Periheliowhat?

 Ah, New Years. That man-made construct when we get to reset everything that needs resetting. This year (2021) we need a lot of resetting in the wake of 2020's mayhem and misery.

Resolutions are a form of resetting I guess. My only resolution is to not have any. Kudos to those who have them and actually keep them but that's not me. 

I wondered briefly as the midnight hour came and went what any of this resetting really means for us. Do we reset the count of Covid deaths back to zero now that its January 1st, 2021 or do we just keep adding to the 346,000 Americans who died  from the virus in 2020? Now that we've passed a third of a million deaths does the counting even matter? 

Astronomically, New Year's roughly corresponds to when our home planet is closest in its orbit to the Sun, something they call Perihelion. The exact time and date through 2025 will vary from January 2nd this year to January 4th in 2023 and 2025. Tomorrow, if you're up and at 'em at 6:50 a.m. Denver time you can stop for a moment and think "Hmmm, I'm only 91,399,454 miles from the Sun!" You'll have to wait until July 25th at 4:27 p.m. (what is referred to as Aphelion) for the opposite to occur when we are at our furthest from old Sol at 94,510,886 miles. 

Times Square January 2020

I suppose we don't need all that astronomical mumbo jumbo to remind us that time keeps moving on. We've got a giant ball in Times Square in New York to tell us that. There's no clock I'm aware of ticking off the time and miles between Perihelion and Aphelion but we could all count down from 10 as the ball dropped last night over an eerily quiet Times Square. 

Last year at this time my wife and I were setting out on a bucket list trip from New York to San Francisco via the Panama Canal. A month later upon arriving in San Francisco we were one of the last cruise ships to dock before they started quarantining passengers and crew on vessels with outbreaks of the then-new virus. As we walked through the San Francisco airport to catch our flight home we were oblivious as to why people in the terminal were already starting to wear face masks. 

Dawn arrival in San Francisco

Lots of folks in our neighborhood were up with us last night to catch the passing of the years. There were a lot of fireworks too, partly I'm guessing, to make up for the cancellation of downtown Denver's New Years Eve celebration. We had ordered takeout from the Cheesecake Factory, invited my mother-in-law over to join us, and watched competing T.V. channels try to outdo one another in year-end merriment. This year the Planet Fitness hats (borrowed from Dr. Seuss?) on the heads of the small crowd of people in Times Square seemed more bizarre than festive given that many, if not most, gyms are still unable to open. But kudos for trying. Ditto for the entertainers who gave it their all. You're efforts were appreciated. Maybe this time NEXT year we'll all be more in the mood for a celebration. One announcer proclaimed that we should work on turning twenty-twenty-one into twenty-twenty-Fun! Good luck with that; me, I'm just looking to make it to Aphelion...

A Christmas like no other...

I'm glad to be alive, how about you? Granted its been an exceptionally traumatic year and I think most everyone will be glad to put 2020 in the rearview mirror. The Associated Press reports that 2020  is the deadliest year in U.S. history, with deaths expected to top 3 million for the first time — due mainly to the coronavirus pandemic. But it's Christmastime (or Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa, or Diwali among other holidays celebrated around this time of the year) and despite Colorado's level Red Covid Restrictions the stores in my area are packed (if the parking lots are any indication). People seem to be making up for the rest of the year in an overabundance of Holiday cheer. My wife and I have noticed that almost every house in our neighborhood is decked out with holiday lights and decorations this year. Normally there are lots of houses lit up but this year its noticeably more. As usual, we like to drive around upon a snowy evening and look at all the beautiful light displays and like last year I've put together a short video of some of our favorites to share with you.

I live in a solidly middle-class neighborhood and sometimes we head to some higher-end areas that often feature some extravagant light displays this time of year. Not so much in 2020, and at first we were at somewhat of a loss to explain why some of these very affluent  neighborhoods were relatively dark this holiday season. The only thing we could come up with is that COVID has put a damper on holiday parties and celebrations and the homeowners couldn't justify the time and expense (in past years some of these displays were obviously professionally done) when they wouldn't be hosting the usual family and business get-togethers. 

Most of the light displays in the video this year come from neighborhoods much like mine though we did also make a jaunt to the town of Golden, Colorado to stroll their beautiful river walk which was decked out beautifully. 'Golden City' served as the capital of the Territory of Colorado from 1862 to 1867. In 1867, the territorial capital was moved about 12 miles east to 'Denver City'. Golden has a nice downtown area along Washington Avenue that is fun to stroll when December weather allows, as it did earlier this week, some relatively balmy evenings with afternoon temps in the 60's. 

