What's Ahead

 I'm far from an expert on any of this stuff, and some of this is just my hopeful nature, but here some predictions for 2021:

1. The last ditch attempts by some Republicans to reverse the Presidential election will be a dismal failure.

2. The Georgia Senate run-offs will result in a 50-50 split in the Senate, with VP Kamala Harris casting the deciding vote. That will put, most likely, Chuck Schumer in the majority leader position, allowing him to control what bills come to the floor.

3. By mid-year, theaters (both film and live) will reopen, with some restrictions. In some areas, that might include proof of vaccination before you can use a ticket. 

4. In September, most school districts will offer in-person learning to anyone who wants it, while continuing on-line offerings to those who don't, at least through the winter holidays. The largest districts will likely require proof of COVID vaccination before re-enrollment.

6. Indoor dining will largely resume by early spring, with some restrictions.

7. While state-wide mask mandates will be over by mid-year, some areas and some businesses may continue to require masks for the foreseeable future. The plexiglass shields in retail businesses will remain, I'd bet forever.

8. Because so many people have grown used to using them, restaurant delivery services like Grub Hub and Uber Eats will continue to thrive. Same with grocery delivery.

9. Domestic airline and train travel will be virtually normal by Thanksgiving...although it's possible there may be rules about proof of vaccination or negative tests, on a company-by-company basis.

10. Depending on how much foreign governments trust that the Biden administration has things under control, foreign travel will return to normal as well....but the cruise industry will still suffer.

Mid-Holiday Doldrums

 Even back in my childhood, I always found this time between Christmas and New Year's to be problematic. All the excitement of Christmas had usually dissipated by the morning of the 27th and the weather was not often conducive to being outside. (Staten Island rarely got snow before January, so sledding was out, but it was too cold to be out biking or something like that.) As a kid, New Year's Eve was nothing special, really...my parents would get me up around 11:30 so I could watch the ball drop on TV, but our big celebration was dinner the next day with my father's family.

As an adult, it got better--I would attend New Year's Eve parties, for instance. But December 26 to 31 often felt like a long period of nothing much.

And, of course, in this time of pandemic restrictions, it's even worse. There's so little to do in normal circumstances that the letdown from Christmas just feels that much worse. Don't get me wrong--I'm not depressed, just feeling a bit at loose-ends. Jill and I both have lots of time on our hands...and nothing we can do with it. Normally, we might plan a night out--a movie and/or dinner--but that's not possible now.

I'm hoping it will all make next year's celebration that much brighter.

What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?

 Last night, on the news, Jill and I saw a report on the preparations being made for the traditional "ball-drop" in Times Square on New Year's Eve. The report included the plans New York City was making to keep the crowd within pandemic restriction limits.

It immediately occurred to both of us: "If that's really your concern (and it should be) why are you permitting the ball-drop at all?" If you don't want a crowd in Times Square, the easiest way to avoid it is not to give them a reason to be there. Sure, there will still be idiots who want to gather in large numbers to celebrate, but there will be far fewer if there's nothing to draw them to that one location. If nothing else, they would be spread out among several other places in the city, such as along the Hudson River waterfront to watch the fireworks display instead. (Or, even better, stay home and celebrate sensibly there.)

You might as well announce "Come to our COVID super-spread party in Times Square! There will be entertainment and spectacle!"

A Pain in my....

 Not sure what I did, but somewhere in the past three or four days, I pulled or strained something in my lower back. It's not bad if I stand and walk around, but sitting for any length of time (in any kind of chair) makes it stiffen up, so that when I stand back up it's difficult to straighten all the way for the first few moments. After walking for a bit, it loosens, but I can still feel the tightness and some residual pain. The problem seems to be centered just where my back transitions to my bottom.

I've used heating pads (that helps a bit) and Aleve (that helps a bit more). Right now, I'm trying a spray-on analgesic and a lumbar pad in my desk chair. They seem to be helping some as well.

Anybody got some suggestions as to what the problem is and a solution?

Peace On Earth

 I don't think anything else needs to be said:

Box It Up

 Happy Boxing Day (or, if you prefer, the Feast of Stephen, as it is called in the carol "Good King Wenceslas"). Here's a little history on the name:

The Oxford English Dictionary gives the earliest attestations from Britain in the 1830s, defining it as "the first weekday after Christmas day, observed as a holiday on which postmen, errand boys, and servants of various kinds expect to receive a Christmas box".

The term "Christmas box" dates back to the 17th century, and among other things meant:

A present or gratuity given at Christmas: in Great Britain, usually confined to gratuities given to those who are supposed to have a vague claim upon the donor for services rendered to him as one of the general public by whom they are employed and paid, or as a customer of their legal employer; the undefined theory being that as they have done offices for this person, for which he has not directly paid them, some direct acknowledgement is becoming at Christmas.

It is also the "second day of Christmas" (Christmas itself being the first), so give your true love a pair of turtledoves, if you are so inclined.

 

Merry Christmas

 I wasn't sure what to post for the holiday, so I decided to get a little traditional, from the Gospel According to Luke:

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.  (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register.

 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

 “Glory to God in the highest heaven
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

 

Pardon Me?

 I used to have a standard line I used when people would say, "Pardon me?" I would reply, "Who do you think you are, Richard Nixon?"

After this week, the number of political felons who would fit in that joke must be nearing a dozen...and may well double by the time we reach January 20. As I heard mentioned last night on MSNBC, this kind of flurry of pardons around the holidays is fairly common...but usually they are non-political: people who were given surprisingly harsh sentences, people who had clearly turned their lives around, people with health problems. 

There's one good thing that might come from all this--if any of the folks Trump pardoned in the last days of his term are called to testify about their role in his malfeasances, they can no longer claim the protections of the Fifth Amendment. The pardon means they cannot be prosecuted for their crimes, and hence they have no fear of incriminating themselves.

Crazy Like a Fox?

 Okay, so after months of avoiding any contact with the COVID relief efforts in Congress, now that they've passed--by a veto-proof majority--a minimal package that includes the necessary legislation to keep the government running for another few weeks, Trump decides it's not what he wanted (not that he told anyone what he wanted until now) and suggests he won't sign it.

Has this been his plan all along? To (1) blame Congress for not doing enough; and (2) hand Biden a government shut-down on January 20? "If I can't run the country, nobody gets to do it. Nyah-nyah, let's see you solve this one, wise guy!" And as for the prospect of a continued Republican majority in the Senate? "You're on your own, Mitch! I won't be here so I don't give a damn!"

Hasn't this been his pattern throughout his business career? Run a company into the ground, then declare bankruptcy or sell out to some poor sucker who doesn't realize how bad it really is, and leave it to others to suffer the consequences?

Is this just his biggest bankruptcy and abandonment?

Vote Fraud Found

 ...but it won't make Donald Trump happy. After examining more than 100 allegations of voter fraud or irregularities in Delaware County, PA, District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer and his bi-partisan staff found just one verifiable case--and it was a Republican who illegally voted for Trump in the name of his dead mother. As reported in today's edition of the Delaware County Daily Times:

Stollsteimer said Bartman accessed the Pennsylvania online voter registration portal in August 2020 to register his mother, Elizabeth Bartman, who died in 2008....

Bartman was able to use his mother’s driver’s license number... as [an identifier] in the Pennsylvania system. In the case of Bartman’s mother, Stollsteimer said the system not only failed to catch the information as a registration from a deceased person, it actually uploaded information from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation database.

Bartman then applied for and received an absentee ballot for his mother from the Election Bureau, filled it out and returned it. That ballot was received Oct. 28 and counted Nov. 3 for Nether Providence’s 3rd Ward, Stollsteimer said. Bartman also voted in that same precinct...

https://www.delcotimes.com/news/d-a-marple-mans-dead-mom-voted-for-trump/article_fea7510e-43e7-11eb-aea6-2f7f71b245ec.html

Christmas Prep 2

 You would think that the pandemic would have given us so much extra time that we'd be ahead of schedule on Christmas...and you'd be wrong. We are at least a week behind our normal timing on shopping and shipping. Packages to our children will not be shipped until later today...which means they more than likely will not arrive in time to be opened on Christmas morning.

Of course, we had things beside the pandemic to deal with. The death of Jill's mother and the planning to attend her funeral took up most of a week that normally would have been our wrapping and packaging time. Then, of course, the snowstorm last week meant getting out to the shipping places was delayed as well.

So, we're working on the idea that anything that arrives by Epiphany on January 6 is on time, since the 12 days of Christmas are the period between December 25 and that date.

Christmas Prep

 Did you decorate for Christmas this year? We didn't--except for putting up lights outside.

We disposed of our artificial tree after last season (it was on its last legs) and had intended to order a new one for this year. But as the holidays approached, we realized that we would undoubtedly have no visitors over Christmas--the pandemic restrictions and their own requirements meant that our sons and their significant others would not be joining us.

Getting a new tree. putting it up and decorating it seemed like an awful lot of fuss for just the two of us. It would have meant clearing space in the living room (always more of a hassle than it seems), hauling the decorations out of the attic--and then undoing it all just a couple of weeks later. So, we decided to skip it this year...and maybe do it up even bigger and better next year, as a celebration of getting out of pandemic.

How has your Christmas planning changed?

Let It Snow 4

 Last one of these, I promise--unless we get snow again before the New Year.

I finally cut a narrow path through the packed ice on the sidewalk, thanks to the ice chopper blade I bought at Home Depot. I will let the sun and warmer temperatures expected in the next few days work at widening it, thank you. (But those warmer temps didn't arrive this morning--16 degrees at 6 AM!)

Let It Snow 3

 So, I got the driveway clear, but by the time I could get to work on the sidewalk, the sun had gone down, it was getting colder, and the snow--most of which was from the plows that had thrown the stuff from the road onto my walk--had turned rock hard. It's still rock hard this morning. (Worse, I'm the last house on the street to clear things...but I'm also the one that gets hit hardest by the plows, because the road widens to three lanes right in front of my house, so the plows are clearing right up to my curb--and all that ice and snow has nowhere to go except on my walk.)

I've thrown salt on the top of the ice, hoping that--combined with warming temps and sun--will soften it enough to let me get at it. I've seen some suggestions for a vinegar/water solution and/or boiling water as a help. Anyone have experience with this?

This is the worst I've ever seen it in 20 years here.

Let It Snow 2

 As a kid, I used to love snow. I even loved it as a younger adult. I still think new-fallen snow is a lovely sight...the problem is that it doesn't last.

Soon it is just heaps of plowed up dirty ice along the edges of the roads, or worse at the top of my driveway. When the snow is followed by rain, it just turns into slabs of ice...and even a snow-blower will not clear those easily...so out comes the shovel, trying to crack the ice enough to get it off the pavement. 

I spent 30 minutes so far today trying to dig out...and only managed to clear about five feet of my driveway and the back porch. The sun is out now, streaming down the driveway, so I will shortly go back out to see if that is helping any.

Snow is no longer something I love.

Let It Snow?

 Here I was hoping that, after the last nine months, we would have an easy winter, like last year's. Last year, our area got literally no measurable snow. This year, we are about to have one of the earliest real snowstorms I can remember in the two decades we've lived around here.

We rarely get any snow before New Year's...and that tends to be light flurries that melt within 24 hours. Today, we're expecting anywhere from 3 to 6 inches, some of which might be "wintry mix". I can't imagine what road clearing in a pandemic might turn out to be like.

Cars and Phones

I live on a major thoroughfare, just a few yards from an intersection with a traffic light, so traffic often (almost always) backs up to my driveway. Not a complaint--I knew it would happen when we moved here. Yesterday, though, I observed for what must be the umpteenth time, something that rankles me.

