Poem: I'm glad my mother is dead

I'm glad my mother is dead

she never had to see this happen again

she never got to see how far we've fallen

she'll never have to look at her friends and neighbors

and wonder which of them chose this

I'm glad my mother is dead

I'll never have to worry about her insurance

or how any of this will affect her

I'll never have to worry about her

worrying about me, or my brother, or my sister, or her grandsons 

I'm glad my mother is dead

She's safe in her grave

or gone to her eternal reward

or experiencing the blissful nothingness of non-being

I don't have to worry about her saying "Why won't somebody just shoot the bastard?" in the wrong company

I'm glad my mother is dead

2021: Good riddance

When last we met, I had just said goodbye to another of our cats, and we had gotten word that the church I had grown up with would be permanently closed. COVID infections had plummeted, though the "Delta variant" of the disease seemed to be threatening a late-Summer resurgence. 

Then I went silent.

But not really. I responded to the church closing in the way I usually do: I created a blog. I intended that it would be a place where I could share all of my photographs and memories of the church, and where other parishioners could do the same. But I quickly discovered that I had far fewer photographs than I remembered, and no one else was really interested in sharing theirs. I took my shot, said what I wanted to say, and stopped.

Babusz was the last of my animal friends to die in 2021. (Ray had died in the Spring, on the same day I got my second COVID shot.) We are now down to three older cats born in 2009, and Mama Cat (most likely born in 2017) and her babies who were born in 2019. All are ferals. Few of our ferals have lived much past 12 before cancer killed them. Feral cats select for fecundity, not long life.

None of my close friends or family have died of COVID so far. One person I know did die, in early September. (She is technically the second person I know who has died. I never met Fr. Tom Carten socially, at least that I was aware of - he once was a lurker at a gathering of bloggers - but my sister knew him well, and I was a big fan of his blog.) I met Joyce Dombroski Gebhart through one of the blogger/politician mixers that we used to have many years ago. She was running for public office on what looked like a pure Tea Party platform. She didn't win. We were on opposite ends of the political spectrum, but somehow she became aware of my interest in space and backyard astronomy. She would frequently contact me through Facebook to let me know about interesting events, from planetary alignments to bright passes of the space station. I reciprocated far less often. I have no idea if she was vaccinated, but her politics leads me to believe she was not. She went on a family vacation in the Summer. She and one or more family members contracted COVID. They recovered. She did not.

Earlier in the Summer it had really started to feel like COVID might soon be over. I got together with some friends in late May, for the first time in a year and a half, just as the CDC was announcing the lifting of restrictions for the fully vaccinated. I went to my first poetry reading since February 2020 on June 19, 2021. This was also an opportunity to see a friend I had not seen in well over two years. But everything felt - wrong. Off. The readings ran too long. I began to feel uncomfortable. All I wanted to do was get out of there and go home.

Later I went to a family gathering held outdoors at a cousin's house. At that point the Delta upswing had begun in earnest. But other countries had experienced the Delta variant, and had seen a rise followed by a fall. Sure enough, the Delta spike peaked in September, then began its downward slide. 

I got together with my friends again in early November. Things seemed more uncertain then. What would the next variant bring? Booster shots had already begun, and I was the last of our group to get boosted.

Shortly afterwards the fast-spreading Omicron variant was announced.

On November 19 there was a lunar eclipse, exactly the sort of thing Joyce would have enjoyed.

My immediate family - with the exclusion of my sister, who lives out of state - gathered for Thanksgiving, our first Thanksgiving in two years. Shortly afterwards we met again for my nephew's birthday. The day after his party I met with some friends whom I had worked with from 1999 through 2007.  We are all getting up in age - I am the youngest of the group - and all have pre-existing conditions that make us much more susceptible to the serious effects of COVID. Even though the Omicron variant had already been announced, the restaurant was fairly crowded with few masks in sight. This has been the rule since mask mandates were dropped over the summer: whenever I go out shopping, which isn't that often, I am usually one of a small minority of people wearing a mask. It is hard to look at these unmasked masses and not think of them as poor naive doomed fools.

Some planets lined up in the post-sunset sky in December - Venus, Saturn, Mars, and Jupiter. Venus once again entered a crescent phase. Many people who might not have otherwise seen the crescent of Venus saw it because of the alignment. Once again, something Joyce would have enjoyed.

Crescent of Venus, December 19, 2021

Christmas came, and another family gathering, this time with my sister coming in for only the second time since we were all fully vaccinated. 

My mom and my nephew's friendly rescue pit bull

I decorated our small Christmas tree fairly enthusiastically this year. I am excited about taking it down and boxing everything up, because I am already thinking about decoration variations for next year. 

While COVID may feel like the dominant issue in the world right now, Climate Change is the most significant issue now and will continue to be so for decades - maybe centuries - to come. December tornadoes in the South, firestorms in Colorado driven by 110-mph winds, droughts, floods, and record-breaking temperatures month after month. Here are forsythia and dandelion blossoms in my back yard two days after Christmas:

There is no denying the absolute horror that the resurgence of COVID has presented in the second half of 2021. Where once it looked like COVID had been beaten back into nothingness, it has now soared to unprecedented levels both in Pennsylvania and the U.S. as a whole. Hospitals are once again overcrowded with the unvaccinated sick and dying, to the point that more routine issues like dealing with broken bones, cancer, heart attacks, and other non-COVID issues are being put on the back burner. Even the vaccinated are getting infected with the Omicron variant. The difference is that many of the vaccinated who get infected are not dying or even requiring hospitalization, though their long-tern prognosis is unknown. But in the meantime, Republicans continue to push rejection of any vaccine in favor of post-infection treatments.

Which brings us to here. The end of one year, and the beginning of another. Over 800,000 Americans have died of COVID since the start of the pandemic. Russian forces are massed on the Ukrainian border, ready to invade and trigger a confrontation with the U.S. and NATO. Kim Jon-Un is strangely silent. I continue to work from home, though how much longer that will continue is unknown. None of my cats are sick or dying. None of my family or friends are sick with COVID.

Betty White died on the last day of 2021, just two weeks short of her 100th birthday.

Good riddance, 2021.

A long time between readings

Eighteen months.

The last time I went out to an event of any sort was Saturday, February 22, 2020. That was the final edition of the Writers' Showcase, held at the Olde Brick Theatre (a.k.a. the Diva Theater) in Scranton, PA. It was an unusual event, to say the least: the founder and co-host of the event was not there; neither, apparently, were the owners/operators of the venue, since the doors were locked and the lights were out. But the other host was there, as were the readers, and a small audience. So we held the event anyway, in the back parking lot of the theater, lit by a sodium vapor light and the stars glowing in a clear, crisp Winter sky, including a recently-dimmed Betelgeuse. (Betelgeuse, an irregularly variable star, had plunged to a dimness never before observed, leading some to speculate that it was about to undergo the supernova explosion waiting at the end of its life. We didn't realize it at the time, but Betelgeuse was already brightening that night; analysis suggests that the dimming was caused by the alignment of an orbiting dust cloud.) The night was cold, the crowd was small, and the threat of the incursion of the COVID-19 virus, which at that point had been spreading rapidly through New York City and Philadelphia and major port cities on the West coast, hung over us - had anyone been to New York or Philadelphia lately? But it was a successful and very enjoyable event.

Eighteen months. One election, one insurrection, over 600,000 people in the U.S. dead of COVID-19 later.

The Blackwatch Cafe was supposed to open before the pandemic hit, but COVID-19 has had a way of messing up everybody's plans. Instead it opened in late April 2021. It is on the grounds of Nay Aug Park in Scranton, in a beautiful stone structure that looks like it might once have served as a guard house of some sort - but was in fact originally the women's lavatory. The poetry reading was conceived just a few weeks before it was held there, after a chance visit to the new coffee shop by poets Michael Czarnecki and Tamar Samuel-Siegel.

