‘I thought that people would surely get vaccinated when threatened by actual illness. Nope.’ Here’s what else surprised people about the COVID-19 pandemic

Dec. 27, 2021 

By Charles Passy

A Reddit thread with nearly 25K comments looks at how COVID-19 changed lives in unexpected ways, from vaccine resistance to toilet-paper shortages

Protesters rally against vaccine mandates on November 20, 2021 in New York City. STEPHANIE KEITH/GETTY IMAGES

As the coronavirus pandemic heads into its third year, with signs aplenty that things are worsening with the omicron variant, people are taking stock of how the health crisis has changed and affected them in myriad ways. And some are expressing surprises of all kinds.

A popular Reddit thread posted earlier in December looks at that very question: “What’s surprised you the most about the pandemic?” It has racked up nearly 25,000 comments to date.

Perhaps the most common theme was how the pandemic divided the U.S., if not the globe, and became such a hot-button political issue, which was a development that many apparently didn’t expect. One Redditor lamented: “Not sure if there’s anything that can unite us again.” Another referred to a speech from Heath Ledger’s Joker character in “The Dark Knight” movie, noting that his observations “about how civilized people will eat each other when the chips are down wasn’t that far off after all.”

Some naturally expressed surprise — and disappointment — that the COVID-19 vaccines developed by pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer PFE, -1.98%, Moderna MRNA, -2.36% and Johnson & Johnson JNJ, 0.37% weren’t universally accepted. “I thought that people would surely get vaccinated when threatened by actual illness. Nope,” one said. “There is a solution, it’s free, it’s right in front of them, and they refuse it,” another said.

On the other hand, some were taken off guard by all the government involvement — presumably they were referring to shutdowns, and mask and vaccine mandates — and decried what they called a lack of freedom. “It’s like collectively, people haven’t learned anything from history,” one said.

Related: Apple delays return-to-office date indefinitely, gives workers $1,000 ‘work-from-home’ bonus


Toilet-paper shortages have been another great — and unwanted — surprise of the pandemic. NAOMI BAKER/GETTY IMAGES

Some found a surprise silver lining in terms of the quiet and time for reflection that the pandemic afforded them. Even someone in the United Kingdom who was laid off from work at the start of the pandemic saw a positive: “The weather in the U.K. was absolutely stunning for those few months and I just remember going on walks and binge watching so many series on Netflix NFLX, -0.34% … I hated having to go back to work.”

And at least one Redditor was surprised at how the pandemic prompted them to make changes in their life for the better. In this case, the writer said that it became a time to successfully confront their alcohol addiction: “This huge event showed how much I was still willing to fight.”

Some who stayed in their jobs but worked from home were also surprised at their productivity and contentment with the new arrangements. One noted, “It was oddly peaceful…I could work from home without being bothered.” Others claimed the massive shift to so many people working from home proved that most offices are “unnecessary.”

Of course, the great pandemic toilet-paper shortages prompted surprise as well. But at least one Redditor said the surprise came with a solution — the purchase of a bidet. “How nice (it) is,” the commenter wrote. (And indeed, bidet sales have surged during the past couple of years.)

Alas, the most frustrating surprise for many is that the pandemic is far from over, particularly as the spread caused by the omicron variant prompts new closures and restrictions. One Redditor simply said, “It doesn’t seem to end.” Another said they looked back on the early days of the pandemic almost with nostalgia. “Everyone was just baking bread and staying home and it was kind of fun!” But the Redditor added that now “I’m just sad. And tired. So very tired.”

Lake Tahoe shatters 50-year December snowfall record with more than 16 feet of snow

Amy Alonzo, Reno Gazette Journal
Tue, December 28, 2021

LAKE TAHOE, Nev. —With four days left to go in the month, Lake Tahoe has already broken the record for December snowfall set 50 years ago.

On Monday, December snow totals at the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab reached 193.7 inches, blowing a 1970 record of 179 inches out of the water.

The lab, located at Donner Pass, has received roughly 39 inches of snow in the past 24 hours and could break the 200-inch mark today.


The lab was built in 1946 by the U.S. Weather Bureau and Army Corps of Engineers and maintains one of the longest-running manual snow depth records in the world, dating back to 1879.

“This has been a very beneficial storm for the Sierra region,” said Dan McEvoy, regional climatologist for the Western Regional Climate Center.

Snow continued to make travel nearly impossible over mountain passes on Dec. 26, 2021, a day after a Christmas storm left more than 7 feet of snow in some locations. Seen here is a sign for Spooner Summit Dec. 26, 2021

The Lake Tahoe Basin is sitting around 200 percent of average for snow water equivalent – the amount of water that will be released from the snowpack when it melts – for this time of year.

And the Basin is sitting at 60 percent of its peak average snow water equivalent, which occurs around late March or early April, McEvoy said. The median peak average is 27 inches, and today 16.1 inches of snow water equivalent was measured, he said.

December’s storms came in “forming a right-side-up snowpack,” he said. Earlier storms were wetter with higher elevation snow, but then temperatures and snow levels dropped.

“That’s good for both water content and avalanche concerns,” McEvoy said.

It will also help keep the snowpack for area ski resorts in good shape, even if the region runs into a dry spell.

“It’s been a pretty impressive December,” McEvoy said.

But, he cautioned, it’s possible for drought conditions to resume.

“If I had to emphasize one point, it’s that the drought’s not over. We need the storms to continue through the winter.”

Reach Amy Alonzo at aalonzo@gannett.com.

China Says This Strange Light Was a Record-Breaking Cosmic Explosion. Others Say It’s Space Garbage


David Axe
Tue, December 28, 2021

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Pablo Carlos Budassi, Getty

About a year ago, a team of astronomers working in Hawaii glimpsed something in the night sky. A four-minute-long flash of light.

