Better Days

It's been awhile since I've written and some things have happened. Dave spent some time up at Judi's at the beginning of the month taking care of Buzz, which gave us access to the studio and the kiln.

Here are some really poor photos of the latest to exit the kiln, a bunch of calaveras that have been sitting, some of them, for one or two years.

This crazy calavera has a crown of purple roses. I like her, but she is simple.

This is a little four-tiered calavera (you can't really see the 4th tier)--a crazy one, a decorated one, a menacing one, and a ghost--that I made in honor of my four decades on this planet. The little ghost at the top (which you can hardly see because the thing curves away from the camera) is wearing a little, red, conical, birthday hat.

This decorated calavera has "Siempre" (Always) written on the neck. For awhile I was into decorating them and mimicking tattoos, like the roses on the chest.

The bottom of the calavera asks, "Did we survive the pandemic?" Because of course, none of us know yet if we have. If we will.

 

This last calavera is a three tiered one (similar to the four tiered above, but larger), with a crazy calavera, a menacing calavera, and a ghost with a red bow. The caption is "De musico, poeta y loco todos tenemos un poco" (Of music, poetry, and craziness, everyone has a little).

 

In addition to the calaveras, I also fired two large pasta bowls and four small plates that I had quickly painted with Day of the Dead themed paintings. Dave fired a bunch of butter bells and some bowls and mugs. We included a handful of work for our friend Grace, mostly smaller sculptures. Judi was gone for a week and we managed three firings in that time.

As soon as Judi returned, Kelly and Kevin were gone and Dave moved in there to take care of their dogs until they return. Dave has been baking a lot recently and to supplement the chocolate babka and coffee cake that Grace and Chris gave him (and the blueberry sour cream dessert loaf that we picked up at a local bakery), Dave has made pizza crust (using Kelly and Kevin's grill) and naan using his new cast iron pans.

Then Christmas happened. It didn't feel like Christmas this year. There were no get togethers (except for Zoom dinners) and no tamales or posole. Dave and I didn't exchange gifts, but we had a nice dinner of cheese fondue, salad, and berries with whipped cream. (Dave had made aquafaba meringues but the dogs got them.)

The pandemic is wearing on so many of us. We remain as vigilant as ever, regardless of how others conduct themselves. We are wearing KF94 and KN95 masks under our cloth masks all the time now, a further precaution. Everything that can't be wiped down gets quarantined for several days. Our contact with others is limited, very limited. Our groceries are acquired via curbside pickup or contact-less delivery. The experts are expecting another surge in January from people who ignored the directives to stay home over the holidays. They get worse and worse and the newest figures suggest that the death toll will top 500,000 by the time Trump leaves office. Three thousand Americans are dying every single day--each day more Americans die of Covid than were killed on 9/11--and people just go about their business as though nothing had changed.

We were Covid tested soon after I left my job (after Dave had to spend some time at his mother's after she began exhibiting worrisome behavior and he had to set up in-home caregivers for her) and the tests were negative, thankfully. I've read that one in a thousand Americans have died from Covid. (Yes, the math is correct.) Many of those people are elderly, many black or brown, but that is rapidly changing. Covid is killing off the easy ones now and a more virulent strain is on the rise. It will kill more quickly (but will also die off more quickly because it is so virulent, similar to how HIV ran its course) and I have no doubt that there will be more and more younger victims. And even if they do pull through, the burden on our healthcare system will be immense and the real story will be borne out in the sequelae that follows the infection, like the blood clots that will may have long term-effects to the heart, brain, lungs and kidneys. 

Yes, the vaccine is here, but no one I know has had it yet and there are tens of thousands of people in my state who have active Covid infections. I read also that almost 3,000 healthcare workers have died from Covid, including doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists. I wonder where people think their replacements are going to come from.  

This is an awful time in America, and it can be traced back to the republicans who dismantled our pandemic response system and who sent ventilators to Russia and sold PPE to other countries while Americans suffer. No, I guess it goes back further than that: The blame rests on the people who voted them into office. Much of this would have happened if Hillary Clinton hadn't been cheated out of her rightful place as president. 

I'm waiting until Biden takes office and the republicans--who have added over two trillion dollars to the national debt by giving tax cuts to the rich--will suddenly start worrying about the deficit and will start blaming Biden and Democrats for the more than 300,000 Americans who died of Covid while their president played golf and tweeted about his wife not being invited to appear on the cover of fashion magazines. 

He is a con man and he fleeced millions. I used to feel sorry for stupid people, used to think that many of them were vulnerable, but now I feel contemptuous toward them. Maybe that will change in the future. Maybe not.

One of our friends asked me how long we'll be wearing masks and taking precautions. I think, conservatively, we'll be doing this through September of 2021. That's a conservative estimate. Not enough people will get the vaccine to establish herd immunity (we need 94% of people to be vaccinated against measles, for example, for herd immunity and the anti-vaxxers have had enough of an effect that we've dropped below that number and are seeing measles outbreaks becoming more common).    

It's too depressing to think about.

Happy New Year, I guess.