In order to get back to normal, we need an actual plan. A plan starts with the following steps:

1: Figure out where you want to get to; the goal.
2: Figure out how you can get there.

I have a clear view of every ship lining up to dock in the L.A. Harbor to my right, and the Naval munitions dock at Anaheim Bay to my left. But I know almost nothing about them.

We’re in lockdown starting Friday at 5 PM, but as far as I was concerned it started today. Wife has an essential-person deferment; so do I. No plans to use it but it’s nice if it’s there. When Wife held up her document stating she could move about freely, it was like a Letter of Transit. I’ll hide it in the piano.

The sun came out and the temps soared. I stood on the porch at the top of the hill and watched all the dog-walkers and moms with strollers. Made a point of waving if they looked up. When I’m walking the dog and I see people coming up the sidewalk, I move to the street, but I wave, and smile. For a few weeks we weren’t looking at each other. Now we need to wave, and smile.

Let’s posit that a Clockmaker G-d created the entire natural world, wound it up, and let it go. By itself, though, Planet Earth is pretty predictable and cyclical – even repetitive. Since the Clockmaker built the world, nothing comes as a surprise; it ends up being pretty boring.

So G-d creates change agents, independent creatures infused with a divine spirit. These agents (we’ll call ourselves “people”) come from G-d and are potentially very powerful, indeed. Alas, we barely scratch the surface of our potential.

Isolation hasn’t been too bad down here. Monroe County, FL, is (last time I checked) still in the low single digits for COVID-19 victims. A couple of the cases can be directly attributed to people from up north who decided to escape their domiciles in high-risk areas and fled to the Keys already infected. Awesome. Thanks.

On Friday, 27 March, Monroe County is establishing a no-entry rule. If you don’t live or work down here, you’ll be turned around. If you work down here but don’t live here, you’ll have to undergo a nominal screening and then be allowed to pass. It’s not, I assess, to overly protect from infection, although I’m sure that’s part of it. We have been blessedly light in that regard. Instead, it’s the people from the greater Miami area coming down here to load up on supplies after their Miami environs have been sucked dry. On a daily basis, the toilet paper preppers, the red meat ransackers, and the fresh produce pillagers descend upon us like locusts and strip the grocery stores bare. Long-suffering smiles of welcome are wearing a bit thin.

I don’t agree with everything that Kevin Williamson has to say but a recent article of his contained a few sentences that should be required reading for those who “just can’t get past” Trump’s volatile personality. And, it’s a reminder for all of us that, even though the poster child for senility has taken the lead in the Democratic race, it’s still the party of AOC and Bernie.

When James Carville warns about driving away blue-collar and rural voters, Democrats in Brooklyn hear that Southern accent and quietly whisper, “Good riddance.” The Democrats are in the mood for culture war, not for coalition-building and reconciliation. They do not wish to win with moderation and compromise, because they do not wish to govern with moderation and compromise.

Everyone knows community colleges are cheaper than just about any other option. But I’ve found that going to community college gave me some advantages now that I’m finishing my degree at a university.

1. Small Class Sizes/Lecture Hall Avoidance
Yup, this is something of a cliche, since just about every college pamphlet I’ve seen advertises a low student-to-faculty ratio, or something like that. But often, introductory classes at larger universities meet in lecture halls, with as many as a few hundred students in the room. Regardless of how many students there are per faculty member, larger schools often need to be efficient this way, especially in 100 and 200 level courses where the material is less in-depth. Meanwhile, I don’t think I ever had a class at my community college with more than 50 students, and usually that was closer to 30. The teachers almost always knew my name, and if I had a question, I could walk up to them after class and ask, rather than having to make an appointment, send an email, or visit office hours.
By the time you get to the university, you will have finished most classes that would normally take place in lecture halls at community college, and move on to the upper-level courses that usually have small class sizes. Going to community college allowed me to almost completely bypass lecture halls.

I could disable retweets on Twitter, but it’s helpful to see who retweets what, so they can be cast into the silence of the Muted Realm. Someone liked this: