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dansnaturepictures · 3 years

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22/05/2021-Great walk at Martin Down again: Blog 2 of 2-Wildlife photos and story of the walk

We came to Martin Down again today where we came last Saturday we often frequent this place at this time of year with our quest for seeing butterflies in the spring, with four of the list of targets for right now in my head remaining to chase. We arrived in fairly bright conditions with the sun in and out today and it was great to see bulging clumps of speedwell flowers as we did last week I would later take the sixth picture in this photoset of some of these, most likely germander speedwell I think. We saw a lot of nice flowers today including milkwort, common rock-rose, buttercup and dandelion. I took the third picture in this photoset of the former. We also saw a pink orchid possibly a common-spotted which was great to see.

Things really came to life for insects as we walked on with Dingy Skippers showing themselves I took the fifth picture in this photoset of one later on and we had that all walk which was great. I am having probably my best ever year for Dingy and Grizzled Skipper the trips we’ve been on timed well for us to really see them a lot of times which I’ve loved. I found out today a Dingy Skipper photo I took at Martin Down last month was published in the Hampshire Chronicle via the photography club Facebook page. A couple of a bright and exciting moths were about early on and I just about made out this was a Burnet Companion. A moth I learnt by seeing it at nearby Lakeside last year that was a very welcome sighting this year a beautiful moth it was special to see. We did see a lot of different moths today as our season got going for them a bit in the spring months well and truly now I had not seen a lot of them before today so this was great. Walking on just a bit we caught sight of one of the targets when a smashing orange and brown Small Heath flew around and landed briefly. That was one of the targets seen straight away which made me happy.

We walked on towards a square area just a bit before the big mound where we have had happy butterfly times before. On the way we were ecstatic to spot a Grey Partridge darting through the air a glorious moment. It was exceptional to see this quite rarely seen and quintessentially rural bird once more at this the best location we know for them. It’s my 156th bird of the year a number slot on my year list I always tend to fill with a memorable bird in years and this is one of my birds of the year. It keeps my year list competing well with previous years it’s only a few weeks behind my 2018 and 2019 with how many birds I had seen on this date in years and is ahead of my 2020 in that respect for now. As my great year list resurgence from mid-March onwards continues with now ten year ticks this month which I am absolutely thrilled with. At the place I saw my first ever in 2013 it was an important moment for the elusive Grey Partridge and us as the first time we had seen Grey Partridges in back to back years after seeing the ones here in 2013, again here in 2015, twice in 2018 in Moray in Scotland and here later on and twice in 2020 after here that February part of a really memorable day for me and another memorable day at Blakeney in Norfolk last September. This feels significant for seeing this bird.

We carried on and inspected the square area seeing Grizzled Skipper fairly well with its wings closed a little bit too both Dingy and Grizzled Skipper I appreciated their underwings like never before today. Then we saw a smashing looking ruby red Small Copper a butterfly I saw for the first time this year last week it was a great view of this rich coloured butterfly one of my B list favourites which I love seeing and it gave great photo opportunities including the second picture I took today in this photoset. I also noticed some interesting small snails or snail shells scattered across the grass today all of different colours and patterns light and dark which was really interesting and maybe a sign of the weather we’ve had. It was something really beautiful to stumble across, I took the first picture in this photoset of one in this square bit looking nice. As last week there were also a fair few mushrooms around of different colours I tweeted on Dans_Pictures photos I took of some today and there was one in my part 1 of the blogs today with my landscape and other photos.

Waking on past the ridge area an orange spark of inspiration flashed by when one of our big targets lately a Marsh Fritillary flew by. A fleeting but welcome sighting of our first of this also B list favourite butterfly of mine this year. My 22nd butterfly species of the year a figure I am so proud of. The walk after that was mostly a grey one as the sun was obscured by the clouds which has been around for so much of May which can make it difficult to see butterflies and there is one in particular the Green Hairstreak we are yet to see which we have seen earlier than this in years so I am really happy with how well we’ve done seeing this many butterfly species so far this year. Its my seventh butterfly year tick at Martin Down this year which not only means I’ve got one more butterfly year tick than bird at this strong location for both which we’ve had a brilliant year at already but it means both Lakeside and Martin Down have seven year ticks each on my butterfly year list so far this year 31.8% of my butterfly species seen for the first time at each this year so far and 63.6% of them coming at either of those locations which I find interesting.

On the greyer large patch of the walk with interesting cloud formations hanging over the landscape again as I posted about in my last blog attention turned to birds in this strong bird area too. We saw a hat trick of smashing Corn Buntings as the walk went on watching one in particular for ages and hearing its charming and delightful call which sounded so beautiful which we hadn’t often heard before I took the fourth picture in this photoset of this top bird. A rare bird that is doing so well at this reserve always an honour to see. We also saw and heard Skylarks to a spectacular extent here again with them flying so close over us and that pure and electric wall of sound of them at the beginning as you often get when getting out the car a unique charm of this place. I heard another Cuckoo briefly too which was great.

On the way back we got a glimpse of the usual star flower here the burnt-tip orchids in a little way as they had just started to rear their heads with the tiny purple bit of them showing in the place they usually with a lot of close to the ground flowers as the seventh picture in this photoset shows for the burnt tips. On some of the buttercups we enjoyed seeing a great green beetle a lovely insect sighting I took the ninth picture in this photoset of this and eighth of another flower. As the sun re-emerged before getting back to the car Dingy Skippers were out again as the sweet green vegetation was lit up and the moths still danced along. I also got a valuable chance to chase one more Small Heath I didn’t get a picture with my closeup macro lens used for butterflies, other insects, flowers and mushrooms which was in demand today and barely off but I did get to feel that thrill of the chase I always get from photographing butterflies especially this way. I enjoyed the sun brightening up the beautiful New Forest on the way home. Another successful Saturday, I hope you all had a good one.

Wildlife Sightings Summary: My first Grey Partridge, Small Heath, Marsh Fritillary and Burnet Companion moth of the year, Corn Bunting, Skylark, Linnet flying from a bush late on with Goldfinch around too, Mistle Thrush, Woodpigeon, Swift gliding over very nicely again, Whitethroat, Dingy Skipper, Grizzled Skipper, Small Copper, beetle, moths, other insects, bee and I heard one of my favourite birds the Cuckoo.

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fmdtaeyongarchive · 3 years

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— after meeting you.

date: 2011-2021.

word count: 1,886 words, excluding lyrics.

summary: ash makes a song over the course of ten years.

triggers: n/a.

notes: creative claims verification.

it’s a song a decade in the making. over the course of ten years, he comes back to it over and over as a diary of his idea of the perfect love.

2011

he begins it on the doorstep of the first time he’ll ever fall in love. he’s a trainee and his days are filled with nonstop practice. when he comes home late at night or in the early hours of the morning, he barely has the time to pull out his homework to complete enough to keep passing classes and avoid a scolding from the company, but he still finds time to try to put into words what he’s feeling.

love is everything he’d heard about and more. he’s had the butterflies, the moments of awe, but he’s also found himself confused at times by how much he has to learn about being someone’s boyfriend. hand holding on the playground in third grade and shy kisses during spin the bottle in middle school hadn’t prepared him for actually falling in love.

he’s young, only fifteen when he writes down the first words of what he has no idea will one day be one song of many he stands on stage and sings by himself. he has no idea about the heartbreak he’ll endure in the next decade, that the one he thinks will be his first and last will be far behind him by the time the world gets to hear the words.

we understand each other i was surprised how we got used to each other

he’s never felt this way with anyone. the quiet understanding, the spark he feels at every touch and every glance they share between ash leaving class and heading into practice or on the late nights of the weekend when he can slip in time to see them. if this is the love everyone’s always talked about, that everyone’s written countless songs about and based movies and art on, he can understand why.

in the bright morning i open my eyes while thinking of you

he’s young and it feels like no one takes his love as seriously as it feels to him. it’s all-consuming and he just knows they’re the two that got lucky to find their soulmates and life partners so young. the idea of fate battles with his desire for free will, but he doesn’t care which is real when his arms are around them.

it’s only a few lines, tucked away on a sticky note stuck to the margins of a school notebook, but they show a boy who believes in every word he writes, words he’ll reshape and flesh out when he’s older and his korean has refined itself into something more sophisticated than he can offer at fifteen, but one phrase he writes doesn’t change at all:

i love you

january 2016

more pieces of what will eventually become the song stick themselves together over the years, through relationships and flings, but it’s not until years later that he sits in a vocal practice room at bc entertainment alone, old notebook in front of him and his fingers on the keyboard.

the notes of the melody he writes link to years into the past and stay with him for years into the future.

solo music is still a pipe dream for him, but something he’s afraid to put a name to has sparked again in his heart. it’s not the only time since the first time he’d fallen, but it’s the most confusing for him.

see, they’re not dating. they’re friends who have fallen into the trap of letting skin on skin bleed into their hearts to mean more than it does.

for ash, at least. he doesn’t know if his touch has bled into her bone marrow the same way hers has into his, and so he doesn’t say anything. not to her. instead, he lets his fingers idle on a piano, recalling the moment he’d first looked over at her and realized he was in trouble.

for as complicated and messy as his situation is, the melody line he crafts doesn’t soar too high or too low, it doesn’t tumble over itself in rapid notes or odd time signatures, though he still simplifies it down some more a few years later when he comes back to it. it sits in 4/4 time signature, the most basic, for love sits inside such a simplistic framework, bent out of shape by the imperfect humans who inhabit it and, as ash has now come to learn, sometimes break the frame in half.

the piano piece is therapy in keys, the only therapy he knows at the time, not for lack of needing it, but because of lack of time and motivation to take care of himself in the way he should.

the impending spiral downward in the next few months he can’t foresee yet will be the breaking point, but he’ll never stop coming back to the keys when he feels emotions he can’t share with anyone else.

late 2016-2017

more lyrics and music slot into place over the rapidfire falling he does over a few months. there’s the model trainee he thinks he could love that shatters his heart in the aftermath of a heartfelt confession. there’s the ill-fated relationship that starts hopeful, but dissolves into fighting before he can even write much embodying that hope. then, there comes her and then him, the ones that leave him looking back on his record of love put into song and makes him want to spill tears to drown every instrument and wet every notebook so he can never write something so hopeful again.

there are times he writes words about them, but, often, he’s at a loss for words, and the song becomes more instrumental than voice, silence on his part.

silence is what damns him in the end.

2017-2019

in kijung, ash is sure he’s found the true muse to the song he’s been writing for years.

just like now when it’s peaceful i want to be with you forever i thought that as i was looking at you i was so happy after meeting you i was able to love you so much because you embraced and understood my young and immature mind warmly

he almost plays the song for him one night, almost decides he wants to rewrite it to be solely about kijung so he can sing it for him and only him, but fear makes him back out.

months later, fear makes him back out of the relationship altogether and the song remains a patchwork quilt of lovers past.

mid-2020

when she’s back in his life, the tone changes.

when we hurt each other with nonchalant tones i can’t bear our distant relationship so i’m sorry even now when i’m anxious i want to be with you forever i thought that as i was looking at you

he knows now that love can hurt just as badly when one’s in it as it can once it’s ended.

are you happy after meeting me, too? i’m sorry that i have more that i couldn’t give you i’m selfish and unstable but i wanted to treat you well

he breaks her heart and his own at the same time and comes to realize he’s no longer a man built to be deserving of the love he’s prayed at the altar of his whole life.

late 2020

there’s a piece of writing advice ash has heard over and over again for as long as he can remember: write what you know.

but when he pieces together the last lyrics of the song, they’re to everyone he’s known and someone he’s never known at once. they’re to someone he’s accepted he’ll never meet, or to someone he let slip away. he can’t tell which one, but he knows it’s more fantasy than reality.

he bleeds out every ounce of hope he has left inside of him and leaves it printed in ink and bared in song. ten years of hope etched into one song, meeting a man who now stands empty of it. he’s faced with a mirror image of someone brighter and bolder, touched with love, but left shielded from the inevitable heartbreak attached to it.

in the end, they sit over an instrumental that’s been recrafted so that something sad hits under the hope, harmonizing the truth with the dream he’s packed away and abandoned.

i think i found a perfect love that i’ve waited for for a long time because you held me and gave me energy because you hugged me by being considerate lovingly after i met you

2021

he sends in the demo to the company right before the release of his fourth solo album as closure, but he doesn’t expect to hear back that they’re interested in having him release it. it’s so different from the sound that most of lovesick had been drenched in. it fits better the music he’d been known for releasing three or four years ago when he’d been first starting out as a soloist. it makes sense that it does, considering much of the song had been created before then, but management seems more excited for it than he’d expected.

he doesn’t realize right away why, but once he gets the brief for some, he realizes that maybe they’ve decided he’s been too mopey as of late to be marketable.

despite his best efforts not to let his hesitancy about some infect his work on this song, some resentment builds inside as he spends time in the studio on it. the more he listens back to different takes of his own voice singing back the polished lyrics over the finalized melody, the more he feels like he’s mocking himself. it sounds out of place in his voice.

he’d give up if he didn’t know that letting bc know he was throwing in the towel would only mean they’d put someone else on the job to get the final product completed, and as sour as he is, the song still has strings that attach to the inside of his chest that he’s not ready to cut to hand the song over to someone else.

erin is the one who points out what’s wrong to him one night when she comes to visit him in his studio.

“you sound really young here.” she’s silent for a moment, and then she corrects herself. “you sound like you’re trying to sound young.”

she’s right.

he’s trying to sound like the fifteen year old ash who had been the root of all of this. for a man who’s been so insistent he’s not good at playing a character when he’s writing, he’s taken on the persona of someone who can skate along the surface level of the song for the sake of marketability — a man the words can’t hurt.

the song isn’t about first love just because those were what the first words had been written about.

so, he re-records it, singing it like the man who’s experienced everything he’s been through. he switches out the arrangement from coffee house acoustic to transition the instrumental from a simple piano and strings arrangement o a full-out orchestral arrangement toward the end.

when he’d felt the first rays of love, he may have thought that it was as easy as two complementary instruments, but in the decade since, he’s learned all of the moving pieces that have to come together.

by most accounts, its arrangement lends itself to a run of the mill emotional ballad, and bc will either love or hate that, but some of the pieces that had been failing to line up slot in to place.

listening back, the song still makes him sadder than he can imagine a younger ash would be proud of.

the night he finishes, he sits in his studio with the lights low and loops the track, searching through every line for a flaw he needs to fix. it comes without thought, looking for what he’s done wrong.

as he sits there, he hears his own voice repeat over and over again thoughts from years past, singing about once-perfect loves that had only been perfect for flashes of time in a broad expanse of history, and he stops the track. for once, he’s done searching for his own faults.

#fmdverification #&& when you're screaming but they only hear you whisper | self para #god i have had the idea for this verification for soooo long icb i finally wrote it

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thesportssoundoff · 4 years

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When the inevitable happens, these will determine who the Cowboys next coach is.

Joey

December 2nd, 2019

When Jerry Jones stood outside a shouting and volatile Cowboys locker room, media onlookers said the proud owner had tears in his eyes. He spoke with absolute confidence in Jason Garrett and uttered the famous line that the only man who could take them to where he believed this team could go (That's the Super Bowl, fellas) was Jason Garrett. That's....actually true. If the Cowboys have any chance, as slim as it may be, to win the Super Bowl it's not going to become an actuality with an interim head coach. It's especially not going to come with no obvious choice on staff as Kris Richard's defense has fallen apart, Rod Marinelli has an endless loyalty to Jason Garrett (and his defensive line is not wowing anybody either), Kellen Moore is in his first year calling plays for a slumping offense and no obvious other choice on the offensive side of the ball. If there's any chance of any sort of post season success, it will lay with Jason Garrett and Jason Garrett only.

