to take prisoners.

And he wasn’t alone. Among the other images from that day that stick in my mind? One, which I’m not sharing here, is of a gallows that these people set up near the Capitol.

It doesn’t take the creative mind of a writer of space operas to imagine what might have transpired if these people had managed to corner a member of Congress someplace. It doesn’t take a major feat of imagination to think of what might have happened if they’d managed to get hold of, say, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Or Ilhan Omar. Or Nancy Pelosi, or Bernie Sanders, or Adam Schiff. Or, believe it or not, Vice President Pence, whom many of those rioters now view as a traitor for his failure to wave whatever magic wand they think he has to stop Congress from recognizing the Electoral College’s election of Joe Biden as President.

These people stormed the United States Capitol and at least some of them were thinking in terms of violence: capturing lawmakers, and maybe killing them.

There is no common ground to be found here. There is no basis on which they and I can unify so we can work together to build a better nation. These people don’t want a better nation. All they want is their nation, and they literally do not care how much of a shithole their nation is, so long as it’s theirs. Well, they are not welcome in my nation…or in the nation belonging to many, many millions of us.

To hell with “common ground”, and to hell with anyone who showed up in Washington to riot, and to anyone who stayed home to sympathize with them.

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“We are who we were.”

 Longtime readers know that one of my main ways of processing the world is through movies and teevee shows I’ve seen, and books I’ve read. I often find in the creative works of others a prism through which I can crystalize my own thinking on the issues of the day.

Today’s attempted coup* in Washington is no exception.

I found myself thinking about the great John Quincy Adams speech that comes at the end of the movie Amistad. If you haven’t seen the film, it involves a major court case that arose from a property dispute where the property was human lives. The captives aboard a slave ship somehow get control of the ship, but they are soon captured by another vessel, and what ensues is the legal fight for freedom. The legal case, being a bellwether for slavery and property concerns as America is heading toward the Civil War, ends up before the Supreme Court, and one of the lawyers working the case is John Quincy Adams, current member of the House of Representatives and former President of the United States.

It’s quite a movie speech (historically, it’s not terribly accurate, but so what?), and it ends with this remarkable passage after JQ Adams (played by Sir Anthony Hopkins six years after he played Hannibal Lecter, and you can see nothing of the previous performance in this one) has described how in the African tribe to which the man Adams represents belongs, in times of deep difficulty they invoke their ancestors, thinking them as great a force in their lives now as when they were alive.

James Madison; Alexander Hamilton; Benjamin Franklin; Thomas Jefferson; George Washington; John Adams: We’ve long resisted asking you for guidance. Perhaps we have feared in doing so we might acknowledge that our individuality which we so, so revere is not entirely our own. Perhaps we’ve feared an — an appeal to you might be taken for weakness. But we’ve come to understand, finally, that this is not so.

We understand now. We’ve been made to understand, and to embrace the understanding, that who we are — is who we were.

It’s that one quote there that gets me: “Who we are is who we were.” We don’t escape history. Nothing happens without precedent, without its first principles being established years, decades, even centuries past. The road we walk is the one our ancestors paved, for good or ill. It’s a road that leads to amazing things: a nation that helped defeat Fascism on opposite sides of the globe, and a nation that built itself on the stolen labor of some and the stolen land of others. We’re a nation that visited the Moon and questions if we did. We’re a nation that elected a black man President, and then turned around and enabled a four-year tantrum by people who hate that this ever happened.

“Who we are is who we were.” We were racists and white supremacists and violent conquerors of people who lived here before us. We weren’t just those things, but we were those things…and who we are is who we were.

But we were also something else. At least, I hope we were.

In the movie, JQ Adams continues, closing his speech:

We desperately need your strength and wisdom to triumph over our fears, our prejudices, our-selves. Give us the courage to do what is right. And if it means civil war, then let it come. And when it does, may it be, finally, the last battle of the American Revolution.

