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A woman discovers the naked truth about herself  HALLOWEEN IN THE TIME OF COVID This past Thursday night Halloween was celebrated in my neighborhood. Or I should say mostly not celebrated, as all but a few houses on my street were dark and shuttered against participating in Halloween during the COVID-19 epidemic. And, had I had my say, our house would have been among the unlit Halloween-non-participating affiliation. Which is saying a lot, because I love Halloween. I love the decorated houses and the neighbors out on their porches or on the sidewalk chatting. I love the activity, the parade of young trick-or-treaters bringing the street to life. And I especially love sitting on the front porch handing out treats to the little ones and even the the not-so-little ones, the serious expressions on the faces of the princesses, super-heroes, witches, ghosts, and animals and their polite, serious little voices - "say trick-or-treat," the older ones encourage their younger siblings - as they hold out their pillow cases and plastic pumpkin buckets and ask for their treats.  I guess it's that Halloween always brings me back to Halloweens long gone by when my own children were among the little trick-or-treaters.    But this year I was sadly prepared to add Halloween to the list of things that would have to be reliquished for the sake of safe social distancing during the pandemic. It was my hubby Tom who spotted the idea that was making the rounds on the internet for a contactless method of dispensing Halloween treats. It involved securing a length of pipe at an angle from the porch to the sidewalk to make a chute to transport candy from a safe disance directly into the bags of trick-or-treaters.  "I can make one of those," said Tom. And he did. He bought a ten-foot length of thin plastic 3" pipe from the hardware store and, because our porch lacks a railing, he decided to use a step latter and a stepping stool to anchor the pipe and create the necessary angle.  Tom figured that by standing on the second rung he would be high enough to reach the top of the ladder, from whence he'd shoot candy down into the open bags of the trick-or-treaters.   He secured the pipe to the ladder and the stool with duct tape and a little help from me.    If the result was in form perhaps a tad inelegant,  ...especially after Tom set up a line of barrier tape to ensure that social distancing was not breached,  ....it proved upon a trial run to be nonetheless perfectly functional.  And so we had our COVID-safe Halloween candy-dispensing set-up and were ready to receive trick-or-treaters. Still, though we'd built it, we weren't sure they would come.  And at first they didn't.   But then after a while, in spite of the rain, they did.    As for the candy chute, it was such an across-the-board hit with the trick-or-treaters,      ...that we will indubitably set it up for all future Halloweens, COVID or not. Hopefully not. 
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 About a week ago Tom and I were engaged in our post-breakfast morning routine of sitting at the kitchen table swapping sections of the New York Times and the Columbus Dispatch while exchanging occasional commentary on the news stories when my mate held up in one hand the folded section of newspaper he was reading. "For crying out loud," he said, smacking the paper with the back of his other hand, "what a bunch of..." "Of what?" I asked, looking up from the article I was absorbed in. But the word escaped him, this particular bunch apparently defying description. Rather he read aloud a few excerpts from the Associated Press article he'd been reading: "Moments after hearing an Idaho hospital was overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients and looking at sending people as far away as Seattle for care, members of a regional health department board voted Thursday to repeal a local mask mandate. 'Most of our medical surgical beds at Kootenai Health are full,' Panhandle Health District epidemiologist Jeff Lee told board members in the state’s third most populated county. 'We’re facing staff shortages, and we have a lot of physician fatigue. This has been going on for seven months — we’re tired,' Lee said. But the board voted 4-3 to end the mask mandate. Board members overseeing the operations of Idaho’s public health districts are appointed by county commissioners and not required to have any medical experience. Board member Walt Kirby said he was giving up on the idea of controlling the spread of coronavirus. 'I personally do not care whether anybody wears a mask or not. If they want to be dumb enough to walk around and expose themselves and others, that’s fine with me,' Kirby said. 'Nobody’s wearing the damned mask anyway. ... I’m sitting back and watching them catch it and die. Hopefully I’ll live through it.' Another board member, Allen Banks, denied COVID-19 exists." Tom put down the paper, looked at me and said, "Now what do you think of that?" I answered him with the word that popped into my head. "Colony Collapse." It seems there's a mysterious disorder that has been afflicting bee hives world-wide since the early 2000's, though it's been more prevalent this year than in previous years. Colony Collapse occurs when the majority of worker bees in a honeybee colony basically abandon their community responsibilities to the hive - in fact, they disappear - which results in the death of the worker bees and the surviving colony becoming so weakened that its remaining members are no longer able to sufficiently pollinate or produce honey, and so the whole colony eventually goes down.  