Saturday, January 2, 2021
Well, 2020 has come to an end, and many are no doubt celebrating. Not me. I'm happy to have time on this earth no matter what, pretty much, so you won't find me wishing for a year to be over prematurely.
I wonder what would have happened if, one year ago, we had all been told ahead of time about what 2020 would be like. How would we have responded? I think a lot of us would have freaked out, myself included. But once you're actually in the middle of a situation, you find ways of managing.
The president, who wore a black coat over a white shirt with a red tie, added that many medical workers would be "on duty this festive night" and called on everyone else "not to retreat in the face of difficulties, to preserve our unity."
The longtime Russian leader said in his 17th New Year's address he was convinced that together Russians could "overcome everything" and "restore normal life."
In Moscow, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in Russia, 25,000 people have been vaccinated at the beginning of the week out of the mayor's eventual target of 6 to 7 million. Right now anybody in Moscow can get vaccinated who's aged 18 to 60, without chronic illnesses and working in a wide range of professions from health care and education to retail and manufacturing. The list includes people who work in Moscow's renowned cultural institutions. But that doesn't impress actor Yevgeny Stavinsky (ph), who's rushing, coffee in hand, to his theater.
What could go wrong?
YEVGENY STAVINSKY: (Speaking Russian).
KIM: The 45-year-old says he doesn't know anything about Sputnik V and that he doesn't plan to get it even though his employer offered to vaccinate him for free.
STAVINSKY: (Speaking Russian).
KIM: Stavinsky says he knows a lot of people who got sick and even died. And he suspects he was down with COVID for a few days, though he never tested positive for it. If the coronavirus has come to stay, he says, then what's the point in being scared?
- Widow of Turkish diplomat files suit, claims husband died of Covid in Turkmenistan. Officially in Turkmenistan there is no Covid.
- Meanwhile, Turkmen president suggests licorice might be the answer.
- Nevertheless, measures are clearly being taken in Turkmenistan with Covid in mind. More here on the mood in Turkmenistan.
Over 260 suspects were detained across Turkey in a crackdown to avert possible terrorattacks on New Year’s Eve, the Interior Ministry said on Jan. 2.
A statement said 267 individuals suspected of “supporting terrorist organizations abusing religion” were held in operations in 33 provinces between Dec. 20 and Dec. 31.
The suspects include 106 Turkish citizens and 161 foreign nationals, according to the ministry.
- I wasn't one of the historians consulted in the panel discussion on whether or not 2020 was the worst year ever, but I will say this: it depends. In every major event, there are winners and losers, and this year has been no different. For all the early talk about how the virus was an "equal-opportunity destroyer," we know now that this isn't the case. People with money ended up with even more this year. Those without it had their lives blown apart.
- I wonder how many lives would have been saved if the Senate had just done its job and convicted DJT in the first week of February during his impeachment trial.
- I hope 2021 will be better, I'm sure we all do. Part of me wonders, however, if the pandemic will be but the first of a series of crises. Once the immediacy of the health crisis has passed, will another shoe drop in the form of an even more wide-ranging economic crisis, or an international one?
- 2020 has exposed the inadequacies of many of our leaders--and not just the ones in Washington. I think back to the end of WWI: once everyone was able to finally lift their heads up from the shit-storm that had been raining down on them, they turned on those who had claimed to be leaders.
- No travel for me in 2020--for the first time since 1982, I didn't cross an international border. Might not cross one this year, either.
- In the last nine months, I've had one meal that I didn't prepare with my own hands.
- From mid-March until baseball came back in late July, the only sports I watched was the lady who lives across the courtyard from me playing badminton with her son.
- Last semester I taught a new class called "Memoir & Biography in History." It's basically an opportunity for me to teach books that I love relating to individuals in the parts of the world I work on. Several of the books we read related to countries--like the USSR or Yugoslavia--which no longer exist. The people whose life stories we were reading had all been obliged, at some point, to start over. An important lesson from these works is that nothing lasts forever.
- But something else that these life stories tell us is that people can and do find ways of surviving conditions that are much more difficult than anything that most of us are experiencing right now. This too will pass and soon enough, inşallah.
- From the Bozeman rapports policiers: domestic ducks follow wild mallard.
- An officer “did some cowboying” and returned horses to a fenced area.
- In an apparently unrelated incident, someone shot at elk toward a caller's house.
- Bozeman rapports policiers: horses were loose.
- A loose dog ran when a man tried grabbing it.
- A caller wanted to talk to an officer about a voicemail from a person who claimed he was attacked by a bear in California.
- Moose in snow: spotted, filmed, and shared.
- Man scares bear with creepy clown.
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