Weekend pleasures – A tale of warning – The Dominion Voting lawsuit (perhaps) progresses – Evening statistics
After a rain-filled week the weekend has become fairer, allowing me to attend an after-trip dinner party yesterday and to embark upon a 20-mile hike today in comfort, starting at the MLK memorial (or, in my case, from the Foggy Bottom Metro station, since I did not wish to drive into DC) and completing a loop via the Wharf and the two banks of the Anacostia River, with a brief detour to Heritage and Kingsman Islands. Both days were clear, and today was especially so, so that the wavelets of the Anacostia danced and sparkled in the sunlight. It is both heartening and impressive to see how greatly the river has improved in recent years. I can remember a time – not so very long ago either – when its pollution was a byword; now it is quite clean and virtually free of debris.
A rather troubling hiker-related story has come to my attention. Ruth Woroniecki ascended the 8,800-foot summit of Cucamonga Peak in the San Gabriel Mountains, and then, upon returning down, slipped on ice that had accumulated on the trail and fell 200 feet. Her tumble was broken by her landing on a fallen tree trunk. As a result of the fall, she suffered a number of torn ligaments and tendons in her legs and large gashes on her head, chin, and face that required over 40 stitches, as well as a broken neck. She was found in this condition by other hikers, who contacted San Bernardino Rescue. Because of the wind conditions, it took a helicopter two hours to arrive and to lower one rescuer onto the mountain just west of Woroniecki’s location. But the helicopter could not go any further and the rescuer told Woroniecki that she would have to hike 200 feet so that she could be picked up there. She managed to get there despite the intense pain from her broken neck and despite the risk of paralysis, after which she was airlifted to a hospital for treatment. All of her injuries, including the broken neck, were successfully repaired.
The story thus had a happy ending but it is troubling nonetheless, because I can readily imagine such an accident happening to me. It is well-known that the descent is the most difficult part of any hike. Unfortunately, however, it often happens that a hiker feels such a sense of accomplishment upon reaching a summit that he or she is off-guard when beginning the downhill portion leading back to the trailhead. I try to be cautious when going steeply downhill but I am not always successful, and I’ve taken a fall now and then. Such accidents as I have had were limited and temporary in nature, but that is more a matter of luck than anything else. Ruth Worniecki was 40 when she underwent her misadventure, whereas I am nearly 70; and I doubt if I could have recovered under such circumstances as thoroughly as she managed to do. I must try never to let my guard down while pacing upon the trails; more than that I cannot do.
Excerpts from an exhibit of the lawsuit that Dominion Voting Systems has leveled against Fox News have been made public, and it appears that the Fox News hosts had doubts about the allegations of voter fraud in November, 2020, with Tucker Carlson telling a producer that “Sidney Powell is lying” and Sean Hannity remarking “that whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second.” The trial is scheduled to begin in mid-April. Superior Court Justice Eric Davis has ruled that in this case Dominion Voting Systems is to be regarded as a public figure, which means that Dominion must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the Fox defendants acted with actual malice or reckless disregard for the truth.
Unfortunately it is difficult for laymen like myself to determine what constitutes “proof” to the subtleties of the legal mind. I’m not the only one in such perplexity. See, for example, Ambrose Bierce’s definition of “technicality” in The Devil’s Dictionary: “In an English court a man named Home was tried for slander in having accused his neighbor of murder. His exact words were: ‘Sir Thomas Holt hath taken a cleaver and stricken his cook upon the head, so that one side of the head fell upon one shoulder and the other side upon the other shoulder.’ The defendant was acquitted by instruction of the court, the learned judges holding that the words did not charge murder, for they did not affirm the death of the cook, that being only an inference.”
Today’s statistics as of 9:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 678,691,949; # of deaths worldwide: 6,791,079; # of cases U.S.: 104,986,098; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,142,595.