A lot of summerfolk are hear to pull their boats out of the water and get them cleaned and winterized for storage. The boatyards in our town are quite busy, with their lots full of boats waiting for winterization. I called the boatyard that takes care of the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout and inquired about prepping and storing it for the winter. The owner, a good friend, asked if I’d be able to wait a couple of weeks before dropping it off because he’s booked solid until the end of the month. Even with a lot of summerfolk having pulled their boats from the water early because of the low water level of the lake, there are still a lot of boats that need to be removed and prepared. I don’t mind waiting to drop of my boat because I can still pull it from the water a couple of weeks beforehand. I think a lot of the folks living here at the lake are going to do likewise since they can keep using their boats as long as the weather holds out.
And so our boating season is slowly fading away.
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Today’s Thoughts On A Sunday post is going to be a bit abbreviated as I have to go into work shortly. There’s lab work needing to be done and I’m on a short deadline, so spending the balance of the morning and this afternoon at work is necessary if I am to meet that deadline.
Do I like the fact that I need to do this? No. But it is necessary and I don’t like leaving jobs undone. Call it the Puritan Work Ethic that is part and parcel of being a New England Yankee.
So off to work I go.
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It looks like the second debate between Trump and Biden scheduled for October 15th in Miami has been canceled.
If memory serves, the Biden campaign wanted to have a virtual debate, with the two candidates in separate venues, citing the possibility of Covid-19 exposure. This despite health professionals saying there should be no issue as long as social distancing is maintained. The Trump campaign balked, saying there was no reason not to have the two candidates face each other on the same stage.
I can certainly think of one reason why the Biden people would want it to be a virtual debate: They could be off-camera using a teleprompter to feed Joe the answers, something they couldn’t do if the two candidates were on the same stage.
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Election fraud? There’s no election fraud here! Move along! Move along! There’s nothing to see here!
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Seen elsewhere on the ‘Net: The first rule of 2021 is no one talks about 2020.
There’s just one problem...
(H/T Powerline)
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Speaking of 2020 (Yes, I’m breaking the rule...but it isn’t 2021 yet), we have been seeing an upsurge in Covid-19 cases here in New Hampshire. While I can’t speak to other communities, ours has seen 4 new cases over the past two weeks. However, after contacting the state health officials it appears three of the four cases were asymptomatic and the fourth case was only mildly symptomatic. All cases were detected via regular testing, so this isn’t the same scenario as we were seeing this past spring.
The upsurge started when schools reopened, a not unexpected event. (While there is correlation, that doesn’t automatically mean it’s because our schools have reopened. Remember, correlation does not imply causality.) We didn’t see a lot of cases during the summer even with the large number of visitors we experienced during the tourist season.
Our cases per capita are minuscule compared to our neighboring state to the south. Massachusetts has a bit less than 6 times the population of New Hampshire, but has had 15 times the number of Covid-19 cases and 21 times the number of deaths. In fact, the number of Covid-19 deaths in the People’s Republic of Maskachusetts exceeds the total number of Covid-19 cases in New Hampshire.
There are advantages to living in a primarily rural state.
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And that’s the (abbreviated) news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where cooler weather is visiting for the next few days, a little more rain is on its way, and where some of us will be working on Columbus Day.