So Many Choices, It's Not Fair

I had to run some errands today which brought me to the city of New Rochelle, which was founded by Huguenots fleeing persecution in France. New Rochelle is a very ethnically diverse community, and has had a sizable Mexican-American population for the past four decades. New Rochelle's Mexican restaurants are the best in my neck of the woods, and even Mexican food aficianados living in New York City would be well-advised to check them out.

After parking in front of a friend's (he's the guy who hired me to work at for The Gates project) place of business, I ran to the bank, passing such fantastic Mexican restaurants as The Little Mexican Cafe, The Mexican Corner Restaurant, La Herradura Mexican Pizzeria and Restaurant. I also passed by Indian restaurants Rangoli and Coromandel and Peruvian restaurants La Brisa Marina and Cholo's Kitchen. Golden Krust Jamaican Bakery was also within easy walking distance. Each place beckoned, but I was in the mood for some tacos from hole-in-the-wall wonder El Michoacano. Having a ravenous hunger, I ordered four tacos- carnitas (roast pork), cabeza (stewed beef head), buche (pork stomach), and chorizo (hot sausage)- to wash it down, I ordered a large horchata. Before my order came to the table, the charming proprietress placed a bowl of sliced, pickled carrots and jalapeños and a small plate of corn chips with refried beans on my table. The tacos came, garnished with sliced radishes quartered limes, and some quickly fried onions. The horchata came in a 32-ounce takout container.

I ate a leisurely meal, watching La Rosa de Guadelupe with a young family and a couple of guys on their lunch break. The meal itself was stellar, I won't have to be eating dinner tonight.

I used to work in New Rochelle years ago, and fell in love with the restaurant scene- there are a lot of great places from which to choose. Unfortunately, I don't get there too often these days (the city, while not far from my home, is a pain in the ass to get to, a drive there involves travelling on local roads which tend to be congested). I was grateful to have an opportunity to partake of the local cuisine, and even more grateful to run into my friend and shoot the breeze for a while.

I don't forage all the time! Bonus New Rochelle trivia, the superhero defender of New Rochelle is The Blowfish Avenger.

UPDATE: I put this post together pretty hastily, so I forgot to add my joke that the city would have been cooler if it had been founded not by Huguenot refugees from La Rochelle, but by heathen refugees from Averoigne, though the city would have been called New Ximes under those circumstances.

Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that the post title is cribbed from a relentlessly poppy Guadalcanal Diary song:

A Town I Love so Well

Years ago, when I still had a head of luxurious golden curls, I used to live in the City of New Rochelle, which is in the center of a containment zone due to the COVID-19 outbreak. I still have a deep, abiding love for New Rochelle, a city of about 80,000 residents. It's a pretty city with a diverse population and a myriad of dining and entertainment options. I am especially perturbed by this outbreak because I have friends who are congregants of the Young Israel of New Rochelle synagogue. I know that neighborhood well, even back in my high school days, I patronized the businesses affected by the containment zone... H&R Bialy in particular was a required stop before trips to Jones Beach.

It's heartbreaking to see such a vibrant community brought to its knees by a microorganism. I'd say that my heart goes out to the people of New Rochelle, but my heart's always been with them.

Post title taken from Phil Coulter's tragic ode to Derry- I've been remiss in my pre-St Patrick's day posts, so here is the song in its sad glory:





Once this COVID-19 thing blows over, I will go on a long-overdo 'foodie' tour of New Rochelle. I owe them, and I owe myself.

A Pernicious Hate Hits Close to Home

The big local news story today is that the continuing epidemic of anti-semitic attacks and threats has hit in our area, with bomb threats phoned in to Jewish Community Centers in the communities of Tarrytown and New Rochelle. I am intimately familiar with both of these municipalities- I work near the Village of Tarrytown and I used to live and work in the City of New Rochelle... both of these communities are exemplars of multiculturalism and the virtues of liberal values. I have posted on the wonders of New Rochelle and Tarrytown on numerous occasions, and have a love for both of these places.

I've always been stymied by anti-semitism, having grown up with Jewish friends, neighbors, doctors, teachers, roommates. The Jewish people, in spite of two millennia of bigotry and violence, have thrived- their gifts to humanity in the fields of science, medicine, philosophy, and the arts are immeasurable. The very fact that this current wave of vandalism and threats of violence is occurring in twenty-first century America appalls and confounds me, and the fact that such threats have been made in such 'safe' communities as New Rochelle and Tarrytown has me pig-biting mad. These are friends of mine who are being targeted now.