Michael and Tamar were the featured poets, and nine additional poets read as well. The event was held on June 19, 2021 - Juneteenth, the first officially recognized Juneteenth in the United States. But it also happened to be the last day of Spring. I read "Springtime by the Numbers," which I had originally written (and read) on the last day of Spring in 2013.

 

Michael Czarnecki

Tamar Samuel-Siegel

Event flyer

In contrast to the February 22, 2020 event - cold, possibly below freezing, though no one seemed particularly uncomfortable during the hour-and-change that we all stood outside under the stars - the weather for the June 19, 2021 event was absolutely beautiful, with lots of sunshine and cool breezes, some possibly brought on by the helicopter which flew over us several times and landed in the park about a hundred yards away. After the event was over but while a few stragglers were still hanging out at the now-closed coffeeshop, a gentle rain began to fall.

It was the first reading at the Blackwatch Cafe, but perhaps just the first of many more to come. Gradually, other venues will reopen and re-establish their regular readings and open mics. 

The last Writers' Showcase in the parking lot of the
Olde Brick Theatre, Scranton, February 22, 2020

**************

New cases of COVID-19 in the United States continue to fall. They have actually fallen to such a level that a linear y-axis is becoming less and less useful. Switching to a logarithmic scale for the y-axis makes the current downward trend more visible. Cases are now at a level not seen since the fourth week of March 2020.

The Writers' Showcase event mentioned above took place on February 22, 2020 - a date that doesn't even show up on the graphs here, which I have chosen to start on March 1, 2020. At that point the disease was spreading rapidly, but the mass dying hadn't started yet. Things would get very bad very quickly, and then get worse, and worse, and worse. 

In the Year of Brood X, 2021

 

Cicada on my cherry tree, June 19, 2021

I have been blogging for seventeen years. My first "official" blog post was May 14, 2004 - there had been another post a few days earlier that just said "Coming soon - Another Monkey with a blog!", but I deleted that after I officially started my blog. 2004 was a Brood X year, another year in which the Brood X cicadas emerge during the final stages of their seventeen-year cycle, and they were the subject of my twenty-fifth blog post on June 9, 2004. The cicada eggs that were laid that year grew up to be the cicadas of this year.

(I was in college during the previous Brood X cycle in 1987, and spent that summer at the TV faceplate factory in Pittston where my father worked. I remember cicadas thudding off the windshield of our car as we made the commute to work. I was two years old during the Brood X emergence before that one, and don't have any memories of it.)

I have been hearing cicadas for the past few weeks around Nanticoke, but had only seen a single one (flying near the top of one of my cherry trees) up until yesterday. The cicadas seem to be concentrated in the area alongside Route 29 on the east side of town, although there are also some along Middle Road to the south and possibly some along the river flats to the north. In large numbers they emit a sound that sounds exactly like one of the dozen or so sound effects that were used for phasers in the original TV series of Star Trek. Individually they sound like an electric drill being used in short bursts, to the point that many people assume that this is what they are hearing: some rude and thoughtless neighbor using power tools at all hours of the day and night, over and over.

Yesterday I went for a ride to the Hanover Mall to get some specialized pet food for our fifteen year old cat Babusz, who recently had an incident of odd behavior - she suddenly abandoned her usual hangout spots and went into hiding, choosing to isolate herself in odd areas around the house and refusing to accompany my mom to the bathroom, as was her custom. She did this for about two weeks, and then gradually began to emerge again, spending some of the day in her old usual spot on a rocker near where I work, racing my mom to the bathroom some (but not all) of the time. But since she emerged she has been losing weight. We'll get her to the vet soon, but having lost four cats in the last twelve months I fear the worst. At my sister's recommendation we are trying a new food/treat, Churu by Inaba. She has gradually taken to it. Our grocery store doesn't carry it, by Village Pet Supplies in the Hanover Mall does.

