week 28 and week 29

 
Since I've been avoiding the news and social media for the most part I have damn little to report.

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We now know that the nomination party for Trump's Supreme Court pick was the genesis of this wave of infections throughout Trump's inner circle and if it was just them I'd say they deserve it but the staffers and Secret Service who have also been infected, don't. Hope Hicks was just the first to test positive and - surprise! - Trump lied about when he knew he was positive. He knew for sure on Thursday before he went to that fundraiser and he probably suspected on Wednesday and may even have been feeling the first symptoms on Tuesday which is why he arrived late for the debate and avoided taking a test.

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More fallout from that party...Chris Christie, Sen. Ron Johnson, Trump's personal assistant Nicolas Luna, and now press secretary Kayleigh McEnany have tested positive.

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So Trump was moved to Walter Reed against his wishes because it would make him look weak but the doctors insisted but he made them wait til after the stock market closed on Friday. The doctors there at Walter Reed are pumping him full of everything they can think of, experimental therapies and steroids, and you know it has to be affecting his mental capacity because that's what that stuff does but because he is loathe to give up power to Pence who he despises and also because he does not want to appear weak (like those loser and sucker dead and wounded military personnel), he is ordering his doctors and the White House staff to lie about how ill he really is and is setting up fake photo ops to show he is doing great and working, if signing a blank piece of paper can be called working, and forcing Secret Service agents to sit with him in the bullet proof hermetically sealed car so he can be driven around the block to wave at those pathetic losers doing vigil outside the hospital. So now the agents in the car and maybe even the photographer from the photo ops will have to quarantine for 14 days. And maybe even get sick all because Trump doesn't give a shit about anyone but himself.

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I have only two other items I've bookmarked for this bi-monthly report because for one thing I'm really weary of the whole thing and unless things get really bad as winter moves in this may be my last dedicated post and also because other news items have blown covid related news out of the water, just not seeing much come across my various news feeds.

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The NYT reports that the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly claims an experimental drug lowers levels of the virus and prevents hospitalization. The drug is a monoclonal antibody manufactured from an antibody from a recovered patient and is still undergoing trials and has not yet been vetted by independent scientists and the success of the drug is still anecdotal. Scientists hope that this treatment will be very successful but the monoclonal antibodies are difficult and expensive to manufacture. Of course Trump is getting treated with this experimental drug as well as the standard treatment (anti-viral) remdesivir and (steroid) dexamethasone, the guy who is responsible for the spread of the virus in this country and who has constantly criticized and undermined the health professional protocols to the tune of 210,000 deaths and counting here while everyone else suffers and dies. 

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The Hill reports that the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency conducted a survey of 965 recovered covid-19 patients and found that more than 90% had lingering side effects from the virus, the most common of which was fatigue followed by difficulty in concentrating. During the congressional hearing last week, Dr. Fauci also warned of lingering effects weeks and even months after recovery including inflammation of the heart.

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And that's all I've got other than that it is still out there flaring up here and there with associated responses...opening/closing schools, opening/closing bars and restaurants, people still working from home, Americans still out of work and falling on hard times because the Senate won't take up the relief bills passed in the house, etc. I suppose if I dug around I could come up with more but as I mentioned before, today I'm weary of the whole thing.

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Current US statistics as of today 10/5/20, 20:37 GMT: cases – 7,668,358; deaths – 214,889. My state, (red, so fuck you Trump) Texas, is, still today, #2 after California for the total number of coronavirus cases then Florida, then New York so of the top 4 states with the most infections, two are blue states for a total of 1,273,194 and two are red states for a total of 1,412,553. Let me repeat that, of the top four states, the red states have the most infections. So fuck you Trump and your lying bullshit about how if we didn't count the blue states we'd have so few cases, almost none.

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My (red) county has now jumped up to 1,386 cases and 53 deaths (only 3 more deaths in the last two weeks).

what's been going around, came around

 
Well, the big news is that Hope Hicks tested negative last Wednesday morning, got on a plane with Trump and his closest peeps and developed symptoms during the day and a second test came back positive. Trump knew this and went to a fundraiser in NJ on Thursday anyway, and people have commented that he didn't look well at the event, and Thursday night he and Melania tested positive. Word is those big dollar donors (tickets for the event were up to $250,000) are freaking out that Trump knowingly exposed them. I wonder if they'll still support him with cash.