I am currently writing this post in the Grinton I. Will branch of the Yonkers Library System, having stopped by looking for some reading material while on errands. In the lobby of the library, there is a small, stark Holocaust memorial:

As I guy who likes to fight recreationally, and abhors cheap-shotting someone, I sure am in a Nazi-punching mood. New Rochelle and Tarrytown are vibrant and beautiful because of their diverse residents, and they are strong enough to resist this onslaught of hate.

Another Local Legend Gone

While listening to the radio today, I learned of the passing of Ruby Dee, another towering 20th century polymath. Besides her achievements as an actress, writer, and activist on the national stage, Ms Dee and her husband Ossie Davis were pillars of the City of New Rochelle community. As a former resident of New Rochelle, this small-yet-diverse city is dear to my heart. Ossie Davis and Ruby Lee were central to the cultural life of the city, to the extent that the public library has a theater named after Ossie Davis.

My first exposure to Ms Dee's body of work was her performance in the 1961 film production of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. After reading the play in 7th grade English class, our teacher showed us the powerful film:





Perhaps Ms Dee's most important role was as an MC at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom:





While the nation mourns Ruby Dee, her loss is felt especially keenly in New Rochelle, a city in which she and her husband attended PTA meetings and spoke at assemblies at the local public schools. Thank you, Ms Dee, for your dedication to the people who make up this remarkable community- rest in peace.

Hooray Hooray the First of May!

 Outdoor judo starts today!

Today was the return of my Saturday morning coaching gig.  In an ordinary year, this program runs from October to March, and takes place indoors- the model of the program being that the children would participate in school athletics in the Spring and Summer.  With social distancing guidelines still in place, we have adapted to the new conditions, and will be running an outdoor program throughout May and June, a semester of eight weeks rather than our traditional ten.

Judo being a contact sport, we haven't really been able to conduct complete classes in which the kids can compete with each other.  Today, we just went over the steps necessary for the throws ippon seoi nage, tai otoshi (my personal favorite), and o soto gari.  We were practicing in a gorgeous locale on the shore of Long Island Sound, and while the scenery was beautiful, when we started it was windy and a bit chilly for early May.

Of course the highlight of the morning was seeing everyone- administrators, coaches, parents, and kids.  We all compared vaccination notes, most of us have received the requisite number of shots (we're not getting any older), and we look forward to a day when we can return to our usual digs,  On a sad note, I learned that Roberto Rulli, loving father, doting grandfather, skilled judoka, brilliant mentor, and good friend, passed away at the age of eighty in Florence, Italy.  He was a kind man, but one who knew more than a few tricks to use on opponents.  Condolences to his loved ones.

After the program ended, a restorative lunch with friends at the venerable Mister Taco in New Rochelle was in order.  Some guacamole, a couple of tacos, and a glass of horchata were accompanied by a lively discussion of the infamous North Avenue bars, which from the late seventies to the mid nineties were positively overrun by underage drinkings (uh, I'm not admitting to anything).  Yes, until the mid nineties, when there was a drunk driving incident which claimed the life of a teenager, the neighborhood was pretty much a destination for free-range high schoolers looking to get loaded.  Thankfully, the county social scene shifted to my neighborhood, where the taverns are more professionally operated, at the time, leaving the former party district of North Avenue open to development by immigrant business owners from Mexico and Jamaica.  It was a hell of a nostalgia trip, with tales of debauchery in dives with fetid accommodations... quite the contrast to the morning's wholesome outdoor activity.  I think next week, I'll introduce my friends to the varied restaurants on New Rochelle's busy Main Street... there's a really good Peruvian place among the quality Mexican restaurants.

It's good to have this part of my routine return, even though it's not exactly what it was in the Before Times.  Someday, we'll be able to really play our sport (my great and good friend Gentle Jimmy G made it clear to me that he's looking forward to beating me up), someday soon.  In the meantime, we make do with imparting the bare fundamentals and figuring out how to teach under very limiting circumstances.

