Day 315: Take it back

This is Day 315 of The First Ohio Shutdown and Day 75 of That Curfew Thing.

Deb and I are ok.

Today, once again, the Ubi Libertas header image isn’t a picture of knife. I didn’t take the photo recently, that much should be obvious — this one goes back to August in Muskingum County. We’d escaped to Ohio’s southeastern quadrant for the weekend, and on this hot afternoon we were enjoying a sunny stroll along the shore of the reservoir.

Jumping ahead here to the last weekend of January, we had no sun and we weren’t strolling. We closed out that month and have begun the next with 48 hours of spastic weather.

I was up with the dogs before 6am yesterday. Looking out the kitchen window I saw that several inches of snow had fallen overnight, and it was still snowing. A half-dozen municipal plow trucks paraded out of the city garage up the street.

A few hours later it was raining, and it rained all day before changing back to snow last night. Snow on top of rain on top of snow. Marvelous.

Oh, and a snowplow took out our mailbox.

But it’s the First of February, and that’s significant to Deb and me. It kicks off a home stretch, initiating a countdown of sorts. In six weeks, give or take, our life will change — again.

Lots to do between now and then.

I want to make a brief comment about teachers, like those in the Chicago Public system, who are refusing to return to the classroom, ostensibly because they don’t feel the schools are a safe place for them to be.

Some of those teachers are, I’m sure, more medically vulnerable than others. But overall, teachers need to stop reading press clippings about how wonderful teachers are and get the hell back to work.

Now if an individual teacher doesn’t feel safe returning to school, it’s their right to choose not to report for work. And I support that personal choice.

Where I come from, that’s called “quitting your job.”

Every time I hear someone talk about seeing a light at the end of the long Pandemic Tunnel, I have to laugh. I mean, they point to positive trends, availability of vaccines and the like, as if our “betters” are approaching this stuff rationally.

The State created this “crisis,” exploiting fear to seize control of virtually every aspect of our lives. They won’t give up that control easily, voluntarily or quickly, and certainly not any time soon.

Notice how The Holy Narrative has shifted lately. Mutations. Strains. Variants. Double-masking. Millions of doses of vaccine lost or unaccounted for. It’s all about perpetuating fear and uncertainty, thereby maintaining control.

Anyone who’s waiting for permission from government to return to something resembling a “normal” life will be waiting a very long time — and we’re talkin’ years here, left to the State, if ever.

If we want our American Life back, we’ll have to take it. We don’t need anyone’s approval and there’s no reason to wait — take it back now.

Take it!

Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.

#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath