The Conundrum of a COVID vaccine hesitant person.

I have some good news though. There may be some actionable data that will reduce my hesitancy and perhaps yours.

(Okay, this is a really long post. I’m sorry but there’s a lot of it that I felt I needed to explain.)

I know we’re all sick and tired of the COVID doom articles and talking heads. After two solid years of DOOM, and “bring out your dead.” It’s understandable that we’re all shoving this to the back our minds as just another bunch of pointless noise.

As I wrote a while ago it’s becoming the same noise as The Russians are gonna nuke us at any moment. After a point you just want to get on with your life and take a Devil may care attitude.

That’s the risk the climate change activists have been running into for years. BLM has encountered it as well.

When a problem is too big, or so far out of individuals control, they ignore it in favor of living in the “now”.

I personally have always tried to dial my wastefulness down to a close to zero as I personally could. While I like driving, I try to drive as little as possible. I combine stops and save gas at the same time.

I recycle anything and everything that can be recycled. I prefer scooping nuts and dried fruits out of barrels rather than buying stuff like that pre-packaged. I try like heck to capture rainwater or snow in places in my yard so that it goes into the ground instead of running down the street into a culvert. I’ve replaced every light in my house with LED or (much as I hate them,) CF bulbs. I pick up other people’s trash on hikes and do my personal best to leave a place as clean or cleaner than when I arrived.

I’m not rabid about it. For me, this is a personal choice that helps a little, and represents a philosophy of being ecologically responsible. It’s my choice, I’m not going to force my beliefs on you.

The thing is, I’m doing all I can within the limits of my reach. Hopefully, I’m showing by example how being a caretaker of the environment isn’t a burden. Being an example, I hope that others will follow my lead and join me, but I don’t demand it.

All that being said, I’m not willing to pay some group (over which I have no control) an arbitrary carbon tax. I’m not willing to sit in the cold and dark because some jackass in a mansion thinks I should be reminded that manmade climate change is real.

Our planetary climate is changing. It has for 4.5 billion years and will likely continue to change for another couple of billion years. When the sun of our solar system begins to expand the planet’s climate will change a lot. This is well beyond my lifetime and ability to stop. It’s just physics!

So for me, climate change doomsayers became background noise. I’ve lived long enough that I remember when these same people said we were going to be in an ice age in 20 years. They were wrong.

The planetary ecology is far too complex for humanity to predict. We can model it, but our models cannot account for all the variables, because we don’t know all the variables to put into the model.

Let’s just agree that climate changes. Let’s do what each of us can to be responsible and clean up our messes. That’s it, that’s the best we can do, and as we develop new technologies, let’s use them to make things better.

BLM is the same thing. Yes, racism exists. Yes, we need to do better. Burning down city blocks doesn’t address racism. It does however contribute to man made climate change.

I personally don’t like racism of any kind. If you’re making value judgements about people based on the color of their skin, you’re being racist. It’s that simple, and in my thoughts it’s cut and dried. No one gets a pass for singling someone out based on the color of their skin.

I’m a moron, I don’t have the brain power to deal with nuances of skin tone. I also don’t have the time.

BLM, made their statement. They brought an issue to everyone’s attention and now they’re done. Message received. Time to move on.

BLM doesn’t see it that way, they keep hammering and so in my world they become background noise.

I’ve explained the above as a rather long preamble because it will help you understand a little about how my personal thought processes run. Now, to the point I was going to make in the first place.

For two solid years we’ve all been inundated with COVID doom. This has been a planet wide phenomena.

The virus is still 99% survivable without any medical intervention. That’s a fact. Cold & Flu are also 99% survivable without medical intervention. This too is a fact. I’m not going to quibble about the fractional percentages because it’s pointless.

Any of the aforementioned conditions are much worse if you have comorbidities. If you’re fat, if you have diabetes, if you suffer from breathing issues, if you’ve got, or recovered from cancer, if you’re very old, or very young, or are in any way immune-compromised. This too is a demonstrable fact.

The greater number of comorbidities you personally have, the greater the percentage that COVID, the Flu or a Cold will kill you. This too is a fact.

They used to call this having one foot in the grave and the other foot on a banana peel. (That’s probably not politically correct anymore in this humorless world we occupy.)

At one time the statement was a common truism, and widely accepted is an acknowledgement that Life is fleeting. Death comes to us all, sometimes sooner and sometimes later but Death will visit all of our homes many times in our lives, and eventually each of us one final time.

