Massive Mask-less Wedding

Posted on by Thor

An ordinance in New York allows gatherings of up to 50 people. In defiance of that ordinance, thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews packed into Yetev Lev D’Satmar synagogue in Brooklyn for a secret wedding. The building has a maximum capacity of 7,000 people and this event was packed shouder to shoulder with standing room only in the aisles.

Authorities learned about the secret wedding over the weekend and fined its organizers $15,000. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo condemned the event on Sunday as a “blatant disregard of the law” and called it “disrespectful to the people of New York.” Officials have issued strict limits on public gatherings in New York City’s boroughs and across the rest of the state. However, large parties have been cropping up on a near-daily basis, according to the New York City Sheriff’s Office.

A much smaller wedding in Maine had 55 guests. Guests reportedly did not wear masks, nor observe physical distancing rules. That wedding resulted in half the guests contracting COVID-19 with that then spreading to 177 people and killing 7. One guest who became sick visited a parent who worked at a retirement home. That resulted in an outbreak of 38 cases among staff and residents at the long-term care facility, over 100 miles away from the wedding. Six residents died at that facility.

In NYC the club scene went underground after the start of the pandemic. Those in the know can find crowded gatherings at warehouses, lofts, basements, boats, parks and rooftops. It is like the return of the prohibition ere only today people want to get drunk and deathly sick. Over Halloween weekend two parties were shit down by police, one with 400 people in Brooklyn and the other with 550 in the Bronx. Event organizers fail to understand or simply ignore the dangers of large indoor gatherings. Two bit event organizers see this as an opportunity to profit off the pandemic.

Beach Day

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The day before Thanksgiving, Pam and I decided we wanted to get away for a beach day with the dogs. Pam researched and found  a beach near Melbourne that allows dogs. The drive to the beach as fairly uneventful though Donkey kept blocking my view out the back window.

The beach had its own parking lot long with a bathroom and the lot was almost full with just a few parking spots left. Rather than carry the umbrella and towels out we decided to walk out to the beach with the dogs thinking we might have to turn around if it was too crowded.

We both wore masks the entire time and discovered that no one else on the beach wore masks. The beach was crowded but we decided to try and find an isolated spot. My comfort level included at least 30 feet of space or 5 times my height removed from others. That amount of space was hard to find. A sign staked out the limits for the dog beach and all said, maybe 100 yards were allowed for dogs. It was also high tide which meant people and dogs were crushed together. More than half the people on the beach also didn’t have dogs which was frustrating because they could spread out to the vast stretched of beach that were deserted on either side of this crowded mess.

The breeze was coming off the ocean so my other thought is that we should find a spot with no one camped out directly in front of us. We found one spot back by the dunes that was properly isolated. As I held the dogs, Pam started setting up the umbrella. As she was doing that a woman with her dog plopped down a few feet directly in front of us. Pam picked up stakes and we moved about 30 feet south to another spot.

We relaxed for a bit and then took the dogs out to the surf on their leashes. Our masks stayed on, we were no going to swim ourselves, we just let the dogs pay in the surf. Sprout was caught off guard by one wave, but swam back to shore like a pro. Donkey, a puppy, had never been to the beach and she had a blast. We played out in the surf twice. One lady lost her flip flop in the surf and we recovered it for her. On the way back to our umbrella that same lady lost her French Bull Dog and we had to catch it. All three dogs on leashed got tangled up. It would have been funny otherwise, but this lady was not wearing her mask. I worked hard to pull back from the chaos as dogs barked and tugged in all directions. When we got back to the umbrella two college girls had plopped down a few feet from us. We decided to call it a day rather than constantly having to pick up and move. The congested strip of beach kept getting more crowded.

We actually did spot one other responsible dog owner who wore a mask as she walked her pup. Several mask less children flew kites.

Financial Advisor

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I went to a presentation by  a Raymond James financial advisor at a local library in the four years between my separation and finally getting a divorce. His presentation was about gaining control of finances during the divorce.

I asked him to sit in on the final mediation since my lawyer was not offering much advice. In that mediation he cut through the numbers and boiled it down to simple straight forward facts.

After all was said and done, he now helps me in keeping track of those finances through these rough times.

