The Usual Stuff Again

This was last night.  It's always such a surprise to me how far the sun moves north at sunset.  Soon the setting sun will require standing in the middle of the street to photograph.  Knowing that the rattlesnakes enjoy the heat rising from the asphalt may put an end to taking sunset pictures.

Two new masks.  Now we can go to two stores and take the first mask off while driving to the second.  Why does one's nose immediately itch after putting on a mask one is forbidden to touch?  We're not perfect on the no touching, but we're getting better.  It amuses me how they look like a swim suit top when leaned up on each other.

Our prickly pear is blooming.  That plant is so old and so decrepit that we were seriously considering taking it out and replacing him.  However, for the second year in a row, he's putting on an impressive bloom.  I think the fact that we water him has something to do with it.  But he does look pretty ragged.

This is the impulse buy cactus we had planted recently.  He's very happy to be here, I did not expect him to bloom for a few years.

We were up at 6:15 in the morning to make it to senior time at Fry's.  Still no toilet paper.  Their produce is pretty good, they have eggs and chicken.  So we were pretty tired.  We got home and went back to bed.  How sad is that.  Later we went for a short hike. 

A bird on a saguaro.  If you look lower down you can see where birds have pecked holes for nests in the cactus.

In news of the pandemic, it's becoming widely known that FEMA is indeed confiscating equipment bought and paid for by the states.  Some of it is given to Blue Flame Medical who then sells it back to the states.  The states get to pay for it twice.  Some of it is given to states with Republican Governors who have been sufficiently deferential to the president.  Today the president said that there is no reason for testing, we'll just open up all the doors to all of the businesses and it will be fine.  He's going to kill us all.


Other than this paltry offering, I have zippity doo dah to say.

There Was Something to See Here Today

Greeting Fellow Earthlings!  How are you doing in the time of Covid-19?  I'm pretty much unchanged, really pissed off and somewhat scared.  The pandemic is not how any of us envisioned spending our golden years.  Here are pretty pictures for us all.

This was two nights ago.  We had a very pink sunset.

This was the pink moon last night.  It was somewhat underwhelming.  Last year's worm moon seemed larger, and I was able to capture the lunar seas.

Cactus down the street.  They really are that color.  Look at the spines on that plant.  Weeding near or under it will be life threatening.

I thought this was a good tweet.  The original version of the chart had labelled the blue circle "wears masks" as if to say wearing masks was the cause of fewer cases.

We did grocery pickup at Safeway today.  It was a waste of time.  No chicken, at all; no zucchini, no a bunch of stuff.  The lady who loaded the car said there had been toilet paper on the shelves, so I grabbed my bandana and went in, but to no avail.  Someday...

This afternoon we had this:

A Pima County Sheriff's officer parked across the street and went hustling out in to the desert.  He was moving fast.

An ambulance went down the street, followed by this.

Finally, there was the technical rescue team.

We were tied up with the lady who came to measure three of our giant windows for screens that block 90% of the UV.  Facing west is hot!  Anyway, we went down to gawk after she left.  They did bring someone out of the desert on a stretcher.  It's a cool device, it's a gurney with a frame connected to one wheel so they can get you out.  They loaded up the person, and did not go out with sirens blazing, so it must not have been too awful, what ever it was that happened.

I'm pretty happy to know they will mount that kind of response.  The fire department is very close to us.  They're the ones that will come and remove rattlesnakes and gila monsters from your yard.  They make the new guys do it.

ABC news put up an interesting article about when it was known that Covid-19 would be a problem.

As far back as late November, U.S. intelligence officials were warning that a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region, changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population, according to four sources briefed on the secret reporting. 

From that warning in November, the sources described repeated briefings through December for policy-makers and decision-makers across the federal government as well as the National Security Council at the White House. All of that culminated with a detailed explanation of the problem that appeared in the President’s Daily Brief of intelligence matters in early January, the sources said. For something to have appeared in the PDB, it would have had to go through weeks of vetting and analysis, according to people who have worked on presidential briefings in both Republican and Democratic administrations.

It was in the President's Daily Brief in early January.  January!  What if they had begun then?  December would have been better, but January would be better than what we got.

Other than this brief bit of excitement, we're all still bored spitless.  I finished up three masks today.  The second pleated mask is also uncomfortable, so it's not due to the fabric in the first pleated attempt.  Quilt fabric just does not feel very good against one's face.  We like the flannel much better. Once my next shipment of shoe laces arrives, I believe I will make another two. 