Having said that, understand that that comment is less about a faith in Jason Garrett and more about an obvious lack of options. If Jerry Jones or Stephen Jones or Will McClay felt as though they had an option in house, Garrett is probably gone around the Minnesota game when he held a private meeting with the players to fend off a potential revolt. Jerry Jones spoke of his confidence in Jason Garrett but it almost reeked of past tense. It came off like a guy whistfully battling reality while embracing the painful truth. Like a friend in a coma, Jerry spoke optimistically but with the pangs in his voice that this was over. From 2009 until 2019, Jerry held a belief that he had found his own homegrown head coach who would be the successor to the Landry and early 90s era of consistent coaching. Jason Garrett wasn't the guy and no amount of willing, no amount of coddling and no amount of firing him up will get him to where Jerry believed he would be. This marriage is just about done and it's all over but the crying, the paperwork and figuring out who gets to keep the dog. The Garrett Era will be a complicated one; underrated in terms of actual results (he has one season under .500 and led the Cowboys to their first actual success in the playoffs since the Chan Gailey one off in 1999 or so) but one where the gaffes, the post season flops and the inconsistency on a year to year basis will outweigh whatever successes he might've had.

So what now? In January the Cowboys will officially announce their desire to not bring Jason Garrett back and will embark on their first genuine coaching search since the end of the 2006 season. Coaching searches are complex and often times messy, especially with an organization as big and leak heavy as the Cowboys. What factors might determine or shape the coaching search? Well.....

Dak Prescott

Simply put, any head coach will be sat before the QB of the largest franchise in the world and will have to get the approval of the man who is about to be written a 30 million dollar plus a year guarantee each season. This team asked Dak Prescott to take his game to the next level and thus far on a whole he has despite the chaos around him. The Cowboys will not (and honestly nor should they) hire a head coach who cannot answer the most obvious question that'll be presented: What can you do to further elevate Dak Prescott? Every coach who has had Dak Prescott from his college day until year four in the NFL rave about his work ethic, lack of an ego and adaptability so I have a hard time imagining anybody NOT wanting to work with him. If we can be year five into Jameis Winston trying to figure things out, coaches will be toppling over one another to work with Dak Prescott. Hiring a coach who will hold the QB accountable but also embrace his strengths as a leader and as a developing pocket passer will win out over everything else.

Is it a rebuild? Or is it a reloading?

This will almost entirely be determined by the end of the season. How things end and what the Cowboys do over these last four games (or longer) will dictate where this goes. If the Cowboys finish it up at 9-7 or 10-6 and do SOMETHING in the playoffs, there's a fine chance the Cowboys will look at this team and determine that the ship is fine and the problems are entirely related to the captain and his first mates. If this is about Jason Garrett, Kris Richard, Kellen Moore and company not maximizing the potential of this team then the offseason can be dictated in finding a better captain. Maybe it's as simple as finding a stabilizing hand as a head coach; someone who has been here before, been successful at it and is just in need of a new place to operate. Maybe it's not the sexiest hire like a wacky college guru or a superstar college coach but a guy who has enough real time NFL successes to garner respect from players and not try to re-invent the wheel. Think of hiring a guy like Gary Kubiak in Denver a while ago or more recently Matt LaFleur who was essentially given the same parts and pieces that Mike McCarthy had and then went to work utilizing them better. Hell speaking of Mike McCarthy; maybe the Cowboys look at him, assume his failures were from a collision of egos and figure a guy who won a Super Bowl, flirted with a few more and simply ran into a Seattle juggernaut he couldn't figure out would be of interest. Maybe it's just about changing the guy wearing the captain's hat.

If this team craters then it could get ugly. Real ugly. If the Cowboys ownership and the brass who makes decisions determines that this team simply wasn't good enough then you're looking at potentially wholesale changes. Your veteran OL with a lot of money tied up in it could all be potential dead money inducing cap casualties. Your big money linebacking crew that has underachieved could be stripped and sold off. The Cowboys could tempt fate and let the likes of Amari Cooper go, not wanting to tie up a serious piece of their offense over the concerns of the fit. A LONG term rebuild; often painful in NFL years could be on its way. That also opens up your coaching candidates. If you assume for the sake of argument that a first year head coach needs at least one solid year to implement his own parts and brand his own identity as a coach then you're probably more willing to burn a year of the primes of Dak, Zeke, Amari and company IF you believe you're a ways away. That would in turn open up the Cowboys to maybe a few more "growing pains" options.

77.

When the Dallas Cowboys take the field in 2020, Jerry Jones will be 77 years old with his 78th birthday waiting in mid October. This will be in all likelihood the last head coach he hires with his own influence. 5-10 years from now, the role of being "the decider" for the Cowboys will belong to Stephen Jones likely with Jerry's son in law Shy Anderson or John Stephen Jones (Stephen Jones' son currently playing QB at Arkansas). My guess is that Jerry wants to nail this hire not just for the obvious reasons of the Cowboys success but to leave the Jones family set up with a head coach who will make the transition as seamlessly as possible.

Kellen Moore

Even if you account for a complete shutdown of the offense for the past two games, Kellen Moore's Cowboys offense is off to a really fine start. They've got the most yards in the league, average the 2nd most yards per drive, fourth most points per drive despite being last in the league in average starting field position so on so forth so on so forth. The Cowboys offense under Kellen Moore is actually bordering on prolific if we're being 100% honest. The Cowboys will have Dak Prescott in the midst of a career year, they've got a really good running back sort of kind of, they've got three wide receivers having fine years and are getting more production than recent years out of their tight end spot despite so-so production from Jason Witten and Blake Jarwin being mismanaged. As much as people want to shout from the heavens about hiring an offensive guru, maybe you'd like to give your 31 year old potential guru a chance to keep developing what he's doing? The Cowboys could easily give Kellen Moore a few more years to work his magic offensively while hiring a steady hand head coach to be a reliable proven presence while Moore continues to get his on the job training as a coordinator. The same could be said for QB coach Jon Kitna and ascending WR coach Sanjay Lal. They've all produced in various ways.

The Familiars and the influencers

Let's start with the familiars. Jerry Jones has been in charge of this operation for over 30 years, he's had multiple players eventually become coaches, multiple coaches become friends and advisors. There's a real good chance that with so much riding on the line, their first move will be to try and see if somebody they know, trust and respect might be up for the task of manning this ship. If you're an optimist, your eyes may light up at the fact that the Jones family is very familiar of Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley or that they have a very close relationship with New Orleans head coach Sean Peyton or that they have a great trust and admiration for Mike Zimmer. Dan Campbell was once a member of the Dallas Cowboys and the team tried to corral him to coach their tight ends after Campbell was let go in Miami. He wound up in New Orleans where he's been the figurehead for their impressive running game. Perhaps the fact that Mike Tomlin and Stephen Jones serve on the competition committee together excites you should the worst case scenario happen for Tomlin in Pittsburgh. Not sure if he excites anybody but the Cowboys have a close familiarity with Seattle Seahawks defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr. If you're a pessimist, John Fox and the Jones family are very close with one another. Jack Del Rio and Jerry Jones go way back, so much so in fact that Del Rio was called by Jerry Jones to discuss Amari Cooper before the Cowboys made the Cooper plunge. The Cowboys interviewed Ron Rivera for their head coaching job and he was apparently in the running up until the end when the finalists were Norv Turner, Wade Phillips and Mike Singletary. If one truly wishes to swallow some bile, the Cowboys have long had a respect for disgraced Cleveland Browns/Pittsburgh Steelers offensive coordinator Todd Haley. Haley was a Bill Parcells disciple who coached wide receivers and apparently was one of the few guys who could keep TO in check.

Then you have the influencers. For better or worse, Jerry Jones has always been known to be rather...receptive of information sent his way. He has people who have his ear and considering he's been around for years on end, he's pretty much the most accessible owner in the NFL. And so the likes of Larry Lacewell, Bill Parcells, Nick Saban and others will play a heavy part in this process and will be sure to chime in with suggestions. How good of a salesjob would Pete Carroll do for Ken Norton Jr? Will Sean Payton stick his neck out for former head coach and current D-coordinator Dennis Allen? Will John Fox also do the same for his one time defensive coordinator? What's going to happen if Jerry Jones calls for an accurate assessment of Josh McDaniels from Bill Belichick? Who are the influencers outside of this organization who will find a way to impact the coaching search.

The decay of the NFL coaching tree

It's a copy cat league as they say and so coaches from successful teams are often poached away. After all if it's working elsewhere then why not snag and pick it up for your team? The problem with this philosophy is that eventually you'll run out of guys worthy of the spot. Case in point; Sean McVay has been poached to the point where there's nobody who immediately jumps out as being HC worthy. Shane Waldron? Well that's great except he oversees the passing game that has completely collapsed on itself. Wes Phillips or Skip Peete do anything for you? The general rule of thumb was to just raid whoever was on Andy Reid's staff but that too has been picked pretty much clean depending on your stance on Eric Bienemey (who should garner an interview in Dallas). The Doug Pedersen staff? That's just about done too as Frank Reich is in Indy, Jon DeFilippo is trying to figure things out in Jacksonville and the current core of Matt Groh and Deuce Staley have clearly fallen out of favor. You willing to take a bet on Josh McDaniels actually showing up to his next head coaching gig? Can any Saints coordinator be relied upon to run their own team given how much control Sean Payton has? With so many new coaching staffs in play, you're pretty much stuck with a decaying coaching tree to pick from.

#Dallas Cowboys #Jerry Jones #Jason Garrett #coaches #2020 #NFL

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sailor-cresselia · 6 years

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How much have you thought of the ex aid timeline?

Probably a bit too much. Here’s what I’ve worked out so far. Keep in mind that I’m not including anything from Mighty Novel X, any drama cds that may exist, or the two stage shows - I don’t have access to them, so I can’t source them.

2000: Kuroto (age 14) discovers the Bugster Virus, and soon proceeds to infect Emu (age 8). Later in the year, the car accident happens. (shhhh i know what the novel says i don’t care it was an accident shhhhhh)

Late 2010: Genius Gamer M collapses from exhaustion and a long term case of the game illness. Happy Birthday, Parad. If this was OOO you’d be getting a cake.

2011: Taiga becomes Snipe, and after what appears to be several months The Thing With Saki happens. I’m still unsure if this is Zero Day - They mentioned the term a few times in show but never specified what it actually was, IIRC.

August 2015, in the world of Build: Parad finds himself on the other side of a wormhole.

early 2016: Ghost and the 100 eyecons movie. I have no idea what goes down, but apparently there’s an ExAid cameo. I need to watch it, but I’m pretty sure that the cameo can be ignored?

April 17, 2016: Over at a previous season, some stuff goes down, Takeru comes back to life, etc.etc. Kuroto (As Genm) goes and practices his Shakariki Sports stunts on some Ganma mooks. (Kuroto has An Aesthetic and it is Zombies and these jerks are ruining it for him.)

Some unspecified time in between, when Takeru is celebrating his birthday: Takeru meets his future son! (aka Surprise Future 3: the surprising. Takeru hates time travel almost to the same level as Shinnosuke now, and is probably worried that he’s going to be a terrible father.) This is the next appearance of both Genm and Ex-Aid - but I DON”T KNOW WHERE IT FITS. I don’t want it to be on Takeru’s original birthday, but if it’s shortly after his revival, then it is physically impossible for Ex-Aid to appear. I just don’t know.

October 2016: Game Start. Emu becomes Ex-Aid.

Early December, 2016: Ex-Aid & Ghost. Technically, outside of Zaizen, his cronies, and Parad, Takeru manages to be the fourth person overall to find out about Emu being Patient Zero. Numbers one and two are Kuroto and Masamune, presumably in that order, and number three is Kiriya. Emu doesn’t remember a thing about the last part of that battle.

Christmas 2016: Episode 12. That is really all there is to say on the matter.

February 2017: Beast Rider Squad

March 2017: Okay, Parad, this is the definition of ‘cool motive, still murder.’ (AKA Kuroto dies.) Later in the month, ‘Chou Super Hero Taisen’ and the Gorider special occur.

April 2017: Kamen Rider Chronicle Begins

May 2017: oh. hey there kuroto. “welcome back” (also the proper introduction of Masamune / Cronus)

June 2017: Oh! Hey there Kiriya! Welcome back!

Early to Mid August 2017: Kamen Rider Chronicle Ends. (and so does the Season.) That Other Build appears, presumably from his 2015, and takes off one of Kuroto’s remaining lives.

I figure about a week passes between Masamune’s defeat and The Press Conference, maybe two weeks. No more than that. Enough time to get things done, like Taiga’s clinic being made official, Nico to graduate, Hiiro to get some new students, etc.

Late August to early September 2017: True Ending, wherein a terrible father is actually able to try and redeem himself for once in this franchise.

Here’s where it gets tricky.

In the True Ending post-credits scene, That Other Build appears, again presumably from his 2015, takes Ex-Aid’s power, and accidentally takes Parad along for the trip back through the wormhole. Parad is stuck in Build!2015 until Build!2017, aka Heisei Gen Final, at which point he and Sento hitch a ride with Kouta (the overpowered little–) back to the Main Timeline.

Build & Ex-Aid (Heisei Generations Final) is, with regards to the Main Timeline, canonically “one year after True Ending”, which would put it somewhere in the second half of 2018.

I. Don’t like putting this film a full year after the season. It doesn’t fit with any of the other Movie Wars - most are at most set six months post-series.

(Well - most of the other Movie Wars.)

(We are studiously ignoring OOO & W for the purpose of comparison, because W’s final episode is set one year after the rest of the series, and the movie really requires that to have happened. To say nothing of the OOO section… *shudder*)

(And the Ex-Aid & Ghost film has no choice but to be in December, because of Certain Events In Late December, so it’s by necessity 8 months after the conclusion of… most of Ghost’s storyline.)

But putting Heisei Gen Final in 2018 makes several things awkward.

First: one year? really? Again, an unusual time gap. I just don’t like it.

Second: It screws with Sento and Ryuuga, who I maintain landed in the Main Timeline. I know I rag on Zi-O, and there are all sorts of problems and unreliable narration going on in there, but this has nothing to do with that. This is largely consolidation of characters. I assume that time stayed ‘synced’ when Enigma was shut down, so they landed in Mid to Late July 2018. (season finale time dilation in action, folks!)

IF Heisei Gen Final is in 2018, as canon claims, then there would be two Sentos and two Ryuugas running around at the time. Three people with the same faces, technically, because of Sato Taro and the black-haired Ryuuga.

That’s just mean and there’s too many paradoxes going around in Rider right now.

Also, Final being in 2018 will probably wreak havoc with the currently upcoming Heisei Generations Forever.

All of that to say that I personally put Final in December 2017, just to keep things nice and consistent.

The Another Ending trilogy in August 2019, two years after the series finale. (As is the Para-DX HBV.) That’s unavoidable. Two years post-finale is a good time span.

I can’t tell what the time span of the four is, though. They follow pretty much immediately on each other’s heels, but I think it’s… maybe a week, week and a half total?

A very, very long and tiring week and a half.

I have no earthly idea how far off Kiriya’s revival is, and that bugs me.

(… heh. bugs. like bugsters. i’m so sick of these puns you guys.)

Doing math like a normal human tells us that Another Ending is 2019 - they SAY two years after True Ending, but Rider Wiki insists it’s in 2020 - two years after the ‘technically canonical but really really dumb’ date of 2018… for Heisei Final. Normal Human math means that Mighty Novel X, canonically ‘three years after Another Ending’, is thus 2022, as oppose to where Rider Wiki lists it - 2023.