I drove to the end of the driveway and waited my turn to be able to enter traffic. There was a car directly in across my path (again, not the issue). The driver had his face buried in his phone, paying no attention to the circumstances around him. Now, on one level, I understand this level of thinking: "I'm stopped at a red light, it's gonna be at least 30 to 40 seconds, let me check my phone...." But I think it's more dangerous than it seems...and let me tell you why, using what actually happened yesterday.

The light changed, the car ahead of this fellow moved...and he didn't--because all his attention was on his phone. I had to honk at him to wake him up to reality around him. Now, suppose the driver behind him, unaware of the phone-user's inattention, had begun to move? Accident? Quite possibly.

There's probably no way to make this work, but here's an idea for a future phone/car feature. When the vehicle's transmission is in any mode except "park" the phone doesn't work. No texting, no calling, nothing. 

Your thoughts?

Google-Eyed

 Nothing like waking up and finding that none of your usual agenda is working, because all of it is tied to Google.

Normally, we get up, I go to my computer and check e-mail and the like, while Jill turns on the TV in the bedroom to catch up on the news and weather. We get our broadcast news through the YouTube TV service and that was down along with most everything else Google does--e-mail, Google Docs, Blogger, etc. We finally got some news by finding the CBSNews stream.

As of the time of this posting, there's still no word from Google on exactly what the problem was. 

Beginning of the End

 This morning, the news was doing live reports of the first trucks leaving Pfizer's Michigan plant loaded with COVID vaccine. Jill wondered if this were really something that required this kind of coverage, or if it were a circumstance of Pfizer looking for publicity and the media playing along.

I said I think it is a news-worthy event, comparable to coverage of troops boarding ships and planes bound for combat. Since then, another comparison has come to mind: In the days before the launch of Apollo 11, the news media followed the three astronauts constantly. And on the morning of the launch, there were reports on their every move--what they had for breakfast, their farewells to their families, the trip to the launch pad, etc.

 This deserves that kind of coverage...if only to show the public, on a stage-by-stage, day-by-day basis, that the vaccine is real, it is being distributed, it is not being hoarded for the "elite" (and yes, I have seen that accusation being made).

I applaud the media for this.

Hotel Blues 2

 Well, all that agita over a hotel reservation was for naught. Just hours after I successfully made the reservation, Governor Wolf announced new COVID restrictions going into effect at midnight tonight, making our plans for this trip impossible. (We have to go out of state for a family funeral; we had planned to go to this hotel tonight, stay overnight, drive the rest of the way to the funeral Saturday morning, return to the hotel for Saturday night and come home Sunday morning.)

The new restrictions mean the hotel's restaurants will not be serving any meals and, since there is no convenient place to order meals delivered, that meant there would be no food to be had easily at the hotel (possibly at all, since all the restaurants anywhere around would be under the same restrictions). I cancelled the reservation--and may have to pay a cancellation charge, since I was past the 24-hour grace period.

Instead, we have made plans to meet with another relative and share driving so we can do it all in one day. To be honest, I was looking forward to the chance to spend 24 to 36 hours away from home.

Hotel Blues

How hard should it be to make a hotel reservation? I went online to a hotel I have used many times before to make a reservation for this weekend. The online system refused to deal with me because I had my browser set to reject cookies. So, I went in and changed that to allow all cookies. Still rejected. Went in and specifically said to accept cookies from the hotel's site. Still rejected.

So, I gave up on that and called the phone reservation line. Despite being an 866 number (which are usually manned 24 hours), I was told that the office hours didn't start until 9 AM. (It was about 8:50.) I hung up, waited about 15 minutes and tried again. I got the same voicemail message. I left a message.

So I called the hotel front desk, explained the situation, and the clerk said he would check on the reservation staff. He came back to say that the first thing the staff does on arrival is check all their messages, so I would probably get a call back soon.

Thirty minutes later, still no call back. I tried again and this time got a live body in the reservations office. She was apologetic about my problem and immediately began taking my information. Now, I have used this hotel often enough that as soon as I gave my name, she began reading back the info to me. Five minutes later the transaction was complete. I have my reservation.

But should it have taken three on-line tries and three phone calls?

Horrible Year

 Queen Elizabeth II called 1992 her "annus horribilus". (That was the year Princess Diana died and the Queen took a lot of flack for her apparent lack of empathy.)

2020 is turning into my "annus horribilus". It began in January with the death of my mother. While it was not unexpected, it was still somewhat surprising as her final decline was a rapid two or three days. A month later, the pandemic began and all the plans I had made for the year crashed and burned. I had decided in late 2019 that I would retire from my part-time job on April 30, with the intention of spending my newly free time largely on work with local community theaters. Before I hit my last day of work, all the community theaters closed up shop and have remained closed.

All our usual "fun things" have not been possible this year. Our annual get-together with SF fans in the spring was cancelled. Plans to see my family at a memorial for Mom in June have been postponed until next June at the earliest. Thanksgiving, of course, was a bust, save for a three-hour Zoom meeting with our children.

And now, one last blow. My mother-in-law died over the weekend. My wife is depressed--not so much because of the loss of her mother (like mine, we knew this was coming), but by the limited ways we can deal with the situation. At the moment, we will make a 24-hour trip to West Virginia this weekend for the burial, along with just a handful of her children and grandchildren. Any larger memorial will have to wait until later this year.

A year bookended with personal deaths and filled with misery of every kind in between.

Lights Up!

 Christmas has arrived in the O'Neill front yard:

28 Days

What can be accomplished in 28 days? That's what left for the current session of Congress, including the probable recess for Christmas and New Year's. If you take that out, this session has only about 12 days left--less than two weeks!

In that time, the Congress must pass at least a continuing resolution to keep the government funded; it ought to also pass some kind of additional relief bill tied to the pandemic. What are the chances? I doubt either party wants to see a government shut-down timed for the holidays, so the funding bill will pass in some form. I am less sanguine about the relief bill. Mitch McConnell seems adamant about not allowing anything that will look like a "victory" for the Democrats, at least not before the Georgia Senate run-off on January 5.

Joe Biden has said we are in for a "dark winter". I fear he is right.

Remembering My Youth

 How much do you remember of your childhood? As I get older, I find that certain details fade. Certainly, I still remember the layout of the house I grew up in and the neighborhood (the fact that I left that area only about 20 years ago and frequently visited until earlier this year probably helps), but other things have become fuzzy...like the names of the friends I played with.

Some are still clear but others remain just "the family that lived across the street and two doors down." The names of neighbors who didn't have children are even more harder to recall. My immediate next-door neighbors I still can name...but the ones a few doors away or across the street are merely blurry faces without names in my memory.

Weirdly, though, I still vividly recall other parts of my childhood--the Saturday morning shows we watched, and even the schedule they aired on, as an example. The theme songs of those programs and others I haven't seen in decades. The daytime soap operas my mother watched (she was strictly a CBS network fan): The Brighter Day, Search for Tomorrow, and As the World Turns.

Why are some things so crystal clear and others just dimly recalled?

Theater Struggles

 Once again, I'm posting here a letter I sent to my local paper, The Delaware County Daily Times, on a subject near and dear to me:

I commend you on reprinting in Saturday's paper the editorial from the Philadelphia Inquirer regarding the difficulties the live entertainment industry has faced over the past nine months and will continue to face in the foreseeable future.

But I note that, in Delaware County, live theater mostly means volunteer community theater...and those venues are struggling as well. They have rents, utilities and other costs that continue whether they are putting on shows or not and they have had no revenues to support those payments since March.

I ask your readers who enjoy live theater to support these organizations with donations. In order to avoid omitting anyone, I simply ask that they search "community theater in Delaware County" on line and see the results. Anything you give will keep these organizations alive until they can once again stage a play, a musical, or a revue.

That plea goes out to you all, too. No matter where you live, find a local community theater and donate.

 

Audition Assets

 This post is mainly for my theater friends. What do you consider the strongest assets you bring to an audition? Not necessarily the assets you bring to a role should you be cast, but the strengths you have that would encourage a director to cast you? What are you weakest ones?

