Ok, it might not be 70 up here but if it is in Denver, we’ll be 65, whoo hoo! Before I go any further, up here, outdoor activity is approved by the authorities as long as people stay 6 feet apart. This includes sledding, hiking, and other outdoor activities. I think people in Denver can go for walks too as long as they follow the social distancing rules. I can’t imagine they expect everyone to not go outside. Sledding by the way, is essentially in our back yard. Also it looks like from Friday to Saturday we had zero new cases in Eagle! I triple checked this but the number seems correct. If so, that’s great news for us. Also when the kids we’re sledding, Zoe’s mom was there making sure all the kids were six feet apart at all times.
I do agree this will probably now come back every year but it will go away during the year. What won’t go away is all the freedom we’re giving up. There’s talk and concern worldwide about the restrictions governments are installing. It’s not too bad here but some countries and even States are using this to do things like putting ankle monitors on people or tracking them by drones and by the way, every single place you’ve gone for years has been tracked if you have and take your cell phone. There’s even talk of putting a designation on passports or drivers licenses if you’ve had, not have but had, the virus. Rhode Island police are pulling over anyone with an out of State license plate! This is a real slippery slope. Some of you might not be concerned and even think this is good but what if in the future you can’t get into your favorite restaurant or store if you’ve ever tested positive for the virus. What if your hair salon or nail salon won’t see you anymore. What if some of your close friends now shun you out of fear you’re still carrying the virus? Or worse, what if you’re denied medical care in a few years because you’ve had this? Already we’re told we can’t go visit our loved ones in the hospital or nursing home. In the bible they call it the mark of the beast. Here’s the biblical meaning just to be clear,
The Mark of the Beast Passage. Revelation 13:16-18 (HCSB) — 16 And he [the False Prophet] requires everyone—small and great, rich and poor, free and slave—to be given a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, 17 so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark: the beast’s name or the number of his name.
This is where we’re headed people, don’t let it happen. You are a free person. I’m not saying go out in groups, all I’m saying is don’t give up your rights as a free individual. People throughout history typically lose their rights when they give them up due to some tragedy or emergency as they think it’s in their best interest.
Robi, wish you lived closer as Tom and I could take you shooting! We’re excited and happy for you. Tom said, about time, when we heard you bought a firearm and I agree. Good for you sister! You should have bought two! His and hers! That’s it, hope everyone is well, as I said before, everyone up here is doing well. Some neighborhoods have taken down the basketball hoops at the parks as that is not social distancing. We’ll take the dogs up the hill behind our house again today as they cannot just stay in the home all day, especially Harley, ha. God Bless.
Here’s some food for thought, NY is the blue line at top.
We Cannot Destroy The Country For The Sake Of New York City
New York City is being ravaged by the Wuhan coronavirus, but the rest of the country is being destroyed by a generation of economic collapse.
By David MarcusAPRIL 3, 2020
I imagine there are some people who love New York City more than I do, but I do love it. I love it with fervor of the convert. A Philadelphian by birth, for 20 years I have now walked the storied steel canyons of the world’s current capital.
There’s a reason the United Nations meets here, why artists and would-be stock barons alike come here. Now we are in the grip of the coronavirus, locked down. But our peril must not mean that the nation we represent must be destroyed.
I had occasion this week, as the virus ground us all to a stop, to talk to a friend in Indiana. I asked, “Is this the greatest crisis the country has ever faced?†We haven’t been invaded since 1812, I pointed out, and have never been occupied. Her reply, “What crisis?†She was in her backyard, her children playing. My life was at a bizarre standstill, death all around, hers was not. Yet all across the nation I don’t have time to think about lives are being destroyed, not by virus, but by an economic disaster unknown in a century.
The entire country, experts I trust tell us, must be shut down. Businesses shuttered, many with little hope of opening again. Ten million people unemployed in two weeks. Ten million. In that world beyond that Hudson River, an economic hammer is falling faster than the virus can spread. Who can think of money at a time like this? we are told. How callous. But it’s not just money. In its own way it’s lives, it is a way of life.
Jack Kerouac — who danced and played and was educated in New York City but found his literary and intellectual fortune in the forgotten America — once said he didn’t want a living, he wanted a life. But where is the difference? What is life if not the ability to sustain it? We are embarking upon the devastation of an entire nation when it is becoming clearer and clearer that the gravest threat lies in megacities. And no city is more mega than Gotham.
The counter point is that the virus will eventually spread from New York and inevitably infect the suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas. But in Europe and here at home that isn’t what has happened. In Washington state, where the first-recorded American cases occurred in Seattle, the number of cases has flattened. Why? Well, as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has pointed out, the population density and public transit usage in New York City makes us violently susceptible to this plague.
New York City is the center of the universe; by definition the center of the universe is an anomaly. We cannot base an entire national policy on an anomaly. Err on the side of caution, many say, but is it cautious to destroy entire communities through economic collapse that may not recover for a generation?
“If we can save one life then it’s worth it.†Is it? David Mamet in the movie “Wag the Dog†asked why nations go to war. The answer was to defend our way of life. Four hundred thousand Americans died in World War Two to defend the American way of life. Should we have handed the world to the Nazis to save American lives? Although far from perfect, the point of this analogy is that we cannot base public policy on the basis of total fear of death. We never have, and we never should.
Let’s be clear: what we are sacrificing by a policy of total lockdown for God knows how long is the livelihoods, dignity, and yes, in many cases lives of hundreds of millions of Americans. Platitudes don’t cut it. A crisis is a crisis specifically because it is a situation with no good answers. If there were an easy answer it wouldn’t be a crisis.
I’m scared. I open the door to my bodega in Brooklyn with my elbow, not my hand; I wash my hands like my life depends upon it because it might. But I also chose to live here and I’m not leaving. New York City will get through this. I hope I do too. But being the symbol and signal of America does not mean the rest of the nation must be crushed under the weight of economic collapse. We need to make some hard choices, and we need to make them now.
2 Responses to 70 degrees today?