Hiking to Buzzard Rock – Visit to Ocean City, NJ – The Trumpster rallies in Iowa – His disturbing cult of personality – The faltering investigation into the January 6th riot – Brazil’s new milestone – An anti-vaxxer demonstration backfires – Vaccinations and the homeless – Evening statistics
This past Tuesday I went with the Vigorous Hikers on a hike that started from Brunswick, crossing the Potomac and continuing westward along the bank and eventually up the ridgeline to Buzzard Rock. From there we came down to the Harpers Ferry Adventure Center and returned by way of the C&O Canal. The results were rather a mixture. Some were quite pleased with the hike; others were disconcerted by the bushwhack it entailed. I should have vetted the hike description more carefully, so as to warn those who signed up that the bushwhack was long and arduous. Originally the hike was intended to continue with another bushwhack to Split Rock and from there to Loudoun Heights, but I persuaded RS, the hike leader, to cut the hike short and cross the Potomac back to Maryland via the Rte. 340 bridge. As it was, the hike was between 16 and 17 miles; the excursion to Loudoun Heights would have added between 4 and 5 miles more. But we had splendid views from Buzzard Rock and the return along the C&O canal was a good way to wind down after clambering up and down along the steep slope of the ridgeline along the Virginia bank.
Then from Wednesday to this morning I visited JF, my friend in Ocean City, NJ. JF is not a devotee of mountain trails, but on city streets he is an excellent walker, and we covered over 40 miles in three days.
On Wednesday we went to Cape May, spending less time in the city itself and more on the beach along the bay, digging for so-called “Cape May diamonds.” These are actually bits of transparent quartz that are washed down by the Delaware River into the bay. They can be cut and polished to resemble diamonds, although they are of course much less valuable ($8 per carat at the most). Afterwards I went up to the top of the lighthouse and then we both went to the park area and the Nature Conservancy to see the various points used for bird-watching. One portion of the bay had a large number of trumpeter swans, and we saw egrets, herons, and sandpipers as well. Afterwards we dined at an Irish pub in the main shopping center of the city and spent part of the evening, upon our return, walking the Ocean City boardwalk (2½ miles each way, or 5 miles total).
Then on Thursday we went to Princeton. The town itself is pleasant and interesting, but the focal point of any visit to the city must be the university itself. As a graduate student, I went to the University of Pennsylvania, which is one of the universities designated as “Ivy League”; but its campus is not very distinctive – certainly not worth a visit on its own account. Princeton, on the other hand, is well worth seeing: reminiscent of the campuses of Oxford and Cambridge, with imposing architecture, numerous “quads,” shaded walks bordered with flowers: a poster child, in short, for what is called “higher education.” From there we went to a very different venue, namely, the flea market at Columbus: a vast array of outdoor stalls proffering all sorts of merchandise at cut-rate prices: clothing, artwork, outdoor sports equipment, furniture, house decorations, and so on. The facility included a building rather like a warehouse, where vendors sold various produce. Even though I had not intended to buy anything, I wound up purchasing sundry articles such as sneakers, a ski-cap, and a pair of sunglasses, as well as a basket of ripe plums. The plums in the supermarkets are all but tasteless, and as it has been some time since I’ve tasted a truly ripe plum, I could not resist when I saw them.
Friday was a relatively relaxed day, but we took in the boardwalk at Sea Isle (1½ miles each way, or 3 miles round trip) and went to Cold Spring Village, an open-air museum consisting of 27 historic buildings, some of them listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is a re-created New Jersey town of the Colonial era, with various buildings (blacksmith, poultry house, inn, residual houses, barns, etc.) provided with various furnishings from that period. Then we lunched in Stone Harbor, the most upscale of the beach communities in South Jersey, with several elegant restaurants to choose from even in the off-season. The lunch we had turned out to be so elaborate that we needed no more than a mere snack for the evening meal. We visited the Ocean City museum on our return. Even the museum occupies no more than a large room at the community center, it contained a surprising amount of information. Among other things, it mentioned that Grace Kelly’s family had a summer home in the city and that she spent many of her summers there while growing up. This information impelled JF and I to see the house owned by the Kelly family. It is by far the most elaborate in the city, built in the Spanish Mission Revival style. Curiously, the building has no plaque indicating that she had resided there, so it is quite easy for the casual tourist to pass it by without realizing its significance. She retained her connection with Ocean City during her movie career and after her marriage to Prince Rainier, visiting it frequently, swimming on the beach and strolling along the boardwalk. She would come with other members of the royal family to spend as much as two weeks in the year there, generally at the time of the annual Labor Day barbecue.
Afterwards we had a light dinner and, since it was still early, we then walked along the main street to the center of the city and returned via the boardwalk. Both Asbury Avenue, the main street, and the boardwalk were busier than I would have expected for the off-season. It is still the aftermath of the influx of visitors during the Labor Day weekend, of course, and these areas of the city will undoubtedly become much quieter as the season advances into winter.
