Groundhog Day/That Was the Year That Was

In these parts, they claim that if the groundhog sees his shadow (Feb 2, the midpoint between the winter solstice and spring equinox in the northern hemisphere), we’ll have 6 more weeks of winter – which is the amount of astronomical winter remaining (duh). A cloudy day is supposed to mean an early spring. Since winter around here lasts at least six weeks after groundhog day, I figure clouds might just mean winter lasts into April. Two years ago on January 30, the temperature here dropped to -26 degrees Fahrenheit. Wind chill was estimated at -50. (It was colder in the infamous wind tunnel by the pharmacy building.) That morning is when I learned that one’s eyes can be frost-nipped, and I bought goggles for cold weather.

The red eyes, not to mention the ice in the lashes, are from cold. But that was two years ago and today (January 28) was our first time below zero since that cold snap. So the one good thing about 2020 was that it was warm, if that can be called a good thing.

January: CPR renewal, when it could be done face-to-face still. Surgery and a long convalescence. My first trip out in the real world was to go to a funeral. The only live concert of the year (Dwight Yoakum for my birthday).

February: The only live theatre of the year (in Minneapolis); a show stage-managed by my daughter, who was sick as a dog (a phrase that dates at least as far back as the 1700s, but I haven’t found a satisfying explanation) but the show must go on. I came home and promptly got sick. The test said it wasn’t COVID-19, but it was the sickest I’ve been in years.

March: Two weeks of quarantine and return to work in scrubs for the first time ever. Still wearing scrubs and probably will until I retire or they wear out, whichever comes first. And if they wear out first, then I will retire.

April-September: All club rides canceled. Instead of riding every Wednesday night with 100-200 friends and acquaintances, followed by a beer and then dinner with a few friends, I rode alone every Wednesday night, then went home and did the laundry and made dinner. (Pro tip: if you want riding gear to last, hand wash in cold water and dry on a rack after every ride. I just retired my 1991 Death Ride jersey because it lost its elasticity after 29 years.)

July: The Death Ride canceled, along with our trip to California to hang out at a cabin in the mountains, where we stayed during the 1992 Death Ride. While I’ve mentioned it before, I haven’t explained it in a while. 200 km, 15,000 feet of climbing, 5 mountain passes, elevation ~5000-9000 feet. (Oh yeah, and it takes place in one day.) At one point they changed the name to Tour of the California Alps for insurance reasons. I guess no one wants to insure an event with death in the name. Everyone called it the Death Ride anyway, so now they use both names (The Death Ride: Tour of the California Alps) – kinda like a scholarly article with a title, a colon, and a subtitle (“Colonoscopy: An examination of the use of punctuation in the titles of scholarly works”.)

August: Camping trip with family. No swimming (too many people at the beach). No live theatre (the park has a resident theatre troupe that does original musical theatre, but not this year). Our daughter moved back in with us after the trip, in order to go to grad school.

September: Canceled century ride, so I camped and rode alone. A different kind of fun, but no less fun.

November: Thanksgiving dinner for 3, instead of the usual 20+.

December: Christmas like Thanksgiving, with an added large-scale Zoom call, with breakout sessions so it almost seemed like work. Bailey (named after George Bailey from “It’s Wonderful Life”) joins the family. While he likes to spend a lot of his time sleeping, he demonstrated his athletic prowess by jumping over me while I was sitting in a kitchen chair. I caught him before he landed on the table. He was a rescue dog, looks like mostly Viszla but with the coloration of a Chocolate Lab. Maybe a little Weimeraner and some breed with shorter ears than any of those three. When not eating things he shouldn’t or running wild laps, he spends most of his time curled up in a tiny ball or watching out the second floor window to keep tabs on doings in the street.

We got a bit of snow this week. Today we added a few inches of heavy and wet snow so the depth has actually decreased from this measurement. I got out the roof rake to take off a few hundred pounds. The snowplow made four passes down our street, so there was a lot of shoveling. The only thing worse than shoveling out the snow left by the plow is not shoveling out the snow left by the plow. It then hardens into a heavy and icy consistency that makes it a lot like shoveling partially-hardened concrete.

A neighbor had emergency abdominal surgery so I shoveled out from the plow on their side of the street, too; then shoveled out the curb cut and the storm drain. A year ago I couldn’t shovel at all. Now my abdominal wall needs some strengthening. Shoveling makes the perfect workout.

Maybe soon we can be freed of our obsession with the news; wondering what atrocity the president will say or do next. It’s no accident that my roundup of the year is not focused on the political events. I will say that I think all newly-elected members of congress who think the election was stolen are welcome to give up their stolen seats. I thought this song summed up the past four years as well as any:

As for the title: There was once a weekly TV show called “That was the week that was”. It was a satirical look at the news, with topical songs by Tom Lehrer in the US version – the original was a British show. He later assembled some of those songs into the album “That was the year that was”.

