The Skin I Live In

So, as you've probably gathered from yesterday's post, I didn't go see the Osees at Variety Playhouse last night.

Yesterday's post listed all of the rational and logical reasons not to go, and weighed the pros and cons of attending.  In the end, the cons outweighed the pros, and I wound up staying at home.

But here's the thing - to be honest, I probably didn't want to go, anyway.  I've written here before about how our subconscious elephants determine what we do, usually without our realizing it, and how our conscious, rational monkey mind then makes up reasons to justify the elephant's decisions.

Yesterday's post was entirely the monkey mind coming up with all of the rational reasons that it wasn't safe to go to that particular show on that particular night at that particular place.  But those rational reasons didn't convince the subconscious elephant to stay home.  For its own reasons, the subconscious elephant apparently didn't want to go, despite having tickets and despite not having gone to a show in nearly 20 months.  The monkey mind then came up with some reasons to justify the elephant's subconscious preference.

Had it been the other way around and the subconscious elephant had wanted to go, the monkey mind  would have found comfort in the efficacy of vaccines, the mask mandates, the vaccination requirements, and the plummeting number of covid cases in Georgia.  But as it turns out, that's not the way it happened.

The deeper question here is why I subconsciously didn't want to go out.  Have I gotten so used to the stay-at-home pandemic schedule that I now prefer to remain isolated?  Have I lost my enthusiasm at some level for going out to hear live music?  Have I fallen into depression and can't bring myself to leave home anymore?

Instead of seeing Osees at Variety Playhouse, I stayed in, played a little Hitman and Beyond Two Souls, and then watched the Almodovar movie The Skin I Live In on HBO Max.

Today is the last day of September 2021.  There are 92 days left to the year.  Today is the day for meditation on suffering, and with it, the cessation of aspiration.

In Which I Answer My Own Questions

And now we're 272 days into 2021.  There are 93 days left until we're finally done with this year. Today is the day for meditation on inconstancy, during which we can reflect on the desires of the past, present, and future.

Last Saturday, when the great southern State of Georgia was experiencing an average of 4,561 new covid cases per day, I predicted that by today we'd be down to 3,800 cases per day.  According to the New York Times, yesterday we were down to 3,615 cases per day, the lowest number since August 6.

3,615 new cases per day, while 60% lower than the last peak (9,244 cases per day on August 31) is higher than the peak (954 cases per day) of the first, flatten-the-curve wave, or the peak (3,490 cases per day) of the second, siummer-of-2020 wave.

Thee Oh Sees (aka, Oh Sees, OCS, and now touring as "Osees") perform tonight at Variety Playhouse.  I have a ticket to the show, and have been looking forward to it ever since I bought the ticket last July. 

Back on July 1, Georgia was only experiencing 383 new cases per day, but since then, the delta variant, vaccine resistance, and poor public hygiene have caused the case numbers to explode.

But in Georgia today, the covid outbreak is more of a rural problem than an urban problem.  Vaccination rates are higher in Atlanta than in other parts of Georgia, and the counties with the highest per-capita rate of infection are in rural areas far from the city.

True, but the five counties (Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, Gwinnett, and Clayton) that make up the Atlanta metropolitan area accounted for 28% of the state's 3,615 cases. The other 72% are spread among the state's other 154 counties.

While the number of new covid cases as of today is still concerning, I'm fully vaccinated and the venue (Variety Playhouse) is requiring all attendees to show proof of vaccination on entering.

A recent CDC report on an outbreak in Massachusetts found vaccinated and unvaccinated people both carried comparable loads of the covid virus. Even fully vaccinated people can still transmit the virus.

Variety Playhouse, while not an outdoor venue, is larger and better ventilated than small clubs like The Earl, and if I can claim my usual spot at the front of the first riser on the right, I shouldn't have other people breathing directly into my face.

Osees play a very energetic form of psych-punk/garage-rock and never fail to have a lively mosh pit at the front of the stage.  The vigorous activity, and cheering by the rest of the audience, leads to a lot of exhalation; together with the close quarters, it's a perfect incubator for the spread of covid.  If even one person enters the venue with the covids, the air inside the Playhouse could quickly fill with the virus.

Osees at Warsaw (Brooklyn), September 25, 2021 (photo by u/anohioanredditer)

I will wear a mask to protect myself.   

Variety Playhouse "strongly encourages" but doesn't require ticket-holders to wear masks.  Wearing a mask among a crowd of unmasked people is at least 50% less effective than if everyone wore masks.

Despite these concerns, music has returned to live venues for over a month now and both nationwide and locally, covid cases have been dropping. There haven't been outbreaks or super-spreader events associated with the shows performed to date. Ergo, going to a live music show with reasonable precautions (vaccination and facemasks) is "safe."  

According to Billboard, the Zac Brown Band cancelled their tour yesterday when frontman Zac Brown revealed a positive test for covid.  On September 21, Joan Jett cancelled her tour due to covid concerns.  On September 10, Bush cancelled their current tour "due to unfortunate and unavoidable covid-related circumstances."  Nine Inch Nails made a similar announcement back on August 19.  Other tours cancelled due to the covids include the Backstreet Boys, BTS, Kiss, Korn, Limp Bizkit, Rage Against the Machine, The 1975, The Deftones, the Pixies, Florida Georgia Line, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Aerosmith, Alan Parsons,  Roger Waters, Garth Brooks, Stevie Nicks, Taylor Swift, and Halsey.  

Cancelled festivals include the New Orleans Jazz Festival, Boston Calling, Movement Detroit, Cincinnati Music Fest, Coachella (California), Burning Man (Nevada), CMA (Nashville), Ultra Music Fest (Miami), Glastonbury (U.K.), Primavera Sound (Spain), Roskilde (Denmark), Tomorrowland (Belgium), Bluesfest (Autralia), and Bigsound (Australia).

But my neighbors went to see Hamilton at the Fox Theater last week and they're fine, why shouldn't I go see the Osees at Variety Playhouse?  

I strongly doubt the seated audience at Hamilton moshed and crowd surfed the way Osees audiences do, and besides, your neighbors are some 25  to 30 years younger than you.

I'm in pretty good health and haven't had so much as a cold for over a year now.  Surely, my vaccinated system, coupled with a face mask, can handle whatever the audience and the venue throws my way.

Don't kid yourself - you're 67, overweight, and out of shape.  Enough with the post-adolescent fantasies of immortality already.  The delta variant would eat you up for dinner given half a chance, kiddo.  