Since the divorce work, keeps coming into my studio despite the pandemic. In the four years of waiting for the divorce to finalize, I learned how to hunker down to keep expenses low. Now that the pandemic has kicked in that war mentality of hunkering down continues.

Rockefeller

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Every year a large Christmas tree is cut down in Upstate New York and trucked down to Rockefeller Center to be installed behind the ice rink. This year, a 75-foot Norway spruce from was felled in Oneonta, in upstate New York and it made the 170 mile trip down to NYC.

A tiny owl was rescued from the branches of the tree in NYC, by a worker who helped transport and secure the tree and his wife called the Ravensbeard Wildlife Center.

At the Center the tiny adult Saw-whet owl owl  was  swaddled in a wool blanket and named Rockefeller or Rocky for short.

When the owl was found, she hadn’t eaten or drunk in three days, but began to recover after getting fluids and food.

The center said a return trip to Oneonta would likely be too traumatic to the bird, so it planned to release it on facility grounds in the upstate town of Saugerties.

Rocky was released Monday November 23, 2020 at dusk by avian veterinarians and owl experts. “Rocky’s release was a success!” the center said in a Facebook post on Tuesday. “She is a tough little bird and we’re happy to see her back in her natural habitat.”

 

Rudy’s Meltdown

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Rudy Giuliani held a press conference on Thursday November 18, 2020 in which he literally melted down. He was attempting to pith the conspiracy theory of wide spread voter fraud and in the process suffered a strange hair dye or mascara malfunction. As he spoke dye began running down his cheeks from his side burns as he sweated profusely. He blew his nose in a hanky from his breast pocket, folded it snot side out and began wiping his face.

He cited the 1980s movie My Cousin Vinny to reference the notion that pole inspectors were not close enough to see the votes being counted. He held up two fingers as the lawyer did in the movie when the witness with bad eyesight guessed wrong. All of the strange conspiracy theories aren’t with mentioning since they are not based in fact. Trump’s lawyers talk of “Fraud” outside the courtroom but inside the courtroom they stress that there is no fraud. Judges keep dismissing cases as baseless since no evidence is presented.

Even more outlandish than Rudy’s lies, Sidney Powell claimed that Georgia’s voting system software was part of a conspiracy involving former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez who died back in 2013. She vowed that her conspiracy theories would “blow up” Georgia with a “biblical” lawsuit. This was even a step too far for Trump, his legal team, Giuliani and, Jenna Ellis  put out a statement Sunday November 22, 2020 that said, “Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own. She is not a member of the Trump legal team. She is also not a lawyer for the president in his personal capacity.” Trump himself tweeted last week that Powell was part of a team of “wonderful lawyers and representatives” spearheaded by Giuliani. What a national embarrassment. President Donald Trump is worried his campaign’s legal team, led by his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, is composed of “fools that are making him look bad,” NBC News reported. For once Trump is waking up to reality.

Trump has over 30 lawsuits on courts attempting to overthrow the election results. At least 25 have been denied, dismissed, settled or withdrawn. He won only two which allowed election inspectors to stand closer to the people counting votes. I would hate to be those counters having people breathing down your neck during a pandemic. No court has found even a single instance of fraud.

 

Cold Storage

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650 bodies remain in a disaster morgue in refrigerated trailers on the Brooklyn waterfront. In April 800 people were dying a day in NYC from COVID-19. Many of these bodies have been in cold storage since that time. This disaster morgue was set up for people whose families can’t be located or can’t afford a proper burial, officials said. Some of those families can’t be located because they died form COVID-19 as well.

At first mass burials were held at Hart Island for those who were not claimed by family. However Manhattan Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged that mass burials in temporary graves wouldn’t take place after footage of the mass burials taken by a drone were shown on social media.

NYC is slowly reducing the number of bodies in storage, with the number declining from 698 to 650 since mid-September, according to Dina Maniotis, the chief medical examiner’s office’s executive deputy commissioner.

In Texas, inmates are paid $2 an hour to move bodies to mobile morgues in freezer trucks. The sheriff’s office said the use of the inmates began on November 9 , 2020 on a volunteer basis. While prison labor is a common practice across the U.S., the reliance on inmates to handle the task of moving the corpses of COVID-19 victims is raising questions about the ethics of such work. El Paso County in Texas has about 34,000 active COVID-19 cases, with more than 1,100 people in hospitals, according to local health data. Since the pandemic began spreading widely in March, the county has recorded 769 deaths due to COVID-19. El Paso now has 10 mobile morgues. The National Guard was was then called in to to help move bodies.