This is living in the natural world. It’s normal.

As humans, we always attempt to control the natural world because it’s our nature to do so.

We make drugs, and figure out what’s ailing us, then search for solutions. We’ve created vaccines to protect us from a wide variety of illnesses and generally speaking, we’ve gotten pretty good at it. Many of us take the yearly Flu vaccine and think nothing of it.

So why have I been personally slow to get the COVID vaccine? What is the source of my hesitancy?

Data.

It’s that simple. When J&J came out with their COVID vaccine I was going to take it. Why? Because it was made using the tried and true methods that the annual Flu vaccine is made with. That in my opinion added a level of safety.

But… then there were reports of reactions to the J&J vaccine. So I decided to hold up a bit. I expected for there to be logical analytical reports and explanations about the reactions, and some reporting about who was most likely to have those reactions and why.

But there wasn’t as much information as you’d expect. Instead, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were pushed with a lot more force.

These vaccines, while apparently effective were made with new technology. This technology hadn’t been widely used in the past and since I know new medical techniques and vaccines are often tested for a decade or more before they’re approved for use in humans, I personally thought they exposed me to an unacceptable level of risk. I felt and still feel that neither of the vaccines or the way they work has been properly tested in humans.

At the same time, the media and even government agencies were only talking about the number of infections that had been detected. Number of infections is not the same as number of hospitalizations or number of deaths.

But in many of the media reports the three numbers were conflated and it truly sounded like COVID was akin to the Black Plague which had a death rate of between 30% – 50 %.

Yet, government agencies like the CDC were reporting less than 1% death rates for COVID.

So that started making me ask questions. I wasn’t alone in asking questions. Lots of people were asking questions and some of those asking questions were eminently qualified to do so.

Then censorship of COVID information and even reputable Doctors became rampant. You could find any number of articles speaking about doom and gloom, but Doctors and scientists presenting alternative research were silenced? Something was seriously askew, this is not the way information flows in this country.

I was willing to suspend my skepticism over the mask / no mask flip flopping from Anthony Fauci. I could chalk that up to new research results causing the change in direction. That’s what happens in science. What I couldn’t abide was that skeptics were shouted down in the public square and their valid research was painted as some kind of heresy.

We’ve seen similar behavior in the area of climate change and the theory of evolution. A theory accepted as truth, and woe be unto anyone skeptical of that theory.

(Full disclosure: I tend to think the theory of evolution is probably correct. However, it is still a theory, as yet unproven.)

That is not the way science is supposed to work. Scientists are supposed to read the research, poke holes in it, try to reproduce the results and either confirm or disprove the research.

Anyone remember Cold Fusion??? Some labs could reproduce the effect, and others could not. The general consensus was that there was some other reaction taking place that we didn’t understand, and couldn’t account for. Additional research was needed.

That’s how Science works. Science is not a religion, science is looking truth in the face and accepting what you see. Science is not faith based, we learned the folly of that path with the inquisition trial of Galileo Galilei. BTW Galileo was right, and the faith of the church was wrong.

Suddenly, it was as if facts and reason didn’t matter. We had scientists actually dismissing our evolutionary heritage that granted acquired immunity, in favor of induced immunity.

Honestly, I tend to trust 5 million years or so of biological adaptation a bit more than a vaccine in a bottle. That being said, I don’t have much of a problem giving my body a leg up on creating immunity by allowing it to sniff a germ in small quantities and saying “Hell No!” Then running off to build antibodies against it. Which led me back to the J&J vaccine.

But nagging in the back of my mind was how much about the virus was unknown. I’d read that the virus was unstable and mutating at a rather alarming rate. Viruses tend to do that, but they almost always mutate to more infectious, less lethal versions of themselves.

Viruses that kill the host organism are biological dead ends. Without a host, a virus has no choice but to be inert. So a fatal virus essentially kills itself off or mutates to something that serves the biological need to reproduce, leaving the host alive. Even Ebola, isn’t 100% fatal.

The problem with any biological system is that it’s always in a state of change. That’s the advantage too.

We’ve known for years that the over use of antibiotics can give rise to stronger more pernicious bacteria. Turns out that the same is true of vaccines that only address one particular aspect of a virus.

In both cases, there will be bugs that somehow survive. When those bugs reproduce, their children carry resistance to the antibiotic or vaccine. Continue that cycle enough times and you end up with so called “Superbugs”. These bugs may mutate to inhabit another biome or they may simply get tougher to kill.

