I’m not precluding the possibility there still could be one, but as late in the morning as it is, I’m suspecting that setting up the computer is taking longer and needing more work than expected – and, if a tech is going to be needed – today is Sunday.
So here is a place to hang comments and wishes for him.
The puzzle of the day is marmalade jars – I’ve done it more then once and it’s wicked, so I’m not going to try while on the TENS. But it’s here.
This isn’t from too far in the past … but it is a blast.
And remember not to let Republicans steal your future!
What do a lawyer, accountant, military intelligence manager, insurance executive and an information tech have in common?
They’re five friends from Mount Vernon (WA) High School Class of 1994 who decided to plunk down $1.5 million to buy a tulip farm (reasonably named Tulip Town) right before the pandemic hit!
The friends decided to name their partnership the Spinach Bus Venture, after the rickety nicknamed “Spinach Bus” they rode during their summer jobs out to the agricultural fields in Skagit County Washington to pick spinach seeds and dig daffodil and tulip bulbs.
But they admit the timing of their purchase could NOT have been worse. Some background will make this clearer.
In Skagit County, about 1,000 acres of farmland are cultivated to grow tulip and daffodil cut flowers, along with annually harvesting over 20 million bulbs for gardeners.
About 500 of those acres are dedicated to tulips, which account for 75% of U.S. commercial production. Additionally, 75 million cut flowers from those fields and greenhouses provide for more than half of all U.S. floral sales. And the bulb industry produces $20 million in annual gross income.
But as impressive as those numbers are, the biggest generator of income for the two tulip farms remaining in Skagit County (Tulip Town with 30 acres and the much larger RoozenGaarde and Washington Bulb Co., with 500 acres of daffodils, 350 acres of tulips and 15 acres of greenhouses) comes from the annual Skagit County Tulip Festival.
It runs for the entire month of April and the paid admission, flowers, bulbs and souvenirs sales account for over 90% of their annual revenues for both Tulip Town and RoozenGaarde.
The Festival attracts over 400,000 visitors annually and pumps almost $65 million into the local economy from restaurants, hotels, etc. So you can imagine the panic the pandemic caused the new entrepreneurs with the cancellation of the 2020 Festival.
And then it was compounded with a dramatic drop in floral gifts given to Mom’s on Mother’s Day, one of the biggest flower-gifting days of the year along with Valentine’s Day, because of the pandemic-induced stay-at-home order. People simply were not going to risk heading out to buy flowers.
But the newbies had one advantage – they weren’t beholding to any “old” way of doing business.
Their first innovation last year was when Festival regulars started calling to say how disappointed they were about missing out on the 2020 celebration – but wondered if they could get some of their flowers anyway.
The previous owners had not focused on shipping actual bouquets, but they did have some boxes stored away. The new crew thought they’d get requests for 100 to 200 boxes of bouquets – but they did that in just their first day of taking orders!
When the season ended, they had boxed and sold over 8,000 bouquets! So a new business line was born.
While the pandemic was raging (thanks to Donnie’s incompetence), American patriots started searching for ways to show their appreciation to frontline workers. The newbies thought people might be happy to send a bouquet of tulips as a donation or statement of support. That’s when their “Color for Courage” came into being – and they took more than 4,700 orders for a $15 bouquet.
Then one of their group thought they could keep in touch with the regular Festivalgoers with a 360-degree app letting them visit the fields that they couldn’t view in person.
All these new ideas kept their heads above water during the pandemic, and they are looking forward to once again welcoming visitors back this spring, although at a reduced capacity with mask and social distancing required.
So from April 1st to the 30th (and maybe into May if the weather holds) there’ll be lots of smiles from taking a tour of Tulip Town. You just won’t be able to see them under the masks!
EPILOGUE
While not wanting to diminish our country’s Tulip Festivals this spring, I think we’d all agree that Holland holds the title for tulips. I’ve been fortunate enough to have visited Amsterdam twice – once in the fall and once in the spring. And their tulip gardens are truly a site to behold! So I’ll close with some of their stupendous displays:
Still, it’s hard to beat a gorgeous floral American sunset in Skagit County …
Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
It would appear to be time for us and the Furies to join the conversation about vaccines. I know some here have been fully vaccinated, and some partially. I have not really even looked yet, because it’s no hardship for me to stay isolated (no family that need hugs, a dependable routine, etc.), it’s still pretty cold (it warms up for a few days and then gets cold again), and I have had other things to think about. I certainly intend to get vaccinated (during out window of warmth) and will pursue it aggressively as soon as that happens. And it will most likely be with an mRNA vaccine, since those are the ones in greatest supply – and I expect everyone here who has been vaccinated has had one of those also. But probably without being aware of how revolutionary they are.
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How do mRNA vaccines work – and why do you need a second dose? 5 essential reads
MRNA vaccines are proving to be more effective than anyone had hoped, but as with any new medical advancement, people have a lot of questions. How do they work? Are they safe? Do I really need two shots? Why do they need to be kept so cold? And will this be the vaccine technology of the future? Below, we highlight five articles from The Conversation that will help answer your questions about mRNA vaccines.
The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are proof that mRNA vaccines are ready for prime time – and far surpass their predecessors. “The hopes that gene-based vaccines could one day provide a vaccine for malaria or HIV, cure cancer, replace less effective traditional vaccines or be ready to stop the next pandemic before it gets started are no longer far-fetched,” explains Fuller.