It remains a mystery why a colony of bees would engage in behavior that is so mortally destructive to themselves and their hive, though scientists strongly suspect the main culprit to be an insidious orange parasite called the Varroa Mite,  ... that attaches itself to the honey bees, infects them, feeds off them, and eventually causes the downfall of their bee society. Now, we've learned over the past four years that some human communities are no less vulnerable to a certain orange parasite,  ...who has infected them and feeds off them as they make illogical choices that endanger their own well-being and that of their community. Take the behavior of the members of a Christian church in Moscow, Idaho, one of the towns located in the state's COVID epidemic hot zone, who stood maskless outside their City Hall singing in protest of a public health mask order,  ...while at the over-crowded area hospitals the over-worked, over-exhausted health care workers continue to put their own lives on the line fighting to save the lives of the COVID infected.  "Colony Collapse?" asked Tom. "Yeah," said I. "Colony Collapse." References
https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-idaho-boise-686fcd99fec93b7c0908f675617b3bfd https://magicvalley.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/north-idaho-hospitals-are-full-but-officials-refuse-mask-rules/article_d969178e-1b1e-5859-ada2-ebf2ec77ced5.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varroa_destructor https://www.agriculture.com/news/livestock/colony-collapse-toll-is-highest-in-four-years-for-us-honeybees Had enough Pumpkin Spice?  Try some really nice spice!  "EQUAL AND OPPOSITE REACTIONS" AND "HAIL MARY" ARE AVAILABLE ON AMAZON. HTTP://AMZN.TO/2XVCGRA HTTPS://WWW.AMZN.COM/1684334888 AUTUMN FINALE I can't say whether this autumn has been an exceptionally beautiful one here in Columbus, Ohio, or whether the delightfully balmy weather and gorgeous leafage are altogether typical but I just never noticed as much as I have this year. But then I've never before spent so much time walking around - and around and around - the neighborhood, breathing in the air while appreciating what a not-to-be-taken- for-granted gift it is to be able to pull in a good, deep breath of air. But mostly I look at the trees and the sky while I walk. And I snap pictures. Now it's late in October and though yesterday was another wonderfully warm, sunny autumn day, today it's predicted to rain and tomorrow the temperature will fall and soon the leaves will fade and follow. But a few days ago I did try to capture the beauty of an early morning when the sun was still on the rise so that the sky was as yet only the palest blue and the light was playing at the tops of the trees, leaving everything below in shadow. These days when we're denied so much of what is near and dear and normal to us we need to seek out whatever little daily joys we can. I'm no artist with a camera, but if anyone finds enjoyment in these few dozen attempts to fix in time the rise of a glorious fall morning, please feast away.                       Shortly after Donald Trump was released from the hospital following his seemingly miraculous recovery from COVID-19 he was he was back in front of the camera doing what sounded like a commercial for Regeneron,  ...the pharmaceuticals company that makes the experimental monoclonal antibody cocktail that Trump received as part of his multi-pronged COVID treatment.  Regeneron cocktails for every American, Donald Trump preached, "and you’re going to get ’em free.” He added, "We have hundreds of thousands of doses that are just about ready." This past Sunday Health and Human Services Director Alex Azar was on "Meet the Press" telling Americans to "Hang in there with us. We're so close. We're weeks away from monoclonal antibodies for you."  Those statements are at the moment dubious at best. The Regeneron monoclonal antibody cocktail is manufactured from two types of synthetic antibodies engineered in a lab from the cloned cells of mice and humans. The cocktail is still in the experimental stage and at this point it is difficult and expensive to make.  As of now Regeneron currently has 50,000 doses of the monoclonal antibody cocktail on hand for use in clinical trials, not "hundreds of thousands" of doses. And even if hundreds of thousands of doses of the drug existed, there are over 331 million people in the United States. (Eli Lilly, a competing drug manufacturer, was likewise producing a synthetic antibody treatment for COVID-19 but stopped the clinical trials when there arose a concern over the safety of the drug). And even if there were hundreds of millions of doses of Regeneron's monoclonal antibody cocktail available, and even if everyone could get a dose for free, how do we know at this point if this drug would be safe and suitable for everyone? "It's a cure," said Donald Trump of the monoclonal antibodies he received, and his Health and Human Services Director implied the same. But the Regeneron cocktail is not a cure for COVID. It's a treatment, and still an experimental one, at that. However, there is one thing that scientists have concluded about the treatment that Trump was given: being infused with those synthetic