Get Back

 C'mon 2021.

Stop the Insanity

Trump wants the GOP and McConnell to lose its Senate majority in Georgia's January run-off elections. He's always played a monomaniacal long game that's solely for his benefit. He now wants an unimpeded, ultra-progressive, socialist Left to force the Biden-Harris administration to legislate their party's worst impulses, leading to an economic and world security armageddon. 

Think a perfect storm of Carter's Misery Index in 1979, critical race theory and social justice academic and workplace mandates, waves of racial violence and crime in urban cities, Mullahs with nukes, China's inexorable militarism, and the explosive chatter of the MSM, Twitter, Facebook, and Parler on steroids. Some real end of days stuff. 

Could a re-emergent center right of the country elect the GOP to House and Senate majorities in the 2022 mid-terms, and reelect Trump to a second term in 2024?

And would that be Make America Great Again again or President Shitshow Part II?

Humor and Partisanship in the Covid-19 Era

This week's New Yorker magazine cover takes yet another kill shot at President Trump with Harry Bliss's – In With the New – homage to Charles Addams. One might also call it a parting shot, but that's unlikely. 

The eye is drawn first to the large coronavirus orb illuminating the scene where a hunch-overed President Trump fans the flames of his burning tax records, assisted by a Lurch-inspired, hair dye-stained Rudy Giuliani. 

Entering from an open doorway on The Left is 2021's New Year's baby – a black baby – watched by 2020's baby, now aged and enfeebled on a Covid IV in a wheelchair, whose time has run out.

Throw in a Zoom meeting with a QAnon troll, Jared dusting cobwebs, rats scurrying to and fro, and a Clorox bottle with glasses on the fireplace mantle under a funereal wreath with an RIP-inscribed ribbon, and the portrait is complete. All the country's ills, if not the world's, encapsulated in a final portrait of the evil and grotesque 45th president on his knees. 

Compare this to Charles Addams' far less vitriolic humor from 1946, where the "Addams Family" poured a vat of hot oil on innocent Christmas carolers, representing the entire country's nascent Cold War fears, not just the president in the White House. This isn't to say Trump's boorish and ego-driven personal style didn't bring much of this upon himself, but the difference and challenge is clear.

When the new administration takes power next month – and all the responsibility, decisions (and blame) shifts – will the NYT and WAPO editorial pages, Steven Colbert and Seth Meyers, Joy Reid and Whoopi Goldberg, and the entire cadre of "Resistance" torch and pitchfork hyper-partisans tear down Joe and Kamala with the same closed-minded animus and relentless zeal? 

Don't hold your breath.

Great Conjunction

Winter Storm Gail

It was a delight to get a foot or more of fine and windswept snow this week. 

The forecast and cold temperatures ahead ensure a white Christmas, the first in recent memory.

Janet Benson

 Born December 15, 1900. 💛

Vermont's Cows Claim Cultural Appropriation

Different Boats for Different Folks

Trump's Psychiatrist

 "No one understands me."

Is Santa Claus a Superspreader?

With Christmas just three weeks away, many Americans are anxiously looking beyond the contested election, the nationwide surge in positive Covid-19 tests, and ahead to the next shoe to drop after all the Thanksgiving holiday travel and gatherings. While a vaccine appears imminent, newspapers and cable news are hyperventilating over how much worse the coming armageddon will get before Joe Biden is inaugurated on January 20.

Fortunately, voices of reason (and science) are still here to assure us that all is not lost. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases and lead member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, has declared that Santa Claus has "innate immunity" and can't spread the virus to anyone this Christmas.

But don't take your kids to the mall to sit on Santa's knee to tell him what they want for Christmas. Santa isn't taking any chances and won't be there.

We'll get to Santa's white male patriarchy issues next.

Thanksgiving 2020

Politics feels like getting screwed

 Ain't it the truth?

2020 Election Results?

At last count, 74,940,507 Americans voted for Biden/Harris, and another 70,649,646 voted for Trump/Pence . . . notwithstanding pending recounts.

That's an historic turnout and vote count for each party.

Whatever happens in the courts, Americans should be accepting, gracious, and peaceful.

Here in Katonah, New York, we've been blessed by an anonymous artist who's been lifting our spirits throughout the pandemic and election year with Bob Marley-inspired chalk drawings of "Three Little Birds" on our sidewalks and roadways . . .  "cause every little thing is gonna be all right."

Election Day ~ Vote!

 

Trick or Treat!

Daylight Savings

Time Traveling with Words

Logophiles will love Merriam Webster's new Time Traveler website. It lets you find the first known use dates of words and terms. 

For example, wordie was first used in 1982.

I entered my birth year, 1957, and looked first for Sputnik. Sure enough, it was there. Along with many surprises, including:

• Asian flu
• cognitive dissonance
• doggie bag
• go-kart
• magic mushroom
• mainframe
• one-hit wonder
• Vietcong

Hat tip to kottke.org. Have fun time traveling!

P.S. The term "time travel" is not in the Merriam Webster dictionary, but is on wikipedia.