Losing One of the Best

It's been a pretty horrible week... it started with a road trip to upstate New York to attend a wake, and it continued with the death of another dear family friend. Previously, I'd written:


In other horrible news, an old grammar school friend of mine recently called to tell me that his mother had terminal esophageal cancer. She decided to forgo chemotherapy, and will be receiving hospice care in her home. She traveled extensively in her youth, and she saw her children marry well and start to raise kids of her own, so she decided (with her characteristic Yorkshire stiff upper lip) that she didn't want to buy a few more weeks at the expense of her quality of life. Her door was always open, so I'll be sure to visit her when she needs support.


Mrs Pauline Stoffel of New Rochelle, New York died in her home on Wednesday night. She was a tremendous individual, and her unfailing hospitality, wit, love, and support meant a lot to me throughout my life. Her door was always open, and she embraced an enormous, diverse extended family, of which I was a part. Her complete lack of b.s. was a salutary thing for any kid to experience- if she thought you needed to "come correct" about anything, she made sure you knew (which is something a lot of people are afraid to do). She was as fearless as she was generous. She raised three incredible children- John, Kate, and Peter, who I have had the privilege of knowing since I was in grammar school, and had a coterie of beautiful, brilliant grandchildren. News of her passing hit me particularly hard... I had planned to visit her on Friday, after a terrible, terribly busy week.

It's been a rough time lately... thankfully, the extended family is incredible, and we'll get through this.

Given up on Fighting the Marxicans

For the past two years, I have warned about the dangers of the Marxican threat. Well, this year, I decided to give up the fight, and to succumb to the Marxican invasion.

Having a day off from work, I headed over to the City of New Rochelle, which has a large Mexican population, mainly from Jalisco and Michoacan states. Yeah, I know Cinco de Mayo is a Pueblan holiday, but I figured that, just as the owners of a bar in Seattle wouldn't bat an eye at people drinking Sam Adams Boston Lager to celebrate Patriot's Day even though it is New England's holiday, the Jalisco-born owner of a family hole-in-the-wall wouldn't mind a big gabacho eating in his place to celebrate a Pueblan holiday.

Accordingly, I traveled to the "Queen City on the Sound" to dine at the redoubtable Mr Taco, a tiny restaurant that I have been patronizing since the days I had a big blond 'fro. The restaurant has the been owned by the same family for the past twenty-plus years. The owners are a diminutive man with a bright smile (how does he stay so skinny working in this place? It must be the frenetic pace at which he plies the griddle and the stove-top full of simmering cauldrons) and his sweet-natured wife. The place has all the atmosphere of the waiting room of a municipal bus terminal, but the food is amazing. I ordered a taco de carnitas, a taco de chorizo and a taco de lengua. To accompany my meal, I had a bottle of Dos Equis- as the proprietress handed me the bottle, I cracked a joke: "El sabor del éxito." which earned me a chuckle.

Authentic Mexican food is a lot subtler than the Tex-Mex stuff served up in chain restaurants... there are no globs of sour cream or mounds of grated processed cheese food product. At a genuine Mexican restaurant, the meat is well-spiced but not too hot (the proprietors have a bottle of strong homemade hot sauce for those who wish to heat up their food- I joked to the proprietress that I needed the hot sauce because I wanted to cry lágrimas del fuego. The sauce isn't so bad that I cried tears of flame, but it might just get me in the end. Anyway, the food is well-prepared, the carnitas are crispy little chunks of pork, the chorizo is crumbled into well-browned bits redolent of spices. The tongue was long-simmered and mild. Each taco was topped with finely diced raw onion and a couple of torn leaves of cilantro. The plate was accompanied by half a lemon- a squeeze of lemon juice, a squirt of hot sauce, and I was experiencing total culinary bliss. I should have taken a picture of the plate, but I was pretty ravenous. There are a couple of pictures on "Yelp", if you need to see what Mr Taco's fare looks like.

After my lunch, I headed across the street to La Flor de Michoacan to get a couple of paletas- on this visit choosing an eggnog popsicle and a lime popsicle. Mexican popsicles are made with fresh ingredients- the lovely lime popsicle was a beautiful green slab of pulpy deliciousness, the eggnog popsicle had a nice hint of spice. If you have a paletería anywhere in your vicinity, by all means go there, and bring a cooler so you can stock up on popsicles to take home.