antibodies appears to have prevented his body from producing its own COVID-19 antibodies, the antibodies necessary for long term immunity from the recurrence of the coronavirus infection. And, unlike the natural antibodies produced by a person's own cells, synthetic antibodies introduced into the bloodstream will fade away in a few weeks. And so if after that period one is exposed a second time to the coronavirus, one will be left without the protection that one's own antibodies might have provided. In Donald Trump's case, not only was his antibody production suppressed by the infusion of the monoclonal antibody cocktail, he was also given the steroid dexamethasone to fight inflammation of his lung tissue. However dexamethasone also suppresses the body's natural immune response, including its ability to make antibodies. And so, between the monoclonal antibody cocktail and the dexamethasone, added to the fact that older people and men have weaker immune systems and subsequently less ability to generate antibodies, Donald Trump may have recovered from his case of COVID-19, but he is hardly, as he's been declaring at rallies, immune to it. Unless maybe he continues to receive monthly doses of the monoclonal antibody cocktail to keep his body replete with synthetic antibodies. But who even knows at this point what the side effects might be of the long-term use of this still experimental drug? Who can say for sure if it was even, in fact, the Regeneron cocktail that cured Trump? After all, along with that drug treatment he was also given the dexamethasone, Remdesivir, zinc, vitamin D and the generic version of Pepcid, the heartburn drug. Right now we're all wishing for a silver bullet. Unfortunately we have President who's always been just as happy to dazzle us with fool's gold. References
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/14/health/coronavirus-trump.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/18/us/virus-warning-vaccine-Azar.html https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/heres-what-known-about-president-donald-trump-s-covid-19-treatment https://www.vox.com/21507357/regeneron-covid-antibody-cocktail-free-trump https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/oct/09/monoclonal-coronavirus-cocktails-all-free-not-simp/ https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/08/trump-free-antibody-treatments-427999 https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/10/trumps-regeneron-antibodies-covid/616683/ Had enough Pumpkin Spice?  Try a nicer spice!  "EQUAL AND OPPOSITE REACTIONS" AND "HAIL MARY" ARE AVAILABLE ON AMAZON. HTTP://AMZN.TO/2XVCGRA HTTPS://WWW.AMZN.COM/1684334888 WE THE VOTERS According to the Columbus Dispatch, since early voting began on October 6 over 20,000 people have cast their ballots in Franklin County - which comprises metropolitan Columbus - alone. Yesterday Tom and I joined their ranks. It was around 9:30 am when we climbed into the car for the eight-mile trip to the Franklin County Board of Elections, to where we had decided to hand-carry our absentee ballots. It felt strange climbing into the car together, we hadn't gone out anywhere together in such a long time. Not that we don't run our separate errands these days, me mostly to the supermarket, Tom mostly to Home Depot or the local hardware store to buy supplies for the home improvement projects he's undertaken over this past homebound summer. But we don't go on outings together anymore, which made this outing feel for a moment like the good old days when we used to go places: to the movies, out to lunch or dinner, on a trip. And though this trip was none of those, still it was one we'd been anticipating, and on this beautiful, balmy October morning,    ...we couldn't help but feel in good spirits, full of hope, and thankful that Ohio has a relatively sensible, accessible election process. Not perfect, mayhaps, but relatively accessible and sensible. For this upcoming election, for example, every registered voter in Ohio was sent an absentee ballot request form.  If one wishes to request an absentee ballot, one fills out and returns the application by mail by the October 31 deadline. The office of the Ohio Secretary of State began sending out the absentee ballots the first week in October and the ballots can be returned: 1. By mail, and must be postmarked by November 2 and received by the local boards of election by November 13, or 2. In person to the drop box at one's county board of elections by election day, November 3.  The other voting options in Ohio are early in person voting, which began on October 6, at one's county board of elections or, of course, in person on election day at one's precinct polling location. So, in Ohio one has options and plenty of time to vote. And here in Ohio, as in other states that offer the option, the early in person voting has taken off like a rocket, as Tom and I witnessed first-hand when we dropped off our ballots at the Franklin County Board of Elections. The Franklin County Board of Elections is located in Columbus on Morse Road, a busy six-lane highway that cuts east-west across the northern part of the city. It's located in what used to be a Kohl's department store in a vast, sprawling strip-mall with a vast, sprawling parking lot.  