While President Donald Trump did nothing to halt the coronavirus pandemic, we are ever so grateful that you, Mr. President-elect stepped up to give us a vaccine to fight Covid-19.

In no time at all, you’ve made up for Trump’s dithering response to the highly infectious disease. Mr. President-elect, we know for sure that you’ll get companies to discover and manufacture the vaccine. You’ll put in place a distribution system to ensure that everyone will have access to the vaccine.

Just like you kick started the campaign to secure enough hospital beds, testing kits, ventilators, masks, therapeutics and more to fight Covid-19.

And you’ll get all of this done on the first day of your administration. Bravo! You da man!

This is so, because we know that Trump did nothing, absolutely nothing, to get these things done. You’ve already established a Covid-19 task force that’ll make up for lost time and before we know it, Covid-19 will be driven from our midst. That should take, oh, 30 days at the most.

Unlike the Trump administration that offered no hope, no encouragement, just doom and gloom, the Biden team will turn the tables and, for once, we’ll get a positive outlook for the eradication of the disease. Now that you’ve won the election, the sun has risen, hope is alive and dark clouds have vanished.

The Biden administration will create a first-of-its-kind public-private partnership that will in record time create a safe vaccine. Biden’s team cleared away all those bureaucratic regulations that would have delayed the creation of a useable vaccine for years. And to make it safe, Biden will micromanage the effort from the White House, and, of course follow the science at every turn. I know, your supporters said that whatever vaccine that Trump came up with would be suspicious or unsafe. But because you’re involved now, the vaccine will be safe and anyone who says it isn’t is anti-science.

We all know that Trump hasn’t followed the science, because we can see that the death rate hasn’t  gone down and useful therapeutics haven’t been developed. And we’ll be ready for any increase in hospitalizations by bringing in the Army Corps of Engineers to build temporary ICUs and the Navy to deploy its hospital ships to the hardest hit regions. Stuff that Trump didn’t do.

Obviously, lockdowns will be necessary. People must stay home. No one over for Thanksgiving or Christmas. No restaurants or stores open. Small businesses–the biggest source of the pandemic–must permanently shut down. Children and parents will have to adapt to remote learning for, well, until there’s no trace of the disease anywhere in the galaxy. That’s because, as science tells us, children are the most likely to catch and transmit the disease. We know, too, if Trump had imposed a lockdown when the virus was first detected coming from God know where, there’d be no pandemic and a quarter million people would not have died on Trump’s watch.

See, Trump needs to be blamed for all the bad stuff that happened while not getting any credit for anything good that just happened, by coincidence, on his watch.

God bless you, Joe Biden, for getting all that good stuff done without even stepping out of your basement hide-away. If the media had wasted your time by asking any serious questions about how you would do better, you would not have had time to save us.

Happy days are here again.

For those who never heard of Warp Speed or believe it has nothing to do with anything, here’s a link to the Trump administration’s timeline. 

For those who swallow whole the Biden criticism that “Trump has no plan!” below is a 60-minutes segment on the Trump administration’s plans for distributing the vaccine. 

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Since the beginning of American history women of color have been strong leaders. Many enslaved Africans would not have made it to freedom if a Black woman had not led them.  White women would not have had the right to vote if Black women did not march with them. Today America would not have a Vice President-Elect who is a woman of color if Shirley Chisholm or Barbara Jordan had stood up and cracked that ceiling.

The one thing women of color have not done is pass that message of power to our young ladies so that there are a continuous understanding and respect of our strength and differences as a whole.

There is a new site called Women with A Message, https://www.udiscovermusic.com/UrbanLegends/ that bridges the generations through music, conversations, and ideas.  It was created as a platform every month to advance black and urban music.

  When I first visited the site, I was blown away by how everything blended so well.  The playlist has everything from Nina Simone to City Girls and artists in between.  Some of the artists I don’t have a clue who they are but it gave me a chance to listen to them and their message, which is basically the same as my generation only with different words and tones.

