Recently I had the opportunity to answer another Quora question on navy life. This answer brought back a flood of memories from my life in Naples, Italy, and working with NATO. The question was “As an enlisted service member, what did an officer do to earn your respect?” I felt this was an interesting question, as the person asking seemed to know enough about military life to know that respecting position is required, but respect for the person is earned.
I recently had the opportunity to answer another Quora question relating to submarines; How does a submarine deal with a hovering enemy helicopter that may drop a depth charge? This was another fun question to answer, and gave me a bit of opportunity to reminisce on my submarine service.
Yesterday was our seventeenth wedding anniversary. It was a quiet day, as most days are in this age of the pandemic. But that was ok, as Winnie and I are still together and still getting along after seven months of home lockdown.
The quiet day did give me a chance to reflect on our life together these past seventeen years (plus our one year of long-distance courtship).
So yesterday news broke that one scourge of America was afflicted by the other scourge of America; President trump tested positive for the coronavirus. Not only has trump tested positive, so has his current wife and a handful of senior aids and Republican doormats executives closely aligned with trump.
It’s almost like this coronavirus suddenly isn’t a Democratic hoax. Or that just maybe, this virus isn’t going to just go away all by itself. Who knew – other than all of us with no political agenda to push.
Yesterday was another “9/11 Remembrance” day. I saw a considerable amount of flag-waving yesterday and a lot of “Never Forget.” The appropriate people paid appropriate amounts of attention to the nineteenth anniversary of our day of ignominy. All-in-all, another day to remember when a group of Really Bad People attacked Our Greatest City and killed Three Thousand People. Never Forget.
I have a different take on yet another remembrance of 9/11 Day.
So here we are on pandemic day one hundred seventy-nine of staying safer-at-home. This life in a pandemic is proving to have it’s challenges and unique demands. Winnie and I are fortunate that at least we still have adequate income, stable shelter, and food on the table. That’s more than too many people in this country currently don’t have.
All the same, I’d just as soon have this over with and life go back to some semblance of pre-pandemic times.
So let’s see. The world is in the grip of a one-hundred year pandemic that’s raging out of control in the world’s nominally most advanced nation. (That would be us). Forest fires are burning up California while a category four hurricane wipes out Louisiana and Texas. We have more wild protests in our cities due to yet another black man shot by police on-camera. Meanwhile, the Doom-and-Gloom Republican National Convention enters it’s fourth and hopefully final day, bearing a message that electing the other guy means a dystopian American future of plague, pestilence and violence in our cities.
Time for some music.
Our grocery shopping patterns have dramatically changed in the age of the pandemic. In the before times Winnie would go grocery shopping every several days, using a variety of mostly Asian food stores. Since we’ve started staying-safer-at-home, we shop every several weeks using either Costco or Walmart curbside pickup. The ripple effects of this change includes not having enough space in our freezer for meat, and other stuff needing freezing to stay edible for long periods of time. So a few weeks ago, we (Winnie) decided we needed to buy a small chest freezer to store our stuff.
This should have been an easy purchase. But in this pandemic age, even internet shopping has proven to be adventurous.
I’ve become a regular contributor to the ever-amazing Quora social media site. I enjoy following the various answers to off-beat questions, and can keep engaged for hours if I let myself. I routinely provide my own answers and commentary.
Most recently, I answered the Quora question: Have you ever been to a restaurant that made you say “You’ve Got To Be Kidding Me!” when they brought out the food?” My answer related a fine-dining restaurant experience from years back.
They’ve Already Lost
I’ve been observing the tumultuous final stages of this 2020 Presidential campaign through my pandemic-imposed lockdown. From my vantage point the evolving trends of the campaign form a pattern rising into view through the mists of chaos.
And the patterns tell me that no matter what happens on Tuesday, trump and his power-drunk brownnosing groupies have already lost.
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