97 24 26018 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/74241e8103c223a06968b1af80601d2a.pdf 5e41c54a9b0ebf83c8d04416dc3c441e PDF Text Text Day 323 by windoworks I have noticed a disconcerting development. Some days like this morning, I woke up and thought its Sunday. Of course its actually Thursday. Not sure why this is happening and what it means. So where are we on this Blursday? First up: And as a very scary follow up to that, this dropped into my inbox last night : Washington Post The Department of Homeland Security issued a warning Wednesday to alert the public about a growing risk of attacks by “ideologically-motivated violent extremists” agitated about President Biden’s inauguration and “perceived grievances fueled by false narratives.” �DHS periodically issues such advisories through its National Terrorism Advisory System, but the warnings have typically been generated by elevated concerns about attacks by foreign governments or radical groups, not domestic extremists. In a statement, the department said the purpose of the new bulletin was to warn the public about a “heightened threat environment” across the United States “that is likely to persist over the coming weeks.” The bulletin is a lesser-status warning designed to alert the public about general risks, rather than an imminent attack linked to a specific threat. DHS does not have any information to indicate a specific, credible plot; however, violent riots have continued in recent days and we remain concerned that individuals frustrated with the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances and ideological causes fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize a broad range of ideologicallymotivated actors to incite or commit violence,” the statement read. The most recent bulletins DHS has issued — both this month — warned the public about an elevated threat from Iran. No other bulletin in recent years has been issued to alert Americans about violence by domestic extremists. Throughout 2020, Domestic Violent Extremists (DVEs) targeted individuals with opposing views engaged in First Amendment-protected, nonviolent protest activity,” the bulletin states. “DVEs motivated by a range of issues, including anger over covid-19 restrictions, the 2020 election results, and police use of force have plotted and on occasion carried out attacks against government facilities.” It added: “DHS is concerned these same drivers to violence will remain through early 2021 and some DVEs may be emboldened by the January 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. to target elected officials and government facilities.” The new bulletin will remain in place through April 30. This bulletin (scary warning) will remain in place for 91 days, or if you prefer: 13 weeks. So here we are, anxious and worried for the next 13 weeks. How could this be happening, I hear you ask? You know the answer - Trump, his despicable Republicans and the willing cult members. From Crooked Media: 45 out of 50 GOP senators voted to advance the fabricated argument that trying Trump on an impeachment charge is unconstitutional—part of an effort by Trump loyalists to bypass any trial for a president who incited a violent insurrection, let alone a conviction. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), one of the five Republicans to break ranks, has called bullshit on his colleagues who try to frame impeachment as divisive without first recanting their inflammatory lies about the election, and on Tuesday urged them to get on Fox News and affirm that Joe Biden won legitimately. It seems they have not gone on Fox News to affirm that Joe Biden won’t legitimately. Why speak up against the voter fraud lie fueling right-wing violence when you can use it as a pretext to rig future elections? Republican lawmakers around the country have been racing to pass restrictive new voter laws in the wake of GOP losses in November, nominally to tighten election security. Georgia Republicans �introduced legislation on Wednesday that would require voters to submit photocopies of their IDs both when applying for absentee ballots and when returning them, in accordance with that well-known constitutional clause that only U.S. citizens in possession of an HP Laserjet Pro may vote. It’s another perfect day to abolish the filibuster and pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Republicans had a post-insurrection opportunity to reckon with the extreme right-wing elements they’d allowed Donald Trump to unleash, redraw the party boundaries to exclude them, and find their way back to reality. That they continue to refuse has frightening implications, but it should clear the Biden administration’s conscience about simply leaving them behind. Once again, we are living in what is supposed to be a democracy. Defined by Websters Dictionary, democracy means: government by the people 1a : government by the people especially : rule of the majority. b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections. 2 : a political unit that has a democratic government. When you read that, it seems that most Republicans are concerned not with governing for all but with governing for that smaller group of middle class to wealthy, white, racist, misogynist people. That group used and abused by Trump, Fox News, Tucker Carlson, QAnon and other militant insurgents. Most of the really wealthy people who ascribe to this don’t care about anything other than power and money. They don’t care about anyone outside their family, and some of them don’t even care about them. I am truly depressed by all this. President Biden and his awesome team carry on regardless. As well as righting the ship of state, Biden has to find a way to root out all the Manchurian candidates implanted by Trump with iron clad contracts. But if watching hours of legal dramas on TV has taught me anything nothing is actually iron clad. So the country stands at turning point. We can submit meekly, and let the minority Republicans in both houses hold the upper hand (seems counterintuitive) or, the Democratic majority in both houses and the Democratic White House fight the insurgency and reestablish this country as a true democracy. In order to begin, Trump and his Republican politician cronies must be neutralized - and while Melania Trump continues to set up a post White House office at Mar-A-Lago, that neutralization can’t happen. There is a chance that if the Republicans are successful at suppressing consequences for themselves or Trump, the US could end up with 2 governments: Trump in Florida and Biden in D.C. Don’t laugh. Think about what you have witnessed so far in 4 years that was completely outside of your imagination. And just to confirm that, here’s a post about a sitting Republican from Crooked Media: �We knew Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) was a bigoted, unhinged QAnon cultist before she was elected. Here’s a quick and incomplete rundown of what we’ve learned about her since she took office: She has spread conspiracy theories about school shootings on Facebook, endorsed the executions of Democratic leaders, supported the QAnon claims that there’s a global pedophile cabal involving top U.S. political figures, and said the 2018 midterms represented “an Islamic invasion of our government.” On Wednesday an awful video resurfaced of Greene harassing Parkland school shooting survivor David Hogg. The flashlight of justice is highlighting many distressing things. Here’s just one brought to light by Washington Post: Fighting a pandemic is expensive. So is biomedical science, which is why many public health programs and projects rely on federal funding. But since 2010, millions set aside to develop drugs and vaccines for a public health crisis were misused by Health and Human Services Department staff. A whistleblower complaint triggered a federal investigation into the HHS office that oversees vaccine research. Investigators found that funds were improperly spent on salaries, administrative expenses and office redecoration. Salaries, administrative expenses, and office redecoration. Because, as we all know, to develop new drugs and vaccines to combat public health crises, those scientists and researchers needed a better office space for all those hours they don’t spend in there while they are supposed to be in the laboratory developing things. I am worried that we are approaching a dystopian society (an imagined state or society in which there is great suffering or injustice, typically one that is totalitarian or post-apocalyptic). Uh oh. I think we can see the similarities here except this isn’t imagined. Okay, I’m exhausted. I’m exhausted by the world around me, I’m exhausted by my level of dismay and anger, and some days I’m just exhausted by reporting the real world. Don’t get me wrong, I am ecstatic that Biden is President and Harris is Vice President and I’m excited by all the work being done and the talented people being confirmed. But this is still an uphill battle and I think we all have to pitch in. I’ll leave it there for today. One last upsetting point: 2 days ago the world passed 100M confirmed covid cases. In the US confirmed cases may be slowing but we are still averaging over 4,000 deaths a day. As of today, the US has recorded more than 25.5M confirmed cases which is more than the total population of Australia. Think about that. More than every person living in Australia, a whole continent. Oliver! He has been sick for a couple of days and the doctor said his ear was a little red but not enough to warrant antibiotics. �There are some days when you feel so crummy that the only place you can safely sleep is in �Mummy’s comforting arms. Stay safe. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource COVID-19 Journals Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Libraries Description An account of the resource This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled. The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Subject The topic of the resource Epidemics Grand Valley State University College students Personal narratives COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COVID-19_2021-01-28_BenjaminPamela_PD-Day-323 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Benjamin, Pamela Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-01-28 Title A name given to the resource Day 323 Description An account of the resource Daily journal entry of Pamela Benjamin, spouse of GVSU history professor, Craig Benjamin, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally self-published on WordPress. Subject The topic of the resource COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Epidemics Grand Valley State University Grand Rapids (Mich.) Personal narratives Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b49b27a9859df77d58b680f5afc1966e.pdf f97aba625b0081c8143485e18b7a457e PDF Text Text Day 324 by windoworks You can’t make this stuff up. Well okay, its that sort of morning. First up: the virus. How did it get here from China, I hear you ask? Well..... Washington Post The first American evacuees from Wuhan, China, were met at a California military base last year by U.S. health officials with no virus prevention plan or infection control training — and who had not even been told to wear masks, according to a federal investigation. Later, those officials were told to remove protective gear when meeting with the evacuees, who were quarantined at the base, to avoid “bad optics.” Those are among the findings of two federal reports obtained by The Washington Post, supporting a whistleblower’s account of the chaos as U.S. officials scrambled to greet nearly 200 evacuees from Wuhan at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County, Calif., in the early morning of Jan. 29, 2020. Well that certainly falls into the ‘nothing surprises me anymore’ category. Apparently watching and learning from the Chinese approach to the virus was not part of the brief. Really, you could be overwhelmed by how poorly the US was prepared and how badly the people in charge misread the danger. And what do viruses do best apart from move swiftly from person to person? That’s right - they mutate. Crooked Media tells it best: South Carolina health officials announced on Thursday that they had confirmed two cases of the South African coronavirus variant, the first report of that variant being identified in the U.S. Neither person infected with the strain had traveled to South Africa or had any connection with each other, suggesting that the variant, known as B.1.351 (catchy; memorable; Elon Musk has added it to his list of baby names), is already spreading around the state. This strain is 50 percent more contagious than your garden-variety coronavirus, has caused a large and rapid increase of new cases in South Africa, and has now been found in at least 32 countries. But wait - is that more? The sudden arrival of extra-spreadable new variants has exposed yet another weak spot in the late-stage Jenga tower that is U.S. pandemic preparedness: We have no way to track these suckers. The U.S. has no nationwide system for checking coronavirus genomes for new mutations; researchers at a patchwork of �labs across the country currently conduct genome sequencing on just a few-thousands samples per week, out of roughly 1.4 million positive tests. And this: Why are all these spooky new strains showing up all of a sudden?” you ask, slightly muffled by your double-mask situation. The specifics are still unclear, but the basic answer is evolution. The virus has been mutating all along, and thanks to our global failure to contain it, it’s had ample time to wind up with significant genetic diversity. Some of those mutations have provided an adaptive advantage enabling strains to spread faster—which is why we’re now faced with variants that are better at infecting people or at dodging the human immune system in similar ways. It’s possible (but not yet proven) that the coronavirus has evolved in response to increasing human immunity: A variant that’s good at evading antibodies wouldn’t have had an advantage at the beginning of the pandemic, when everyone’s immune system was totally defenseless. In places where many people had been infected and developed some level of immunity, though, those variants could quickly become dominant. So, double mask people. And now a new recommendation: a surgical mask (KN95) with a cloth mask over the top. Okay then. I may never go into a store again. I have become a hermit. I only venture out in our car. Craig takes me out almost every day for a drive. There isn’t a single part of the Grand Rapids area and beyond we haven’t seen multiple times. Sometimes we drive around areas in the opposite direction, just for a change. Very occasionally I make us a packed lunch of some sort and we venture further afield Silver Lake or Saugatuck. In the future I may never make another packed lunch again. T hen the highlight of each day is: what to make for dinner thats new and exciting and that we haven’t eaten at least 20 times over the past 10 months. Our family book club has begun swapping a recipe a week, although Elle’s margarita recipe this week is not actually food. In other news, a thing called Game Stop happened and rather than try to explain it, here’s something that explains it You’ll need to blow it up to read it, sorry. ��This next piece is from Move On. MoveOn is a progressive public policy advocacy group and political action committee. Formed in 1998 in response to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton by the U.S. House of Representatives, MoveOn.org has raised millions of dollars for liberal candidates in the United States of America. Wikipedia Also yesterday, the Capitol Police announced the January 6 white supremacist insurrection left nearly 140 officers injured, including some who suffered brain injuries or smashed spinal discs. And in addition to the five people, including one officer, who died in the attack, two additional officers present during the siege have since died by suicide. Which leads us to an interesting (worrying, scary) piece from NPR about QAnon: Now that former President Donald Trump has left office, the community of believers in the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory are left wondering what will happen next. Washington Post national technology reporter Craig Timberg has written about QAnon and related subjects in recent months. He acknowledges that it can be hard to sum up exactly what QAnon is. "Our copy editors [at the Post] are questioning whether we should call it a 'conspiracy theory' or an 'extremist ideology,' " Timberg tells Fresh Air. "Some researchers think it's a cult. Some think it's an alternative reality game." The gist of QAnon is that there is a person who goes by the pseudonym "Q" who is supposedly a top-secret official in the U.S. government. Q posts cryptic online messages about the "truth" of what's really happening in the world. QAnon proponents believe that Trump was battling a cabal of deep-state actors and their celebrity allies who were, in turn, engaged in satanic worship and pedophilia. Are you with me so far? People who believe in this then take those sort of cryptic messages shared among themselves, analyze it, and then have sort of become a community of fellow travelers in this stuff that seems so crazy to many of us, but actually is a really animating force in a lot of people's lives and has been for years," Timberg says. QAnon supporters, Timberg notes, regard Trump "not merely as their president and leader, but also as essentially a messiah." People with QAnon paraphernalia were well represented in the deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. "[They believed that] Trump was going to stay in office, that he had really won the election, that the various baseless claims of election fraud were going to be proven true and acted upon," Timberg says. "And that a bunch of Democrats [were] going to be rounded up and arrested and, depending on which version of this you believed, shot or hung." Hang in there. �Trump's departure from the White House and Joe Biden's inauguration as president left many QAnon followers angry and confused. After the mob stormed the Capitol, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube on Jan. 6 banned Trump — and social media platforms targeted QAnon as well. Timberg predicts that pushback from the social media giants will likely mean fewer people will be engaged with QAnon but that the supporters who remain will be even more impassioned. "Researchers have been saying to me for weeks that … the QAnon believers whose beliefs survive the inauguration of President Biden are likely to be more committed. They're likely to be more fervent and more conspiratorial," Timberg says. "There is a real danger that what we'll see is a somewhat smaller but maybe more fervent and maybe more hateful and maybe more stealthy remnant that remains a force in our political life for years to come — and maybe also engages in acts of violence." OMG and WTF! On what Q supporters think is next, now that Trump has left office I would say they fall into two broad categories: There are those who believe that "the great storm" is still coming in some way, shape or form, even though President Biden is now in office. And I guess there's two iterations of this. One is President Trump is secretly in charge and controlling events from Mar-a-Lago. I guess the other is that there's a new date, March 4, which was the original inauguration date in this country, was done away with, I believe, in the '30s, and that when March 4 arrives, Donald Trump will swoop back in and say, "I've been president all along, I'm taking a second term," and then the mass arrests and the coming storm all happen then. So we'll have to see what happens to that group when that day comes and goes. But then there's an even more angry kind of dead-ender group that is feeling as though this central tenets of QAnon about pedophilia and Satan worshipping, etc., have been true all along, that Donald Trump was not maybe the messiah they thought he was, and that they're sort of like preparing for a longer struggle. Of all the groups, that one kind of scares me, because they're really doubling down on the most terrifying parts of these prophecies. I had heard snatches of this and combined with the domestic terrorism alert, this makes this horror story real. I said to my counselor (and yes, in a pandemic in this country,everyone needs a counselor) I feel as though I’m living in the middle of a really badly made science fiction movie and all I want to do lately is just scream. No, really. So even though Biden is President and working as fast as he can to help us all, the dangerous committed loonies are still out there, in the midst of a mutating viral pandemic. Are we near the end of the movie yet? I’m exhausted at watching it through my fingers and humming loudly during the really scary parts. �Well okay, Oliver. Yesterday he was well enough to go to daycare. They played with a big tub of crumbly dough and Oliver and a friend eventually climbed into the tub with the crumbly dough. As you do. ���So double masks and be very careful out there. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource COVID-19 Journals Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Libraries Description An account of the resource This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled. The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Subject The topic of the resource Epidemics Grand Valley State University College students Personal narratives COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COVID-19_2021-01-29_BenjaminPamela_PD-Day-324 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Benjamin, Pamela Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-01-29 Title A name given to the resource Day 324 Description An account of the resource Daily journal entry of Pamela Benjamin, spouse of GVSU history professor, Craig Benjamin, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally self-published on WordPress. Subject The topic of the resource COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Epidemics Grand Valley State University Grand Rapids (Mich.) Personal narratives Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/fc7e6fdb95d5d6a70a488f0ee67d6e69.pdf 264147d0e8f7d048dfafd75e8c6321a5 PDF Text Text Day 325. Saturday January 30. 155 sleeps to go. by windoworks I have asked friends and families to describe how the pandemic affected their working conditions and how and if it will have changed working conditions in the future. First up is my oldest child, Zar, who works at an online national news publication as a front page editor. New Zealand has been very lucky through the global Covid pandemic as after its lockdown in March (and a smaller, milder lockdown for Auckland for a couple of weeks in August) under the elimination strategy, life has been able to return to pre-virus ‘normal’ very quickly. While we have no community transmission of the virus, the work environment here has returned to what it was before the pandemic, but there is one main difference - the expanded acceptance of working from home. In the lockdown, most companies with office roles adjusted to working remotely. Many workers set up home offices and logged into work from there. Here again New Zealand is lucky as several years back it completed the roll-out of an national ultra-fast broadband network (UFB) to most areas, so people could hook up to fiber internet connections at speeds ranging upwards from 100mbps. This has made working remotely easy. With the experience of successful remote working from the national lockdown, many companies have embraced this as an option for employees - especially useful for staff with sick children or having to work unsociable hours. Another advantage of working remotely in the lockdown is that people can very quickly set up their home offices again if needed to in another lockdown situation - such as the milder lockdown in Auckland in August. �Kiwis have become quite adept at moving quickly to observe restrictions or lockdowns when needed, and the Government has invested huge sums in controls to keep the virus out. Here people refer to it as “putting in the mahi” (work) so they can then enjoy the results of this, living restriction-free. Thankfully, some of the people putting in the most valuable mahi are the contact tracing teams and Covid testers. As inevitable, we have had a few sparse cases where the virus has infected a border worker or returnee, who has ventured into the public (*See below). The contract tracing teams have been able to swing into action and ring-fence those very quickly, moving them and any close contacts into quarantine facilities with no need for further action. Fast testing, available free of charge around the country, was also ramped up, and quick results from large amounts of tests meant there have been no changes to restrictions or work environments. If further action is needed in the future, Kiwis will act together in our “team of 5 million”. *New Zealand’s borders are closed. Only New Zealanders have a right of entry, but must complete a minimum 14 days of isolation in a managed isolation facility (MIQ), with at least four consecutive negative Covid tests. The requirements are free. Foreigners (quite often film crews and deep-sea fishers, and, in some instances medical personnel) can apply for entry and if granted, must also complete managed isolation, but must also pay for it - in some cases many thousands of dollars. Its both interesting and a bit depressing to read how organized and efficient New Zealand has been at managing the virus. You may say: well their total population is only 5M, and that is a good point, but their �success is also an indication of the calm authority at the top - Prime Minister Jacinda Arden. A constant refrain to my question - why can’t we do that? Is: that would never happen here. And then the respondent usually refers to the Constitution. It makes no difference if I point out that as far as I know, every country in the world has a governing document similar to the US Constitution, because apparently our US one is special. Now I could delve into a long discussion about the Constitution and the law and I would point out that the sole purpose of the US Supreme Court is to interpret challenges to the Constitution - but that’s another blogpost. We haven’t been able to organize around the pandemic nationally because we didn’t have a national leader willing to take on responsibility for the safe passage of this country through this time. And right now, the Constitution seems under virulent attack by insurrectionists and coup leaders - and a large number of Republican Representatives and Senators seem to be aiding and abetting them. We now have a calm steady hand on the tiller in the White House, ably assisted by a diverse group of talented people who are working hard for the common good. Meanwhile, the truly disturbed (and I mean that in the mental health sense) and disaffected are doing their very best to tear up the Constitution and establish a dictatorship or monarchy in this country. Why, I hear you ask? The age old reasons - money and power. And because it popped into my head and seemed so appropriate, I offer this from ABBA: Money, money, money Must be funny In the rich man's world Money, money, money Always sunny In the rich man's world Aha aha All the things I could do If I had a little money It's a rich man's world It's a rich man's world From Heather Cox Richardson’s daily FB post: That anyone is trying to downplay that attempt to destroy the central principle of our democracy—fair elections and the peaceful transfer of power-- is appalling. And yet, Republican lawmakers are doing just that. Within the party, the pro-Trump faction and the business faction are struggling to take control. Those in the business wing of the party are not moderates: they are determined to destroy the government regulation, social welfare legislation, and public infrastructure programs that a majority of Americans like. �But they are not openly white supremacists or adherents of the QAnon conspiracy, the way that Trump’s vocal supporters are. And the absolute queen of the QAnon Republican Representatives is News & Guts: In addition to all her wacky conspiracy theories (Newtown school shooting was a “false flag” for example), Marjorie Taylor Greene has also made many bigoted comments. The latest post to surface came from Media Matters reporter Eric Hananoki who found the Georgia Congresswoman blamed the 2018 Camp Fire in California on the Rothchilds, a prominent Jewish family, and lasers beamed from space. Greene has expressed overt and more subtle antisemitic theories over time. In 2018 she shared a video, also on Facebook, that lambasted “Zionist supremacists” and advanced the “great replacement” theory, which falsely alleges that Jews are conspiring to undermine white-majority countries by bringing in nonwhite immigrants. At a minimum, she should be denied committee assignments and shunned by GOP donors. Other options include reprimand, censure or expulsion, particularly if she remains unapologetic or dodgy about her hatefilled views. Throughout history, Democrats and Republicans have both had fringe or corrupt members in their midst. How GOP leaders deal with someone so obviously unfit for office will speak volumes about the party’s values. If the US Constitution is our ruling document, how are House and Senate Republican members who took the mandatory oath of office abiding by it? I do solemnly swear and affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God. All enemies, foreign and domestic. Well that’s clearly stated and I rather think QAnon might fall under the domestic enemy category. But watching from the sidelines and after I watched an interview with Peter Meijer yesterday (a Republican Representative), I knew the Republican Party is tearing itself apart. Rep Meijer said how very disturbed he was by the behavior of the majority of the Republican Representatives and Senators. He is a newly elected member and he was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump. His life has changed significantly. He wears body armor, he has security guards and he has had to vary his daily routine. Apparently, especially in Washington D.C., we are now living in a war zone. Remember how everyone laughed when a lot of women worried that the Day of the Handmaid was coming. With women such as Majorie Taylor Greene occupying a seat in the government, I can’t imagine what might happen next. And here’s this: �Washington Post The two pipe bombs that were discovered on Jan. 6 near the U.S. Capitol shortly before a mob stormed the building are believed to have been planted the night before, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation and video footage obtained by The Washington Post. The explosive devices, which were placed blocks from one another at the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic national committees, have been largely overshadowed by the violent attempted insurrection at the Capitol. But finding the person suspected of planting both bombs remains a priority for federal authorities, who last week boosted the reward for tips leading to the person’s arrest from $50,000 to $75,000. The FBI said its agents are “using every tool in our toolbox” and have interviewed more than 1,000 residents and business owners in the neighborhood where the devices were found. On Friday morning, the FBI released additional information that confirmed The Post’s reporting about the timing of the placement of the bombs and raised the reward offered to $100,000. The video footage of the person planting the bombs is online. You can watch all the clips for yourself. And then there’s this: Washington Post Complex, overlapping layers of security and a growing distance from the American public have led successive presidents to label the White House “the crown jewel of the federal penitentiary system.” But the mansion may have competition for the title if an immediately controversial proposal goes through at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Days after apologizing for her agency’s “failings” in keeping the Congress secure on Jan. 6 against a rampaging mob whipped up by Donald Trump, acting Capitol Police chief Yogananda Pittman called for permanent fencing at the House and Senate. “In light of recent events, I can unequivocally say that vast improvements to the physical security infrastructure must be made to include permanent fencing, and the availability of ready, back-up forces in close proximity to the Capitol,” Pittman said in a statement. And to have the final word on this subject, from Heather Cox Richardson: In all my years of studying U.S. politics, seamy side and all, I never expected to see the name of an American president in the New York Times in a list comparing him to Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. But then, I never expected to see an American president urge a mob to storm the U.S. Capitol to overturn an election, either. Two posters about Covid which say it all, really. ��Oliver, to cheer you up. �To finish: its a Bernie meme. How long did it take you to find him? �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource COVID-19 Journals Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Libraries Description An account of the resource This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled. The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Subject The topic of the resource Epidemics Grand Valley State University College students Personal narratives COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COVID-19_2021-01-30_BenjaminPamela_PD-Day-325 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Benjamin, Pamela Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-01-30 Title A name given to the resource Day 325 Description An account of the resource Daily journal entry of Pamela Benjamin, spouse of GVSU history professor, Craig Benjamin, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally self-published on WordPress. Subject The topic of the resource COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Epidemics Grand Valley State University Grand Rapids (Mich.) Personal narratives Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/97cf89135ffd7be7f1f764eaf7a6d1df.pdf c364ded8d12e1efabe0299e86c0f62e7 PDF Text Text Day 326 by windoworks It is a dark and snowy morning on this last day of January. Every day I read the news and opinion pieces and I decide what to copy for possible inclusion in the day’s post and what to ignore. One of the biggest stories at the moment is the apparent disintegration of the Republican Party. I keep seeing this party referred to as the GOP which was puzzling because none of those 3 initials say Republican. Wild guess: Group of Putzes? Guess our Purpose? No? What it stands for - and this is surprising in this day and age - is Grand Old Party. Hmmm. That reminds me of something our realtor said last week. The term master bedroom is no longer acceptable. Why? Because it smacks of slavery. Ohhh. I see you all nodding. The correct term is main bedroom. I think the Republican Party needs to consider their widely used nickname. But they do have bigger problems. Here’s Crooked Media’s excellent summary: Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) said Friday that she will move to a new office further away from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-WTF) for her team’s safety, after a maskless Greene “berated” her in the halls of the Capitol, and targeted her on social media. Capping off a week of harrowing revelations about how Greene is, against all odds, worse than we thought, a newly surfaced pre-election video shows her wholeheartedly endorsing political violence: “The only way you get your freedoms back is it’s earned with the price of blood.” Wherever Cori Bush’s new office is, let’s maybe scoot it down 100 yards further? Here’s where everyone stands on the rapidly deteriorating Greene situation: The same week we learned that Greene had spread conspiracy theories about school shootings and bullied a Parkland survivor, Republican leaders put her on the education committee, then took a reaaally big bite of a sandwich, so they can’t comment right now. