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- Story Listed as: True Life For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: General Interest
- Published: 01/31/2021
The View From 90: December 2020
Born 1929, M, from Roseville/CA, United States.jpeg)
ViewDec2020 (Approx. 1,200 wds.)
The View From 90: December 2020
Author’s Note: Way back at the beginning of this year, 2020, I planned to write a memoir called “The View From 90.” At the time of course I had no idea of what the year would turn out to be---a worldwide pandemic, subsequent economic collapses, lockdowns and stay at home orders, racial unrest and riots in the United States, a tumultuous election and all the rest. I decided to do a monthly View of events as a kind of prequel to my memoir and posted these on StoryStar. More recently, I also decided to put out a collection of my writings over the last year and a half and put this on Amazon (if I remembered how to do this). I thought I might include the March View, when the pandemic really hit, and the December View but couldn’t find the December View. I then realized I hadn’t done this yet, forgetfulness being one of the perks of old age exasperated by being in the middle of a pandemic, so I quickly put something together and here it is.
I write a column for a monthly senior newspaper called “Observations” and my headline for the December issue was “Observations on the Worst and Best of Times.” This of course referred to the COVID-19 surging to record cases and deaths while vaccines to come offered, as the ever-cautious Dr. Fauci said, some light at the end of the tunnel. At the time California (and maybe other states) once again went into lockdown to curb the virus surge, which many blamed on family gatherings over the holidays, and restaurant owners complained, with some justification, that they were being ruined.
While millions of Americans were getting infected by the virus and thousands were dying daily the never-ending Washington circus was going on its merry way. A second stimulus bill, which I think was introduced way back in May and stalled ever since was revived and actually passed, this time offering $600 per person and an extra $300 on top of unemployment checks, plus the usual pork. Naturally the Dems and the Reps blamed each other for the long delay. I’d give most of the credit to good old Nancy Pelosi, who didn’t want to give her friend Trump any possible credit before the election and who, when asked about this, was visibly upset.
Meanwhile, now ex-President Trump was doing his best to prove that what Nancy and other detractors said about him was true, he was an idiot. First, after that stimulus bill was passed he declared that $600 was too miserly and it should be $2,000. This made Nancy and the Dems happy and they immediately passed a bill in the House. Then he vetoed the big Defense bill everyone agreed on and raised the possibility that the government would be shut down (maybe not a bad idea). In the end, he signed the bill with the $600, Congress overrode his veto of the Defense bill and the government staggered on.
At the same time, it was belatedly discovered that the Russians had been hacking our Defense Department, other agencies and some private companies. While Secretary of State Pompeo and everyone else blamed the Russians, Trump suggested it might be the Chinese. But the worst thing the ex-President did was claim the election was rigged and he’d really won, and won big. This was nuts and the New York Post had a headline urging him to stop the insanity. He didn’t but little did anyone know that the January sixth “insurrection,” or at any rate the invasion of the Capital, was to come. Happily, as kind of an antidote to all this, sports on TV, mainly the NFL season, went on and the NBA started a new season (didn’t it just end the old one?) late in the month.
On the personal front, over the past months nothing much was happening as Beverly and I stayed sheltering in place and one day was pretty much like another, so much so that we often forgot just what day it was. However, December was somewhat more eventful. First, there were the usual problems. Perhaps the most notable was when, taking my Toyota Corolla out for its weekly spin, I noticed a warning light had come on. I referred to the owner’s manual and saw it might be a brake or a tire problem, it was hard to tell which. I called Toyota and was told the service department would call back. They never did, either that day or the day after. With the virus raging in our area I didn’t think this was the best time to bring it in so went to Google and found a mobile car repair service. In a few days someone came out, determined it was just one low tire, fixed it, and that was that. Had I known I could have borrowed a devise from a neighbor that pumped up tires and saved $45, but I did find out that there was such a thing as a mobile car service and that they could do just about anything a regular garage can do.
Another problem came up when I wanted to give some larger than usual Christmas checks to our three sons. To do this, I had to transfer the money from my Schwab account to our checking account. I’d done this before and it was a simple matter of calling someone. However, probably in the name of progress, this procedure had been automated and had to be done online. I won’t go into detail but it took over a week and I was starting to be sorry I’d gotten into it. In the end, the money was reluctantly transferred by Schwab and I had another reason to hate automation.
The worst problem during the month, I’d say, was my old and obsolete miniPad, which kept telling me its storage was full no matter how many things I deleted from it. Eventually, the Pad just about stopped working altogether. When I hit an App the screen went black and that was it. Fortunately, this story has a happy ending. My birthday was December 30th and my son living in Ireland, a computer specialist, sent me a new full-sized iPad. I wasn’t immediately grateful as this meant setting the Pad up, a procedure involving passwords and such, and this had always defeated me. As I’d written in one of my “Observations,” I was convinced all technogadgets said any password was “invalid.” This time I somehow found the right thing to push, the Pad itself gave instructions on setting itself up, the passwords were for once acceptable and all was well. Not only this, after a while I had the brilliant idea of deleting all the Apps I’d put on the new Pad from my old mini and, lo, the old mini is now working again, mostly anyway.
So ended the month and the year. After all that had happened I’d reached my 91st year. Beverly earlier had turned 85. The virus hadn’t gotten us, nor anybody in our immediate family. It was still out there and still scary, but we might get the vaccine in the coming months. I’d see if I could get out a collection of my writings and then a memoir, “The View From 90.”
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