I suppose now we’d have to rephrase that: Let it come, and when it does, may it be the last battle of the American Civil War.

(You can read the entire JQ Adams speech from Amistad here, and there’s a clip of the whole thing, so you can watch Hopkins deliver one of the best movie speeches in history.)

* Yes, it was an attempted coup. I will entertain no counterargument on this.

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My Letter to Chris

 Tonight I did something I haven’t done in quite a while. I e-mailed my Representative in Congress.

Unfortunately, I happen to live in a district that is currently as reliably crimson as any small town in Alabama, and my current Representative, Chris Jacobs, has thus far in his short career (he was only first elected in a special election last summer) proven to be a pandering empty suit, but today he managed to irritate even me by being not just a rubber stamp for the right wing, but a gutless one. He announced today his intention to join the chorus of Congressfolk who are “objecting” to the Congressional certification of the Electoral College results. Today. On the very day those results were to be certified, and on a day when he knew that there would almost certainly be violence.

Chris Jacobs took a cowardly stance because he knew that his base would demand it, and he took that stance when he knew the light would shine dimly on him if if shone on him at all.

Here’s a rough paraphrase of what I wrote, since I didn’t think to copy-and-paste it until after it was sent (via an email form on his web page):

As a liberal Democrat in your district, I have had no illusions that you would represent my beliefs or values in Washington much at all, but even so I was surprised to learn how cowardly you are in your service to those constituents you do claim to represent. I see that you have waited until the very last possible moment to announce that you, too, will object to the certification of the Electoral College’s ultimate election of Joseph R. Biden as the next President of the United States.

I am sure that you know, as well as I do, that not a single shred of proof or actionable evidence of any voter fraud at all, much less a sufficient degree of it to swing an entire American Presidential election, has been advanced in any court in this country. I am sure that you know that this notion is simply delusional, and I am sure that you know that your endorsement of it is nothing but cowardly pandering to your base. What was surprising in your cowardice is that you waited until today, on the day the votes were to be counted in Congress, and on a day when you surely knew that many thousands of the current President’s supporters would be in Washington to “protest”, to make your announcement. You waited until you knew the light would not be on you, and then you stepped up to bravely say, “Me too.”

Again, I know that there is zero chance of you advocating in Congress for MY values, but know that I will work tirelessly at home to oppose YOURS. While this district is currently as red as it gets, there is no law of nature requiring it to remain that way forevermore, and whatever the future holds, this moment will pass and you’re young enough that you’ll likely live to see at least some of history’s judgment of you and those with whom you have made common cause. Your grandchildren will know what kind of man you were, and people like me will work hard to make sure that they know.

Sincerely,

and so on and so forth.

Maybe this was intemperate? I don’t know. But I do know that what’s happening now is not tenable, and that this country cannot long survive so much of its population being off its collective rocker. And it likely cannot survive so many of its elected officials being in thrall to such pure craven irrationality.

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2020: [sigh of not really relief, but not defeat either]

 It’s time for my annual wrap-up quiz. Warning: I’m writing about 2020 here. Trigger warnings galore! And some political bluntness, for which I’ll say, if you disagree with me, well…I do not care. For a taste of how I’ve been seeing the year just gone by, consider this tweet:

It’s been my view for some time that everything going wrong for America and for the world, all of it, consists of self-inflicted wounds, and I have seen nothing to make me think otherwise for even a second.

But now, on to the quiz.

Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year? 


 My resolutions never change much: “Read a lot, write a lot, eat healthier, walk more, listen to more music.”

As these go, not bad! The toughest one is “eat healthier,” which is a back-end kind of thing: I have no problem finding newer healthier foods to like. It’s staying away from the less-than-healthy ones that tends to trip me up! This is something I need to work on big-time.

As for the rest, it was a decent year. I wrote a fair amount (though a lot of my writing time this year was spent on editing existing manuscripts, so drafting was on the backseat for a chunk of the year). Reading was a constant, and I really have made effort to listen to more music! 