Today (Groundhog Day) begins my next tour of duty in the COVID-19 unit. My vaccines should be at full strength and the COVID census on Friday was ⅓ what it was during my last tour there. As for side effects: the first shot made me feel a little odd the next day – slight disequilibrium, but nothing that would have kept me out of work, had it been a work day. (We were required to get the injection when we had the following two days off, so if there were side effects we wouldn’t use sick leave.) My arm ached like from a flu shot. The second one came with no side effects – until after the 72 hours we were supposed to be watching for said effects. Then I had a headache for 10 days. It is gone now. Again, nothing to keep me from normal life; just an annoyance.

Why is it…

that the only people trying to steal the election are campaigning under the banner “Stop the steal”? Is it just me, or is that the ultimate in irony?

I did it. The first injection of the novel coronavirus vaccine from Pfizer went into my arm Saturday afternoon. My arm did not freeze and fall off. With a substance stored at -70 degrees C (-94 F) I was hoping they’d warm it up a bit. They did. Nothing like frostbite from the inside out. While there are supposed to be only mild side effects (like the pain at injection site you get with the flu vaccine), my employer isn’t taking any chances – I was required to get the vaccine at the end of my Saturday shift so, if I get sick, I’ll be sick on my own time and won’t miss work unless it lasts 3 days. Kinesiotape at the injection site works for the flu vaccine. We’ll see how it works for this.

Twenty four hours after injection I have an achy arm, a lot like after a flu shot. I have a vague sense of dis-ease – slight disequilibrium, subtle visual changes, very mild nausea, and a slight headache – nothing that would have kept me from working if today were a workday. In three weeks I’ll let you know how the second injection goes.

We received our new shipment of PAPRs (Powered Air-Purifying Respirators) so I can dispense with the N-95 mask and patients can see my face for the first time this year (except for a week or two in February when I worked maskless). I still need a mask for the non-COVID patients and when I am doing anything else at work, but that is just a simple mask, not an N-95. They can hear me better, too. (Photo: What the well-dressed therapist is wearing these days. Isolation gown not shown.)

I’m thinking a PAPR could come in handy for the Death Ride. Nothing like extra air delivered under pressure for the thin air at higher elevations while climbing mountains. Not to mention that I don’t expect to be ready to share air at close quarters with a couple thousand other people in July.

We added a new member to the family this week. He was a street dog from Oklahoma and came to us via a rescue organization and a foster home. He seems to like it here so far. He got a little close for this selfie but, lacking thumbs, he did pretty well I think. Especially since he was drifting off to sleep. When our daughter moves out, he goes too, so I can’t get too attached. Maybe he’ll come for sleepovers. (Then again, I got pretty attached to the kids but it was OK for them to move out on their own.)

We had our first real snow and the lake is starting to freeze. Time for the studded tires. For now, I try to avoid the icy spots and ride slowly when there is no choice.

• 

• 

Rumor has it people have started skating on the shallow bay – the first place to freeze and attract ice fishers, who are on the ice before any sane creature.

A couple of days after that last paragraph, it warmed up; and the newspaper included a story about the number of ice rescues performed that day. None were from that bay, but skating will wait, as it has been above freezing for >24 hours.

In our culture, this season is often associated with conspicuous consumption – the TV ads encouraging us to surprise each other with new cars, telling us the only way you can show your love is via diamonds, helping us convince ourselves that joy comes from stuff. Delbert McClinton and friends tell us otherwise:

Check the sky tonight – Jupiter and Saturn will appear very close together, and just in time for the solstice. They will appear in the southwest sky shortly after sunset as long as, in your home on the range, the skies are not cloudy all day.

Photo by Jim Peacock, Bayfield WI, 12/14/2020. From EarthSky.org

Karen Terrier

This is Karen.

Image credits: Generic Karen from Film Daily. Target Karen and Walmart Karen from the Daily Mail. Central Park Karen from NY Daily News. Pacific Heights Karen from sfist.com.

Karen Key: “Target Karen” destroyed a mask display while filming it. She doesn’t like to wear a mask and thinks you shouldn’t wear one, either. “Walmart Karen” blocked a parking lot and screamed profanities and racist insults at those (including police) who asked her to move her car. She was in Hawaii and yelling at Hawaiians. “Central Park Karen” called police to tell them an African American man was threatening her life – because he asked her to leash her dog in a bird sanctuary. “Pacific Heights Karen” called police because a man wrote “Black Lives Matter” in sidewalk chalk on his retaining wall. She insisted she knew the owner, who would not approve. Clearly the actual property owner’s skin tone was too dark for him to live there. Luckily, the responding officer knew him and knew it was his own house.