2021 will soon be upon us, and like the incoming Presidential administration, is already hamstrung by unrealistic expectations. All I want is to stay safe and healthy long enough to roll up my sleeve for the much anticipated vaccine. It may be closer to 2022 than to the start of the year when that finally happens for us normal Americans and patience is clearly not an American trait. Still, I'm cautiously optimistic that 2021 won't set the record for American deaths like its cousin 2020 has. Sadly, there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of our friends, family members, and acquaintances who will still die in the new year before we presume to have the great Pandemic behind us. That ubiquitous symbol of 2020, the facemask, won't be disappearing anytime soon, and some of my friends who to this day still contend COVID is a hoax will be hard pressed to maintain that charade. 

Still, this time of the year offers Hope. Defined as  a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen, Hope has it's hands full going into the New Year so perhaps we can come together in this time of 'Good will toward Men' and ALL do our part to help Hope have a chance. Stay safe, and from my house to yours have a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday...

Person of the Year?

Time Magazine, that venerable bastion of print journalism (Time Magazine debuted March 3, 1923 as the first weekly news magazine in the U.S.), has, since 1927, announced a “Person of the Year” (“Man of the Year” or “Woman of the Year” until 1999) in one of its December issues. Since 1998 Time has also held an online poll of readers to query who they think should be recognized, but the final decision remains that of the magazine’s editors.

Charles Lindbergh
Time Man of the Year 1927

The “Person of the Year” came about as a method for the magazine to overcome the oversight of not putting aviator Charles Lindbergh on one of its covers after his historic first trans-Atlantic flight in May 1927. The magazine thought an article on Lindbergh as “Man of the Year” would remedy that mistake. 

Who do you think should be 2020’s “Person of the Year”? The online poll features 80 nominated people or groups (groups have been recognized in at least 11 years, and inanimate objects twice - The Computer in 1982 and The Endangered Earth in 1988. 

Among the 80 nominations this year are folks like Dr. Anthony Fauci and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo along with as-you-might-expect people like Joe Biden, Donald Trump - Man of the Year in 2016, Kamala Harris, and Mike Pence. Group nominations include The Black Lives Matter movement. There’s also the usual mix of entertainers and sports figures along with some notable tech giants (Jeff Bazos/Amazon -who has already been recognized -  in 1999, Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook - recognized in 2010, and Zoom’s CEO Eric Yuan). Even royal couple Meghan Markle and Prince Harry were nominated. Do you remember who won in 2019, which seems such a lifetime ago? Greta Thunberg, the Swedish climate change activist, was selected by Time’s editors over “Hong Kong Protesters” which won in online polling.  

The annual announcement does not always celebrate good: Adolf Hitler was recognized in 1938 and Joseph Stalin made the cover not once but twice, in 1939 and 1942. Ayatollah Khomeini, who led the Iranian Revolution and was instrumental in the Iranian Hostage Crisis was recognized in 1979. Even Vladimir Putin, who has featured so prominently during the Trump years, made the editors choice in 2007. 

Rudolph Giuliani was featured on the cover in 2001 as epitomizing America’s response to the September 11th attacks. Few would have argued with that selection. Mr. Giuliani remains in the news having recently led the current President’s efforts to overturn the results of what appears, according to all reliable sources, to have been a fair and honest election contest. On Tuesday he called into a radio talk show program criticizing the widespread use of masks and social distancing  to prevent future outbreaks of COVID despite the fact that he himself remains hospitalized in a Washington D.C. hospital after testing positive for the virus. It is not anticipated that Mr. Giuliani will repeat his cover appearance this year.

So, how about it - who’s your choice to represent the year of the Pandemic? My vote mirrors the results in online polling - The Essential Worker - those doctors, nurses, delivery workers, public transit, and grocery store employees, who have played such critical roles in the year of COVID. Truly, where would we be without them? Even with their efforts, and through no fault of theirs, its anticipated that we, as Americans, will have lost more than 300,000 of our fellow citizens by Christmas. Maybe the Time editorial staff will simply pick COVID, the virus itself, for its cover this year. That would open the way for my potential pick for 2021 - the Vaccine. For this year we can all find out who they pick on December 10th when Time televises its first-ever “TIME Person of the Year” television special on NBC, on Dec. 10 at 10 p.m. ET. For a list of all those who have graced Time's Person of the Year covers click here.

Completely unrelated to anything so momentous as "Person of the Year", have you noticed how many more homes are being decorated for the holidays this year? Almost every house in my neighborhood lights up in a splendiforous light display the minute the sun sets. Most of my family's decorating takes place on the inside of our home as my wife brings out her collection of snowmans (snowmen?). To that end I share with you the following short film featuring just some of her collection of these wintry visitors. They don't last long, leaving behind only puddles and happy memories when they go so enjoy them while you can!