Apparently the event at the Rose Garden to announce Trump's Supreme Court pick, is the genesis of all these infections as a number of people who attended are also infected...RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, Kellyanne Conway, Senator Thom Tillis, Senator Mike Lee, the president of Notre Dame John Jenkins and at least three journalists. Friday night Trump's campaign manager Bill Stephien announced he too was infected.

Now we have learned that eleven staffers at the Cleveland debate are also infected and who knows how many of the Secret Service. And of course Trump's whole family refused to wear masks at that joke of a debate Tuesday even when asked pointedly to do so and in fact purposely arrived late so that they would not have time to be tested as was required (and to which they agreed), letting them in on the 'honor' system (and if that isn't the biggest joke since when have any of them acted with honor about anything) assuming that if they were infected or been exposed that they would say so while Trump, who very possibly already knew he was infected, yelled and spewed spit and molecules at Biden, frustrated because he couldn't get closer. It would not surprise me in the least to learn that he was trying to infect Biden. What a bunch of arrogant pricks. And now, we're supposed to show compassion for Trump getting sick.

So supposedly Trump and Melania are undergoing quarantine and there is so much speculation about whether or not Trump really has it since everything out of his White House is a lie and that perhaps it's a ploy to get out of the next debates but it also means no more rallies in the interim so that's probably not the case though I have read that his rallies this time around are not as well attended and do not have the energy and spark they did in 2016. Also he was scheduled to do two rallies in Michigan this past week but the state is undergoing a surge and at least one of them was canceled beforehand.

The other speculation has been that they are lying about Trump being infected centering on the idea that it's a trick so that Trump can emerge from covid having no symptoms and healthy therefore underscoring his position that the virus is nothing to be concerned about. Another opinion tweeted was that because there is no real news coming out of the White House about Trump's infection is that he's sicker than they want people to know. However, Friday evening the doctors at the White House decided to transfer Trump to Walter Reed Hospital 'out of an abundance of caution' and it's been reported that they have given him an experimental cocktail that hasn't finished going through trials and the success of which is only anecdotal. But the fact is that Trump and his minions are liars and there is no way of knowing what the truth really is.

We do know this though, Trump's White House has not been forthcoming with information. The Biden campaign and I assume the Bidens learned of Hope Hicks' (who attended the debate) infection on the news the next morning and the White House didn't bother to alert Nancy Pelosi of Trump's imminent transfer to Walter Reed. As third in line for succession if something happened to Trump and Pence, you'd think that she would be informed.

The Bidens and Kamala and her husband and Nancy have all tested negative for which we can be grateful and I hope they continue to test negative but quite frankly, I am not sorry Trump and Melania and the rest of Trump's supporters have contracted covid. Everyone of them refused to believe and follow the advice of the medical professionals, spreading misinformation, refusing to wear masks and social distance and Trump is responsible for the deaths of 210,000 Americans. I do feel sorry for the White House staffers who have been exposed by Trump's order 'preference' of no masks in the White House.

Biden, of course, has taken the high road, has only wished Trump and Melania well and a speedy recovery and has pulled all his negative ads against Trump. Of course he did, because that's who Joe is. But Trump's campaign has not reciprocated and in fact are spreading more lies about Biden's response to the news because, well, that's who Trump is.

cheating at drawing

I'm a bit of a lazy artist. I've done plenty of drawing from looking at the object I was drawing and I've done plenty of tracing and copying in my art work for the etched glass once I had accumulated a large library of flowers and such. The small scale compositions were always done freehand but when it came to the full size drawings and the detail I would shuffle through my library of flowers and birds and other things that I used a lot and would transfer the appropriate thing into the full size drawing. When I was starting out I relied on the kid's section of the library, various design and coloring books from the art supply store, and pictures from magazines. Later I would take pictures of what I wanted, print them out, slip it into a clear plastic sleeve and convert the photo to a line drawing using a fine tipped sharpie and then print out the line drawing. I have four binders of line drawings of various flowers and leaves and birds and other critters that I've accumulated over the years. I use this technique in my wax model making too. All the botanica erotica pieces started out with a line drawing from a photograph and then I converted that into a three dimensional sculpture.

The first colored pencil drawings I did in 2018 when I was trying to jumpstart my motivation and do a drawing a day I drew the old fashioned way directly into the sketchbook. Of the four I've done so far during the pandemic when I had time and the desire to do a drawing, I only drew the first, the amaryllis bud, the other three I traced and transferred from photographs like this:

print the photograph

slip it in a plastic sleeve and make a line drawing

print the image on the plastic sleeve

flip it over and use the side of a pencil to scribble graphite behind the drawing

position the drawing, graphite side down, and then trace, transferring the drawing onto the page in the sketchbook and start coloring it in.

Being lazy is easy but now and then I draw for real just to make sure I can still do it. The new drawing from another one of Linda Sue's photographs, 

I drew from scratch and it came out pretty damn good.

I always amaze myself. Once I was happy with the drawing I transferred it to the sketchbook and have just started to color it in, the first basic layer that I will build up on. So that's what I've been working on.

Not today though. I didn't roll out of bed til 8:30 this morning and worked out in the yard after breakfast pruning an althea, getting out the gone by zinnias and some weeds, til about 12:30 and then did a grocery shop and washed the piled up dishes and generally cleaned up the kitchen, worked on this post. Now it's time to feed the dog though I could take a little nap right about now even though I won't.

At the grocery store, we can only bring our own bags if we sack our groceries ourselves but I read elsewhere that people were having them just put the groceries back in the cart unbagged and then transferring to their own bags at the car. Instead of my own bags, I put three cardboard boxes in the trunk and at the check-out I told the guy to please do not put my stuff in plastic bags but to just put it all back in the cart. When I finished unloading onto the conveyor belt I looked up and the guy was starting to put my stuff in plastic bags. No, no I told him, no bags, just put the stuff back in the cart. It worked out pretty well. It didn't really take me any longer to transfer the stuff into those boxes than to unload a cart with a jillion plastic bags. Now if I had just remembered to take my mesh produce bags with me I could have got out of there without a single plastic bag!

(Have I mentioned how much I hate the new blogger?)

the days, they just blend together

 
I wish I had something profound or meaningful or even interesting to write about but since I'm avoiding all things Trumpian, truth to tell, one day is pretty much like the one before it and the one that will come after it. I'm not an early riser and it's usually about 8 before I drag my butt out of bed and take my thyroid med on an empty stomach and drink a small glass of water first thing, then my yoga routine, then my two cups of coffee while I visit blogland or write a post and then finally go fix breakfast at 10. This is how every day starts unless I have something to do for which I need to leave the house early.

One of which is that I've started volunteering at SHARE here on Thursday mornings, the only day they are open right now, and I try to get there between 8:30 and 9. SHARE is an organization that provides food and clothing and in some cases monetary aid to the needy so I go and help fill the baskets of food depending on how many in the family and help restock the shelves to be ready for the next week. It's a church sponsored organization and the other people there are religious. The lady in charge finally had me fill out a form, basic information I imagine to do a background check though she didn't say so as two of the other volunteers are my neighbors. The last line was what church or organization did I represent if any. I wrote in 'humanity'.

We've been having some cooler weather since Beta blew through, or didn't blow as the case may be. It has dried up enough to get some weeding done which I did yesterday until I ran out of shade. It's still hot in the sun and getting warmer but the weather liars prognosticators are promising us more cool weather next week, even down in the 50s! We'll see. There are several tasks I've been putting off for cooler weather...cleaning out/up the garage, also the barn, also the shop...all three in desperate need. Still need to continue moving cast glass stuff into the new studio room and set it up. Not to mention all the fall yard tasks. Speaking of which you may or may not have noticed I haven't been writing about pecans which I usually do starting in July when the trees start shedding immature nuts. There's been very little of that and while we had the best crop we've had in years last year, I don't think we're going to get any this year. I'm not seeing any nuts up in my three trees and the few that have dropped are rotten inside. My neighbors' trees however are producing so maybe I can beg some of their excess crop.

The hummingbirds continue to ignore the feeders for the most part. I see them more often among the flowers that are blooming. The rain from Beta has produced a new round of rain lilies and oxblood lilies, even two of the bulbs I have yet to get planted have bloomed! 

And speaking of blooming flowers, Sabine at Interim Arrangements posted a picture of one of every flower blooming in her garden a couple of posts back which I really liked so I've done it too. Here's what's blooming today sans one other that I forgot, a yellow walking iris.

I've finally decided where I'm going to plant the oxblood lilies I dug up out of the ditch over a year ago! I created this space in front of the buddha and I'm going to plant them there.

Still haven't started a new drawing but at least I know what it is I'm going to draw when I get around to it. Mostly I wonder what to do with these drawings. Leave them in my sketchbook and let them accumulate or try and frame them for possible sale. Which reminds me, I have to get my images and bio/artspeak blurb sent in to be uploaded to the Height's Artisan Market website for the online sale. I don't actually expect to sell anything but it's good exposure. I also have a new idea for the gallery page on my website which will take a couple of days to build. Now that it's too hot to work outside comfortably perhaps I'll work on that today.