Make that a huge parking lot. However, when we arrived around 10 am there was a line on Morse Road to get into the parking lot. That parking lot - that huge parking lot - was all parked up,  ...and people were driving up and down the aisles looking for parking spots. We saw people walking across Morse Road, apparently having parked their cars in the strip mall parking lot across the highway from the Board of Elections. As for the line to the early voting center, it was long.  It was very long.  It snaked the length of the buildings to the end of the strip mall,  ...then around the corner behind the buildings,  ...to the end of the buildings where there was a fence that divided the parking lot from the street. It appeared that people were beginning to line up along the fence  The line appeared to be a good quarter mile long. However, we'd hear that the voters were moving along at the rate of 500 per hour and that, despite the crowd of people, the wait wasn't unbearable. As for the ballot drop-box, it was located in a tent in the parking lot and was attended by several workers.  There were two lanes for traffic with a worker for each lane. We handed our ballots to a worker, who then deposited them into the box,   ...a more secure system than having people drop their own ballots. The line for the ballot drop box was not long, and we waited only a few minutes. The real draw the morning we were there was the in-person voting.  And not only the morning we were there. In truth, the above pictures were not taken by me - alas, in my excitement and amazement I'd forgotten to snap some shots until we were driving away and here, I'm mortified to admit, is the only image I managed to capture:  (Sigh). But though the above pictures that I snagged from online are of earlier days, what I described is what we saw yesterday, and these pictures show the same images as we saw yesterday - almost a week after early voting began. And by the way, of the 20,000-plus votes cast in Franklin County as of yesterday, 55% were Democrat, 6% Republican, and 39% unaffiliated. Fingers crossed. References:
https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/10/13/franklin-county-early-voters-skyrocket-20-000-biden-airs-new-ads-while-donald-trump-remains-dark/5976859002/ https://www.ohiosos.gov/publications/2020-elections-calendar/   "EQUAL AND OPPOSITE REACTIONS" AND "HAIL MARY" ARE AVAILABLE ON AMAZON. THE TORTOISE SNUGGLERS Let's face it, everybody needs a little dose of cheer these days. And while we all enjoyed the fly on Mike Pence's head last night during his debate with Kamala Harris,  ...we here in Columbus, Ohio were treated to a nice little pick-me-up yesterday morning when we turned to the front page of the Metro section of the Columbus Dispatch. Framed by stories of another shooting and a rise in local domestic and gun violence was a different kind of story: one about a group of volunteers whose job and joy it is to snuggle with and otherwise pamper the giant tortoises at the Columbus Zoo. Bubba and and Sonny, born 73 and 53 years ago respectively on islands in the Indian Ocean, love them some TLC, and members of a group known around the zoo as the "Tortoise Snugglers" come to the giant tortoises three times a week to provide them some. Volunteers such as Peggy Heffemire,  ...will spend several hours at a stretch giving Bubba and Sonny affection, attention, snuggles, neck and leg rubs, and they brush their shells. Ms. Heffemire spoke to the Dispatch of how the tortoises, who relish human interaction, react to the attention, how it stimulates them and increases their appetites. "They respond to us. They stand up and start moving around."  "I constantly talk to the tortoises," said Ms. Heffemire. "I greet them, ask them how they are, tell them how wonderful they are, talk about current events, the weather, etc. Sometimes I sing; the animal care staff will play music for them." She said that the key to being a successful volunteer is patience and a positive attitude. But there has to be more to it. Something that comes from the heart. I'll just end this little story by saying God bless these kind volunteers who are a blessing to these gentle giant creatures. In a world where kindness and gentleness are in such short supply, maybe what the world needs now is more Tortoise Snugglers.  Reference:
https://www.dispatch.com/story/lifestyle/2020/10/06/powell-woman-describes-what-its-like-tortoise-snuggler/5877403002/ Donald Trump warned that they'd be coming to invade the suburbs. For the upscale Columbus, Ohio suburb of New Albany that dire prediction came true over the weekend when they invaded the town. Except that this "they" turned out not to be the dreaded "they" that Donald Trump had been referring to; Last Saturday New Albany, Ohio was invaded by none other than...the Proud Boys.  Now, for those who are still a little foggy on exactly who and what the Proud Boys are after Donald Trump's shout-out to them during the Presidential candidates' debate last week,  ...which has energized and empowered them and put them in ascendance,  ...the Proud Boys are, according to Wikipedia, "a far-right, neo-fascist, and male-only organization affiliated with white supremacists that promotes and engages in political violence. It is based in the United States and also has a presence in Canada...The group can be described as violent, nationalistic, Islamophobic, transphobic and misogynistic." The FBI has labeled the Proud Boys an extremist group with ties to white nationalism and the Southern Poverty Law Center has named them a hate group. It was a former Proud Boy who organized the White Supremacist Neo-Nazi "Unite the Right" march in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.  