The news has been spectacular this week, regardless of which of the two major narratives you prefer. Both inspire emotion, or at least attempt to do so. The current President’s legal team promised last week to release The Kraken, and had a long press conference to outline its ominous shadow.

The Media managed to characterize the event as the deranged ravings of a departing public figure tinged with lunacy. To start the next week, Presidential Attorney Sidney Powell is promising fuller revelations of “Biblical proportions,” which sounds as big as a rock, so look forward to more excitement of one sort or another. Add the Holiday that no one seems particularly Thankful for this benighted year and there is doubtless more excitement and hilarity to come.

By the time this passes in a couple weeks, we will abandon the free-for-all and start hitting constitutionally-mandated timelines that direct things to happen- the equally benighted Electoral College being the major one on 14 December, and the hotly contested Georgia Senate elections and Joint Session of congress in early January and this should be an exciting new year. As part of the general uplift, students t the University of Wisconsin at Madison have set their sights on a 70-ton boulder on Observation Hill. There was a single recorded instance a century ago of it being known by a now-forbidden word, not the name of a geologist and former University President, Dr. Thomas Crowder Chamberlin, for which it is officially known. It has a plaque that says so.

The controversy was of interest to me as a property owner whose land is home to a couple of large granite chunks left from the last Ice Age. I have not named them after former illustrious occupants of the estate. I was comfortable calling them “Big Ass Rocks (BARs)” which seemed to sum them up succinctly, but it is useful to have another couple descriptive terms for them, since “BAR1” and “BAR2” are hardly endearing. The one you cannot say is the origin of the century-old controversy which could involve more heavy lifting than I am willing to bear, and that is just the ones I own.

It is pretty exciting to see a nation in transition, with the implications coming right down to this little property out in the country. Grand times!

Still being limited in mobility, in other times this would have led to additional time devoted to college football on the tube. That is another disputed term, since there is no “tube” in the flatscreen at the end of the Great Room at the farm. I have found the earlier disputes about politics and public sporting activities to cause me to blanche in anguish. An alternative had to be found to ease tensions, and with assistance, discovered the Hallmark Channel.

Don’t hold me responsible, though. I am a tough cookie (chocolate oatmeal this week) and have surrendered to a third persistent narrative to assuage local controversy. We are currently watching a series of movies from the Walton family saga filmed a couple decades ago. They are tailored to an idealized America which apparently no longer exists. Most of what I have seen is new to me, as a former member of the sports community. It is fun: the Walton’s family mountain is fictionally right here in the Virginia countryside, just a couple turns down Rt-522, and it is downright strange to see how Hollywood imagines our past. Fun stuff, and no one seems to call anyone or anything by an inappropriate name.

There are other movies sponsored by the Hallmark people about wonderful Christmas towns whose basic goodness is ignited by the return of a plucky heroine and the emergence of love and happiness. It is the same movie, over and over, changing the cast to simulate something different. Give me that over a triple-overtime Michigan win against Rutgers anytime.

So, a good weekend, warming to a new season. We celebrated with the best damn neighbors ever, and though one of their turkeys has to die to help us all out, it calls back to different times. With lit candles, a nice little tree and some pleasantly aromatic split logs in the fireplace.

With all the rest, I am going to leave the Chamberlins where they are and welcome the spirit of the season to come while ignoring the other one that won’t quit.

Copyright 2020 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com