Babusz, July 12, 2020

The Hanover Mall is just the other side of Route 29. When I got there, I stepped out of the car and into the cicada chorus, providing a science fiction-y background to the mundane scenes of people getting out of their cars or loading purchases into their cars. I saw another cicada in the air as I parked the car.

Reports are that cicadas are absent from many areas around Northeastern Pennsylvania where they had been seen seventeen years ago. Development has disrupted and destroyed many of the underground cicada sites, eliminating whole breeding populations. NEPA is at the edge of the Brood X emergence territory, so things can be a bit more iffy here as to whether cicadas will actually show up anywhere. 

Today I went to a poetry reading, the first event I have gone to since February 22, 2020. I stepped out of the house with my Chromebook in its makeshift carrying case and my old-and-getting-older Nikon Coolpix P520. On my way to the car I heard the familiar buzz-flap of cicada wings, and watched a cicada alight on the cherry tree next to me. (My cherry trees produced their first decent crop of fruit in several years, though the cherries just ripened earlier this week and the birds have already eaten everything I didn't pick.) I carefully dropped the Chromebook, broke out the camera, and coaxed out two decent photos: 

I don't know how much longer the cicadas will be around, singing their song. When they are gone, we will not see Brood X again until 2038. If I live that long, I will be seventy years old. Will I still be blogging then?

The Pandemic: Year One

Yellow crocus at cemetery, March 13, 2021

One year. One lost year.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been going on for longer than that. The dying started in late 2019. The early epicenter was Wuhan, China. By the time the world knew what was happening, it was too late to stop it from spreading across the world, and probably had been for some time.

COVID-19 is unusual. Highly contagious, yes, as any good virus should be. Kills quite a few of the people who get it and develop symptoms - not ideal for a virus, but acceptable as long as infected individuals do their job of spreading the virus before they die. Asymptomatic spread is a hallmark of COVID-19, and that's unusual. 

In the past, asymptomatic carriers of disease (like "Typhoid Mary") were unusual enough to make their way into the history books and national lore. Now the standard operating procedure for COVID-19 is: an individual gets infected by breathing in virus particles that an infected person has breathed out, the virus infects them, they spend about two weeks being contagious without showing any symptoms, and then they develop symptoms while continuing to be contagious. Some of the people who develop symptoms die. Some recover completely. Some recover and suffer lifetime consequences. 

And the symptoms! The consequences! Roll the dice, see what you get: lungs that look like frosted glass on an X-ray, "COVID toes," intense generalized pain, chronic cough,  difficulty breathing, loss of smell and taste, hair loss, and lots more. Maybe you'll get some. Maybe you'll get only a few. Maybe you'll die in just a few days. Maybe you'll hang in for weeks, months even, and then you'll recover. Or die.

In the first year, over 2.6 million people have died of COVID-19 worldwide, more than 530,000 in the United States alone.* The United States had an increase in deaths of 15%. in 2020 compared to previous years. In some countries, the rate of "excess deaths" for 2020, the number of deaths in excess of what would be expected based on past data, exceeds 50%.

And there are people who will dispute every one of these things. They will tell you that COVID is "just the flu." They will tell you that masks don't work. That no one has actually died of COVID. That it's the vaccines that are actually killing people.

Oh, we have vaccines now. Two, by Pfizer and Moderna, were developed during the Trump administration, though Pfizer was developed independently of the Federal government. The Johnson & Johnson single-shot vaccine was approved just a few weeks ago, and teachers began receiving it this week. There are other vaccines in use throughout the world. Mass vaccination programs are taking place worldwide.

We also have a plan now. A plan passed without a single Republican vote. During the Trump occupation, Trump pitted states against each other in competition for critical resources. Chaos was the order of the day. That day is over.

Joe Biden pledged to get 100 million shots into arms in his first 100 days as President. He got us there in his first 50.