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi lambasted them for it, and noted that Congress would need to adopt heightened security measures to address the reality that “the enemy is within the House of Representatives.” The parents of children killed in school shootings have called for Greene’s removal from Congress, and a major Jewish nonprofit group has demanded accountability. Republicans’ refusal to condemn the antisemitic, teen-harassing, violence-espousing conspiracy theorist in their midst reflects the fact that Greene isn’t some outlier in the Republican Party, but its godawful new face. She’s not even the lone GOP House member with extremist ties: Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) has hung out with the Oath Keepers militia (whose members later attacked the Capitol), and told the group, “We’re in [a civil war]. We just haven’t started shooting at each other yet.” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) was linked to the “Stop the Steal” campaign, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) has close connections to a number of selfstyled militia groups, and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) appeared at an event attended by the Proud Boys (who were there to provide security, Gaetz stressed, as if that….helps). �You know the Impeachment Trial begins in the Senate on February 9. This delay was to give Trump time to assemble a team of lawyers. And he did - 5 well thought of lawyers. But, as of yesterday, all 5, I repeat, all 5 lawyers have removed themselves. They left because Trump insisted that his only defense be, that the election was rigged and he is still the President. Now I don’t want to feel sad for Trump, such a despicable person who has cost America such a steep price in lives lost, but I do begin to wonder. Did America (not Craig or I) elect a delusional man to the White House 4 years ago? In all these terrible 4 years, did the President lead the country down a rabbit hole of his own firmly held erroneous beliefs? Does he actually believe there was some sort of hidden voter fraud in the recent election? In some ways, that is sad and he really needs proper help - the heavily medicated, locked in a safe facility type. As Shakespeare said: truth will out. Here’s an amazing piece from the Guardian (I cannot speak to the validity but it sounds plausible). Donald Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset over 40 years and proved so willing to parrot anti-western propaganda that there were celebrations in Moscow, a former KGB spy has told the Guardian. Yuri Shvets, posted to Washington by the Soviet Union in the 1980s, compares the former US president to “the Cambridge five”, the British spy ring that passed secrets to Moscow during the second world war and early cold war. Now 67, Shvets is a key source for American Kompromat, a new book by journalist Craig Unger. Unger describes how Trump first appeared on the Russians’ radar in 1977 when he married his first wife, Ivana Zelnickova, a Czech model. Trump became the target of a spying operation overseen by Czechoslovakia’s intelligence service in cooperation with the KGB. Then, in 1987, Trump and Ivana visited Moscow and St Petersburg for the first time. Shvets said Trump was fed KGB talking points and flattered by KGB operatives who floated the idea that he should go into politics. The ex-major recalled: “For the KGB, it was a charm offensive. They had collected a lot of information on his personality so they knew who he was personally. The feeling was that he was extremely vulnerable intellectually, and psychologically, and he was prone to flattery. “This is what they exploited. They played the game as if they were immensely impressed by his personality and believed this is the guy who should be the president of the United States one day: it is people like him who could change the world. They fed him these so-called active measures soundbites and it happened. So it was a big achievement for the KGB active measures at the time.” Trump was the perfect target in a lot of ways: his vanity, narcissism made him a natural target to recruit. He was cultivated over a 40-year period, right up through his election.” Is that a bombshell, or were we already wondering? February 9 in the Senate should bevery interesting. So, the virus. What is the latest, I hear you ask. From Washington Post: �The road to herd immunity from the coronavirus suddenly looks longer. The emergence of more transmissible, potentially vaccine-evading variants threatens to extend the global health disaster and make 2021 feel too much like 2020. A complicated mix of good news and bad news makes any forecast for the coming months fuzzy. But scientists have one clear and sobering message: The pandemic is a long way from over. The mutation-laden variants are on the move, and that includes one first identified in South Africa and confirmed in a Baltimore-area adult, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said Saturday. It was the third known case in the United States of the variant, following two cases announced Thursday in South Carolina. The person in Maryland had no travel history, which is evidence of community transmission. Research findings published in recent days have shown that vaccines will still likely work against mutated variants of the coronavirus. But they may not work as well, as the slippery virus continues to adapt to its new host, the human species. Scientists are ramping up genomic surveillance of the virus and vaccine makers are retooling their formulas in an attempt to keep pace with this morphing pathogen. “We’re very worried,” said Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. “All it’s going to take is a couple more mutations on top of that, and you’re really going to have to start worrying.” There is also the issue of reinfection. Collins said Friday that he is troubled by information from the biotech company Novavax, maker of a vaccine that proved effective in clinical trials, that the new variant circulating widely in South Africa showed signs of eluding natural immunity among volunteers who had previously survived an infection with the more common coronavirus strain. The Novavax vaccine was strikingly less effective against that variant, called B.1.351, than against other strains. “That is something I had not seen before,” Collins said of the reinfection claim. “It is very tentative, and the numbers are not huge, but I would be alarmed if natural infection . . . is not sufficient to provide immunity.” So, I was going to include something about GameStop but honestly, it was so confusing, I gave up reading the article. Instead here’s what’s happening at our house. Over the last couple of days Craig has put a large amount of stuff out at the top of our driveway as “free”. It all disappeared, with the exception of some old magazines. He has also moved the 30 heavy, packed boxes down to the basement and we have depersonalized the house - a task that took much longer than you would think. Can I just say I am never doing this again? If there is a next time, I’ll pay someone. And remember how Craig said: lets not end up living like monks for 5 months? Too late. Our house now looks either a photo shoot for House & Garden or - sparse, uncluttered, perhaps minimalist. In other exciting news - our failing boiler (furnace) will be replaced in a week or so, but, that means we may be entirely without heat for a night. We’re already working out survival strategies. Oliver. Yesterday he was still feeling a little crabby and under the weather. But he is a trooper. He always tries to smile. �Well nearly always �In the park with Dad. Okay, that’s it for today. Stay safe. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource COVID-19 Journals Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Libraries Description An account of the resource This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled. The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Subject The topic of the resource Epidemics Grand Valley State University College students Personal narratives COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COVID-19_2021-01-31_BenjaminPamela_PD-Day-326 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Benjamin, Pamela Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-01-31 Title A name given to the resource Day 326 Description An account of the resource Daily journal entry of Pamela Benjamin, spouse of GVSU history professor, Craig Benjamin, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally self-published on WordPress. Subject The topic of the resource COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Epidemics Grand Valley State University Grand Rapids (Mich.) Personal narratives Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/cdba6cf9ae80b95fa6dc1bbfbb03ca87.pdf 91e9bb6ec4cec212f94c9049c0a993d2 PDF Text Text Day 327 by windoworks Yesterday I posted a photo of a completed 1000 piece Charles Wysocki jigsaw puzzle. So far, during this pandemic, I have ordered about 7 puzzles through Amazon. In the beginning, they were too expensive online and instead I ordered and paid for 2 puzzles from Barnes & Noble at a nearby mall. The store was on the second floor of the mall, but my instructions were to pull up in the car at the main mall entrance, call the store and then wait. A couple of minutes later, a young woman came down the fire escape stairs with my puzzles in a bag. I was most impressed by the store’s curbside pickup. It is the first day of February and restaurants in Michigan are allowed to open for in-house dining but under restrictive conditions. Many restaurants are not going to bother as the conditions are just too hard to enforce. The biggest problem is not only policing the customers and constantly sanitizing, its also the chance that one of the staff members will contract Covid and then infect the whole establishment and perhaps some customers before anyone feels ill. Craig and I are still not interested in eating out or buying take out. The emergence of 3 new virus variants is disturbing. How do these variants occur? Where do they come from? This article from the LA Times may have the answer: Among the sickest of COVID-19 patients, this population of “long haulers” appears to play a key role in incubating new variants of the coronavirus, some of which could change the trajectory of the pandemic. The mutations that arose from one single patient are “a microcosm of the viral evolution we’re seeing globally,” said Dr. Jonathan Z. Li, an infectious-disease specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston who treated him. “He showed us what could happen” when a germ with a knack for genetic shapeshifting stumbles upon conditions that reward it for doing so. Indeed, situations in which patients can’t clear a viral infection are “the worst possible scenario for developing mutations,” said Dr. Bruce Walker, an immunologist and founding director of the Ragon Institute in Boston. As weeks of illness turn into months, a virus copies itself millions of times. Each copy is an opportunity to make random mistakes. As it spins off new mutations, the virus may happen upon ones that help it resist medications, evade the immune system and come back stronger. SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, has been an unpredictable adversary. The chance to witness its transformation in near-real time, and see where and how it mutates in a single host, can guide the design of vaccines and medications that don’t lose their effectiveness over time, Walker said. In the first wave, he said, the proliferation of infections gives the virus ample opportunity to take on genetic changes that may live on in bodies of immunocompromised patients. By the time a second wave begins, novel variants that were incubating in these long-haulers have also begun to circulate. When they encounter vast numbers of new hosts, the result is a fertile environment for strains to establish themselves �— if their genetic modifications confer some advantage. The best way to prevent the emergence of more mutations is to both expand vaccinations and do more to protect people with compromised immune systems, De Oliveira said. “If we keep the virus around for a long time, we will be giving it more opportunities to outsmart us,” he said. There are now 5 vaccines in circulation around the world and they are all effective. In one article I read a question: should I take the Johnson & Johnson vaccine tomorrow or wait 2-3 weeks for a dose of Moderna or Pfizer? The unequivocal answer was: take the Johnson & Johnson vaccine now. Here a small excerpt which speaks to this: New York Times Here’s the key fact: All five vaccines with public results have eliminated Covid-19 deaths. They have also drastically reduced hospitalizations. “They’re all good trial results,” Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University, told me. “It’s great news.” Many people are instead focusing on relatively minor differences among the vaccine results and wrongly assuming that those differences mean that some vaccines won’t prevent serious illnesses. It’s still too early to be sure, because a few of the vaccine makers have released only a small amount of data. But the available data is very encouraging — including about the vaccines’ effect on the virus’s variants. Well thats very encouraging. We are still 1 more worrying week out from our first vaccine shot. I now automatically delay things like a much needed haircut until after at least the first shot. �I suspect that most sitting Republicans are hoping that the Impeachment Trial and the reason for it, the January 6 attempted coup, would just simply fade into the background. Unfortunately for them, the investigations and the published results of those ongoing investigations are keeping this at the forefront. Washington Post When die-hard supporters of President Donald Trump showed up at rally point “Cowboy” in Louisville on the morning of Jan. 5, they found the shopping mall’s parking lot was closed to cars, so they assembled their 50 or so vehicles outside a nearby Kohl’s department store. Hundreds of miles away in Columbia, S.C., at a mall designated rally point “Rebel,” other Trump supporters gathered to form another caravan to Washington. A similar meetup — dubbed “Minuteman” — was planned for Springfield, Mass. That same day, FBI personnel in Norfolk were increasingly alarmed by the online conversations they were seeing, including warlike talk around the convoys headed to the nation’s capital. One map posted online described the rally points, declaring them a “MAGA Cavalry To Connect Patriot Caravans to StopTheSteal in D.C.” Another map showed the U.S. Congress, indicating tunnels connecting different parts of the complex. The map was headlined, “CREATE PERIMETER,” according to the FBI report, which was reviewed by The Washington Post. “Be ready to fight. Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in,” read one posting, according to the report. FBI agents around the country are working to unravel the various motives, relationships, goals and actions of the hundreds of Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Some inside the bureau have described the Capitol riot investigation as their biggest case since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and a top �priority of the agents’ work is to determine the extent to which that violence and chaos was preplanned and coordinated. Investigators caution there is an important legal distinction between gathering likeminded people for a political rally — which is protected by the First Amendment — and organizing an armed assault on the seat of American government. The task now is to distinguish which people belong in each category, and who played key roles in committing or coordinating the violence. Video and court filings, for instance, describe how several groups of men that include alleged members of the Proud Boys appear to engage in concerted action, converging on the West Front of the Capitol just before 1 p.m., near the Peace Monument at First Street NW and Pennsylvania Avenue NW. Different factions of the crowd appear to coalesce, move forward and chant under the direction of different leaders before charging at startled police staffing a pedestrian gate, all in the matter of a few minutes. The FBI is also trying to determine how many people went to Washington seeking to engage in violence, even if they weren’t part of any formal organization. Some of those in the Louisville caravan said they were animated by the belief that the election was stolen, according to interviews they gave to the Louisville CourierJournal.One of the comments cited in the FBI memo declared Trump supporters should go to Washington and get “violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die.” Some had been preparing for conflict for weeks. In conversations later that month, Watkins allegedly spoke in apocalyptic terms about the prospect of Joe Biden’s being sworn in as president on Jan. 20. “`If he is, our way of life as we know it is over. Our Republic would be over. Then it is our duty as Americans to fight, kill and die for our rights. . . . If Biden get the steal, none of us have a chance in my mind. We already have our neck in the noose. They just haven’t kicked the chair yet.” “Historically, within the right-wing extremist movements, leadership has produced rhetoric to spin up their members, increase radicalization and recruitment, and then stand back and let small cells or individual lone offenders follow through on that rhetoric with violent action,” said Thomas O’Connor, a former FBI agent who spent decades investigating domestic terrorists. “Domestic terrorism actually developed the leaderless resistance concept, taking the potential blame away from the leadership and putting it down into small groups or individuals, and I think that is what you’re starting to see here.” Two main players who allowed themselves to be photographed maskless which then allowed easier identification, were arrested and indicted in federal court: NPR: Two members of the far-right group the Proud Boys were indicted in federal court Friday for their participation in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Charges included obstructing an official proceeding and assaulting officers. Forty-three year-old Dominic Pezzola of Rochester, N.Y., and 31-year-old William Pepe of Beacon, N.Y., were both originally charged by criminal complaint and were arrested in mid-January, a Department of Justice statement said. Both men were indicted in Washington, D.C., on Friday on federal charges of conspiracy, civil disorder, unlawfully entering restricted buildings or grounds, and disorderly and �disruptive conduct in restricted buildings or grounds. Pezzola faces additional charges of obstruction of an official proceeding; auxiliary counts of civil disorder, and aiding and abetting civil disorder; robbery of personal property of the United States; assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers; destruction of government property; and engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds. Wow! Karma’s a bitch, isn’t it? There is video footage of the crowd inside the Capitol Building, crammed shoulder to shoulder, maskless, shouting “Hang Mike Pence”. I watch that video and others and I can’t believe we’ve come to this - but we have. You would think that sitting Republicans would stand up and support their Oath and begin to work across the aisle to find compromises that both Democrats and Republicans can live with. There is a tiny indication of that with 10 Republicans presenting an alternative stimulus bill to President Biden’s bill. Hopefully this will at least open honest discussions which will conclude with a stimulus bill that is not perfect to either side but is one that they can both live with. Because that’s how governments, boards and committees work - no one should ever get their way perfectly, that would be a dictatorship or an authoritarian system. Its always all about compromise. Oliver has 2 of his bottom molars! Teething is such hard work. �This quiche stuff is yummy. �Yes! The flashback is back - but I’ve almost forgotten where we were. Oh, thats right - Amalfi. The umbrellas on the beach ���Back to the ship by tender �In the evening a soprano came on board to sing for us �Look to the right of the ‘A’ and you can see one of the fireworks that was part of the fireworks display that we stayed anchored to watch. �Goodbye Amalfi. It was fun! See you tomorrow - Groundhog Day. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource COVID-19 Journals Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Libraries Description An account of the resource This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled. The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Subject The topic of the resource Epidemics Grand Valley State University College students Personal narratives COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COVID-19_2021-02-01_BenjaminPamela_PD-Day-327 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Benjamin, Pamela Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-02-01 Title A name given to the resource Day 327 Description An account of the resource Daily journal entry of Pamela Benjamin, spouse of GVSU history professor, Craig Benjamin, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally self-published on WordPress. Subject The topic of the resource COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Epidemics Grand Valley State University Grand Rapids (Mich.) Personal narratives Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/9927566d0c2f8da279a24dec9fc5eca7.pdf 94bf6c92f64c3917000e7b29f42589ae PDF Text Text Day 328 by windoworks I was talking to my youngest last night and he said he thought I would sound happier in my posts after Biden was elected President. I thought I would sound happier too, but almost immediately after the President and the First Lady moved into the White House (still don’t like that name), stupid shit started happening. And I have to say that its depressing and scary and its the dead of winter. I am not allowed to walk outside when there’s ice on the sidewalks, roads and trails because my wrist surgeon assured me that if I fell on my right wrist, he would not be able to put it back together again. So, of course, I listen to him. The confirmed case numbers in the US are slowly dropping and daily deaths have slowed also. It seems January was our worst month of all. Yesterday Governor Whitmer posted that Michigan had vaccinated its 1M person. Which is good but her aim is to vaccinate 50,000 people a day as soon as possible. Just a side note here: Trump’s administration seems to have mislaid 20M doses of the vaccine, and try as they might, the Biden Administration can’t seem to find them. Why? You ask. Because the Trump administration had no plan, remember? No plan for anything, except making America great again (he was going to hold his breath and wish hard) and then when that didn’t work, Plan B: staging a coup. �This morning, in spite of my best intentions to not drown in dreadful video feeds, Craig and I watched Congresswoman Katie Porter being interviewed about January 6 and how Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez suddenly ran in to hide in her office. Porter said: what are you looking for? as Ocasio-Cortez ran around her office looking in closets and cupboards. She replied: I’m looking for somewhere to hide. Ocasio-Cortez eventually hid behind the door in Porter’s bathroom and listened to the mob screaming “where is she?” It is unbelievable that the evidence is showing that elected Republicans are trying to either: a) sweep this under the rug, b) deny it really happened, c) cover up their aiding and abetting, d) insist that the election was stolen from Trump, although it didn’t seem to be stolen from them, e) carry on as if they still hold the balance of power.... I could go on (and on and on). Trump now has 2 of the most despicable lawyers to run defense for his Impeachment Trial (look them up), and apparently they’ve convinced him that his defense that he was cheated out of the election is not the best ploy and so perhaps an argument that an Impeachmeant Trial after the Impeached President has ended his term is unconstitutional. From NPR: This is from a Congressional Research Service legal briefing on Jan. 15, two days after Trump's impeachment and in anticipation of the likelihood that the Senate would take up an impeachment trial after Trump's term was up: “Though the text [of the Constitution] is open to debate, it appears that most scholars who have closely examined the question have concluded that Congress has authority to extend the impeachment process to officials who are no longer in office." So they’re not arguing that he didn’t incite violence, they’re arguing that he can’t be convicted because he’s no longer in office. We’ll see. In other developments, there is a movement to discipline Majorie Taylor-Greene for her egregious behavior and at the very least, remove her from all committees. At the same time, The Women’s March is urging women all over the US to write to Ted Cruz’s major funders and ask them to remove their financial support due to his unconstitutional behavior. �And all the time, President Biden keeps working, working, working. For many contentious issues he is using his Executive Powers. This is probably not the best way of governing, but it is what is left to him by the autocratic Republicans. In other extraordinary news: Republican Representative Peter Meijer is �holding his first virtual town hall on Wednesday this week, and all constituents can attend. Wait, what? Isn’t that what elected Democrats do? Well that seems reasonable, Peter. Vaccines. From NPR: For nearly an hour Saturday, about 50 vaccination opponents and right-wing supporters of former President Donald Trump delayed COVID-19 vaccinations when they protested at the entrance to Dodger Stadium, the site of a mass vaccination campaign. Holding signs that said things such as "COVID=Scam," "Don't be a lab rat" and "Tell Bill Gates to go vaccinate himself," the protesters caused the Los Angeles Fire Department to close the stadium entrance as a precaution. People in hundreds of cars, waiting in line for hours, had to wait even longer. The site was shut down around 2 p.m. Saturday as several Los Angeles Police Department officers arrived at the scene. No arrests were made, and by 3 p.m., the site was reopened. "We will not be deterred or threatened," California Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Twitter. So we have stepped off reality into an unknown space. Every day I report these things and every day my brain does a little wiggle and if I was a robot it would say: does not compute. I understand if you don’t believe in the virus or the vaccine, I’m okay with that. Be it on your own head. But why do you have to demonstrate at a vaccination center and close it down? Here’s my real question: what’s in it for you? What do you gain if you stop other people from being vaccinated? What am I missing? Yesterday I received an email from my friend Merrilyn, who you remember lives in Perth, Western Australia. Here’s what she said: Well, at last the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic has reached Perth again. It’s 10 months since we were in lockdown and thanks to a young 20-something security guard at one of the quarantine hotels who has the British strain of the virus, the whole of the Perth Metropolitan area has been forced into a 5-day lockdown. That’s 2 million people. That’s how our WA Premier reacts to the alarm. We have a wonderful WAsafe App on our phones which we have to use wherever we go these days and thanks to that the authorities have been able to trace this young man’s movements and those of his 3 flatmates whilst he and they were out and about before being diagnosed. During this lockdown everyone has to wear masks – something that’s also new to WA residents. One fellow in a nearby suburb was walking the streets yesterday without a mask and was stopped by police who offered him a mask which he refused. He also refused to give his name and was arrested immediately, no bail was allowed and he will be in prison for 17 days until his hearing. Meanwhile there is a huge bushfire raging out of control in the suburbs north of us. We have experienced temperatures in the high 30s (high 90F) for the last few days with another 37 predicted for today. We are not in danger from this particular bushfire as the winds are in our favour at the moment, but as you know, �fires are unpredictable. We do have a bushfire plan and I have a bag packed should we have to evacuate. It does make life a little edgy at this moment. Imagine a non masker being arrested an jailed without bail for 17 days before their trial. That makes you think, doesn’t it? Its Oliver time. You can see how he brightens up my day. I’ll leave you to imagine what he’s thinking. The next day we sailed on to Taormina. Taormina is a hilltop town on the east coast of Sicily. It sits near Mount Etna, an active volcano with trails leading to the summit. The town is known for the Teatro Antico di Taormina, an ancient Greco-Roman theater still used today. Near the theater, cliffs drop to the sea forming coves with sandy beaches. A narrow stretch of sand connects to Isola Bella, a tiny island and nature reserve. ― Google �Mt Etna, from the ship �Looking down from the town to the bay with our ship in the distance �The town square and the �church �Taormina is a famed shopping stop. The Roman amphitheater �Looking along the coast through the amphitheater �entrance �Inside a nearby church Someone important’s house �A religious festival which used