Evanston: it’s over; poor Bill

Obviously as proven by the crowd photos in what poses as the news, the pandemic is over, which is a shame just when people were becoming more like me.  But ‘Hooray’ anyway.

Yesterday Carol and I celebrated the end of the virus by going to a tennis court.  A few days ago Evanston put up the nets on some of the public tennis courts.  Usually every other one in the interest of now antiquated social distancing.  Carol knows of two rarely used courts and we found them empty with a net on one.  With my cyclopean vision I cannot return balls except by pure chance, something like batters facing Pedro Martinez in his prime when their only hope was to stick out the bat and hope he hit it with the ball.  However I can hit balls to her and then retrieve her returns.

In the afternoon Carol repaid my services by cutting my hair.  This was not pandemic induced.  When I had hair I cut it myself.  I did so once last year at sea after not getting to a barber shop in Panama.  But for some years Carol has cut my hair.  She always takes too much off the top, but for what I pay her I don’t complain.

I saw the heading of an article several days ago about a young man who allegedly drove 500 miles to get a haircut.  This raises several questions about the young man’s vanity and sanity, but I did not read the article and have no answers.

Yesterday as the number of deaths in the United States from the former pandemic approached 100,000, the NY TIMES ran a rolling list of the names and ages of 1000 of the dead.  I watched it for a while and was struck by how very few were under age 60.  We have been told that the virus is killing mostly old people, but perhaps in an attempt to make us all feel that we are in this together, the few young who have died get disproportionate coverage.  

You may recall my writing that we are not all in this together.  Once again the world is catching up.  A recent magazine cover reads:  One Nation Divided.  Certainly there is a virus age divide and the young have every right to feel put upon by having their partying disrupted by something that will be a mild case of flu to them.  If they pass it on to some old geezers whom it kills, well there is a geezer surplus and more are entering the supply chain every day.  Kill off enough and it may even save Social Security.

For myself I am giving serious thought of attending the next orgy.




Poor Bill Gates.  Not often one says that of the world’s second richest man.  As if being demoted to second isn’t bad enough, according to a recent survey half of Fox News viewers believe that he “is planning to use a future COVID-19 vaccine to implant microchips in billions of people in order to monitor their movements.”   44% of self-described Republicans share belief in this lunacy, as do 44% of those who voted for Donald Trump.

https://www.cnet.com/news/over-40-of-republicans-wrongly-believe-conspiracy-theory-about-bill-gates-and-covid-19-vaccines/

Long ago I wrote that democracy doesn’t work and never has except possibly on the village level.   At the time I labeled that an hypothesis.  Sufficient evidence is now in to state it as a proven fact.



I have continued to listen to one or two of Alastair Cooke’s Letters From America every day.  In addition to Harry Truman’s election and the atom bomb warning, I have now heard about Groucho Marx, Bing Crosby, Rudolph Valentino, the Augusta National Golf Course, and how ice cream changed America.  All a delight and in delightful contrast to the talking heads on television today.  I wonder what Alastair Cooke would have said about recent events.  It really is our loss.

I’m repeating the link in case you missed it.  You can thank me later.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p010fyzg