In many of the stores both customers and vendors wore no masks. Both JF, who works for a nursing home facility, and I were more cautious: we wore masks whenever we went inside of a store or a restaurant. However, the situation was different than it had been in Idaho during my excursion there earlier last month. New Jersey has a high rate of vaccination and a correspondingly high rate of availability of ICU beds. At this point 45% of the state’s ICU beds are occupied – not an insignificant number, it is true, but much better than the complete absence of ICU beds that prevailed during the time that I was visiting Idaho.
The visit, like all good things, had to come to an end; and today I drove back home to cope with the mail that piled up during my absence (both snail mail and Email), shopped for groceries, mowed the lawn, and went on various other errands.
Donald Trump is now no longer on Forbes’ list of the nation’s richest people. At this point he has a mere two-and-a-half billion to cover his nakedness. And, most appropriately, a considerable amount of the reduction in his fortunes is due to the pandemic he treated so cavalierly. Much of his wealth comes from big-city properties; and as urban businesses and tourism were adversely affected by the pandemic, his properties fell dramatically in value. This is an encouraging development, but it is far from sufficient. The only way he can be prevented from inflicting even greater damage than what he has already done is to separate him from his money – preferably as a result of large financial penalties imposed by various lawsuits should they ever be decided against him, but perhaps Melania will perform some genuine public service for once by divorcing him and exacting an exorbitant amount of alimony and child support as part of the settlement. Whether he will be unable to inflict more harm on our electoral system once he is impoverished is uncertain, but he most assuredly cannot be prevented from exercising his baneful influence under any other set of circumstances.
I know that at times I seem unhealthily obsessed with Trump, but to my mind he represents a great danger to our nation. He is doing his utmost to undermine public confidence in our electoral system, and I regret to say that he is succeeding. Today he held a rally in Des Moines, IA, signaling that he intends to run for Presidential office again in 2024. The large turnout indicates that he has a good chance of securing the nomination. And he is continually hammering on his claim that he was defrauded by the 2020 election, with evident effect. “I feel in my heart that there was a lot of cheating going on,” one observer said, and this man seems to be voicing the view of a large percentage of the Republican base. Fifty-three percent of Iowans hold a favorable view of the former president and only 45% hold an unfavorable view, according to a Des Moines Register/Mediacom survey released on Monday. Among Republicans only, he retains a favorability rating of 91%. The parallels with Mussolini’s growing hold on the populace and the cult of personality that fuels it are marked, and I sometimes wonder whether Trump is deliberately emulating Mussolini’s career path.
It is doubtful that the current investigation by Congress concerning the January 6th riot will amount to much. Trump has openly told the members of his staff who have been subpoenaed to disregard these summonses, and at least one of them, Steve Bannon, has followed his advice. To do Bannon justice, I doubt whether he needed Trump’s incitement to brush aside the law. It just comes naturally to him. He could, of course, be held for contempt of court; but he has already once ignored a subpoena during the 2018 investigation by a House Intelligence Committee; and while the Democrats considered holding him in contempt for his refusal to comply, they ultimately declined to do so. I cannot see that their resolution has increased during the interval. They will wring their hands and make a few feeble plaints about how unbecoming such behavior is, and then they will end up by doing nothing.
In the meantime, Brazil has achieved a thoroughly undesirable milestone: its death toll from COVID has exceeded 600, 000, just under 0.3% of its population (about 1 death per 350). Bolsonaro, who has boasted about his unvaccinated status in the past, was forced to isolate shortly after attending the United Nations General Assembly in September after he and one of his aides tested positive for coronavirus. Now he is urging those who are vaccinated to throw aside their masks, “because if they are vaccinated, there is no way the virus can be transmitted.” Whatever one might think about the scientific basis of such reassurances, they are for the most part irrelevant in any case: at this point only 12% of Brazil’s population is fully vaccinated.
One scene in the never-ending drama of the protests of the anti-vaxxers was enacted this past Thursday that, I think I am safe in saying, could not have occurred in any country except our own. In Los Angeles on Hollywood Boulevard, a group of anti-vaccine protesters were carrying picket signs and American flags. “Do you see all of these homeless people around?” the lead protester yelled through a bullhorn. “Are they dead in the streets with COVID? Hell no! Why?” Whereupon a man pushing a shopping cart down the street provided the following response: “Because I’m vaccinated, you dumb fuck!”
Vaccinations, as it turns out, have been widely available for the homeless; and as the man’s reaction indicates, they have not been slow in taking advantage of the opportunity. In Los Angeles the Housing for Health unit of the city’s Department of Health Services has managed to inoculate 75% of the homeless population. That is a higher percentage than the Republicans in the same community can claim.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 238,327,262; # of deaths worldwide: 4,862,309; # of cases U.S.: 45,179,038; # of deaths; U.S.: 733,057.