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shadowkat
I'd strained my back on Friday night/Saturday morning, but it was better today, so took a walk in Greenwood Cemetery. Lovely day, as you can see above - clear blue skies, sun, and in the upper forties. I took pictures of flying Canadian Geese.
And watching old John Wayne movies - which I find oddly comforting (possibly because I'm worrying about my parents and missing them - and I saw them as a kid with my parents in the 1970s, and there's a kind of nostalgic comfort that comes from seeing them again - akin to being wrapped in a blanked and drinking coco with marshmallows). The Quiet Man (John Ford's love letter to Ireland) and Big Jake (notable for the first on-screen appearances of John Wayne's son Patrick Wayne, and Robert Mitchum's son Christopher Mitchum. Neither were very good actors and didn't really stay in the field.)
The first movie is a favorite, the second is kind of fun - it's a 1970s Western, so the bad guys are outlaws, and the Indian is part of the good guy group. The 70s Westerns were a touch more politically correct than the 1950s and 60s Westerns.
Amazon Prime has a group of them.
Told mother that I was watching them - and we talked a bit about Wayne, and the old movies. Also her favorite - Red River, which I wrote a paper on in undergrad.
Irritable today. Realized it when I kept muttering at the folks I was running into on the cobbled paths, who weren't looking. I was walking along, they were more interested in talking to each other then noticing someone was on a narrow path walking towards them, before entering it.
My parents can't get the vaccine. Even though they are over the age of 75, have pre-existing conditions, and in a retirement/nursing home. Why? They are in South Carolina - and no one has advocated to get them the vaccines. Meanwhile relatives who are under 75, and don't have their health issues can get it easily. And I've co-workers who are in their 30s with no problems at all that are.
My own take? I refuse to butt in line. Brooklyn Army Terminal shut down - they ran out of vaccines and had to cancel over 50,000 appointments. Mother said various hospitals and communities in South Carolina have had to do the same thing. She said one friend went online to set up appointments for her and her husband, but apparently you need two separate email accounts. So she had to set up her own email account in order to get it.
Workplace gets it through Jacobs Javits, which still had appointments available but it also is only for the public agencies.
It's a shame - because the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are reportedly the best vaccines out there - top-notch according to various experts. So why can't we humanely distribute them to those who need them?
Per the Governor's email:
As of this morning, New York State has now administered over one million total doses: 903,131 first doses and 103,747 second doses. The pace of vaccination is rapidly accelerating. If the Federal Government can increase supply, we are ready to inoculate New Yorkers and scale up the vaccine distribution.
Total hospitalizations rose 8,868. Of the 186,205 tests reported yesterday, 12,185, or 6.54 percent, were positive. There were 1,523 patients in ICU yesterday, down 27 from the previous day. Of them, 997 are intubated. Sadly, we lost 153 New Yorkers to the virus. While hospitalizations are still rising, it's encouraging to see that the rate of increase has slowed significantly.
* I have asked Pfizer if New York can directly purchase vaccine doses from them. Since Pfizer is not bound to commitments that are a part of Operation Warp Speed, I have asked Pfizer, a New York-based company, if they will sell vaccine doses directly to New York State. [Pfizer is a private company so not bound by the Federal Government.]
* I issued a letter demanding U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar explain his false claim that vaccine doses in reserve would be shipped to states. In case you missed it, last week the Federal Government told not just New York, but all fifty states, that vaccine doses that had been "held in physical reserve" would be shipped to states. This came as welcome news, as federal supply of the vaccine is extremely limited. But it turned out that this was false. These doses had already been distributed to the states. Whether this was an act of incompetence or an act of intentional falsehood, New York and the public deserve a full accounting.
* The Statewide positivity rate has come down—but we should still be very cautious. The post-holiday spike that we anticipated has declined (see chart above), but the more contagious UK variant is in New York State and represents a serious risk to our hospital system and all New Yorkers. Continue to be vigilant and wear a mask, social distance and avoid gatherings.
From the NY Times Briefing on the Inaugration..
The nation’s capital has been secured with checkpoints, tens of thousands of National Guard troops and miles of fencing and barricades — security at the cost of normalcy.
Thousands of troops have poured into Washington, where armored military trucks are parked in the middle of streets to block traffic, and where subway stations and roads are closed. Above, a rehearsal outside the Capitol today.
In the aftermath of the Capitol riot, the Justice Department has charged suspected members of the Three Percenters, a militia group that emerged from the gun-rights movement, and of the Oath Keepers, a militia group founded by law enforcement and military veterans, as it works to determine whether the extremist groups conspired to attack Congress.
