Market Day

Posted on by Thor

Stella Arbeláez Tascón and I went to the Webster Westside Flea Market (516 NW 3rd Street, Webster, FL). This is a painting of the combined haul before we divvied up the spoils of the marketing war.

Stella is great at comparing prices and finding the best deal while I just grab on impulse and sometimes forget to pay. I’m just excited to get the produce in my ancient granny cart which was rickety by the end of the shopping spree due to the produce weight.

The jar contains, Tamarind, a hard shelled pea shaped Fruit legume, which is sweet and bitter at the same time. I bit off individual seed pods and nurse the fruit off the seed with my front teeth while rolling it in my mouth.

I have become addicted to having several oranges every day. I am also a fan of cooking corn on the cob every night. It only takes 5 minutes to boil an ear so it is a quick snack.

In the background of the sketch are some ink bottles. Stella was testing each bottle of ink for it’s permanence when used with watercolor washes. It turns out one bottle is not permanent and that is the one she had been using.

My backpack for my Europe trip arrived yesterday. Each morning I put it on to walk around the block to see how it feels. I shopped at REI and maybe packed it 1/3 full. I hope on my travels I can find keep finding lush bounties of fruit as I hike, train and drive from town to town. I am getting close to finishing my itinerary. Which will give me a list of the towns and hamlets I must visit to follow in 1st Lieutenant Arthur Thorspecken‘s footsteps as his C-Company infantry unit moved from France to Belgium, Norway and ultimately the heart of Germany at the end of WWII. I think I solved the mystery of which work concentration camp his unit might have liberated and moved the victims toward Eastern Europe via train box cars. The displaced person’s didn’t want to get on the train and his unit had to hammer the box car doors shut with nails. The trip East might have been a death sentence. Skeletal faces started out from between box car boards in sorrow.

Norway Omicron Superspreader

Posted on by Thor

A company Christmas party is Oslo Norway became the sire of an Omicron superspreader event. Up to 60 people may have been infected at the company party held at Louise Restaurant & Bar at Aker Brygge. 13 of the infections so far have been confirmed to be the Omicron variant.

The Nov. 26, 2021 outbreak took place at a Christmas party organized by renewable energy company Scatec, which has operations in South Africa where the variant was first detected.

At least one employee had just returned from South Africa. All the attendees were fully vaccinated and had tested negative before the event.

Preben Aavitsland, a senior physician at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, told Reuters by email, “Our working hypothesis is that at least half of the 120 participants were infected with the Omicron variant during the party. This makes this, for now, the largest Omicron outbreak outside South Africa.”

Health authorities said the individuals infected were so far displaying mild symptoms, with none hospitalized.”It is still too early to say whether the clinical picture of the disease is different in Omicron infections than in Delta infections,” Aavitsland said.

The outbreak led the Norwegian government to reintroduce some nationwide restrictions to curb the spread of COVID-19. Across Europe, companies are cancelling Christmas party plans due to the emergence of the Omicron variant. Daily new cases are exponentially spiking in Norway.