See, inadvertently humans have been doing gain of function research for decades.

We just didn’t realize until recently that it could be really dangerous. Penicillin, sure… Now we have Penicillin resistant bacteria. Ampicillin gives rise to Ampicillin resistant bacteria, and so on & so on because we’re actively engaging in a biological war that’s been going on for millions of years. Get the picture?

Apparently, the same process is true of viruses.

With the rise of the COVID variants, I decided once again to hold off getting a vaccine.

My hope was that more research would lead to a better vaccine that stopped COVID cold, and prevented the escalation of variants. I’d prefer a one shot and done approach, instead of endless boosters every six months.

Think about Tetanus. It can be deadly and there is a vaccine. Generally speaking, you get a booster every ten years. But there are people who, because of their work, are exposed to Tetanus all the time. In their case, a booster isn’t technically required because their bodies see Tetanus so regularly their immune system has the antibodies on hot standby forever.

This speaks to the one size doesn’t fit all theory.

If your body has a continuously replenished supply of antibodies to something due to repeated exposure why do you need a vaccine? Your body sees each variation of the invader and creates a counter to it automatically. Therefore, anyone whose had COVID probably will be able to fend off all but the most radically changed variants. That’s the logic of the situation.

But try to find a discussion that addresses why or why not that logic works and you run into nothing but, “Get the damn vaccine, you fucking idiot!”

That worried me because it ignores the issue of acquired immunity altogether. That answer is not an answer. It’s akin to your mother telling you, “because I said so.”

So I held off a while longer. I was still hoping for enough research to be completed so that I could make an informed choice. I was hoping that there’d be an investigation into the Wuhan lab and that we’d know what exactly happened.

Was the virus naturally occurring or was the virus a chimera. I still believe that if the virus was created in a lab using gain of function technology then if we see the constituent parts we can build a vaccine that shuts it down.

If the virus is something totally natural, then at least we know and can concentrate on dealing with all the mutations. Either way, more knowledge is power. Except, every time someone asked that question… It was shot down as if asking the question was a conspiracy theory. Don’t we want to know?

At least we still had / have freedom of choice about getting the vaccine even if we’re not able to make a fully informed decision about getting it.

Then President Biden tried to mandate vaccines. But he didn’t do it above board. Oh no, he tried to do it in a fucking underhanded way that made me suspicious all over again.

Why is it so important to get a vaccine that The President would try to mandate it? Our government (Democrat & Republican) has shown over decades a rather pointed disregard for the people, except as chattel who provide fabulous sums of tax money that can be spent frivolously. Why the sudden about face? What is it that makes this vaccine so fucking important?

Could it be that the pharmaceutical companies are making a fortune? Could those fortunes result in kickbacks to certain politicians? Could it be that because the pharmaceutical companies bear no liability for harm caused by their vaccine, the payout is better than usual? I know this sounds like conspiracy stuff but “come on man…”

So I wait a bit longer. I watch friend after friend go get vaccinated even though they don’t want to. Why? Because their companies are anticipating Biden’s mandate will be upheld in the courts, and therefore are being good little sheep, obeying The President, forcing their employees to get the vaccine and then provide that medical information to their HR dept.

Several of these friends have had the light go out in their eyes a bit. They have now had their noses rubbed in the undeniable fact that they are slaves.

I’m hoping they get over it. Most of them state without question that they hate their companies, their executive officers, their management, and don’t give the least shit about doing their best work anymore. Their employers told them, “You’re easily replaced so you better obey us.”

It’s technically not about the fucking vaccine, it’s about the realization that they felt they had to choose to violate their caution and/or their beliefs in order to have a paycheck.

This broke their spirit. Time will tell if they’ll heal, or if as one friend said, “I don’t care about anything anymore. I don’t want to live like this, or ever have to compromise like this again. I felt I had no choice given that the holidays were upon us and the kids needed to have something normal.” He added, “I will never vote for a Democrat again, and I may just not vote again, because it’s pointless.”

He’s talking about putting his house on the market in June. He said that even if they don’t move out of state, they’re going to just rent. His plan is to get a small as possible, pay off debt, and not buy anything that isn’t absolutely necessary. No new phones, new cars, new TVs, washers or dryers, nothing in the durable goods category at all. He’s dropping cable after the first of the year and says everyone will just have to get used to watching what stations they can get with an antenna or what can be streamed over the internet. He’s not angry per se. He’s just wounded in spirit and has no knowledge or support to help him treat those wounds.

