Too Old To Fly

June 1, 2020 The 73rd Year Day 74 Fickle! The front page is a fickle place. That is such a 20th century reference. More accurately the home page is a fickle place. Twenty-four-hour broadcast news is equally mercurial. History is fickle too but we will get to that later. The home page is where news organizations emblazon its most important stories online. For three months the Covid-19 pandemic has been breathless, breaking news on all media platforms all day long. Until now! The coronavirus, which in less than three months has infected more than 6.2 million and killed about 370,000 across the globe, has been demoted to a position “below the fold,” journalist-speak for stories on the lower half of a folded newspaper. The online equivalent might be “well down the home page scroll.” America has been burning for the last six days. Protests, most peaceful but some violent, have spread to more than 140 cities. Police cars and buildings have been torched. People have been sho...

May 30, 2020 The 73rd Year Day 72 The far right is itching for a fight. Pandemic-weary Americans are itching for a fight. African Americans and other oppressed minorities are itching for a fight.  President Donald Trump is begging for a fight! The fight has begun. It will end in November with an old-fashioned right-wing coup d'etat. Win or lose the election Donald Trump will be our president in 2021. Here is how it will happen. Trump is behind former Vice President Joe Biden in the national polls and in several states that are key to his reelection. Any other candidate would take this information, soften his or her tone and try to broaden their base. Not Donald Trump. He’s the fireman who runs at a blazing building  armed with only a jerry can and pours gas on the flames. When peaceful protests of the senseless killing of an African American man in Minneapolis turned ugly this week, the president did nothing to calm the nation. Instead he tweeted: “When the l...

May 28, 2020 The 73rd Year Day 70 The Covid-19 virus is simple, plebeian, utilitarian and incremental. It is not profound. It is not discretionary or selective. It does not just infect and kill Democrats or Republicans. It is not on the red team or the blue team. It is not progressive or liberal or conservative or libertarian.  It does not just target capitalists or socialists or fascists or communists. It does not infect only Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Confucians, Zoroastrians or even atheists! It is not a Chinese disease or an American disease or a Brazilian disease. The  Covid-19 virus is not political. At all! The virus has a simple mission; it wants to infect everyone and kill as many people across the globe as it can. It will eventually get us all if we allow it.  It is doing a good job so far. It has infected about 5.8 million people worldwide and killed more than 358,000, according to this morning’s worldometer tally. More than 100,000...

May 26, 2020 The 73rd Year Day 68 Farming is not for everyone, especially if you plan to make your living that way. We have been farming since 1983. My then teenage nephew who had been milking cows in Massachusetts since he was 12 heard we were leaving DC to return to Vermont and farm.  He offered sage advice well beyond his years: “Rob, if you want to be a successful farmer, you have to keep one foot in the real world.”  In other words make sure you have a real job.  Of course I did work off the farm in Vermont, for about 35 years until I retired in 2015. From the outset the farm was more than a hobby but less than a full-time job.  We milked cows by hand and once I got viciously kicked in the chest while doing so. I was knocked on my butt 30 years ago by a feisty ram named Bernie, after Vermont’s most famous politician. The ram earned the name because he was always angry and had a shaggy mane like Bernie Sanders who at the time was an unsuccessful, fr...

May 24, 2020 The 73rd Year Day 66 Saturday is trash day! Every week the process is the same: load the trash and recyclables into my aging Chevy pickup and drive five miles to the transfer station. There is no curbside pickup here in the boonies and the transfer station is a young guy parked at the local car wash with a high-sided pickup and a trailer. He told me once: “I do this Saturday morning so I can drink beer Saturday night.” Trash goes in the pickup, recyclables in the trailer.  Both are filled to bursting in about three hours and are driven off to a regional waste center another eight miles away. The separated waste is stored and eventually loaded onto separate, humongous tractor trailer containers. The trash is eventually taken to a large landfill about 60 miles away. The recyclables are hauled to processors for domestic use or to ports to be shipped to markets overseas. That is how it is supposed to work. These days more often than not both trucks head north t...

May 22, 2020 The 73rd Year Day 64 Welcome to life on the Covid 19 plateau. Plan on living there for the foreseeable future. The Covid-19 plateau is not the breathtaking high chaparral found in the deserts of Arizona and Southern California. It is not the metaphoric plateau that keeps our mood swings in check. Nor is it the place where most interpersonal relationships reside after a few euphoric, passion-filled years. The Covid-19 plateau is annoying, inconvenient and deadly. It was supposed to be short-lived. The experts told us so. Coronavirus cases and deaths were supposed to climb to a peak, stall for a bit and then drop steadily. There were many models that showed this. In fact, there were models that showed this for every state and the District of Columbia. The experts lied to the American public early on when they told us masks were not necessary. They were trying to prevent binge buying so medical masks could be preserved for front-line health care workers and first re...

May 20, 2020 The 73rd Year Day 62 Homo sapiens crave intimacy.  Not just sexual intimacy but also a physical and emotional closeness with friends, family and even co-workers. It is not surprising then that social distancing is not instinctive. It is not baked into our psyche.  It does not live in our DNA. It is not even desirable. This begins at birth right after the obstetrician or midwife smacks a baby on the butt, generates a welcome-wail and hands her off to bond with mom. Those first hours are all about developing the intimacy we will crave our entire lives. Babies are swaddled and cuddled by cooing grownups. Small children get hugs and head pats every time an adult enter their personal space. Then they get a second hug and pat when the adult leaves their personal space. Teenagers rebel against everything including unsolicited intimacy. That is why they flee when a red-faced, ancient auntie attempts a boozy embrace before Sunday dinner. Adults, because they ...