That’s as far out as I can go, so yeah. Little too much thought. I’m desperately trying to figure out the Heart and Mach specials for Drive - I know they’re here in 2018, but I’m not sure WHEN in 2018. (Mach Saga is going in November for the (re)United verse, no two ways about that, but I dunno about canonically.)

So that’s what I’ve been using for the Ex-Aid Timeline. Why do you ask?

#sailorcressy says #i will ride this inspiration train until it runs out of track #kamen rider ex-aid #i spent an hour typing this #i need to sleep now goodnight #Anonymous

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omgstupendousbouquetbasement · 3 years

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Las Vegas Roars Back to Life With Record Gambling Win

Barely a year after the Las Vegas Strip was shut down by COVID-19, its world-famous casinos have roared back to a record-breaking summer thanks to a remarkable winning streak.

Nevada pocketed an all-time record $1.36 billion last month from gamblers, who are flooding back to the city nicknamed Lost Wages after months confined at home with little to spend their money on.

"We weren't anticipating these type of numbers," said Michael Lawton, senior analyst for Nevada Gaming Control Board.

"In Nevada, a billion dollars in gaming win is kind of a bellwether number. And we've recorded a billion dollars in gaming win in five consecutive months."

July was something of a "perfect storm," thanks to the presence of major events including a Conor McGregor fight, a Garth Brooks concert at the gleaming new Allegiant Stadium, and the return of musical residencies such as Usher and Bruno Mars at swanky casino theaters.

The month also contained five weekends, including the bonanza Fourth of July holiday.

But the hot streak -- and bustling crowds on the Strip -- point to a renewed confidence in the safety of piling onto slot machines and roulette tables, even as the delta variant spreads and Nevada has had to reimpose indoor mask mandates.

"The people that come to Vegas don't really seem too concerned," said one barman working on the Strip, who asked not to be named. "They don't seem super worried about getting sick or anything. I think if you're paranoid about getting sick, I don't think those people travel -- they probably stay at home."

Workers at casinos told AFP that many of their customers hail from the U.S. Midwest, Texas and Florida.

"It's definitely back to pre-pandemic levels," said Shawn Jones, a promoter at the brand-new Resorts World casino, who said the previous weekend's pool parties had fully sold out. "Maybe it's the pent-up energy... if you ain't able to do something for a while, then there's a big rush when they are able to get out."

Las Vegas became a ghost town in early 2020, with casinos ordered to close for 78 days, dealing a heavy unemployment blow to the tourism-reliant economy.

Capacity limits remained in place until this June, but even by May the city had broken its long-standing monthly gambling revenue record set before the global financial crisis that began in October 2007, according to Lawton.

Americans' reluctance to travel abroad during the COVID-19 pandemic appears to have benefited Las Vegas, with domestic tourism surging.

"We had been planning a girls' trip -- we were originally going to Greece in 2020, but it was postponed, so this is like a revamp," said Karen Utsey, 50, a defense contractor from Michigan. "Right now, I don't know if I'm comfortable going overseas."

Total visitor numbers for July hit 3.3 million, just 10% below the same month in pre-pandemic 2019 despite the relative absence of international travel.

Numbers arriving by car from California have surpassed pre-pandemic levels all summer.

While Lawton expects August gambling figures to track slightly lower than July, the gradual return of trade conventions that make up a huge slice of mid-week business offers hope for further growth.

In June, the World of Concrete drew headlines as the first major industry convention to return to Las Vegas, and this week saw events including movie theater summit CinemaCon, the JCK jewelry show and Cannabis Conference 2021.

Attendee numbers were expected to be lower than previous years, but both events were scrapped entirely in 2020 at the start of the pandemic, meaning their return to Las Vegas represents progress.

Dean and Amanda Moodie, 37 and 35, respectively, just arriving from Minnesota for the jewelry event, said they have taken outdoor-based vacations around the U.S. during the pandemic, but the Las Vegas trip "is probably our first dabble into things that are mainly indoors."

"I mean there's masks and stuff," said Dean Moodie. "I'm not too worried about myself personally anyways. And then we're both vaccinated as well."

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tkmedia · 3 years

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For Popovich and USA it's gold or nothing

After their first Olympic defeat since 2004 in their opening game against France and without many of their best players, the US men's basketball team face an uphill struggle to leave Tokyo with the gold medal. Gregg Popovich knows better than anyone that nothing less will do

By Huw Hopkins Last Updated: 26/07/21 4:44pm

Kevin Durant and Gregg Popovich during the USA's opening defeat to France on Sunday The last time Gregg Popovich worked with Team USA at an Olympics was 2004. He was an assistant coach for the men’s team that won bronze, and his first foray at the Olympics as head coach might be heading towards a similar outcome. In 2004, his superstar power forward Tim Duncan for the San Antonio Spurs was a leader on the USA roster. Duncan was also one of the few top Americans to have not dropped out of representing the country after the FIBA Americas Cup, where the team had romped to an undefeated championship a year earlier. So if Team USA go out sad are we finally going to have to have a conversation that maybe it was just Tim Duncan’s greatness and not Coach Pop that made San Antonio so great for so long? 👀— Mo Mooncey (@TheHoopGenius) July 25, 2021 But without Jason Kidd, Tracy McGrady, Jermaine O’Neal, Vince Carter, Mike Bibby, Ray Allen and Elton Brand - all top players at the time in the NBA - or other elite players such as Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, Kevin Garnett or Chauncey Billups, the USA fielded a group of young men without much professional experience and only B-grade talent.When you look back at the names that joined Team USA, it’s not a terrible list: rookies LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Carmelo Anthony were there, as was sophomore Amar'e Stoudemire. But so too was Emeka Okafor, who hadn’t played a minute of professional basketball. They were joined by Shawn Marion, Richard Jefferson, Lamar Odom, Carlos Boozer - none of whom were ever the best guy on a good team - and a pair of dominant ball handlers in Stephon Marbury and Allen Iverson. And of course Duncan, who was arguably the best player in the NBA.Had all these players been brought in at their peak this could have been a gold medal team, but the mix of inexperience and lesser talent wasn’t enough to support the duelling superstars that represented chalk and cheese on the hardwood, Iverson and Duncan.The Dream was over

Allen Iverson and Tim Duncan at the 2004 Athens Olympics It was the worst iteration of what some were still calling the ‘Dream Team’. The moniker came from the 1992 Olympics when professional basketball players from the NBA were first allowed to suit up for their nation. The men’s USA team comprised Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, John Stockton, Karl Malone, David Robinson, Patrick Ewing, Chris Mullen, Clyde Drexler, Scottie Pippen, and, in a nod to the college athletes that previously represented the USA at the Olympics, Christian Laettner. Aside from the latter, there had never been a better collection of basketball talent put together.Vice-President of NBA Europe Ralph Rivera believes it was this moment that acted as a catalyst for the rest of the world catching up to the USA in terms of talent. “It was pivotal,” he told Sky Sports earlier this year.“I think you can trace back the big bang of the NBA to the Dream Team in 1992. Pau Gasol talked about the fact that it happened in his hometown and inspired him and a generation of kids like him to follow the players and the league. In fact, that was the impetus as well for opening the European office two years later in 1994.”The Dream Team nickname had probably worn off by 1996, but there were still top players on each incarnation, and some still used the term going into the 2004 Olympics, when the talent had taken an undeniable dip.

The 1992 USA Men's Basketball Team The NBA had also seen an influx of internationals as a result of the first Dream Team inspiring other nations to pick up the orange ball. Detlef Schrempf became the first European All-Star in 1993, and his fellow German Dirk Nowitzki had become a good player in the early 2000s. Serbia’s Peja Stojakovic as one of the NBA’s leading scorers in the mid-2000s, China's Yao Ming had become an international sensation and Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili had joined Tim Duncan and Gregg Popovich's Spurs from France and Argentina, respectively.These days, the floodgates of international NBA talent are well and truly open with around a fifth of the NBA’s roster spots being taken by players overseas.There hasn’t been an American Most Valuable Player since James Harden in 2018, and the Defensive Player of the Year Award hasn’t been presented to someone from the USA since 2017.With the likes of Luka Doncic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Nikola Jokic, Rudy Gobert and Joel Embiid cementing their status as All-Stars, as well as leading their respective teams to top seeds - and Giannis leading his to an NBA championship - during a season when 107 NBA players were born outside of the USA, the growth and influence of overseas talent within the league is clear.Even so, several top international players are now finding they can make more money as a star in a league in their home country rather than accepting a similar amount to play limited minutes in the NBA.Simply put, the USA needs its best players to turn up year after year if they want to compete for gold.Get worse before you get better

Stephon Marbury and Allen Iverson are awarded their bronze medals in Athens It almost seems like the USA needs to lose an Olympics before the country reworks its international programme. After missing out on a gold medal in 1988, then NBA Commissioner David Stern worked closely with USA Basketball and the Olympic Committee to bring in professionals. It took three Summer Games of succeeding before gold eluded them again in 2004.Many complained that the players had stopped taking it seriously when Tim Duncan’s team settled for bronze, as there was a mentality for some to rock up one year before the Olympics took place, play a tournament to get used to FIBA rules, then win the big one.After 2004, the USA scrapped the coaching staff and started from scratch with the players. That meant assistant coach Gregg Popovich was out of the fold - he was considered for the top job but apparently didn’t show enough hunger for the position - and Duke University coach Mike Krzyzewski took over on the proviso that he would stick around to set up a pathway.Players were also told that they have to commit to multiple summers, attend training camps, compete in tournaments and be part of a wider group that would be selected on merit closer to the time. There was no guarantee they would be selected and they would have to give up their time.

LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony with their gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and Dwyane Wade were NBA veterans in 2008. They had become the best players (or certainly on the top tier) and they returned to Team USA to avenge their rookie-year embarrassment on the national stage. The big guns were brought in: Kobe Bryant and Jason Kidd were now elder statesmen in the league but they set the tone for a ‘gold or nothing’ mentality. And a few younger players - such as Chris Paul, Deron Williams and Dwight Howard - learned from the best.This is when the Dream Team was officially retired. In came the Redeem Team.It ushered in three more Olympic gold medals, but when Krzyzewski retired from international commitments after Rio, Gregg Popovich finally got his run as head coach.The problem? The top players were beginning to tire of giving up their free time.Wade and James completed their third Olympic cycle and stepped away from 2016. Anthony stayed on but that would prove to be his last. That team successfully ushered in a new generation that included Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, Klay Thompson, Paul George and Jimmy Butler, but after the Rio Games, some of the top stars had lost motivation to attend training camps and tournaments each summer.At the FIBA World Cup in 2019, in his first major tournament, Popovich was left without much star power and a lot of youth. The result was a defeat to France in the quarter-finals and a miserable seventh-place finish.No LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Damian Lillard, Kawhi Leonard, Anthony Davis, James Harden, nor Kevin Durant. The scoring was instead falling onto the shoulders of 22-year-olds Donovan Mitchell and Jaylen Brown, and a 21-year-old Jayson Tatum.

Donovan Mitchell at the 2019 FIBA World Cup We might look back on some of those names one day with the same appreciation that we do with Wade, Anthony and James today, but they were not reliable superstars at that point. The only hope is that some of them will have been able to use that experience at Tokyo 2020, when some of the truly elite players will have returned.Covid-19 threw a spanner in that plan. With the Olympics delayed and such a short turnaround between the 2019-20 season and the 2020-21 season, more players opted for rest this summer, and many of the best players were simply not available. Popovich was once again given one or two superstars, supported by a number of players who are second, third, and even fourth, fifth and sometimes sixth or seventh options on their NBA teams.The USA men’s Tokyo 2020 roster is not the Dream Team. It’s not even the Redeem Team. And the loss against France in their opening contest, as well as losses to Australia and Nigeria during warm-up exhibitions, shows that Popovich might not have the best luck when it comes to international competition. The rest of the world has officially caught up to the USA’s men’s teams, and if a nation can’t put out it’s best players, it will be tough to get on the podium.If they don’t win gold, it could mean another overhaul at USA Basketball to regenerate the enthusiasm that top American-born players need to show up and represent their country. And if Popovich is ousted, it could put a permanent dent on the career of someone who many consider as the best basketball coach of all time. Read the full article

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olivereliott · 3 years

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Mt. Shasta As A Convergence

[Note: 2020 is the tenth year of my blog at Semi-Rad.com, and since I started it, I’ve been fortunate to get to do some pretty wonderful adventures. Throughout this year, I’ll be writing about 12 favorite adventures I’ve had since I started writing about the outdoors, one per month. This is the eleventh in the series. The other stories are here.]

It occurred to me, as Forest’s leg pressed against mine in the dark, a bit over the invisible line between our two sleeping pads, that I had never had a comfortable night in a tent on Mt. Shasta.

This time, in May 2018, was both uncomfortable and funny because of the size difference between my backpack and Forest’s backpack. I had planned on using a nice, roomy ski mountaineering pack, but a shipping snafu at the last minute meant it didn’t arrive in time, so I crammed as much as I could in a 38-liter pack, and left out some things that definitely would have helped. Like an extra foam pad to put under my sleeping pad, an extra pair of socks to change into so my feet wouldn’t freeze in my sleeping bag, a thicker sleeping bag, extra layers, extra food, et cetera. Forest, on the other hand, had a massive backpack, and was never one to shy away from overpacking. His rationale, as a photographer, was basically: I’m packing all these heavy lenses, so I might as well give up on having a light pack. In our many trips together, I have more than once glanced over in shock and awe at something he had apparently carried 10 or more miles into the backcountry: a glass jar of tapenade, a quart of half and half, a pair of bulky leather moccasin slippers that he seemed to be taking everywhere lately, maybe more as a running gag than anything.

As soon as we’d gotten our small but bombproof mountaineering tent set up and anchored in the snow at Lake Helen on Mt. Shasta, we discovered that the tent was designed for two regular-sized 20-inch-wide sleeping pads. We discovered this because Forest had apparently acquired a super-plush 25-inch-wide pad, which was now monster-trucking over mine by almost five inches.

On the way up to our camp at Helen Lake, I had drenched all my baselayers and my socks skinning uphill in the afternoon sun, but hoped they might still have a chance to dry out in the brief couple hours we had at camp before sunset. I wasn’t that lucky, and wriggled into my sleeping bag with a pair of damp ski socks between my knees, hoping to dry them overnight. It was a short night, one of those nights out when you aren’t freezing to death, but just can’t quite manage to get into good sleep because you’re just a bit too cold, all night. And Forest was a bit over the line onto my side of the tent, or, more accurately, my 40 percent portion of the tent.

I had been on Shasta once before, on a fundraising climb in 2009, and I didn’t sleep well then either, for different reasons: Three guys sleeping shoulder-to-shoulder in a “three-person” tent, flatulence (Night 1’s dinner was bean burritos and Night 2 was lentil something-or-other), and nerves, because I had way less of an idea if I was capable of making it to the top of the mountain or not. We’d gotten up just after midnight on our summit day, climbed slowly in rope teams, made it to the summit, and then glissaded down for what felt like hours. It was my first time on a volcano, first time on a rope team, and first summit of Shasta. Before and after, my friend Mitsu kept talking about what a great ski descent it was. At the time, skiing it would have been a big leap for me, skill-wise, and: How would I even navigate up the Avalanche Gulch route in the dark? I mean, our guide had even led us a bit off-route in the dark that morning, to everyone’s surprise, including his. But maybe someday.

