Slight Detour: Say It Ain't So: Snow!!!

This year of 2020 may be lasting longer than we would wish, but WHY or WHY has my October month of winterizing only two-thirds its normal length?

C'mon, Mother Nature!

The calendar says eight more days left in this month, and you're dumping a load of snow on us today and tonight. Plus, tomorrow we're gonna freeze our buns off in 10-degree temps!!!!

If there's anything worse than a Pandemic the same year as a Presidential election year, it's an early winter during a Pandemic and an election.

That common saying about God not handing us any more trouble than we can handle apparently doesn't apply when Mother Nature is concerned.

Bill and I have been methodically going about our winter preparation around the Lovestead with the travel trailer being winterized and stored and hoses being put away and dead plants being hauled off and leaves being picked up.

BUT

Half the leaves haven't yet fallen, and Bill hasn't even thought about putting the plow on the back of the tractor because I've asked him to put the brush hog back on so I can cut the weeds and dead grass from the pastures.

I just paid nearly $400 to have a bunch of stuff fixed on my lawnmower leaf bag so I could pick up the leaves that haven't yet fallen.

Like pretty much everything in 2020, this doesn't seem exactly fair, but there's nothing we can do about it, except get out the winter coats and the boots and the snow shovels.

They say the dump overnight is gonna be significant. Maybe, if I adopt the attitude a lot of folks have about Covid, the snow will just not fall on the Lovestead.

Would we be so lucky???

Anyway, I'm not happy, especially because once it falls, there's little likelihood it will melt cuz we'll have cold, dry weather for several days.

For some reason, I appreciated the sights around the area a bit more than usual yesterday, knowing they may have been the grand finale for fall.

I guess the only good thing about the imminent snowstorm is that remaining leaves with snow on them could offer some artistic photography.

In other news, the Daily Bee reports that the Panhandle Health Board of Directors (not the doctors) voted to rescind the Kootenai County mask mandate yesterday afternoon.

https://bonnercountydailybee.com/news/2020/oct/22/panhandle-vote-snp/

Twas the same day that the whole Northwest had heard the news that Kootenai Medical Center could be sending Covid patients to Seattle and Portland because of reaching 99-percent capacity.

And, it was the same day that Kootenai and Boundary Counties moved into the red zone, i.e., the highest level of concern for Covid spread.

The timing of this decision by the Panhandle Health Board makes me figuratively scratch my head in wonderment. Actually, this year, I'm amazed I have any hair left from the number of times I've scratched my head in wonderment.

Though their voices are hardly as loud as those who proclaim their need/right to be liberated, I know of a number of people with personal health problems of their own or within their families who feel great concern for the laid-back attitude so prevalent in this area toward personal safety and the safety of others.

Seems like it would be so simple and so unselfish to show a little respect for others, and, in so doing, slow down the spread and maybe get all of us out of this unfun situation a little sooner.

Just sayin', and just postin' a segment below about relative pandemic success within the state from which our family friend Nancy hails.

GO, VERMONT!!

Seems like some reasonable approaches to make everyone's lives a little better and a little longer.

from this morning's New York Times briefs . . . .

The coronavirus is spreading more rapidly in rural areas of the U.S. than in urban areas. But one rural state continues to do a fabulous job keeping the virus away: Vermont.

The starkest sign of Vermont’s success is that it has not recorded a singlg Covid-19 death in more than two months.

Vermont is succeeding partly because it has not allowed the virus to become a partisan issue.

The Republican governor, Phill Scott—unlike many other Republican politicians around the country---has consistently told people to take the virus seriously.

“He started wearing a mask early in the pandemic and has stood at the back of the room in many of the state’s coronavirus briefings, letting Dr. Mark Levine, Vermont’s answer to Dr. Fauci dominate proceedings,” Bill McKibben, a Vermont resident, wrote in The New Yorker.

Vermont also benefits from having a high degree of social trust among its residents, as Maria Sacchetti explained in The Washington Post.

And Vermont has two strong media organizations---VTDigger and Seven Days---that keep residents informed and that both took an intriguing step early in the pandemic, McKibben notes: They shut down their comments section, to prevent misinformation from spreading.