2. How does an mRNA vaccine work?
These vaccines are not only effective, they work in a fundamentally different way from traditional vaccines, explains Sanjay Mishra, a staff scientist at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Traditional vaccines use an entire dead virus – or just a piece of one – to generate immunity. “But an mRNA vaccine is different,” writes Mishra, “because rather than having the viral protein injected, a person receives genetic material – mRNA – that encodes the viral protein. When these genetic instructions are injected into the upper arm, the muscle cells translate them to make the viral protein directly in the body.”
“Safety is the first and foremost goal for a vaccine,” says William Petri, a Professor of Medicine at the University of Virginia. A lot of people have expressed safety concerns based on how fast these vaccines were developed, approved and distributed.
According to Petri, the vaccines still went through every normal step – they just did them simultaneously.
“In my opinion, safety is not compromised by the speed of vaccine development and emergency use authorization. The reason that vaccines may be approved so quickly is that the large clinical trials to assess vaccine efficacy and safety are happening at the same time as the large-scale manufacturing preparation, funded by the federal government’s Operation Warp Speed program.”
4. Why it’s important to get your second shot
You got your first vaccine shot. But with shortages and supply problems, getting the second dose might be becoming a hassle. Does it really matter? Yes, explains William Petri in another article.
“The first dose primes the immune system and introduces the body to the germ of interest. This allows the immune system to prepare its defense. The second dose, or booster, provides the opportunity for the immune system to ramp up the quality and quantity of the antibodies used to fight the virus.”
Immunity is a complex process, and “if the booster isn’t given within the appropriate window, lower quantities of antibodies will be produced that may not provide as powerful protection from the virus,” writes Petri. So go get your second shot if you can, even if you have to get it a bit later than expected.
For all of their amazing attributes, mRNA vaccines do have at least one weakness: “If they get too warm or too cold they spoil. And, just like fish, a spoiled vaccine must be thrown away,” explains Anna Nagurney, Professor of Operations Management at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who studies medical supply chains.
The mRNA molecule is very fragile, so vaccines need to be kept at extremely cold, very specific temperatures – a challenge for distribution. “The answer is something called the vaccine cold chain – a supply chain that can keep vaccines in tightly controlled temperatures from the moment they are made to the moment that they are administered to a person,” explains Nagurney. This cold supply chain is critical to getting vaccines where they need to go, and without it, no matter how good the vaccines are, they can’t make much of a difference.
Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.
Daniel Merino, Assistant Editor: Science, Health, Environment; Co-Host: The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation
================================================================ Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone as scary as the pandemic has been, and still is, and sadly will continue to be, not through the fault of health care providers exactly, but primarily due to the unwillingness of so many people to get vaccinated (and I grant that, particular for certain groups underserved for decades, some distrust is justified) – as scary as it is, there is hope coming out of it, not only in how to handle this virus, but how to deal with future pandemics better than we did with this one. Of course that will require us to keep electing, and in increasing numbers, intelligent, knowledgeable, and caring leaders. I wish I knew what to do about that being so difficult.
Just a place to hang comments on for TC while he is moving.
I know I wish him (and WWWendy) a maximum of accomplishment and a minimum of glitches – and I want a place to say so. I imagine everyone else does too.
Here’s a link to the Puzzle of the Day – although I changed it to “48 piece classic” before copying, I expect you’ll have to change it again, as I’m not a member.
Here’s a cartoon that fans of old movies are sure to appreciate:
Believe it or not, there is a moving company which has a website which includes a playlist for Moving Day. This one is right at the top. Just don’t look too closely at the lyrics –
And, whatever you do, DON’T let Republicans steal your future!
politicsrus – another one that has written narration and snippets of quotes but no CC.
[0:10] (MLK] Mind you, friends your vote is precious, almost sacred. It is the most powerful non-violent tool we have to create a more perfect union. On one occasion a man was asked to count the number of bubbles in a bar of soap. On another occasion a man was asked to count the number of jelly beans in a jar -to keep them from casting their ballot.
[0:30] [Stacey Abrams?] The Governoris signing a bill that affects more Georgians – why are they doing it in private and why do they try to keep elected officials representing us out of this process?
[0:48][Rev Warnock]The Georgia election was certainly free of any consequential fraud. We counted the village not once not twice but three times
[music]
[1:20][Warnock] They don’t like the outcome. So this is democracy in reverse where Politicians have decided that instead of voters picking their representatives, their representatives have a right to cherry pick the voters.
[1:36] Dozens of prominent black business leaders in America, calling for companies to fight against georgia’s controversial voter legislation. We’re asking corporate America to publicly and directly oppose any discriminatory legislation and all measures designed to limit America’s ability to vote.
[2:16] There’s work to be done.
Meidas Touch – Projection…
Now This News – Despite pockets of crazies, I am proud of my state … and certainly proud of out Secretary of State.
Now This News – This is at least promising. We will have to see to what degree the promise is kept.
Republican Accountability Project “Weekend at Mar-a-Lago”
The Lincoln Project – “Stain”
“Ye Old Karen Shanty” – can “Release the Karen” be far behind?
I’m having my 80-foot tall hickory tree taken down today, so I’ll be “supervising”.
While it’s still healthy, it largely overhangs the roof and is starting to drop branches. Plus I’m tired of dealing with all the hickory nuts. They’re the reason that part of the lawn has turned to weeds.
But Nike will miss watching & chatting to all his squirrel friends!
Believe it or not, there is a moving company which has a website which includes a playlist for Moving Day. This one is right at the top. Just don’t look too closely at the lyrics –