July 4--Happy Independence Day

Quiet here--for now. I expect we will have the usual fireworks from the neighbors tonight. We did have some last night. I only know it is a holiday because my computer says so and we won't have mail delivery today. And because many of my e-mail has the same notation. Otherwise it is a very ordinary day. Nothing doing outside because of the heat which is about 92F at the moment. That is not an official temp but what the thermometer on the patio reads which is always between 5* and 10* above any official reading.

Theodora Gross has a post detailing how the pandemic has upended her life.

Just Live With It--the "new" White House message on the Corona Virus. Smacks somewhat of George W.'s "go shopping" advice after 9/11.

July 7

We have had a couple of days here when all our plans have gone out the window. Sunday I was feeling incredibly lazy and did very little. Yesterday we spent almost all day at the auto repair shop getting some much needed (and much delayed) work done on the car.

The post I linked on the 4th have something in common: "living with it" meaning the virus. The question, of course, is how do you mean the phrase "live with it." I was being somewhat sarcastic when I compared the response of #45 to #43 but the sentiments are fundamentally the same: a desire to go back the what was before the coronavirus in the first case and 9/11 in the other. I rather doubt that going back to whatever halcyon days #45 imagines existed pre-COVID will be any more possible than it was for the U.S. after 9/11. On April 29, John Michael Greer posted an assessment of the possible impact of the shutdowns on at least a segment of the population. At the same time the news notes the desperation of some workers to get back to work (and a paycheck) stories also had experts and politicians worried about whether those workers would actually want to get back to work because the virus was in no way contained  or whether they were disinclined because of the "too generous" unemployment benefits. That last always reminded me of the "humane" slave owners lamenting the "necessity" of the lash because those lazy slaves wouldn't work otherwise. One thing is practically guaranteed: what ever the new normal looks like post COVID will not be what we will have after.

Good piece by William Hartung on Tomdispatch this morning. Defunding our foreign and domestic wars sounds like a good idea. Note: not abolishing the military or the police but shrinking their footprint and shifting money to other priorities. And asking the question of whether our massive funding of the military, the police and prisons is really making us safe and from what?

I think something is mostly missing in the arguments about re-opening schools in the fall: whether parents will feel it is safe to send their kids to schools.

Some observations on our local situation: At the auto repair shop--almost everyone who came in were wearing masks but everyone maintained their distance. We started out wearing our masks but since everyone maintained distance took them off. We put them back on when we went over the the KFC

 for something to drink. On the way home we stopped at the local supermarket to pick up something for supper since we were exhausted by our 7+ hour wait for the car (no way to get home without it). Honestly, it was palatable only because we were very hungry since breakfast was a long time gone. We prefer what we cook at home. My brother had to go out over the weekend and noticed a huge line of cars trying to get into the Dunes for their July 4th outing. Many were parked on the shoulders and more in yards and driveways of residents who had to call the cops to get them to leave. A large percentage were from Illinois. Our governor had opened things up because he thought our numbers were going in the right direction. Thanks to various idiots (and not just those from Illinois) he may take us back a step or two. Most of the medical experts I have heard talking about the surge in cases make two points: many states opened up too quickly and too many people decided they could go back to socializing as they used to.