—

When I was in fourth grade, my parents told my brother and me that we’d be going to Colorado to learn how to ski. We’d drive out from southwest Iowa over two days, stay in a four-bedroom condominium with three other families, kids sleeping on the floor of the living room, adults in bedrooms, and the kids would take ski lessons for most of the week. I don’t know what drew our families to Steamboat, but I do know that with every adult lift ticket purchased, one kid 12 years old or younger skied for free. I think the first year, I wore sunglasses in lieu of goggles, and had a shoestring running through the sleeves of my jacket to my gloves, which was a pretty idiot-proof way to not lose a glove.

I remember looking out the window of the condo the first evening and seeing the chairlift, wondering how people managed to stay on it on the way down the mountain. If I had asked my brother, he probably would have said something like, You don’t ride it down, moron, you ski down. And I would have said, Oh, yeah.

We learned how to snowplow/pizza, and eventually how to do parallel turns/french fries, going from green to blue on rental skis, collecting less snow inside our jackets and pants as we figured out how to stay upright. I don’t remember specifically now, but I imagine my brother picked it up faster than I did, because he was more natural at pretty much every sport. By the end of the five days, I imagine we thought we were experts, and started being those kids who would go straight down every blue run without a single turn if they could. We came back to Steamboat the next year, and then had one more trip to Winter Park when I was in seventh grade.

I would never have said my family was rich—we seemed to be the last family I knew in the ’80s to get a microwave and an answering machine—but maybe instead of a microwave, my parents wanted to go skiing. And now that I think about it, as an adult out on my own, I went a couple decades without owning a microwave, but I always had a pair of skis in my closet.

One other possibly unintended consequence of those early trips: I left Iowa when I was 23 to live near the Rocky Mountains, and have been unable to escape the gravitational pull of them ever since. I wouldn’t say skiing has ever been my Number One thing, but I think those early ski days planted a seed. When I returned to skiing again in my mid-20s, my favorite part was no longer the whooshing down runs clear-cut through mountainside forests, but the views from the top of all the other peaks, and all the other possibilities for exploring, not just in the winter, but the next summer.

—

I moved to Colorado in 2005 and logged 30 days on the mountain, learning to snowboard behind my friend Nick. In 2008, Nick and I took an AIARE Level 1 avalanche course, and I got a pair of bulky alpine touring bindings for cheap, and mounted them on an old pair of skis my friend Mitsu sold me for $100. I skied a handful of days each year, a few at resorts and a few in the backcountry in the spring, when the snow had consolidated and avalanche danger was less.

In 2017, I started climbing and skiing a volcano every year with Mitsu, first the Southwest Chutes of Mt. Adams, a 35-40-degree line that keeps going and going for 4,000 vertical feed, and then Mt. Hood (I downclimbed a couple hundred feet down the Old Chute route before clicking into my skis, looking at the bergschrund at the bottom and not feeling confident I’d make the consequential turns). I loved the snow climbs, and I loved skiing down instead of walking.

For 2019, I had started to think about Mt. Shasta, and Forest and I were looking for a snowy location for a photo shoot for a book we were writing about camping. Mitsu was in, too. I also invited our friend Abi, who lived in northern California and had been partway up Mt. Shasta three times but never summited, for various reasons. She had a young son at home and hadn’t been getting out as much as she used to, but I figured we’d pace ourselves and she’d be OK. I did forget that the weekend we’d be on Shasta was Mother’s Day weekend, but her husband, Eddie, was up for doing a guys’ weekend with their son in order to help Mom get up a big snowy mountain.

As I strapped my skis to my pack at the Bunny Flat trailhead on Shasta’s southwest flank to walk the first couple miles of trail, I started to realize I was more excited to help Abi finally get to the summit than I was about

taking a shot at skiing the mountain myself. It’s one thing to try something and have to turn back once, but twice, and then three times, it starts to build up. And with a young family, and maybe your friends all starting to have young families and spend less time climbing mountains, it might get to the point where you think you might not get back to try, let alone summit. But I thought our plan was good: take two days, hike up to Lake Helen the first day, camp, and then go for the summit in the morning—a pretty standard itinerary for the Avalanche Gulch route, the most popular route on the peak. Abi wasn’t sure if she’d try to ski down, but I figured she could probably glissade as fast as I could ski, or at least fast enough.

I hadn’t specifically trained for Shasta, besides one day of skinning up a groomed run at Loveland Ski Area, and a last-minute climb and ski of the Cristo Couloir on Colorado’s Quandary Peak, a 14er I thought would be a good test to see if I was ready to ski Shasta. Test results: Fit enough to climb up, not fit enough to ski down and look good doing it, but probably fit enough to ski down without my legs turning to complete Jell-o. As I crammed extra clothing in my ski bag for my flight to California, I thought about the idea of telling nine-year-old me during my first week on skis that you could use them to ski UPHILL. It would have blown my mind—and sounded like the dumbest idea ever.

From our campsite at Helen Lake, which we shared with a dozen or so other climbers, I looked up at the route. Mitsu and Abi melted snow for cooking and drinking water and Forest shot a few photos. We’d been hot on the ski up to the campsite at 10,400 feet, the sun bouncing off all the snow at our feet and up onto our faces, but as soon as the sun went under, the temperature would drop and the soft snow at the campsite would harden to ice overnight.

Mitsu, in a rush to pack and leave Portland, had forgotten his crampons, and thought he might be able to make do with his ski crampons. But he also had a splitting headache, and was drinking a cup of coffee in a desperate hope that maybe the caffeine would help.

I remembered wondering back in 2009 how the hell I’d find my way up the steep snowy slope in the dark, and the answer seemed funny now: we’d leave camp later. We were in decent shape, knew how long it would probably take us to get to the summit, and there were only four of us, climbing unroped. In 2009, I had trained for my Shasta climb by hauling a heavy pack up a steep hike near Denver once a week, figuring that was a good simulation. This time, I had hardly trained at all, except for all the trail running I’d been doing, and I was at least partly counting on knowing how to pace myself, something that had come with a lot of experience—and the lesson from our Shasta guides that going slow and not stopping was way better than going fast and having to stop and catch your breath every couple hundred feet.

The next morning, we got up at 5:00 to stomp around in the cold and make oatmeal and coffee in the dark. One by one, we left camp, figuring we’d be able to keep tabs on each other pretty easily in the wide-open gully. I started on my skis, skinning at a comfortable pace, then eventually popped them off and put crampons on my ski boots. Abi and I kept fairly close to each other all the way up, and Mitsu made it about two-thirds of the way to the top of the gully before throwing in the towel—he didn’t feel good about trying to finish the climb without crampons.

Abi and I made it to the top of Avalanche Gulch, heading around the Red Banks and plopping down in the snow for a break before the final 1,300-foot climb to the summit, less steep but maybe more miserable because of the decreased availability of oxygen higher up. I scanned the sky to the west looking for clouds, checked my phone for the elevation, and tried to estimate how much longer we might be climbing before we hit the summit. Abi, having crushed out 2,500 feet of climbing despite multiple warnings to us that she did not think she was in peak physical condition for something like this, tried to eat some Cheez-Its and updated me on how things were going in regards to menstruation and lactation: “I’m bleeding into my pants and I’m going to need to milk myself when we get down.”

I talked with Abi about apps that help you track your menstrual cycle, which is not something I thought I’d ever discuss with someone on the side of a mountain, and I thought about something my friend Jayson told me once in a discussion about traveling. He had been telling me about walking out of a tent to board a plane at the Nairobi airport, which was under construction at the time. I said something about how it sounded crazy compared to what we consider “normal” air travel, and he told me that he realized that whenever he had anxiety about traveling somewhere new, with all the things you think about, passports, visas, not knowing the language, not knowing how to get around a new country or a city, and generally feeling like a very nervous fish out of water, he’d see a mom juggling all the same stuff he was juggling while traveling, plus a kid or two, and looking like she wasn’t worried at all.We climbed the next thousand feet up Misery Hill, a slope that everyone will tell you feels like it’s never going to end, Abi just behind me, and Forest just behind her, until we arrived at the final rocky crown of the peak, bordered by a steam vent leaking rotten-egg-smelling sulfuric air everywhere.

Abi and I set our packs down in the snow to trudge up the final 300 rocky vertical feet to the summit of Shasta. The snowy climbers’ trail ended a few scrambly moves from the proper summit. I said Abi should go first because it was her first time up there and it was more important, and she said no, you go first because if I watch you do it, the exposure won’t seem so bad. I stood my ground and finally, Abi went for it, stopped to take in the view, and let some tears run down her cheeks. Forest popped his head up from around the corner behind me, and he and I moved up to the summit to take a photo with Abi.

After a few minutes, we picked our way down off the summit and back to our packs. Some guys who had come up just behind us put on their skis on the actual summit, and made a scrappy turn or two down from the top before continuing down. For about half a second, I wondered if I should have tried to ski off the real summit, but the idea flitted away immediately, because I’d gotten what I came for: a supporting role in helping my friend get to the top.

I clicked into my skis, Forest strapped on his splitboard, and we made our way down, stopping every few minutes to make sure Abi was doing OK plunge-stepping and glissading down, until we finally made it back to our tents at Helen Lake.

I’ve always seen Shasta as a sort of slightly more friendly volcanic cousin of Mt. Rainier, at least by each mountain’s trade route—Shasta is a couple hundred feet lower, and the climb is a bit shorter in both mileage and elevation gain. But Shasta is interesting on its own, in both the climbing and skiing, and the many legends about the mountain from UFOs, to Lizard People, to the ancient city of Telos that some claim lies under Shasta. I can’t speak on any of that other stuff, but I can say that I get why people like to tell stories about mountains.

Thanks for reading. These posts are able to continue thanks to the handful of wonderful people who back Semi-Rad on Patreon for as little as $1 a month. If you’d like to join them, click here for more info—you’ll also get access to the Patreon-only posts I write, as well as discounts to my shop and other free stuff.

—Brendan

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cliftonsteen · 4 years

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The Success Of Locally-Produced Coffee In The Philippines

Philippine farmers have grown coffee for hundreds of years. The country has produced commercial Robusta for decades, with specialty Arabica production making up a tiny percentage of the local coffee industry.

A number of factors have kept Philippine specialty coffee from reaching a wider audience. Natural disasters, environmental issues, and unstable economic conditions have hampered production in recent years. Demand is also considerably higher than local supply: in 2018, the Philippines consumed 170,000 metric tons of coffee, but produced only 35,000.

While 2020 brought further challenges – including the Covid-19 pandemic and the Taal Volcano eruption – it could also mark the beginning of a new era for Philippine specialty coffee. For the first time in history, a locally-produced coffee won the 2020 Philippine National Barista Championship (PNBC). Read on to learn about why this success is so important for the future of Philippine coffee production.

You may also like Understanding Specialty Coffee in The Philippines

Philippine Coffee Production

Spanish monks first brought coffee to the Philippines in 1740 in Lipa, which soon became the country’s coffee capital. Production soon spread across the country and by the 1800s, coffee was being exported to the USA via San Francisco and Europe via the Suez Canal.

By the late 1800s, the Philippines was the world’s fourth-largest coffee exporter. At one point in the 19th century, it was the only source of coffee in the entire world when coffee rust destroyed crops in Africa, Java, and Brazil.

However, when coffee rust eventually reached the Philippines in the early 1900s, it devastated the country’s coffee production. It destroyed almost all of the country’s coffee plants, leading many producers to abandon the crop altogether. Production slowly recovered throughout the 20th century, and in the 1950s, the Philippine government introduced a disease-resistant variety into the country.

However, production is still far behind local demand. According to the Department of Agriculture, the country imports between 75,000 and 100,000 metric tons a year from Vietnam and Indonesia alone.

JC Martinez is the President of BrewsCo, a Philippine coffee brand. He explains that in 2019, most of the coffee produced in the country was Robusta, followed by Arabica (with only a small percentage at specialty grade), Excelsia, and Liberica. It’s only in the past three to five years farmers have focused on increasing specialty Arabica production.

To make matters worse, 2020 has brought a completely new set of challenges for Philippine coffee farmers. When the Taal Volcano erupted in January 2020, more than 450,000 residents were urged to leave their homes and farms. Damage to farmland, crops, and livestock was estimated to cost around 577 million Philippine pesos (around US $11 million) with more than 5,000 metric tons of coffee damaged.

And just weeks after the eruption, in mid-March, the government declared a lockdown across most of the country. This has only further impacted the Philippine coffee sector; co-chair and president of Philippine Coffee Board (PCBI), Pacita U. Juan, said that major local roasters have “suffered a drop of about 80% in demand”.

The 2020 PNCC

From 2013 to 2019, the licensed body for World Coffee Events (WCE) in the Philippines was the Phillipine National Barista Championship (PNBC).

However, in 2020, a new WCE-sanctioned body, the Philippine National Coffee Competition (PNCC), took over the event, with the aim of improving global visibility for the Philippine coffee industry. The PNCC presented the 2020 National Barista Championship, Philippine Latte Art Championship, and Brewer’s Cup over a three-day event in early March.

The National Barista Champion was Adrian Vocalan, who was also 2017’s Philippine National Latte Art Champion. Unlike previous winners, however, Adrian won using a local coffee – an experimentally-processed Typica from Itogon, Benguet.

Adrian prepared an espresso, milk beverage, and signature beverage, highlighting the coffee’s more nuanced flavour notes with each preparation method. The espresso highlighted orange, cherry, and cocoa tasting notes, while the milk beverage had notes of vanilla, butterscotch, and caramel. PNCC organiser Nina Guinto described the signature beverage as tasting floral and juicy, with pineapple, honey, and sweet tamarind notes.

Unlike previous competition winners, Adrian picked the coffee himself and oversaw its processing and roasting. By doing so, he was able to share its production and processing details with judges, connecting them with the people producing it.

The Typica came from a lot produced by Elma Serna, a producer from Sitio Hartwell with a farm 1,300 to 1,500 metres above sea level. Sitio Hartwell is in the Cordillera region, which is known for producing specialty Arabica.

Michael Harris Conlin, the 2019 Philippine National Barista Champion, was part of the team that sourced Adrian’s winning coffee. He says: “Elma is a backyard farmer whose family’s livelihood before getting into coffee was mining. After mining was banned by the local municipality, she shifted to coffee production.

“Adrian’s coffee was processed in a very special way. He used carbonic maceration as well a piece of yeast from kombucha grown in a lab. This gave the coffee a nice, effervescent mouthfeel that is not typical of Philippine coffee.”

When I asked Michael what made this coffee special, he said: “I think the most special thing about that is the way it was processed, but Adrian was involved from start to finish. He picked the coffee himself, processed it and was involved in the roasting. The only thing he missed was planting it.”

The fact that a Philippine coffee won the 2020 PNBC is testament to the fact that local specialty coffees are improving in quality. Sly Samonte won the PNBC in 2016 and 2017, and he says that six years ago, he looked for locally-produced competition-grade coffees, but couldn’t find any.

Raoul De Peralta roasted Adrian’s competition-winning coffee. He says: “[A few years ago], the quality of coffee production, in terms of the soil processing and harvesting practices, was not properly refined. Philippine coffee was only ready [for competitions] when more independent coffee producers started to be more hands-on. In maybe 2016 or 2017, you started to see a shift in local coffees.”

Many people who enter barista competitions use coffees that are already well-known and recognised for their quality. Adrian acknowledges that, in the Philippines, using a local coffee is risky. However, he explains that he “wants to break that mindset”.

“We are proud to have this coffee. And using our skills, we needed to prove that our coffee and our ability can win in a competition like this.”

The Future Of Philippine-Produced Specialty Coffee

Coffee professionals in the Philippines hope that a local coffee winning 2020’s PNCC will help bring attention to locally-produced specialty coffee. Rosario Juan is the owner of Commune and part of the PNCC’s leadership. She says: “At the most basic level, this gets people talking about Philippine coffee.

