As I write this, Washington D.C. police and the National Guard are clearing violent protestors from the national Capitol. This has been the result of those of our elected officials, including the Congressman who represents where I live and a Wisconsin Senator, who have chosen to try to subvert our Constitutional electoral process by claiming the recent elections have been fraudulent. I feel their actions amount to sedition and those who act that way ought to be treated the same way our nation has dealt with traitors in the past.
Having gotten that off my chest, in my county of some 46,000 people we sit tonight with 3,169 documented cases of the Covid virus and 23 dead from it. People are wearing masks inside the businesses I visit, but I’m not part of the bar crowd and Marina and I have not eaten inside restaurants lately, even as I wish I could support them. We have ordered take-out from some and I lament those businesspeople who could not find or imagine a way to try something like takeout in order to stay in business and keep people employed. Service people coming to our home, including our favorite heating/a.c. guy and the electricians, all have worn masks and don’t grouse about it. Wolf Creek United Methodist Church has been meeting via Zoom, with the exception of Christmas Eve, when we had a service in the church building with social distancing and masks. I’m guessing that we will continue to Zoom services through at least mid-January to late January, depending on the reality of the anticipated Christmas/New Years spike in the virus count. Whether we originate our service on Zoom or we do it in the church building, our services are spread abroad on YouTube and Facebook. (On Zoom, it’s Wolf Creek United Methodist Church-services.) Just yesterday I received an email from a former student advisee that suggested I join him and his classmates (fellow former foreign students at Macalester College) on their next Zoom session. I’m honored. I was their advisor half a century ago and I’m grateful to be remembered, much less to be in contact with them. But the truth is, they were (are) a remarkable group of people, even as young people obviously destined for success in life, and I was able to help them along with the scholarship money they needed.Then, my job was to do what I could to help them succeed in another culture in a rigorous academic setting. In other words, I had a door I could open but they had to walk through that door. And they did.
Marina and I have acquired a small rental property in the Village of Luck. The key to this being a good move or a giant mistake will be to find good renters. The house has been neglected and is in tremendous need of cleaning. Oh, and it came with a dead body. I’ll talk more about that in a future blog. Heck, I’ll tell you now: Harold W. McCarthy’s ashes were left in a box in the basement. He died in 2016 in Portland, Oregon. I do write fiction but I’m not sure I want to invent a good story around this.But then, I just might. . . .
As I’m able to get to it, I’m still logging and splitting the trees downed by last year’s tornado. I have a nice supply of firewood. And now there has been a good amount of snow, so I’ve pulled snow off the roofs of both houses. I plow paths through our property so Marina can walk through the various areas. We have had frost on everything the past several days and it is awesomely beautiful. I’m grateful for eyes to see God’s creation.