For all of my joking about the "Marxican threat", I have long had an appreciation of the various cultures of Mexico. When I was a high-school kid working in the local deli, I got to know a lot of Mexican guys who were working as gardeners. They'd come in after work to buy Bud tall boys, and often the only words of English they knew were "Keeng Size Booweiser!" They thought it was a hoot when the blond kid behind the counter could shoot the shit with them in Spanish. For all that Mexicans are demonized by the right-wing in this country, the Mexicans I have known have embodied the virtues that right-wingers claim are uniquely American- they tend to be religious, they value their families, and they have a remarkable work ethic. The main problems in Mexican culture can largely be laid at the feet of the United States- the post-NAFTA maquiladora boom went belly-up as factories moved to China, where labor costs were even cheaper and environmental regulations more lax. The average Mexican farmer was hit hard when cheap American corn hit the Mexican market, forcing many of the campesinos off the land. The drug trade which has devastated wide swathes of Mexican society is driven by demand in the United States. My feeling is that the average Mexican and the average American are suffering from the effects of the same policies which benefit a tiny minority of oligarchs. It's a pity the average American is swayed by anti-immigrant propaganda to realize what the San Patricios quickly figured out- the enemy is not the peasant of a different race, but the exploiters of all races. I value my Mexican neighbors and their contributions to American society, and I was happy to partake of their culture today.

Hey, how about a number from Frontera Bugalú? I had to pleasure of meeting these folks and I immediately took a liking to them (they reminded me of a bunch of groovy grad students), and they certainly can rock the house:

Jewels in the Crown of the City of Y______

The day being beautiful weatherwise, and I having the day off (plus, me being in need of a "mental hygiene" break after a bad week's worth of current events), I decided to drive to the corner of the city furthest from my home (I live in the extreme Southeast of the City of Y, a couple of blocks north of the Bronx and a couple of blocks west of "money earnin'" Mount Vernon) to visit two of Yonkers' most precious jewels. My first visit was to the Hudson River Museum, on Warburton Avenue, which overlooks the mighty Hudson. The Hudson River Museum combines a modern museum and planetarium with Glenview, a well-conserved mansion built in the 1870s:





The setting of the museum is unparalleled, the views of the Palisades and the river is unexcelled:





As one looks south of the museum, one is reminded of a less idyllic memento of the past- the abandoned Yonkers power plant, which is featured prominently in the wonderful book Hudson Valley Ruins (in the interest of full disclosure, I know one of the authors):





The museum was featuring an exhibit titled The Panoramic River: The Hudson and the Thames. The inspiration for the exhibit was The Rhinebeck Panorama, a panoramic depiction of London found in Dutchess County, New York. While I didn't take any pictures inside the museum (I don't know if flash photography is allowed, and I always err on the side of propriety in museums), I will post images of some of my favorite paintings from the exhibit.

John Henry Dolph's Haying Near New Rochelle is a nice pastoral scene set in an area which is now a small, multicultural city and foodie paradise. The body of water in the background is Long Island Sound, the Hudson being a few miles to the west:





Another favorite of mine was James Bard's painting of the steamboat Francis Skiddy- gotta dig the "painting in a painting" motif, as the housing of the paddlewheel sports an image of the Hudson narrows:





Another favorite of mine, George W. Wright's A Terrible Bore, which is part of the permanent collection, can be glimpsed on page two of the Museum's School Brochure PDF.

For a brief visual overview of the exhibit, here is a promo from a local public television station:





Another highlight of the Hudson River Museum is the Riverama, a permanent exhibit detailing the geology and ecology of the Hudson River region, and centered around a thirty foot long topographical model of the region. There is a video on the return of the peregrin falcon to the region (unrelated to the museum, but of note is the Mid-Hudson Bridge peregrin falcon cam), an exhibit on invasive species, a brief piece on the different sorts of boats plying the river, an interactive "wild sounds" console courtesy of the Cornell Ornithological Lab, and other nice interactive displays. It's a good introduction to the inner workings of the river, hydrologically, geologically, biologically, and sociologically. Pete Seeger would approve.

I followed my visit to the museum with a visit to Lenoir Preserve, which I mentioned in a blog post three years ago. The preserve is just as lovely as ever, and I'll have to return in a few months to see how some of the more ambitious projects underway are proceeding.