Stuff in General

We rode the bikes yesterday, not that long and not that far.  However, I've once again lost the calluses on my ischial tuberosities.  Today would not have been a good riding day.  After spending too much time this morning reading about the horror show in our nation's capitol, I decided to make a new mask pattern.  It's a pleated mask.  It's really uncomfortable.  I'm not sure if the fabric was at fault or what.  The first two are lined with flannel which may have something to do with how good they feel.  Tomorrow I will return to the complicated, but comfortable, pattern.  Good thing I put fabric in storage for those 11 years we were out of a house, I have much flannel and much quilting 100% cotton.

Here is another angle of the bougainvillea.  I am so taken by how good he looks and how fast he came back from being half dead.  Each year we have to remind ourselves that they grow like weeds.

This is a pressure oil can, it's like a pump.  Someone has deposited it on top of our community mailbox and marked it as free.  This looks like littering to me.  Why don't they put it on Nextdoor? Or why don't they just put it in the trash.

This is attached to one of the step through gates into Tucson Mountain Park.  Eternal vigilance is required.

More cactus beauty.

I think my brain has changed in my dotage.  When I was working, I made tailored pants with zippers, and shirts with buttons, suits and other complicated things.  Following a printed pattern was not difficult for me.  Now I find that the written instructions for these masks are difficult to interpret, I resort to the instructional videos.  I guess my brain really is turning in to mush.

More Aggravation from Washington D.C.

Who is tired?  I'm tired, despite the fact that I'm spending far too much time in the house sitting in my chair.  My theory is that my level of anger and despair over the nincompoops currently running the government is sapping my life force.

I read an interesting piece yesterday morning.  It was opinion, but the writer's position was that people are really not hoarding toilet paper.  With the shelter in place orders, people are staying home.  Before the virus, these people went to work or went to school and used the restrooms at work or school.  Now they are home, using 40% more toilet paper than they used to.  I'm not sure where the 40% figure came from, but it sounds reasonable.  This was sort of a depressing piece, two days ago I read an opinion that said that soon there would be pallets of toilet paper in the store aisles that no one would want because their garages are full.  I liked that scenario much better.

I started this post yesterday, and was going to make it a complaint and Covid-19 free zone, however, I have stuff I want to remember.  But first, here are some pictures that are nice.

A sunset.

This is the bougainvillea in the front of the house.  He's deformed from the years of the agave growing in to his personal space.  It'll take awhile for him to become a uniformly shaped plant.

A prickly pear down the street.  It has a lot of buds, so the bloom should go for a long time.

On today's hike, I finally got a good ocotillo picture.

All righty then!  On to today's aggravation.

Jared Kushner.  Jared and his buds, none of who are medically trained have taken over the seventh floor of the HHS building and are doing who knows what.  What they are doing is issuing stupid commands, gumming up the works and interrupting the adults.  Jared is responsible for the president's disastrous speech from the oval office awhile ago.  But this, this is just crazy.

Please.  What, precisely is the federal government supposed to do with a medical equipment stockpile other than give it to the states that need the equipment?  Will the administration be opening their own hospitals?  Newsweek did a fairly scathing article on the whole thing.

Next up from Task and Purpose, an article about the firing of Captain Crozier.

Officially, the reason Navy Capt. Brett E. Crozier was fired on April 2 because he sent too many people a memo outlining the dire conditions aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt. That excuse is all the more laughable considering nothing in Crozier’s memo was classified.
Events moved quickly after the San Francisco Chronicle published a leaked copy of Crozier’s memo on March 31. The following day, Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly promised reporters that Crozier would not be made a sacrificial lamb.
“The fact that he wrote the letter to his chain of command to express his concerns would absolutely not result in any type of retaliation,” Modly said during a Pentagon news briefing. “This is what we want our commanding officers to be able to do.”
That didn’t last long. Roughly 24 hours later, Modly accused Crozier of being reckless by sending his memo to up to 30 people.

Today, in his daily televised rally, the president said that the Captain was wrong to have sent the memo, that he thought it looked terrible that he wrote the letter. "This is not a class on literature...He shouldn't be talking that way in a letter. He could call & ask & suggest."  One wonders how he should have communicated to the higher ups that they should evacuate the sick crewmen from the boat if not via a memo.  Also recall that Secretary of Defense Esper issued guidance some weeks ago that no military personnel should say anything that might embarrass the president.  I guess that includes trying to save the lives of one's shipmates.  Task and Purpose has another article up about how the president ordered the immediate firing of Captain Crozier.  I keep waiting to witness the president's "love" of the war fighters.

Task and Purpose is a worth while site.  It's listed on my side bar.  They have a piece about the time Jackie Robinson was court martialed.   I didn't know about that. 

WAPO has written a master class article about the failure of the administration in their response to Covid-19.  There is a clear and concise time line about what wasn't done and by whom.

This article, which retraces the failures over the first 70 days of the coronavirus crisis, is based on 47 interviews with administration officials, public health experts, intelligence officers and others involved in fighting the pandemic. Many spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information and decisions.