For me, I think my strongest asset is the ability to give a good cold read. I pride myself on getting up on stage with a script or side in hand, one that I may have had only five or ten minutes to look at, and flawlessly perform the part. I know how to pronounce the difficult words, I know how to look up from the page and then back without losing my place, I can find a character and a voice for that character.

As a director, I value that in an auditioning actor, because it's difficult to know how the actor will perform when cast if he or she is stumbling through a cold read.

My weakest asset? This only applies to musicals, of course--I can't dance. I have no training in it and I have the rhythm of a centipede with all left feet. I hate when I have to do a dance audition for a show in which I am trying out for a character who doesn't dance. Want an idea of how bad my sense of rhythm is? Watch this video:

(I can sing in rhythm, of course...but I can't move in it.)

So, what do you bring to an audition that will get you cast? And what do you hope will not be asked?

The Middle-Class Bubble, Revisited

 The Delaware County Daily Times published my letter today (the one I also posted here); strangely enough, they also published a letter from a friend, Paul Kerrigan, who expressed some of the same objections to Mr. McOscar's conclusions, though from a different angle (and no, neither of us knew the other was going to write to the paper on the topic). Paul wrote, in part:

...in Nether Providence where I was an observer, the local Judge of Elections confirmed what appeared to be true, that two contiguous wards had about a 5 to 1 disparity in the number of voters being served. The one ward had no line to speak of, while the voters in the adjacent ward consistently had a wait of an hour or more. Interestingly, the under-served voting ward was the one that had the apartment complex, as opposed to the single home properties in the first. I’m not saying that there was malicious intent, but the nearly all white voters in one ward were impressive when compared with the diverse voters who made up the other.

These subtle discrepancies reinforce the historical racism of the red-lining and de facto segregation of the past. 

Always good to know you are not alone in your thoughts. 

 

Donating

 What did you contribute to yesterday, Giving Tuesday?

As I think you should always give to things that bring you joy and that really matter to you, I donated to the two local community theaters with which I am most involved. Both had connections with groups doing matching donations, so it was very worthwhile to participate. I hope it allows them to stay in business long enough to be operating again in six months or so.

Living in a Middle-Class Bubble

 This morning, my local paper, the Delaware County Daily Times, ran an op-ed, which spurred me to write this letter to the editor:

To the editor:

Clearly, Jerry McOscar lives in a white, middle-class bubble and doesn't understand how his life differs from those who may be poor, non-white, elderly, or otherwise "out of the mainstream".

In his op-ed on Tuesday, after outlining the problems that Julie Berger, a Senior Research Coordinator at University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, observed at a polling place in West Philadelphia--problems that included an inability to locate the proper polling place, long lines, and difficulty in understanding how to operate the ballot scanning machine--McOscar wrote:

"The truth is that most of these purported 'obstacles' are easily remedied by a little pre-election day homework — reading sample ballots, verifying the proper polling place, checking paperwork, voting early if work is an issue, for example. Ms. Berger even admits to being confused at times when voting in person.

"She asserts that voter suppression can take blatant forms, but its more insidious forms can be hard to see for those, like her, who have always exercised their voting rights easily: a labyrinth of registration forms and deadlines, a hard-to-read ballot, 'complex' voting machines, mismatched polling books."

What McOscar fails to acknowledge is that that kind of "homework" may require an access to the internet, or a library, or even the skills to utilize either, that may not be commonplace in areas like West Philly, especially among the poor and elderly. Has he not heard of the "digital divide"? Further, it may require a time and effort that even a younger person, working two or more jobs, holding together a single-parent household, simply cannot manage.

 
I'm a senior citizen who was an "early adapter" to the computerized world, thanks to working in the publishing industry in my youth; but when I took a part-time job in a supermarket in my later years, I discovered a wide swath of people of all ages and races who had difficulty operating a self-checkout or understanding how our loyalty card system operated.

Mr. McOscar needs to realize that what he finds simple and easy may not be for everyone.