For a relatively small city (pop. 195,976 as of 2010), Yonkers does have a nice variety of cultural institutions. To be sure, midtown Manhattan is only a half-hour train ride away, but sometimes it pays to stay closer to home.

Tainted Love Day

I have to confess that I've always been cynical about Valentine's Day- it really comes across as a made-up holiday engineered to make people in committed relationships feel obligated to spend a lot of money and to make people not in committed relationships feel bad about themselves. I'm not as down on romance as the guys in Gang of Four, but I'm not really big on commercialization/commoditization. As a hilarious aside, one of my cousins used to put her relationship with her boyfriend on hold from Christmas to Valentine's Day so as to avoid the whole present-buying kerfuffle. She can't do that with her marriage these days, but she had a good run while she was still single.

A scant year ago, though it feels like a longer time, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting eclipsed the romantic holiday with its utter horror. The original St Valentine's Day Massacre could be snarked about, it was a gangland slaying and the victims were, as Dotard would put it, bad hombres. Another mass shooting in 1977 in my beloved New Rochelle remains largely forgotten.

The Stoneman Douglas massacre seemed to have marked a shift in the national discourse about gun violence- the survivors were eloquent and media savvy, the victims were heroic, those who lost their lives trying to save their students, their friends. Sadly, though, nothing substantial has been done, and mass shootings still occur regularly. There were attempts, thankfully failed, to portray the shooter as a victim of bullying, and repeated attacks on the survivors' character, which helped to make this past year seem like a slog. The real tragedy is that there will never be a normal for these kids, never a February 14th which will be about overpriced roses or chocolate samplers. Title taken from a classic of my adolescence.

It's Always Been a MAGA Plague

Via Tengrain, we have a recap of Donald Trump's career as a COVID superspreader, including the shocking, but not surprising, revelation that Trump tested positive for the 'rona just days before his first debate with Joe Biden.  If you can't beat your opponent in the debate, or the campaign, use a biological weapon against him...

Tengrain's post details the superspreader events from September on, which infected members of Trump's inner circle as well as the rubes.  In one particularly pathetic case, Chris Christie probably contracted COVID from Trump while helping him with debate prep.

The real issue is that COVID-19 was always a MAGA plague.  The first COVID superspreader event was the 2020 CPAC conference, which resulted in the containment-and-quarantine of my beloved city of New Rochelle, NY.  It's still a MAGA plague, and MAGA politicians are determined to keep it that way.

Goofing Off

Today, I woke up late, being knackered from working a long day yesterday. I figured I'd noodle around for a bit, listen to the radio, and work on a blog post. Then the phone rang- it was my cousin, who did not use the alias Big Leo during the hilarious "Midnight Gardeners" stunt, but, as ringleader, went by "El Capitan". My cousin and his son had to travel to New Rochelle on some business and were planning on hitting the Bronx Zoo afterwards. Well, my destiny was clear- it would be boy's day at the zoo.

Wednesdays is the free day at the zoo, so the place was, as they say, a zoo. A lot of summer camps take their charges there because they don't have to pay admission for thirty or so little urchins. Needless to say, there were a lot of hairless apes wandering the premises. We decided to concentrate on some key areas- my little cousin wanted to see the gorillas, and take a ride on the Wild Asia monorail- and what could possibly go wrong with a monorail ride? Anyway, the line for the monorail ride was longer than the monorail ride would have been, so we decided to bag it, and head off to "Jungle World". While I really like the tree kangaroos, my personal favorite is the comical looking Fly River Turtle:





We finally wended our way to the gorilla exhibit, with a long detour to check out the spotted hyenas (I don't know why, but I've always had a soft spot in my head for hyenas). The gorilla exhibit was packed, but the gorillas just looked kinda bored- if I were in the hoosegow, I'd look (and be) bored as well. We were only at the zoo for a couple of hours (which is not a big deal on free admission day, or if you're a member), and we resolved to return at a later day when it would not be so crowded (membership has its privileges, one of which is unlimited admission).

After the zoo sojourn, we decided to hit The Rambling House for an early dinner and (for the adults) a couple of beers. Happily, they had the strong (6.3% alcohol by volume) pale ale from The Bronx Brewery on tap- I have to say, it's delicious, and I wish the brewery staff good luck in their endeavors.