Leaf Peeping

2020 Photomicrography Competition

 A vinyl record, shot using Differential Interference Contrast at 20x Objective Lens Magnification.

Just when you thought it was safe to go online

Trick or Treat

Lila Ash ~ The New Yorker

Debates

 I remember past debates being much more civil and policy focused.

The Country of the Pointed Firs

"At last it was the time of late summer, when the house was cool and damp in the morning, and all the light seemed to come through green leaves; but at the first step out of doors the sunshine always laid a warm hand on my shoulder, and the clear, high sky seemed to lift quickly as I looked at it. There was no autumnal mist nor any August fog; instead of these, the sky and the hills, with every bush of bay and every fir-top, gained a deeper color and a sharper clearness. There was something shining in the air, and a kind of lustre on the pasture grass – a northern look that, except at this moment of the year, one must go far to seek. The sunshine of a northern summer was coming to its lovely end."

Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs ~ 1896

RBG RIP

Smartphone?

Lila Ash ~ The New Yorker

Goya's Third of May 1808

Fine Art Simpsons

Peaceful Protests

9.11

Never forget.

September Grass

The Summer Concert Series

Can it be any worse than fan-less hockey, baseball, basketball, and tennis? And do they use fake canned cheering and applause?

Jason Adam Katzenstein ~ The New Yorker

Squibnocket Pond Reservation

Everybody wins sometimes.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water

Vineyard Gazette ~ Martina Mastromonaco

Dreaded Portuguese Man of War jellyfish are back in Martha's Vineyard waters. As of Wednesday, 50 jellyfish were spotted in Squibnocket and another 30 at Lucy Vincent beach.

As reported in the Vineyard Gazette:

"The jellyfish, sometimes called the floating terror, belongs to a particularly dangerous class of hydrozoan. Known for its vibrant blue and pink color, the animal has tentacles that can extend up to 30 feet in length and encircle its victims, increasing both the surface of its sting and its general lethality to swimmers, said Martina Mastromonaco, superintendent of Chilmark beaches."

Enquiring minds want to know, is it politically correct to blame Portugal? And men?

Burying Hill Beach – Greens Farms, Connecticut

Burying Hill Beach ~ Werner Liepolt

Sunset Sail in Westport, Connecticut

Storm Clouds Over Martha's Vineyard

We watched an active lightning storm gather over New Bedford, Massachusetts late this afternoon as it quickly made its way across Buzzard's Bay and Vineyard Sound. By the time I got home, I received a Severe Thunderstorm Warning from the National Weather Service, forecasting 60 mph winds, rain, quarter-size hail, and wind damage to trees and power lines. When it reached the north shore of West Tisbury, there was no wind and it left little more than trace rain. That's the way it's been all summer.

Upper Makonikey ~ Martha's Vineyard

Double Scoop

The New Yorker ~ Wayne Thiebaud - Double Scoop

Cumulus Clouds over Martha's Vineyard

Tim Johnson ~ Vineyard Gazette

Mars 2020 Launched

Atlas 5 Mars 2020 Launch ~ NASA

NASA's latest Mars mission, Mars 2020 and its Perseverance Rover and Ingenuity helicopter drone, launched successfully today from Cape Canaveral. They will land in the planet's 28-mile-wide Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021 with the mission to look for microbial life.

Mars 2020 ~ Perseverance & Ingenuity – NASA

Here's some 4K video stitched together recently from thousands of NASA's still images by Britain's ElderFox Documentaries.

We're all in this together?

Steve Breen ~ San Diego Union-Tribune

Opening Day

David Sipress ~ The New Yorker

Comet NEOWISE

A Katonah friend shared this remarkable photograph of Comet NEOWISE taken this week near the Muscoot Reservoir.

Heat Wave

Teresa Burns Parkhurst ~ The New Yorker

Bari Weiss and The New York Times

I no longer subscribe to The New York Times. This wasn't a recent decision.  In fact, I parted company in September 2001, just days after Osama bin Laden's 9/11 attacks.

What compelled the cancellation was a long series of readership experiences where the paper's editors and writers no longer spoke to my worldview and political sensibilities. The truth and the paper's motto "All The News That's Fit To Print" had become farcical. And it wasn't just the liberal tilt, it was the facile dishonesty, Bush-bashing, and in-your-face disdain for conservatism.

Op-ed staff editor and writer Bari Weiss's resignation from the NYT yesterday – especially her letter to NYT publisher A.G. Sulzberger – was a lightning bolt of validation of my own far less consequential decision all those years ago.

Will her letter have any impact on the paper's leadership, editorial strictures, and ever-narrowing woke orthodoxy? Probably not.

Excepts here:

"I joined the paper with gratitude and optimism three years ago. I was hired with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives, and others who would not naturally think of the Times as their home. The reason for this effort was clear: The paper's failure to anticipate the outcome of the 2016 election meant it didn't have a firm grasp of the country it covers."

"But the lessons that ought to have followed the election – lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society – have not been learned. Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially this paper: the truth isn't a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else."

"Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative."

"But I can no longer do the work that you brought me here to do – the work that Adolph Ochs described in that famous 1896 statement: 'to make of the columns of The New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.' "