This is a bull terrier. It was bred to harass bulls.

This is a rat terrier. It was bred to harass rats.

This is a fox terrier. It was bred to harass foxes.

Dog images from AKC.com

As a child I learned about a breed called a Cairn terrier, but I heard it as “Karen terrier”. Why not? We could use it to let the above Karens know that their attitude is not wanted.

Why not?

image from meme-generator.com

Tales of Our Only President

The New York Times has revealed that Our Only President did not pay Federal Income Tax for 10 of the past 15 years. In the two most recent years in which he paid taxes, he paid $750. In 2018 he claimed an income of $435 million in a financial disclosure, while claiming a loss of $47 million on his tax return. There are two logical and not incompatible explanations for this: 1) He is a liar and a cheat; 2) our tax code is structured to favor the wealthy. He calls the story “fake news”. Unfortunately, many in his base will probably love him even more for this. Many consider taxes to be evil and think anyone who dodges taxes is smart and a hero. Income tax evasion ultimately brought down Al Capone. May we be so lucky this time.

P.S. He is also reported (in a new book by a supporter and convicted felon) to have tried to sell his campaign on the idea of Ivanka as his running mate in 2016.

When is a precedent not a precedent?
(A letter to Senator Ron Johnson. He declined to respond. This is a slightly abridged version, cut to fit a newspaper’s 200-word limit. They chose not to run it.)

Dear Sen Johnson:
Please explain why it is not the height of hypocrisy for you to have said, in May of 2016, “Let the American people have a voice in the composition of the Supreme Court…Instead of a lame duck president and Senate nominating and confirming, a new president and Senate — elected by the people only a few months from now — should make that important decision. I can’t think of a fairer or more democratic process”; and then in September of 2020 to say, “President Trump has indicated he’s going to nominate someone. Leader McConnell has indicated he’ll give that nominee a vote, and I’m very supportive of that.” Further, in 2016 you said, “In the politicized atmosphere of an election year, you probably shouldn’t even nominate someone. It’s not fair to the nominee, it’s not fair to the court.”

I agree with you that the situations are not exactly parallel. In 2016 we were 6 months away from a presidential election. Now we are 6 weeks away from a presidential election. Can you explain this as anything but a bald-faced grab for power? Say it ain’t so Joe. Show a shred of decency.

You may want to skip the italicized section if that made sense to you. If you’re not from around here, Senator Ron Johnson is from the same neck of the woods as Wisconsin’s worst Senator, Joe McCarthy. On June 9, 1954, Joseph Welch, General Counsel for the US Army, was being interrogated by Sen McCarthy. In exasperation, he finally asked McCarthy, “At long last, have you no sense of decency?”

In 1919 the Chicago White Sox allegedly threw the World Series in exchange for bribes from gamblers, in an affair known as “The Black Sox Scandal.”. While they were acquitted, several players were banned from baseball for life. Star player Shoeless Joe Jackson was indicted and Charley Owens, writing in the Chicago Daily News, ran a story headlined “Say it ain’t so, Joe”, asking him to deny the accusation. The line was misattributed to a child, making for this scene in the film “Eight Men Out”:

I’m not sure how much of this Senator Johnson understood. By urging him to show a shred of human decency, I wanted him to put himself above Senator Joe McCarthy. By calling him “Joe” I wanted to draw the parallels between him and Joe McCarthy, to be sure he understood the gravity of the situation. By adding “Say it ain’t so” I was asking him to disavow his statement. References to both the Black Sox Scandal and the McCarthy hearings (especially in the same sentence) may have made it a little dense. Also, Ron Johnson seems to be a little dense. Sorry, I don’t usually explain myself this much. And you’re not Ron Johnson.

Day of Atonement

While my wife and daughter fast, pray, and sing in the Temple of Zoom, I atone by cleaning our adopted highway. Gut Yontiv.

Mark Hirsch, of Platteville, WI, photographed an old Burr Oak every day for a year and chronicled it in the book “That Tree“. The tree blew down in a storm this summer. While I haven’t taken this photo every day, this is the same view from our adopted highway (County F by Brigham Park), that has appeared in this space multiple times, but never this photo from today. While it rained in town, and clouds stayed above me all morning, the valley to the west basked in sunshine.

Finally, happy birthday to my Big Brother who, as a young whippersnapper of my current age, sailed the Rolex China Sea Race, in the boat pictured. (Ask to see his dragon tattoo.)