. . . . Last year at this time we weren’t vaccinated, but this New Year, though many of of us are both vaccinated and boosted, massive numbers continue to refuse to do either, or mask, or distance. The pooba$, political and corporate, finance and real estate, insist on leaving things here, essentially, wide open.
Meanwhile school, from pre-K to unis have had to close to massive Covid. Yet both old mayor and the new in-the-pocket of Big Finance and Real Estate mayor, sworn in last night at the Times Square Ball Drop, insist all the public schools re-open on January 3rd. This despite so many teachers and staff positive and sick and unable to attend to students and classrooms.
Subway lines, restaurants, Broadway, etc. have stopped, due to so many sick, so staff shortages. Airlines have canceled thousand and thousands of flights. Fire fighters, police, ambulance drivers and EMS personnel are in short supply, as so many are positive / sick. (Irony, fire fighters and cops are by-and-large refusniks of both vaccines and mask.) Doctors, dentists, hospitals are already broken in other parts of the country. The stupid streatery sheds are still there in NYC, becoming ever more more permanent structures w/o ventilation or shielding, so restaurants, like schools, hotels and health care, are so overwhelmed, stretched beyond limits that even more people quit.
Supermarkets are looking raggedy due to staffing problems, and, evidently, scraping bottom of the barrel hiring, have cashiers who laugh in your face about wearing a mask.. We're inundated with tourists from everywhere, while at the same time they and others seem to have decided across the board that Omicron's no big deal so what the hell.
We are hoping somehow to get through this month of peaking infections and remaining uninfected. But this seems less likely every day, as already back before Christmas 1 in 150 people in NYC were positive or sick. They Say we may peak with Omicron by the middle of this month. I dunno -- we also have many cases of Delta Covid, which are still increasing too.
We're fairly stocked on groceries and other essentials, for getting through about a month, and we, double masked, vaxed and boosted, feel we maybe can chance the dash into Trader Joe's or wherever for milk and apples and tea. I'm more concerned about whether places like this will be able to stay open and stocked.
We are in some very interesting historical times all right, which I am observing and experiencing up close, in person.
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Biden can’t do anything. The rethuglican shoggoth cultists, the rethuglican plants in the Dems, and the Dem Party Establishment won’t allow it. Nancy Pelosi personally made enormous amounts doing massive buys and trades of the Big Stocks at the end of this year. “Nothing wrong with senators and reps making Big Stock money while in the House and Senate,” she declares.
No state official has done more for the rethuglican covid death cult than the governor of Texas, with the exceptions of Florida's and South Dakota's. Yesterday he was demanding federal aid and assistance of supplies and medical personnel to relieve Texas, because its health system, such as it is, has become utterly overwhelmed. Yet, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) breezily engaged a question about secession at a recent conservative event at Texas A&M University, saying that he was “not there yet” but that if Democrats “fundamentally destroy the country,” then, “I think we take NASA, take the military, take the oil.”
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Last night about 10 PM or so, el V and I met B at our little local park to celebrate B's birthday. I gave him a a bottle of his favorite Spanish wine, and el V gave him a box of petites fours from our French Bakery, in lieu of birthday cake. Since both el V and B are on antibiotics due to dentistry, I was the only one who was able to make a toast with alcohol, a martini that el V had made and brought with him as a surprise. We had a most pleasant time out there in the 54°. El V and I hadn't had any f2f interaction with anyone except with each other, other than briefly and to the point, let's get out of here as fast as possible, with dentist, doctor, librarian, retail, etc. B's behavior is the same. Again we wondered how the three of us would have made this far through pandemic without each other, and how lucky we live so closely together. made sure other friends knew it was B's birthday, so they could call or email him.
It seemed generally NYC wasn't partying hard last night (though what could I really tell from a park bench?). It was really quiet down here. Though all the restaurants were open, they generally looked to be about only half full, if that much. NYers are wearing masks, but the hordes of tourists here, are not. We're number one in the USA YAY for Covid cases now, and if not number one in the world, number two or three. We have more Covid today than we did in April 2020.
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Ironically, when the pandemic hit in March 2020, and NYC shut down, I’d just borrowed from the NYP Sharon Kay Penman’s final novel, The Land Beyond the Sea, published January, 2020. Penman died the same month. The libraries closed 3 days after I took it home, so I wasn’t able to return it until the end of August 2020. Here, at the beginning of this unmerry New Year, a third year of Covid, as we shut down again, if only personally, not officially mandated, which we should be, I am beginning a re-read her final Plantagenet novel, A King’s Ransom (2014). This wasn’t planned. I began 2022 too, with the library. This past Thursday I brought home an armful of light reading -- mysteries, all -- from my Holds list at my local library, which should 'hold' me for a couple of weeks. Not to mention all the other books I have. There's some good tv, in the offing, not least the third season of Discovery of Witches, and tomorrow night, a David Tennant Around the World In 80 Days.
El V's continuing to trade and is now doing serious editing-engineering on the audio for Tierra Sagrada, which has come out of the video documentation of our last, perhaps, final, trip to Cuba, in which we attended 14 sacred events in 8 days. He's gotten some AI apps that allow him to do astonishing things, such as one of the lead vocalist's voice was essentially inaudible via the boom mic. This AI can go through all the channels and pull out a single strand, which in this case is her voice, isolate it and el V can put it wherever he wants in the mix, at which ever volume he wants it! "AI came along just in time to save these tracks!" I heard him say on the phone the other day. He wants to have everything as smoothly produced and engineered as possible before he turns it over to the far more skilled, experienced and technically equipped pros. This is an if, but at the moment it seems that the [redacted] network wants to look at Tierra Sagrada with the view they might broadcast it. That would be most pleasing.
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This is how 2022 begins. I have no optimism that things will be better this year. The anti-vaxers and the shoggoth death cults will never recover from their chosen insanity.
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