Wednesday  December 16 2020.


And so another month of COVID goes by.   Solitude for all of us becomes the norm.    Quiet days, and  - unlike the summer - the house is cold so not much going out either.    This is the normal season where people stay inside and go stir crazy, and with COVID and social distancing even more so now.

This is also the season on the Oregon Coast when the rains settle in for the winter.   Rain all day today, but I managed to get a good walk in before the day's onslaught.    I have been quite disciplined in getting 40-50 miles of walking in a week since the beginning of the Pandemic, which for me consciously began on March 15.       Its been 40 weeks since then, so I reckon I have walked about 1800 COVID miles so far.   I have my set of 6 or 7 mile walks.

With everybody indoors and breathing on each other, the virus is back to raging around the planet again.     300,000 deaths in America so far, with 17 million infected to date.   Worldwide 75 million infected, 1.6 million deaths.     These are all just best estimations of course by the people whose jobs it is to make best guesses.    Some say the virus has infected at least twice that many, as part of the nature of this virus is that it is Asymptomatic (not showing or causing illness) in so many people.    It also kills a lot of people.    No one knows why.   It will be academically interesting when they figure it out.

The good news is that there is a vaccine or - a series of vaccines out now.   The mantra is that vaccinations will be free to everyone.   We will see.

******************

I have just been to the website and it brought up some interesting figures to me.

World population today:  7,832,596,105, and the counter goes up about 5 people per second.  Almost 8 billion people.  

135 million births (+-) this year so far.
births today  so far : 257,000 (@4pm)

Deaths this year 57 million
Deaths today 108 thousand

Net populations growth this year 78 million.

My rough math supposes that barring any other catastrophe, we will reach 8 billion people in 600 or so days, so August of 2022 sometime.  Wow.

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I am currrently in a struggle with my brother.  He and I have had a pretty good relationship over the course of our lives so far,  and supporting each other when the chips were down for one of us.    During COVID about 4 or 5 months ago he started inviting me into a weekly ZOOM phone call with his two sons.    My role in these calls is to provide continuity in conversation - one of my skill sets - and generally just keep things going.   It also allows Scott to stay in touch with his two sons and build a deeper relationship with each one of them.    I have helped him in this and have enjoyed the calls also.   However of late, the conversations have veered into politics, and have turned more confrontational and sour.  And angry.    I have politically left leaning inclinations, and his sons are more to the right of me.   The nature of politics being what they are these days in America  - extremely divisive -   Fireworks have ensued, and the calls have gotten more problematic.    This is not what I volunteered for.  So I have tried to get everyone to agree to NO POLITICS, like we have successfully done on our radio shows at KBOG, but this hasn't worked very well.    

This whole thing kind of blew up yesterday and this morning, so I have told Scott that I am removing myself from these calls for the moment.     I know he loves his sons completely like I love my kids completely, and he can't see what the problem is.    I do though, so will just leave it at that.

******************

My friends (Christine and Ken Hall) made me a nice home cooked dinner takeout style on Thanksgiving, and now for Christmas next week I am doing a food swap with another friend (Christine Roberts).   Steak, baked potato, ham, rice.   That's the plan so far anyway.

After that my planning is to drive the 10 hours down to Santa Clara on Sunday the 27th and spend a day with Jana then a day with Mara then drive back.    A fairly quick and busy four days.  Christine R will watch the house and Tamale the cat while I am away.






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