Tuesday, March 30, 2021

No More Vaccine Envy

I can stop being jealous of those who have gotten their COVID vaccinations now since I'm one of those folks. One shot down, one to go and my arm is still hurting! It's a fluke that I found out about getting the vaccine on Sunday thanks to someone who posted a message (with a link to sign up for shots) on Next Door in my community Sunday. Thanks to that person, I was able to get a spot yesterday and get my first shot taken care of. It's a relief to be partly-vaccinated. I hope the full vaccination makes me feel comfortable enough to try and go back to the gym and actually fly somewhere later in the year. A year ago, I would have said "no" to getting a vaccine, but what a difference a year makes. After seeing so many people get vaccinated with no problems, I got on board with it myself. People have to decide what's best for them and I decided getting vaccinated was best for me if I wanted to try and get back to some sense of normalcy and not freak out every time I leave my house. Nothing is a sure thing, but having some protection is better than none.

Tuesday, March 23, 2021

Vaccine Envy

I didn't realize COVID vaccine envy was a thing until my sister used the expression and then I realized I have vaccine envy myself. Where's my vaccine? I'm envious of those who have gotten one or two shots already. I haven't been vaccinated yet because I don't qualify...yet in my state. I'm old, but not old enough to get my shots. Things are supposed to open up next month for people over the age of 16, so maybe I'll get an appointment then. I heard a doctor on WGN here in the Chicago area say that states that have lowered the vaccination age ahead of Illinois (states like neighboring Indiana) have done so because they had fewer people come forward to get shots. I don't know if I buy that. I just think Illinois is falling behind and those other states have their shit together. Even the city where I live is slow to get the seniors here vaccinated. Because we have our own health department, our city citizens hadn't been able to get shots elsewhere in the state. (I think that restriction is changing.) Our mayor keeps saying we're not getting our fair share of vaccines. Okay. Then he should be on the news weekly complaining to the powers that be about our lack of vaccines. Yet, he isn't. Maybe because he won't be the mayor in another couple of months, so he doesn't feel the need to try harder to get our citizens what we need. I guess he'll leave the complaining to the next mayor to handle. 

Tuesday, March 16, 2021

The Keepers

In keeping (no pun intended) with my steady stream of documentary-watching, I just finished the series The Keepers on Netflix last night. It was fascinating and frustrating at the same time. I was fascinated with the stories told by the women and men in the Baltimore community. Some of the students of Keough High School were truly dealing with awful levels of physical and mental abuse. The abuse that Maskell and his cohorts put on these girls by was mind-boggling. As someone who's not Catholic (and has serious issues with Catholicism and the Catholic Church), I was annoyed with the level of power that Church members wielded over so many people in government, law enforcement, and society as a whole in the past in that area. The Catholic Church works people from the inside, meaning people get worked over psychologically by the Church. (Other religions do this also, so I'm not just singling out Catholics here.) The mental hit job that was done on the abuse victims here was awful. 

What frustrated me about the series (aside from Netflix dragging it out for seven episodes when, really, four or five would have sufficed) was that nothing was really resolved in the end. I doubt the ladies who were investigating Catherine Cesnik's death will ever find out what happened to her. When the series ended, I found myself with more questions than answers. But I commend the women for banding together to try and solve the case of who murdered their beloved teacher. 

Friday, March 12, 2021

Made You Look

I've been watching a lot of documentaries lately and I watched Made You Look last night on Netflix. Wow! The story of wealthy folks buying phony artwork was fascinating. At the end of the documentary, I thought, There are no winners here. Everyone was awful: the supposedly unsuspecting art gallery manager, the woman the manager purchased art from, the ultra wealthy folks who bought the art. No one, in my mind, had clean hands here. The art buyers wanted to have exclusive Pollock and Rothko pieces in their homes to showcase their wealth and brag to friends, the art dealer wanted these huge deals to boost her reputation and boost funds for the failing gallery she managed, and the con artist seller and her boyfriend wanted to make money. I didn't walk away from the documentary feeling like anyone had clean hands here. They were all grimy, some more than others. And the so-called art "experts" who were supposed to verify the authenticity of the works fell down on the job also. Excuses, excuses for why they made bad calls on the art. 

Made You Look reminded me of another documentary I saw called Sour Grapes about a guy who duped wine collectors and claimed to have vintage bottles of wine that sold for a lot of money when, actually, the guy was making the wine in his house and doctoring the bottles, corks, and labels to make them look aged. The same thing was going on with the artwork in Made You Look. The con artists got a Chinese painter to recreate works by artists like Pollock and Rothko and doctor them so they'd look aged. There were so many red flags about this artwork that came out of nowhere, yet everyone seemed to either blissfully overlook those flags or knew the con was afoot and just let the scam play itself out. Crazy, but entertaining. And Armie Hammer's father owned the gallery where this nonsense was taking place. That was an interesting twist. He never actually appears in the documentary himself (he sends his attorney to speak on his behalf, and that was probably a wise decision), but pictures of him are shown throughout. What a hot mess that guy is. Is it any surprise his kid is now in a hot mess himself? Not really. Not that I believe parents are to blame for their grown children's behavior, but sometimes the apple just doesn't fall far from the tree. 

Monday, March 8, 2021

Tell Me Something I Don't Know

So much media attention is out there about Harry and Meghan's interview with Oprah. My sister emailed me this morning and asked if I had watched it. I told her no, I had not...and that was a hard "no" for me. I can't care enough about the British Royal Family (BRF) to spend a few hours hearing about their escapades, but I read about the interview online. I will say that nothing I heard really surprised me. I am surprised that a lot of people are focusing on how someone in the BRF expressed concern about Archie's skin color. Is this really a surprise to people? Apparently. Of course that kid's skin color was going to cause a lot of hand-wringing. That's exactly the kind of thing the BRF would get hung up. These folks are so concerned about how things look. These same folks, many of whom are truly awful, had no problem denigrating the mixed American woman who dared to marry into their family. Please. One of Queen's kids was hanging out with a known molester and another one told a woman he wanted to be her tampon, yet these folks are supposed to be looked up to as members of the British monarchy? Yeah, whatever. I'm glad I'm an American.

However, I don't think Meghan and Harry are innocent victims here either. When she married him, I remember telling people that there wasn't enough love in the world to make me give up my life like that. Meghan was in her mid-30s when she married Harry. How do you go from living your own life as an independent woman to being told by others how to dress, what to say, how to be? But she knew that going in and now she and her husband want to complain about it. I also feel like Meghan was incredibly naïve about how she would be treated by the British people and the British press. I think she had lived her life largely as a white (or white-adjacent) woman and got a rude awakening when she was treated was treated like a common Negro overseas. She had to learn the hard way just what kind of folks she was dealing with. I do hope she and Harry are happy and able to live their lives and raise their kids as they see fit.


Friday, March 5, 2021

Endless Loop

I feel like I'm caught in an endless loop of life. The days all seem to run into each other, the hours drag by, very little changes each day. It's Groundhog Day every day. At least spring is coming and the days are getting longer. We're even getting a few days of sunshine here in the Chicago area. Still, the loop of bad news, not enough COVID vaccines, and general angst continues. It's hard to try and feign enthusiasm sometimes. But what's the alternative? To just climb back into bed and pull the covers over your head. (Yes!) No. We have to keep on keeping on and try to keep our collective sanity.