“The buzz will give it more attention and will interest many. There is a small but steadily growing push for Philippine specialty coffee. The fact that we can start talking about quality shows that the work that has been put in over two decades is finally starting to bear fruit.”

Sly agrees: “There’s a lot of intrigue. There’s a lot of desire to improve Philippine coffee and another win is going to add some fire to that. I think that, yes, people would fly to the Philippines for coffee. I believe that some unique varietals have cropped up in the last few years.”

This win will also encourage local producers to keep growing specialty coffee. Lloyd Eric Lim is the PNCC head of finance and CFO of Conlins Coffee, a Philippine coffee roaster.

He says: “I do feel this is a much-needed boost to the morale of our coffee farmers. I think having the coffee take on such positive national attention is the first step to bringing awareness and growing interest in specialty coffee.”

For the first time in competition history, a Philippine coffee has won a barista competition. This is clear proof that interest in Philippine specialty coffee is only growing. The next test will be competing on an international level; displaying a Philippine coffee origin on a global stage would surely only grow local and international demand even further.

Enjoyed this? Then Read Beyond Manila: Drinking Specialty Coffee Across The Philippines

Photo credits: Michael Harris Conlin, Raoul De Peralta

Perfect Daily Grind

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dansnaturepictures · 4 years

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09/08/20-Amazing butterfly walk at Old Winchester Hill, Cadman’s Pool in the New Forest and flowers in the garden: All of these photos different to the ones I tweeted

Early this afternoon on another stunningly hot day we went to Old Winchester Hill with particularly one and also another target of another butterfly species this year we needed to see. On the way it was great to see a Kestrel and Red Kite from the car and a Buzzard on the way home, the Kestrel we saw as we often do so many of at Old Winchester Hill. When we arrived it was wonderful to take in sensational views across the South Downs countryside. It really did look stunning in this sunshine and the area around the reserve was brimming with bight and rich meadows full of flowers. I took the first three and fifth pictures in this photoset of beautiful views here today. I also took the sixth and seventh pictures in this photoset of flowers and some berries by the car park. I tweeted some other flower photos from today too and was kindly told they are Perforate St. John’s-wort and Small Scabious during Twitter’s #WildFlowerHour. The former one I had seen and photographed a bit this year already at different places so it was nice to know what they are and the other ones looked very good too so two more great ones to learn in my deeper delve into flowers this year.

And the meadows were absolutely teeming with butterflies today I did see hundreds of them. I used 15 minutes to do one of my final big butterfly counts of 2020 with it closing today. And what a way to end. I saw the most of any species in one count for me this year therefore possibly some of the most individuals in any of my counts this year and ever actually, with 40 Meadow Browns seen. There were just clouds of them in the air at once in every direction you looked when in a meadow. It was so brilliant to see and just made the whole meadow full of life. I also saw 6 Gatekeepers, 6 Large Whites, 4 Common Blues, 1 Brimstone, 1 Red Admiral, 1 Six-spot Burnet and 1 Small White in the 15 minutes as well as a host of other butterflies in the walk it was a top one. One of the species was the Chalkhill Blue with boards of them around again today too. The best possible way to help end my big butterfly counts this year.

The first of our targets for our year list today was the Silver-spotted Skipper a butterfly I had marvelled at seeing here the last two summers and it had rather become a mark of my mid/late summer a bit. We wandered across the meadow areas and my Mum spotted one, and then I saw one myself they are delicate little things and flew so quickly but I just got my eyes onto it and made out it’s distinctive underwing marking. Then as we walked on we both wanted the chance to take a picture of one with my macro lens now on. And as we walked on we saw two together flying and one settled. We both got onto it and standing over it I snapped up shots getting closer and closer. One of these the fourth picture in this photoset and I tweeted another. You have to get as close as possible with a macro lens but it’s worth it for the detail they give. Each time I edged closer I took a shot to ensure I had got one in case it flew off. When I got nice and close in the end but to make the shot work better in the heat I just sat down, almost laid down really and was able to move the camera and lens into position to get photos and a nice angle. It was a fantastic natural moment I felt very connected to this gorgeous butterfly being so close to it. I felt so lucky to have seen them they really are so well marked, rare and quite sought after.

Another one flew in and this one took off. Exceptional moments with this species that is on the sign of the car park here. It was all about it today we first saw them here in early September in 2018 but we knew August was the time to come. A little earlier than when we saw them last year so it could go either way. But we got it right today and we saw it which I am over the moon with. In keeping with my theme of my 2020 butterfly year it was my earliest ever sighting of this species in a year of the only four times now I have ever seen them now. Great moment.

As we walked on for a third day this year we were astounded by how many male and female Chalkhill Blues were around. They were just absolutely everywhere it was unbelievable. Mini swarms of them even flew at me and landed briefly on my arms they seemed to take a liking to the sun cream we had both put on as my Mum had this too. What a sensational wildlife moment and another very intimate one. It made me so happy. It became one of those utopian days afterwards where I was so in aw and at one with nature and being inspired and happy at everything I was seeing. A Yellowhammer flitting about in the meadows and visible flying Kestrels adding to that. Everything I hoped might happen today did.

There was one species I knew I had a chance to see butterfly wise which I hadn’t yet this year here, the species we came back to Old Winchester Hill in the first place for in 2018 but saw the skippers instead that day after visiting this place earlier last decade, the Clouded Yellow. We approached at a safe social distance a man watching butterflies, a lovely lady we met at a social distance earlier and had a great brief chat with had told us he was there, and told him about the Silver-spotted Skippers and where they were. I had a strange positive premonition that we were to ask him about Clouded Yellows and one would fly past us all as we were there. We did ask him what he had seen and he said Clouded Yellows. We asked him where and he pointed over the meadow and sure enough one was flying over it! We watched this in delight, getting great binocular views to really see it was a Clouded Yellow with that yellow colour. As we walked down we saw one flying a lot slower than the original and made out it’s distinctive yellow and black edged colour scheme. We saw both flying together battling each other at one point too which is great to see for any species really. The second one landed a couple of glorious times, as did another or maybe the same one we saw on the way back to the car, and we managed to get something quite rare for Clouded Yellow really a photo of them with my macro lens. With so many produced today, 40 in fact a new figure for this year in a day, in a year I continue to take so many pictures, I’m doing the my idea of tweeting most of my pictures and including ten exclusive ones in my blog. The Clouded Yellow of which I only produced one this afternoon I tweeted on my account Dans_Pictures earlier so do take a look at that if you are interested. What another sensational species to be so close to. I was so lucky to see them not always a butterfly I easily see in a year but we now know they can be seen at this part of the reserve a bit more confidently after seeing it ourselves whilst reports on websites etc. are always so valuable.

This Clouded Yellow took my butterfly year list to 43, taking it one ahead of my 2018 total to confirm it as my second highest ever butterfly year list behind last year’s 45 which ended with Silver-sported Skipper here a year ago Tuesday a day after my first Clouded Yellow of 2019 at Magdalen Hill. This is no less than my 2020 deserves for how amazing it’s been, with the amount of butterflies I saw and how positive it all was because from the spring emergence onwards it was to the harrowing backdrop of the huge impact on our lives the coronavirus had and the lockdown and that. Seeing butterflies were an amazing thing to keep me going during the initial bits of that time. But the restrictions easing to allow slightly further afield travel to exercise happened at the right time for me to luckily see my usual variety of butterflies in years as spring marched on. Then as we hurtled towards summer there was the most notable thing of my butterfly year being how early everything was with my first sighting of nearly every butterfly this year being either my earliest or second earliest ever sighting of one in a year. The whole season was a little ahead. Fitting that the Silver-spotted Skipper was my earliest and Clouded Yellow my third earliest ever sightings of the species in a year. Then through summer the big thing for me I think was the amount of days I saw hundreds of butterflies usually with one lead species but many species together which were exceptional moments and today was definitely in the top four so far for that.

But like the day here last year happiness at this happening at the height of the heatwave was tinged with a little sadness that barring any new butterflies and one I think I’ve probably missed this summer now these will probably be my last additions to my butterfly year list this year. What a quick it seemed but sensational journey I have been on for sure. But I’d have taken 43 before the year began and would have jumped at it when lockdown which was needed made it look like it may be difficult to see many of the usual species this year. The lockdown did prevent us from getting to the Isle of Wight to see if we could see the Granville Fritillaries for the first time since 2013 which we wondered about doing and couldn’t. And I knew I wasn’t gonna go anywhere to see a Northern Brown Argus this year unlike last in Northumberland. So to thus far anyway to only miss one that I could have seen is phenomenal I feel and makes me so happy. So I am just thrilled with how I’ve done and I‘ll now make the most of every single butterfly I see on work lunch breaks and generally at home and at weekends and feel that I am ending one of my most spectacular peak butterfly seasons again well.

A perfect summer’s day was ended with an afternoon that felt a little like an evening walk at Cadman’s Pool in the New Forest as we safely mixed our lovely local national parks today where my Mum’s husband and Missy to cool off in the water came. It was a nice atmosphere walking through lush green leaves in the summer’s light beside a little stream too. It just felt magical and just like a moment I will always look back on this summer after a brilliant day today. I took the eighth and ninth pictures in this photoset here.

My Mum had also seen a Golden Ringed Dragonfly beside typical New Forest streams they frequent here recently. A dragonfly I still needed to see this year. Sure enough as we walked along the stream here we did see this unmistakable dragonfly dart by. We went on to see a couple more too. This felt great and was another target of mine this summer so it was very satisfying to tick it off that’s four insect targets this weekend I still needed to see going into it and have done what a productive couple of days for wildlife watching on our walks. It was very pleasing to see this species I love and always have dart past us. My 13th dragonfly and damselfly species seen this year I have had some great times with them as well.

I also saw another of my favourites today a Southern Hawker here a female one on a tree which was nice again one I tweeted a picture of on Dans_Pictures. I had time to do my very last butterfly count of the year walking along here seeing 8 Large White, 4 Gatekeeper, 4 Small White, 1 Holly Blue and also 1 Peacock which was nice adding some real variety of habitats for my counts this year. We saw some nice birds on the walk too most notably two young looking Siskins always a great bird we’re more used to seeing by feeders at Blashford Lakes in winter but are a good bet on the open forest in summer. A brilliant end to a packed and thrilling weekend in the heat and sunshine watching fantastic and precious wildlife I was so happy. Thanks so much for your support and have a great and safe week! I did take the tenth picture in this photoset of more flowers in the garden this evening when home.

Wildlife Sightings Summary: (Old Winchester Hill) My first Silver-spotted Skipper and Clouded Yellow of the year, three of my favourite butterflies the Chalkhill Blue, Brown Argus and Red Admiral, one of my favourite moths the Six-spot Burnet, Meadow Brown, Gatekeeper, Small Heath, Large White, Small White, Common Blue, Brown Argus, Brimstone, Yellowhammer, Willow Warbler, Woodpigeon, Kestrel and wasps. (Cadman’s Pool) My first Golden-ringed Dragonfly of the year, another of my favourite dragonflies the Southern Hawker, Large White, Small White, Gatekeeper, Holly Blue, Peacock, Siskin, Bullfinch I saw one soon after Old Winchester Hill on the way back too I’ve seen a great few these past few days, Robin, Blackbird, Carrion Crow and Canada Goose. Nice to see some ponies there with a foal too. We also saw adorable baby donkeys on the way in from the car, and a pig near the road not sure if this is out to pannage yet with the year generally ahead of its so where commoners turn out pigs in autumn to gorge on acorns something I always love I doubt it but nice to see anyway.

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bountyofbeads · 4 years

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This Is Trump’s Fault

The president is failing, and Americans are paying for his failures.

By David Frum | Published April 7, 2020 | The Atlantic | Posted April 16, 2020 |

“Idon’t take responsibility at all,” said President Donald Trump in the Rose Garden on March 13. Those words will probably end up as the epitaph of his presidency, the single sentence that sums it all up.

Trump now fancies himself a “wartime president.” How is his war going? By the end of March, the coronavirus had killed more Americans than the 9/11 attacks. By the first weekend in April, the virus had killed more Americans than any single battle of the Civil War. By Easter, it may have killed more Americans than the Korean War. On the present trajectory, it will kill, by late April, more Americans than Vietnam. Having earlier promised that casualties could be held near zero, Trump now claims he will have done a “very good job” if the toll is held below 200,000 dead.

The United States is on trajectory to suffer more sickness, more dying, and more economic harm from this virus than any other comparably developed country.

[ Read: How the pandemic will end]

That the pandemic occurred is not Trump’s fault. The utter unpreparedness of the United States for a pandemic is Trump’s fault. The loss of stockpiled respirators to breakage because the federal government let maintenance contracts lapse in 2018 is Trump’s fault. The failure to store sufficient protective medical gear in the national arsenal is Trump’s fault. That states are bidding against other states for equipment, paying many multiples of the precrisis price for ventilators, is Trump’s fault. Air travelers summoned home and forced to stand for hours in dense airport crowds alongside infected people? That was Trump’s fault too. Ten weeks of insisting that the coronavirus is a harmless flu that would miraculously go away on its own? Trump’s fault again. The refusal of red-state governors to act promptly, the failure to close Florida and Gulf Coast beaches until late March? That fault is more widely shared, but again, responsibility rests with Trump: He could have stopped it, and he did not.

The lying about the coronavirus by hosts on Fox News and conservative talk radio is Trump’s fault: They did it to protect him. The false hope of instant cures and nonexistent vaccines is Trump’s fault, because he told those lies to cover up his failure to act in time. The severity of the economic crisis is Trump’s fault; things would have been less bad if he had acted faster instead of sending out his chief economic adviser and his son Eric to assure Americans that the first stock-market dips were buying opportunities. The firing of a Navy captain for speaking truthfully about the virus’s threat to his crew? Trump’s fault. The fact that so many key government jobs were either empty or filled by mediocrities? Trump’s fault. The insertion of Trump’s arrogant and incompetent son-in-law as commander in chief of the national medical supply chain? Trump’s fault.

For three years, Trump has blathered and bluffed and bullied his way through an office for which he is utterly inadequate. But sooner or later, every president must face a supreme test, a test that cannot be evaded by blather and bluff and bullying. That test has overwhelmed Trump.

Trump failed. He is failing. He will continue to fail. And Americans are paying for his failures.

The coronavirus emerged in China in late December. The Trump administration received its first formal notification of the outbreak on January 3. The first confirmed case in the United States was diagnosed in mid-January. Financial markets in the United States suffered the first of a sequence of crashes on February 24. The first person known to have succumbed to COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, in the United States died on February 29. The 100th died on March 17. By March 20, New York City alone had confirmed 5,600 cases. Not until March 21—the day the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services placed its first large-scale order for N95 masks—did the White House begin marshaling a national supply chain to meet the threat in earnest. “What they’ve done over the last 13 days has been really extraordinary,” Jared Kushner said on April 3, implicitly acknowledging the waste of weeks between January 3 and March 21.

[ Peter Wehner: The Trump presidency is over]

Those were the weeks when testing hardly happened, because there were no kits. Those were the weeks when tracing hardly happened, because there was little testing. Those were the weeks when isolation did not happen, because the president and his administration insisted that the virus was under control. Those were the weeks when supplies were not ordered, because nobody in the White House was home to order them. Those lost weeks placed the United States on the path to the worst outbreak of the coronavirus in the developed world: one-fourth of all confirmed cases anywhere on Earth.

Those lost weeks also put the United States—and thus the world—on the path to an economic collapse steeper than any in recent memory. Statisticians cannot count fast enough to keep pace with the accelerating economic depression. It’s a good guess that the unemployment rate had reached 13 percent by April 3. It may peak at 20 percent, perhaps even higher, and threatens to stay at Great Depression–like levels at least into 2021, maybe longer.

This country—buffered by oceans from the epicenter of the global outbreak, in East Asia; blessed with the most advanced medical technology on Earth; endowed with agencies and personnel devoted to responding to pandemics—could have and should have suffered less than nations nearer to China. Instead, the United States will suffer more than any peer country.

It didn’t have to be this way. If somebody else had been president of the United States in December 2019—Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Mike Pence, really almost anybody else—the United States would still have been afflicted by the coronavirus. But it would have been better prepared, and better able to respond.Through the early weeks of the pandemic, when so much death and suffering could still have been prevented or mitigated, Trump joined passivity to fantasy. In those crucial early days, Trump made two big wagers. He bet that the virus could somehow be prevented from entering the United States by travel restrictions. And he bet that, to the extent that the virus had already entered the United States, it would burn off as the weather warmed.

[ Read: All the president’s lies about the coronavirus]

At a session with state governors on February 10, Trump predicted that the virus would quickly disappear on its own. “Now, the virus that we’re talking about having to do—you know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat—as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April. We’re in great shape though. We have 12 cases—11 cases, and many of them are in good shape now.” On February 14, Trump repeated his assurance that the virus would disappear by itself. He tweeted again on February 24 that he had the virus “very much under control in the USA.” On February 27, he said that the virus would disappear “like a miracle.”

Those two assumptions led him to conclude that not much else needed to be done. Senator Chris Murphy left a White House briefing on February 5, and tweeted:

Just left the Administration briefing on Coronavirus. Bottom line: they aren’t taking this seriously enough. Notably, no request for ANY emergency funding, which is a big mistake. Local health systems need supplies, training, screening staff etc. And they need it now.

Trump and his supporters now say that he was distracted from responding to the crisis by his impeachment. Even if it were true, pleading that the defense of your past egregious misconduct led to your present gross failures is not much of an excuse.

But if Trump and his senior national-security aides were distracted, impeachment was not the only reason, or even the principal reason. The period when the virus gathered momentum in Hubei province was also the period during which the United States seemed on the brink of war with Iran. Through the fall of 2019, tensions escalated between the two countries. The United States blamed an Iranian-linked militia for a December 27 rocket attack on a U.S. base in Iraq, triggering tit-for-tat retaliation that would lead to the U.S. killing General Qassem Soleimani on January 3, open threats of war by the United States on January 6, and the destruction of a civilian airliner over Tehran on January 8.

The preoccupation with Iran may account for why Trump paid so little attention to the virus, despite the many warnings. On January 18, Trump—on a golf excursion in Palm Beach, Florida—cut off his health secretary’s telephoned warning of gathering danger to launch into a lecture about vaping, The Washington Post reported.

Two days later, the first documented U.S. case was confirmed in Washington State.

Yet even at that late hour, Trump continued to think of the coronavirus as something external to the United States. He tweeted on January 22: “China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”

Impeachment somehow failed to distract Trump from traveling to Davos, where in a January 22 interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box, he promised: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”

Trump would later complain that he had been deceived by the Chinese. “I wish they could have told us earlier about what was going on inside,” he said on March 21. “We didn’t know about it until it started coming out publicly.”

If Trump truly was so trustingly ignorant as late as January 22, the fault was again his own. The Trump administration had cut U.S. public-health staff operating inside China by two-thirds, from 47 in January 2017 to 14 by 2019, an important reason it found itself dependent on less-accurate information from the World Health Organization. In July 2019, the Trump administration defunded the position that embedded an epidemiologist inside China’s own disease-control administration, again obstructing the flow of information to the United States.

Yet even if Trump did not know what was happening, other Americans did. On January 27, former Vice President Joe Biden sounded the alarm about a global pandemic in an op-ed in USA Today. By the end of January, eight cases of the virus had been confirmed in the United States. Hundreds more must have been incubating undetected.

On January 31, the Trump administration at last did something: It announced restrictions on air travel to and from China by non-U.S. persons. This January 31 decision to restrict air travel has become Trump’s most commonly proffered defense of his actions. “We’ve done an incredible job because we closed early,” Trump said on February 27. “We closed those borders very early, against the advice of a lot of professionals, and we turned out to be right. I took a lot of heat for that,” he repeated on March 4. Trump praised himself some more at a Fox News town hall in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the next day. “As soon as I heard that China had a problem, I said, ‘What’s going on with China? How many people are coming in?’ Nobody but me asked that question. And you know better than—again, you know … that I closed the borders very early.”

Because Trump puts so much emphasis on this point, it’s important to stress that none of this is true. Trump did not close the borders early—in fact, he did not truly close them at all.

The World Health Organization declared a global health emergency on January 30, but recommended against travel restrictions. On January 31, the same day the United States announced its restrictions, Italy suspended all flights to and from China. But unlike the American restrictions, which did not take effect until February 2, the Italian ban applied immediately. Australia acted on February 1, halting entries from China by foreign nationals, again ahead of Trump.

And Trump’s actions did little to stop the spread of the virus. The ban applied only to foreign nationals who had been in China during the previous 14 days, and included 11 categories of exceptions. Since the restrictions took effect, nearly 40,000 passengers have entered the United States from China, subjected to inconsistent screenings, The New York Times reported.

At a House hearing on February 5, a few days after the restrictions went into effect, Ron Klain—who led the Obama administration’s efforts against the Ebola outbreak—condemned the Trump policy as a “travel Band-Aid, not a travel ban.”

That same afternoon, Trump’s impeachment trial ended with his acquittal in the Senate. The president, though, turned his energy not to combatting the virus, but to the demands of his own ego.

The president’s top priority through February 2020 was to exact retribution from truth-tellers in the impeachment fight. On February 7, Trump removed Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman from the National Security Council. On February 12, Trump withdrew his nomination of Jessie Liu as undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial crimes, apparently to punish her for her role in the prosecution and conviction of the Trump ally Roger Stone. On March 2, Trump withdrew the nomination of Elaine McCusker to the post of Pentagon comptroller; McCusker’s sin was having raised concerns that suspension of aid to Ukraine had been improper. Late on the evening of April 3, Trump fired Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, the official who had forwarded the Ukraine whistleblower complaint to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, as the law required. As the epigrammist Windsor Mann tweeted that same night: “Trump’s impeachment distracted him from preparing for a pandemic, but the pandemic did not distract him from firing the man he holds responsible for his impeachment.”

[ Read: The pandemic will cleave America in two]

Intentionally or not, Trump’s campaign of payback against his perceived enemies in the impeachment battle sent a warning to public-health officials: Keep your mouth shut. If anybody missed the message, the firing of Captain Brett Crozier from the command of an aircraft carrier for speaking honestly about the danger facing his sailors was a reminder. There’s a reason that the surgeon general of the United States seems terrified to answer even the most basic factual questions or that Rear Admiral John Polowczyk sounds like a malfunctioning artificial-intelligence program at press briefings. The president’s lies must not be contradicted. And because the president’s lies change constantly, it’s impossible to predict what might contradict him.

“Best usa economy IN HISTORY!” Trump tweeted on February 11. On February 15, Trump shared a video from a Senate GOP account, tweeting: “Our booming economy is drawing Americans off the sidelines and BACK TO WORK at the highest rate in 30 years!”

Denial became the unofficial policy of the administration through the month of February, and as a result, that of the administration’s surrogates and propagandists. “It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump,” Rush Limbaugh said on his radio program February 24. “Now, I want to tell you the truth about the coronavirus … Yeah, I’m dead right on this. The coronavirus is the common cold, folks.”

“We have contained this,” Trump’s economic adviser Larry Kudlow told CNBC on February 24. “I won’t say airtight, but pretty close to airtight. We have done a good job in the United States.” Kudlow conceded that there might be “some stumbles” in financial markets, but insisted there would be no “economic tragedy.”

On February 28, then–White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney told an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference, near Washington, D.C.:

The reason you’re ... seeing so much attention to [the virus] today is that [the media] think this is gonna be what brings down this president. This is what this is all about. I got a note from a reporter saying, “What are you gonna do today to calm the markets.” I’m like: Really, what I might do today to calm the markets is tell people to turn their televisions off for 24 hours ... This is not Ebola, okay? It’s not SARS, it’s not MERS.

That same day, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo scolded a House committee for daring to ask him about the coronavirus. “We agreed that I’d come today to talk about Iran, and the first question today is not about Iran.”

Throughout the crisis, the top priority of the president, and of everyone who works for the president, has been the protection of his ego. Americans have become sadly used to Trump’s blustery self-praise and his insatiable appetite for flattery. During the pandemic, this psychological deformity has mutated into a deadly strategic vulnerability for the United States.

[ Read: The four possible timelines for life returning to normal]

“If we were doing a bad job, we should also be criticized. But we have done an incredible job,” Trump said on February 27. “We’re doing a great job with it,” he told Republican senators on March 10. “I always treated the Chinese Virus very seriously, and have done a very good job from the beginning,” he tweeted on March 18.

For three-quarters of his presidency, Trump has taken credit for the economic expansion that began under President Barack Obama in 2010. That expansion accelerated in 2014, just in time to deliver real prosperity over the past three years. The harm done by Trump’s own initiatives, and especially his trade wars, was masked by that continued growth. The economy Trump inherited became his all-purpose answer to his critics. Did he break laws, corrupt the Treasury, appoint cronies, and tell lies? So what? Unemployment was down, the stock market up.

Suddenly, in 2020, the rooster that had taken credit for the sunrise faced the reality of sunset. He could not bear it.

Underneath all the denial and self-congratulation, Trump seems to have glimpsed the truth. The clearest statement of that knowledge was expressed on February 28. That day, Trump spoke at a rally in South Carolina—his penultimate rally before the pandemic forced him to stop. This was the rally at which Trump accused the Democrats of politicizing the coronavirus as “their new hoax.” That line was so shocking, it has crowded out awareness of everything else Trump said that day. Yet those other statements are, if possible, even more relevant to understanding the trouble he brought upon the country.

Trump does not speak clearly. His patterns of speech betray a man with guilty secrets to hide, and a beclouded mind. Yet we can discern, through the mental fog, that Trump had absorbed some crucial facts. By February 28, somebody in his orbit seemed to already be projecting 35,000 to 40,000 deaths from the coronavirus. Trump remembered the number, but refused to believe it. His remarks are worth revisiting at length:

Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus, you know that, right? Coronavirus, they’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, “How’s President Trump doing?” They go, “Oh, not good, not good.” They have no clue. They don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa. They can’t even count. No, they can’t. They can’t count their votes.

One of my people came up to me and said, “Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.” That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything. They tried it over and over. They’d been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning. They lost. It’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax.

But we did something that’s been pretty amazing. We have 15 people [sick] in this massive country, and because of the fact that we went early. We went early; we could have had a lot more than that. We’re doing great. Our country is doing so great. We are so unified. We are so unified. The Republican Party has never ever been unified like it is now. There has never been a movement in the history of our country like we have now. Never been a movement.

So a statistic that we want to talk about—Go ahead: Say USA. It’s okay; USA. So a number that nobody heard of, that I heard of recently and I was shocked to hear it: 35,000 people on average die each year from the flu. Did anyone know that? Thirty-five thousand, that’s a lot of people. It could go to 100,000; it could be 27,000. They say usually a minimum of 27, goes up to 100,000 people a year die.

And so far, we have lost nobody to coronavirus in the United States. Nobody. And it doesn’t mean we won’t and we are totally prepared. It doesn’t mean we won’t, but think of it. You hear 35 and 40,000 people and we’ve lost nobody and you wonder, the press is in hysteria mode.

On February 28, very few Americans had heard of an estimated death toll of 35,000 to 40,000, but Trump had heard it. And his answer to that estimate was: “So far, we have lost nobody.” He conceded, “It doesn’t mean we won’t.” But he returned to his happy talk. “We are totally prepared.” And as always, it was the media's fault. “You hear 35 and 40,000 people and we’ve lost nobody and you wonder, the press is in hysteria mode.”

By February 28, it was too late to exclude the coronavirus from the United States. It was too late to test and trace, to isolate the first cases and halt their further spread—that opportunity had already been lost. It was too late to refill the stockpiles that the Republican Congresses of the Tea Party years had refused to replenish, despite frantic pleas from the Obama administration. It was too late to produce sufficient ventilators in sufficient time.

But on February 28, it was still not too late to arrange an orderly distribution of medical supplies to the states, not too late to coordinate with U.S. allies, not too late to close the Florida beaches before spring break, not too late to bring passengers home from cruise lines, not too late to ensure that state unemployment-insurance offices were staffed and ready, not too late for local governments to get funds to food banks, not too late to begin social distancing fast and early. Stay-at-home orders could have been put into effect on March 1, not in late March and early April.

[ Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes: Trump’s allies know he has failed]

So much time had been wasted by the end of February. So many opportunities had been squandered. But even then, the shock could have been limited. Instead, Trump and his inner circle plunged deeper into two weeks of lies and denial, both about the disease and about the economy.

On February 28, Eric Trump urged Americans to go “all in” on the weakening stock market.

Kudlow repeated his advice that it was a good time to buy stocks on CNBC on March 6 after another bad week for the financial markets. As late as March 9, Trump was still arguing that the coronavirus would be no worse than the seasonal flu.

So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!

But the facade of denial was already cracking.

Through early march, financial markets declined and then crashed. Schools closed, then whole cities, and then whole states. The overwhelmed president responded by doing what comes most naturally to him at moments of trouble: He shifted the blame to others.

The lack of testing equipment? On March 13, Trump passed that buck to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Obama administration.

The White House had dissolved the directorate of the National Security Council responsible for planning for and responding to pandemics? Not me, Trump said on March 13. Maybe somebody else in the administration did it, but “I didn’t do it ... I don’t know anything about it. You say we did that. I don’t know anything about it.”

Were ventilators desperately scarce? Obtaining medical equipment was the governors’ job, Trump said on a March 16 conference call.

Did Trump delay action until it was far too late? That was the fault of the Chinese government for withholding information, he complained on March 21.

On March 27, Trump attributed his own broken promises about ventilator production to General Motors, now headed by a woman unworthy of even a last name: “Always a mess with Mary B.”

Masks, gowns, and gloves were running short only because hospital staff were stealing them, Trump suggested on March 29.

Was the national emergency medical stockpile catastrophically depleted? Trump’s campaign creatively tried to pin that on mistakes Joe Biden made back in 2009.

At his press conference on April 2, Trump blamed the shortage of lifesaving equipment, and the ensuing panic-buying, on states’ failure to build their own separate stockpile. “They have to work that out. What they should do is they should’ve—long before this pandemic arrived—they should’ve been on the open market just buying. There was no competition; you could have made a great price. The states have to stock up. It’s like one of those things. They waited. They didn’t want to spend the money, because they thought this would never happen.”

Were New Yorkers dying? On April 2, Trump fired off a peevish letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer: “If you spent less time on your ridiculous impeachment hoax, which went haplessly on forever and ended up going nowhere (except increasing my poll numbers), and instead focused on helping the people of New York, then New York would not have been so completely unprepared for the ‘invisible enemy.’”

Trump’s instinct to dodge and blame had devastating consequences for Americans. Every governor and mayor who needed the federal government to take action, every science and medical adviser who hoped to prevent Trump from doing something stupid or crazy, had to reckon with Trump’s psychic needs as their single biggest problem.

