The Lansing School District has given up on having in-person classes this school year, and just hopes that things will be better for the fall semester. So do we all. Still, it invites the question of why they were thinking of having in-person classes at a time when the pandemic is completely out of control.
And I'm left thinking yet again of the Covid-19 enthusiasts. The people who refused to let us just shut everything down for two months and shut back down any time the virus reemerged. The people who refuse to mask. Who refuse to distance. Who now refuse to vaccinate. Who refuse to let businesses demand proof of vaccination. I don't think they understand the danger they're putting themselves in. Not from the virus, although that too.
I'm tired of the pandemic. Everyone is tired of the pandemic. And yet we know, because they can't shut up for one blessed day, who the people are who refuse to lift a finger to end the pandemic. The people who insist on making the pandemic as long and as costly and as horrible as they possibly can. We are entering the fifteenth straight month of their grinding down the patience and empathy and compassion of the patient and empathetic and compassionate people around them. You are in enormous danger when you exhaust the patience of a patient person. There are a lot of patient people being exhausted.
Let's have a mix now of photos from Christmas, most of them of decorated houses noticed while walking around and then some of the smaller-than-average Christmas events.
Another well-wrapped porch.
And here they just decorated everything.
To ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger's parents! Christmas morning and we got everything set up under their tree, in the sun room.
Close-up of a middle section of the tree, showing off some of the older decorations.
A snowflake ornament hung in the window. There was a Christmas snow, too, barely enough to notice --- you see how much of the grass stands through it --- but still, a Christmas snow.
Looking out towards the river in the very light snow.
bunnyhugger gets on a The Facetime with her brother for the present-exchanging. Notice she's got Stitch slippers too.
bunnyhugger sets her camera to the side so she can focus on opening something. Also notice the heaping pile of books I've already opened there.
Her parents' tree, looking all the taller now there's not that great heap of records and books underneath.
And now, I go walking downtown. Can you believe they hadn't plowed yet?
Trivia: In 1778 British troops occupying Newport, Rhode Island, looted and partially burned the house of William Ellery. There is no evidence they were aware he was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Source: Signing Their Lives Away: The Fame and Misfortune of the Men Who Signed the Declaration of Independence, Denise Kiernan, Joseph D'Agnese.
Currently Reading: Great Comics Syndicated by the Daily News-Chicago Tribune, Editor Herb Galewiz. So, got to reding Smokey Stover strips, which are a bunch of your basic American Cornball jokes albeit with energetic illustration and background jokes in, like, every panel. You can see a line from this to Mad Magazine background doodles. And it famously included cryptic nonsense phrases in the background, most famously ``1506 nix nix'' and ``notary sojac''. OK. So one of the strips has a sign reading ``Ryaton Cajos'' stuck on a chair. If it's a pun, I can't work out what it's a pun on. It doesn't seem to be a translation of anything particular, although Google Translate suggests ``cajos'' as a translation for ``beat'' or ``batter''. ``Ryaton'' it can't do anything except suggest maybe I mean ``Ryan''. Was this a tryout bit of nonsense?