 
Did anyone close to you give birth? 

 Nope. 

 
Did anyone close to you die? 

 I suppose it’s almost miraculous that in the Year of COVID, my answer to this is, No. But I know of people who have died, and people close who have suffered a lot of loss (and not all of it COVID driven, since the rest of Death didn’t exactly go on holiday because of the pandemic). 

 
What countries did you visit? 

 In my mind? Tons. 

 
What would you like to have in 2021 that you lacked in 2020? 

 A Federal government that isn’t led by a delusional authoritarian grifter whose appeal is distressingly wide. 

 
What was your biggest achievement of the year? 

 It was 2020. I got to the end of it without having contracted COVID-19 as of this writing. This was not a year for grand accomplishments, I suspect…though I did get a book ready for release, and more! Detail to come in another post. 

 
What was your biggest failure? 

 I took entirely too much random delight in chucking rocks at online trolls. 

 
What was the best thing you bought? 

 I probably bought way too much stuff this year–adding to the overalls collection and purchasing books, of course–but the thing that’s brought the most direct happiness to my ongoing existence is the pair of Bluetooth ear buds I picked up in June. I had watched a YouTube video that was randomly recommended by that platform’s algorithm (why, I’m not sure, it was just someone’s “day in the life” video diary thing), in which a person put on earbuds that had hooks to go over the ear, and I thought, “Wait, they make those?” A bit of Googling turned up my Soundcore buds. 

 
Whose behavior merited celebration? 

 Anyone who wore a mask and socially-distanced themselves, no matter how hard it may have been to do so. 

 
Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Not even my skills with the English language can convey my disappointment at how much farther the Republicans can descend in this country. As I write this, a bunch of them in Congress are gearing up to “object” to the certification of the Electoral College results, based on zero concrete evidence of any “fraud” whatsoever. It’s pure banana-republic dictator shit, this business of “We respect the election as long as the guy in charge wins” and it’s just appalling. Add to that the QAnon lunatics, the science deniers, and the ones who refuse to wear masks or maintain social distance because of “FREEDOM!”, and you’ve got a deeply dangerous state of affairs in this country. We can’t long survive this large a percentage of our citizenry being completely off its collective rocker.

I’m also disappointed in what I see as America’s rejection of collective thinking and its growing lack of imagination, but that will have to wait for another post. 


 
Where did most of your money go? 

 Books, booze, food, gifts, and vintage overalls. And I paid down some debt, which was nice. 

 
What did you get really excited about? 

 In 2020? Day trips to Ithaca and Letchworth and the Finger Lakes area. New flavors I’ve tried. I’ve made green tea a part of my daily routine of late, and I’m loving it! (I also discovered just this week, when the last of my Christmas gifts came in the mail, just how much tea is in a pound of the stuff. Note to self: order the stuff 8oz at a time, moving forward.)

 

Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?


Oh, who the hell knows. On a personal level I’m pretty happy and doing fine. When I start thinking societally, though–ugh.

On a political note, I’m really increasingly disappointed by my country. Maybe I’ll write more about this later, but re-electing the Joni Ernst’s and the Susan Collinses and the Mitch McConnells of the world is a staggering failure of citizenship, and the fact that more than 70 million of my fellow Americans looked at the current state of affairs and decided that they were fine with it is horribly depressing. 


 
Thinner or fatter? 

 A bit thinner! No idea about the poundage, but I own overalls for which I have never been able to fasten both sets of side buttons–and now I can. This amazes me. Now, my progress in that regard has probably taken a small beating the last few weeks, but I did develop some healthier eating habits in 2020 that won’t be hard to replicate. I can still do the “gluttony” thing on occasion, but I’ve finally reached a point where doing so is fun for a very short while, but then my brain goes, “Oooog, gimme salad and fiber and lean protein, please.”

 
Richer or poorer? 