I'm hoping it's not behind the paywall as are many of their Covid-19 articles.  It's a long article, and would take days to synopsize. It really shows where and when the wheels came off the administration.

The president fired Michael Atkinson last night, apparently in the middle of the night.  Mr. Atkinson is the Inspector General who advanced the whistle blower's complaint to Adam Schiff's committee.  The office of the IG was created to do oversight.  IGs belong in various organizations, but they are to stand outside of the reporting structure, so that they can work independently to root out corruption and malfeasance.  This structure is being undermined by the current administration.  There are many open seats, and IGs that are in place are being told that they have no right to request disclosure from their organizations.  The president has already made it clear in his signing statement attached to the recent bail out package that he will not accept oversight on how the $500 billion dollar slush fund is distributed.  Of course, there is a WAPO article on this, too.

Say what you will about FEMA, and sometimes we say bad things that are justified, such as their response to Katrina.  However, they're what we've got.  At the moment we have Covid-19, what we will be having is the beginning of forest fire season and a predicted very active hurricane season.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, the office leading the federal government’s coronavirus response nationwide, is running short of employees who are trained in some of its most important front-line jobs, according to interviews with current and former officials.  At the same time, the agency has been forced to halt a major hiring initiative, and has closed training facilities to avoid spreading the infection.

The number of available personnel who are qualified to lead field operations has fallen to 19 from 44 in less than six weeks, and staff members have been pulled from responding to other disasters, but training centers in Maryland and Alabama have been shuttered until mid-May. In addition, an effort to recruit new employees called “Harness” is on hold, according to a senior administration official with direct knowledge of FEMA’s operations.

There is more on the NYT, which can be found here.

And finally, from today's presser we have this reportage from Yamiche Alcindor (NPR).

Wait until he finds out one of the side effects is hair loss.

How to Wear a Mask

This is from a letter to the editor on the NYT.  Apparently making the mask is not the hard part, it's wearing it correctly.

Editor:

You may have heard that surgical masks don’t work for preventing viral infections and may increase the risk of infection. Why is this? It is because people not accustomed to wearing masks can’t keep their hands off them. They constantly fiddle with them, adjust them, pull them down to talk and so on. Every time they do this, they are contaminating their mask with their hands, and if their hands have virus or bacteria on them, then they are risking infection.

As a surgeon, I am used to standing around for hours without touching my mask or my face, but it is very difficult for someone who is not used to this. So, if you decide to wear a mask for protection against viral or bacterial infection, here is what you need to do:

(1) Start with a clean mask. If you are reusing a mask, make sure that you keep it clean when you are not wearing it.

(2) Wash your hands well with soap and water, for a minimum of 20 seconds but preferably more.

(3) Place your mask and get it adjusted perfectly. It may help to do this in front of a mirror.

(4) Now wash your hands again. You are doing this to protect everyone else since you have contaminated your hands by touching your face.

(5) Do not ever touch the mask or any part of your face again unless you repeat steps 2 to 4.

That’s it. It may be hard to get in the habit, but if surgeons can do it, you can, too!

Mitchell A. Fremlin
Westminster, Colo.


 

Groceries and Covid-19 Humor

I spent yesterday afternoon, three or four hours, working on a mask.  I'm pretty dang sure I picked the most complicated mask pattern on the internet.  On the good side, I actually looked at all of my sewing machine's presser feet and discovered that I do have a top stitching foot.  That was good since 90% of the sewing involved top stitching seems.  Since elastic is no long easily available, we're going with long shoe laces to affix the mask to one's head.  You run the shoelace through the channel next to the ear.  It will be interesting to see how it works. 

Here is mine, made out of a cheerful fish pattern, with a flannel liner.  I'm using a pipe cleaner to get the nose piece to stay curved.

I really miss having a dedicated sewing room with a craft table and a table for the machine and drawers for all of my stuff.

Note the teeny tiny ironing board.  It folds down and hangs on a closet rod.

The cactus bloom is beginning.  This is a trichocereus in our neighbor's yard.  These are so impressive.

Here are some Covid-19 related things from the internet.  I'm not even going to start in on how stupid the governor of Georgia is, he just learned that Covid-19 is transmissible by people who are not symptomatic.  Has he been under a rock?

Another genius.

We went to Fry's this morning, apparently they had just gotten a truck.  They were in a shelf stocking frenzy.  It's a big grocery store, it takes awhile for us to find things.  We took the first load home and went to Safeway, who has a lot more on the shelves than they did, for the all important extra crispy crinkle cut french fries.  Now we are going to make a vat of red sauce so that we know what's for dinner for at least two nights.  Still no sign of toilet paper anywhere.

Update to post:  Me!  In my mask.  It works better with real glasses than with readers, but it's ok.