Laid in earth

This week the United States reached an appalling milestone in the COVID19 pandemic: we surpassed 500,000 deaths directly related to the virus. There have been 2.5 million deaths globally, and we accounted for 20% of them.

President Biden and Vice President Harris marked the occasion for us Monday evening with the lighting of candles at the White House (captured by Jabin Botsford for WaPo):

One candle for each 1000 deaths.

But it’s fitting that for my offering today, I should also commemorate it. So I’m sharing “Dido’s Lament” from Henry Purcell’s opera Dido & Aeneas. This has to be one of the simplest arias ever; such a small number of words. But it covers an enormity of loss, which is what we’re feeling now.

Here’s Annie Lennox and the London City Voices in a remote performance from last December.

 

Lunatic

This has been one bizarre week, so I’m really glad that tomorrow is the company-wide mental health day at my employer. If the weather cooperates, I’m going to walk a labyrinth; if not, I’ve got my regular yoga lesson.

I wasn’t sure what to share with you today, so I’m giving you the gamut—my first attempt shooting the moon with my new mobile camera:

And a squirrel trying to convince me I should toss out some food: 

 

Government intelligence

Yesterday I blew nearly three hours watching the inaptly-named Senate Intelligence Committee question the CEOs of four companies involved in last December’s unveiling of the SolarWinds cyber security breach.

Amazon, which was also involved, declined to appear before the committee. And they consequently got some ‘splaining to do.

But I’m not going to do to you what I did to my colleagues, which was basically live-tweeting it. Instead, I’m giving you a photo of half a head of cabbage, which is still smarter than Marco Rubio.

 

Street crime

Back in the dim, distant past of last week, when I could actually walk without slipping on ice, I made a couple of interesting discoveries.

One was the apparent attempted strangulation of some trees by vines:

The perp might have been ivy, which is ugly, invasive and obviously armed and dangerous:

The other interesting thing was this guy:

And that’s it from the People’s Republic.

 

 

Gratitude Monday: heat and bird seed

As the whole world knows, much of the US had a bad weather week. We here in the District They Call Columbia did not escape, although our dreaded wintry mix was nothing like what Texas experienced.

Even so, there were three days where I basically did not leave the house, because trying to walk (much less drive) on icy pavement was just not worth it.

I’ll tell you, though, I am mighty grateful to have had electricity and heat and even connectivity throughout the storms.

Also, I’m grateful that I got another delivery of 15lbs of bird seed, of which at least a third has been distributed to the visitors to my patio. I swear that when I come down in the morning and pull aside my drapes, they’re lining the branches of trees and shrubs, waiting impatiently. Then, as soon as the first handfuls get tossed out, I have a living carpet as they swarm down to break their fast.

Like so:

I was extra pleased to see this guy chowing down(sorry about the light; these mornings are pretty dark):

Also—he quite likes the heated birdbath.

I have a lot to be thankful for today.