So the question I'm considering now, some 90 minutes before the Playhouse doors open, is do I go to the show vaxxed and masked to see one of my favorite bands, or do I wait for the number of new cases to drop further still before venturing back to the clubs and theaters?

The truth of the matter is, I bought the tickets back in July when case numbers, deaths, and hospitalizations were all low, thinking that the new vaccines were going to keep things that way.  I hadn't counted on the new delta variant spike.  I wouldn't consider going to the show tonight if case numbers had slowly climbed from their July level up to their current level.  

The only reason it looks "safe" now is because things were worse last month at the peak of the current spike.  The fact that things were more dangerous in the past doesn't necessarily make them safe now.  It's better for me to wait until conditions return to their June-July levels than to take my chances now.

Abandonment

Today is the day for abandonment.  Today is the day for abandoning the desires arising from sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch.  Today is the day for abandoning the demands of the mind.

One's 60s can be the best time in your life.  It's an age when the career burdens of one's 40s and 50s have been left behind, but the shutdown and illness of one's 70s and 80s have not yet arrived.  It is a time to enjoy life on your own terms. When I retired in July 2019 at age 65 and entered Chapter Three of my life, my second childhood really began.

Sixty is the new ten.

All too often, people work at their jobs until they're physically unable to work any longer, but that leaves them spent and exhausted with nothing left to physically enjoy their retirement years.  At age 65, I recognized that I was on that path and left, even though I wasn't in the best financial shape to make the move to retirement.

I understand that for all too many people, retirement isn't even an option.  Working from paycheck to paycheck, without enough money invested in Social Security, with mounting financial pressures to provide and care for their families, they simply can't afford to enjoy their golden years.  This is one of the many problems facing our modern society, and one we should and must fix.

But I was lucky.  Two years ago, I saw two paths in front of me and was in a position to be able to pick and choose which path to take.  One path was a timely retirement - a path not without some economic risks, but a path I could still tentatively take.  The other path was continuing to grind my life away in a job I no longer enjoyed, working for a company I didn't like and that didn't particularly like me, until a heart attack or stroke intervened and forced me to live out the rest of my life in recovery.  The former was obviously better than the latter, and I don't regret my decision.

I arrived at that crossroad in July 2019, before anybody knew about the coming pandemic, and I certainly didn't take the isolation and lockdown of the covids into my retirement plans.  C'est la vie.  I wouldn't have changed my plans even if I had somehow known.  In fact, I was better off in retirement, as I didn't have to make hard choices about returning to the workplace versus staying home to protect my health.  Staying home was my default mode.  

It doesn't matter if I sleep until 10:00 a.m.  It doesn't matter if I spend the day reading comic books and novels, or playing a video game, or watching CSPAN.  It doesn't matter if I go to bed at midnight, or 2:00 a.m., or at all.

Letting go of Puritan work ethics and societal guilt trips over being "productive," it's time for a child-like return to simply enjoying each day as it is, regardless of the consequences.

Now excuse me, I have nothing to do.

Joy

This, the 27th day of September, 2021, the second year of the Great Covids Plague, marks the 250th day of Joe Biden's presidency.  The disgraced, twice-impeached, former so-called "president" Agent Orange has been out of office for 250 days now.

Today is the day we abandon all unpleasant things.  Today is the day for joy.

On this day in 2012, both actor Herbert Lom and administrator John Silber died. Impermanence is swift. I really have nothing to say about Herbert Lom, but Silber was president of Boston University from 1971 to 1996, including the years (1976 to 1980) that I attended school there.

To set the tone, in September 1977, my sophomore year, Esquire Magazine ran a profile of Silber written by Nora Ephron, titled The Meanest S.O.B. On Campus.  "B.U. That's the name of the place," Ephron began her article.  "Boston University, but everyone calls it B.U. It's a terrible name, really.  Sounds as if it hasn't had a bath in years.  Looks like it, too."  The piece turned negative from there.  

In response to what they perceived as tyrannical rule by Silber, the B.U. faculty organized a union in 1974 in affiliation with the American Association of University Professors. The conservative Silber would not negotiate with the union, and in 1976, two-thirds of the faculty and deans demanded the board of trustees fire him. The board refused. The faculty conducted a brief strike in 1979, which was followed by a clerical workers' walkout in which several faculty members refused to cross the picket line. Classes were cancelled, even in my generally apolitical Geology Department, and 60 Minutes sent Mike Wallace to B.U. for a profile on Silber and to cover the strike.

In the course of my life, I have had some tangential knowledge or involvement in three stories that were covered by 60 Minutes, and each time they seemed to get the story completely wrong, at least from my perspective.  The B.U. faculty strike was the second of the three.

In the late 1960s, while I was in the 8th Grade, my school took in a Montagnard student from Vietnam.  "Montagnard" is the French term for a member of any one of the various indigenous peoples of the Central Highlands of Vietnam.  The Montagnard had a long history of tensions with the Vietnamese majority.  Ha Kin was rather shy - he didn't speak English very well - and he was exceedingly gentle.  He identified as Christian but seemed more Buddhist in temperament than anything.  60 Minutes came by to interview him, and cast the story as "boy from stone-age mountain tribe who fought the Viet Cong with bows-and-arrows now enrolled in suburban school."  They made him sound like Mowgli from The Jungle Book.  The story included a brief interview with him speaking in his broken English, and with several of my classmates (I wasn't included in the interviews, for some reason).  Amazingly, I still have my yearbook from that class and it includes a photo of Ha Kin wearing a sports jacket and tie, and looking completely comfortable in Western civilization.  Watching the television broadcast, I felt at age 14 that 60 Minutes had completely mischaracterized the situation.

Could their own predisposition have colored their interpretation of the story?

Fast forward a couple decades to the mid-1980s, and I was very marginally involved as a paid hydrogeologic consultant to a large-scale development on the Caribbean island of Barbuda.  Barbuda was a largely undeveloped island, part of the Commonwealth of Antigua and Barbuda.  The back story on the development was admittedly quite colorful, containing European nobles of the lost kingdom of Aragon, actor Rossano Brazzi and the Broadway musical South Pacific, the architect John Portman, and an undiscovered tropical paradise.  It's a long, shaggy-dog story and quite amusing in its own right, but far, far too long to get into here.  60 Minutes sent Ed Bradley to Antigua, twice, to cover the story, but seemingly couldn't take it seriously. They had a "get-a-load-of-this" attitude, and for comedic effect the segment frequently cut away to a videoclip of the song Bali H'ai from South Pacific.  But since 60 Minutes had a reputation as muckraking investigative journalists, they also accused one of the developers of past tax-avoidance scams.  Even if he was guilty (admittedly, he wound up doing a little time in jail), it wasn't unlike the tax-avoidance schemes of any number of other developers, and had little to nothing to do with the Barbuda development.  But that was the way 60 Minutes chose to cover the story - a comedy of colorful characters with a criminal past - and at age 30 I felt like I had at 14, that 60 Minutes had mischaracterized the situation.

