Joy of life after...the pandemic

March 2022. These past two years have been something insane, all around the world. If there is a lesson to be learned here, it's that professional politicians are more self-serving than servants, greedier for more power and money than any billionaire entrepreneur, and fully acquainted with and accepting the sure to lie to achieve their personal ambition.

Real, exuberant joy has been hard to come by these past two years. While there continues to be small signs of hope for an American or global renaissance, the hole that our progressive elected officials have dug for us is a deep one.

Perhaps the greatest joy of these past two years has been somewhat of a perverse gratitude for being absent from the rotting corpse of American university life, where progressive social and political agendas have eroded what was once the shining star of American institutions, where education meant research, learning, thinking and innovation. while today the woke agenda has converted much of higher education into re-education camps, run by the same people who thought that they stopped the Vietnam war and who have adopted a level of guilt and self-flagellation previously unknown on college campuses. The irony is the same people who led the free speech movement in the 1960s and 1970s are leading cancel culture and censorship efforts.

To some extent I just have to try to ride above this. When we came to Wisconsin, I knew that Abe and Jane would be a big a large presence bin our new life, yet I never gave a thought either to Dena going back into major work responsibilities or to the great difficulty in establishing any sort of social community, good friendships and the like. Abe and Jane are much more frail and dependent than I expected, and Dena's work, especially from her back corner bedroom office, makes me often feel like a prisoner in our small house, exacerbated by that cabin fever effect of seven months of snow, wind and cold weather.

Walking has tailed off, from a 1300 mile annual pace to closer to 800 miles. The difference also explains a continuing weight gain, accelerating during the past seven months, ballooning to 225 pounds. Liposuction is on the table. C-PAC machine is in the offing.

We depart for Scotland in four weeks. Most of the pandemic restrictions have been abandoned. Flying business class with a mask would have been unpleasant and certainly a major disappointment. I arranged a two day trip to Skye, with a private taxi tour and two nights away from Edinburgh, one in Mallaig and the other on the isle, near the Mallaig ferry landing. Six hours by train from Edinburgh on the Harry Potter line.