Issue 20: February 28, 2022
Issue 20: February 28, 2022
This comic is very Jessica. You're welcome, world! Maybe she will help halt the deterioration of democracy in the world! Anyway, here is a relatively short update for a short month. Hope everyone is well!
House News
This month, the electricity was finally turned on and the drywalling began! As of this writing, most of the drywall has been hung, but it still needs to be mudded. They estimate that will take about two more weeks. Then trim work, painting, etc. happens. They keep telling us "it will start going fast now," but the drywall took the entire month and it's still not done . . . so . . .
The beams in the main room were installed! To the left, you can see the detail. It's notched in the middle and track lighting will go there. To the left, an attempted view of the beams from the door. You can see about half of the length.
The heat pump is still not delivered, as far as we know. And the HVAC/plumbing contractor has been MIA since he installed the duct work until last week. The contractor was finally able to get a hold of him, but they did not get an update on the status of the heat pump.
Instead, the house is being warmed be a few electric heat pumps, which are doing fine. The drywallers said they have to turn them off before they start working or they get too hot. When Jessica visited last week around 3 pm, it was 20 degrees outside and probably around 68 degrees in the house without any heat source running all day (except human bodies, of course). Pretty cool!
Some more views of the drywall. View from the mudroom into the second bedroom, with ladders (left) and scaffolding in the main room (right). The concrete floor is being protected with heavy duty paper.
Although the ERV system is installed, they haven't turned it on yet because they don't want to get it clogged with drywall dust. But once air starts getting filtered, humidified/dehumidified, and distributed, the climate inside will be even more pleasant (with any luck).
We are starting to transport all the stuff we've been accumulating to the property, starting with the tile. Which was very heavy!
Us! The drywall people cut a heart out of a scrap of drywall.
Other News
We have been following the war in Ukraine and reading about how global democracy has been on the decline for the last fifteen years. Authoritarian actors, like Vladimir Putin, have been building their regimes, meddling to quash democracy abroad, and using cyberattacks to meddle in Western elections, including ours in 2016, in order to destabilize their democracies. So far, it's been working.
In light of this, it has been inspiring to watch Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian people stand up to bully Russia and defend their democracy. (Zelensky could have easily fled, and the United States offered to evacuate him, but he said, "I need ammunition. Not a ride.") It has also been inspiring to see the United States work closely with the rest of the free world to sanction Russia and offer support to Ukraine. But we are also at a turning point. In recent years, democracies have not done enough to quell the spread of authoritarianism.
This month, we are reflecting about how, here in the United States, the Republican Party has blatantly adopted authoritarian practices and, increasingly, authoritarian policies, which restrict personal liberty and degrade the rule of law. Former President Trump admires Putin, as does other mainstream Republican voices, despite being out of step with the rest of the free world. Other Republicans who have supported Trump's pro-Putin policies in the past have abruptly shifted their stance.
We are also remembering that, during the last presidential election, President Trump tried to extort President Zelensky to dig up dirt President Biden. This is what launched Trump's first impeachment (Senate Republicans acquitted him). President Zelensky did not give in to the bully (Trump) then, and he isn't giving in to the bully (Putin) now.
All this stuff can seem very disconnected and esoteric when it's happening in real time. But it's all connected. And there is a lot at stake for all of us in the Ukraine-Russia War. The outcome will tell us which way the wind is blowing.
We've also been participating in some lighter activities. We celebrated lunar new year with friends. We went snowmobiling with our nephew Owen. We went antiquing on a few weekends, found nothing, but saw a farm field filled with hundreds of sandhill cranes (unfortunately we took no pictures). Sandhill cranes migrate through Northwest Indiana in the fall and winter. We had planned to see them, but couldn't get out to the wildlife refuge and thought we missed them. But they are still here!
Uncle Dre with Owen on the snowmobile.
Andreas has been reading about the new death ritual discovered in Peru, how Dave Chappelle helped kill affordable housing in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and a fake company that tricked real people into working for it. He also finished Shit Cassandra Saw by Gwen E. Kirby and started How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu. He's listening to It's Not How Far You Fall, It's the Way You Land by Soulsavers (RIP Mark Lanegan).
Jessica has been frantically scrambling to get her proofreading class together. She read this piece about how book blurbs work (which she already knew but it's fun to see other people talk about it) and the history of giant roadside coffee pots. She also subscribed to Jack Pendarvis's newsletter, in which he is serializing a novel he wrote during the pandemic. Jessica loves his sense of humor, and when she was learning how to be an editor person at the Oxford American, his story was one of her first assignments!
We watched The Lost Daughter, Maggie Gyllenhaal's directorial debut (an adaptation of an Elena Ferrante novel of the same name), which we liked. And we watched The French Dispatch, which we did not. We both usually really like Wes Anderson, but not this time. We only liked one of the vignettes. Usually, one gets lost in the tableau of a Wes Anderson movie. This one screamed HEY. YOU ARE WATCHING A WES ANDERSON MOVIE. WE ARE PRIORITIZING FORM OVER FUNCTION, HERE.
Gif of the Month
Trying to stay positive like . . .
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