Thankfully none of my friends have reported ill effects from the vaccine itself. But it raised the question. If they had, would they have been able to sue their employers for enforcing a mandate that is not law, has been suspended, and may be rescinded by court action? I’m guessing not. I’d bet that the company would say, “We were only following The President’s order,” and the Government would say, “It wasn’t law so we have no responsibility.”

How many other workers have been so wounded? Could this be a part of why US productivity has taken a hit?

On the other side of the coin, there are friends who have drunken deep from the draught of fear porn. Their lives too have been irrevocably changed. Their Christmas cards or letters denote what they’ve not done, the trips or visits they cancelled. They speak with almost loving tones of their masking and not allowing people into their homes. They talk of their vaccinations, boosters, and socially distancing, as virtuous.

These are people who were active, and vibrant. They were healthy with so little risk as to be considered zero. Yet they are talking in their holiday letters are if they’re in their homes making signs to ward off evil.

None of this makes me want run out and get the vaccine. I don’t go to LA or Portland, or San Francisco, or New York, so I don’t want or need to comply with their NAZI vaccine papers or proof of negative infection.

To my friends in LA County, you’ll not have to worry about me darkening your doorsteps. I have no desire to deal with not being able to go into a bar or restaurant with you.

All I want is the facts. Give me hard data from which to make a decision!

Fortunately, someone has provided that very information.

The article is here and it’s interesting.

The person producing the article went at it from a partisan position. While I wouldn’t think this is partisan, this view provides some interesting data. It turns out that heavily Republican districts have a higher incidence of deaths from COVID. Not just cases.

The raw data further down in the article shows a higher death rate among unvaccinated people as well. The correlation tends to suggest that Republicans are more vaccine resistant than Democrats. That might make a lot of sense, given that most Republicans I’ve known over the years really hate the government telling them what to do.

In the highest Republican counties or states the COVID death rate is as high as 100 persons per 100000 versus 18 persons per 100000 dying in the bluest of the blue counties or states.

Okay, I can get my teeth into that data. The numbers still support that less than 1% of folks die from COVID. But it speaks to the efficacy of the vaccines themselves. When you pull the partisan evaluation out of the equation, and look only at deaths Unvaccinated versus vaccinated you get a little over a 4X decrease in death for those folks that are vaccinated.

That makes sense. It is data that allows an honest evaluation of COVID risk to Vaccine risk. Someone like me can look at this and say, “The odds of my dying from COVID are less than 1% and with the vaccine I can reduce those odds by approximately 75% which makes the vaccine worthwhile.

Then I can look at the odds of an adverse reaction to the vaccine based on the number of persons who have taken the same vaccine I’m considering, and determine if I’m comfortable with the odds.

From there I can weigh out both scenarios and make an informed risk assessment. That’s an assessment where my decision is mine and come hell or high water, I can defend my decision sleeping secure in the knowledge that I did the best research I could. I can own it and be proud that I did what I thought was in my best interest.

That’s all I’m asking for, and I’d bet that’s all the other vaccine hesitant are asking for as well.

This is why censorship is evil. If there had been open honest debate instead of censorship I’d bet that a lot of the vaccine hesitancy wouldn’t have been an issue.

Of course looking at one set of data doesn’t mean I’m running right out to get a vaccine. I’ll still go find additional confirming sources.

But it’s a welcome start.

Normally I like Fall.

This time of year is usually one of my favorites.

It’s a time of changing leaves, cool temperatures, and relative peace.

Not this year.

This year, it’s me against nature. It also signals that soon I’ll be trapped into being here another 5 months. Even though I have no immediate plans to get the hell out of California, it’s a psychological barrier. One simply doesn’t change homes in the snow. I did it once a long time ago and learned my lesson.

We’re having a cold snap that is impairing my ability to finish painting the trim of the house. I started this project and then injured my knee. I’d started the project in the narrow window between the completion of the repairs from the water damage and now.

I thought at the time, “it will be tight but I’ll have time to finish before Winter.” Then I hurt my knee and spent 3 weeks hobbling around like an old man barely able to stand up.

You know that you’re hurt bad when the dog keeps licking your foot and leg, and doesn’t even react when you head to the door. It’s like the dog is saying, “Dude, you can walk yourself, you sure as hell can’t walk me!”