With the present surge in COVID-19 cases, hospitals in the Midwest are reaching capacity and they are short on staff. More than 68,500 are hospitalized with Covid-19 across the country, more than at any other point during the pandemic, according to data from the COVID Tracking Project, which is run by journalists at The Atlantic. 19 percent of American hospitals are faced a staffing shortage. We should expect many more hospitalizations, and even worse staffing shortages, to come as the virus burns across the country largely unchecked.

Experts are advising people to stay at home for the Thanksgiving holiday to help slow the spread, but millions of Americans are ignoring the advice of public health experts and traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday. More than 1.04 million people went through airport security checkpoints Sunday November 22, 2020, the most since mid-March.

Pardon

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Don’t travel this Thanksgiving. The Omaha World Herald headline read, “See that Thanksgiving celebrations are restricted as much as possible so as to prevent another flare-up.” Health officials in many cities issued the same holiday warning: “Stay home and stay safe.” That headline ran November 28, 1918 during the Spanish Flu epidemic. 102 years later and we find ourselves in the same predicament.

In 1918 the Thorspecken family lived in Omaha and they survived the Spanish Flu. I have to imagine they were as shocked as I am at peoples stupidity and indifference to the public health threat. Despite the warnings in 1918, many churches held services on Thanksgiving. A big party was held for 150 soldiers returning from WWI at the First Methodist Church. After that festival, 500 soldiers were to be entertained in private homes. These were likely super spreader events at the time.  Back then people made the same mistakes being made today by ignoring basic health warnings, masks social distancing and washing hands. My father was born a few years after the flu epidemic subsided, a sign of hope for the future.

In 2020, more than 1 million COVID-19 cases were reported in the United States over the last 7 days.

As cases continue to increase rapidly across the United States, the safest way to celebrate Thanksgiving is to celebrate at home with the people you live with. Gatherings with family and friends who do not live with you can increase the chances of getting or spreading COVID-19 or the flu.

Celebrating virtually or with the people you live with is the safest choice this Thanksgiving. Zoom has cut off the 40 minute free time limit, so you can stay connected virtually with loved ones on Thanksgiving day.

An Iowa turkey will be traveling to the White House for a presidential pardon. Turkeys are not known to catch COVID-19 and the trip will literally save their lives so it is worth the risk. The turkey “pardoning” tradition seen today dates back to 1863 when President Abraham Lincoln reportedly first granted clemency to a turkey. The tradition formally began in 1989, under former President George H.W. Bush, and presidents have spared the lives of Thanksgiving birds since. Donald Trump is not one for honoring traditions, so I fear for the Turkey. Trump has been hunkered down in the white house refusing to accept reality. In the past, the pardon ceremony has been held in front of a crowd of spectators in the Rose Garden at the White House. I am sure Donald will want to make it another super spreader event.

Donald Trump Jr. Infected

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Donald Trump Jr. 42, tested positive for COVID-19 at the start of this week and has been quarantining at his hunting cabin since the result, a spokesman said.

Don Jr. is the second of the president’s children to test positive. Barron Trump, 14, was also diagnosed last month, but made a swift recovery.

Don Jr’s partner, Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Fox News host, tested positive for the disease in July, and also recovered. He apparently did not contract the infection at the time. Last month, Don Jr was criticized for downplaying the US COVID-19 death toll.

The virus has infected 11.8 million Americans and killed more than 253,000. On Friday November 20, 2020, 192,000 people in the US tested positive for COVID-19, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

Don Jr said he will spend his time in isolation cleaning his guns. He has said that Covid-19 deaths in America are “almost nothing”. 1000 people died that day. Twitter has had to limit Don Jr’s account for promoting COVID-19 misinformation. In total, at least 45 people connected to the White House have tested positive for the virus in recent months.

Yesterday This Was Home: A Future of Civil Rights

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The 12 year old boy morphs into a man while seated on the Greyhound bus seat. Sam explains how his experience on the bus helped fuel his further protests in high school. It was the beginning of his continued efforts to stand up for his rights. I decided to end the film with an iris out much like the ending of a silent era movie. I had Charlie Chaplin‘s, Circus in mind.