But had their own predisposition colored their interpretation of the story - or had mine? I was a paid consultant, and if your livelihood depends on your not seeing a problem, you will have a very hard time perceiving it.

Between those two endpoints, I also felt at age 25 that 60 Minutes had misread the John Silber/B.U. situation.  The strike was first called by the academic faculty of the University, and then spread to the clerical staff, but 60 Minutes covered it as if it were a student strike.  During that post-Vietnam, post-Watergate period of the late 70s, when student protests and demonstrations were largely a thing of the past, 60 Minutes derogatorily proposed that the faculty strike was a sign that the 60s were anachronistically alive and well at B.U.  "Where have all the flowers gone?," they asked.  Alive and kicking, apparently, on the campus of B.U.  They interviewed some of the wooliest-looking student Bolsheviks they could find on campus, barely-articulate, acid-fried stoners, and held them up as representatives of the movement.  I don't recall any interviews with faculty members. Watching the segment, one would get the impression that the unrest at B.U. was simply due to disaffected students living out their nostalgia for the 1960s, and not sober professors protesting in favor of academic freedom. The whole segment was cast to make Silber look good and the University undeserving of his beneficent presence. 

Once again, had their own predisposition colored their interpretation of the story? Or had mine? 

Anyway, Silber's dead now and I'm still alive.  Herbert Lom died peacefully in his sleep at age 95 in London.  Rossano Brazzi died from a neural virus at age 78 on Christmas Eve, 1994.  I googled Ha Kin and found recent photos of him as an adult, dressed in Patagonia fleece and now a married U.S. citizen. He'll probably outlive all of us.

Compassion

Today is the 26th day of September, 2021.  It's Serena Williams' and Beto O'Rourke's birthday (Sheri Moon Zombie's, too).  There are 90 days left until Christmas and today is the day for compassion.  With compassion, we do not kill or harm living things. 

The sun rose at 7:29 a.m. this morning and will set at 7:28 p.m. tonight.  That's 11 hours and 59 minutes of daylight, the night now being one minute longer than daytime.  Yesterday, daylight was one minute longer than nighttime, so we achieved equilibrium, the real Equinox, sometime around midnight last night.  Blink and you missed it.

The waxing gibbous moon is 72% full.  It ill rise at 10:52 p.m. tonight and set at 1:37 p.m. tomorrow afternoon.

Hurricane Sam is now a category 4 storm out in the mid-Atlantic Ocean.  It's a powerful storm with winds up to 145 miles per hour, but it currently looks as if it won't make landfall in the U.S., although it might strike the island of Bermuda.

One year ago today, journeyman baseball player Jay Johnston (California Angels, Chicago White Sox, Oakland Athletics, Philadelphia Phillies, San Diego Padres, Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago Cubs, and even the fucking Yankees) died in a nursing home in Granada Hills, California at the age of 74 due to complications from  the covids. Impermanence is swift.

The average number of new covid cases per day in Georgia is 4,561, the same as yesterday.  That's probably more due to underreporting over the weekend than a stall in the decreasing trend. It's also largely a rural problem at this point - Fulton County has only 380 (8%) of the 4,561 new cases per day.

Last night, Osees, the West Coast rock band, finished a two-night stand at the club Warsaw in Brooklyn, NY.  They play tonight at Union Transfer in Philadelphia.  Coincidentally, just like Georgia, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is also experiencing  an average of 4,561 new covid cases per day (312 cases per day in Philadelphia County).  

Osees play tomorrow night in Chapel Hill, North Carolina at Cat's Cradle.  North Carolina has a whopping 5,515 new covid cases per day; however, the counties surrounding Chapel Hill (Durham, Chatham and Orange) have only a combined 134 of those daily cases.  The band will then take one night off before performing on September 29th in Atlanta at Variety Playhouse.    

On this day in 1986, Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner successfully summitted Makalu,  the fifth highest mountain in the world (27,838 feet), on his sixth attempt.  Makalu is located in the Himalayas southeast of Mount Everest on the border between Nepal and Tibet. Messner had twice unsuccessfully tried climbing the south face of Makalu in 1974 and 1981. He attempted the first winter ascent of Makalu via the normal route in 1985–1986, but even that third attempt had failed. 

Messner returned to Makalu in 1986. Although his team got turned back twice during this expedition, they made the summit via the normal route on their third attempt (Messner's sixth overall).  During the expedition, climber Marcel Rüedi was seen by Messner and the other climbers on his way back from the summit.  Although he was making slow progress, he appeared to be safe. The tea for his reception had already been boiled when Rüedi disappeared behind a snow ridge and did not reappear. He was found dead a short time later.  Impermanence is swift.

At 27,838 feet, Makalu is the fifth highest mountain in the world.  The sixth-highest mountain in the world (26,864 feet) is Cho Oyu, which means "Turquoise Goddess" in Tibetan. Cho Oyu was first climbed on October 19, 1954 via the north-west ridge by an Austrian team of Herbert Tichy, Joseph Jöchler and Sherpa Pasang Dawa Lama.  Geologist and climber Herbert Tichy of that expedition passed away on this day in 1987. Impermanence is swift.

Je Ne Regrette Rien

Today is the 24th day of September, 2021, the 267th day of the year.  If one of those bottles should happen to fall, 97 days would still be left in the year. This day, today, is the day for benevolence.  With benevolence, good roots prevail in all the situations in life 

The sun rose at 7:28 a.m. this morning and will set at 7:29 p.m. Three days past the Equinox, and we're still one minute away from equanimity.  The waning gibbous moon is 79% full and will rise at 10:15 p.m. this evening and will set at 12:41 p.m. tomorrow afternoon.  

Out in the Atlantic, Sam has grown into a Category 3 major hurricane, and is forecast to become a Category 4 storm by tomorrow.  Sam is the fourth major hurricane to form this year.  With over a month of hurricane season still left to go, this year could well make the record books.  The year with the most major hurricanes was 1950 with 8; 2005 came in second with 7.  Six years (1926, 1955, 1961, 1964, 1996, and 1999) are tied with 6 major hurricanes each.