 I’m doing better than a lot of Americans. And we all should be doing better, shouldn’t we? I really hope I live long enough to see this country finally start to pivot away from the trickle-down, “If we just let rich people have more and more money they’ll eventually rain it down upon us all” bullshit that’s been the economic wind in America’s wings since 1981.

I’ll say this for American conservatism: when it managed to convince most of America that the major factor holding them back was what government was taking out of their paychecks instead of what their employers were never putting in their paychecks in the first place, it won a rhetorical victory for the ages. 

 
What do you wish you’d done more of? 

 As always, reading, writing, and walking. (Same as last year.) 

 
What do you wish you’d done less of? 

 Chucking rocks at right-wing trolls online. Yeah, it’s fun to mute them and watch them reply anyway, but still…it’s not a terribly productive use of time! 

 
How did you spend Christmas?

With family. We used FaceTime to include my sister, which was…well, obviously it’s not the same, but it was actually a fun way to manage to include someone who wasn’t able to be around due to circumstances and shit. Other than that, Christmas was what it always is for us: a quiet time spent with family. I don’t come from a large and close extended family, and The Wife’s family lives far away as well, so Christmas has never been about large gatherings and traveling around to multiple houses to put in appearances. It’s always been about home, and I expect it always will be. I hear people complaining about how their holidays were ruined by COVID, or how they were going to defy the Big Bad Government to go to their giant get-togethers, and I reflect anew on the degree to which this particular crisis has forced an awful lot of Americans into my lifestyle. I haven’t yet figured out to what degree their reactions to this amuses me or depresses me, but it’s definitely some of both. 


 
Did you fall in love in 2020? 

 She’s from the Niagara Falls area, you don’t know her. 

(Yes, that’s a quote from The Breakfast Club.)

 
How many one-night stands? 

 Come on. I never had one-night stands when they were an option. 

 
What was your favorite TV program? 

 ABC canceled Bless This Mess, which was a hilarious fish-outta-water sitcom about two NYC liberal hippie-types who inherit farmland in Nebraska, so eff you, ABC. (The show was not about “Let’s make fun of the hicks!”, if you’re thinking along those lines. It was a collection of zany weirdos and full of character-driven comedy that was some of the funniest stuff I’ve seen in years. If you watch it, the short first season–only six episodes, if I recall correctly–is mildly amusing, but the show didn’t take off creatively until the second season, which was sadly the last.)

ABC also had a cool detective show called Stumptown, set in Portland, OR, that I liked a lot. They renewed it for a second season…and then when COVID shut down production, they ended up canceling it instead. Curse you, ABC!

CBS has a sitcom called The Unicorn which we like a lot. This follows a widower as he starts to emerge from grieving; he has two teenage daughters and a wonderful support system of friends around him. This show is in its second season and is worth checking out. It’s sometimes bittersweet, but it’s never depressing.

Oh, and we like The Mandalorian a great deal. We’re slowly watching Season Two now, rationing it out for maximum enjoyment. Of course, the Internet has already seen to it that I’m spoiled and know what happens at the end, so thanks, Internet. Sheesh. 

 
Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year? 

 I really don’t like hatred and I try to avoid it. 

 
What was the best book you read? 

 I refer you to my Books Read in 2020 post from the other day, where my five-star reads are highlighted in bold. 

 
What was your greatest musical discovery? 

 Oh, music! Music might have saved me this year, to the point where this blog was almost exclusively a music blog for a whole lot of the time. Aside from my year-long deep dive into Beethoven, I also did a lot of listening to the work of Black composers, which often featured in my semi-regular Tone Poem Tuesday posts. This was a partial response on my part to the Black Lives Matter movement, because surely one way we can start to acknowledge the importance of the Black lives that we whites have for so long completely marginalized and ignored is to engage with Black art. This will remain a focus of mine, moving forward.

As far as specific Black composers go, I’ve really become a fan of Florence Price, whose music I featured several times.