We're not done yet. We can still snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. The "new cases" graph may** reflect certain societal movements: the final campaign rally push in September through early November 2020, Thanksgiving gatherings in late November, Christmas in late December. It's undeniable that since mid-January 2021, new cases have dropped dramatically, though the rate of decline has leveled out since mid-February. The CDC is advising a cautious approach, maintaining the rules of masking and social distancing, avoiding crowds and indoor events. Texas and Missisippi have essentially ended all COVID-related restrictions - and the Texas Attorney General is threatening legal action against cities like Austin that have chosen to adhere to CDC guidelines. St. Patrick's Day weekend is upon us. Spring is coming, and Summer is not far behind. The same people who demanded "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! REOPEN NOW!" a year ago are making that same demand again, after nearly one on every 600 Americans has died of COVID-19. New variations of COVID-19 have emerged. Small but significant portions of the population are rejecting vaccination, while larger numbers of people are trying to get vaccinated and cannot, either because they do not yet qualify in their state or they qualify but there are not enough vaccines available for everyone.*** 

Is there light at the end of the tunnel? Or will things once again get worse before they get better? Time will tell.

*Last Spring, a friend who was involved in COVID response predicted 500,000 U.S. deaths by the end of 2020. His prediction was off by about seven weeks. My post-election prediction of 400,000 U.S deaths by Inauguration Day was almost exactly correct.

**Europe shows similar increases in the final months of 2020, without Presidential elections or Thanksgiving gatherings, so who the hell knows.

***My mom received her second Moderna shot on March 4, 2021. I received mine on March 6. My brother's entire family has already received both shots, some of Pfizer, some of Moderna. A librarian at a local school district, who also teaches classes and qualifies as an educator, received her Johnson & Johnson shot on Friday, while a librarian at the local library does not yet qualify. My sister, who lives in another state and has multiple health conditions, does not yest qualify for a shot, and other friends who live in the same state as me and who qualify are unable to sign up because of availability.

2021: Our story so far

Welp.

"Trump still has nineteen days in office, and can still do some damage." I wrote those words sixteen days ago. They seem so quaint and naive now.

Donald Trump has simply refused to accept that he lost the election. Cannot believe it, so it must not be true, or he can make it be not true. Two weeks ago he tried to convince the Lieutenant Governor of Georgia - a Republican - to "find" for him enough votes to win the state, two months after the election. The Lieutenant Governor refused. Trump threatened him, stating that by accepting the results of the election, he was acting illegally. The Lieutenant Governor promptly released a recording of the call.

Trump had been rallying his troops on Facebook, on Twitter, summoning them to one big gathering in Washington, D.C. on January 6th, the day that the Electoral Votes would be officially counted and certified by Vice President Mike Pence. Immediately the word got around: prepare for civil war. This is it, this is what they'd been waiting for. The votes from swing states that had gone for Biden would be challenged. Mike Pence would overturn the results of the election. Trump would be certified as President. Or else.

They came. They came in great numbers, from all around the country. Local political gadfly and frequent candidate for public office Frank Scavo ran a bus trip down from Pittston with over 200 participants. The people who showed up in Washington, D.C. weren't bound by the rules that had applied to other gatherings that had taken place there. Many of them carried weapons, and flags, and signs. Many wore combat armor, helmets and bulletproof vests. Many of them looked ready for war.

Trump addressed his troops. He expressed hope that Mike Pence would do his job and overturn the election. He then directed his troops to march down from their gathering spot on the National Mall to the Capitol itself. He would be marching with them - in spirit, anyway.

The counting began, barely. The votes were announced from Alabama. From Alaska. From Arizona - and there came the first objection. Minutes after the counting began it was stopped for two hours so the House and Senate could separately debate whether to accept the votes from Arizona.

That, apparently, was the signal.