As his medical advisers sought to dissuade Trump from proceeding with his musing about reopening the country by Easter, April 12, Deborah Birx—the White House’s coronavirus-response coordinator—appeared on the evangelical CBN network to deliver this abject flattery: “[Trump is] so attentive to the scientific literature & the details & the data. I think his ability to analyze & integrate data that comes out of his long history in business has really been a real benefit.”

Governors got the message too. “If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call,” Trump explained at a White House press briefing on March 27. The federal response has been dogged by suspicions of favoritism for political and personal allies of Trump. The District of Columbia has seen its requests denied, while Florida gets everything it asks for.

The weeks of Trump-administration denial and delay have triggered a desperate scramble among states. The Trump administration is allocating some supplies through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but has made the deliberate choice to allow large volumes of crucial supplies to continue to be distributed by commercial firms to their clients. That has left state governments bidding against one another, as if the 1787 Constitution had never been signed, and we have no national government.

[ Mehrsa Baradaran: The U.S. should just send checks—but won’t]

In his panic, Trump is sacrificing U.S. alliances abroad, attempting to recoup his own failure by turning predator. German and French officials accuse the Trump administration of diverting supplies they had purchased to the United States. On April 3, the North American company 3M publicly rebuked the Trump administration for its attempt to embargo medical exports to Canada, where 3M has operated seven facilities for 70 years.

Around the world, allies are registering that in an emergency, when it matters most, the United States has utterly failed to lead. Perhaps the only political leader in Canada ever to say a good word about Donald Trump, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, expressed disgust at an April 3 press conference. “I just can’t stress how disappointed I am at President Trump ... I’m not going to rely on President Trump,” he said. “I’m not going to rely on any prime minister or president from any country ever again.” Ford argued for a future of Canadian self-sufficiency. Trump’s nationalist selfishness is proving almost as contagious as the virus itself—and could ultimately prove as dangerous, too.

As the pandemic kills, as the economic depression tightens its grip, Donald Trump has consistently put his own needs first. Right now, when his only care should be to beat the pandemic, Trump is renegotiating his debts with his bankers and lease payments with Palm Beach County.

[ Kori Schake: The imperial presidency comes to a sudden halt SEE TIMELINE]

He has never tried to be president of the whole United States, but at most 46 percent of it, to the extent that serving even the 46 percent has been consistent with his supreme concerns: stealing, loafing, and whining. Now he is not even serving the 46 percent. The people most victimized by his lies and fantasies are the people who trusted him, the more conservative Americans who harmed themselves to prove their loyalty to Trump. An Arkansas pastor told The Washington Post of congregants “ready to lick the floor” to support the president’s claim that there is nothing to worry about. On March 15, the Trump-loyal governor of Oklahoma tweeted a since-deleted photo of himself and his children at a crowded restaurant buffet. “Eating with my kids and all my fellow Oklahomans at the @CollectiveOKC. It’s packed tonight!” Those who took their cues from Trump and the media who propagandized for him, and all Americans, will suffer for it.

Governments often fail. From Pearl Harbor to the financial crisis of 2008, you can itemize a long list of missed warnings and overlooked dangers that cost lives and inflicted hardship. But in the past, Americans could at least expect public spirit and civic concern from their presidents.

Trump has mouthed the slogan “America first,” but he has never acted on it. It has always been “Trump first.” His business first. His excuses first. His pathetic vanity first.

Trump has taken millions in payments from the Treasury. He has taken millions in payments from U.S. businesses and foreign governments. He has taken millions in payments from the Republican Party and his own inaugural committee. He has taken so much that does not belong to him, that was unethical and even illegal for him to take. But responsibility? No, he will not take that.

Yet responsibility falls upon Trump, whether he takes it or not. No matter how much he deflects and insults and snivels and whines, this American catastrophe is on his hands and on his head.

_____

DAVID FRUM is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (2020). In 2001 and 2002, he was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush.

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The Paycheck Protection Program Is Failing

Small businesses such as ours won’t survive without a lot more help.

Moshe Schulman, Alexis Percival, and Patrick Cournot | Published April 16, 2020 6:00 AM ET | The Atlantic Magazine | Posted April 16, 2020 |

It was a punch in the mouth when we had to close the doors of our three New York City restaurants and lay off 25 employees. We had been searching frantically for a way to stay open. We had kept up with the news, read press releases from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and talked on the phone with our insurance agent and our lawyers. Ultimately, we had to inform our employees that they would be out of work until further notice.

Our last service was on Sunday, March 15. Sales that weekend had dipped by 25 percent. Before the mandate to end dine-in operations came from city officials, we saw the writing on the wall: With the increasing number of COVID-19 cases in the city, sales would continue to decline. We would not be able to make payroll the following week.

[ Derek Thompson: America’s restaurants will need a miracle]

We urged our employees to immediately file for unemployment, as we expected the Department of Labor systems to be overwhelmed—which they were, to a staggering degree. Luckily, most of our staff got through early and has been receiving unemployment for the past two to three weeks.

What about pickup and delivery? Sure, easy to say, but we would have to bring in roughly $30,000 in sales a week for one location just to meet expenses. That’s about 650 people a week ordering delivery or pickup at an average of $45 a person. That’s after Caviar or Grubhub takes its 30 percent cut. Near impossible. The numbers don’t lie.

Since locking the doors and freezing our auto-debits, we have been in survival mode. We started a GoFundMe campaign for our staff and raised enough money to pay health-insurance premiums for April. Our loyal supporters continue to buy gift cards. We launched an online wine-class series to stay connected with our guests and create a revenue stream, albeit a minor one ($10 a class). Those funds will help us pay our vendors and turn the lights on when we can safely reopen.

But these emergency measures are unsustainable without assistance from the federal and local government. And so far, that assistance has been impractical, insufficient, or both.

Last month, de Blasio announced a $75,000 interest-free loan available to local businesses that could prove a 25 percent decrease in sales over a two-month period in comparison with sales in the same two months in 2019. Only recently did we meet the threshold, since our drop-off was so sudden, starting in the second week of March, unlike restaurants in Chinatown, for instance, that closed in February. As of last week, applications were closed. Our attorneys think they can push ours through since they created an account in time, but the money is presumed to have dried up.

The Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, run through the Small Business Administration, requires a personal guarantor for the amount of money we would need. We are not in a position to guarantee hundreds of thousands of dollars. Especially without any idea of when we will be able to reopen or what business will look like. Will the hours of operation be limited? Occupancy reduced? Our previous sales projections are now moot.

And business-interruption insurance? Most restaurants don’t even pay for this. We do, but our broker informed us that our policy excludes closures due to a virus. Such is the case for most policyholders in New York State. A handful of well-known restaurateurs are uniting to fight their insurance carriers. So will we, but we aren’t holding our breath.

In late March, when Congress passed the $2 trillion relief package, we thought one component in particular, the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), would finally provide a real lifeline. Here’s why it doesn’t.

The premise of PPP is that the federal government will loan you up to two and a half times your monthly payroll through private lenders, and the loan will be forgiven as long as 75 percent of those funds are allocated to retaining and paying employees. The other 25 percent can be used on rent and utilities.

After the bill passed, the Small Business Administration, which is in charge of the PPP, added a new clause that requires 75 percent of the funds to be used for payroll whether you are seeking forgiveness or not. It also requires you to either keep or rehire all your staff. The kicker: Those payroll funds must be used within eight weeks from the time the loan is distributed, which could happen as early as this week.

A serious flaw in this plan is that hourly employees might be disincentivized to return to work, as many of them will earn more under the expanded unemployment benefits than what they usually make. If some hourly employees decide that unemployment insurance is a better deal, businesses can remain eligible for the PPP only by hiring replacements—a fantasy staff for a ghost establishment.

While it’s admirable for government officials to think of employees first, they are forgetting a crucial element of employment: the business itself. How is it beneficial to protect the payroll of the employees if the business isn’t protected?

Health experts don’t expect a widespread reopening of the economy until late summer at the earliest. Even then, restaurants and bars won’t be able to operate as they did in the past. Who knows what business will even look like? Social distancing will continue into the fall or even later, which means that seat capacity will be cut in half and revenue overall will decrease by the same proportion.

The PPP is a Band-Aid for a wound that needs surgery. What happens after the eight weeks are up and the PPP funds have been used to pay employees but sales haven’t returned to a healthy level? Businesses will have no other choice but to significantly cut employees’ hours or entirely terminate them to stay afloat. Restaurants won’t have enough sales to justify the staff the government wants them to protect.

One unintended consequence we’ve already noticed is that landlords are pushing back on rent negotiations as if the PPP is a miracle cure for all of a restaurant’s financial obligations. In fact, most people who use the PPP won’t have money left over to apply to rent.

All these issues considered, many in the hospitality industry will decide they can’t take the risk of a PPP loan. Business owners will worry that they’ll do something wrong, and that they’ll be on the hook for a large loan that will need to be paid back in two years. Yes, a 1 percent interest rate is favorable, but a monthly payment for thousands of dollars certainly isn’t. Most restaurants lose money every month or barely break even. These difficulties may explain why the accommodation- and food-services sector is so far getting a relatively small share of the PPP pie: just more than 9 percent of total loans. (Almost 14 percent has gone to construction.)

Recovery won’t be a sprint but a long and grueling marathon. Many businesses won’t survive at all, and are already closing or filing for bankruptcy.

Congress has to act more swiftly. It needs to revise the PPP to extend over a longer period. It needs to fund business operating accounts in addition to payroll. It needs to forgive sales tax owed since the shutdown and for the foreseeable future. It needs to require insurance companies to carry their portion of the burden. It needs to prepare another bill to anticipate businesses not reopening in two months and the virus resurfacing in the fall.

We have done what we can to survive the past month. Now Congress needs to do its part to make sure that restaurants and the jobs they support will exist when this pandemic nightmare ends.

______

MOSHE SCHULMAN is a managing partner of Ruffian, Ruffian Does Dive Bar, and Kindred, and a writer in New York City.

ALEXIS PERCIVAL is a managing partner and beverage director of Ruffian, Ruffian Does Dive Bar, and Kindred in New York City.

PATRICK COURNOT is a managing partner and beverage director of Ruffian, Ruffian Does Dive Bar, and Kindred in New York City.

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Fox news Biggest questions facing top 5 QBs at combine - NFL.com

Fox news

LSU's Joe Burrow heads to the 2020 NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis this week because the favourite to be the No. 1 overall draft capture. However there is a growing sense within the scouting community three quarterbacks would per chance cease up coming into into the tip 5 -- and it's tranquil too soon to name Burrow a lock to be the first one off the board.

Alabama's Tua Tagovailoa and Oregon's Justin Herbert additionally are heading within the correct route to head early, supplied Tagovailoa's surgically repaired hip checks out. And the names of two completely different QBs -- Utah Snarl's Jordan Adore and Washington's Jacob Eason -- approach up in each conversation about others who delight in the capability to rise throughout the pre-draft process and ultimately land in Round 1. (The consensus on completely different huge names, such as Georgia's Jake Fromm and Oklahoma's Jalen Hurts, is they enter the thrust of the pre-draft process a notch under as seemingly Day 2 picks.)

The mix marks the first alternative for NFL groups to spend main time across the likes of Burrow, Tagovailoa and Eason, and the 2nd around Herbert and Adore, who had been on the Senior Bowl in January. It is now not going to be the last time, with pro days, non-public exercises, "Top 30" visits and more forward in an evaluation process that is more intensive for QBs than at any completely different position.

Groups delight in the total game tape (despite the undeniable reality that many coaches have not dug into it yet). Condo scouts delight in spoken to each person they will safe (even within the occasion that they will also now not delight in shaken the player's hand). So what's left to decide out?

Right here's a behold on the massive questions going through each QB this week, in retaining with present conversations with historical evaluators across the NFL, from resolution-makers to space scouts. Gamers are listed alphabetically.

Joe Burrow, LSU

Can his speedily rise proceed on the NFL stage? Anytime a player's numbers spike in a single year the diagram Burrow's did -- from 16 touchdown passes and a pair of,894 passing yards in 2018 to 60 TDs and 5,671 yards this past season (on his technique to a Heisman Trophy and the national championship) -- NFL groups want to model why. "A year within the past, the man seemingly would've long gone within the third or fourth spherical, and this year, all of a unexpected, he is Andrew Luck," an AFC government talked about of Burrow. "And the [2019 LSU team] become very, very, very proficient around him." Of the 11 players LSU performed most on offense, another exec talked about 10 will seemingly be NFL players, many of them high draft picks. LSU overhauled its scheme last offseason, ditching a huddle-up, pro-fashion diagram in settle on of a huge-open, shotgun attack directed by contemporary fade game coordinator Joe Brady, who's now the Carolina Panthers' OC. How mighty of Burrow's recount become connected to scheme? How mighty of it become Brady? How mighty of it become his teammates? Nobody has mighty doubt about Burrow's intangibles, management and capability to process, given rave experiences from each person who's been around him, relationship to his stint as a backup at Ohio Snarl earlier than his grad switch. "For me, it's only a huge-portray factor," an AFC scout talked about. "OK, you went from this signaling offense, name it from the sideline and the click field, to the headset cuts off at 15 seconds (within the NFL) and also potentialities are you'll maybe even delight in mass chaos in front of you -- how will you address that?"

How's his arm? Burrow's accuracy is a plus. However scouts payment his arm power as sensible, and completely under the likes of Herbert. "He'll be third out of these three (high) guys in the case of constructing factual force throws on the pro throws -- the dig, the comeback, the tight-window throws," an AFC scout talked about. "Nonetheless it's now not a detriment to him. It be nothing that caused you to cease." Acknowledged a college scouting director: "Everyone's evaluation of him from '18 -- that become piece of the evaluation that had him down (within the mid rounds), become fair [his arm strength]. And clearly, that didn't change. Burrow's now not a huge man (listed at 6-foot-4, 216 kilos in school). On account of this going to the Senior Bowl or going to the mix and getting when put next with guys -- it's now not what makes Joe Burrow special." Burrow declined his Senior Bowl invite to spend time with family; no observe yet on whether or now not he'll throw in Indianapolis or at for his pro day. "Scrutinize Eason, Adore, Tua and Herbert throw three balls, then throw [Burrow] on last," another AFC government talked about. "It fair looks completely different. It be now not honest. However each person is conscious of there is more to his position than that arm. Is he Alex Smith? Or is he gonna ever be better than that?"

Jacob Eason, Washington

Has he grown up? A 5-star prospect out of highschool, Eason began 12 games as a factual freshman at Georgia nonetheless ended up transferring after suffering a knee injury within the 2017 opener and shedding his job to the less-proficient, more dialed-in Fromm. "The factor that is haunting Eason correct now is he become Joe College when he got to Georgia," an AFC scout talked about. "It be available within the market he become a celebration man, compose of punched the clock. He's the one-year wonder who has capability oozing out of him, nonetheless he would per chance've historical another year." An NFC scout who spent hundreds of time on Eason talked about he is matured and off-discipline actions weren't a ache at Washington, where he redshirted in 2018 and -- after a nearly two-year layoff -- threw for 3,132 yards and 23 touchdowns with eight interceptions last drop. He has a likeable personality that will spend over NFL of us in interviews, which is in a position to be extreme, since they tranquil delight in hundreds of questions: about instincts, resolution-making, work ethic, and so forth. "My ache is from a psychological processing after which from a management standpoint," a college scouting director talked about. "However capability-colorful -- potentialities are you'll maybe also attach his capability up in opposition to any of them. He would per chance need the handiest arm, he is athletic, he is huge (6-6, 227). It be fair the tape is terribly up and down. However I keep in mind any person is going to drop in esteem with this man over the following two months. Someone's going to behold the capability and train, 'I will fix this man.' "

How fair of an athlete is he? Eason is now not going to fracture any mix facts, nonetheless he would per chance attain better than of us keep in mind, especially for his measurement. He'll attain every thing in Indy, including blow their own horns his arm within the throwing session. "I construct now not keep in mind Eason's going to check all that wisely in the case of working and leaping or anything else esteem that," an NFC scout talked about. "However he is going to throw the s--- out of it." Acknowledged another college scouting director: "Herbert's a huge man with a huge arm, and Eason's greater and got a greater arm. This mix factor need to tranquil be fair for him."