Non-classical? Well, none of these were “discoveries”, but I’m discovering a real fondness for ELO, which I am starting to consider one of the most underrated bands in history, and Taylor Swift, whom I am starting to consider simply a genius.

 
What did you want and get? 

 President-elect Joe Biden. 

 
What did you want and not get? 

 A United States Senate not ruled by Mitch McConnell, whom I believe to be the single worst American of my lifetime. (Though, if Georgia voters manage to come through, I still may get this.) 

 
What were your favorite films of this year? 

 2020 was the first year of my life that I never set foot in a movie theater, and I only watched a single movie new to me, courtesy of Netflix. That was Enola Holmes, which I enjoyed greatly.

I love film and I wish I had more time to watch them. I suspect my retirement, when it finally comes, is going to be a big film-fest. 


 
What did you do on your birthday? 

 I don’t remember specifically what happened on my birthday, but my sister was in town and we did some antiquing and visiting comics stores. The next week was our annual trip to Ithaca and the Finger Lakes, which took on a very different tone given that the annual Apple Harvest Festival was canceled due to COVID. 

 
How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2019? 

 It’s a struggle, every morning: “Which shirt do I want to wear with which overalls?” 

 
What kept you sane?

Books and music and dogs and cats and overalls. Walks in the woods and by the water. I cope best when I’m allowed to focus my energies inward. 


 
Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

I’ll give a shout-out to author and podcaster Dana Schwartz, who is a fine writer and the host of the wonderful podcast Noble Blood, which focuses on the sordid and grim side of history. There have been episodes on each one of Henry VIII’s wives (not all of whom were beheaded!), and a particularly effective episode about King Leopold II of Belgium and how he spearheaded some of the bloodiest acts of African colonialism. My favorite episode focused on one of my favorite stories from the history of science, the life of Tycho Brahe. Schwartz focuses that episode on Brahe’s life, instead of coming at it from the standpoint of Johannes Kepler, as most commentators do.


 
What political issue stirred you the most? 

 God, so many to choose from…but Black Lives Matter remains staggering to me. That a cop could just casually kneel with his knee on the throat of a black man until he died is one of the most appalling things I’ve ever seen, closely followed by the ability of so many white people to argue that there was really nothing at all wrong with this.

And there’s also my country’s response to COVID-19, a response so perfect in its malignant incompetence and rejection of science that it truly makes me believe that whatever greatness lies in store for humanity, America will no longer be much of a factor in driving it. 

 
Who did you miss?

The geeky people who frequent the local cons! I was just starting to get comfortable with the idea of hanging out at local conventions and trying to market myself there (I was even going to release Book Four of The Song of Forgotten Stars at Nickel City Con in May), but that’s gone. I miss festivals–Ithaca’s Apple Harvest Festival, the Sterling Renaissance Festival, various others that we like to frequent. I miss some favorite local restaurants that we pray manage to hold on long enough for the vaccine to finally start beating back this virus. 

 
Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2020: 

 The same ones as always:

Read a lot, write a lot. Listen to music. Go for walks and look at sunsets. Take all the pictures you want. Learn new things and try new stuff. If you have a dog, take him for walks. Buy books for your daughter, even when she complains that she likes to pick her own books (let her do that, too). Nothing fits your hand so well as your lover’s hand. Eating out is fine, but learn to cook things, too. Have a place to go where they know you and what you order. Don’t be afraid to revisit your childhood passions now and again; you weren’t always wrong back then. Overalls are awesome, it’s OK to wear double denim, and a pie in the face is a wonderful thing!


To all of this I would add something that wasn’t really a lesson I learned in 2020, but which I saw illustrated in events so stark as to have it all be writ large in the fiery letters in the sky: The United States of America desperately needs to re-embrace rational and collective thinking, and ditch its mythologies about rugged individualism and the eternal wisdom of “the Founders”.

I’d sum it up with a quote from the afore-mentioned Enola Holmes: “Our future is up to us.” 