flower buds. I’m going to leave you with this today because it expresses my feelings exactly. F word included. �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource COVID-19 Journals Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Libraries Description An account of the resource This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled. The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Subject The topic of the resource Epidemics Grand Valley State University College students Personal narratives COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COVID-19_2021-02-02_BenjaminPamela_PD-Day-328 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Benjamin, Pamela Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-02-02 Title A name given to the resource Day 328 Description An account of the resource Daily journal entry of Pamela Benjamin, spouse of GVSU history professor, Craig Benjamin, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally self-published on WordPress. Subject The topic of the resource COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Epidemics Grand Valley State University Grand Rapids (Mich.) Personal narratives Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/03ca54bb2ee8c7ef0cd8dd75ab5695ba.pdf 416af2719387f8a3f1db4ded349da19d PDF Text Text Day 329 by windoworks Its a big day. Yesterday was Groundhog Day and Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow and so there’s 6 more weeks of winter. Listen, I just report the facts, I don’t explain them. Of course there is nothing factual about whether a groundhog sees his shadow to forecast winters duration, but for about 106 years this has been the premier tourist attraction at Gobblers Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. So winter will last until March 16 or thereabouts. No surprise there. I am posting the following because it describes the charges against Trump and what his new (disreputable) legal team are arguing in defense. It is a long read but I believe that every American: Democrat, Republican, Independent and non voters should read this account and think carefully about it. What will it mean if the Republicans in the Senate do not vote to convict after being presented with this iron clad evidence. What will it mean for the United States of America? How will this country go forward as a democracy from here? February 2, 2021 (Tuesday) Heather Cox Richardson, political historian and author. Today, on the same day that the remains of Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick, who was killed in the January 6 insurrection, lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda, the House impeachment managers filed their trial brief for the upcoming Senate impeachment trial of former president Donald Trump. The charge is that he incited the insurrection attempt of January 6, 2021, in which a mob stormed the Capitol to stop the counting of the certified electoral ballots for the 2020 election. Led by Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a former professor of constitutional law, the managers laid out Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election and his incitement of a violent mob to stop Congress from confirming the victory of Joseph Biden in the election. They note that Trump bears “singular responsibility” for the tragedy of January 6 and dismiss his argument that the Senate cannot convict him now because he is no longer in office, countering that such an understanding would give a president “a free pass to commit high crimes and misdemeanors near the end of their term.” The managers detailed Trump’s deliberate attempt to convince his followers of a lie: that he won the election in a “landslide,” and that Democrats had “stolen” the apparent victory. They say he “amplified these lies at every turn, seeking to convince supporters that they were victims of a massive electoral conspiracy that threatened the Nation’s continued existence.” But the courts rejected his arguments, and state and federal officials refused to cave to his demands that they break the law to alter the election results. So Trump announced a “Save America Rally,” urging his supporters to come to Washington, D.C., to “fight” for his reelection. He promised the rally would be “wild.” �Trump, they note, “spent months insisting to his base that the only way he could lose the election was a dangerous, wide-ranging conspiracy against them that threatened America itself.” He urged them to stop the counting on January 6, “by making plans to ‘fight like hell’ and ‘fight to the death’ against this ‘act of war’ by ‘Radical Left Democrats’ and the ‘weak and ineffective RINO section of the Republican Party.’”On January 6, he urged his supporters to go to the Capitol to stop what he called the massive fraud taking place there. He told them, “if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Carrying Trump flags, the mob marched to the Capitol and broke in, searching specifically for Vice President Mike Pence, whom Trump blamed for counting the votes accurately, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. One shouted, “What are we waiting for? We already voted and what have they done? They stole it! We want our fcking country back! Let’s take it!” Others shouted, “Hang Mike Pence!” and “Tell Pelosi we’re coming for that btch.”Allegedly “delighted” at the interruption to the vote count, Trump retweeted a video of his rally speech telling his supporters to be “strong” and, even as Pence and his family were hiding from the violent mob, tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.” This sent the mob into a frenzy. Then, while the Senate was evacuated, Trump tried to reach the new senator from Alabama, Tommy Tuberville, to urge him to continue to delay the counting of the electoral votes. Members of both houses from both parties called the president to urge him to call off the mob, but for more than three hours, he refused. When he finally issued a video telling his followers to go home, he said, “[i]t was a landslide election and everyone knows it, especially the other side.” He told them: “We love you, you’re very special.”Later that night he tweeted: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!” Trump’s new legal team issued its response to the House impeachment managers today, as well. They stand on the ground that, because Trump is no longer president, it is unconstitutional to try him on an article of impeachment. They also deny that the former president incited the insurrection and say he was simply exercising his First Amendment rights when he repeatedly attacked the legitimacy of the 2020 election. Far from backing down from his position, Trump is continuing to assert his argument that he won the election. “With very few exceptions,” his lawyers’ response reads, “under the convenient guise of Covid19 pandemic ‘safeguards’ states [sic] election laws and procedures were changed by local politicians or judges without the necessary approvals from state legislatures. Insufficient evidence exists upon which a reasonable jurist could conclude that the 45th President’s statements were accurate or not, and he therefore denies they were false.” �Trump’s argument has been dismissed in more than 60 court cases, so there is plenty of evidence to conclude that it is false. But he is doubling down on what scholars of authoritarianism call a “big lie:” that he was the true winner of the 2020 election, and that the Democrats stole it. The big lie, a key propaganda tool that is associated with Nazi Germany, is a lie so huge that no one can believe it is false. If leaders repeat it enough times, refusing to admit that it is a lie, people come to think it is the truth because surely no one would make up anything so outrageous. In this case, Trump supporters insist that there was massive fraud in the 2020 election (there wasn’t) and that Trump really won (he didn’t). As Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) pointed out last week, the Republicans who supported Trump’s big lie and challenged the counting of the electoral votes on January 6 still have not admitted they were lying. Big lies are springboards for authoritarian politicians. They enable a leader to convince followers that they were unfairly cheated of power by those that the leader demonizes. That Trump and his supporters are continuing to advance their big lie, even in the face of overwhelming proof that it is false, is deeply concerning. If there is any need to prove that Trump’s big lie is, indeed, a lie, there is plenty of proof in the fact that when the leader of the company Trump surrogates blamed for facilitating election fraud threatened to sue them, they backed down fast. The voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems was at the center of Trump supporters’ claims of a stolen election, and its leadership has threatened to sue the conservative media network Newsmax for its personalities’ false statements. When the threat of a lawsuit first emerged, Newsmax issued an on-air disclaimer. Today, even as Trump’s lawyers were reiterating his insistence that he really won the election, the issue came up again. When MyPillow founder Mike Lindell began to spout Trump’s big lie on a Newsmax show, the co-anchor tried repeatedly to cut him off. When he was unsuccessful, the producers muted Lindell while the co-anchor said, “We at Newsmax have not been able to verify any of those kinds of allegations…. We just want to let people know that there’s nothing substantive that we have seen.” He read a legal disclaimer: “Newsmax accepts the [election] results as legal and final. The courts have also supported that view.” And then he stood up and left the set. I cannot see a clear path forward here. The Capitol Building and the White House have been sequestered in a Green Zone, such as the Green Zone in Baghdad, Iraq. It refers to a secured area where the seat of government is located. Areas nearby that are unsecured are referred to as red zones. What’s even more disturbing however is that once again, comparisons between Trump and Hitler are being drawn, and the rise of Nazi Germany. When the January 6 attempted coup occurred, Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, expressed concern that these actions in the US would encourage similar actions by the NeoNazis in Germany. �The expression ‘the big lie’ was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, to describe the use of a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously". Wikipedia When we lived in Berlin in August 2016, we visited a display called The Topography of Terror. There were disturbing photos of huge complicit crowds of Germans, all supporting the public shamings, the mass arrests and the firing squad actions. And these photos and the rest of the large display were set out unapologetically, as an unvarnished recounting of facts. There was no concealment of the truth of what took place, no matter how shameful. Some people embrace the big lie as it allows them to rise in power and importance. Some people support the big lie because they are frightened of the consequences if they aren’t seen to support it. Some stand on the sidelines and say nothing, hoping to absolve themselves of blame after it all goes pear shaped. In my wildest dreams, as dysfunctional as the US can be, I never imagined I would see a large group of people embrace and foster such a wildly untrue premise: that a Presidential election, so carefully regulated and policed, would be promoted as a fraud. Is no one thinking about the future of elections and their credibility? If you shout loudly that this legal election was somehow a complete and utter fraud, what will you shout about the next election. How will we return to a democratic system? I cannot see a clear path forward here. Today I’ll leave you with Oliver. �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource COVID-19 Journals Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Libraries Description An account of the resource This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled. The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Subject The topic of the resource Epidemics Grand Valley State University College students Personal narratives COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COVID-19_2021-02-03_BenjaminPamela_PD-Day-329 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Benjamin, Pamela Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-02-03 Title A name given to the resource Day 329 Description An account of the resource Daily journal entry of Pamela Benjamin, spouse of GVSU history professor, Craig Benjamin, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally self-published on WordPress. Subject The topic of the resource COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Epidemics Grand Valley State University Grand Rapids (Mich.) Personal narratives Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ee6b1b32dd1d7af3d792d123223f2ed1.pdf 60f265e757f0b2754502666a2bf5d70c PDF Text Text Day 330 by windoworks That might be my mantra. Good morning. This morning we woke to a freezing cold house. Craig (who is always the breakfast person) wore a quilted coat when he brought me my breakfast. Being nervous about leaving space heaters running all night - wooden houses burn so easily - we had switched everything off. Because in 18 years we have never had to think about warming the house in winter. The furnace guys, who made an astonishing amount of noise in the basement all day yesterday, are coming back today to fill the space age looking new furnace with water. Apparently that takes hours. Then someone has to go around and bleed the air out of all the radiators before the water is heated. We have a new double exhaust �pipe out of a basement window. I have to say the new hot water heater and the new furnace in the basement look most impressive. As they should - they cost a fortune. We had very generous neighbors and an ex neighbor who delivered space heaters to our door on Tuesday. And during the lockdown last year (I actually forget when), a man came around and repaired the pilot light on the gas fireplace in the living room. What a blessing that turned out to be yesterday. Of course the sunshine helped too. They have promised us heat by late afternoon or evening and there’d want to be. A blizzard begins about 3pm this afternoon. Talk about the nick of time! In a quick roundup: the Republicans held a secret vote and kept Liz Cheney as the 3rd highest ranking Republican in the House. Because that worked so well, they are now considering a secret vote on Impeachment. Interesting. Biden and the Democratic House are pushing forward with the Biden stimulus bill but the President is considering the $1400 checks for households under a certain income limit. Randy Rainbow has recorded a wonderful parody of “Evergreen” (the theme song to “A Star is Born” and sung by Barbra Streisand). His version is “Majorie Taylor Greene” and at the end he apologizes to Barbra. Like all his parodies, it brought a smile to my face - and he can certainly sing. The FBI has now arrested 180 insurrectionists from January 6. Oh and Canada has labeled the Proud Boys a terrorist entity. But what about the pandemic, Pamela? Well, I do have a couple of things: The Atlantic Even in a year of horrendous suffering, what is unfolding in Brazil stands out. In the rainforest city of Manaus, home to 2 million people, bodies are reportedly being dropped into mass graves as quickly as they can be dug. Hospitals have run out of oxygen, and people with potentially treatable cases of COVID-19 are dying of asphyxia. This nature and scale of mortality have not been seen since the first months of the pandemic. On the whole, Brazil has already reported the second-highest death toll in the world (though half that of the United States). As the country headed into summer, the worst was thought to be behind it. Data seemed to support the idea that herd immunity in Manaus was near. The city was able to largely reopen and remain open throughout its winter with low levels of COVID-19 cases. Yet now, the nightmare scenario is happening a second time. The variant in Brazil, known as the P.1 (or B.1.1.248) lineage, has a potent combination of mutations. Not only does this variant seem to be more transmissible; its lineage carries mutations that help it escape the antibodies that we develop in response to older lineages of the coronavirus. The coming year could be a story of two worlds undermining each other. Certain countries will approach herd immunity by vaccinating almost every citizen. Other countries could see mass casualties and catastrophic waves of reinfection—potentially with variants that evolved in response to the immunity conferred by the very vaccines to which these populations do not have access. In the process, these hot spots themselves will facilitate rapid evolution, giving rise to even more variants that could make the �vaccinated populations susceptible to disease once again. In a recursive loop, the virus could come back to haunt the vaccinated, leading to new surges and lockdowns in coming years. The countries that hoard the vaccine without a plan to help others do so at their own peril. Well that is depressing. But wait, we do have the vaccines. Craig and I are scheduled to receive our first dose next Monday February 8. I cannot tell you what a trying procedure that was! A friend texted me the link and I went online and began scheduling my vaccination. Halfway though I realized I needed my health insurance card (because you never think of this beforehand) and by the time I completed the form correctly, that vaccination spot had gone. I managed to get a later time slot and then I set about registering Craig - and by the time I had completed his form completely his available spot was 3 hours later than mine. But hey! We have these slots and other friends are still struggling. By the way, we both registered with another vaccination scheme some weeks ago and periodically they text us to say: we haven’t forgotten you but we don’t have a vaccination for you yet. Who’s organizing that? And I’ll do it 4 times better and for half the money. Here’s some vaccine questions answered from The Wall Street Journal: After filling out consent forms and receiving the shot, you’ll be monitored for adverse reactions for 15 or 30 minutes depending on your allergy history. You’ll simply need your photo ID and proof of your appointment. The two vaccines available in the U.S. are found to be similarly safe and effective. The second dose of the Pfizer vaccine is offered 21 days later, while Moderna is offered 28 days later. Staying well hydrated prior to the vaccine is encouraged. Ibuprofen or acetaminophen, can be used following vaccination to treat any fever or local discomfort. People are asked to stay at the site to be monitored for adverse effects, including allergic reactions, though these are rare. Adults will receive a vaccination card that includes the lot number and name of the administered vaccine along with a reminder to get their second dose. Those going for their second dose will need to bring this card with them. Side effects may include fatigue, muscle aches and soreness at the injection site. There is likely some protection from the first shot but the second dose enables the immune system to provide long-lasting protection. Doctors strongly advise getting both shots, in the recommended time frame. The protective effect begins to be observed from two weeks after the second vaccine injection. Precautions including mask-wearing and staying away from others are important even after you’ve been fully vaccinated, as the vaccines aren’t 100% effective. It is possible that even those who have been vaccinated can carry the virus without showing symptoms and pass it onto others. Research on this is still under way. But here’s this to consider from CNN: More than 530,000 people in the US could die of Covid-19 by the end of this month, a new CDC projection claims. That would be about one death for every minute of the pandemic. The CDC has also expressed concern that emerging data may show the UK variant making its way around the world is even �more deadly than the original strain. Researchers in the US are assuming there are far more cases of these international strains out there than are being reported. But there is some comforting news, too. Global vaccine confidence is rising, according to a survey, with more than half of people in 15 countries saying they’d take the vaccine if offered. And COVAX, a vaccine-sharing initiative, has announced its plan to distribute more than 330 million doses to developing nations in the first half of the year. Doctors and scientists and other reputable people are warning that this weekend’s Super Bowl could be a Superspreader Event. Now I know you’re really tired of hearing this, but in light of the new variants it is better to show caution. Perhaps watching it at home in your bubble, wearing the appropriate colors and eating yummy homemade Super Bowl food might be the answer this year. They have made us turn off the gas fireplace and I am wrapped in as many layers as humanly possible while typing. There are many noises happening again in the basement but they are hopeful it will be finished by mid afternoon. How did we all cope before furnaces and heating? That explains why some medieval fireplaces in palaces are so huge. You sat on a seat inside the fireplace to get maximum warmth. I wouldn’t have survived. Oliver: �Yesterday he spent a lot of time on one of the teacher’s lap. He looked hot and cranky. Another tooth coming through? After a day at sea, we reached our next destination: Dubrovnik is a city in southern Croatia fronting the Adriatic Sea. It's known for its distinctive Old Town, encircled with massive stone walls completed in the 16th century. Its well-preserved buildings range from baroque St. Blaise Church to Renaissance Sponza Palace and Gothic Rector’s Palace, now a history museum. Paved with limestone, the pedestrianized Stradun (or Placa) is lined with shops and restaurants. ― Google �Entering Dubrovnik harbor �Old Town ����Holding his hand for �luck �Ah, coffee! In the morning after we anchored, Craig took the tender in and went on a hike around the circuit of the Old Town walls. That photo memory is for tomorrow. After lunch, he took me back into the Old Town and we wandered around looking for possible Game of Thrones filming locations. I liked Dubrovnik’s Old Town, especially after we found a shaded cafe in a lane way to have some welcome coffee. I have to stop typing now and put my hands in their fingerless mittens under the blanket to warm up. Stay safe - we’re still in a pandemic. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource COVID-19 Journals Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Libraries Description An account of the resource This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled. The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Subject The topic of the resource Epidemics Grand Valley State University College students Personal narratives COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COVID-19_2021-02-04_BenjaminPamela_PD-Day-330 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Benjamin, Pamela Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-02-04 Title A name given to the resource Day 330 Description An account of the resource Daily journal entry of Pamela Benjamin, spouse of GVSU history professor, Craig Benjamin, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally self-published on WordPress. Subject The topic of the resource COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Epidemics Grand Valley State University Grand Rapids (Mich.) Personal narratives Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/cb87ffa3e6edd773df71a03873a76658.pdf cdda9eb928976f2dd357cebf69d7ebe6 PDF Text Text Day 331 by windoworks CNN Scientists have figured out how to give a zebrafish limb-like appendages. Hmm, the idea of a fish with arms is more upsetting than expected. Progress report: I now realize how poorly our furnace was working. I had gotten used to wearing a dressing gown in bed in the mornings, and a warm main bathroom had become a thing of the past. All that has changed! Our house is toasty warm from top to bottom. There is one tiny fly in the ointment - the downstairs toilet area radiator refuses to warm up. Various things have been tried and I suspect we will try even more things - but as we happen to have a small fan heater of our own, we will continue to use that until the problem is fixed. I never want to be as cold as I was yesterday morning, ever again. Yesterday afternoon, the space age furnace fired up (after careful programming) and heat began seeping back into the house - just as the snow began to fall. Here it is - a thing of beauty indeed. I thought it would be encrusted with diamonds, it cost so much. �So yesterday the House voted to strip Majorie Taylor Greene of her committee appointments. Here’s a roundup from NPR: The House of Representatives has voted to strip Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments, following uproar over her past incendiary comments and apparent support of violence against Democrats. Thursday's vote was 230-199, with 11 Republicans joining with all Democrats to back the resolution. The vote comes a day after the House Rules Committee advanced a resolution, put forth by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., to remove Greene from her assignments on the Budget panel and the Education and Labor Committee. The Georgia freshman has come under fire in recent weeks for her history of trafficking in racism, antiSemitism and baseless conspiracy theories, along with her support for online comments encouraging violence against Democratic officials prior to taking office. Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., responded to Greene's remarks on the floor, noting her defense sidestepped her "liking" social media posts prior to her election that advocated for violence against Democratic leaders. "I just have to say that I did not hear a disavowment or an apology for those things. I did not hear an apology or denouncement for the claim, the insinuation that political opponents should be violently dealt with. I didn't hear anybody apologize or retract the anti-Semitic and Islamophobic remarks that had been made that have been posted over and over and over again. Because if this isn't the bottom, then I don't know what the hell is," he said. "I hope we are setting a clear standard for what we will not tolerate. Anyone who suggests putting a bullet in the head of a member shouldn't serve on any committee period." "If anyone has any question about the things that she has said or done, anybody who's watching, just spend a moment and look at her social media posts, don't take my word for it. Go research it for yourself. Google it. It's all there," McGovern said. In a powerful moment, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., walked around the floor showing his colleagues a poster featuring a screenshot of a Facebook ad on Greene's campaign page. The image featured a photo of Greene holding a gun alongside isolated images of Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. Underneath was the caption: "Squad's worst nightmare." "I urge my colleagues to look at that image and tell me what message you think it sends," Hoyer said. "Here she is armed with a deadly assault rifle pointed toward three Democratic members." Hoyer added: "In 2019, during the same election cycle in which she ran, [Greene] showed support for comments online that the quickest way to remove [House] Speaker Pelosi from power would be, and I quote, a bullet to the head. �And from the Atlantic: • Greene is just a symptom of what ails the party. David A. Graham sums up the GOP’s dilemma: “How do you hold one individual accountable for repugnant things you’d previously decided to indulge as a route to victory?” It seems as though the Republican Party is floundering. It is hard to say what will happen next, as they seem to have left sanity and reason behind some time ago. From Crooked Media who always tell it like it is: For better or for worse (spoiler: it’s for worse), Republicans have now officially tethered themselves to what were once unspeakable right-wing fringe elements. It’s a terrifying national step backwards into the abyss, but it might be useful in the midterms? The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has already launched a $50,000 ad campaign that highlights Greene as the face of the GOP, in an effort to tie vulnerable House Republicans to Greene and her horrific beliefs. Republican leaders have made that task much easier by refusing to take any disciplinary action on their own, and subsequently going on the record in her defense. And also this: The Government Accountability Office eviscerated the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, in a 346-page report that deviated from the watchdog’s usually neutral tone. The GAO made 31 recommendations for the pandemic response in 2020, and 27 of them—almost 90 percent— had not been implemented as of January 15. Those ignored recommendations included addressing gaps in the medical-supply chain, issuing a comprehensive national testing strategy, speeding up the disbursement of coronavirus funding, and establishing a national plan for vaccine distribution. Rep. Gerry Connolly (DVA), who received the report as a member of the House oversight committee, summed it up thusly: “This independent report is a stunning indictment of the Trump administration’s total failure to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. Their inaction resulted in lives lost.” The Impeachment Managers invited Trump to testify (explain? confess?) at the trial which begins on Tuesday February 9. Of course, he refused. No surprise there. He is continuing to claim that he won the election, yadda, yadda, yadda. I think there is enough evidence against him to convict him three times over. From Washington Post: “If you decline this invitation, we reserve any and all rights, including the right to establish at trial that your refusal to testify supports a strong adverse inference regarding your actions (and inaction) on January 6, 2021,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) wrote. But as the days go by and Biden, Harris and their administration keep working and repairing actions taken by Trump, and the Democratic led House and Senate find their feet, Trump is receding slowly into the background. The local government overseeing Mar-A-Lago said yesterday that Trump may live out his life there. Wow! That’s a dismissive statement! Is he terminally ill? Is it dementia? �And I just had to include this from CNN: Politics isn't about the weird worship of one dude. Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, responding to leaders of his state's Republican Party after they advanced a censure resolution against him for criticizing efforts to overturn the presidential election results and then-President Trump's involvement in the US Capitol riot. And this is HUGE: Washington Post Smartmatic, an election technology company, has followed through on a threat to sue the parent company of Fox News over comments made on the network suggesting that the company participated in fraudulent activities during the Nov. 3 presidential election. The company filed suit Thursday in New York State Court in Manhattan, seeking $2.7 billion for defamation and disparagement and accusing Fox News of fomenting a “disinformation campaign against Smartmatic.” Smartmatic said it has identified “100 false statements and implications” made on Fox’s airwaves about the company and its services, which it said has damaged its business and future prospects. “One of the biggest challenges in the Information Age is disinformation,” Smartmatic chief executive Antonio Mugica said in announcing the suit. “Fox is responsible for this disinformation campaign, which has damaged democracy worldwide and irreparably harmed Smartmatic and other stakeholders who contribute to modern elections.” That joins Dominion Voting who are suing Rudy Giuliani and I think, Sidney Powell, for 1.3 billion. I wonder if Rudy has a spare 1.3billion lying around? On the pandemic front, there’s a new vaccine in the offing. Washington Post Johnson & Johnson seeks emergency use authorization from the FDA for its single-shot coronavirus vaccine. The pharmaceutical giant Thursday requested emergency use authorization for a vaccine shown in studies to be robustly effective against illness and especially at preventing severe cases and death. If the Food and Drug Administration grants the request, the vaccine would become the third available in the United States. Vaccinations remain patchwork. More vaccination opportunities are arising but you have to be on the ball to snap them up. I’ve heard that they schedule your second shot when you get your first shot and I’ve heard that scheduling the second shot is up to you. In totally unrelated news: �A runner running across frozen Reeds Lake �Ice fishermen on Lake Muskegon �Walking (carefully avoiding the ice) through Oak Hill Cemetery. Oliver �All right, yes, I got the yoghurt everywhere, but a lot more of it went into my �mouth. �In half an hour we have to leave our house to let a realtor walk through and videotape it. Apparently someone on the east side of the state is interested in possibly buying our house. I may never find some things I have hidden away, again. Its surprising the amount of personal stuff you have lying around. Its absolutely amazing how much work there is in getting your house ready to sell. Tomorrow then. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource COVID-19 Journals Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Libraries Description An account of the resource This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled. The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Subject The topic of the resource Epidemics Grand Valley State University College students Personal narratives COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COVID-19_2021-02-05_BenjaminPamela_PD-Day-331 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Benjamin, Pamela Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-02-05 Title A name given to the resource Day 331 Description An account of the resource Daily journal entry of Pamela Benjamin, spouse of GVSU history professor, Craig Benjamin, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally self-published on WordPress. Subject The topic of the resource COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Epidemics Grand Valley State University Grand Rapids (Mich.) Personal narratives Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/97e758591c61665bd443db7edafab2cf.pdf fdbe1df4561ce0c511bc1429b1d17151 PDF Text Text Day 332. Saturday February 6. 148 sleeps to go. by windoworks I don’t feel like the weeks are passing faster, and yet they are. This was a big week. The furnace installation ended up taking 2.5 days. On Thursday evening, every radiator in the house was lovely and warm except the one in the back bathroom. At first, everyone thought that a pipe leading to the radiator had ice blocking it. Everyone, except me, crawled underneath the back porch and shimmied their way to underneath the bathroom. They used heating guns and a portable radiator. There was another heater aimed at the radiator itself in the bathroom. Nothing helped. Yesterday morning Craig called the furnace manager and he said he had been thinking about this problem during the night. Paul thought it might be an air blockage and he would send someone around later in the day to try and fix it. But we had something else happening yesterday. To backtrack: we have a realtor who is a friend of mine. We employed her a few weeks ago when neighbors who had moved away from our block some years ago, said they had heard we were selling and could they look at our house? So I contacted Linda our realtor and armed with the comps for our area, we let the couple wander through our house while we drove around the block several times. Two days later, they let us know that while they loved our house, it wouldn’t fit their needs. Later that same week I received a text from Abby, a realtor, who said she had a buyer on the east side of the state interested in our house. You know, you automatically wonder if this is a scam, so we copied the text and sent it to Linda. Well, it was real and yesterday, in among the final fixing of the radiator, Abby came to our house and filmed it and photographed everything while Craig and I sat outside in our car with the heater blasting and the snow falling. There was a lot of work getting ready to have Abby walk through the house. Linda asked us to depersonalize the house and thats when we realized that we had 20, 20, photos of us and family members on shelves and walls. Most of these were on the upper landing and staircase walls. Craig took them all down and then he pulled out the nails, spackfilled the holes, sanded them back when dry - and then found the paint tin containing the landing and staircase color had dried out. No problem. Just a quick trip to the nearby hardware store where they no longer stocked that brand of paint . Oh but no problem, we’ll color match it with another brand. So home he came and he carefully painted over the filler and when it dried and we looked at his handiwork admiringly - it was at least one shade darker, and now the landing and staircase wall had blobs on them. And you couldn’t pretend you couldn’t see them. So, he carefully painted whole sections of the walls, grinding his teeth at the same time. But it looked wonderful and it was so worth the extra effort. Then we went through the house and put every other personal belonging away - and some things I may never find again - and at last, when Abby walked through the house, we felt we had done everything we �could to make our house look attractive and welcoming. Of course Abby loved our house and assured us that her clients would love the house too. Yes they did, and now they would like to come over and look at the house for themselves, some time in the next couple of weekends. When Craig asked why they wanted to move, Abby replied they just wanted a historic house in Eastown. Now the only other problem is the weekly numbers allowed into New South Wales, Australia. We knew that there was a weekly limit and it was 3,010 a week. Each state in Australia has a weekly limit on returning Australians entering their state. Those limits were halved in January due to a person returning who tested positive for one of the variants. However, having got this under control, the limit for NSW will return to 3,010 from 1,505 in the middle of this month. Other problems are, each flight in is only allowed so many passengers and people have been bumped off flights and stuck overseas waiting for another flight. You can sometimes keep your seat on a flight if you are prepared to pay between $15,000US - $23,000US. So what should we do? After a fraught discussion, we realized that the obvious and best option was to carry on with our plans and cross that bridge when we came to it. I have to say, its another situation where I think someone must know what’s happening. Our flight is booked on Japan Airlines on July 5th and I assumed that they would have already submitted our names to the Australian government so we would be included in the week’s quota. However, one phone call to the Australian Consulate in Chicago later, where the gentleman had no idea about anything, followed by another call to the Australian Embassy in D.C. which produced similar results. Apparently the airline would know these answers. After a long wait on hold with Japan Airlines, the answer was either (and Craig still can’t say for sure) no they don’t do that or no they don’t do that until nearer the actual flight. Did I mention I could do all of these jobs for half the price and twice as fast? There were 2 suggestions, one from the Consulate: the Australian news channels are more up to date than us (!) and one from the Embassy: contact the New South Wales Health Department, they should know. Ah, bureaucracy, what a thing of beauty! Meanwhile, the winter storm advisory has been extended again until 8am tomorrow morning. Craig went out walking earlier this morning and took these photos. �����The temperature outside at 9:15 am is 13F (-10.5C), but feels like 6F (-14.4C). Thats reasonably cold. These photos were taken mostly in Aquinas College, a small university close by. Quick roundup: the Biden administration has deployed more than 1000 active duty troops to help with vaccination efforts. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has started a $500000 effort on television and online portraying House Republicans as aligned with Marjorie Taylor Greene and QAnon. (Ouch! That’s gotta hurt). Israel’s virus numbers are dropping due to their aggressive vaccination program. Once again, seed suppliers and gardening stores are running out of supplies due to almost everyone in the US turning to home gardening. And from Washington Post, this nugget: Fox Business has canceled “Lou Dobbs Tonight” one day after the host was named in a multibillion dollar defamation lawsuit against the network and its parent company. Dobbs, 75, was among the most ardent pro-Trump voices on air. He held influence over Trump administration policy — particularly on trade and immigration — and relentlessly promoted the former president’s false claims of election fraud late last year. His nightly program, which a person close to Dobbs said aired its final episode Friday, was by far the highest-rated on Fox Business. �Could sanity and cold reason be rearing their ugly heads? Last night I watched an interview with a South Carolina woman who had swallowed QAnon whole. At some point after the Inauguration when Trump didn’t overthrow the government and arrest all Democrat members, she painfully realized she had been duped. Now she goes online to try and help other people be deprogrammed. Oliver. ��In the morning in Dubrovnik, Craig walked around the walls. You can only enter and leave at the same point, that is, once up on the walls you have to keep walking right around to the exit. The path was very rough and the paving stones uneven, there were steep stairs to climb and there were first aid stations around the walls because while he walked, people kept tripping and falling all the time. I saw an elderly man sitting at the base of the wall with a nurse attending to his bloody knees. No wall walking for me! An ancient city well �Looking down on one of the main �streets The wall winding away �Along the shore �Down steep stairs �Across the rooftops �The ancient harbor �Croatia playing England. We watched it on the deck outside. We could hear the cheers from the city square in the Old Town. Stay warm and stay safe. Colder weather is coming. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource COVID-19 Journals Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Libraries Description An account of the resource This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled. The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Subject The topic of the resource Epidemics Grand Valley State University College students Personal narratives COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COVID-19_2021-02-06_BenjaminPamela_PD-Day-332 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Benjamin, Pamela Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-02-06 Title A name given to the resource Day 332 Description An account of the resource Daily journal entry of Pamela Benjamin, spouse of GVSU history professor, Craig Benjamin, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally self-published on WordPress. Subject The topic of the resource COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Epidemics Grand Valley State University Grand Rapids (Mich.) Personal narratives Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4a485689f1779090ce40877ce67b5bb5.pdf a4678b213ef5c36d1cd942172617e430 PDF Text Text Day 333 by windoworks To be honest, the Super Bowl is usually only interesting for me for the halftime ads. There. I said it out loud. I remember the first time I went to an actual American football game. It was the first football season after we moved here. Some neighbors took Craig and I and we sat on a hill and watched. It was at Grand Valley State University and as Craig was a new tenure track hire, our friends thought we should support the home team. It seemed incomprehensible to me. In New Zealand Rugby Union was the game I grew up with. The national team, the All Blacks, were invincible. I watched them play the Roosters (the French national team), the Lions (the English national team) and the Spring Boks (the South African national team). There are two stories about how the name originated. One is that it was a typo in a sports report in �a British newspaper in the early 1900s where the reporter stated: they are all Backs (referring to their dominant game position) and the other story is that another reporter said they’re all white men but their jerseys, shorts and socks are all black. Take your pick. Rugby Union players are tough men. That games relies more on speed and scrums (where the two teams link arms and hunker down and clash together while someone throws the ball into the middle - and one side grabs it). Union also features line outs where both teams line up and someone throws the ball and one side catches it. (I can hear my nephews: Auntie Pamela! That’s not how the game works!) In Australia one of the most popular games is Rugby League. This is a slightly different, rougher game. The team members often tape their ears to their heads (no I didn’t make that up) so they aren’t ripped off during the game. With the advent of HIV, the Blood Bin was established. If a team member was injured enough to bleed, he would be sent off to the Blood Bin. If the bloody arm or leg was covered successfully, I think he was allowed back into the game. One feature of both games: there is a limit of players on the field - 15 for Rugby Union and 13 for Rugby League. Rugby League is a very stop, start game and Rugby Union flows more. Anyway, it was a big surprise to watch an American Football game. There were moments when the game stopped completely. After a while it seemed to me that the really big, beefy players held the other team at bay so the smaller, faster players could run through and score a touchdown. And the game went on for hours. I know marginally more about cricket, mostly because Craig adores it. A series test match (between say, Australia and New Zealand) lasts for 5 days. It features a wicket (the run area) and 2 helmeted batsmen, a hard red cricket ball, stumps thats where its similarity to baseball ends. I am not going to even try to explain the game and I have no idea where the rules came from. There is a consensus of expert opinion that cricket may have been invented during Saxon or Norman times by children living in the Weald, an area of dense woodlands and clearings in south-east England. Cricket.com CNN has published a list of people’s questions about the vaccines. There are 7 questions and answers, and I’ll print them in 3 lots. First 2 questions: If they say: "I don't know what's in the vaccine." You can say: That's fair. Vaccine ingredient lists include a lot of lengthy names only a chemist would recognize. Here are the some of the main ingredients in the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, the two vaccines currently authorized for use, and how they work: mRNA: Short for messenger ribonucleic acid, mRNA is a "genetic software" that tells cells how to make the coronavirus spike protein, the structure the virus uses to invade cells. The mRNA gets your immune system's attention, so it's prepared to attack the spike protein if infection occurs. The mRNA disintegrates �as soon as it relays its message, Schaffner said, and you excrete its remnants. Fatty lipids: The mRNA is very fragile, so it's coated in a fatty lipid to protect it. The lipids, a buttery substance, can melt at room temperature -- which is why both vaccines must be kept at extremely cold temperatures. Fatty lipids used in Covid-19 vaccines include polyethylene glycol-2000 and cholesterol, among others. Salts and sugars: Salts such as potassium chloride and sodium chloride are in the vaccine to balance the acidity in your body, according to the MIT Technology Review. Sugar, listed as sucrose, is there so the vaccine nanoparticles keep their shape. Other vaccines still in trials in the US, such as AstraZeneca's, rely on different technologies than mRNA and, therefore, have different ingredients. If they say: "The vaccine was created too quickly to be trustworthy." You can say: It's true that the Covid-19 vaccines currently authorized for emergency use by the US Food and Drug Administration were developed and tested more quickly than other vaccines we're familiar with. But extensive clinical trials have proven their effectiveness. Part of the reason why the vaccines were developed rapidly is because the circumstances called for speed: We're in a pandemic that's killed more than 2 million people worldwide and sickened over 103 million people. The need for a vaccine is urgent. So rather than wait for the results of trials to manufacture a vaccine, the companies creating these vaccines produced them simultaneously so they'd be ready to deploy when the trials were completed, Schaffner said. Typically, the companies that create vaccines would wait for a trial to end before giving the OK to manufacture the vaccines. "Of course, our 'bet,' if you will, came up a winner," Schaffner said. Both Pfizer and Moderna's vaccines are 94% to 95% effective at preventing severe sickness from Covid-19. The technology the vaccines use, mRNA, was developed long before the virus that causes Covid-19 began to circulate in humans, so the tech can be trusted, Schaffner and Karron said. The Covid-19 vaccine trials included tens of thousands of participants, Karron said, whose reactions to the vaccine were closely monitored for months before the vaccines were approved by the FDA. Vaccine developers also had the resources to speed up the process -- there were no questions of demand or funding, Karron said. Two more questions and answers tomorrow. Now for today’s quick roundup: President Biden decided there was no purpose in granting former President Trump access to intelligence briefings - and he worried that Trump might let something slip. The US Postal Service is in disarray and Democrats are struggling with how to address this, especially how to force Louis DeJoy out of his Postmaster General position. Here’s a newly revealed alarming fact from Washington Post: �Trump’s election fraud falsehoods have cost taxpayers $519 million — and counting. Donald Trump’s claims that the election was stolen have forced local, state and federal agencies to spend millions enhancing security, fending off lawsuits and repairing property damage, according to a Washington Post review. The numbers are mounting daily, but the full cost may never be known as officials struggle to account for the fiscal impact of a president injecting instability into the democratic system. And I know you’re agog to hear about plans for the impeachment trial. Here’s this from the New York Times: House impeachment managers are preparing to prosecute the former president on the charge of “incitement of an insurrection” for inflaming the mob that attacked the Capitol last month. Opening arguments begin Tuesday. Prosecutors plan to mount a fast-paced, cinematic case in which they’ll argue that Mr. Trump was “singularly responsible” for the Jan. 6 attack and a broader attack on democracy that showed he would do anything to “reassert his grip on power” if he were allowed to seek election again. Mr. Trump’s lawyers have denied that he incited the assault on the Capitol and will argue that the Senate has no power to try a former president. Mr. Trump’s words to supporters, they say, are protected by his First Amendment right to free speech. (More than 100 leading constitutional lawyers called that claim “legally frivolous.”) Mr. Trump has refused to testify. Members of both parties are hoping for a speedy trial, possibly completed within a week. A guilty verdict would require at least 17 Republicans to join all 50 Democrats in voting to convict. And this last miscellaneous, really disturbing finding: CNN: Top baby food manufacturers knowingly sold products with high levels of toxic metals, report shows. Yesterday, Oliver and Zoe and our friend Chardi went to the Sydney Aquarium. He loved it! ���Flashback: Our next stop was at Šibenik. Šibenik is a city on the Adriatic coast of Croatia. It’s known as a gateway to the Kornati Islands. The 15th-century stone Cathedral of St. James is decorated with 71 sculpted faces. Nearby, the Šibenik City Museum, in the 14th-century Prince’s Palace, has exhibits ranging from prehistory to the present. The white stone St. Michael’s Fortress has an open-air theater, with views of Šibenik Bay and neighboring islands. ― Google Through the narrow passage �Krka National Park (Croatian: Nacionalni park Krka) is one of the Croatian national parks, �named after the river Krka (ancient Greek: Kyrikos) that it encloses. It is located along the middle-lower course of the Krka River in central Dalmatia, in Šibenik-Knin county, downstream Miljevci area, and just a few kilometers northeast of the city of Šibenik. It was formed to protect the Krka River and is intended primarily for scientific, cultural, educational, recreational, and tourism activities. It is the seventh national park in Croatia and was proclaimed a national park in 1985. I’ve never seen so many rills, creeks, ponds, streams, rivers, waterfalls, and rapids. Krka was beautiful but the day was hot! �Families bathing. It was too hard to get down into the water. Very slippery. ��But I managed this little �stream. �More Šibenik tomorrow. Its Super Bowl Day. No Superspreader events please! � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource COVID-19 Journals Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Libraries Description An account of the resource This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled. The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Subject The topic of the resource Epidemics Grand Valley State University College students Personal narratives COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COVID-19_2021-02-07_BenjaminPamela_PD-Day-333 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Benjamin, Pamela Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-02-07 Title A name given to the resource Day 333 Description An account of the resource Daily journal entry of Pamela Benjamin, spouse of GVSU history professor, Craig Benjamin, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally self-published on WordPress. Subject The topic of the resource COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Epidemics Grand Valley State University Grand Rapids (Mich.) Personal narratives Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/596f4a4533a5a4b22f66ca2dc37c38f2.pdf 7f83e5e2f138a1045affd6cdec15330b PDF Text Text Day 334 by windoworks This morning at 11:18am I am to receive the first shot of what I assume is the Pfizer vaccine. This is the one that has to be kept at extremely low temperatures which means that most pharmacies inside grocery stores, don’t have the capability of keeping the Pfizer vaccine cold enough. The other vaccine, Moderna, has to be kept cold but not as cold as the Pfizer one. It was a tedious business getting this appointment and there seems no rhyme or reason to who secures a vaccination spot and who doesn’t. Craig and I secured ours (although Craig’s spot is at 2pm today, the closest I could get to my spot), through a friend’s text, saying go online to this address NOW! I have friends who have completed their vaccinations and their spouse/partner is still trying to secure a spot for the first dose. It is very hit and miss. Here’s the next two vaccine questions: If they say: "The vaccine could give me Covid-19." You can say: The vaccine cannot give you Covid-19, because it doesn't contain the virus. It contains mRNA, or messenger ribonucleic acid, which tells your cells how to create the protein spike the virus uses to infect other cells. The live virus never enters your body in the vaccination process, your cells learn how to make a part of the virus, but coronavirus can't replicate that way. You may experience some "intense but brief" symptoms like fatigue, nausea and a low fever after you're vaccinated. Those are often synonymous with Covid-19, but these vaccine-induced side effects should subside within 24 to 48 hours. It's also possible you could suffer no side effects, or they could be as mild as a headache and a sore arm. In any case, you won't get Covid-19 from getting vaccinated. If they say: "The vaccine could alter my DNA." You can say: The Covid-19 vaccines do not alter or interact with your DNA. The mRNA never enters a cell's nucleus, which houses DNA. It does its work in the cytoplasm, the fluid within a cell. The mRNA doesn't stick around in the body, either. It dissolves once it's sent a message to cells and exits your body. The last 3 questions tomorrow. Then yesterday this appeared in my Facebook feed: GRAND RAPIDS, MICH. (Feb. 7, 2021) The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) notified the Kent County Health Department (KCHD) that the COVID-19 variant known as SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.7 has been confirmed in a Kent County resident. �This variant is concerning because it is associated with increased transmissibility. Compared to the original virus, the B.1.1.7 variant is approximately 50 percent more transmissible, leading to faster spread of the virus and potentially increasing numbers of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. The presence of the quick spreading variant in Kent County illustrates the importance of staying vigilant in the prevention of spreading COVID-19. Proper mask usage, social distancing and practicing good hand hygiene continue to be the most effective measures in combating the spread of the disease. The KCHD is also encouraging residents to limit their interactions with people who live outside of their own households. The SARSCoV-2 B.1.1.7 variant is thought to have emerged in the United Kingdom and has since been detected in many countries and states. The MDHHS has identified 30 cases of the B.1.1.7 variant in Michigan. While most of these cases have been found in the southeast portion of the state, the recent confirmation of a case in Kalamazoo and now in Kent counties illustrates the fast-moving nature of the variant. Its never ending really. Yesterday we drove past an Applebees restaurant which appeared packed with diners. The restaurant owners beg to be allowed to have in house dining and then when it is granted, some places ignore the strict regulations - and then diners come down with covid and then in house dining is banned again. I can hear the nationwide cry: I just want life to be normal again! Well so do we all, but that’s not happening any time soon, if at all. I was listening to Ira Glass on the radio yesterday. He was interviewing a scientist (I never heard his name) about the virus and the vaccines and one question he answered was: how long is the vaccine effective for? The scientist answered: we just don’t know, but perhaps a booster shot will be necessary every 2 - 3 years. One point the scientist did make is that the 2 vaccines we have here in the States, prevent mild to serious illness. If you were to contract the virus, the vaccine would prevent it being more than a mild complaint. And the mRNA vaccines are spectacular much better than other vaccines and as a very exciting side note - at some point in the nearish future, scientists expect to be able to develop an mRNA vaccine against cancer! Cancer! Imagine teenagers or children being vaccinated against cancer just like measles! In the US, total cases stand at 27M and the total deaths are at 463,000. I tell you those numbers before I add this article from NPR: Ever since the coronavirus reached the U.S., officials and citizens alike have gauged the severity of the spread by tracking one measure in particular: How many new cases are confirmed through testing each day. However, it has been clear all along that this number is an understatement because of testing shortfalls. Now a research team at Columbia University has built a mathematical model that gives a much more complete — and scary — picture of how much virus is circulating in our communities. It estimates how many people are never counted because they never get tested. And it answers a second question that is arguably even more crucial — but that until now has not been reliably estimated: On any given day, what is the total number of people who are actively infectious? This includes those who may �have been infected on previous days but are still shedding virus and capable of spreading disease. The model's conclusion: On any given day, the actual number of active cases — people who are newly infected or still infectious — is likely 10 times that day's official number of reported cases. The sustained periods of high transmission in the U.S. also mean that by now, quite a large share of the U.S. population has been infected beyond what the tallies of reported cases would indicate. Nationwide, it is estimated that about 120 million people have now been infected, just over a third of the U.S. population. This made me laugh: �The big day is tomorrow. Trump’s impeachment trial begins in the Senate. What will happen? Here’s an interesting piece from the Atlantic: �Democracy depends on the consent of the losers. For most of the 20th century, parties and candidates in the United States have competed in elections with the understanding that electoral defeats are neither permanent nor intolerable. The losers could accept the result, adjust their ideas and coalitions, and move on to fight in the next election. Ideas and policies would be contested, sometimes viciously, but however heated the rhetoric got, defeat was not generally equated with political annihilation. In October, with the specter of impeachment looming, Trump fumed on Twitter, “What is taking place is not an impeachment, it is a COUP, intended to take away the Power of the People, their VOTE, their Freedoms, their Second Amendment, Religion, Military, Border Wall, and their God-given rights as a Citizen of The United States of America!” For good measure, he also quoted a supporter’s dark prediction that impeachment “will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.” Trump’s apocalyptic rhetoric matches the tenor of the times. The body politic is more fractious than at any time in recent memory. The stakes in this battle on the right are much higher than the next election. If Republican voters can’t be convinced that democratic elections will continue to offer them a viable path to victory, that they can thrive within a diversifying nation, and that even in defeat their basic rights will be protected, then Trumpism will extend long after Trump leaves office—and our democracy will suffer for it. Last night Craig went outside and took photos of our house. ��Friends keep asking if we will get this much snow in Australia. The answer is no. When we return to Sydney in July this year, it will be the middle of winter and the average daily temperature is 47F-63F. Sydneysiders complain bitterly and wrap up, but any of my winter coats are far too warm to wear. Still, I would like a house with some sort of heating, not because its so cold, but because its so damp. Everything feels damp and clammy - even the bedsheets. I have been spoiled by living in a heated house in winter. And speaking of heat, we now realize that the furnace was failing for the past 2 or 3 years. Our house is so toasty warm now. Lovely, especially this weekend as the temperatures dip down to 1F (-17C) overnight. Brrr! Oliver �I love daycare. �Places to go, people to see. �I have to stop writing now and get myself ready for my vaccination appointment. A friend found another Bernie meme: So remember: double mask up, stay out of non-compliant businesses (no mask, no business), keep washing your hands, keep physically distancing. The UK variant is here. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource COVID-19 Journals Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Libraries Description An account of the resource This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled. The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Subject The topic of the resource Epidemics Grand Valley State University College students Personal narratives COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COVID-19_2021-02-08_BenjaminPamela_PD-Day-334 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Benjamin, Pamela Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-02-08 Title A name given to the resource Day 334 Description An account of the resource Daily journal entry of Pamela Benjamin, spouse of GVSU history professor, Craig Benjamin, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally self-published on WordPress. Subject The topic of the resource COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Epidemics Grand Valley State University Grand Rapids (Mich.) Personal narratives Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/81261328f5a90aedb896af56ad818697.pdf e25bea658003c71e618c9d031d32a996 PDF Text Text Day 335 by windoworks First up: impeachment. The trial in the Senate begins today. Here’s the program from CNN: The second impeachment trial of former President Trump begins today. Here’s how it will go: Things will get going in the afternoon with up to four hours of debate, followed by a vote on the constitutionality of the trial (it needs just a simple majority to pass). Then, we’ll see up to a few days of arguments, followed by a period when senators can question the legal teams. Then, there will be more debate, closing arguments and deliberation. During the trial, senators and witnesses will revisit the events of the Capitol riot on January 6, so things may get emotional. Sen. Patrick Leahy, president pro tempore of the Senate, will preside over the trial. Security around the Capitol is being beefed up ahead of the proceedings, with razor wire-topped fences looming and National Guard members standing by. And from Crooked Media: Republicans have been very forthcoming about the fact that they’d much prefer to speed this trial along with no witnesses, as part of their larger project to stuff the events of January 6 down the national memory hole. GOP senators like Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) already feel comfortable enough to suggest on television that the insurrection was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s fault, actually. What’s to be gained by letting them move on without confronting sworn testimony from Brad Raffensperger, say, or folks who know what Trump was actually up to during the Capitol attack? Democrats understandably want to focus on Joe Biden’s agenda, but as they insisted during the first impeachment process, the Senate can walk and chew gum at the same time. Its hard to predict what will happen. For myself I would prefer Trump to be convicted, so that he is barred from holding any elected position for life. I don’t mind if he fades into memory, as long as the lessons of his dreadful tenure as President are not forgotten. It is human to make mistakes. We should always learn from our mistakes so we don’t make them again. As for all the deluded QAnon believers and the like - I have no idea how to help them. As Crooked Media points out: There’s no clear upside to calling the trial a lost cause and playing it at 1.5x speed: A new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds that a large majority of Americans support the Senate convicting Trump and barring him from holding future office. If Republicans are determined to vote against the popular notion of holding Trump accountable, Democrats can at least make them do so under an avalanche of damning evidence, in full public view. We’ll see. �Here’s the last 3 questions about the vaccine: If they say: "The vaccine could give my child autism or a birth defect." You can say: This is not true. Several studies have repeatedly shown that vaccines do not cause autism or development issues in young children. That belief is based on a bunk study from the 1990s that has since been retracted. As stated above, the Covid-19 vaccine does not interfere with DNA. If they're worried about the risk of getting vaccinated while pregnant, this may assuage their fears: The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommended the Covid-19 vaccine for people who are pregnant or breastfeeding. It's also wise to get vaccinated because pregnant women are thought to be at a higher risk of severe illness from Covid-19. Compared to symptomatic people who are not pregnant, pregnant people are at a higher risk of ICU admission, the need for a ventilator and death, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. If they say: "The vaccine's side effects could be severe." You can say: It's unlikely that you'll have a severe reaction to the Covid-19 vaccine. It's much more likely that you'll have a "local reaction," such as redness and soreness in your arm or a low fever. Side effects of the vaccine tend to be more severe after the second dose of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines, so it's smart to plan around that. You may want to take a day off work after you get the vaccine in case you're too fatigued. The symptoms tend to be more severe in young people than older folks who get vaccinated. It's a small price to pay to prevent Covid. If they say: "I could have an allergic reaction to the vaccine." You can say: This is possible, but very rare: About 11 cases per one million cases of Covid-19 vaccinations resulted in an allergic reaction. People with severe allergies or those who carry an EpiPen should consult with their doctor before they get vaccinated, but even those with allergies have gotten the vaccine without a reaction. Yesterday Craig and I drove to the Kent County Health Department office on Fuller. We had driven there the day before and followed the partially snow covered signs to the Vaccination building, so we knew where to go the next day. Yesterday, Monday, the traffic was pouring in and out. The empty parking lot we had found on Sunday was full to the brim, with cars constantly coming and going. We were early for my appointment, so we sat in the car for a few minutes. We decided to go inside and not wait, and not only were cars coming and going, but so were the people, pouring in and out of the door. �Inside, the floor was carefully marked with 6 feet apart spots. Our first stop was the first check in. The woman looked me up in her register and then ticked off my name and then fond Craig’s name at his 2pm slot and ticked off his name off also. There was a State policeman standing with her. I said: I’m smiling behind my mask and he said: I am too. Then down the long corridor we went to the next stop where we were asked: first dose or second dose? First dose, we said. We were given a yellow sheet to be filled in and we were directed to a freshly sanitized desk to fill it in. There were clean pens and after we had used them we put them in the dirty pens box. Next, we were directed into a room with people sitting behind plexiglass at computers. Using our yellow forms they typed our details in (we were at separate desks), and filled out our official vaccination cards. They took our health insurance details too. I believe that if you have health insurance they charge it, but if you don’t have insurance, its free. The date for our second dose was added to our cards: Monday March 8 at 10:42am. I asked why 4 weeks as we were receiving the Pfizer vaccine which gives the second dose 3 weeks later. The answer was that they were so overloaded they had to push everyone to 4 weeks apart to cope. Clutching our returned yellow forms and our new vaccination cards, we were directed into a room of cubicles, divided by fabric screens. Craig went to one cubicle and I went to another. My nurse filled out the dose information on my card and then said: my hands are cold, sorry. She squeezed my left upper arm and injected me in less than 2 seconds - and I was done! Lastly, we were directed to the adjacent sitting area where we sat carefully spaced out on freshly sanitized chairs, for 15 minutes to watch for any severe allergies. People chatted quietly while they waited. A young man came around and collected our yellow forms and gave us more reading material. After 15 minutes we walked out to our car and drove home. I have enrolled in a V-watch online program which will check on my symptoms daily. Both Craig and I had very sore arms yesterday but this morning, my arm is still sore but much less. The whole procedure took about 20 minutes - mostly the 15 minutes waiting time afterwards. They process 700 people 5 days a week (3,500), just at that one facility. I have tried to find out how many people are vaccinated each week in Grand Rapids but I can’t find any statistics. We are very pleased to have received the first dose and to have a firm date for our second dose. Later in the day, I thought about the fact that we will be fully vaccinated by March 8 - just under 1 year since the first 2 cases appeared in Michigan and the Governor and the Chief Medical Officer locked the state down. That is an astonishing scientific achievement. The nurse who vaccinated me said that she was thrilled that scientists were being hailed as heroes, as well as nurses and doctors. Some people have said they are too nervous to get the vaccine, but with the rapid spread of the UK variant, as well as the Brazilian and South African variants, I’d take being vaccinated any day over getting sick. Of course we still have to safely distance, mask up, wash our hands and keep to our tiny 2 person bubble. And this one’s just for Craig: �Just the two of us We can make it if we try Just the two of us (Just the two of us) Just the two of us Building castles in the sky Just the two of us You and I And because there is a whole world out there where other events happen and are sometimes worse than the pandemic: CNN: At least 180 people are missing and 19 have died in India’s northern Uttarakhand state after part of a Himalayan glacier fell into a river, triggering massive flash floods. The water rolled down a mountain gorge, picking up rocks and debris before crashing through a dam. Most of the missing are workers from two hydroelectric projects in Uttarakhand's Chamoli district that were hit by the avalanche. Glaciers in the Himalayan region have been melting rapidly due to the climate crisis, and it’s not uncommon for them to become unstable. Environmentalists have warned against widespread development in the region, which can compromise rivers and other natural structures. A similar tragedy occurred in the region in 2013, when nearly 6,000 people lost their lives after a massive amount of rainfall led to flash floods. Here at home 4 skiers have died in an avalanche in Utah. It must be Oliver time, right? �Because Oliver went to the Aquarium on the weekend, the activity was creatures of the sea �and shore. Flashback: our next stop was: Ravenna is a city in Emilia-Romagna, Italy. It's known for the colorful mosaics adorning many of its central buildings, like the octagonal Basilica di San Vitale, the 6th-century Basilica di Sant'Apollinare Nuovo and the cross-shaped Mausoleo di Galla Placidia. North of the center, the Mausoleo di Teodorico built in the 6th century for King Theodoric the Great, is a Gothic, circular stone tomb with a monolithic dome. ― Google Our excursion was to Brisighella: one of the most beautiful medieval villages of Italy, on the hillside between Florence and Ravenna. Apart from the medieval town square, we visited a fabulous mosaic museum. �������This was an amazing place. I must admit I thought the museum would be boring but no. They had mosaics from really ancient times through to modern pieces at the end of the museum. This was just our first stop on a packed day. More Ravenna/Brisighella tomorrow. Oh and as I finish this post - its snowing again. and a correction to yesterday’s post: Ira Flatow was the journalist not Ira Glass. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource COVID-19 Journals Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Libraries Description An account of the resource This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled. The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Subject The topic of the resource Epidemics Grand Valley State University College students Personal narratives COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COVID-19_2021-02-09_BenjaminPamela_PD-Day-335 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Benjamin, Pamela Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-02-09 Title A name given to the resource Day 335 Description An account of the resource Daily journal entry of Pamela Benjamin, spouse of GVSU history professor, Craig Benjamin, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally self-published on WordPress. Subject The topic of the resource COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Epidemics Grand Valley State University Grand Rapids (Mich.) Personal narratives Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2c42f9b24df86ec46749d61f42b1c278.pdf f81ef12be8e7d199f5136a5ea2db8ebc PDF Text Text Day 336 by windoworks Impeachment managers walk from the House to the Senate to begin the second Impeachment Trial of Donald Trump. This morning Craig and I watched the 13 minute video compilation of the attempted coup on January 6. We had watched it live on TV on the day, but this compilation was much more upsetting. The hate and the fury of the crowd, whipped into an insane frenzy by Trump was terrifying to see. Here’s what the public is thinking from The New York Times: A change in the polling During the long debate over Donald Trump’s first impeachment, the share of Americans who favored removing him from office never rose above 50 percent. It hovered in a tight range around 47 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling average. Trump’s second impeachment is different: Most Americans believe the Senate should convict Trump and disqualify him from holding office again, according to multiple polls. In a CBS News poll released yesterday, 56 percent of respondents said they supported conviction. In an ABC/Ipsos poll, 56 percent said he should be convicted and barred from office. Gallup found people favoring conviction by a margin of 52 percent to 45 percent — which is close to the average of all recent polls. �In our deeply polarized country, even a narrow majority of public opinion is significant. It indicates that a meaningful number of people have crossed over to the other side of a debate. In the CBS poll, for example, 21 percent of Republican voters said they believed Trump had encouraged violence during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. This next excerpt from NYT says it all for me. Representative Jamie Raskin, the Maryland Democrat leading the prosecution, delivered an impassioned argument recalling his own experience that day. “All around me, people were calling their wives and their husbands, their loved ones to say goodbye,” Raskin said. “Senators, this cannot be our future. This cannot be the future of America. We cannot have presidents inciting and mobilizing mob violence against our government and our institutions because they refuse to accept the will of the people.” This is the dangerous path we are now walking down. When something false is presented as something true (despite all evidence to the contrary), a precedent is set. If you accept that the election was stolen by fraud from Trump, then every following election will probably be contested. Pouf! And just like that, democracy disappears and autocracy (a system of government by one person with absolute power) takes its place. If Trump is acquitted of this crime, then there is no barrier to his future actions and no consequences. Seven people died in that attempted coup. There is a brief piece of footage of a policeman, jammed in a doorway, crying and moaning as he is repeatedly beaten by an insurrectionist. These people didn’t just wake up one morning and think: lets go to Washington and see if we can overturn the government. No. They were aided, abetted and actively directed and encouraged by Trump - who couldn’t win the election fairly, and so he decided to take back the Presidency anyway. In this state, the Michigan GOP tried to vote to censure Representative Peter Meijer for supporting Impeachment. That vote failed, much the same as the vote to censure Liz Cheney failed. The only way that sitting Republicans can vote honestly now is by secret vote. I suspect many of the Senate Republicans are facing a difficult position. This will go to a vote and just over half of all Americans in a number of different polls have said they favor a conviction. What to do? If a member votes yes, will Trumps fans vote them out at the midterms and put a Trumper in their seat? If they vote no, will their constituents vote them out at the midterms because they’re lily livered and duplicitous? Uh, oh, its that rock and a hard place. And from Crooked Media; The nearly party-line vote on the constitutionality of the impeachment trial drove home the reality that Republicans will almost certainly protect Trump from a conviction, no matter how pathetic his defense. The question is whether Democrats can draw Americans’ attention to the full horror of that fact in the meantime. �I actually read that one Republican Senator said ‘Nancy Pelosi set up this insurrection’. What alternate universe is he living in? The insurrectionists wanted to shoot Nancy Pelosi. There is a Chinese saying: May you live in interesting times. Its actually a curse and I think we definitely are living in interesting times. Now of course, its time for the virus. CNN: About 1 in 10 Americans, or nearly 32.9 million people, have gotten their first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. That sounds promising, but challenges remain, including supply shortages, inequitable access and the looming threat of new variants. And this may not be a one-off deal. The CEO of Johnson & Johnson says he thinks people will need an annual Covid-19 vaccination for years to come. In Wuhan, the World Health Organization experts who were looking into the origins of the novel coronavirus have wrapped up and concluded that an "intermediary host species" is probably how Covid-19 was introduced to humans, but other scenarios like transmission via frozen food products are also possible. China is claiming vindication, and the Biden administration is getting flak from at least one WHO investigator for saying it supports the findings but will rely on US intelligence to evaluate the WHO report. Every day we do what Craig calls “Driving Miss Pamela’. We go out for a drive and we usually finish with a quick stop at the grocery store. Yesterday we discovered (entirely by accident) that at the end of one road there is a very attractive and organized viewing area for the Gerald R Ford International airport - and there were a lot of cars parked with people watching the airport activity. So then, at our usual grocery store stop, where Craig goes into the store and I wait in the car and listen to the radio, I heard the end of a very interesting interview with a woman in the WHO team looking into the origins of the virus in Wuhan. She said they had found that the virus originated in a bat which was then transmitted to another animal, which was then transmitted at a wet market in Wuhan. She said definitively that it did not come from a laboratory in Wuhan. A long year ago now, I heard an American scientist interviewed and talk about his team’s work at the Wuhan bat laboratory. Trump stopped the funding and the team had to return to the States, but this scientist said there was a large number of different corona viruses carried by bats and in the right circumstances, any one of them could cross over to animal to human contagion. Well, damn! We better be better prepared next time. From the ‘is it ethical to jump the vaccine queue? Here’s some answers from NPR: 1.If I hear at a grocery store that has extras that are going to waste, is it fair for me to get one, even if it's not my turn? The panel was unanimous. 100% yes. If a dose is truly in danger of going to waste, and you're there and you want it, you should take it. Still the ethicists cited caveats. Doses from defrosted, opened vaccine vials must be used or tossed within six hours. So if your local pharmacy has a few extra doses due to cancellations, or if a freezer failure causes vaccines to unexpectedly thaw, it's ethical to accept a vaccine that would otherwise be going into the trash, even if you're a healthy young person who wouldn't �otherwise be eligible to get one. If you do take it, you are contributing to decreasing the risk of getting COVID yourself, and the risk others may face by interacting with you. 2. If I'm not eligible in my county, but I could be if I lived in the county next to mine, should I drive over to get it? In this case, the answer is 100% no. Here, you're not preventing a vaccine dose from going to waste; instead, you're taking a slot that was intended for your neighbor. The allocation is very limited right now. Any county that's getting these vaccines is having a hard time getting them, and they are getting them in part based on a consideration of their population, and what their population needs. 3. Why should smokers get priority over nonsmokers? For some people, smoking cigarettes is a voluntary behavior. In others, it's an addiction they haven't been able to quit. Regardless, being a current or former smoker increases a person's risk of getting severely ill if they get COVID-19. The CDC's vaccine advisory committee, which laid out its prioritization advice in a preliminary way last fall, considers smoking to be a high-risk medical condition and recommends that smokers, as well as those with a number of other underlying conditions, get prioritized for vaccines ahead of the general population of healthy young people. And finally from Washington Post: The pandemic has been a yearlong test of endurance. Now, some are up against their limits. People have “hit the wall,” to borrow an expression marathon runners use when their bodies feel like depleted batteries. A sudden rush of spiritual and emotional exhaustion — that's hitting the wall, Style reporter Maura Judkis notes. If this is where you are, you are not alone. Anxiety and fear around catching the virus has a name: Coronaphobia. I definitely have coronaphobia and one of the only things that help this every day, is a FaceTime visit with Oliver and Zoe. �Uh oh! He’s figured out how to turn the baby cam on and off. But how can you be cross with �that face? After our visit to the Ceramics Museum, we drove further up into the hills for lunch. But first a correction to yesterdays post: The MIC, International Museum of Ceramics, is located in Faenza (in the district of Ravenna) and it is the largest collection in in the world of handcrafted ceramics. �������So some of these photos are from a walk around Faenza and then the last two are from Brisighella where we went for lunch. More of the day tomorrow. And just to show you what this winter is like so far, here is a photo of the Grand Haven lighthouse taken 2 days ago. Ahhh Michigan! �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource COVID-19 Journals Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Libraries Description An account of the resource This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled. The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Subject The topic of the resource Epidemics Grand Valley State University College students Personal narratives COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COVID-19_2021-02-10_BenjaminPamela_PD-Day-336 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Benjamin, Pamela Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-02-10 Title A name given to the resource Day 336 Description An account of the resource Daily journal entry of Pamela Benjamin, spouse of GVSU history professor, Craig Benjamin, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally self-published on WordPress. Subject The topic of the resource COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Epidemics Grand Valley State University Grand Rapids (Mich.) Personal narratives Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a294e57eb19bc0f54060dd7300e0509a.pdf d41ab1701b5afeee0a3e51986dab91e7 PDF Text Text Day 337 by windoworks Those chickens coming home to roost are multiplying. It was Day 2 of the impeachment trial, but we’ll get to that in a moment. First, remember how the officials in Palm Beach county said that Trump could live out his days at Mar-a-Lago? Well now, there’s been new developments: While the U.S. Senate began its second impeachment trial of Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, local lawmakers in the town of Palm Beach, Fla., also gathered to consider the former president's fate – specifically, whether to let him live full-time at his sprawling private club, Mar-a-Lago. Trump bought Mar-a-Lago, a 126-room mansion, in the mid-1980s and in 1993 asked for the town's approval to convert it into a private club. The town agreed, with a stipulation that members of the club could not reside there for longer than three weeks each year. Trump has flouted that rule on a number of occasions and in the 20 days since leaving the White House, he has resided at Mar-a-Lago. Objections to the former president's full-time residency at the club were presented by neighbors, with whom Trump has had a number of disputes in the past. Before Trump became president, he had gotten on �the wrong side of Palm Beach officials by installing a giant flag pole at the club that exceeded local height limits. During his presidency, neighbors reportedly complained about traffic and blocked streets caused by Trump's frequent trips to Mar-a-Lago. On Tuesday, Reginald Stambaugh told the Council that many of his clients had purchased their properties with the understanding that no club members would permanently reside at the site. "This agreement assured my clients they would be able to live peacefully and enjoy the privacy afforded others on the island," Stambaugh said. Another attorney representing a group calling itself Preserve Palm Beach, expressed similar concerns over declining quality of life. "We feel that this issue threatens to make Mar-a-Lago into a permanent beacon for his more rabid, lawless supporters." I did read that Melania Trump had set up a post-White House office at Mar-a-Lago, which I am sure the neighbors are not happy about. Melania wasn’t thrilled about living there either. She complained the rooms were too small for their furniture, and (this was her sorest point), all the guests could walk past the Trumps door any time of the day or night. Okay, the trial. Here’s a quote from Congressman Ted Lieu (D- CA) News & Guts “How did our exceptional country get to the point where a violent mob attacked our Capitol, murdering a police officer, assaulting over 140 other officers? How did we get to the point where rioters desecrated, defiled, and dishonored your Senate chamber? Where the very place in which you sit became a crime scene, and where national guard troops still patrol outside wearing body armor? I’ll show you how we got here. President Donald J. Trump ran out of non-violent options to maintain power. After his efforts and, of course, and threatening officials failed, he turned to privately and publicly attacking members of his own party. In the house and in the Senate.” Yesterday, the Impeachment Managers ran an impressive prosecution. I watched some of it. Each speaker interspersed their speech with clips and photos of tweets. Here’s a wrap up from CNN: 1. Trump is his own worst enemy: Yes, the House impeachment managers did a good job of making their case. But in truth, Trump himself did a lot of the work for them. His tweets. His speeches. His media interviews. There was just so much of it. And time after time, Trump left nothing to the imagination. Trump's mouth -- and keyboard-typing fingers -- makes it hard for any Republican to suggest that this is purely a partisan political proceeding without any "there" there. This wasn't the House impeachment managers putting words in Trump's mouth. This was just him -- talking and tweeting and talking some more. 2. Liz Cheney: A week after the Wyoming Republican survived a challenge to her leadership slot in the House GOP, her words in explaining why she was voting to impeach Trump were used, again, by Democrats to make the case for why he needed to be convicted. "The President of the United States �summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack," -- a direct quotation from Cheney's statement of January 12. Her statement would allow Democrats to bash every single Republican member with it. And they were right. 3. The House impeachment managers made an airtight case that Trump's most ardent backers always took what he said literally. They believed him when he said the election was going to be rigged. They believed him when he attacked the vote in Michigan. And they took him at his word when he told them on January 6 they needed to fight to save democracy. Those who participated in the January 6 riot insisted they were acting on the orders of their President. 4. In a mid-June 2020 Trump interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace, the President refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he lost. January 6 wasn't a one-off. This was the result of months of Trump priming the pump, lying to his supporters about the election and its outcome. January 6 was the culmination of all of those lies, not the starting point. There is a lot of new footage being released during this trial. Most of it on the second day of the trial is from Capitol security cameras. There is no sound, just endless footage of the insurrectionists breaking into the building and then weird silent movie type footage of senators, house members and staff, all running through the corridors trying to find somewhere safe to shelter, being urged on by police and security. The other footage of insurrectionists being pushed back by police in riot gear is really disturbing, as flagpoles and Perspex shields are thrown at police, and hefty punches are also thrown. The Republican senators have to sit through this footage and try to shape the event as something other than what it so obviously was. The evidence is even more than overwhelming that the January 6 attempted coup was carefully and deliberately planned and promoted by a desperate man who had conclusively lost the election. I have read reports that Trump is incandescent (not my word) with rage at the ineptitude of his lawyers. I cannot imagine what Day 2 brought about for him. And at the same time there is a criminal case pending against him in Georgia, as a result of his recorded hour long rant and threats to Brad Raffensperger, on the phone, trying to bully him into overturning the electoral count in one county and find enough votes to allow him to win Georgia. I am amazed by Trumps actions. Every tweet, every speech, every interview, every phone call has been recorded and kept. Even the phone calls he had with Putin - Trump ordered that they be off the record and they were, except for some notes taken by aides and now delivered safely into President Biden’s hands. What did Putin and Trump discuss so secretly? We may never know - but President Biden does. And now to an article on herd immunity from The Atlantic: To be technical about it, a population reaches herd immunity when the average number of people infected by a single sick person falls below one. Patient zero might infect another person, but that second person can’t infect a third. This is what happens with measles, polio, and several other diseases for which vaccines �have achieved herd immunity in the United States. A case might land here, but the spark never finds much dry fuel. The outbreak never sustains itself. For COVID-19, the herd-immunity threshold is estimated to be between 60 and 90 percent. That’s the proportion of people who need to have immunity either from vaccination or from prior infection. In the U.S., the countdown to when enough people are vaccinated to reach herd immunity has already begun. A number of signs now point to a future in which the transmission of this virus cannot be contained through herd immunity. COVID-19 will likely continue to circulate, to evolve, and to reinfect. In that case, the goal of vaccination needs to be different. While COVID-19 vaccines are very good—even unexpectedly good—at preventing disease, they are still unlikely to be good enough against transmission of the virus, which is key to herd immunity. The role of COVID-19 vaccines may ultimately be more akin to that of the flu shot: reducing hospitalizations and deaths by mitigating the disease’s severity. What does this mean for the future of COVID-19? One possible scenario is that the disease could follow the path of the four coronaviruses that cause common colds, which frequently reinfect people but rarely seriously. So herd immunity is out and vaccinations may have to be annual. In the meantime, carry on as before: masking, hand washing, distancing, quarantining when necessary and getting vaccinated when you can. ��At 9am this Saturday morning, the people who are interested in buying our house are coming to go through. 9am in the morning! On Saturday morning! Oh well. Stay tuned for developments. Brisighella. After a delicious gluten free (for me) lunch, we wandered around this town while we waited for our bus to pick us up and take us back to the ship. �����Photos 1,2 & 3 are of the Donkeys Alley in Brisighella VIA DEL BORGO OR DONKEYS ALLEY This is a unique walkway, perched high above the street level: on one side it has tiny entrances to various ancient homes (still lived in today) and opposite, on the street side, it has a long line of arched openings which overlook the street beneath and give light. Built approximately around the 14th century, it was the oldest defensive walkway of the village. At the beginning it was open and served as an outpost for the guards but later, lost its military use, was covered and became home to many families. The alley was mainly inhabited by the carters who used the walkway to transport the gypsum from the Monticino caves with their donkeys (hence the name of the street). The stables were in front of the arches, while people lived upstairs and the carts were kept below, at the street level, in large cart houses dug in the chalky rock. Brisighella.org There was one last event this day, but I will leave that till tomorrow. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource COVID-19 Journals Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Libraries Description An account of the resource This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled. The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Subject The topic of the resource Epidemics Grand Valley State University College students Personal narratives COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COVID-19_2021-02-11_BenjaminPamela_PD-Day-337 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Benjamin, Pamela Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-02-11 Title A name given to the resource Day 337 Description An account of the resource Daily journal entry of Pamela Benjamin, spouse of GVSU history professor, Craig Benjamin, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally self-published on WordPress. Subject The topic of the resource COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Epidemics Grand Valley State University Grand Rapids (Mich.) Personal narratives Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d818bfd01f9fb1d1c8d638a3e3355dae.pdf e36c0bf5a4375d12fdbefd9d02a68ead PDF Text Text Day 338. by windoworks In 27 days, I will have been writing this blogpost daily for a whole year. I have taught myself how to research, to cite resources and to gratefully accept ideas, photos and links from my readers. I know some of you, but there is a great number of you out there who read my posts. Not everyone reads them on the day they are posted; not everyone reads them word for word. Some people cannot access them online and so they are forwarded on by others. And some people read my post in countries I have never been to and readers I have never met. Good morning. I see you all. Last might this happened: MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Melbourne, Australia’s second-largest city, will begin its third lockdown on Friday due to a rapidly spreading COVID-19 cluster centered on hotel quarantine. The five-day lockdown will be enforced across Victoria state to prevent the virus spreading from the state capital, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said. The Australian Open tennis tournament will be allowed to continue but without spectators, he said. Only international flights that were already in the air when the lockdown was announced will be allowed to land at Melbourne Airport. Schools and many businesses will be closed. Residents are ordered to stay at home except to exercise and for essential purposes. A population of 6.5 million will be locked down from 11:59 p.m. until the same time on Wednesday because of a contagious British variant of the virus first detected at a Melbourne Airport hotel that has infected 13 people. Andrews said the rate of spread demanded drastic action to avoid a new surge in Melbourne. “The game has changed. This thing is not the 2020 virus. It is very different. It is much faster. It spreads much more easily,” Andrews told reporters. “I am confident that this short, sharp circuit breaker will be effective. We will be able to smother this.” So once again, our youngest child, Asher, is locked down. In some ways I think being locked down and then released only to be locked down again, might be worse. For Craig and I it has been 338 days of more or less the same thing. I remember at the beginning, having a stand up argument with the day manager of a grocery store. He said the company’s lawyers had told them they didn’t have to comply with the restrictions. That was months and months and months ago. From the very beginning, Trader Joe’s instituted carefully spaced lines outside, only allowing you in when a shopper left, always cleaning the carts properly, and careful check out procedures. To the best of my knowledge, they are the only chain store that has kept this up. We have a store in our neighborhood that sells jewelry, knick knacks, pottery etc. It is an extremely popular store and there is always a very carefully spaced line outside with customers patiently waiting their turn. �I am beginning to believe that this virus will never go away. Here’s this report from Business Insider: As the pandemic approaches its second year, the coronavirus has morphed into a tougher foe. Several mutations that scientists have identified in rapidly spreading variants are particularly worrisome. They raise concerns that these strains will be more contagious or be able to at least partly evade protection provided by vaccines and by prior infections. Let's be clear: No one knows how the next phase of the pandemic will play out. Is a new strain already spreading undetected or lurking around the corner? How effective will these vaccines be in the long run? And just when can we think about returning to schools and offices, or getting together with older relatives again? Some of the nation's top infectious-disease experts are hesitant to offer predictions. The first axiom of infectious disease: Never underestimate your pathogen," Dr. Larry Corey, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, told Insider. Despite this uncertainty, most scientists have accepted an unfortunate truth: The coronavirus will likely be part of our lives forever, though the pandemic phase will eventually end. Our best hope is for it to turn into a mild, flu-like illness rather than a deadlier, long-term threat. Some of the most important unanswered questions hinge on what happens to variants next, and how well vaccinations and immunity can keep pace. Four other human coronaviruses are already endemic in our population, meaning they circulate perpetually but don't hit pandemic-level peaks. For the most part, these viruses cause only mild symptoms associated with common colds. Scientists had always feared a new coronavirus might come along that would be deadlier but still highly transmissible. Enter SARS-CoV-2. "It's safe to say we're not going to eradicate it entirely," said Dr. Becky Smith, an infectious-disease specialist at Duke Health. "Too many people in the world have it. It's too efficient at transmitting." The virus is also zoonotic, meaning it can jump back and forth between animals and humans. Even if we managed to eradicate SARS-CoV-2 in humans, animals could reintroduce a similar infection to our population — perhaps with an even deadlier mutation. To this day, smallpox is the only infectious disease that has ever been eradicated in humans. It has no animal reservoir, so it must spread from human to human to survive. A recent study suggested that SARSCoV-2 would most likely become endemic within five to 10 years, eventually resembling a common cold that infects people during childhood. That scenario hinges on the notion that pediatric cases will remain mild. If a new mutation makes the virus deadlier in kids, coronavirus shots may become required for young people, similar to vaccines for polio or measles. Still, Mike Osterholm, a leading infectious-disease expert, said it would be nearly impossible to make a yearly coronavirus vaccine available to every person on Earth. It is going to be with us forever," Osterholm, who directs of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said of the virus. "It is something we can't eradicate from humans." �When the first vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna were authorized for emergency use last year, there was real hope that they could crush the pandemic. The shots were over 90% effective — a stunning achievement — and provided overwhelming protection against mild, moderate, and severe symptoms. Now the goal for vaccines has become more modest: Blunt the worst outcomes, preventing deaths and hospital stays. "I've seen the language changing already from 'We're going to hit herd immunity' to 'Hey, we're going to have something that is going to get us back to normal, from the perspective that our hospitals aren't going to be overloaded,'" said Deborah Fuller, a microbiologist and vaccine researcher at the University of Washington. One thing is certain: The best defense against new variants is stopping transmission from person to person. More widespread vaccinations could lend a hand. If we don't vaccinate the whole world, unvaccinated people will keep circulating the virus — and the virus, in turn, will keep changing on its own terms. Treatments for COVID-19 — especially in its early, mild stages — are elusive. That may remain the case for quite a while. We still don't have good treatments for illnesses caused by many other viruses, including polio, measles, mumps, and rubella. Instead, we rely on vaccinations to prevent them."This virus is something that we're going to learn to live with, just as we do with influenza," Meissner said. "What we really want to do is stop the hospitalizations, stop the deaths." Well, now you know and its depressing. So, argue all you like about getting back to normal - that ship has sailed long ago. This is the new normal and one day soon, our grandchildren won’t remember anything else. They will accept it as normal. �A sign at a Whole Foods store in Auckland New Zealand. �So, the impeachment trial concludes today. The Impeachment Managers have mounted what they would consider a watertight case. Some Republicans didn’t show up for Day Two (their mindset couldn’t deal with the conundrum). Apparently a number of non- Trumper Republicans are holding meetings to consider forming a 3rd political party. the Impeachment Managers made it clear: last time Trump was given a free pass, the rationale was that he would never do that again. Not only did he do it again, he escalated his seditious behavior. If they vote to acquit, Trump will see that as another free pass. He still has not conceded the election, he is still referring to himself as number 45. I believe that an acquittal after all those tweets, phone calls, and then video footage, will rip this nation apart. That would be an unspoken acknowledgement that any sort of seditious , treasonous behavior by sitting or retired politicians or persons in positions of responsibility would be okay - because no one will bring them to task for it. Here in Michigan, Mike Shirley, the Republican Senate majority leader has called the January 6 event a hoax. I made myself watch the videos that the managers presented, I listened to the police radioing for help and telling their members to fall back because they were overrun, I watched and heard the policeman jammed between two doors and screaming in pain, I’ve seen the body cam footage of hundreds of crazy people shouting ‘push’ as they pushed together to get inside the Capitol building and I’ve seen the insurrectionists in the Senate, rifling through private documents and stealing or photographing them, saying ‘Ted Cruz would like this”. Don’t tell me that was a hoax. Don’t ever say that word to me again. Zoe and Oliver have gone to Canberra to visit Craig’s sister and mother. My sister-in-law Kym said: he never stops talking. Ah the mark of a true Benjamin. �Riding his bike with Mum and Great Uncle Mal. �It was a long day in Ravenna/Brisighella. In the evening, after a buffet dinner, we attended the third and last Azamazing Evening of our three cruises. We were bussed back to the center of Ravenna and then we walked to the Teatro Comunale Alighieri, that is the Ravenna Opera House, for a Jazz Concert. �Dante’s �tomb The view from our opera box inside the Opera House �The captain introducing the concert ��It was a famous Italian jazz orchestra with a two guests: and accordion player and a clarinetist. It was a stunning concert and the highlight of the day. Then it was back to the ship for champagne and jazz music as we boarded. Last port tomorrow. Today will be a day for the history books. What a year we’ve had. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource COVID-19 Journals Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Libraries Description An account of the resource This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled. The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Subject The topic of the resource Epidemics Grand Valley State University College students Personal narratives COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COVID-19_2021-02-12_BenjaminPamela_PD-Day-338 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Benjamin, Pamela Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-02-12 Title A name given to the resource Day 338 Description An account of the resource Daily journal entry of Pamela Benjamin, spouse of GVSU history professor, Craig Benjamin, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally self-published on WordPress. Subject The topic of the resource COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Epidemics Grand Valley State University Grand Rapids (Mich.) Personal narratives Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/88b487a1f2250f56826f6fae30a9479e.pdf cd080fbe23d11be939a2389e49b1095e PDF Text Text Day 339. Saturday February 13. 141 sleeps to go. by windoworks I want to begin today with some excerpts from an opinion piece published yesterday in the New York Times, by Maureen Dowd. Craig and I have been on 2 different cruises with Maureen, as part of a lecturing tour available to some passengers. On our first cruise Maureen was nervous about lecturing as she said her talents lay in writing. That first cruise we also met Carl Hulse, a close colleague of Maureen’s and the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times. Carl’s wife helped Maureen compose a PowerPoint for her second lecture. Once she relaxed, Maureen lectured the same way she writes; funny, self - deprecating, and full of anecdotes about every major politician you could think of. She had a close friendship with George H Bush, although their political beliefs diverged. She always seems fearless in the questions she asks, sometimes of dictators and autocrats. I could share some of her best anecdotes but today I will just share her thoughts on Trump: Trump’s Taste for Blood If Republicans won’t convict, bring on the handcuffs. Everything bloodcurdling that happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6 flowed from his bloodthirsty behavior. He had always been cruel and selfish, blowing things up and reveling in the chaos, gloating in the wreckage. But it was only during his campaign that he realized he had a nasty mob at his disposal. He had moved into a world that allowed him to exercise his malice in an extraordinary way, and he loved it. He became his own Lee Atwater, doing the dirty stuff right out in the open. He embraced the worst part of his party, the most racist, violent cohort. But once Trump got into politics, he realized, with growing intoxication, that the more incendiary he was, the more his fans would cheer. He found that he could really play with the emotions of the crowd, and that turned him on. Now he had the chance to command a mob, so his words could be linked to their actions. Trump never cared about law and order or the cops. He was thrilled that he could unleash his mob on the Capitol and its guardians, with rioters smearing blood and feces and yelling Trump’s words and going after his targets — Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence. The Democrats put on an excellent case, and they were right to impeach Trump. But if the Republicans won’t convict him, then bring on the criminal charges. Republicans say that’s how it should be done when someone is out of office, so let’s hope someone follows through on their suggestion. A few days ago, prosecutors in Georgia opened an investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the election there. Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance could drag Trump into court on tax and fraud charges. Karl Racine, the attorney general for D.C., has said that Trump could be charged for his role in inciting the riot. Maybe a man who gloated as his crowds screamed “Lock her up!” will find that jurors reach a similar conclusion about him. �Carl Hulse on the left talking with the mic and Maureen sitting in the middle. Today there is talk that a vote on Trump will be delayed as the Democrats may bring some witnesses. (Update: witnesses have been called). Here’s this from Washington Post: Donald Trump used popular resentment against elites as political rocket fuel to propel his unlikely 2016 presidential campaign, describing America’s economy and politics as “rigged” against the middle class and railing against a “rigged system” of justice in favor of the powerful. The impeachment managers argued this week that his acquittal would prove him right, pointing to the the hundreds of Trump supporters arrested for their role in the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot All of these people who have been arrested and charged, they're being held accountable for their actions,” said Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.). “Their leader, the man who incited them, must be held accountable as well.” I can’t begin to think about this trial coherently. It seems so obvious to me that Trump engineered and orchestrated it all. It has caused great harm to citizens and the political system. I remember years ago reading about how change is so uncomfortable. No matter how difficult our personal situation is, we settle into it like a comfortable rut - familiar, expected and sometimes, even safe. Change occurs when we are forcibly ejected from that rut, often against our wishes. We are all at sea, discombobulated. I think we can �liken that to the intransigent Republicans. They know they should vote to convict Trump, but the path beyond that conviction is so scary and so fraught with danger, they are willing to not only remain in their rut, but defend it to the death. And here’s a thought that may not have occurred to them - if Trump is brought up on criminal charges for his part in the January 6 attempted coup - will other Republicans be named as complicit, aiding and abetting? I could name a few right now. Sadly for the majority of Republicans, they’ve managed to quash their consciences long ago. and here’s one last word: Washington Post: A novel appeal to GOP senators about the consequences of acquittal. If there is one quote that summed up the Democrats’ argument for conviction of Trump, it came Thursday from Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.). The fact that Trump is no longer in office renders the biggest punishment of the impeachment process — removal from office — moot. Beyond that, it’s about sanctioning him and preventing Trump from being able to hold high office again. But Lieu suggested that this wasn’t just about preventing Trump from running (and potentially winning) again; he said it was instead about avoiding another situation such as this. Another impeachment manager, Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), added later: “Impeachment is not to punish, but to prevent. We are not here to punish Donald Trump. We are here to prevent the seeds of hatred that he planted from bearing any more fruit.” Now, the pandemic. Firstly, some new evidence about how that UK variant spread in the Melbourne Airport hotel. An infected person used a nebulizer and the steam somehow escaped their hotel room and infected others nearby. Well damn! They told us that the variants were far more easily spread! New York Times In a public health emergency, absolutism is a very tempting response: People should cease all behavior that creates additional risk. That instinct led to calls for gay men to stop having sex during the AIDS crisis. It has also spurred campaigns for teen abstinence, to reduce sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancies. And to fight obesity, people have been drawn to fads like the elimination of trans fats or carbohydrates. These days, there is a new absolutist health fad: the discouragement — or even prohibition — of any behavior that seems to increase the risk of coronavirus infection, even minutely. People continue to scream at joggers, walkers and cyclists who are not wearing masks. The University of California, Berkeley, this week banned outdoor exercise, masked or not, saying, “The risk is real.” The University of Massachusetts Amherst has banned outdoor walks. It encouraged students to get exercise by “accessing food and participating in twice-weekly Covid testing.” A related trend is “hygiene theater,” as �Derek Thompson of The Atlantic described it: The New York City subway system closes every night, for example, so that workers can perform a deep cleaning. Telling Americans to wear masks when they’re unnecessary undermines efforts to persuade more people to wear masks where they are vital. Remember: Americans are not doing a particularly good job of wearing masks when they make a big difference, indoors and when people are close together outdoors. Banning college students from outdoor walks won’t make them stay inside their dorm rooms for weeks on end. But it probably will increase the chances that they surreptitiously gather indoors. And spending money on deep cleaning leaves less money for safety measures that will protect people, like faster vaccination. “Rules that are really more about showing that you’re doing something versus doing something that’s actually effective” are counterproductive, Marcus told my colleague Ian Prasad Philbrick. “Trust is the currency of public health.” And from the US Department of Health and Human Services: Glad that the COVID-19 vaccines are here? So am I. But I know it’s still important to mask up, stay at least six feet apart from others, avoid crowds, and not gather inside with people I don’t live with – so we can celebrate together again soon. #SlowTheSpread Its Valentines Day tomorrow and here’s what President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden put on the White House lawn (to be honest, I think the First Lady did it - the President’s been far too busy). What a breathtaking change from the last administration! �Oliver. �Oliver and Alfie. �This made me laugh. Flashback: as we sailed away from Ravenna, Craig was asked if he would “talk” the ship into Venice, the next morning. He would be up on the Bridge, broadcasting in the public spaces and the top deck of the ship. Of course he said yes. So at 5am he left our cabin and was taken up to the Bridge. The Bridge was in darkness as the crew watched the radar and took soundings from the channel. Craig talked quietly into a microphone while struggling to see his notes and keep an eye on the screen below. Later he asked if we could hear him and I answered ‘clearly’. I also told him that most passengers had their cameras on the top deck and as he pointed out sights, we all ran from side to side of the ship to see the next thing he was pointing out. It made me laugh. First light �Into the channel �Sun rising �Venice �Looking back along our �path Sailing very slowly past Piazza San Marco �Looking through a �canal Craig’s selfie on the Bridge �The screen he could watch. We docked on the Giudecca Canal, a larger waterway. We docked there, almost in the heart of Venice because our ship was so small. Any larger ships had to dock further out of Venice. Our ship had to sail very, very slowly because there are strict rules about bow waves. Venice is built on water and is barely above the waterline. We had two days and nights in Venice - so more tomorrow. My post is late today because we had to be out of our house for 45 minutes while some prospective buyers looked through it. They wanted to look at it before it goes on the market in late April. No, I don’t know what they thought. Perhaps we’ll hear later. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource COVID-19 Journals Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Libraries Description An account of the resource This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled. The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Subject The topic of the resource Epidemics Grand Valley State University College students Personal narratives COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COVID-19_2021-02-13_BenjaminPamela_PD-Day-339 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Benjamin, Pamela Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-02-13 Title A name given to the resource Day 339 Description An account of the resource Daily journal entry of Pamela Benjamin, spouse of GVSU history professor, Craig Benjamin, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally self-published on WordPress. Subject The topic of the resource COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Epidemics Grand Valley State University Grand Rapids (Mich.) Personal narratives Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/312707bc070244f76166f1620de19060.pdf feb330af606fd1361ab99be75e83edb6 PDF Text Text Day 340. by windoworks ��I had heard that the Magas were holding out for March 4. Everyone kept saying: why March 4? Here’s why: Why are QAnon followers waiting for Trump’s inauguration on March 4? Many members of the so-called sovereign citizens believe that the United States turned into a corporation after a law was enacted in 1871 and the 18th president of the US, Ulysses S Grant, was the last legal commander-in-chief of the country. Some QAnon followers share the unfounded belief that any amendments after the 16th Amendment were invalid because, according to them, there has been no country known as the United States since it turned into a corporation. Prior to 1937, US presidents were inaugurated on March 4 but was changed to January 20 by the 20th amendment. The date has gained significance among “sovereign citizens” and QAnon, a fringe group that has often claimed a threat of a “deep state” against Donald Trump. Michele Anne Tittler, one of the most prominent voices of QAnon, had recently laid out a detailed plan in a TikTok video. Tittler claimed that Trump will be sworn in as the 19th president of the United States on March 4 “under the restored Republic.” So there are many things I could say about yesterday. It snowed all day for one thing. At least 3 people walked through my house and opened every cupboard, closet and door, for another thing. And oh, right. The majority of Senate Republicans voted to acquit Trump - and Trump then crowed with delight and justification. In light of all the rock solid evidence presented by the Impeachment Managers, the Republicans decided to ignore all those hours of videos, police radio calls, tweets and personal experiences and acquit Trump on the erroneous assumption that a retired elected official cannot be tried for impeachment. This is blatantly untrue, and the Managers quoted at least 3 other retired elected officials who were impeached. And here’s a cheering nugget: Washington Post: Fulton County district attorney to scrutinize call Sen. Graham made to Ga. secretary of state, person familiar with inquiry says. The Nov. 13 call, during which Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) questioned him about how the state verifies mail votes, will be looked at as part of a criminal inquiry into efforts to influence the election in the state. The revelation comes as Graham is serving as a juror in former president Donald Trump’s impeachment trial and advising his defense. Advising his defense - no, there’s no impropriety or collusion there! Move along, nothing to see here. The Impeachment Managers mounted a watertight case - there was no way to argue against it. So Trumps lawyers presented the silliest, most amateur case known to man. In a proper court of law, their defense would have been laughed out of court and the lawyers found in contempt for wasting the court’s time. So what happened? �White Supremacy won on the day. Over 80% of the current Senate are white. Remember yesterday I talked about the comfort of the rut? Trump allows all those white, comfortable and righteous in their rut, to not only stay in the rut, but try to force the White Supremacy rut on as many other people as possible. We may see more unrest and insurrection attempts going forward. I think the moment for saying Trump was acquitted, move on, is passed. There are huge movements afoot from organizations such as Move On, to oust Trunpian Republicans and increase the black and brown quota in the US Senate. In desperation, some states are changing voting laws and tightening gerrymandering of districts but it all smacks of extreme fear of loss of white power. Abraham Maslow “In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or step back into safety.” And just for hope: Steve Jobs "The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do." I think the way has been paved for criminal charges against Trump in a large number of cases, but what will be the future of the Republican Party is anyone’s guess. I would begin with getting rid of the term ‘Grand Old Party’, which really smacks of White Supremacy. Yesterday, this happened in New Zealand: WELLINGTON (Reuters) - New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Sunday announced a threeday lockdown in the country’s biggest city Auckland, after three COVID-19 cases emerged, the first local infections since late January. Level 3 restrictions will require everyone to stay home except for essential shopping and essential work, Ardern said, repeating the strict approach the country has taken over the past year in virtually eliminating the pandemic. “We have stamped out the virus before and we will do it again,” Ardern told a news conference in the capital, Wellington. New Zealand, which had gone more than two months without local infections before the January case, is to start inoculating its 5 million people against the new coronavirus on Feb. 20, receiving the PfizerBioNTech vaccine earlier than anticipated. Restrictions were raised to level 3 through Wednesday, shutting public venues and prohibiting gatherings outside homes, except for weddings and funerals of up to 10 people. Schools will stay open for children of essential workers but others were asked to stay home. �We were alerted to this development by our youngest child texting our oldest in New Zealand and asking if he was locked down again. So at this point, Craig and I are still in our self imposed lockdown; Asher is locked down in Melbourne, Zar and Alva are locked down in Auckland and Elle and Terry are locked down in Cornwall, England. Its never ending really. Pardon? What about your house sale, I hear you say. Apparently there will be a ‘nice’ offer later today. We’ll see. Oliver �Why does everyone photograph me when I’m �eating? �Oliver in GG’s garden. Venice! Constructing the Redentore walking bridge across the Giudecca Canal. ���St Marks ��St Marks Plaza The Festa del Redentore is an event held in Venice the third Sunday of July where fireworks play an important role. The Redentore began as a feast – held on the day of the Feast of the Most Holy Redeemer – to give thanks for the end of the terrible plague of 1576, which killed 50,000 people,[1] including the great painter Tiziano Vecellio (Titian). The Doge Alvise I Mocenigo promised to build a magnificent church if the plague ended.[1] Andrea Palladio was commissioned, assisted by Da Ponte, to build a majestic church on the Island of Giudecca. The church, known as Il Redentore, was consecrated in 1592,[2] and is one of the most important examples of Palladian religious architecture. After the foundation stone was laid, a small wooden church was temporarily built, along with temporary bridge of barges from the Zattere, so that the Doge Sebastian Venier could walk in procession as far as the tabernacle. Afterwards, the Doge made a pilgrimage to the Church of Redentore every year. Wikipedia Our third cruise ended in Venice in time for the Festival. The photos above were mostly taken by Craig on one of his early morning walks. Venice does look its best (cleanest and quietest) early in the morning. More Venice tomorrow. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource COVID-19 Journals Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Libraries Description An account of the resource This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled. The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Subject The topic of the resource Epidemics Grand Valley State University College students Personal narratives COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COVID-19_2021-02-14_BenjaminPamela_PD-Day-340 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Benjamin, Pamela Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-02-14 Title A name given to the resource Day 340 Description An account of the resource Daily journal entry of Pamela Benjamin, spouse of GVSU history professor, Craig Benjamin, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally self-published on WordPress. Subject The topic of the resource COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Epidemics Grand Valley State University Grand Rapids (Mich.) Personal narratives Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/58b4af5794daa8ec6c2ef4363a0a1622.pdf b1fad8234150a3dcd3fe093d6f62036a PDF Text Text Day 341. by windoworks Midwinter Michigan. Its been snowing on and off for days. We are now under another winter weather advisory - snow, ice and wind chills - until lunchtime tomorrow. It seems as though it has been a few years since this more normal winter and as it is probably our last winter in Michigan, Craig and I are quite enjoying it. This same storm is also affecting my brother in Campbell River on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. We were comparing snow levels yesterday. He and his wife are staying in place. They have their son and his family nearby and they are coparenting a dog together. Allan and Leith are unable to visit either of their daughters and their families as the families are worried that they might infect their parents. He and I were talking about the virus (my brother is a retired doctor) and he agrees with me - Covid is with us forever, just like influenza. He suggested we would begin to be vaccinated annually, also just like the flu. He also said that Canada is struggling to obtain enough supplies of the vaccines to vaccinate their population and in that respect, he thought the US had done better. Isn’t that an interesting thought? You know, just when you think you know almost everything about the virus and its variants - more disturbing news comes along. I know you’re probably saying: don’t tell us Pamela! But I’m going to share it anyway. That way, I think, we are all better prepared. First, a piece about the 3 variants we’ve all heard of, from CNN: Scientists are not surprised to see the coronavirus changing and evolving -- it's what viruses do, after all. And with so much unchecked spread across the US and other parts of the world, the virus is getting plenty of opportunity to do just that.Four of the new variants are especially worrisome. (Authors note: 4? 4? I thought there was just 3.) What scientists most fear is that one will mutate to the point that it causes more severe disease, bypasses the ability of tests to detect it or evades the protection provided by vaccination. While some of the new variants appear to have changes that look like they could affect immune response, it's only by a matter of degree. Governments are already reacting. Colombia banned flights from Brazil, and Brazil banned flights from South Africa. It's almost certainly too late to stop the spread, and there's some indication the mutations in these variants are arising independently and in multiple places. Here's what's known about the top four. B.1.1.7 At the top of the list for researchers in the US is the B.1.1.7 variant first seen in Britain. The CDC has warned it could worsen the spread of the pandemic. It reports more than 300 cases in 28 states -- but those are only the cases caught by genomic sequencing, which is hit and miss in the US. The mutations in the variant help it enter cells more easily -- which means if someone, says, breathes in a lungful of air that has virus particles in it, those particles are going to be more likely to infect some cells in the sinuses or lungs �rather than bouncing off harmlessly. The worrisome changes enhance the spike protein that the virus uses to attach to cells, meaning people are more likely to become infected by an exposure. B.1.351 The variant first seen in South Africa called B.1.351 or 501Y.V2 was reported for the first time in the US Thursday, in South Carolina. On Saturday, Maryland's governor announced a sample from someone in the Baltimore area had also shown the characteristic mutation pattern of B.1.351. None of the three people had any contact with one another and none had traveled recently. This suggests the variant has been spreading undetected in the communities. It has a different pattern of mutations that causes more physical alterations in the structure of the spike protein than B.1.1.7 does. One important mutation, called E484K, appears to affect the receptor binding domain -- the part of the spike protein most important for attaching to cells. P.1 A variant suspected of fueling a resurgence of viral spread in Brazil turned up in Minnesota for the first time in January. It was in a traveler from Brazil, so there's no indication yet of community spread. This variant, called P.1, was found in 42% of specimens in one survey done in the Brazilian city of Manaus, and Japanese officials found the variant in four travelers from Brazil. "The emergence of this variant raises concerns of a potential increase in transmissibility or propensity for SARS-CoV-2 re-infection of individuals," the CDC said. P.1 also carries the E484K mutation. L452R Finally, there's a variant seen in California, as well as a dozen other states. "We don't know yet what the significance of that one is," said Armstrong. It also has a mutation in the receptor binding domain of the spike protein. It is called L452R and while it's being found commonly, it's not yet clear if it's more transmissible. Any viral strain can become more common because of what's known as the founder effect. "The founder effect is a matter of a virus being in the right place at the right time," Armstrong said. If a particular strain happens to be circulating when transmission increases because of human behavior, that strain will ride along and become more common not because it spreads more easily, but simply because it was there. Now added to that (wait Pamela, there’s more?) it turns out scientists have found something else: (CNN) Researchers said Sunday they have identified a batch of similar troubling mutations in coronavirus samples circulating in the United States. They've not only drawn attention to them; they've come up with a better shorthand for referring to them. They've named them after birds. The genetic stretch that is mutated, or changed, is called 677. The various changes are so similar that the researchers think evolution favors these particular variants. “In late January of 2021, our two independent SARS-CoV-2 genomic surveillance programs, based at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences in Albuquerque, New �Mexico and the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in Shreveport, Louisiana, each noticed increasing numbers of … viruses carrying an S:Q677P mutation, and that this variant had increased in frequency in samples collected in late 2020 to mid-January," the researchers wrote. They've identified seven similar mutations at 677 . One, called Robin 1, has turned up in more than 30 US states, predominating in the Midwest. A second first appeared in a 2020 sample from Alabama and is named 'Robin 2' owing to its similarity to the parental Robin 1 sub-lineage. It's mainly seen in the Southeast. One called Pelican was first seen in a sample from Oregon, and has since turned up in 12 other states as well as Australia, Denmark, Sweden and India. The remaining Q677H sub-lineages are named: Yellowhammer, detected mostly in the southeast US; Bluebird, mostly in the northeast United States; Quail, mainly in the Southwest and Northeast; and Mockingbird, mainly in the South-central and East coast states. The United States has barely studied the genomic sequences of coronaviruses circulating, so if these variants have turned up so often in databases, they are probably very prevalent, the researchers said. The appearance of so many similar mutations at the same time is "remarkable.” Well now, as they used to say in Australia: I need a cup of tea, a Bex (aspirin) and a good lie down (nap). What’s really bothering, is that all these mutations are so much more easily spread, and some have more serious consequences. It seems as though we just learn everything there is to learn about SARS-CoV-2 and suddenly everything we thought we knew is tossed out the window and we’re running to catch up. But may blessings fall on the overworked scientists all round the world who never stop researching, correlating and forming testable theories and formulas, and never say ‘now we know everything’. What the scientists do say is: keep masking, keep distancing, keep washing your hands, keep just to your bubble. Apart from the vaccine, these are the only tools we have. There was an uproar after Trump’s second Impeachment acquittal. Most of us are all standing round asking ourselves why the Republicans would do this. Here’s an interesting piece from the New York Times: Purely as a matter of political self-interest, congressional Republicans had some good reasons to abandon Donald Trump as the de facto leader of their party. Trump is unpopular with most Americans, and he has been for his entire political career. He was able to win the presidency in 2016 only with help from some unusual factors — including an unpopular opponent, intervention from both Russia and the F.B.I. director and razor-thin wins in three swing states. Today, Trump is a defeated one-term president who never cracked 47 percent of the vote, and political parties are usually happy to move on from presidents who lose re-election. So why didn’t Senate Republicans do so? There are two important parts to the answer. �The more obvious one is the short-term political danger for individual Republicans. Roughly 70 percent of Republican voters continue to support Trump strongly, polls suggest. A similar share say they would be less likely to vote for a Republican senator who voted to convict Trump, according to Li Zhou of Vox. For Republican politicians, turning on Trump still brings a significant risk of being a career-ending move, as it was for Jeff Flake, the former Arizona senator, and Jeff Sessions, the former attorney general. Of the seven Republican senators who voted for conviction, only one — Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — faces re-election next year. And the seven are already facing blowback in their home states. The second part of the answer is more subtle but no less important. The Republican Party of the past won elections by persuading most Americans that it would do a better job than Democrats of running the country. Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Dwight Eisenhower each won at least 57 percent of the vote in their re-election campaigns. George W. Bush won 51 percent, largely by appealing to swing voters on national security, education, immigration and other issues. A party focused on rebuilding a national majority probably could not stay tethered to Trump. But the modern Republican Party has found ways other than majority support to achieve its goals. It benefits from a large built-in advantage in the Senate, which gives more power to rural and heavily white states. The filibuster also helps Republicans more than it does Democrats. In the House and state legislatures, both parties have gerrymandered, but Republicans have done more of it. In the courts, Republicans have been more aggressive about putting judges on the bench and blocking Democratic presidents from doing so. All of this helps explain Trump’s second acquittal. The Republican Party is in the midst of the worst run that any party has endured — across American history — in the popular vote of presidential elections, having lost seven of the past eight. Yet the party has had a pretty good few decades, policy-wise. It has figured out how to succeed with minority support. I still believe change is coming. The largest avalanche begins as a small trickle at the top of the mountain and then gathers speed and mass as it descends - and nothing can stop it. How long will a profound change to nationwide multiculturalism, gender equity and racial equity represented at all levels of society and government take? Probably a century, was Craig’s answer. And are we the trickle of snow at the top of the mountain? I sincerely hope so. I think today is a 3 photo day for Oliver ��A hammer? You gave him a hammer? �Step one: stand on scooter. �Although we had visited Venice twice before, we had never visited this museum: The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is one of the most important museums of European and American art of the twentieth century in Italy. It is located in Peggy Guggenheim’s former home, Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, on the Grand Canal in Venice. The museum presents Peggy Guggenheim's personal collection, masterpieces from the Hannelore B. and Rudolph B. Schulhof collection, a sculpture garden as well as temporary exhibitions. �It was already a hot day as we walked to the �museum. �The view from Peggy’s villa on the Grand Canal. �The view along the canal in the other direction - and the pole for the gondolas to tie up. ��A Modigliani �portrait �Carved wooden collection In Peggy’s garden where she and her cats are buried. And then it was lunchtime and we found a little cafe mostly catering to Venetians and we had a wonderful lunch, of course. More of our day tomorrow. Stay safe wherever you are. �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource COVID-19 Journals Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Libraries Description An account of the resource This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled. The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Subject The topic of the resource Epidemics Grand Valley State University College students Personal narratives COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COVID-19_2021-02-15_BenjaminPamela_PD-Day-341 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Benjamin, Pamela Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-02-15 Title A name given to the resource Day 341 Description An account of the resource Daily journal entry of Pamela Benjamin, spouse of GVSU history professor, Craig Benjamin, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally self-published on WordPress. Subject The topic of the resource COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Epidemics Grand Valley State University Grand Rapids (Mich.) Personal narratives Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/aa00e3877dc7596243d739e4d4da0d68.pdf 552101179007ec23337ab2b29fdaf51d PDF Text Text New post on Stuff Day 342 by windoworks Good morning. If you are not familiar with this sign it says ‘Black Lives Matter’. I show you this as an indication of how much snow we have had over the past few days. The above photo was taken yesterday morning and we have had a couple of inches of more snow since then. From Washington Post: A severe cold snap has turned the central and southern parts of the country into an extension of the Arctic, with dangerously low temperatures not seen in decades and a blast of snow and ice which has shut down population centers in multiple states. The excessive cold has sent energy demand skyrocketing. In Texas, 2.8 million customers were without electricity as of 1:30 p.m. Eastern amid the punishing cold, according to poweroutage.us. �The mercury plummeted in the Lone Star State on Sunday night while it was blitzed by snow and ice, causing nearly impossible driving conditions and hundreds of vehicle accidents. Officials have urged residents not to travel, as social media videos proliferated of cars and trucks sliding down roads out of control. Houston’s Bush Intercontinental and Hobby airports were closed, while all flights out of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport were also canceled Monday morning. For the first time, the entire state of Texas was placed under a winter storm warning Sunday. These warnings for hazardous amounts of ice and snow expanded Monday to cover all of Arkansas and most of Louisiana, Mississippi, and western and northern Alabama, while extending northeast through much of the Tennessee and Ohio valleys, and interior Northeast. Now the amount of snow and the plunging cold temperatures are commonplace to Michiganders and most of the Great Lakes states. We hunker down inside, those with snow plows clear our sidewalks and at some point each day, everyone shovels their driveways and walks to the their front door. Our houses have central heating of some sort and if you can afford it, people put all weather tires on their cars. In states such as Texas, they have few grit trucks or snow plows and the ice has overpowered their electrical utilities. The temperature inside the houses is 50F (10C) or below. Now perhaps that doesn’t sound too cold, but we have discovered that since we had a new hot water tank installed last year and a new furnace installed a week ago, our basement is 50F at best - and in midwinter, that’s really cold. It also tells me that the old furnace used to bleed heat into the basement as the temperature down there was usually in the low 60s. Its freezing doing the washing now. So far this winter Grand Rapids has had a total of 35.5 inches of snow. Our winter average was 75 inches I’m not sure that is still the average. Today is Fat Tuesday. Traditionally this is the last day before Lent, a period of 40 days of abstinence. This is a Catholic tradition, and parishioners are expected to give up primarily a loved food item for Lent, such as chocolate. I have a friend who, every year, gives up guilt. Fat Tuesday is the day you eat all the cream and eggs and meat you are supposed to give up for Lent. In New Orleans, Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday in French) is the event of the year and floats are feverishly decorated for the big parade, complete with love beads thrown out to the crowd. Where did Mardi Gras begin? History Channel: A popular theory holds that Mardi Gras’ origins lie in ancient pagan celebrations of spring and fertility, such as Saturnalia and Lupercalia. Some experts contend, however, that Mardi Grastype festivities popped up solely as a result of the Catholic Church’s discouragement of sex and meat �during Lent. Church reformers may have helped to propagate the pagan rumors, these experts say, in the hope of dissuading pre-Lenten hedonism. Louisiana has been hit hard by the pandemic and the parades and the street parties have been canceled. So the residents of New Orleans celebrated by making their houses a stationary float. ��And baking the customary and popular King Cakes. Each King Cake contains a tiny, plastic baby in it. From Better Homes and Gardens: When a king cake is served at a Mardi Gras celebration, everyone wants to know who was served the slice with the baby—but what does it mean if you find one? Tradition dictates that finding the baby in your cake symbolizes luck and prosperity, and the finder becomes the 'king' or 'queen' of the evening. �And in line with change in the pandemic forced upon us. Here is a piece from Craig Benjamin (my husband), a professor at Grand Valley State University; Transitioning from Face-to-Face (F2F) Teaching to ‘Zoom School’. For most of the summer I had planned to teach my fall 2020 GVSU classes in hybrid format, and had structured all my syllabi based on the assumption that half the students would attend class in person one day, and the other half another day. Each of my three classes had approximately 20 students enrolled, so reducing the number of students in class to only 10 meant we would be well spaced out. Of course we would all be masked, and I had also planned to teach as many classes as possible outside, to further reduce the risk of infection. This new format meant drastically cutting the content for each class, because I would have to repeat the same material to both groups of 10 students, but this was relatively easy to do. This was the plan right up to the last week of August. During that week a number of extraordinary Zoom meetings of the University Academic Senate were held, and it was clear that everyone was very concerned about resuming in person teaching. In the end, on literally the weekend before classes were due to commence, the university administration agreed that anyone who wanted to switch their classes from F2F to fully online could do so. Reluctantly I decided to do just that, and had to inform my students that instead of meeting in person as we had been planning, we were going fully online. I say reluctantly �because I was fairly certain this would result in a much less rewarding educational experience for both students and myself, but I was to be proven wrong. I quickly loaded all my PowerPoint lectures and readings into the course Blackboard sites, and informed the students they would need to look at the lectures and do the readings before class. This meant we could devote every 75-minute class period to group discussion. To make these discussions more meaningful I retained the split class format, so would meet 10 students on Tuesday, and the other 10 on Thursday, and each group would discuss the same content. The brilliant technology of Zoom made all this possible. I would start class a few minutes early, and welcome the students as they joined the meeting one by one. With only 11 faces on the screen we could all see each other well, and we all kept our cameras and mikes on so that spontaneous and vigorous discussions could occur, almost as they would have done if we were in class together. All my students are in the Honors College - intelligent, deep critical thinkers, and articulate – and because we were all determined to make these Zoom discussions work, they did. We quickly came to realize that we could have almost as rewarding an educational experience, including establishing meaningful interpersonal relationships, online as we would have had in the classroom. So here we are deep into the second semester of the school year, and Zoom classes continue using the same format. At the start of the fall semester I was skeptical about the ability of professors and students to create online classes that could work almost as well as F2F classes, but I have been proven wrong. Indeed, I have become a strong advocate for Zoom school and the online educational experience which, like so many other changes brought about by the pandemic, is certain to expand enormously in the years ahead. In a quick round up of other news: a wealthy conservative donor Fred Eshelman donated $2M to an election fraud investigation fund. (Trump’s campaign and the Republican Party collected $255 million in two months, saying the money would support legal challenges to an election marred by fraud). Now, Eshelman wants his money back. And, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Monday that the US Congress will establish an outside, independent commission to review the “facts and causes” related to the deadly 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump in the waning days of his presidency. Lastly, investigators from the World Health Organization (WHO) looking into the origins of coronavirus in China have discovered signs the outbreak was much wider in Wuhan in December 2019 than previously thought. �Oliver has a little cold and is probably getting another molar breaking through. He always enjoys daycare though. Chalk adventures After lunch we visited: The Art Acamdemy of Venice (Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia) was founded in 1750 at the request of the Venetian Senate, who wanted the ‘City of Doges’ to have its own school of painting, sculpture and architecture. Shortly, the Academy became a reference in the study of the visual arts and brought together a team of brilliant teachers, including famous Italian painter Giambattista Tiepolo. The avant-garde Art Academy of Venice was the first ever to start restoring ancient paintings at the end of the 18th century. In 1807, Napoleon Bonaparte, who had conquered the city ten years earlier, created the galleries of the Art Acamemy to open the collections to the general public. On Napoleon’s orders, the Art Academy of Venice together with the museum collections also moved to their current location. �In 2004, the Art Academy was separated from the Gallerie dell’Accademia and transferred to another building to make room for the expansion of the museum’s galleries. Over the years, the museum’s collections have been enriched, thanks in part to donations and patronage from wealthy collectors. Today, the Gallerie dell’Accademia is home to over 800 paintings and frescoes dating from the 14th to the 18th centuries, including an invaluable collection of paintings by Italian masters. �������More Venice adventures tomorrow. Now you know. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource COVID-19 Journals Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Libraries Description An account of the resource This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled. The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Subject The topic of the resource Epidemics Grand Valley State University College students Personal narratives COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COVID-19_2021-02-16_BenjaminPamela_PD-Day-342 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Benjamin, Pamela Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-02-16 Title A name given to the resource Day 342 Description An account of the resource Daily journal entry of Pamela Benjamin, spouse of GVSU history professor, Craig Benjamin, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally self-published on WordPress. Subject The topic of the resource COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Epidemics Grand Valley State University Grand Rapids (Mich.) Personal narratives Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8f9fa1b4a3b77ec32ea6db7086bad28a.pdf a60fcaf36f70d66f54c64296a4864c81 PDF Text Text Day 343 by windoworks Craig is about to head out on his normal early morning walk and the current temperature outside is -4F. That is -20C. That is cold enough for him to wear a ski mask to protect his face. The roads are glazed with ice. The top temperature here to day will be 22F (-5.5C). Ahhh Michigan! Meanwhile in Texas, there is the possibility of another storm on Thursday/Friday. It was so cold that the wind turbines froze. Here’s an interesting snippet from Heather Cox Richardson: Most of Texas is on its own power grid, a decision made in the 1930s to keep it clear of federal regulation. This means both that it avoids federal regulation and that it cannot import more electricity during periods of high demand. Apparently, as temperatures began to drop, people turned up electric heaters and needed more power than engineers had been told to design for, just as the ice shut down gas-fired plants and wind turbines froze. Demand for natural gas spiked and created a shortage. With climate change expected to intensify extremes of weather, the crisis in Texas indicates that our infrastructure will need to be reinforced to meet conditions it was not designed for. Wait? Is this help on the horizon? From a FB post: The President approved federal help for Texas, LA, AL, KS and Ok as soon as their Governors requested it. He did it without the need of him being praised! He sees no blue or red states. He sees and represents the United States whether or not they voted for him!! This is what a real President does!! Bill Gates (who predicted the global pandemic in a TED talk about 7 years ago) has a new book coming out: “How To Avoid A Climate Disaster - the solutions we have and the breakthroughs we need”. I’m pretty sure we should listen to him. And in line with that here’s this from Science Alert: It's been nearly two decades since a coronavirus capable of wreaking havoc on our bodies threatened global pandemic. Last year, that threat was made good with the emergence of a deadly new version, dubbed SARS-CoV-2. With the world still reeling from the devastation of COVID-19, the question of if – and when – we'll see yet another member of this family pop up in the near future has the attention of researchers. Their findings should have us on high alert. A recent investigation has employed machine learning to predict which mammals could host multiple strains of coronavirus, allowing the pathogens to mix and piece together the makings of a next-gen COVID. The numbers hint at close to a dozen times more coronavirus-host associations than estimates based on observations alone. �Alarmingly, they also found more than 30 times the potential hosts that could harbour SARS-CoV-2 and allow it to recombine into something uglier; and over 40 times the number of species previously suspected to host a handful of coronavirus subgenera. Viruses regularly shuffle genes and recode their genome as they infect hosts, chancing on clever new methods for unlocking cells, evading eviction from the immune system, or even jumping to new animals, giving rise to what we call new species and strains. Thanks in part to the amazingly robust immune systems, many bat species can harbour a number of viruses comfortably for long periods, giving them all a chance to mix-and-match their genes. From there, a leap into a human host simply requires a chance encounter, either directly or through an intermediate host, such as a pangolin brought into civilisation for its meat. So here we are. As awful and life changing as this pandemic continues to be - its not the worst scenario. And all of us, mostly those of us living in wealthy countries, we have done this to ourselves. So many of us have refused to accept the term ‘climate change’, never mind the current term ‘climate crisis’. A tweet from Greta Thunberg: A small piece of advice for humanity: when you're in a hole - stop digging. A crisis created by lack of respect for nature will most likely not be solved by taking that lack of respect to the next level… Greta Thunberg is an 18 year old Swedish climate activist. In September 2019, Greta spoke to the General Assembly of the United Nations. She said: My message is that we'll be watching you. This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet, you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words and yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you! For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you're doing enough when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight. You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency, but no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act then you would be evil and that I refuse to believe. The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50 percent chance of staying below 1.5 degrees and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control. Fifty percent may be acceptable to you, but those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution or the aspects of equity and climate justice. They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with �technologies that barely exist. So a 50 percent risk is simply not acceptable to us, we who have to live with the consequences. How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just business as usual and some technical solutions? With today's emissions levels, that remaining CO2 budget will be entirely gone within less than eight and a half years. There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today, because these numbers are too uncomfortable and you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is. You are failing us, but the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you and if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up and change is coming, whether you like it or not. Thank you. I think that is a clear message and here we are in the first pandemic (there will probably be others) and if we are honest - we did this to ourselves. Not only ourselves, but our children and our grandchildren and on and on. How many science fiction films or TV series have you watched with the central premise that the Earth has become unlivable. All those movies and series tell us that it’s all right - we’ll just find another planet to live on. That’s irresponsible. Thats like saying if you trash the house you are currently living in - that’s all right. You’ll just find another house to live in. We have to wake up right now. Some of our worst fears are being realized. If you have steadfastly refused to believe in climate crisis (we passed climate change some years ago) perhaps it is time to look at this with the long view. Years ago a family member told me with great cheer - oh I don’t believe in climate change. My response was: if you do something to help even if you don’t believe in it - what will you lose if it turns out not to be true? If you do nothing and it turns to be true - what will you lose? Perhaps you are saying: well Pamela, what can I do? I’m just one person. You can adjust the way you live and consume, because remember the tiny snow trickle at the top of the mountain that gradually becomes an avalanche? You can be part of that tiny trickle and then you can say to yourself: it might not be much, but I’m doing what I can. This past year has taught us all so much about making do, growing food, establishing rain gardens, eating in a more healthy and sustainable way, and much more. My neighbor, who has always been a great cook, has begun to try lots more new recipes. Craig and I have begun taking turns cooking dinner and sometimes cooking a meal together. Sometimes adversity draws us all closer together and we begin to appreciate our family and friends so much more. Now this is interesting. From News & Guts: The N.A.A.C.P. has filed a lawsuit in federal court against former president Donald Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. The suit, brought on behalf of Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) claims the two violated a 19th century statute when they tried to prevent certification of the election on January 6th, according to the New York Times. �The lawsuit contends that Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani violated the Ku Klux Klan Act, an 1871 statute that includes protections against violent conspiracies that interfered with Congress’s constitutional duties; the suit also names the Proud Boys, the far-right nationalist group, and the Oath Keepers militia group. The legal action accuses Mr. Trump, Mr. Giuliani and the two groups of conspiring to incite a violent riot at the Capitol, with the goal of preventing Congress from certifying the election. The suit contends that Mr. Thompson was forced to hide on the floor of the house gallery for three hours and wear a gas mask on January 6 while hearing “threats of physical violence against any member who attempted to proceed to approve the Electoral College ballot count.” The suit also alleges Giuliani and Trump worked in collaboration with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers far-right extremist groups. Mr. Thompson told the Times that he would have not brought the suit if the Senate had convicted Mr. Trump. Politico spoke with the president of the N.A.A.C.P.: “If we don’t put a check on the spread of domestic terrorism, it will consume this nation and transform it to something that none of us recognize,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in an interview. “We must, as a nation, prevent the spread of this type of boldness where [insurrectionists] will go to our U.S. Capitol and seek an act of treason.” ��Oliver �Next (in our long day in Venice) we took a ferry ride along the Grand Canal and the Giudecca Canal. �Grand Canal �A villa on the Grand �Canal Ferry stop on the Giudecca Canal �The completed Redentore footbridge �People walking across �To the Giudecca church �To celebrate mass (no I didn’t walk across the bridge and go inside the church - Craig did, of course �The 3rd canal regatta of the day: gondolas with two oars. It looked like very hard work for the gondoliers Yes there is still more to see on our last day in Venice. Stay warm, stay safe - and you know the rest. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource COVID-19 Journals Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Libraries Description An account of the resource This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled. The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Subject The topic of the resource Epidemics Grand Valley State University College students Personal narratives COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COVID-19_2021-02-17_BenjaminPamela_PD-Day-343 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Benjamin, Pamela Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-02-17 Title A name given to the resource Day 343 Description An account of the resource Daily journal entry of Pamela Benjamin, spouse of GVSU history professor, Craig Benjamin, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally self-published on WordPress. Subject The topic of the resource COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Epidemics Grand Valley State University Grand Rapids (Mich.) Personal narratives Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e9229c422b258f4b249ff063571a845f.pdf d4ace09ace1af24c99ebfb68d240156a PDF Text Text Day 344 by windoworks The big news of the day: remember we had to leave the house last Saturday so some prespective buyers could look at the house? They sent us an offer on Sunday afternoon which we declined. And that, I thought, was the end of it. However, on Tuesday they made a second offer which was much more attractive, so we accepted it. Now all the folderol begins. Tomorrow we have to leave the house at 10:30am and stay away for approximately 3 hours while the house is formally inspected. Where to go and what to do for 3 hours in a pandemic? Plus, I think we’ve looked after our house really well, but then I love it. And in another side note - this morning the toaster died, because pandemic and we’re leaving the country in just under 4 months and none of our electrical goods will work in Australia. There is lots to talk about this morning but first, here’s a piece from my daughter Zoe. As an addendum to her piece, yesterday she had a cold that she had caught from Oliver who caught it from daycare - you get the picture. She found out that if she wanted to go to the office yesterday instead of working from home, she had to get tested for Covid, it was the new rule. I haven’t heard her results yet. Our team was probably the first in our district office to try working from home, in mid-March of 2020. I remember coming in on a Tuesday and some of my team members were quite stressed about the growing numbers of COVID-19, asking if it was possible to work from home. I went to my Director, who thought it might be a good “test case” for our office, so from the next day, we were all at home. For the most part, we have worked at home since then. I started coming in to our office once a week from about August, and have increased that to twice a week occasionally as well. As of the last few weeks, our messaging is beginning to change. Australia’s numbers of COVID have on the whole, been kept relatively low (thanks to vigorous lockdowns and quick reactions from our state governments), and in New South Wales where I live, following a minor outbreak over Christmas, we have sat on no new community transmission cases for 30 days now. This means our state government (who I work for) is interested in promoting the idea of returning to the office, in a COVID-safe way, primarily I think because of the economic concern that the city has become so unpopulated, which won’t be great in a post-pandemic tourist sense. I am now working with my team members (I manage 5 people) about them returning to the office for at least a few days a week, and making sure they don’t feel anxious about this, as many of them have to take public transport to get here (where we still wear masks). I like being in the office, it’s something I missed a lot last year – especially as COVID hit only about 5 weeks after I had returned from maternity leave, and I was craving the company of adults (and coffees!) But I also recognise we are trying to balance being safe in the office, with appreciating the need for flexibility in people’s lives, and the reality that COVID showed us we can work from home just fine with, if anything, more productivity. �Zoë Benjamin | Manager Communications Office of the Executive District Director Department of Communities and Justice. I respect and acknowledge Aboriginal people as the traditional owners of the land on which I live and work and pay my respects to Elders both Past and Present. It is interesting to me that the acknowledgement of the Aboriginal people is included in every state and federal communication. Recently I have watched the Covid updates from British Columbia, Canada, and each time, the speaker acknowledges and thanks the Native Canadians for allowing them to be on their lands. Here’s something about the future of jobs from Washington Post: Millions of jobs that have been shortchanged or wiped out entirely by the coronavirus pandemic are unlikely to come back, economists warn, setting up a massive need for career changes and retraining in the United States. The coronavirus pandemic has triggered permanent shifts in how and where people work. Businesses are planning for a future where more people are working from home, traveling less for business, or replacing workers with robots. All of these modifications mean many workers will not be able to do the same job they did before the pandemic, even after much of the U.S. population gets vaccinated against the deadly virus. Microsoft founder-turned-philanthropist Bill Gates raised eyebrows in November when he predicted that half of business travel and 30 percent of “days in the office” would go away forever. That forecast no longer seems far-fetched. In a report coming out later this week that was previewed to The Washington Post, the McKinsey Global Institute says that 20 percent of business travel won’t come back and about 20 percent of workers could end up working from home indefinitely. These shifts mean fewer jobs at hotels, restaurants and downtown shops, in addition to ongoing automation of office support roles and some factory jobs. So there you have it. It will never be the same old normal again from the Before Times. It will be a New Normal. Are we ready? �Texas is in a catastrophic state. In one story that Craig heard, a family huddled together in front of their open fireplace. During the night when the fire began to die down, the parents used furniture and picture frames to keep themselves and their small children warm. There seems to be a lot of finger pointing going on. President Biden immediately sent everything that Texas asked for (generators, bottled water etc), even though the Governor and his minions continue to badmouth Democrats and Liberals. Tim Boyd, the mayor of Colorado City, Texas, when asked for help by his constituents, said on FB ‘get off your lazy asses and fix it for yourselves’. There was more but you don’t need to read it. He must have forgotten that ‘that other guy’ was no longer President. He resigned after a FB uproar. I see major changes looming to Texas’ power grid. �How did this freak winter storm happen in the south? Here’s a piece from the New York Times: Much of the Pacific Northwest is blanketed in snow. Texas continues to endure frigid weather and electricity outages. Another winter storm is spreading across much of the country. Today, snow or freezing rain may fall on Washington, New York and Boston. To make sense of this week’s cold spell and storms, I spoke with John Schwartz, a Times reporter who focuses on the climate. Question: Let’s start with a simple question on some people’s minds — How do you think about recordlow temperatures hammering parts of the U.S. at the same time that we’re experiencing global warming? John Schwartz: It does sound counterintuitive! Those who deny climate science love to declare that there’s no such thing as climate change whenever the weather turns cold. But weather remains variable, and cold weather in winter still happens, even if the overall warming trend means that winters are getting milder. �Q: And is there any relationship between this week’s storms and climate change? I noticed that the climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe uses the phrase “global weirding.” John: There’s interesting science that suggests the effects of a warming world have something to do with these sudden bursts of Arctic cold, as well. The cold air at the top of the world, the polar vortex, is usually held in place by the circulating jet stream. The Northern Hemisphere’s warming appears to be weakening the jet stream, and when sudden blasts of heat in the stratosphere punch into the vortex, that Arctic air can spill down into the middle latitudes. Q: Are there any other changing patterns of winter weather that may be connected to climate change? John: A warming atmosphere can hold more moisture, so when you do get storms you can expect to see heavier rain and snow. There’s also fascinating research that links a warming Arctic to increased frequency of the broad range of extreme winter weather in parts of the United States. It’s known as “warm-Arctic/cold-continents pattern,” a phenomenon that’s still being studied. Q: What are the recent weather trends — during winter or not — where the evidence most strongly suggests climate change is playing a role?John: In the United States, we’re seeing longer wildfire seasons because of hotter, drier conditions, and our hurricanes are becoming more destructive in several ways, including flooding and storm surge. It’s even worsening the misery of pollen season. We’ve always had floods, fires and storms, but climate change adds oomph to many weather events. I realize I’m repeating myself here, but scientists are still hashing out all of this. While the science underlying the links between human emissions and climate change is rock solid, some of the particulars, such as whether climate change will cause us to see more frequent blasts from the polar vortex, are still being debated. And that’s as it should be. So as well as everything else, 7M people in Texas are under a boil all drinking water advisory - although how people are doing that during a severe power outage - oh wait, can we use the grill? I am being flippant but people have died trying to keep warm. Starting the car and pumping up the heater is only a good idea if you back the car out of the garage first. And here’s a nifty little tip, although, you should check the tea lights first for harmful chemicals �What is happening with the virus? Well, from CNN: Covid-19 variants are threatening to cause another surge of infections in the US, making it more important than ever to continue practicing tried-and-true safety measures. The good news is that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines appear to protect against some of the more concerning variants. The bad news is despite President Joe Biden recently saying that the US would have enough vaccines for every American by the end of July, actually vaccinating all those people will likely take longer. In another sobering development, the CDC reports US life expectancy dropped a full year in the first half of 2020 — and even more for Black and Hispanic Americans. Perhaps unsurprisingly, experts say that Covid-19 was a significant factor contributing to the decline. And here’s this from Washington Post: Academic and industry researchers the world over have shifted their focus to the coronavirus. But plenty of information remains unknown. The first-ever human challenge trial for the coronavirus will try to fill in some blanks. In it, healthy volunteers will be exposed �to the pathogen — an ethically tricky proposition, weighing the benefits of new knowledge against the dangers participants face. On Wednesday, a British ethics body gave the green light for the trial to begin. As many as 90 adults in the U.K. will be exposed in the first experiment. Boy those 90 people are braver than me! Oliver: Great Uncle Mal is the best story reader - and he’ll read me as many stories as I want. �We’ll have the last of Venice tomorrow. This post is long enough already. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource COVID-19 Journals Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Libraries Description An account of the resource This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled. The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Subject The topic of the resource Epidemics Grand Valley State University College students Personal narratives COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COVID-19_2021-02-18_BenjaminPamela_PD-Day-344 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Benjamin, Pamela Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-02-18 Title A name given to the resource Day 344 Description An account of the resource Daily journal entry of Pamela Benjamin, spouse of GVSU history professor, Craig Benjamin, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally self-published on WordPress. Subject The topic of the resource COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Epidemics Grand Valley State University Grand Rapids (Mich.) Personal narratives Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/1af61d84634b384214043c2e5e998b07.pdf f1832522a542e61b97bef9102fb5be7c PDF Text Text Day 345 by windoworks It usually takes me an hour or so to write the day’s post but today I will have to be quicker. At 10:30, a person will come to inspect the house and with them will be the buyers. I’m not sure how I feel about meeting the buyers and Craig and I will have to leave the house because the Covid rule is only 2 families in a house for sale. The inspector is one family and the buyers are the other. Now the inspection process can take up to 3 hours which is difficult to fill in the middle of a pandemic. So I have hot soup in a thermos and we will probably drive out to the big lake, to sit and look at the ice and waves while we eat our lunch. �Oh yes it does Now on the news front. First some photos from Texas: �Lining up for dwindling supplies in a grocery store. �Not a warming center but a furniture store that the owner threw open for Texans to shelter in Turtles rescued from the bitter cold and being warmed up indoors. �CNN: The lights are back on for most Texans, after a devastating week of freezing temperatures and winter storms. But now the state is facing a new crisis: nearly half of its residents are having to boil water due to a critically low water supply. Some are dealing with burst pipes and flooded homes, while others are struggling to find food. Carbon monoxide poisonings are spiking. To add to that, some Texans face yet another round of record lows tonight into tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, Sen. Ted Cruz is under fire after flying to Cancun while his constituents were suffering. He has since called his decision a mistake. What amazes me, every time, is that some people in positions of responsibility imagine they can do whatever they like and no one will notice. Social media is full of photos (like this one below) of Ted Cruz at the airport with his passport. This reminds me of the Prime Minister of Australia, taking his whole family to Hawaii for a vacation, during the worst bushfires ever in Australia. Scott had to admit that was a mistake too. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. �The Atlantic When the snow came, the state of Texas failed. Its self-maintained power grid stopped working—and its politicians seemed to do the same: Senator Ted Cruz flew to Cancún, Mexico, with his family, only to take a return flight the next day amid outcry. In the absence of political leadership from Cruz and other state leaders, many Texans continue to face dangerous conditions, their access to power, drinking water, and food threatened. Cruz is no hypocrite. He’s worse. That he couldn’t think of any way to help Texans is “a failure of �imagination and of political ideology,” David A. Graham argues. (Cruz also appears on our list of the 147 members of Congress who chose despotism over democracy in the aftermath of the Capitol attack.) One of our Texas-based writers is freezing cold—and burning mad. Fixing the state’s power grid “will require actual governance, as opposed to performative governance,” Andrew Exum writes from Dallas. Perhaps the days of just doing whatever you liked because Trump was your example - perhaps those days are over. And suddenly, people are beginning to argue over President Biden’s actions. Oh, I remember this - this is how a real democracy works! Healthy discourse. Now I know its February and the cases are easing a little but sometimes we have to look back. January was the worst covid month of all: each day in January, covid-19 killed an average of 3,100 people in the United States — one every 28 seconds. �I’m cheered by this - aren’t you? In New Zealand vaccinations began yesterday and in Australia, vaccinations are scheduled to begin on Monday. Help is coming. My daughter’s test finally came back negative and she really does just have a rotten cold. In other news of the day: the Perseverance rover touched down in the Jezero Crater on Mars to begin its search for signs of past life. Next, from Crooked Media: White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has warned that two emerging Ebola outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Guinea require swift action to stop them from becoming large-scale epidemics. On February 7, the DRC confirmed four cases of Ebola in Butembo, a city that was the epicenter of the second-largest Ebola outbreak in the world, which was declared over in June. A week later, officials in �Guinea declared an Ebola epidemic, after at least three people died and four others were infected. The outbreaks aren’t linked, according to public health experts. The WHO has urged West and Central African countries to stay on high alert for potential infections, and national security advisor Jake Sullivan has spoken with ambassadors from Guinea, the DRC, Sierra Leone, and Liberia “to convey the United States’ willingness to work closely” with those countries. Then, from Washington Post: Biden authorizes FEMA to provide generators, supplies to hard-hit states such as Texas amid severe weather. In a tweet, President Biden said he has declared states of emergency, is ready to fulfill additional requests and added, “Please heed the instructions of local officials and stay safe.” In a White House briefing, homeland security adviser and deputy national security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall said that states of emergency have been declared for Texas and Oklahoma and that the administration is considering a request from Louisiana. And, from Workplace Safety: ��Rush Limbaugh died yesterday and Trump was devastated. Well, Rush was a faithful enabler and promoter of Trump’s worst excesses. What else is happening for ‘that other guy’? CNN: The fallout over Donald Trump's second impeachment trial continues. The former President on Tuesday went after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who offered a blistering criticism of Trump just after voting to acquit him. The insults leveled by Trump against McConnell come as the Republican Party at large is grappling over whether to continue in Trump's likeness or forge a path veering from the former President's legacy. In other news, Trump's longtime personal attorney Rudy Giuliani is not currently representing the former President in any legal matters, an adviser said. Trump is facing multiple criminal investigations, civil state inquiries and defamation lawsuits by two women accusing him of sexual assault. Randy Rainbow’s offering: Rudolph the Leaky Lawyer says it all. Oliver: �And I’m also �teething again. Well, that’s it for today. I promise, I promise I’ll post more of Venice tomorrow but I have to get ready to leave the house now. I’ll leave you with this gem from Crooked Media: • Earth had its quietest period in decades during 2020 while humans were all under lockdown—urban ambient noise fell by up to 50% at some measuring stations. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource COVID-19 Journals Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Libraries Description An account of the resource This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled. The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Subject The topic of the resource Epidemics Grand Valley State University College students Personal narratives COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COVID-19_2021-02-19_BenjaminPamela_PD-Day-345 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Benjamin, Pamela Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-02-19 Title A name given to the resource Day 345 Description An account of the resource Daily journal entry of Pamela Benjamin, spouse of GVSU history professor, Craig Benjamin, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally self-published on WordPress. Subject The topic of the resource COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Epidemics Grand Valley State University Grand Rapids (Mich.) Personal narratives Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/03eed80fd3b4b1e0c6fa4f8ca208cd9f.pdf 86a1eeec65b8ae033958e5c7b2c3c852 PDF Text Text Day 346. Saturday February 20. 134 sleeps to go. by windoworks Just to make you laugh. In a pandemic you never know what will happen next. Yesterday, after the inspector arrived, we began our drive out to Grand Haven. We had homemade soup, cheese rolls and cupcakes for lunch and we were set. Until the snow got so heavy that Craig decided to turn around and drive back to the Ravine near GVSU, to eat our lunch. ��The inspector said he’d be done by 1:00pm and we thought we’d sit in the car across the road until he left. As we drove up our street, we could see that he had gone already (good news!) and we parked the car in the garage and went inside. 10 minutes later I heard a chainsaw start up and Craig said: good thing we came home early because the tree guys are parked across our drive. To backtrack: 2 summers ago, both TJ next door and Craig called the city to say that trees in front of our houses were ailing and could someone come and take a look. Nothing, nada, zilch. I think the guys gave up. So, yesterday, in 45 action packed and militarily organized minutes, this is what happened: ����But the really astonishing thing was - nobody told TJ and Amy. They were both out on different errands while this happened and were gobsmacked when they both came home. The tree guys left the big logs behind for later collection and TJ, never one to to pass up free firewood, spent hours outside in the dark, sawing the logs up. There’s just really the stump left now. So, the virus. From Crooked Media: First, the good news: The pace of vaccinations has picked up substantially. More than 41 million Americans have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and more than 16 million have received both doses. The U.S. is now administering an average of 1.7 million doses per day, almost double the average from the week before President Biden took office. This week, the White House announced that the total vaccine supply to states will increase from 11 million doses per week to 13.5 million doses, and that the supply going directly to pharmacies will double to two million doses. And about the second dose: Crooked Media: A new Israeli study published in the Lancet medical journal found the Pfizer vaccine to be 85 percent effective two to four weeks after a single dose. It’s not clear how long that protection would last, and the second dose is still necessary to get the vaccine’s full 95 percent protection, but that finding is �a solid bit of data to support the U.K.’s strategy of delaying a second dose by up to 12 weeks in order to free up supplies for more first doses. Separately, Pfizer has found that its vaccine can actually be stored in regular medical freezers, rather than ultra-cold storage, which would make it much easier to distribute across the U.S. So that means Craig and I are almost at the 2 week mark (this Monday) so we’ll be 85% covered. But just when you think its all good news, here’s this from Washington Post: In Japan, about 100 people have been confirmed to have a new variant that has caused infections in the Kanto region, in the eastern part of the country. It's too early to know whether that variant's mutations make the virus more contagious or harmful. It's also important to remember that the coronavirus is constantly mutating. Though tracking how the pathogen changes is critical, each emergent variant isn't necessarily a cause for alarm. And in line with this, is this disturbing piece from The Independent: The Chinese city of Wuhan had more than a dozen Covid variants by December 2019, new findings by a team of World Health Organisation (WHO) scientists probing the origins of the pandemic suggest. Peter Ben Embarek, who led a team of WHO investigators in Wuhan, said 13 different genetic sequences of the SARS-COV-2 virus were found in the Hubei province city, adding thousands more blood samples have been requested for analysis. It suggests that the infection had been circulating in China earlier than previously thought. Wuhan is widely considered to be "ground zero" of the outbreak, although its exact origins and timeframe continue to be debated, with some reports suggesting the disease was present in Europe as early as October. In an interview with CNN published on Monday, Mr Embarek told the network "the virus was circulating widely in Wuhan in December, which is a new finding”. Mr Embarek said Chinese officials had presented his team with 174 cases of coronavirus in and near the Wuhan area in December 2019, around 100 of which had been laboratory test-confirmed, with the remaining cases identified through the clinical diagnosis of the patients' symptoms. He said this suggested there could have been as many as 1,000 cases of the disease in Wuhan by December. Mr Embarek said that the 13 variants examined alongside other patient data across China in 2019 could provide vital clues to the origins of the outbreak. He added: "Some of [the variants] are from the markets… some of them are not linked to the markets. Professor John Watson, a former deputy chief medical officer, said while China remained a “very, very possible source”, reports that the virus was circulating in other parts of the world, notably northern Italy, as early as September and October, warranted further investigation. But China was “by no means necessarily the place where the leap from animals to humans took place and I think we need to ensure that we are looking beyond the borders of China, as well as within China,” he added. A study released by �the National Cancer Institute (INT) in Milan in November showed the new coronavirus was circulating in Italy in September 2019. And if you’re still wondering if you should be vaccinated, here’s this from the New York Times: . The evidence so far suggests that a full dose of the vaccine — with the appropriate waiting period after the second shot — effectively eliminates the risk of Covid-19 death, nearly eliminates the risk of hospitalization and drastically reduces a person’s ability to infect somebody else. All of that is also true about the virus’s new variants. And here’s a tiny snippet, tucked away on a many snippets page also from NYT: The number of confirmed Covid deaths in the U.S. is on pace to exceed 500,000 in the next few days. How can that be? Here’s the stats today: total US cases (remember this is the total number of cases tested): 28M. Worldwide case total: 111M. Total US deaths: 496K (yes we are about 2 days from 500K deaths). Worldwide deaths: 2.45M. Here in Kent County we have 51,098 confirmed cases and 699 deaths. Hmmm. Next, Teddy. Did you mean to make us laugh at you, while crying for your constituents? ��There is a movement afoot to have Ted removed from office. He deserves that. And just in case you thought the DOJ and the FBI had found all the insurrectionists who participated in the January 6 attempted coup: Capitol riot involved wider conspiracy with Oath Keepers, prosecutors say, as six more individuals face charges The addition of six people to the indictment means that nine defendants, led by three already charged U.S. military veterans, face allegations that they “planned with each other, and with others known and unknown” to obstruct the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s election. Prosecutors say those newly charged are Oath Keepers members or associates. And the sentences for these people could be extremely long without parole. Before you freak out, this is a doctored photo of Mars. �Oliver: still life with glue. ��So, Venice: The last day of the Redentore �Our last White Night onboard �Venice, Italy - of course the entertainment was an opera singer �The fireworks to celebrate the end of of the Redentore began at midnight. ��The fireworks lasted for over 20 minutes. After 10 minutes we went to bed. �Flying out over the Venetian flatlands the next morning. Our 3 week cruise was over. Today I’ll leave you with this: ��See you tomorrow. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource COVID-19 Journals Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Libraries Description An account of the resource This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled. The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Subject The topic of the resource Epidemics Grand Valley State University College students Personal narratives COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COVID-19_2021-02-20_BenjaminPamela_PD-Day-346 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Benjamin, Pamela Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-02-20 Title A name given to the resource Day 346 Description An account of the resource Daily journal entry of Pamela Benjamin, spouse of GVSU history professor, Craig Benjamin, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally self-published on WordPress. Subject The topic of the resource COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Epidemics Grand Valley State University Grand Rapids (Mich.) Personal narratives Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng