The frost is on the Halloween pumpkin

October 30, 2020. Well, actually, it's snow. Sunday afternoon we ended our walk with a few scattered flakes and by Friday night we had perhaps an inch of snow. By morning, the roads turned dry an d the temperature started to rise above freezing. Conditions will be fine for a walk this afternoon.

Meanwhile, our front porch pumpkins are showing signs of the time. Last year -- our first fall in Wisconsin -- we have similar snow during the last week of October. It cleared by Halloween but it was a preview of a number of light accumulations perhaps four times in the coming month, before a pretty good blast of snow over Thanksgiving. I vividly recall seeing Jane set out for Milwaukee late Sunday afternoon, worried about icy roads and accumulated snow. She did fine, but it probably cemented my desire to secure a covered garage for Betty (Jane's Passat), which we did by February, just before the pandemic arrived, which brought Jane home for about four months.

Earlier this month I speculated that Appleton has five months of summer and winter, with a single month of fall and spring, with fall commencing by mid-October. The past twelve months have generally borne this out. The last twelve months have also found me walking 1,200 miles and I expect the 2020 figure to be much higher, given that I am about 150 miles short of 1,200 miles for the year, with nine weeks to go. Back in my days of running, 75 miles every two weeks was a basic metric for me. My walking mileage is one-third less but the effect is proportionally more positive, forty years later. So weather has never been a real hindrance to serious running, be in Lawrence, Laramie or Harrison.

Seven months into this current Groundhog Day experience, I chafe a little under the restrictions yet, for the most part, life continues in a manageable, not uncomfortable routine. Daily rosary and Mass, breakfasts and lunches with Abe and Jane, visits to 617 Cambridge, occasional grocery shopping, and daily walking, averaging 25 miles a week. Any plans to travel have been limited to hotel booking for the Luskin Center at UCLA for Gaby's graduation in mid-June. I'd like to be back in Eden in late August and, if possible, re-schedule a British Airways trip to London and/or Edinburgh for early September; we have about $8,000 in flight credit to use or lose by April 2022.

Months ago, I grew less wary of the prospects of Covid's impact on my health, the health of my extended family, or even the health of the nation and shifted my concern to the economic and political consequences of the fear and panic produced by the 'experts'. The policies are much more political than scientific in their reasoning, and "follow the science" has become one of the most useless canards ever coined. This weekend, I heard the president of the UW system claim that social distancing's goal is to "end" the virus, whereas previously the argument was that these measures would reside or slow the spread of the virus. Go figure.