 
If you take selfies, post your six favorite ones: 
Oh, to have reached another weekend! #sigh #overalls #dungarees #biboveralls #vintage #gap #gapoveralls #bluedenim #denimoveralls #overallsarelife #vintageoveralls
Another in my ongoing "Possible Future Author Photo" series! #overalls #dungarees #biboveralls #vintage #key #keyoveralls #herringbone #vintageoveralls #overallsarelife #sweater #sweatersandoveralls
Just a casual guy in the forest #ChestnutRidge #wny #orchardpark #spring #nature #hiking #trees #overalls #dungarees #biboveralls #key #keyoveralls #bluedenim #denimoveralls #overallsarelife
This pandemic has done wonders for my vintage overalls collection. New Ely overalls FTW! #overalls #dungarees #biboveralls #vintage #ElyOveralls #denim #bluedenim #rawdenim #denimoveralls #vintageoveralls #overallsarelife
Wine tasting on a crisp fall day! #UpstateTravels #wine #yum #overalls #dungarees #biboveralls #vintage #lee #leeoveralls #hickorystripe #denimoveralls #overallsarelife #vintageoveralls #sweatersandoveralls
What a perfect day it was! #ahhhhh #basking #overalls #dungarees #biboveralls #vintage #lee #leeoveralls #hickorystripe #denimoveralls #overallsarelife #vintageoveralls #sweatersandoveralls
A manufactured pose while my coffee steeps. #ootd #overalls #dungarees #biboveralls #vintage #lee #leeoveralls #hickorystripe #denimoveralls #overallsarelife #vintageoveralls #doubledenim #denimondenim
Finally the coffee was done. #yum #coffee #overalls #dungarees #biboveralls #vintage #GuessJeans #GuessOveralls #blackdenim #denimoveralls #overallsarelife #vintageoveralls #plaid #flannel
Yeah, I’m doing eight, because I can.

 

Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:


Boy, have I been dreading this question. A song that sums up 2020? How could there possibly be a musical expression of how this awful year was and the effect it had…but maybe, just maybe, 2020 was sufficiently calamitous to provoke at least a beginning to a long-needed reassessment of the American paradigm of life, business, and profit?

This made me remember the last episode of House MD, which ended as Dr. House, having faked his own death, took off on a motorcycle trip with his best friend Dr. Wilson, who at this point was dying of cancer and had only months left. As they motor off into the hills, this song played out the end of the show, and if this is a bit morbid (and maybe sexist in one verse), well…these are the times in which we live.
So here’s Guy Lombardo.
You work and work for years and years, you’re always on the go
You never take a minute off, too busy makin’ dough
Someday you say, you’ll have your fun, when you’re a millionaire
Imagine all the fun you’ll have in your old rockin’ chair
Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think
Enjoy yourself, while you’re still in the pink
The years go by, as quickly as a wink
Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think
You’re gonna take that ocean trip, no matter come what may
You’ve got your reservations made, but you just can’t get away
Next year for sure, you’ll see the world, you’ll really get around
But how far can you travel when you’re six feet underground?
Your heart of hearts, your dream of dreams, your ravishing brunette
She’s left you and she’s now become somebody else’s pet
Lay down that gun, don’t try my friend to reach the great beyond
You’ll have more fun by reaching for a redhead or a blond
Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think
Enjoy yourself, while you’re still in the pink
The years go by, as quickly as a wink
Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think
You never go to night clubs and you just don’t care to dance
You don’t have time for silly things like moonlight and romance
You only think of dollar bills tied neatly in a stack
But when you kiss a dollar bill, it doesn’t kiss you back
Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think
Enjoy yourself, while you’re still in the pink
The years go by, as quickly as a wink
Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think
Let’s make 2021 better, shall we? I’d love to be able to post some optimistic and more cheerful answers to these questions in one year’s time. Remember Ms. Holmes’s quote above: Our future is up to us.

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