The licking can be bothersome but it’s sweet in its way. The pup is just trying to make you feel better as he would another dog. I take it as a sign that he’s decided we’re a pack.

The knee is getting better daily. I’ve been able to do much of the project by chipping away at it. I’ll work until my knee says, “That’s enough,” I’ve made good progress but I’m worried that I won’t be able to complete the project before it’s too cold to finish painting. Did you know that paint wont set up correctly below certain temperatures? I didn’t, until I moved here.

The other winterizing project that I have yet to do, is cleaning out the gutters. That, like painting requires that I be on a ladder. The more time I spend on a ladder, the less time I have to actually do the project before the knee starts “Bidening” (Calling a lid on the day). That’s a project that has got to get done, because otherwise water backs up in the gutters and then freezes, causing problems throughout the entire Winter.

The last project for Winter, is annoying but can be done regardless of the temperature. Unfortunately, it also means that I have to be on a ladder and climbing around in the attic. (There’s that ladder thing again!)

I’ve got to get in the attic crawlspace and retape the ductwork. We had some work done last year up in the attic and I think one or more of the ducts got pushed around, perhaps creating leaks between the ductwork and the registers. It happens, I didn’t notice the problem until months after the workmen had left because their work was done in the time between needing to run either the A/C or the heat.

You can do ductwork stuff in the Summer with the roof broiling in the sun and the attic is 120°F or you can do it in the fall when attic temps are more reasonable. I’ve chosen the latter.

Thinking about it, I should also clean out the dryer vent. That may be a “today” kind of project because it’s 35°F outside and windy. (So, no painting today!) As a bonus, there’s no ladder required.

All of this is to say,

Welcome to Fall!

It also serves as an explanation of why I’ve not been blogging as much as usual.

I’ve scanned the news recently. Nothing much has changed.

I could sum up the news like this, “We’re all gonna die, the government is out of money, one group or another is pissed off about something, and everything is going to hell in a hand basket.”

There, now you don’t have to watch the evening news. Instead, turn off the TV, shut down the computer, put the phone aside, and go read a good book.

Until next time… I hope you’re having a nice Fall season.

The Storm

So the storm was everything the National Weather Service claimed it would be.

Wind, rain/sleet, and snow. Lots of snow. About 16 inches at my elevation.

The front deck 1/29/2021

It’s not all that unusual to get snows like this here. What is unusual is that we’ve had essentially 3 back to back over the course of a few days.

The street. which was clear down to the pavement on 1/28/2021 and is buried again on 1/29/2021

The problem with our street is that it’s not county maintained. Meaning the residents have to clear it ourselves.

So we all pull out shovels, snow blowers, and one of the neighbors has an ATV with a snow blade on the front. Unfortunately, in the last snow he broke a shear pin and is waiting for the replacement which is on it’s way from MN via the USPS. He’s thinking that he won’t get it until spring.

The snow mound that is my front yard.

So after a full day of working, resting, & working again I can see most of the driveway again. One of the neighbors is at the far end of the street running his snow blower. What usually happens is all the neighbors fire up their snow blowers at the same time and the begin a carefully choreographed series of passes on the street.

That doesn’t begin until driveways are cleared otherwise we end up losing track of the driveways and have to do more work to find ’em and clear ’em. Something you don’t find out until you’ve regularly used a snow blower is, after you’ve blown the snow with a snow blower, it tends to compress into ice. So if you bury someones driveway sometimes the only solution is a pick and standard shovel instead of the traditional snow shovel.

One other really nice thing is that if one of the neighbors is away, and there’s a snow storm those of us who are home clear their driveway so they have a place to park when they get back. It’s not something any of us have talked about or agreed upon. It’s just a nice unwritten rule of kindness.

The other rule is that if the storm was really bad and your driveway isn’t cleared yet, you park in one of the neighbors drives until we get to yours. That rule is also unwritten and one of the nice things about our street.

We also have a common bag of various sized snowblower shear pins, unfortunately, none of us had anything big enough for the neighbors ATV snow blade. Dang IT!!!!

A shot of the house after clearing the road

In the picture above, the dark streaks are where the new guy on the block ingested some of the dirt from my yard. Ooops! No matter, the yard will be fine, but his snow blower was very unhappy for a couple of minutes. This picture isn’t super pretty but it gives a good reference of ground level and the relative depth of the snow.