Records are made to be broken...

 I'm a big fan of the printed newspaper so a year or two ago I was sad to make the switch to the online version of the Denver Post. Despite the newsroom being trimmed (gutted?) by it's owner MediaNews Group, Inc. I still rely on the venerable Post to fill in some of the information gaps my other sources of news don't seem to cover in-depth, at least on the local level. There is still a tactile pleasure about turning the physical page of a newspaper, or a book for that matter, that I really miss (with apologies to my beloved Kindle). I also miss the printed paper for that other time-honored use - starting a fire in the fireplace. Both the Denver Post and Leadville's Herald Democrat pages have helped keep me and mine warm on many a chilly winter's evening. No gas fireplace, as of yet, for me. I rue the day when I don't have the pleasure of heading out to the woodpile to split a couple of logs to feed the fireplace as the snow gently falls, and the temps start to plummet as the brittle sunlight fades behind the mountain tops.

Speaking of temperatures plummeting, its almost December as I write this and even with global warming we're heading for the coldest months of the year. The days are getting shorter, the nights longer and hibernating in front of a roaring fire with a good paper or book sounds like heaven to me. My better half and I were watching an excellent movie the other night about a place even colder than Colorado - Antarctica. Shot by Anthony Powell, Antarctica: A Year on Ice is a stunningly breathtaking documentary covering his ten years spent living and working at the bottom of the world. The photography is absolutely amazing and the characters who spend their time there, especially the "winter-overs", are as fascinating a bunch as any you'll find anywhere. 

I worked with a gentleman (hi, John) who had the enviable job of doing psychological assessments for Americans heading to The Ice to make sure they were compatible with frigid temps and no sunlight for months at a time. I remember a conversation where he told me if ever I was interested in heading south to let him know. Hindsight being 20/20 how I wish I had taken him up on that offer... 

Here's the Post's weather
article for December

On the last day of every month the Post has an article talking about the weather we can expect in the upcoming month. I think this article is a carryover from the long-gone Rocky Mountain News. I can remember as a kid growing up my dad used to cut the article out and tape it on the fridge so he could know, day by day, what the 'average' weather was supposed to be. Granted the T.V. weather forecasters of today are far nicer to look at and they certainly have some fancy graphics, but that little monthly synopsis was his bible and candidly he could generally forecast what was to come about as accurately as today's computer models and glitzy prognostications. 

I had never thought about it, but when I saw the article in today's Post, it started me to thinking, which is always a dangerous thing as I never know where it will lead. Anyway, two of the columns I always peruse are those showing the record high and low temps for the day. It struck me that I have been around for more than half of the records being set (14 record high and 21 record low years). So if my math is right, most of these records have been set in the last 63 years. Seven of the record highs have been set in the last 20 years along with eight of the lows. Now, I don't pretend to know what any of this means other than perhaps I've been hanging around this beautiful blue orb way too long. I do know it might have been nice to have been around back on December 5th, 1939 when the temperature was a balmy 79 degrees but not so  much on Christmas Eve 1876 when it was 25 below zero. December 1939 also saw Germany begin deporting Polish Jews as well as the premiere of Gone With the Wind, while December 1876 saw the United States Electoral College casts their votes in the disputed Presidential election between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden with two sets of conflicting results returned to Congress on December 7th (Mr. Hayes eventually assumed office even though Mr. Tilden actually won the popular vote). I guess, just like the weather, what comes around goes around.

Photo By Jeffrey Beall 

Closer to home, Colorado became a State in 1876 while in 1939 we had a new Governor, Ralph Carr, take office. Mr. Carr would go on in 1942 to oppose, to the detriment of his political career, the internment of American citizens of Japanese descent during WWII once saying: 

"...the Japanese are protected by the same Constitution that protects us. An American citizen of Japanese descent has the same rights as any other citizen. ... If you harm them, you must first harm me. I was brought up in small towns where I knew the shame and dishonor of race hatred."

Another interesting statistic on the Post summary is the average windspeed - 8.4mph. It may mislead however, in that it fails miserably to forecast how the winds of change may really blow. 

Happy Turkey Day!

It would be so, so easy to lament all the bad things we’ve experienced in 2020, a year for the history and record books. As citizens of the world we’ve dealt collectively with COVID and shared the sickness and death it has wrought with the rest of humankind in every corner of the globe from Europe, to Asia, Australia and New Zealand, and yes, China. Only a few nations have not directly experienced COVID’s wrath, most of them island countries in the South Pacific (Palau, Micronesia, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Samoa for example) while Antarctica remains the only COVID-free continent on this, our little blue speck in the cosmos.