The average number of new covid cases per day in Georgia is now down to 4,561, a 50% decrease from the August 31 peak (9,244 cases per day).  If this rate of decline continues, we should be down to around 3,800 cases per day by September 29, when I hope to see Oh Sees play at Variety Playhouse.  That sounds like a low number when compared to the peak average of 9,244, but it's still high.  We didn't experience 3,800 cases per day during the first two waves of the virus, only reaching that level in December 2020 during the early days of the third wave. 

On this date in 1980, Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham died. The morning before, on his way to rehearsals for a planned North American tour, Bonham stopped for breakfast, where he reportedly drank four quadruple vodka screwdrivers (16 shots). He continued to drink heavily throughout the day's rehearsals.  After midnight on September 25, Bonham fell asleep.  Someone took him to bed and placed him on his side. He was found unresponsive that afternoon and was later pronounced dead at 32 years old. Impermanence is swift. An inquest showed that in 24 hours, Bonham had consumed around 40 shots of 80-proof vodka, after which he vomited and choked, the same cause (pulmonary aspiration) that killed Jimi Hendrix a decade earlier.

On the day than Bonham died, rapper T.I. was born as Clifford Joseph Harris, Jr. in the Bankhead neighborhood of Northwest Atlanta.  His childhood nickname was "Tip," from which he derived the stage name "T.I."  A highly successful performed and entrepreneur, T.I. has released 11 studio albums to date and won three Grammy Awards. He is the author of two novels, Power & Beauty and Trouble & Triumph.  He's also had a successful acting career, starring in the films ATL, Takers, Get Hard, Identity Thief, and in the Marvel films Ant-Man and its sequel.  T.I. also starred in the American reality television series The Grand Hustle, T.I.'s Road to Redemption, and T.I. & Tiny: The Family Hustle. 

He's served two terms in county jail for probation violations, and a term in federal prison on a weapons charge. He released his seventh studio album, No Mercy, in 2010 while serving an 11-month term. As of March 2021, more than 30 women and at least one man have accused T.I., his wife Tiny, and their associates of "forced drugging, kidnapping, rape, and intimidation" in at least two states (California and Georgia), which allegedly occurred since at least 2005. The accusers allege that "prior to or upon immediately entering T&T's home, hotel, or tour bus [they] were coerced by Tiny to ingest drugs or [were] unknowingly administered drugs to impair the victims' ability to consent to subsequent vile sexual acts." T.I. has denied the allegations and claimed that all of his sexual encounters had been consensual, but as a result of the allegations, production of T.I. & Tiny: The Family Hustle was suspended.

Book Report

98 bottles of beer on the wall, 98 bottles of beer.   We take one down and pass it around, 98 bottles of beer.

September 24 is the 267th day of the year.  Today is the day for mindfulness of the heavens, as it gives rise to a wide and big mind.

The sun rose this morning at 7:27 a.m. and will set at 7:31 p.m. for 12 hours and 4 minutes of daylight.  Still not quite equanimity.

The waning gibbous moon is 86% full and will rise at 7:43 p.m. this evening and will set at 11:43 a.m. tomorrow.  

A low-pressure system a couple hundred miles north-northeast of Bermuda has about a 70% chance of developing into a hurricane.  No predictions yet on its track.  Tropical Storm Sam has developed into a full-blown hurricane as predicted, and is expected to become a major hurricane tomorrow. It is slowly moving in the direction of the southeastern United States, but no landfall is predicted as of yet.

The number of new covid cases per day continues to decrease in both the U.S. and the State of Georgia.  Hospitalizations also seem to have peaked, although the daily death count has not yet stated to fall.

Russian author and social critic Alexander Radishchev died on this day in 1802.  Radishchev brought the tradition of radicalism in Russian literature to prominence with his 1790 novel Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow. His depiction of socio-economic conditions in Russia resulted in Catherine the Great exiling him to Siberia until 1797. After Catherine's death, her successor, Tsar Paul, recalled Radishchev from Siberia and confined him to his own estate.  When Alexander I became Emperor in 1801, Radishchev was briefly employed to help revise Russian law, a realization of his lifelong dream. Unfortunately, his tenure in this administrative role proved short and unsuccessful. On this day in 1802, after a critic jokingly suggested sending him back into exile in Siberia, a despondent Radishchev committed suicide by drinking poison. Impermanence is swift.

Meanwhile in France, on that very same day that Radishchev died, French geologist and paleontologist Étienne Jules Adolphe Desmier de Saint-Simon, Vicomte d'Archiac was born in Reims.  His early works,  dating from 1835, described the Tertiary and Cretaceous formations of France, Belgium and England.  Later,  he studied the Carboniferous, Devonian and Silurian formations.  His best-known work, Histoire des progrès de la géologie de 1834 à 1859, was published in eight volumes. In 1853, he won the Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society of London and in 1861 he was appointed professor of paleontology in the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris.  However, while suffering from severe depression, he committed suicide by throwing himself into the River Seine on Christmas Eve, 1868. Impermanence is swift.

As for modern books and contemporary reading, I'm about half-way through the first volume of Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem trilogy.  I've come to the realization that these books aren't about the trikaya at all.

Insanity

Today is the 266th day of 2021; ninety-nine bottles of beer remain on that wall. 

This is the day for mindfulness of ethics.  With mindfulness of ethics, we can fulfill all our vows.

The sun rose this morning at 7:27 a.m. and will set at 7:32 p.m. Twelve hour and five minutes of daylight - still not quite the equipoise we were promised on yesterday's equinox.  Meanwhile, the gibbous moon is waning.

Atlanta's weather continues to feel like autumn, though.  It was downright cool this morning, and the a.c. in my house never kicked on even once all day.  The good news is that the sunny, dry, and cool weather is forecast to last for at least the next week or so.

On this day in 1978, baseball player Lyman Bostock of the California Angels (and formerly of the Minnesota Twins) was shot to death while in a car visiting friends in his hometown of Gary, Indiana after a game at Chicago's Comiskey Park.  Impermanence is swift.  His murderer pleaded insanity and was released after only seven months in a hospital.

Tropical Storm 17 and Tropical Storm Peter have, well, petered out, but Tropical Depression 18 has been upgraded to a tropical storm and named "Sam."  Rapid intensification of Sam into a major hurricane is expected over the next several days, but it is still too early to tell whether or not its's likely to make landfall on North America.

"Luxury" is the name of a five-man rock band from Toccoa, Georgia. They began playing together in the early 1990s, and toured extensively in the months after the release of their first album. In late 1995, most of the band's members were hospitalized following a bad car accident while traveling between shows.  All members survived and recovered, but after recording a few more albums, Luxury broke up and the members went their separate ways.  Three of the five band members are now priests serving in the Orthodox Church.