Or I may try and finish the book I'm reading.

tropical storm BETA, voting, and my dying iMac

Sunday and Monday...days spent helping my sister at her old house doing the final repairs, touch-ups, and cleaning now that the estate sale is done and the unsold stuff hauled away to become someone else's problem or delight. Now our attention shifts to the outdoors and the last of the yard stuff and plants still to be dug up, the shed to be tidied but not til it dries out some from...

Tropical Storm Beta made landfall Monday night at Matagorda. Matagorda is a straight shot hour drive down Hwy 60 from Wharton. It rained for a couple of hours Monday afternoon and when it stopped we did our storm prep getting in the yard furniture and taking down all the wind chimes and yard art. It started up again early evening and did not stop on top of the 2 1/2” we got on Sunday. The only saving grace was that it was not torrential though sometimes heavy. Still the low spot on the west side back by the slab continued to accumulate water which slowly expanded into the low spot on the north side but I wasn't worried about that because that's the part of the house on pier and beam. As I checked out the window on the west side about every 15 minutes I was glad to see that, so far, the water had not gotten high enough to breach the dirt I had been mounding up along the slab. One last check after dark with the lights before I went to bed telling myself that I WAS NOT going to check during the night no matter how many times I woke up since there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it anyway except just deal with it and every time I did wake up it was still raining. It had stopped though by the time I woke up Tuesday morning to a little standing water in the low spot. I checked my rain gauge which tops out at 7” and it was full so I texted my neighbor at the other end of the street to see what their bigger rain gauge showed which was 6.1” so I'm thinking maybe my rain gauge isn't all that accurate except that I checked the markings on the side with a ruler and they are accurate. Guess I'll have to get a second one for a different part of the yard and see how they compare.

Tuesday was mostly without rain but some drizzle off and on so as it turned out TS Beta sort of fizzled out with no high wind here at all though a big dead branch did fall out of one of the oak trees yesterday late morning.

it has impaled the ground so solidly that it doesn't even wobble

here's the rest of it

flowers of a different sort

About the only thing I accomplished yesterday was going to the grocery store where the idiots were out, at least more than usual. I saw one guy without a mask at all (required in the grocery store) selfishly possibly spreading virus as he went and more than the usual number of shoppers with the mask below their noses. Go ahead on, I grumbled to myself, the virus loves your nose way more than it loves your mouth. I give those people a wide berth. The only other thing I accomplished was getting to the vet and getting flea treatment for the dog and cat.

I've been dithering about getting a mail-in ballot since I'm in the age group where it's allowed for voting as opposed to in person. There's a chat group on FB for Wharton so I posted a query if anyone knew if there would be a drop box for mail-in ballots. The chiropractor here I've gone to a couple of times just lost a client after he posted a snarky reply...yeah, Nov. 3 at your polling place. Well, thanks Mr. Obvious. What is it with Republicans? Are they all assholes or just the ones that comment on posts cause I'm seeing a trend here. Someone else commented that mail-in ballots had to be postmarked so I looked up election rules here in Texas. So, yeah, no drop boxes allowed in Texas but you can hand your ballot in in person to the county election office where you have to show a valid ID and sign off that you voted. That office is here in Wharton since this is the county seat. 

The news is so bad that I can't even look at it, can't even read Heather Cox Richardson's newsletters. We're all counting on the election to save this country while Trump, Barr, and McConnell are doing everything they can to suppress the vote and stack the Supreme Court to contest and declare the election null and void and install Trump again. I'm really scared.

Well, I think my iMac is in the last stages of it's long life. It's at least a decade old, older I think but don't remember exactly what year we bought it and for some time now it will get really hot to the touch in the upper left corner and yesterday and today as well it wouldn't even come on until I unplugged it and then plugged it back in (the magic cure for everything computer related it seems) and yesterday it spontaneously quit twice. Not a good sign.

Wet and soggy today. Think I'll start on a new drawing.

PS. I still hate the new blogger. 

week 26 and week 27

 

Well, the big news is, of course, Bob Woodward's book and revelation that Trump knew in January how bad, how devastating, the virus is and would be and PURPOSELY chose to downplay it, ignore it, lie about it over and over, refusing to marshal the country to fight it because he didn't want to create a panic (and he was perfectly content for blue states to suffer). Of course, he has had no problem creating panics over immigration or muslims or our cities allowing people to exercise their 1^st amendment rights protesting police brutality and instigating violence against fellow Americans. The truth of the matter is he didn't want to create a panic in the stock market because he thinks that is crucial for his re-election.