Fortunately, we haven’t had to contend with snowplayers today. They have a bad habit of turning onto our road then freaking out when the realize 2 important things. 1) It’s a dead end. 2) It’s very narrow and there isn’t anyplace to turn around unless there happens to be an open driveway.

Usually they end up having to back down out onto the wider county maintained road. Which is also full of snowplayers trying to get up that road to its dead end, or it’s full of those who have found out that there is no way through and turned around.

This is why we don’t like snowplayers up in the neighborhoods. There are lots of little roads that dead end. Lots of these people come up here thinking the whole town is a snow/ski area, and they refuse to read signs that are clearly posted saying that a road is a dead end, or following the larger and equally clear signs that point to the designated play areas, and ski resorts.

They get tired of crawling along on the main, and well maintained road and tend to turn onto the first side road they see. Then the police get involved and start running them out of the neighborhoods, writing tickets, and towing vehicles.

Us locals, stop with a smile and present our drivers licenses (to prove our address and get waved on through police checkpoints). Sometimes we’ll provide thermos refills for the officer on duty. Especially if we notice an officer who hasn’t had a break in many hours working in the cold.

I’m afraid that tomorrow (Saturday) will bring a ton of rude, giddy, idiots, which will make all of the neighbors weekends a pain in the ass. We tend to take turns shooing the idiots off our lawns, out of the streets, and out of the reforestation project(s).

Then we spend Monday and Tuesday picking up all the trash. Broken plastic sleds, paper, dirty diapers, gloves, shoes, face masks, and the amazing detritus of human beings.

I am amused by the irony as well. These are the same people who would scream at the top of their lungs against pulling out of the Paris climate accords, but think nothing of trashing a pristine mountain town.

After all, they don’t have to actually clean up the mess. They don’t have to call the forestry service to help sick wildlife. They don’t have to worry about anything do they? It’s someone else’s problem when they drive back down the mountain.

Following are some pictures that illustrate the point really well.

A local creek about 10 miles from home. This picture was taken 15 year ago before the road to the creek was paved.
The same area about 4 years ago.
There is a creek under these uprooted trees. People were climbing the trees and then using their weight to pull them over. Seems the people wanted a bridge so they could cross a creek that has at best 10 inches of water in it during the Summer.
Filthy Humans!

If I sound harsh about people. It’s because I see the kind of wanton destruction and disregard all too many people have for the “Natural” surroundings that I live in and appreciate.

Ironically, lots of these people come to these wilder places to, “Get away from the city,” Unfortunately, they bring all their bad habits with them and just expect it to be magically cleaned up every night.

Before anyone talks to me about Climate change, the Green New Deal, Carbon taxes, or my gas powered car. They better have a simple appreciation of what’s happening every day in their local wilderness.

Cause if they don’t… I’m going to eat them for lunch!

Sorry, I digressed…

I’m not a traditional tree hugging Eco-Warrior. I’m just a guy who likes nature and gets really mad about the hypocrisy of people who are willing to pay stupid taxes and force everyone else to do the same, terrorizing us with dire warnings about Climate Change.

Too many of these people have never in their lives spent a day carrying a big trash bag through a forest picking up other people’s trash. Or tending a trampled sapling, or scrubbing graffiti off of rocks, or looking after an animal that ingested something left behind by a thoughtless person.

I do all of these things, and for the record, I’m not part of any organization. There’s no-one taking pictures. The big garbage bag ends up in my trash or recycling bin which ever is appropriate. I do this because I believe it’s the right thing to do, and should be done for no other reason. I’m the human walking in the forest seeing all the mess. Rather than tut-tut about it, I’ve got two hands, and a backpack with at least one trash bag inside.

Leave no trace. Leave a place better than you found it. That way the next person on the trail can appreciate the beauty and hopefully they’re operating on the same philosophy.

I’m a big believer that until you tend to the local issues you can’t really address the global ones. I also believe that if everyone simply tended to their own local issues, the world would be a lot prettier and healthier.

After all anyone can write a check, or click “Like” and feel smug about it. Put some skin in the game if you’re really serious.

Just my two cents. What I’ve said may not be right. It may not be right for you in particular. But It’s right for me and given that I do have skin in the game I’m not going to apologize if what I’ve said offends anyone.

Contrary to what you might think…

This is not a picture of an unhappy dog. This is a picture of a dog who’s been outside in 15 inches of snow and is looking for something else to get into.