That being said, there are nonetheless some Black members of the Proud Boys as well as a sub-group who call themselves the Proud Boys' Girls. Go figure.  As for New Albany, Ohio, this is a small, family-friendly town distinctive for its mostly red-brick Georgian-style architecture, where the streets are nice,   ...the parks and meadows are nice,     ...the schools are nice,    ...and all the school buildings are on the same campus.  The houses are nice,    ...the mansions are nice,     ...including that of Les Wexner, founder of The Limited.  Even the New Albany police station is nice.  The people who live there love New Albany. The people who don't live there love New Albany. In 2015 and again in 2018 Business Insider named New Albany the best suburb in America. And last Saturday it was upon this idyllic little spot on the map that the Proud Boys swooped for a pro-Trump rally and protest against...well, anything that wasn't pro-Trump. The Proud Boys started out with the rally, a Trump-Train parade of vehicles through downtown. Next they took to the streets of New Albany, wearing their signature black and gold Fred Perry polo shirts,   ...chanting, singing, and shouting through bullhorns;  ...flashing their White Power symbol;     ...carrying banners and signs and waving flags,    ...including the flag of Israel.  I don't know what the significance of the Israeli flag was, unless it was a reference to the sizable Jewish population living in New Albany. After their march the Proud Boys lingered in the square,  ...then perambulated to the park for a group photo op.  And for all the noise and spectacle the Proud Boys brought to the town of New Albany last Saturday afternoon, as it turned out, except for the Proud Boys themselves, the streets of New Albany were empty that day. It seems that the Mayor of New Albany had alerted the populace to avoid the Proud Boys rally and protest and they did. As one Proud Boy summed it up through his bull horn:  "They knew we were coming. They didn't show. They know they would lose. They send out their photographers and their doxers (journalists). Because they're scumbags." And so, except for members of the press and a few sympathetic drivers-by,  ...the Proud Boys ended up entertaining only themselves.   However later that day, after the Proud Boys had scattered and slithered back to from whence they'd originated, the citizens of New Albany returned to their streets and a couple of youngsters made a small but powerful statement of their own.  And New Albany remains a nice place.  References:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzz0L_KL1pg https://blog.jasonopland.com/new-albany-ohio-is-the-best-suburb-in-america/ https://newalbanycompany.com/new-albany-named-in-usa-todays-2019-best-cities-to-live-list/ https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=New%20Albany%2C%20&epa=SEARCH_BOX https://abc6onyourside.com/news/local/2-protests-in-new-albany-on-saturday https://craigcalcaterra.com/blog/the-proud-boys-come-to-new-albany/amp/?__twitter_impression=true&fbclid=IwAR01rIZ4Cdn6cq3m00xC8B7D6nnc_ZCvDKygFpAT972P1EauGwJ8HpGHROI  What to say - besides wishing him a speedy recovery for a number of reasons - about Donald Trump catching COVID-19? Should this be called karma? Just deserts? A random act of cosmic unkindness? Or how about what it actually is: plain old irrefutable, inescapable science? Consider: The science of COVID is that it is spread in respiratory droplets that travel from person to person, land in the mouth and nose and are subsequently inhaled into the lungs. If you frequent close crowds of unmasked people in the midst of a COVID epidemic you are bound to be infected with the virus. Ignore the science if you want, deny it if you want, spin it any way you want, reflect as upbeat an attitude as you want, and even prop a whole phalanx of doctors behind you if you want,  ...none of that makes any difference. It is what it is, as Donald Trump himself has declared,  ...and has now learned first hand. I suppose you could say that science is nature's karma. Still, considering Donald Trump's careless behavior regarding crowds and mask-flouting, he is lucky that he didn't get sick sooner. And here's something else Donald Trump is lucky about: Disregarding the meaningless prattle on social media, Donald Trump is lucky that the rest of the world is not as cruel and lowbred as he is. For, while he and his minions would have been having been whirling in a viciously gleeful celebration, a theater of mockery and meanness, had it been his opponent Joe Biden who'd been infected, Biden's public response to the news of his opponent's illness was to offer a prayer for Donald and Melania Trump to make a quick and full recovery.  Biden has further removed all negative campaign ads at this time, even though Trump has not reciprocated by doing the same. Barak Obama has likewise wished the Trumps a speedy recovery.  So has Kamala Harris.  So has Stephen Colbert.  So has the New York Times.  Certainly None of that is Mr. Trump's karma. It's simply human decency.
 "HAIL MARY" BY PATTI LISZKAY IS AVAILABLE ON AMAZON |
"Equal And Opposite Reactions"
by Patti Liszkay Buy it on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa or from The Book Loft of German Village, Columbus, Ohio 
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