After a six-year break, Luxury reconvened in 2005 to record a new album, making them perhaps the only band in America composed three-fifths of Orthodox priests.  In February 2013, they reunited again, and released their fifth album, Trophies, in 2015.  Tonight, Luxury will perform a show at The Earl in East Atlanta. I have tickets but I'm not going.

I actually didn't mean to buy the tickets.  Back in July, I was trying to buy tickets to see the band Algiers at The Earl on October 9th, but when I clicked the "Tickets" icon for the Algiers show, I was misdirected to the Luxury show, and I didn't notice the error until after I had bought the tickets.

I could have refunded the unwanted Luxury tickets, but I became intrigued when I read about the band (they were new to me), so I figured, "Cool.  Another show to explore."  At that time, the covid pandemic seemed to be disappearing, and I was looking for new opportunities to get back out and about.  But as we all know by now, the delta variant caused the pandemic to come roaring back to life, and the number of new cases per day spiked right back up to where it was last winter.

The delta wave seems to have peaked in Georgia and yesterday, the average number of new cases per day fell below 5,000 for the first time since August 8. It was previously above 5,000 cases per day between December 10, 2020 and February 5, 2021.  Although 5,000 cases per day is a lot better than the horrific peak of the delta-variant wave (9,244 cases per day on August 31), it's still way too many.  It's higher than the peak (920 cases per day) of the first wave of the pandemic (remember "flatten the curve?") or the peak of the Summer 2020 wave (3,490 cases on July 29).

The death toll of the covid pandemic has now passed the death toll of the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918.

Although The Earl is requiring face masks for all shows, proof of vaccination is required on a show-by-show basis at the request of the performers.  Although Algiers is requiring proof of vaccination for their October 9 show, Luxury is not requiring the same, and their hometown of Toccoa is in Stephens County, Georgia. Stephens County currently has the highest per capita rate of new covid infections in the state - 127 new cases per 100,000 people per day, or 0.13% of the population each day. Seventeen percent of the Stephens County population have contracted the virus at some point. Statistically, at least one of the five members of Luxury probably either has or had the disease.

It doesn't seem like it's worth the risk to go see a band, a band I'm not even a particular fan of at that, at this time and at that place.

Before the October 9 Algiers show, I have tickets to see Oh Sees at Variety Playhouse on September 29 (next Wednesday).  I am a fan of Oh Sees, a big fan (they're one of my favorite bands), and I do plan on going to their show.  The number of new cases should continue to decline over the next week, making it at least a little safer statistically, and Variety Playhouse requires both masks and proof of vaccination for all of its shows.  In addition, Variety Playhouse is larger than the intimate Earl and my usual vantage point at the venue allows me some modicum of separation from the other attendees - at least they won't be exhaling directly into my face like they would if I was stageside at The Earl.

It's still a risk, but with better ventilation and a vaccine requirement, it's less of a risk than The Earl.  And Oh Sees represent more of a reward (at least to me) than Luxury.  So unless conditions change (or I lose my nerve), expect to see me at Oh Sees next Wednesday (and at Algiers in two weeks).

Equinox

 There are only 100 days left to 2021.  Please use them wisely.

Today is the 22nd day of September, the 265th day of the year.  It is the day for mindfulness of generosity.  With mindfulness of generosity, we do not expect reward.

Today is also the autumnal equinox and the first day of autumn.  Here is Atlanta, the sun rose this morning at 7:26 a.m. and will set at 7:33 p.m. for 12 hours and 7 minutes of daylight.  Day and night are not quite perfectly balanced because the spherical Earth is not everywhere a perfect celestial observatory, but generally speaking the forces of light and darkness are balanced, in equanimity.  As the year progresses through its final 100 days, nights will grow longer and the planet will tilt toward the side of darkness. While this could be taken as symbolic of increasing delusion and decreasing enlightenment, in the still quiet hours of the evening, we have more time for quiet contemplation, free as we are from the blindingly bright, chaotically busy daytime.  Our practice can deepen during the autumnal nights.

It felt like the first day of autumn here in Atlanta today.  The summer had been notably hot and humid, a muggy season of mosquitos and dew, and for the past five or so days it's rained almost continuously.  But the rain stopped in the late morning hours today and the effects of the passing cold front were immediately noticeable - for the first time in months, there was a cool, dry snap to the air, and it felt quite nice to be outside.

The waxing gibbous moon is almost (96%) but not quite full and will rise at 8:46 p.m. tonight.  It will set at 9:46 a.m. tomorrow morning.

On this day in 1979, a satellite detected an unidentified double flash of light over the south Indian Ocean.  The cause of the flash remains officially unknown, and some information about the event remains classified by the U.S. government. While it has been suggested that the signal could have been caused by a meteoroid hitting the satellite, most independent researchers believe that the flash was caused by a nuclear explosion.

Both Nick Cave (The Bad Seeds) and Johnette Napolitano  (Concrete Blonde) were born on this day in 1957. Happy Birthday.

Zen Master Eihei Dōgen died on this day in 1253.  He fell ill in the autumn of 1252, and showed no signs of recovering. He presented his robes to his main apprentice, Koun Ejō, making him the abbot of the temple Eihei-ji, and in search of a remedy for his illness, Dōgen left for Kyōto. Soon after arriving,  however, Dōgen died. Shortly before his death, he had written a death poem, as was customary for Zen monks:

Fifty-four years lighting up the sky. 

A quivering leap smashes a billion worlds.

Hah!

Entire body looks for nothing.

Living, I plunge into Yellow Springs.

"Yellow Springs" is a traditional Chinese symbol of death.

Photo Essay

Today is September 21. There are 101 days left to this year of 2021.  It is the day of mindfulness of the community for with it, attainment of the truth is steadfast.  

The circle of life: On this day in 1947, actor Harry Carey passed away  A long-time cigar smoker, Carey's death was from coronary thrombosis, believed to have been aggravated by a bite from a black widow spider a month earlier.  On that same date that Carey died (September 21, 1947), author Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine, and one year ago today, Tommy DeVito, a founding member of the 0s pop group The Four Seasons, died from the covids. Death, birth, death. Impermanence is swift.

Here are some pictures.

The Third Monday of September

September 20 is the 263rd day of the year. There are 102 days remaining until the end of the year. Today is the day for mindfulness of the nature of reality; with it reflection of dharma is pure.