I’ve never had a dog that loved the snow like Jesse. All my previous dogs enjoyed the snow, but after 1/2 hour or so they were ready to come in, get a treat, get warm and snooze.

That is not the case with Jesse. He comes alive in the snow, it’s all a game and he’s more than content to be outside for hours on end. He digs, rolls, has zoomies, plays with toys, and then curls up watching the world from one of his favorite spots on the decks or near the front gate.

Today is a little different in that he’s not wanting to come in. The last couple of snowfalls haven’t been that impressive. Just a couple of inches and while he’s enjoyed himself he’s been just as happy inside as out. Today on the other hand it’s 29°F and the snow is deep. He’s preferred to be outside running around and when I’ve offered to let him in, he’s just looked at me and run some more.

That’s a good thing because he’s not getting his usual 3 miles of walking today. He’s built for the snow, and plows through it like it’s nothing. I on the other hand, don’t do well in deep snow.

This photo is of the snow we woke up to this morning. 15 inches. We’d already cleared 3 to 5 inches off the decks and the driveway on Saturday. So out in the yard where he’s playing there’s probably at least 18 inches of snow, and the trail that he and I walk every day is going to have at least that much.

I don’t do very well in snow that’s above my knees.

You can see how deep it is in this picture, after clearing the drive and part of the street.

The weather report says that we’re to expect heavy snow and perhaps even thunder and high winds into Monday.

This blog will post automatically early on Monday. I’m writing it on Sunday Morning.

This morning we had power glitches and I’ve had to shut down some of the devices on my local network. With the predicted high winds and snow I’m writing ahead in case the power goes off on Sunday night.

I must admit that the snow is pretty. I wish I wasn’t the one out there clearing it and that the roads were clear. On the other hand, We haven’t had any snow players today so it’s been a quiet Sunday for a change. Saturday morning, I looked out in my front yard and there were complete strangers tromping across my front lawn to pose for pictures and movies on my wooden bench. I ran them off. It is just unbelievable what people think is okay just because there’s snow on the ground.

Coming back from a walk with Jesse, a guy asked me if I had a lighter. He was parked in the yard of a house for sale and wanted to build a fire… On the lawn! I pointed out that he and his party were on private property, that I didn’t have a lighter, and generally speaking folk in these mountains take a very dim view of open fires.

His response, “Yeah I know it’s private property but we weren’t doing anything.”

Then why do you need a lighter???

One of my neighbors came around the corner on an ATV. He’d been using a blade on the front to clear the street . He stopped and told me that he’d had a lot of success for the first time he’d tried the blade.

We chatted a bit and I pointed out that it was great that our street was clear but that we might regret it because of the jackass snowplayers having access to our yards and driveways.

It was at this point Mr. “Have you got a lighter?” decided to pack up and leave.

It could have been that my neighbor and I was chatting about jackass snowplayers, or it could have been that my neighbor has a very nice confederate flag on the front of his ATV.

Perhaps Mr. “Have you got a lighter?” decided that our neighborhood wasn’t to his liking.

Don’t know, don’t care!

Then there were the morons that decided to have their wedding in the snow just off HWY2, (The main road into town,) they thought nothing of blocking the road with their wedding guests and cars. 3500 People in the town were going nowhere, including EMTs!

Apparently, that didn’t even occur to the thoughtless bride and groom. After all… It’s was their day. I couldn’t help but wonder if a snow wedding was the brides way of telling the groom what their marriage was going to be like. You know… Cold as Ice!

In all though, the day was pretty snowplayer free. Turns out, the reason was that there was a 7 car pileup on Highway 138. I guess that put the kibosh on all the other dingbats getting up to the mountains on Saturday.

Sunday has thus far been pretty clear too. Chain requirements and CHP inspection points will do that…

We’ll see what Monday brings.

If there’s power, I’ll update with Monday’s events.


01/27/2021

I missed the update I promised. Between snow clearing and trying to entertain the dog it’s been a busy couple of days.

Monday was a grey and cloudy day. It was bitterly cold, windy and the main focus was just trying to get the driveway, decks, and walkways clear.

Tuesday was bright and sunny it was still 29° F but bearable as long as you stayed in the sun. So later in the afternoon I took the dog for a walk.

As you can see he was very happy to be out of the yard and having a more routine day.