The gathered crowd surged on the Capitol. They knocked down the barriers keeping them away - in some cases, the barriers were moved aside for them by Capitol Police. They stormed the Capitol steps, off-limits to visitors since September 11, 2001. They scaled walls. They rushed the doors and battered them in. They smashed windows and poured into the Capitol. Some looked like excited tourists caught up in the moment. Others looked like soldiers on a mission to infiltrate enemy headquarters and assassinate the general staff.

Frank Scavo posted excitedly:

The next day, Frank Scavo would tell his story to all the local newspapers and TV stations: he was there, but not so close to the action as to see what exactly was going on - despite his photo from the off-limits steps above. He had heard about the incursion into the Capitol, but such a thing surely must be the work of ANTIFA disguised as Trump supporters - no true patriot would defile the Capitol in the way that these people had! A day later, photos emerged of Scavo inside the Capitol as part of a mob. Over the next few days, the news stations would publish the photographic evidence. Scavo hasn't had much to say about the incident since then, not that anyone would believe anything he had to say anyway.

Each day, more and more photos and videos of the Capitol Insurrection have emerged, many shared by members of the mob itself in generous acts of self-incrimination. Parents have identified and reported their children, and children have identified and reported their parents. One was identified by an old high school classmate. The FBI have begun making arrests. Many of the members of the insurrection had fairly obvious intent, equipped with police-issue zip-cuffs. In the videos you see them going from room to room, looking for members of Congress, Nancy Pelosi in particular (though they had also chanted "Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence!", clearly upset at his failure to overturn the results of the election.) 

While some members of the Capitol Police - the only force in position to defend the Capitol that day - welcomed the insurrectionists as friends and comrades, others did their jobs. One played Pied Piper, carefully leading a mob away from unsecured doors that would have allowed them access directly to the Senate. Others were severely beaten. One was killed, beaten to death with a fire extinguisher. Four members of the mob died - one, an Air Force veteran who smashed her way through a door and was shot by the police defending a secure position; another, a woman carrying a Gadsden "DON'T TREAD ON ME" flag, was trampled to death by the mob; two others died of heart attacks, including another local arranger of buses (and purveyor of the "Trumparoo," an adorable Trump/kangaroo hybrid.) Another member of the Capitol Police died by suicide a few days after the event.

Members of Congress and their staffers and family members engaged in an active shooter response - Nancy Pelosi ruefully noted that many of her staffers had learned how to respond in school. QAnon cult member Representative Lauren Boebert helpfully tweeted out the positions and movements of members of Congress, including Nancy Pelosi. 

Hours passed before Trump allowed the National Guard to go in. Reportedly he was watching everything unfold on TV, and enjoying it tremendously. Joseph Biden wasted no time declaring the insurrectionists "domestic terrorists."

Congress reconvened at 8:00 PM. There were several more delays, including one over the validity of the votes from Pennsylvania. But eventually all objections were overruled. Despite Frank Scavo's excited assertion, the Electoral Vote was certified, and Joseph R. Biden was officially declared the winner.

Within days Donald Trump, in recognition of his incitement of the gathered mob to storm the Capitol in an act of insurrection, became the first president in U.S. history to be impeached twice. He has been permanently banned from Twitter and Facebook, perhaps a greater personal blow.

A social media site, Parler, which was extremely popular with right-wing extremists and conspiracy theorists, was shut down after they lost both their hosting and the right to continue to use the "free trial" versions of software they used to run much of their site. Some enterprising soul managed to archive all Parler content while it was still available - which is where much of the video and photographic evidence from the insurrection was housed.

December 7, 1941. September 11, 2001. January 6, 2021.

At noon on January 20, 2021, Donald Trump will be handing President Joseph R. Biden a country in flames. A collapsed economy. Over 400,000 dead of COVID-19. Trump himself won't be there; having broken the longstanding tradition of peaceful transitions of power, he intends to slink off early. He wants to be honored with a military sendoff, complete with a band and a twenty-one gun salute.

And he still has two and a half days to go.

We'll see what happens between now and then.