Tomorrow is actor Bill Murray's birthday.  In 2014, Murray starred in the film St. Vincent.  The birthday of singer-songwriter Annie Clark, who records under the name St. Vincent, is September 28.  Instead of Labor Day, perhaps we should set aside the third Monday of each September and call it St. Vincent's Day for both Bill Murray and Annie Clark.

Nothing against the labor movement.

The full Harvest Moon occurs at 7:54 p.m. tonight.  As September's full moon corresponds to the time of harvesting corn, some people call it the Corn Moon.  Those people apparently don't listen to Neil Young much.  

The Harvest Moon will rise at 7:51, a few minutes before achieving total illumination, and will set at 7:52 tomorrow.  Sunrise and sunset are at 7:25 a.m. and 7:36 p.m. - the full moon, being on the opposite side of Earth from the Sun, always rises at sunset and sets at sunrise.

On this day in 1498, the Meiō earthquake occurred off the coast of Honshū, the main island in Japan. The death toll associated with the earthquake (estimated magnitude of 8.6) is uncertain, but between 5,000 and 41,000 casualties were reported. The earthquake triggered a large tsunami which washed away the building housing the Great Buddha statue at Kōtoku-in in Kamakura, although the statue itself remained intact. It has remained outdoors ever since.

Today is the third day of almost continuous, non-stop rain.  Despite the wet and rainy conditions, Piedmont Park in Midtown Atlanta managed to host the annual Music Midtown festival, after missing 2020 due to the pandemic.  I didn't go, as the Top 40 pop-music lineup was atrocious.  However, wet weather and humidity carries sound more efficiently than dry air, and sound can ricochet off of low cloud cover.  As a result, even though Piedmont Park is some 4 miles from my home, I could hear the rumble and bass of the Music Midtown performers, even inside of my house, for the first time that I can recall.

People all over the Atlanta metro area were reporting the same thing on the Next Door app.  Apparently, the sound carried across the entire Buckhead community and all the way out to Vinings in Cobb County. That's pretty impressive.

Most of the Next Door commenters seemed to think that this year's Music Midtown was just plain louder than any previous year, as if the headlining Jonas Brothers were some some of death metal band.  Amazingly, some of the Buckhead residents, probably those already inclined toward supporting a separate Buckhead City, claimed that the noise was just more evidence to support secession.  As if a new political jurisdiction would somehow stop sound waves at the new city limits.  As if a Buckhead City would have any influence on events held in Midtown Atlanta.  One commenter said that her subdivision had a curfew on loud music after 9 p.m., and she was going to report Music Midtown to her Homeowners' Association for still performing at 10:45 p.m. I hope that someone posts a video of that conversation on line.

This all speaks to the mindset of the secessionists.  They're reaction to anything is secession.  Crime? Leave Atlanta.  Noise? Leave Atlanta.  Covid mandates? Leave Atlanta.  None of them has explained yet how secession will solve these problems. They just want to leave Atlanta.

Reflection of All Things Pure

I've written about mountain climbers here before, but I don't believe I've mentioned Lionel Terray, a French climber who made many first ascents. In 1947, Terray made the second ascent of the North Face of the Eiger, and he was a member of a 1950 expedition on Annapurna, the highest peak summitted at the time and the first 8000-meter peak ever climbed. Terray himself did not reach the summit of Annapurna, but helped aid the two summiteers down from the mountain. In 1952, he was the first to climb Mount Fitz Roy in Patagonia, and in 1955, was the first to summit Makalu in the Himalayas, the fifth highest mountain in the world. In 1964, he was the first to ascend Mount Huntington in the Alaska Range. Terray died in a rock-climbing accident in the Vercors, south of Grenoble, on this date in 1965.  Impermanence is swift.

On that same day in 1965 that Terray fell to his death, Sunita Williams was born in Euclid, Ohio.  She graduated from Needham High School in Massachusetts, received a Bachelor degree in physical science from the United States Naval Academy, and a Master degree in engineering management from Florida Institute of Technology.  In June 1998, Williams was selected by NASA for the astronaut program.  She was a member of Expeditions 14 and 15 on the International Space Station, and served as a flight engineer on Expedition 32 and then commander of Expedition 33. She held the records for most spacewalks by a woman (seven) and most spacewalk time for a woman (50 hours, 40 minutes).  Today, the 56th anniversary of Terray's death, is Williams' 56th birthday.

This is the day to be mindful of our universal self, for with it, reflection of all things is pure.

We're well into hurricane season now and I'm watching the horizon for any new storms.  The remnants of Tropical Storm Odetta are a couple hundred miles south of Newfoundland and not likely to be heard from again.   One of the two systems that had been forming in the Atlantic is now a tropical storm and has been named "Peter."  Tropical Storm Peter is expected to pass north of the Lesser Antilles later this week and then hook north toward Bermuda.  The other storm, a tropical depression for now referred to only as "Seventeen," is likely to become a tropical storm but seems to be heading from the east coast of Africa toward the northern mid-Atlantic.  If it stays on that trajectory, it shouldn't make landfall on North America.  As it's hurricane season, a fourth system is brewing just off the coast of Guinea-Bissau and currently has less than a 40% chance of becoming a hurricane.

I'm also keeping an eye on the Buckhead secession movement.  I got a flyer in the mail yesterday from the Buckhead City Committee, one whole page of which was full of scary headlines and statistics about crime in Buckhead. Another page claimed that a Buckhead City would have four times the number of cops of the street.  The flyer touts a recent "Feasibility Study" commissioned by the Committee that claims that not only would a Buckhead City be safer and fiscally viable, but wouldn't have any negative impact on the City of Atlanta.  

An independent analysis performed by KB Advisory Group concluded that if Buckhead were to secede from the City of Atlanta, both entities, as well as Atlanta Public School system, would stand to lose financially, economically, and socially.  Specifically, the analysis found  that the City of Atlanta would lose approximately $252 million in revenue from the Buckhead area derived mainly from property taxes, sales taxes, lodging taxes, and business license fees. 

The Buckhead City Committee claims the secession of Buckhead would leave Atlanta with the responsibility of 20% fewer residents, and that any loss in revenue would "be offset by the reduction of responsibility for police, roads, and parks." However, the financial analysis by KB Advisory Group found that despite the cost savings, the City of Atlanta would suffer net fiscal losses ranging from $80 million to $116 million annually.  In addition, issues regarding service of current debt and future debt, economic development disunity, and reduced community services are all likely to be significant difficulties for both the City of Atlanta and the Buckhead area if secession were to move forward. 