Ahead of the inauguration ceremonies on Wednesday, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris today became the former U.S. senator from California, after resigning from her seat.
Three new Democratic senators — Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff from Georgia, and Alex Padilla, California’s secretary of state, who is set to replace Ms. Harris — may be sworn in as early as this week.
* Lawmakers are set to return to the Capitol.
But it remains unclear when Speaker Nancy Pelosi will formally send to the Senate the article of impeachment charging President Trump with “incitement of insurrection.” Above, National Guard troops outside the Capitol today.
*Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, will not be taking part in the president’s defense in the Senate trial for his second impeachment, a person close to Mr. Trump said. It is unclear who will step in, given that many lawyers have privately said they won’t represent the president.
Per some news commentator that mother was listening to today in between bouts of PT, once Trump's Twitter account was removed - the reports of insurrectionist posts and rallies for a revolution had gone down by 75%. As had hateful posts. They'd lost their leader - without him rallying them, their energy defused. Reminds me a little of Buffy the Vampire Slayer S7 - once the First Evil is vanquished, the hell mouth and mindless vampires kind of collapse in on themselves. Or Harry Potter - once Voldemort was no more, his followers crumbled. Or Hitler, once Hitler was removed, the rest fell apart.
Some Good News?
Joe Biden plans to issue dozens of executive directives in a 10-day blitz.
The orders will include canceling the Keystone XL pipeline permit on his first day in office, reversing President Trump’s approval of a project to move oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.
Environmentalists have long targeted the nearly 1,200-mile pipeline as a contributor to climate change and a symbol of the country’s unwillingness to move away from oil energy.
Other orders expected on Mr. Biden’s first day: rescinding the travel ban on several predominantly Muslim countries, rejoining the Paris climate change accord, issuing a mask mandate for federal property and interstate travel, and ordering agencies to reunite children separated from their families after crossing the border.
This! I want this, so badly. So very very badly. It's long overdue.
Ugh. The photo above kind of says it all.
4. Los Angeles County became the first in the U.S. to surpass one million recorded coronavirus infections, and California is the first state to have more than three million cases. Much of the state is under a stay-at-home order.
It’s part of a national picture: Nearly one year after the virus was first detected in the U.S., the country has reached 24 million cases and is hurtling toward 400,000 total deaths. Above, motorists in line for virus tests in the Dodger Stadium parking lot in L.A.
Around the world, governments and public health organizations responded slowly and ineffectually to the outbreak, according to an interim report by a World Health Organization panel that described a yearlong cascade of failures.
Since July, the Trump administration has executed 13 inmates.
That is more than three times as many as the federal government had put to death in the previous six decades, spurring the Supreme Court’s liberal justices to question the court’s role in rejecting stays of execution. Above, security fencing around the Supreme Court building.
In a dissent issued late Friday, as the court cleared the way for the last execution of the Trump era, Justice Sonia Sotomayor took stock of what the nation had learned about the Supreme Court’s attitude toward the death penalty.
“Over the past six months, this court has repeatedly sidestepped its usual deliberative processes, often at the government’s request, allowing it to push forward with an unprecedented, breakneck timetable of executions,” she wrote.
Well this is reassuring, considering my mother keeps getting hip surgery.
Scared of hip surgery?
Our Personal Health columnist, Jane Brody, says that improved surgical techniques and artificial hips that resist mechanical failure have been game changers for people with degenerated joints that are in serious need of replacement.
The essential fact of hip replacement has not changed. But computer-assisted surgery and robotic arms help doctors expose less tissue, leading to rapid discharge, faster return to function, and diminished need for pain management.
Robot-aided hip surgeries are typically not covered by insurance today. But as patients have faster and easier recoveries, with fewer complications, the economic advantages of robotic procedures are expected to change the insurance picture.
In other news? They have simulated car racing now... NBC and Fox experimented with sim racing - where only the money is real
Oh well, off to bed to read. Back to work tomorrow. Hopefully will be able to do laundry tomorrow evening - wasn't able to do it this evening.
Good night and good luck...
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Date: 2021-01-19 02:48 pm (UTC)Second, I read just this morning that the faster-spreading version of Covid has been in CA since November. That probably explains why we've been hit so hard -- the previously effective protections stopped being as effective.