And how quickly the protests of spring and summer have faded from consciousness. There's seemingly more concern over the 5,700 fans allowed into the current incarnation of Mile High Stadium to watch the Broncos than there is for who's kneeling and for what. 

My next door neighbor, Mike, is an Intensive Care Nurse at Denver General. He's one of those front-line heroes we celebrated months ago. Remember? He's well aware there's not a lot of civic howling anymore in support of these folks who's sole job is saving the lives of others. He was telling my wife this morning as he was going to work that as bad a picture as the media paints COVID, its far, far worse. He spoke of his hospital having a hard time simply staffing the ICU because folks on the front lines are getting burned out or, yes, dying from doing their job. Fewer and fewer people are available, or willing, to step up and fill the ranks of those we all depend on to stay alive. Our Governor is now talking about allowing hospitals to turn away patients if their ICU's are at capacity while at the same time county governments are saying they won't enforce the State's mask mandate or COVID-dial restrictions.

So, do you have anything to be thankful for this Thanksgiving? I'm thankful for simply being alive after spending my own four days in intensive care back in April and watching those critical care staff try to save my life. I'm thankful for my friends and family. They really are my better angels. My family is not getting together for our traditional Thanksgiving meal and I'm thankful that they respect the sanctity of each other's life more than a day spent putting those we love in harm's way. 

Most of all perhaps, I'm thankful there is still beauty in this world and that I occasionally get to glimpse it. More than ever before in my life I find myself actively seeking it out. Sometimes - many times - its hard to find, especially in today's world. Sometimes it sneaks up on me when least expected, some days my conscious effort to seek it out is rewarded but either way its something no virus, no war or famine, no manmade catastrophe can steal from me. 

With that in mind I share with you two of my recent efforts to find some of that beauty. Both took place in the Colorado High Country that I love so much. The first is a simple walk through the little town of Twin Lakes which is nestled at the base of Independence Pass. Perhaps you've been there in the summer when the warm wind rustles through the leaves of the quaking aspen trees. This time of year, the town is nearly deserted and at first glance might seem abandoned yet its in that peaceful solitude that I most find its beauty. The second is a hidden treasure called Mushroom Gulch. Near Buena Vista, its just a couple of miles off Highway 285 yet lightyears removed from the frenetic pace and sometime ugliness of the outside world. In its own special way it offers a chance to find the peaceful serenity that only the beauty of nature can provide. In the words of Henry David Thoreau, 

"I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees."

And not least of all, I'm also thankful for you as a reader of this blog. I wish you and yours a happy and safe Thanksgiving no matter how you choose to celebrate it this year. 

A Tale of Two (or more...) Cities

The storming of the Bastille by French Painter Jean-Pierre-Louis-Laurent Houël. During his long life Houël witnessed the reign of Louis XV, the French Revolution, and the period of Napoleon's First Empire. (Wikipedia)

One of my favorite books is A Tale of Two Cities which was written in 1859 by Charles Dickens. It is a historical novel set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution and tells the story of the French Doctor Manette, his 18-year-long imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris and his release to live in London with his daughter Lucie, whom he has never met. The story is set against the conditions that led up to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. The book opens with a paragraph that could well mirror the times we are living through right now: 

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

We, you and I, are now in month nine (it seems so much longer...) of the 2020 pandemic. Literally and figuratively we are now entering "the season of darkness" having set our clocks back just a couple of weeks ago and with the COVID virus seemingly completely out of control going into the Holiday season. Whether the next few months will live up to "the winter of despair" remains to be seen.

Set against the backdrop of the French Revolution of 1789-1799 much of his stirring account takes place during the Reign of Terror, perhaps the most violent period of the revolt. From the summer of 1793 through the summer of 1794, more than 50,000 people were killed for suspected counter-revolutionary activity or so-called “crimes against liberty”. One-third of this number died under the falling blade of the guillotine. Some accounts put the number of victims actually closer to 250,000. As I write this, more than 249,000 Americans have fallen victim to our own current reign of terror for which we, as of yet, have no real cure.

Just as historians and authors look back upon the past so too will their counterparts in the future look back and study the time we are living in. It may sound cliché, but we are living history. Living through history of course means that we are feeling our way, charting our own new path through the perils of our time. No one of us has all the answers, though collectively we may have a few if we can ever reach consensus. 

