11/28/2021

Thoughts On A Sunday

I had the good fortune to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra this past Friday. It was the 25th anniversary of the release of their first album, Christmas Eve And Other Stories, and they performed the music from the entire album to celebrate, as well as some of their other songs.

The concert was amazing. I can guarantee the photo below doesn’t come close to doing it justice.


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After the concert my friends and I walked out of the venue to find it was snowing. It was our first snowfall of the season. It made the first part of the trip an adventure considering the heavy snowfall and poor visibility encountered. It was necessary to engage 4WD for that part of the trip. But as I headed farther north and back to Lake Winnipesaukee, the snow tapered off and most of what was falling was rain. The slush covered roads were replaced by wet roads and by the time I got home, the precipitation had pretty much stopped.

It was a twofer on Friday night – a great concert and our first taste of winter weather.

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Canada has had to dip into its maple syrup strategic reserve due to a massive shortage.

Canada has strategic reserves...of maple syrup?

Hmm. Makes sense….

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A discussion with the Left-leaning daughter of a friend of mine gave me a glimmer of hope that the younger generation isn’t doomed. One of our topics of discussion was about the whole ‘woke’ movement.

At one point, I made a point that the woke appear to me to be people desperate for a cause, people who will latch on to any cause like a drowning man will latch on to a floating bit of debris to save oneself. So many have taken up causes on behalf of people who they believe should be offended about some small thing. That they aren’t offended about that small thing offends the woke, so they become offended on behalf of those people who aren’t offended, in many cases offending the very people on whose behalf they are being offended.

I also made a point that the woke also will seek trivial or non-existent causes, amplify them all out of proportion, and then be offended when anyone has the audacity to question their new cause, accusing the questioner of being a ‘whateverist’ because they don’t support the cause du jour.

She was about to reply, then her eyes opened wide when she realized what it is I had just said.

My thought was “Ah, light dawns over Marblehead!”

I could see she was thinking things over and she finally said something along the lines of “You know, I hadn’t thought about it that way before.”

After a few moments of cogitation, the course of our discussion changed paths a number of times as we we continued devouring our evening repast.

It will be interesting to pick that particular thread of discussion again sometime in the future.

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The newest variant of Covid – the ‘not-Xi but Omicron variant’ – is already being touted as the next ‘deadly variant everyone needs to be afraid of’ even though reports from its place of origin – South Africa – state “it presents ‘unusual but mild’ symptoms.”

I expect the DNC-MSM will be playing up this latest variant for all it’s worth, as will WRBA, the CDC, and that font of public health wisdom, Dr. Fauci. No doubt they will be offering their usual precautions that everyone knows don’t work. It will be hyped to no end.

Dr. Angelique Coetzee, the South African doctor responsible for alerting health officials about the omicron variant of COVID-19 says it presents “unusual but mild” symptoms.

Coetzee first observed patients with unusual symptoms who were otherwise healthy in mid-November.

“Their symptoms were so different and so mild from those I had treated before,” Coetzee told The Telegraph. Coetzee has been a General Practitioner for 33 years, has her own practice, and chairs the South African Medical Association.

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While symptoms in younger patients appear to be very mild, Coetzee is still concerned about how the new variant will affect the elderly, who have typically been the most at-risk group from COVID.

Concerns about how the new variant will affect the elderly and those with comorbidities are not unfounded. Covid and the annual flu virus affect both groups more than rest of the population, so the concerns are justified. But if the Omicron variant is indeed a much milder version of the previous variants, then the over-the-top and ineffective precautions taken will be an even tougher sell.

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And speaking of Covid, who has the better scorecard when it comes to handling Covid, Biden or Trump?

Joe Biden has ordered a ban on travel from eight African countries due to the emergence of the latest coronavirus variant. The countries from which Biden is cutting off travel are South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique and Malawi.

When Donald Trump banned travel from China in the early days of the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, Biden called the move xenophobic. I suppose that makes Biden’s travel ban racist by similar reckoning.

Speaking of Trump, Biden, and Covid, the Wall Street Journal points out that deaths in the U.S. from that virus since Biden was inaugurated exceed the number of deaths that had occurred when, during a 2020 campaign debate, Biden proclaimed: “Anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as President of the United States of America.” At the time Biden proposed this disqualifier from holding the presidency, the U.S. had recorded 220,000 Covid deaths, according to the Journal. Since inauguration day, it has recorded 350,000. And counting.

The Narrative must be preserved. Therefore, Biden’s crappy Covid numbers must be ignored even though they are far worse the Trump’s. Biden’s words about Trump’s Covid numbers must be ignored because they would be seen as hypocritical.

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How can they have gotten this so wrong?

Back in 1995, the New York Times stated that most East Coast beaches would be gone by 2020.

Here it is, 2021, and the beaches are still here. Some are even bigger than they were 25 years ago. Yet the rising sea levels are supposed to submerge much of the coastal low lands? Call it yet another prediction of doom that has turned out to be overblown and has, in fact, showed just the opposite of what was predicted.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where winter temperatures are visiting, leaves still need cleaning up around The Gulch, and where we’ve avoided as much in the way the Black Friday craziness as we could.