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Date: 2021-01-19 03:25 pm (UTC)"In the long working “friendship” between the two men, unless I missed it, Ford never spared a kind word for his protégé. In fact, Ford was savage in his mistreatment of Wayne, even though—or because?—Wayne worshipped him. (“My whole set up was that he was my mentor and my ideal! I think that deep down inside, he’s one of the greatest human beings that I have ever known.”) From Stagecoach through Liberty Valance, their last Western together, Ford rode Wayne so mercilessly that fellow performers—remarkably, given the terror Ford inspired—stepped in on Wayne’s behalf. Filming Stagecoach, Wayne revealed his inexperience as a leading man, and this made Ford jumpy. “Why are you moving your mouth so much?” he demanded, grabbing Wayne by the chin. “Don’t you know that you don’t act with your mouth in pictures?” And he hated the way Wayne moved. “Can’t you walk, instead of skipping like a goddamn fairy?”
The article can be found here: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/12/john-wayne-john-ford/544113/
I can separate art from the artist. I can still enjoy Mel Gibson, Tom Cruise, Denis Quaid, and Bruce Willis films, for example. Music is harder - because usually it bleeds into that - so no on that (although I can still listen to Michael Jackson with no issues. I was never a fan of Ted Nugent and heavy metal - and I don't like Kid Rock - so that was NEVER a problem). But screen-actors? They are basically celery in a salad.
Who they are outside of the films they make? Doesn't matter. I don't know them. And often what is written about them isn't always clear or real, anyhow. Wayne created a persona - I'm not sure many people saw the person below the persona that Marion Berry created. Same with Cary Grant.
Directors are more problematic, because it does bleed into it. And Ford was ...a bully, due to his own insecurities and problems. But we don't always see that in his films. Howard Hawkes had his issues as well, as did so many others. Also, in film, it's so collaborative - that unless the director is really in control and is trying to push a message (see Oliver Stone or Roman Polanski), it's usually not a problem.
Novelists and writers are harder, I find it impossible to read Orson Scott Card, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Margaret Mitchell, and Virigina Woolf at times. But, TS Eliot - I never saw the anti-semitism he was famous for...in his writing, nor did I see the misogyny in his poems. If it's there, it was lost on me.
There's also an argument for getting inside another world-view, to understand it better, and feel empathy - which an African-American friend pointed out to me in regards to reading Flannery O'Connor. Although I think O'Connor was mainly showing the racism - much in the way that Harper Lee had hoped to, in all its grisly detail - without the romanticizing it like Mitchell does.
And there's an argument for time capsule or period. The Quiet Man - is a creature of its time. As are many films of the previous century. They don't quite work now, and they aren't meant to. They are a window back in time - with all it's problems. I don't want to live in the World of The Quiet Man or Big Jake, any more than I want to live in the world of The 100, Buffy, Angel, or Game of Thrones - but I can enjoy them all the same.
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Date: 2021-01-19 04:15 pm (UTC)Your view of how to handle this stuff is very similar to mine. I have some general feelings -- I wouldn't listen to Ted Nugent on a bet -- but I'm hardly consistent about it (I love Chinatown, even though I represented Polanski's rape victim). But for the most part I come down where you do on all of the examples you give.
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Date: 2021-01-19 04:39 pm (UTC)Chinatown - I actually for a while had the script for it. I enjoyed the movie. But it's not one you want to analyze too much. Actually Polanski is one of those directors that is best watched without thinking too much about his films.
It probably helps that I don't know much about Marion Berry (John Wayne) as a person, and what I do know? I've forgotten, outside of that article I shared - which I read a few years back courtesy of selenak (on DW), who posted it.
I try not to find out much about the personal lives of entertainers...they tend to be rather screwed up individuals for the most part. (shrugs). It's not an easy field - the glamour biz. Lots of assholes running the shop - from what I've seen.
The problem is that fame, fortune and applause often brings out the worst in human beings. It's toxic. And the entertainment world's idea of success is fame and fortune...sigh.
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Date: 2021-01-19 06:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-19 06:42 pm (UTC)Also not impressed by people who have - I've had family members and close friends do a lot of name dropping over the years. People are people. The problem with famous folks - is their egos tend to take over, and often narcissism sets in. It's hard to avoid - fame is toxic. As is power. And often the two coincide.
I was listening to NY's Governor again - who I have a love/hate relationship with - the man has an EGO...and a tendency to go about winners and losers, and how NY is better than everyone else - until I want to just smack him. LOL! I have no interest in meeting him in real life. But I'm pleased his the Governor of NY. Also, same with Obama - whose book Promised Land, I'm listening to on audiobooks. I love the book, I find him fascinating, but...he has a big ego (you kind of have to run for President of the US, which he fully admits). I wouldn't want to meet him in person - and he's most likely the closest I'd come to wanting to meet a famous person - Barack and Michelle Obama. If I had to meet anyone - it probably would be them, and I don't want to.
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Date: 2021-01-19 03:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-19 04:25 pm (UTC)