I'm hearing more and more people questioning the feasibility of the proposed separate city, but that may be due simply to the left-leaning feedback loop of my media bubble.  Others may be hearing the opposite.  I'm still looking for corroborating data on line (without luck so far), but the local news broadcast on Atlanta's CBS affiliate, WSB, this afternoon reported that a recent poll showed only 29% of the responders in favor of a Buckhead secession.  The big question is if that 29% were from the overall City of Atlanta, or from just Buckhead residents.

Clear Thoughts

The story of life is quicker than the wink of an eye. - from Jimi Hendrix's final poem, The Story of Life (September 17, 1970)

It's the 18th day of September, 2021.  It's the 261st day of the year and 104 days remain until the end of the year.  Today is the day for clear thought, which eliminates the poisons of greed, anger, and delusion.

On this day in 1970, guitarist Jimi Hendrix died.  Details of his last day on Earth are unclear and widely disputed, but an ambulance was called to a London apartment at 11:18 a.m. that morning. When they arrived, they found Hendrix alone in bed, covered in his own vomit.  At 12:45 p.m., Hendrix was pronounced dead at the hospital.  He was 27 years old. Impermanence is swifter than the wink of an eye.

I was 16. I remember where I was when I learned of Kennedy's assassination in 1963 and where I was when I heard about John Lennon in 1980.  I also remember where I was when I heard about Hendrix - my Mom told me she that had heard it on the radio as she was picking me up from a friend's house.

The sun rose at 7:23 a.m. this morning (same time as yesterday) and will set at 7:39 p.m. this evening (a minute earlier than yesterday).  The moon is nearly full (94.5%  illuminated) and will rise at 6:50 p.m. tonight.  It will set at 5:50 a.m. tomorrow morning.  

They finally gave that storm out in the Atlantic a name - Odette.  It's now reached the latitude of Washington, D.C. and is heading out to sea.   It won't make landfall anywhere in North America, but two other storms are sneaking across the Atlantic toward the Caribbean and may be heard from before they're done.

The delta wave of covid infections has definitely peaked in Georgia.  Yesterday, the average number of new covid cases per day (5,730) is down 38% from the peak on August 31 (9,244 new cases per day).  With some more vaccinations (Georgia is only 44% vaccinated) and a little more indoor mask use, we might be able to finally beat this thing.

Fewer than 500 people, many of them journalists, rallied in Washington today for “Justice for J6” (the failed January 6th insurrection attempt).  Counter-protesters reportedly mixed freely with the crowd. Given all the paranoia and security measures surrounding this event, it turned out to be much ado about relatively nothing.

Today, I'll be watching SEC football. The No. 2-ranked Georgia Bulldogs host unranked South Carolina tonight, and later this afternoon, No. 1-ranked Alabama plays No. 11 Florida in Tallahassee.  If Florida can pull off an upset win over Alabama, and Georgia beats South Carolina, Georgia will be the No.1-ranked team in the country.

Trikaya

Today is Friday (TGIF), September 17th, the 260th day of the year 2021.  105 days remain until the end of the year. Today is the day of honest speech, and with it, the elimination of lying, silencing of dissent, abusive language, and two-faced speaking. 

It's Reinhold Messner's birthday.  Messner is an Italian mountaineer and explorer and in my opinion, the  greatest  mountain climber of our time, probably of all time.  In 1978, along with climber Peter Habeler, Messner made the first ascent of Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen.  Two years later, he made the first solo ascent of Everest without supplemental oxygen, a feat he accomplished during the challenging monsoon season.  He was the first climber to ascend all fourteen peaks over 8,000 meters (26,000 feet) above sea level. He has a long list of "first ascents" and of difficult "first routes." Messner was the first to cross Antarctica and Greenland with neither snowmobiles nor dog sleds. In 2004, he crossed the Gobi Desert alone.  It's almost impossible to compile even a short list of mountaineering firsts without mentioning Messner's name at least once, if not several times.  Happy 77th, Reinhold!

It's a dreary, overcast day in Atlanta, but they tell me the sun rose at 7:23 a.m. somewhere behind all those clouds.  It will set at 7:40 p.m. this evening.  After sunset, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn would be visible in the night sky but for the clouds, and Neptune would be visible with binoculars or a telescope.  The waxing gibbous moon is 88% full and will rise at 6:13 p.m. and set at 4:45 a.m.  

Hurricane watch: the remnants of Nicholas are still lingering over the rain besodden Louisiana bayou. The disturbance out in the Atlantic has already moved north to the approximate latitude of Virginia, and appears very unlikely to impact anything south of New York City, if it even makes landfall at all.  Meanwhile, two other storms, both with the potential of becoming hurricanes, are currently crossing the Atlantic from Equatorial Africa, so we need to keep an eye on them.  For now.

I've started reading Cixin Liu's trilogy, The Three Body Problem.  I'm not far enough in yet to know what the "problem" is, but there is a three-body doctrine in Buddhism.

As I understand (or misunderstand) it, early Buddhist teaching, and current Theravadin Buddhist dogma, holds that a Buddha, and only a Buddha, has three "bodies." The three bodies, or trikaya, include the physical form, the dharmakaya, this sack of skin in which we go through life.  But since everything is intimately interconnected with everything else ("everything is everything"), the whole universe is our second body, the sambhogakaya.  Finally, a Buddha has a third body, the so-called "reward body," known as the nirmanakaya.  As only a Buddha can attain the nirmanakaya, only a Buddha can know what it is.

Sometime around the 2nd or 3rd Century A.D., Buddhism went through a transformation and the Mahayana school emerged. I won't go through the differences between Mahayana and Theravadin Buddhism now, but the Mahayanans taught that everybody, not just Buddhas, have the three-body trikaya. In addition to the corporeal dharamakaya and universal sambhogakaya, we can realize the reward body, the nirmanakaya, upon understanding the simultaneous existence of the two other bodies. When we realize that our bodies and our mind are one with the universe, but we experience it from the limited perspective of our individual form, we attain the nirmanakaya.

Zen Buddhism takes it one step further.  In everyday, mundane life, we occupy the physical dharmakaya, this meat skeleton we consider our "body."  But in meditation, when thought and mind drop away, we experience oneness with the universe, and attain the sambhogakaya.  The nirmanakaya is achieved when we emerge from meditation with an understanding of these dual existences - nirmanakaya is dharmakaya and sambhogakaya merged as one.  I'm told that Matsuoka Roshi, my teacher's teacher (whom I've never met), explained nirmanakaya wordlessly by crossing his middle finger over his index finger, merging two separate "bodies" (fingers) into one.

