Archive for Quarantine Time

Baby Steps…

After sixteen months of Covid isolation, we were ready to hit the road. I never imagined it would be a difficult or complicated decision but times change. In January of 2020 Marilynn arranged a summer house trade in France. By March we were in lockdown. All travel plans on hold. By May it was canceled. 

For years we hopped on airplanes and traveled as far as we could. Before the pandemic, we combined our overseas trips with leisurely explorations of America. We drove across Texas (El Paso to Austin), the Southwest (Tucson, Four Corners, Mesa Verde, Moab), the South (Charleston, Beaufort, Savannah, St. Simons Island), the Northeast (Rhode Island and the Berkshires, including Tanglewood). But, there are still great expanses of America for us to cover. read more

Art in the Pandemic Era…

If art, music, dance, or theater were an important part of your world earlier, the pandemic has turned it upside down. With the ability to travel, attend events and visit museums limited, we have been left casting about for alternatives. Art is meant to be experiential—best when it’s a one-on-one experience with the original. 

A picture can’t begin to deliver the feeling of standing next to Michelangelo’s statue of David at the Accademia in Florence. In its presence the stone pulses with energy, muscles ripple, veins throb and eyelids almost blink. read more

He Went to Jared…

Two weeks ago, Secretary of State Pompeo and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu flew to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for a secret meeting with Mohammed Bin Salman, the Saudi Crown Prince. All three parties denied the meeting occurred but lately their story has sprung leaks. 

This triad of unsavory characters – MBS, who ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Netanyahu, under indictment for bribery, bank fraud, and breach of trust at home in Israel, and Pompeo seeking support for a presidential run in 2024 – are doing Trump’s dirty work by establishing an anti-Iranian alliance they hope will undermine the incoming Biden administration. read more

Healthcare in America?

When Donald Trump contracted the Covid-19 virus in October, he was medevac’d by helicopter to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center where a team of 12 doctors monitored his vital signs, supplied him with supplemental oxygen, injected him with Remdesivir, a viral inhibitor, and gave him Regeneron, an experimental antibody cocktail not yet approved for general use. Mr. Trump recovered from the virus at an estimated cost of $100,000 not counting the helicopter ride to and from the White House. American taxpayers paid for all of it. read more

Public Art and the Homeless…

This is public art (and science). Like all good art it’s unique and thought provoking. It sits in one of the less visited corners of Magnuson Park (the old Sand Point Naval Air Station) in Seattle.

Briefly… the artist, Perri Lynch, crafted 12 limestone pillars along a 1- kilometer line called the Sand Point Calibration Baseline where surveyors’ measure, test, and calibrate their equipment. There are about a dozen such baselines in the State of Washington, but some local surveyors worried that this one would be destroyed by unknowing visitors. They lobbied for public art monument to raise awareness and prevent its accidental destruction. read more