One of the things historians of the future will surely look at are all the statistics being generated in the information-overload culture of today. There is always a story to be told behind the numbers and already, just 9 months into our current predicament, there is a story to be read by simply looking at one statistic - the number of new COVID cases. If you do a Google search for COVID in your location you're likely to be given a chart, courtesy of the New York Times, that gives the number of COVID cases by day from  March to present. The numbers by themselves are of course staggering - who back in March, "...the spring of hope", would have guessed that cases in the U.S. would be upward of 11 million and that a quarter million of us would not be here this Thanksgiving to break bread with family and friends. To me though, as staggering as the numbers are, its the pattern of the charts across different locations in the U.S. that speak to how we have taken such a divided approach on how to deal with the unfolding nightmare of this newest of new viruses. 

Lets start with the chart for Colorado:

It would appear that Colorado was able to largely contain, though never eliminate, the spread of COVID-19 at least until recently. Compare the shape of our graph to another U.S. location:

Clearly what was going on in location "D" was very much different than what we lived through in Colorado. 

Let's look at another location's graph (see if you can guess by its shape where it is):

Think about why a location might see such a pattern of new cases. What was going on - what were they doing, or perhaps more importantly what were they not doing, to see new cases behave as they are reflected in location "B".

Here is a location that was perhaps as unique in its locale as any...

yet it's graph nearly mirrors that of location "B". In terms of geographical distance location "C" couldn't be further removed from location "B" so why are the two graphs so similar to each other and so dissimilar from Colorado's?

OK, you get the point; its this type of data and the behavioral questions it raises that will keep PhD candidates busy for years to come. You don't need these graphs to know that different places in the United States have had widely different responses to dealing with COVID. Some were pragmatic and scientific in their approach while others to this very day continue to downplay the seriousness of the situation. To use another historical reference, they say that Nero played his fiddle while ancient Rome burned back in the year 64. His supposed fiddling now has come to represent the epitome of acting irresponsibly in the midst of an emergency. It would appear from the graphs that some today have as much of an affinity for fiddle playing as Emperor Nero did nearly 2,000 years ago.

Here are just a couple of more to show the disparity between U.S. locations:

So, have you figured out where some of these locations are? Here are the actual locales:

A: Colorado

B: Florida

C: Hawaii

D: New York City

E: Texas

F: Utah

G: Washington D.C.

H: Washington State

I'll leave it to far greater minds than I to further extrapolate the real meanings behind the disparities in the data but I'd hazard my own guess that in the years to come some of these locations may look back on their graphs and raise the question: what could they have done differently? 

In the end, A Tale of Two Cities is a classic love story about the love two men share for a woman, and ultimately about Man's love for his fellow Man and the sacrifice some are willing to make for that Love. In that, there are lessons to be learned by all of us.

Here's hoping that the "season of Light" still awaits...

All good things...

Photo courtesy of National Park Service

All good things must come to an end, or so the saying goes. Today is Election Day in these “United” States of America and the country is as not-united as I have ever witnessed it. Stores are boarding up their windows in anticipation of civil unrest regardless of who wins. Are you as sick of all this as I am? 

I was in California at the start of this year and saw an election themed t-shirt proclaiming support for “Any Functioning Adult”. I’m not sure that’s what we’ve ended up with after a truly dismal election cycle but we clearly have a clear choice as America lurches to the polls (assuming you’re not one of the majority who have already cast their ballots prior to today.)

Did we get this?

Everyone is saying we won’t even know tonight who the winner is (perhaps the T.V. networks would have better served us if they had postponed their hours of coverage until tomorrow evening) and one side is already announcing they have a team of lawyers set to contest the results should they end up on the losing side. Yet it’s America who has really lost, regardless of who garners the magical 270 Electoral College votes this evening (actually we won't know for sure until December 14th). There’s more than enough blame to be hurled around by both sides but can anyone really argue we as a country are in a better place today? I know, I know, some would resolutely say “Yes!”, but truly they must be in the minority. 

Some wounds take a long time to heal, while some never do. Again, regardless of who “wins” tonight, the changes wrought during the last four years (be they good, bad, or indifferent in your opinion) will likely last far longer than the time they took to inflict. Love him or hate him, Mr. Trump has irrevocably changed  this country we call home and we will be living with the ripple effect for generations. It’s good that so many Americans have decided to participate in their civic duty this year. It is after all our country; it does not belong to Mr. Trump or Mr. Biden. And it is us, 300+ million strong, who in the days, months, and years to come must still decide and come to grips with what we want this “one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” to look like. I don’t think God was in line at the polling site this morning but if so, may she continue to bless America.

And may we hope that another old proverb comes true: 

"All's well that ends well."