I should note that he’s prancing on a ridge of rocks. In reality the snow on either side of the ridge he is walking on is quite deep. Above my knees in many cases and were it not for the sledding path made by some of the local children It would have been a miserable slog for me. As it was I got a heck of a workout. Jesse did too and I think part of his happiness is that he remembered the rocks under the snow and wasn’t buried up to his shoulders in fluffy dry powder.

This is not to say that he wasn’t snow diving on a fairly regular basis. There were a couple of snowbanks where he jumped as if he was planning to land on top and then look like king of the hill. Things didn’t go as he planned. Instead of landing on top of a solid bank of snow, he disappeared completely.

I was standing there with a leash disappearing into a snowbank making it look like I was walking a snowbank instead of a dog. After a few seconds, Jesse would explode out of the top of the snowbank, so now it looked like a small volcano. Then he’d do this goofy bunny hop to get clear of the snowbank, once clear he’d come running over to me with that laughing look he gets.

It wasn’t until we got to the bottom of the hill that he started to act tired. He’s strong but even for him pushing through deep snow is a lot of work. We walked back up the hill at a slow but even pace and Jesse was pretty much right by my side. He’d occasionally bury his head in the snow trying to catch some illusive smell.

When we got back to the house, Jesse attained his “King of the Hill” Status in our front yard.

The snow pile in the yard is about 8 feet tall but is made up of fairly hard compressed snow because it was piled there by the snow blower.

Tonight, Wednesday we’re expecting more snow going into Thursday and Friday. At this point none of us on the street are sure where we will pile the additional snowfall.

8 feet is about as tall as the snowblowers can pitch the stuff. I suspect that after the next waves of snow, I’m going to have to use a shovel to redistribute the existing pile more evenly over the yard.

That should allow us to clear the driveway and our section of the street again. Then it’s fingers crossed that the next 10 days provide us with warmer temps and sunshine to clear the ice patches.

Enough Already!

That’s it! Let’s take all social media platforms down! Yeah I said it!

All podcasts, Twitter, FaceBook, Gab, and all the rest!

I’m sick of seeing yet another self righteous pundit, news organization, or whoever the hell else, BITCHING about people espousing views that they don’t agree with. We’re supposed to be a free country, we’re supposed to have freedom of speech, we’re supposed to respect people whose views are different from our own. RIGHT?

Apparently NOT!

The latest two examples of violation of free speech is this article in Breitbart. Followed by this little gem from The Washington Post.

The Breitbart piece talks about the AP, yeah, you read that right… The Associated Press making the case that Podcasts should be de-platformed due to “incitement” on these podcasts.

The Washington Post article describes Apple being sued in federal court to force Apple to de-platform Telegram. Telegram, don’t ya know is where all the Parler users went after finding out that Parler was going to be screwed over by Amazon Web Services.

Here’s a idea. Shut it all down. Our phone batteries would last longer.

That would have the benefit of keeping all the village idiots in their own villages. If you stop them from talking to each other, you’ll prevent them from gathering steam. You might also have a side benefit that if they never meet, we don’t have to worry about an every increasing number of idiots that we’ll have to put up with and take care of.

Then we have this brilliant Senior News analyst from CNN (Communist News Network) who’s trying to float a balloon about censoring OAN & Newsmax.

Both of which appear to be conservative oriented news broadcasters. I’ve not watched either of them, because by the time I learned about them, I was too disgusted by the way the country was heading after the 2020 election to give a rancid fuck.

This is so similar to the way that the NAZI party came to power I can’t stand it. If they actually taught history in schools today and didn’t sanitize the brutality of various regimes people would know this.

First control the narrative, then control the media, then censor anyone with differing beliefs, cast everyone who doesn’t agree with you as anti-(insert the noun de jour) BLM, ANTIFA, Left, Progressive, Equality, Woman, blah, blah, blah. Then take over the country. Next build the camps, then try the re-education, and finally kill EVERYONE!

But… humanity appears doomed to repeat the horrors of the past.

A couple thousand years from now, in a barren wasteland some guy will find a TESLA buried in the sand. People will oooh and ahhh and decide it’s from Aliens. One curious person in the group will recognize that it was made by humans, be curious about how we fell so far, and the whole process of a civilization crawling out of the muck will start over.

Maybe they’ll get it right the next time.

The fall of America to communism or socialism won’t destroy all civilization. But the pervasive backwards thinking cult of leftism in the world just might.