 Right after the Presidential election I spoke with Katina Bynum the Executive VP of East Coast Labels, Urban for Universal Music Enterprises, and one of the creators of the theme and messaging of Women with a Message. I asked how she came up with the concept.

“We thought about Kamala and how important she is she’d been nominated, she being the first woman of color to be nominated for VP and we were thinking about other strong women in different fields and what they had to say. What is their message, how do they see the world now? We just didn’t want to be specific to music, we wanted to branch out. So, myself and my team which I’m so happy about how supportive they are and the work that they do. They went out and they found women that play athletics.

They also found activists and women that all have leading roles in the record industry which I thought would be really great to get ideas and so forth and look at the world through these women’s eyes and how aggressive they’re being and how supportive they’re being of each other.”

In visiting the site, I found myself opening and really listening to the opinions of the “younger generation.”  You know the ones we baby boomers feel do not understand what we went through during the civil rights movement and beyond.

“I think that it’s a way to mix it up to introduce some of the young folk to older artists and what they had to say and also some of the older listeners to hear what the young people are talking about. So, I think it’s a really great mix to make people appreciate the different age groups, the different times of music, and what people were saying.”

As I said earlier, Women with a Message is a bridge that can bring generations of women together.

Until next time, keep your EYE to the sky!

Katina Bynum – photo credit Meredith Truax

First of all, yes. I have conservative friends, despite my left-leaning beliefs. And it’s not like “some of my best friends are conservatives” friends. I’m talking about real friends. We talk about certain things, and agree on some of them. Or we agree on some parts of some of them.

But certain other things are generally avoided, so we can continue to find common ground on some issues. And so our discussions will continue to be “Machlochet L’Shem Shamayim“.  Literally “Arguments for the sake of heaven,” the phrase is understood to refer to constructive arguments, with more emphasis on understanding and reaching common goals and less emphasis on “winning”, whatever that might mean.

Two weeks after the end of voting in the 2020 General Election, I’ve been reluctant to ask a question of my conservative friends. It’s not clear to me if this is one of the issues we can discuss without devolving into a battle of egos. Or worse, a battle of realities.

Maybe if I do it in this sort-of-public way, we can still see the best in each other and continue to have constructive arguments. So …

Is Joe Biden the Presidential-Elect?

Was the election free and fair?

If I get an answer, I’ll know.

If there’s no answer, it will just be one of those things we won’t discuss. And you’ll still be my friend.

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As Thanksgiving began to mentioned in the broadcast and print media, I immediately started hearing complaints about how it will be a different holiday this year: relatives can’t come, or we can’t go to them; we won’t be able to eat together; we may not be able to get the usual treats to eat. It just won’t be the same!

It’s all because of The Virus, as I tend to write it in my diary and letters. If you can say that The Virus and its disease, COVID-19, have not yet cost the life of a friend or family member, count that as a blessing.

If there is any chance that you’ll see your usual Thanksgiving companions again, please count that as one of your blessings. Consider those of us who remember Thanksgiving Days — and so many other days — with people we cannot meet again in this life.

Missing someone temporarily is just practicing, folks.

But there’s not as much to do! There aren’t as many miles to drive or fly! What can we do with a Thanksgiving like this?

I started thinking of what I will do for Thanksgiving and realized that I want some guidance on how to give thanks this year. I got out one of my copies of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations — I’ve been getting accustomed to a 1980 copy passed along by a fellow blogger, but I haven’t abandoned my 1956 copy. I sat down and looked for some quotations about thanks, and I found enough for a series of posts.

The one I’d like to mention here is a bit of a paradox —  not just because it seems to be by both the ever-prolific Anonymous and William Wordsworth.

‘”Rest and be thankful.”

Bartlett’s says that’s from an Anonymous inscription on a stone seat in the Highlands of Scotland, but also the title of one of William Wordsworth’s poems.

So there’s nothing to do? Be thankful. You get a chance to rest. Be thankful for it.

You have happy memories? Be thankful for them. You get a chance to do something in your home? Be thankful for your home.

Rest and be thankful. This year and always, it’s good advice.

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