For the record, I've really only studied Zen Buddhism, so apologies if I've made errors in the Theravadin and Mahayana interpretation of the three-body problem.

Fir the record, I sincerely doubt that the "problem" in The Three-Body Problem trilogy has anything to do at all with the trikaya.

Atlanta

As of today, there are 106 days remaining to 2021.  Today is the day of right conduct, and with right conduct, the behavior of body, speech, and mind are pure.

One year ago today, Nick Mourouzis, head football coach at DePauw University in Indiana (1981-2003), died from the covids.  Mourouzis was recruited as a college player by Ara Parseghian to Miami, Ohio, where he was the starting quarterback from 1956 to 1958.

Here are some more pictures of the lovely City of Atlanta, harvested from my social media feeds. All credit goes to the original photographers, but unfortunately I've lost their names for attribution. The second photo below is of the "crime-infested" and "under-policed" Buckhead business district; Stone Mountain can be seen on the horizon in the background.

The Ides of September Have Passed, My Love

Today is the 15th day of September, 2021.  It's hard to believe that the month is already half over.  I was thinking today was the "ides of September," but when I looked up just what word "ides" meant, I learned it was "the 15th day of March, May, July, or October, or the 13th day of any other month in the ancient Roman calendar." So the "ides of September" passed two days ago and I didn't even notice it. Happy belated ides.  

It is the 258th day of 2021.  There are 107 days remaining in the year and today is the day of delight; with it, the mind is peaceful and tranquil.

The Georgia sun rose at 7:21 a.m. this morning and will set at 7:43 p.m. this evening for 12 hours and 22 minutes of daylight.  The waxing gibbous moon is 68% full and rose in the afternoon sky at 4:39 p.m. and will set at 2:33 a.m. early tomorrow morning.

The Austrian composer Anton Webern is known for extending the twelve-tone system previously made famous by Arnold Schoenberg. Breaking with tonality and creating serial composition, his innovations led to what is known as total serialism.  From 1908 to 1925, he wrote only freely atonal music and after that, he only used Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique in every composition.  Often described as an uncompromising idealist, he spent most of his career unrecognized as a musician. He was blacklisted and branded by the Nazis during World War II as a degenerate artist and stripped of all his conducting posts. His only son died as a result of the war, so he and his remaining family fled to safety near Salzburg.

After a cheerful family dinner on this day (September 15) in 1945, Webern was enjoying a cigar in the cool air on the steps of his refuge. The family dinner and cigar were a rare treat after the previous years in Nazi-occupied, war-torn Vienna, and the cigar was a gift from his son-in-law, Benno Mattel, who led a thriving black-market operation. As Webern stepped outside to avoid the cigar smoke from disturbing his grandchildren, Mattel received two Americans inside to complete some pre-arranged business. Three drinks later, the visitors drew revolvers. They were not black-market business colleagues at all but U.S. soldiers on a mission to expose Mattel’s operation. Mattel was immediately placed under arrest. At some point, one of the Americans, a company cook from North Carolina, rushed out of the house and passed Webern on the steps. Inexplicably, he fired three shots, hitting the composer.  Webern stumbled inside shouting for help and was laid down on a mattress by his wife and his daughter. He quietly murmured "It is over," and by the time medical help arrived, he was dead, aged 61. Impermanence is swift.

On the same day in 1945 that Webern died, across the Atlantic, operatic soprano Jessye Norman was born in Augusta, Georgia.  Norman was a commanding presence on operatic, concert and recital stages. The New York Times described her voice as a "grand mansion of sound", containing "enormous dimensions, reaching backward and upward. It opens onto unexpected vistas. It contains sunlit rooms, narrow passageways, cavernous halls."  She sang leading roles with the Metropolitan Opera, and at the second inauguration of both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.  She sang at Queen Elizabeth II's 60th birthday celebration in 1986 and at the 1996 Summer Olympics opening ceremony here in Atlanta.  She won five Grammy Awards and a Lifetime Achievement Award.  She won a National Medal of Arts and was named a member of the British Royal Academy of Music. In 1990, UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar named her an Honorary Ambassador to the United Nations. I would have led this by saying that today was her birthday, but sadly she passed away in 2019.  Impermanence is swift.

The Georgia sky must have been ominous and foreboding on the day that Norman was born in Augusta, because on that same September 15, 1945 that Anton Webern died, the Homestead hurricane made landfall in Florida (back then, hurricanes weren't given person names like they are today).  The hardest hit area was Miami-Dade County. Most of the city of Homestead was destroyed, while a fire ignited during the storm burned down three hangars at the Richmond Naval Air Station . The Homestead Army Air Corps Base, to the east of Homestead, was completely destroyed as winds of up to 145 miles per hour tore through the buildings. A force of 400 German prisoners of war and 200 Bahamian laborers participated in the cleanup process.

In the here and now of 2021, Tropical Depression Nicholas has petered out over the State of Louisiana and shows no apparent interest in crossing Mississippi and Alabama to get to Atlanta.  It will bring still more rain to already besodden New Orleans, but we here in Atlanta will be spared the bulk of the rainfall. 

There is another disturbance located northeast of the Bahamas that has about a 50-50 chance of developing into a hurricane but if it does, I wouldn't expect it to make landfall on the U.S. given its northerly latitude.

I may have called the peak of the delta wave of the covid pandemic too soon, but there's a lot of noise in the signal.  There was certainly a drop in the number of new covid cases after August 31, with a sharp but short-lived downward spike over the Labor Day weekend, probably due to underreporting of cases during the holiday.  The downward trend continued after the Labor Day weekend but was interrupted by a sharp but short-lived upward spike, almost a reverse mirror image of the holiday downward spike.  The upward spike may represent an accounting for all the cases missed over the holiday weekend.  Following the upward spike, case numbers started dropping again, and the seven-day average number of new cases yesterday (6,691), although still way too high, is lower than it's been since August 16. 

The national trend is similar to that of Georgia, including an apparent late-August peak and two opposing spikes in new case numbers.  As of today, Tennessee leads the country in recent cases per capita but even there, the rate of increase in new cases has started to slow.  I'm banking on the trend's continued decline, and today I gambled and went ahead and bought a 3-day pass to the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville next March.

Let's see, what else is new?  My Amazon order arrived today - I purchased the sci-fi trilogy The Three-Body Problem (The Three Body Problem, The Dark Forest, and Death's End) by Cixin Liu.  I haven't started reading yet, but at nearly 1,300 pages, I have my work cut out for me.