It's been a day of goofing off, but it was nice to hang out with family, and to mingle a bit of learning in with the goofery. As regular readers know, I'm a big one for mixing education with goofing off and boozing it up... my goofery should be apparent to even a cursory glance at the blog.

Half Century Club

It's another year around the sun for me. Personally, I'm doing okay, but I can't help but feel that somehow, the world has gone radically wrong in the course of my lifetime. I was born during the apogee of the Space Age, but Flat Earthers not only remain among us, but seem to have a larger cultural presence that they would have a few decades ago. The problems of racism and misogyny haven't been solved, and again there seems to be a backlash against the gains made by women, people of color, and LGBTQ people. It's tough to pinpoint exactly when things started going wrong, but I lay much of the blame on Reagan, who cheerfully pushed the lie that government was the major problem in people's lives, and that unions were greedy institutions preventing Joe Schmo from becoming a millionaire. The demographic shifts that our country is experiencing are something I am comfortable with- I spent a lot of time in the Bronx as a kid, and when I lived in New Rochelle, NY, there was already a vibrant community of Mexican immigrants whose culture and language I came to love. While I was fully aware of our nation's questionable foreign policy in places like Latin America and the Middle East, being the sort of kid who started reading the newspaper in kindergarten (my mom loves to tell the story of the time I didn't want to go to a friend's birthday party at an amusement park because I had read about a ferris wheel accident in Durban, South Africa), the current cruelty is something I never would have predicted. Years ago, I still thought that the nation I grew up in was fundamentally good... I sure hope it is, and that the current shitshow is a temporary phase.

I wish I could say that the half-century I've spent on the planet was marked by progress, but I don't see it. Again, personally I am doing okay, I am surrounded by friends and a loving family, and I even work in a gorgeous place. I might be looking a little craggy lately, largely as a result of keeping horrendous hours, but generally speaking, life is good... I mean this is me at work:

It's a funny week, a lot of my friends and one of my uncles were born around this time of year- today marks the start of three days of celebrating birthdays. Sure, the promise of the era of my birth has been squandered on five decades of missed opportunities, wasted potential, but I'm doing okay, and the people around me are doing okay, and I am still optimistic enough to believe that we will be working to make things better. Things had better get better.

The 'C' Stands for COVID

 Last year, the CPAC conference was perhaps the first COVID-19 superspreader event in the United States... one of the attendees tested positive for the novel coronavirus, which led to a lockdown of the city of New Rochelle, NY, a city for which I have a deep, abiding love.  If not THE first superspreader event, it was an early superspreader event... and the movement conservatives that attend CPAC haven't learned a goddamn thing about COVID, or public health, or virology:

CPAC organizers get booed off the stage for telling conference-goers to wear masks. pic.twitter.com/OcbkqKbz3H

— Zachary Petrizzo (@ZTPetrizzo) February 26, 2021

A year after kicking off a pandemic which has killed over a half-million Americans, these creeps are still bound and determined to spread the pathogen.  They decided early on that the wearing of masks, and the maintenance of social distancing, were culture war issues, but the only culture war is between viruses and individuals determined to play the role of Petri dishes.  

The Trump Maladministration utilized the pandemic to 'punish' communities which tend to vote Democratic, so their sycophants tend to downplay the seriousness of the plague.  It looks like this year's CPAC, like last year's, will be another superspreader event.  Hopefully, it will mark the last big superspreader event (though I doubt it)- it would be crazy if the pandemic were 'bookended' by two CPACs.  The real plague, though, is the ideology that the attendees promulgate, and there's no vaccine for that sort of pathology.

Stumbling in the Home Stretch

 Predictably, the Trump Maladministration is screwing up the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.  In the home stretch of the race against the pandemic, the response teams are stumbling, mainly due to a failure to prepare for the vaccination effort.  The federal government has neglected to put an infrastructure in place, so the individual states will have to work to create it.

So far, only two million (out of a potential twenty million) individuals have been vaccinated, and with the slow pace of vaccination, doses might expire before they can be administered.  A competent administration would have rolled out the military to speed the distribution of the vaccine, much like Governor Cuomo rolled out the NY National Guard to help the pandemic response efforts in the early New Rochelle hotspot.  That would be a better use of the military than asking them to arrange a coup would be.  With the current glacial pace of vaccination, it will take about ten years for herd immunity to be achieved... and I thought 2021 would mark a genuine change in this shitshow.