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Astra-Zeneca temporarily halted the global trials for their vaccine after a volunteer suffered some illness while they tried to determine if it was a side effect of the vaccine. I believe I read later that they have reinstated the trial. 

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HHS spokesperson Michael Caputo, has been interfering with the CDC's virus reports demanding to see the reports before they were made public and demanding they be watered down so as not to undermine Trump's 'optimistic' messages (lies) about the virus even wanting to go so far as to retroactively change already published reports and holding back other reports. As if that's not enough, he berated CDC scientists and accused them of creating 'hit job' reports to undermine Trump for political reasons. 

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The CDC on Friday reversed their testing guidance issued in August, no doubt because of pressure from Trump who wants less testing and therefore a lower case count, that people without symptoms did not need to get tested. The new guidance recommends that anyone with no symptoms but who have been in contact with an infected person should get tested. 

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And today, the CDC retracted guidance it had published also on Friday concerning how the virus spreads through the air after the WHO questioned the statement. The CDC says it is updating it's recommendation regarding airborne transmission and that a draft version had been published in error. 

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Schools that have been opening in-person classes are experiencing increased infections among children and teachers.

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The motorcycle rally in Sturgis SD in August is responsible for over 260,000 new cases of covid-19 but that didn't stop 125,000 bikers from convening in Missouri for another rally this past weekend.

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Anti-maskers continue to barge their way into stores that require masks just so they can make a scene and harangue customers and employees alike.

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A perfectly healthy 21 year old male suffered a heart attack. When he was tested for the virus in the hospital it came back positive.

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Europe is experiencing a rise in infections.

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Current US statistics as of today 9/21/20, 21:50 GMT: cases – 7,035,917; deaths – 204,386. My state, (red, so fuck you Trump) Texas, is, still today, #2 after California for the total number of coronavirus cases then Florida, then New York so of the top 4 states with the most infections, two are blue states for a total of 1,273,194 and two are red states for a total of 1,412,553. Let me repeat that, of the top four states, the red states have the most infections. So, once again, fuck you Trump and your lying bullshit about how if we didn't count the blue states we'd have so few cases, almost none.

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My (red) county has now jumped up to 1,340 cases and 50 deaths.

good news, bad news, and a finished drawing

The good news is, I woke up this morning feeling well. The afib is settling down and I went 38 hours with only a blip here and there, had a minor flare up last night but it quit sometime after I went to bed. So far so good today. I think part of the problem besides too much attention to bad news is that I was dehydrated from working out in the heat and sweating profusely and not drinking enough water to make up for it.

The other good news is that the owner of the python found her. She was in the garage the whole time. A major sigh of relief went up from the neighborhood.

The estate sale at Pam's old house is ongoing, tomorrow being the last day with everything 50% off, then everything that is left will be hauled off and we can get in there to finishing making repairs before the house officially goes on the market next week.

It finally happened, no more access to the legacy version of blogger but it seems two of my three biggest complaints about the new version have been remedied. I tried a test post, copied and pasted two paragraphs into the the new post form and while it did double space the paragraphs, I was able to just delete the second one and it let me drag and drop an image from my desktop instead of have to go through the 6 or 7 steps to post a picture. My third issue was the 'labels' where previously they showed a cloud of all the labels and you could just click on the one you wanted. Now, they don't show any at all but when you type a letter, all the labels that include that letter show up and you have to scroll through them to find the one you want. Still very cumbersome. The rest is just having to get used to the new arrangement of tools. So here's my first post using the new version (which I still don't like).

I'd have more to rage write about if I was allowing myself to get immersed in all things Trump and the destruction of our democracy and it is just snowballing, the more desperate he gets the crazier he and Barr get with Barr musing about charging the governor of Oregon with sedition for allowing the protests there and Trump's attitude that it's only the incompetent blue states that have made our death toll so high (just to be clear, red state Texas is #3 in total deaths, more than California now, falling behind only New York and New Jersey and nearly twice as many cases as New York and second only to California, red state Florida being third), and all the revelations coming out about the actions of his appointees, people quitting left and right and coming forward with the goods. But I'm not going there.

So I spent the day finishing the drawing of the lotus bud.

Here's the photo Linda took.

https://lindaleinen.com/2020/09/06/a-slow-rising/

Well, the dog is reminding me it's her dinner time.

Just back from walking the dog to devastating news. We are truly fucked now. RBG has died and you know McConnell has already broken out the champagne.