Justin Herbert, Oregon

Can he attach all of it together? The total traits scouts behold for are there. And Herbert helped himself with a mettlesome performance on the Senior Bowl, where he won MVP honors. "The Senior Bowl is now not the least bit times a straightforward assign of dwelling to trip correct in and adapt and be purposeful in a fully contemporary offense with a bunch of contemporary receivers, and I'd train he did it as wisely as any person in present memory," a college scouting director talked about. "No longer that that is a be-all, cease-all, nonetheless it completely's a fair correct fair indication that the man can address some transition and adjustment." That is especially famous for a Eugene, Oregon, native who'd never lived anyplace else earlier than relocating to California for pre-draft practicing. Herbert is the most experienced QB of this crew, having thrown for 95 touchdowns and 10,541 yards in 44 college games (42 begins). He returned to Oregon for his senior year, won the Pac-12 title and ran for 3 touchdowns, including the 30-yard game winner, in Oregon's Rose Bowl victory over Wisconsin. "I execrable Herbert first," an AFC scout talked about. "He's greater (6-6 1/8, 227). He's stronger. There's nothing more that youngster wishes to attain." Some scouts tranquil delight in questions about Herbert's instincts and innate playmaking capability, although neither the Geese' receivers nor their efforts to do a vitality-working game did him many favors. One scouting director talked about he wished Herbert had made greater strides throughout the last couple seasons; as a replace, his pattern looked to flatline. "What's his signature game? The Rose Bowl, where he ran? You fair desired to behold him gash free and fade originate a play," an AFC government talked about. "Now, they didn't give him any befriend schematically. It become a s--- offense to check. That is where our coaching staffs approach in: 'Is it him? Or is it them?' He's got the total bodily instruments. He's huge, he is snappy, he is athletic and he is got a huge f---ing cannon arm." The notion is for Herbert to throw and attain every thing else on the mix.

How will his personality play in an NFL locker room? Several scouts train they had been pleasantly very a lot surprised by Herbert's interactions with them, and teammates, on the Senior Bowl. "Everyone's fair going to knock him: 'Is he too good? Is he too nerdy? Is he too introverted?' All that bulls---. However he'll be stunning," an NFC scout talked about. "He's good dapper. He's refined as s---. He fair didn't delight in the Joe Burrow self perception that he is a baller yet. He become a dull-stunning dude, underrecruited, Eugene become his home, being a Duck quarterback become his pinnacle. He's fair growing up as a young man. He would now not understand how fair he can even be. However the boldness is coming."

Jordan Adore, Utah Snarl

How mighty football does he know? There were hundreds of elements in Adore's dip from a breakout 2018 season (32 touchdowns, six interceptions on an 11-2 Aggies crew) to 2019, when he threw 17 INTs. "This man goes through his third or fourth offensive coordinator, a brand contemporary head coach, nine offensive starters (leave) -- how would per chance that now not affect any person?" a college scouting director talked about. "He become compelled to attain too mighty and he tried to attain too mighty and it ache him." Ravishing the amount of turnovers raises questions, although, so Adore's board sessions will seemingly be main in meetings. "Everyone is going to drill into him about how mighty exact football he is conscious of and processing snappy and all that stuff," an NFC scout talked about. "He become in [an Air Raid] offense his first couple years, so it become honest straightforward and he become fair having fun with free and letting it rip. When he if truth be told needed to sit down down and browse coverages and flee more advanced schemes that he is going to thrill in flee on the following stage and attain more, he didn't capture that this year." There's plenty to esteem with Adore -- measurement (6-3 5/8, 223), broad arms (10 5/8), a natural stroke, capability to throw on the switch and a relaxed presence about him. He plans to throw in Indy. "I keep in mind Adore's going to be the attention-grabbing one," an NFC government talked about. "It be a terribly lively arm."

What become he pondering? Nobody thinks Adore is a execrable youngster or truly an off-discipline threat. However potentialities are you'll maybe also wager groups can delight in questions about Adore's quotation, along with two teammates, for marijuana possession on Dec. 14 -- days after he'd declared for the NFL draft and days earlier than Utah Snarl's bowl game -- although the costs had been later brushed apart. "If he told any person that he smoked weed, they'd be esteem, 'OK, no topic,' " an AFC government talked about. "However inserting your self in that position -- after having a down year -- it makes you merely keep in mind esteem, what the f---?" As a college scouting director attach it: "Quarterback is a judgment position. So if his judgment is unsuitable, you are in huge ache."

Tua Tagovailoa, Alabama

How's the scientific checklist? It be now not only the hip Tagovailoa dislocated Nov. 16 at Mississippi Snarl, ending his junior season. Tagovailoa additionally has had "tightrope" surgical treatment on each his ankles -- the left in December 2018 and the supreme last October. He additionally had surgical treatment for a broken index finger on his left (throwing) hand last March and performed through a knee injury last October. "It be all (about) durability," an AFC scout talked about. "Durability and fair the play fashion, because clearly, he is ultra-instinctive, only a gamer. The problem is the injury historical past." The mix will provide the first alternative for NFL scientific doctors to scrutinize Tagovailoa, who's now not going to be ready to determine in Indy nonetheless intends to catch a non-public pro day earlier than the draft. So, whereas all indicators are only previously, each crew -- with its own scientific doctors, and its own stage of threat tolerance -- will give you the choice to diagram to its own conclusions about how wisely Tagovailoa's hip will catch up, whether or now not there are long-term risks such as arthritis, and so forth. "Even as you will wager your job on [drafting him], you better be rattling obvious that he checks each completely different field, because there is hundreds of issues to nitpick on with this man -- most importantly, the injuries," an AFC government talked about. "He's a 6-foot quarterback who's 230 kilos with a (dislocated) hip and it fair would now not add up."

How will his personality play in an NFL locker room? One NFC scout when put next Tagovailoa's personality to that of fellow Hawaii native Marcus Mariota: "It be Kind B, nonchalant, he performs the ukulele across the constructing -- only a exact laid-encourage dude." That is now not a knock in opposition to Tagovailoa. Groups fair will want to get to understand him, as wisely as learn more about his family, including his father, Galu, who remains heavily focused on his son's existence. "The man has confirmed he is a exact chief," a college scouting director talked about of Tua. "It be a dinky bit completely different fashion, nonetheless that is all legitimate." Though he is now not going to determine in Indianapolis, groups additionally can spend meetings to learn more about Tagovailoa as a player. His manufacturing below three completely different coordinators in three years -- 87 touchdown passes in opposition to fair 11 interceptions in 33 college games (24 begins) whereas throwing to the Crimson Tide's outstanding receiver crew -- suggests a high stage of adaptability. "(Slit) Saban loves this man. They esteem his instincts," another AFC government talked about. "I construct now not keep in mind [handling pro concepts is] going to be a major field, nonetheless potentialities are you'll maybe also want to assign him throughout the ringer. You give him no topic your crew has as a long way as making an strive out a man's capability to learn and lend a hand and also you lift him through that." Tagovailoa has been doing board work in present weeks with used NFL coach Ken Whisenhunt, who has been impressed.

Note Tom Pelissero on Twitter @TomPelissero.

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andrewuttaro · 4 years

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New Look Sabres: GM 42 - EDM - Thirsty Thursday

3-2 OT Win

When I was an undergraduate in college there was this special night of the week called Thirsty Thursday. A lot of my classmates created their schedules, so they had no classes on Fridays creating a prolonged weekend for all the activities Animal House taught you college students do. Thirsty Thursday was the beginning of that debauchery. Specifically the mid to late evening as the party people dressed to the nines emerged from their dorms, already tipsy, and climbed into Ubers, Lyfts and Cabs to go to the skankiest clubs and try to cross the border into Canada. Niagara Falls is pretty lit on the other side in case you weren’t aware. The Buffalo Sabres had themselves a bit of a Thirsty Thursday yesterday. This time however I’m excited for the consequences. I drew attention to GM Jason Botterill’s planned 5:30 radio appearance before the game against Edmonton so that when it was called off it seemed cowardly. Not that my lone tweet riled up an angry mob like the gif I used implied, but the timing seemed… well very bad. Dalton Smith was put on waivers the day before after an embarrassing affair on New Year’s Eve against Tampa and it all seemed for nothing: as if our GM had no clue what he was doing and now he was hiding from facing the fans. In reality perfect setups like that never happen. When WGR550 was told Botterill couldn’t make his regular radio hit the negativity around the team right now would naturally make you think of that dodging the press theory. Us wild and crazy optimists hoped against hope he was busy working on… dare I say… a trade!? The whispers came in as game time approached and Thirsty Thursday kicked off with a three-way (Normally something reserved for the end of the night if you know I mean). At about 6:40 pm the team announced a 2020 fourth round pick had been acquired from the Montreal Canadiens for Marco Scandella. The next part unfolded when the team announced at about 6:50 pm that the same 2020 fourth that was yielded from the Scandella trade was going to the Calgary Flames for RW Michael Frolik. No salary retained or conditions, it was essentially Marco Scandella for Michael Frolik.

Set aside all your newfound appreciations for Scandella, even his revitalization was to inflate his trade value. Not to be harsh but he won’t be missed; especially when Jeremy White’s Super-Secret Sabres Source (SSSS) then tells him they’re not done, and they want to bring Lawrence Pilut up from Rochester. This humble blogger says good and good. Scandella for Frolik constitutes a wash in terms of salary if not a little bit more taken on by Buffalo. However, if it gets Pilut back up to Buffalo and or Colin Miller out of buying tickets out of town then it’s a win in my book. In spite of how few trades we saw in the last five months of 2019 it does make a lot of sense that this is the prelude to bigger trades. One can only hope. I hope this analysis of it is outdated by the time I post it. Although we all thought the Jokiharju trade was the prelude to a bigger trade that never came so it could go both ways I suppose. All this figuring out distracted me from the actual game unfolding. I looked up and suddenly the Sabres were down 2-0 to the Oilers at home and certainly a blood bath was to ensue if another egg was laid in downtown Buffalo. Then as soon as I had that thought Thirsty Thursday ticked up again, but this time with some good clean action: Marcus Johansson disposed an Oiler along the wall in the offensive zone and went around behind the net. Johansson got it to Curtis Lazar who tapped it in past Mike Smith in net. It was now 2-1 and Jason Botterill had that much more cover to come out and face the press in the first intermission like we hadn’t gotten three hours earlier while trades were unfolding.

Jason Botterill spoke for about seven minutes saying a lot of things you might expect: Michael Frolik will bring even strength scoring, he’s won a Stanley Cup, has playoff experience and what not. Perhaps the most important things Botterill said is the special teams have to be better. He said that Frolik could help on the penalty kill and could be a bit of a rover on the wing. Botterill spoke to greater roster competition as something of a rationale for seeing as many players publicly want out. Assuming this isn’t the only move to be made its just refreshing to hear that the GM does understand what’s going on. The Dalton Smith Fiasco will probably be pushed under the rug 1984 style and that’s probably the only way to handle it at this point but pushing forward the point that there is in fact a plan here will allow some optimism, however scant, back into the fanbase. Once again, assuming there are more moves coming this move helps. The move itself is more or less whatever. If you get what Frolik was in years past then maybe he’s not just another piece to be traded at the deadline. Getting Frolik was one of those rumors from months ago and evidently the conditions on this Thirty Thursday were just right to make it happen. Conditions were not just right in the second period and apart from a slash on Jack Eichel and the Sabres taking over the lead in shots on goal, nothing really happened. Then it creeps into your head, like I hear it does for the party people at some point in the early morning hours on Thirsty Thursday, that all this momentary excitement could just melt away with nothing truly rewarding coming from it unless… unless you kiss that hot little number down the bar. It was unlikely another trade would happen as the clock ticked past 9pm last night but the clap-back Sabres awoke again. As an early offensive push unfolded in the third period for the home team they began cycling the puck around in the Oilers’ zone. Zach Bogosian took a shot that Sam Reinhart redirected in for the 2-2 equalizer and… well what do you know: Reinhart’s 100th NHL goal. For a moment try not to think about the impending second coming of the Reinhart contract drama and just savor what Samson does and who Samson is. But just like most things with this team, darkness follows close behind and Victor Olofsson was escorted out of the game after a weird fall all on his own just after he got the secondary assist on the equalizer. No new word on that today either mind you, just Scott Wilson getting called up because you can’t let us get too high, right?

The third period went on and the Sabres threw everything and the kitchen sink Zemgus Girgensons at Mike Smith. Nothing went through and we found ourselves in overtime. To Ralph Krueger’s credit most of the Sabres overtime periods have been tight possession affairs like they should be, even when they’re losing efforts. The same happened last night until an absolutely bonkers ten seconds about a minute into the extra frame. Jack Eichel went end to end, like from behind the Linus Ullmark net all the way to Mike Smith’s mouthguard on the other end. Along the way he drew a penalty when Oscar Klefbom hooked him on his final approach. That was good for a penalty shot but before the play was even over Jack almost scored on the rebound. This Thirsty Thursday was about to see it’s last act. That hot little number down the bar I mentioned earlier, that was Jack mother fucking Eichel, and we kissed his greatness to cap off the night. He took the puck, skated in and snapped it far side past Mike Smith, 3-2 Sabres in Overtime! And so the inebriated masses stumbled out of their rides in the wee hours of the morning; still concerned about their future but sated for just a time until the next party comes. Hopefully more parties to come then sadness they hope.

Like, Comment and Share this blog now because some of you will not like what I say next. The game on Saturday was moved to 1pm in the afternoon because the Buffalo Sabres organization shares an owner with the Buffalo Bills and is therefore allowed to be self-aware. You probably already knew that. To those of you whom pointed to that move as a sign of the Pegulas caring more about the Bills I’d just ask you to take a deep breath, maybe play your favorite video game and relax. There is good evidence that theory is true, but the Buffalo Bills also happen to be in the playoffs for only the second time in twenty years. Forgive the whole City around you if they want to focus on that team when they come on at 4:35 tomorrow! I know its 90s night… or afternoon now tomorrow, but please, let good things be good. Enjoy yourself a little bit. The Florida Panthers will be a challenge and then they’ll be off for four days, hopefully while Botterill is making more trades and Michael Frolik is getting his Visa figured out so he can actually come and play. Then its six games leading into the bye week of varying difficulty but mostly difficult. I would guess even if the Sabres miraculously won eight straight going into that break they still might only crack the top three in the Atlantic Division given the spaces between games. Nonetheless the tide of this dissent into another lost season we’ve been experiencing since before Christmas can be reversed this month. It will likely take more work on the part of the GM even though the deadline is still several weeks away. Yesterday’s Thirsty Thursday events were not enough for me to fully get back in the conductor’s chair of the hype train but whether it be for hoped for trades or just the first Buffalo Bills Playoff win since I was in diapers I can enthusiastically say right now: Let’s Go Buffalo!

Thanks for Reading.

P.S. According to NHL PR that OT Penalty shot goal by Jack Eichel made him the first player in Buffalo Sabres history to do such a thing. That is some kind of surprising stat.

#buffalo sabres #hockey #nhl #blog

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