I learned a lot doing this film. I came to realize that at most I can produce 10 seconds of animation a day which usually amounted to one or two shots a day. The animation might go smoothly but then late at night I would be painting each individual drawing. I saved so much time by doing rather clean storyboards which I then re-used as the backgrounds for each shot.It turns out I really love animating when there is a compelling story to be told.

Each day during the pandemic I plan and execute on illustration which tells a story about the news of the day. It was nice to take a whole month to tell one story with action narration and music. Animation is really the ultimate art form which ties together all the artistic disciplines.

This film is now on display at the Orange County Regional History Center (65 East Central Blvd Orlando FL) for the new exhibition, Yesterday This Was Home, about the 1920 Ocoee Voting Day Massacre. The exhibition is open until February 14, 2021. The 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history.

Events unfolded on Election Day 1920, when Mose Norman, a black U.S. citizen, attempted to exercise his legal right to vote in Ocoee and was turned away from the polls. That evening, a mob of armed white men came to the home of his friend, July Perry, in an effort to locate Norman. Shooting ensued. Perry was captured and eventually lynched. An unknown number of African American citizens were murdered, and their homes and community were burned to the ground. Most of the black population of Ocoee fled, never to return.

This landmark exhibition will mark the 100-year remembrance of the Ocoee Massacre. The exhibition will explore not only this horrific time in our community’s history but also historical and recent incidents of racism, hatred, and terror, some right here at home.

The content will encourage reflection on a century of social transformation, the power of perspective, and the importance of exercising the right to vote, and will ask what lessons history can inspire moving forward.

To promote safe distancing, the museum has implemented new ticketing procedures for this special exhibition. For the run of the exhibition, the museum will have extended operating hours to create a safe viewing experience for a greater number of people. On Sundays the museum will open two hours earlier at 10 am. and stay open two hours earlier until 7 p.m. And on Thursdays, we will be open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.

 

Expulsion

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Swinging is a practice in which people already in a committed relationship engage in sexual activity with other people. The Naughty N’Awlins Swingers Convention is happening November 19-23 in New Orleans in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The organizers tout the event as, “most popular lifestyle and swinger convention event in the country since 1998.”

This gathering at the Astor Crowne Plaza on Bourbon Street and Canal will be limited to married couples who have never traded partners. Married couples who have traded partners in the past will be asked to watch only this year.

According to organizers, some of the guidelines NiN2020 will implement include:

• Quarantining all couples in their hotel rooms 24/7
• Rectal temperature tests every six hours
• Latex prophylactics on all handles and extensions
• Plastic sheets on all room surfaces
• Couples must provide a detailed record of arguments from the preceding year proving the marriage

The plan for “monogamy” is considered the best option for NiN2020 to still happen while keeping the intimate convention from becoming a super-spreading cluster during the current pandemic. Gone are the dozen or so event “playrooms,” where people could “safely explore fantasies” with new partners or in groups. About about 250 checked in for the 2020 event where 2000 checked in the year before.

With monogamy being a drastic change of scenery for the convention, NiN2020 organizers say they are prepared if some couples are tempted to stray. Virtual swapping through streaming, chats, and live podcasts will be available by request. Creepy robotic dolls will also be on hand to give a hand.

If would seem that swingers parties are being approved across the country. The Metro Public Health Department in Nashville Tennessee signed off on alleged swinger parties. One party, scheduled for December, costs $100 for couples, $30 for single females and $120 for selected single gentlemen. A Metro Council member was quoted in Tennessee Lookout calling the parties “clearly dangerous” for spreading COVID-19.

It seems the COVID-19 pandemic has sparked a surge in the number of people using swingers apps. Data shows that there are currently at least 721,927 active swingers across the United States. COVID-19 is spread through touch and droplets breathed out by infected people, and experts have warned against sleeping with partners from outside your household while lock downs remain in place. I could not find any stats about how many swingers might have been infected by the virus.

Swingers parties in the UK, Australia and France may have been linked to outbreaks.

Post script: The Naughty Naulins event is a superspreader now that 41 people have tested positive for COVID-19 as of December 2, 2020.