Depending on who you ask, that flash was either a powerful explosion from 13.4 billion years ago—a virtual snapshot of the universe as it existed just 400 million years after its formation—or a reflection from a hunk of space junk lazily looping around Earth. Scientific treasure—or garbage.

Despite a year of heated debate and a flurry of studies, it’s possible we may never know what caused this mysterious flash, dubbed “GN-z11-flash” for the faraway galaxy where it may have originated. But this is high-stakes astronomy—either a landmark, career-defining discovery, or the type of embarrassment people spend their whole lives trying to avoid.

As astronomers stretch the limits of technology and scholarship to peer farther and farther into space, they run into more and more obstacles. Our telescopes aren’t good enough. Our computers are too slow. Our data is too thin. Distant observations are so delicate and shrouded in uncertainty that a passing piece of space garbage can spoil everything.

Back in 2017, a team of astronomers led by Linhua Jiang, from China’s Peking University, was peering through the Keck I telescope in Hawaii, observing GN-z11. They were using an infrared spectrometer attached to the telescope, expecting to scrutinize the galaxy—which at 13.4 billion light-years away is the oldest and most distant object humanity has ever observed—for clues about the early history of the universe. GN-z11 like many very old, very faraway galaxies is only visible in infrared.

They didn’t expect to witness an explosion. But if you believe the team’s subsequent analysis, that’s exactly what happened. For 245 seconds, Keck I registered what appeared to be a possible gamma-ray burst from the universe’s infancy.

Observing a 13.4 billion-year-old gamma-ray burst, or GRB, would be a profound stroke of luck with equally profound implications for the study of, well, everything. “GRBs and their associated emission can be used to probe the star-formation and reionization history in the era of cosmic dawn,” Jiang and his team wrote in their initial paper, which appeared in the science journal Nature Astronomy in December 2020.

“Reionization” refers to the eons half a billion years after the Big Bang when the hydrogen making up most of the atoms in the universe ionized and murky space became transparent. It’s a mysterious era—the first eons of light following a period of hundreds of millions of years during which space was swirling with opaque gases.

Witnessing an explosion from that timeframe would be a scientific coup. “This means that gamma-ray bursts can be efficiently produced at a very early time,” Jiang told The Daily Beast. In other words, the explosions we associate with the deaths of stars, and the creation of black holes, started happening really early. If gamma rays were bursting as long ago as 13.4 billion years, it means the universe—its structure and galaxy-forming mechanisms—evolved fast into what we see around us today.

But other astronomers weren’t convinced Jiang and his team had seen anything remotely interesting. The odds of glimpsing a gamma-ray burst 13.4 billion light years away are infinitesimally slim, a team led by Michał Michałowski, an astronomer at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland, explained in Nature Astronomy in October.

In astronomy, a “redshift” is the change in a faraway galaxy’s infrared signature that helps us to determine its age. GN-z11 naturally has a very high redshift, which suggests it’s ancient. But astronomers haven’t confirmed any other galaxies remotely this old. The next oldest, galaxy EGSY8p7, has a redshift of 8.7, meaning it’s probably hundreds of millions of years younger than GN-z11.

U.S. and Chinese Astronomers Are Teaming Up to Hunt for Alien Lights

Astronomers would need to find a lot more galaxies in GN-z11’s age range and spend a lot more time pointing telescopes at them in order to be sure what a gamma-ray burst from these old galaxies even looks like, Michalkowski and his team noted. “A larger sample of very high redshift galaxies is needed to detect such distant GRBs.”

It was way, way more likely that Jiang and his team caught a reflection from the castoff Breeze-M upper stage of a 6-year-old Russian Proton rocket. “We searched Space-Track, the largest publicly available database of Earth satellites and space debris for an object close to the position of GN-z11-flash at the time of observations,” Michałowski’s team wrote. “We found the Breeze-M space debris.”

This particular argument comes down, in part, to common sense, Michałowski told The Daily Beast. “The conclusion is that either it was an extraordinary discovery of something we have not seen yet—a gamma-ray burst at redshift 11—or an obvious explanation with a well-identified space debris, which we are certain went either through the field of view of the Keck telescope or just outside of it… with all properties consistent with being a flash.

“Everybody can pick the explanation they prefer, but I don’t have doubts myself,” Michałowski added. He said he considers the controversy “settled.”

Jiang and his team disagree. “We looked into our records and found that this satellite was ruled out in our original analysis,” they explained in a new paper, a preprint of which appeared online last week but has not yet been peer-reviewed.

Jiang et al’s calculations put the Russian rocket shell and the potential GN-z11-flash inches apart in the telescope’s field of view—a distance they claimed should preclude any confusion between the rocket and a gamma-ray burst from the distant galaxy. Besides, they added, the rocket’s reflection “was much fainter than what was needed to produce the flash.”

The yearlong back-and-forth, which included two other major criticisms of the Jiang team’s conclusions, has so far ended in impasse, with no resolution in sight. “We will never know the true nature of this flash,” Jiang said.

If we had a lot of good data on confirmed gamma-ray bursts from billions of light-years away, we might be able to compare them to the GN-z11-flash and see if they match. Jiang said he looked and couldn’t find anything to form a comparison. “I spent lots of time searching,” he explained. “Unfortunately we didn’t get such data.”

That could change in the future. Better telescopes—such as NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope, launched on Dec. 25 as a Christmas treat—combined with very powerful computers could help us spot and categorize faraway explosions. With time, luck and new technology, we might eventually be able to reassess the GN-z11-flash.

But Bing Zhang, a University of Nevada astronomer and a member of Jiang’s team, is urging patience. A lot of it. “One needs very powerful telescopes to continuously monitor many distant but faint galaxies to constrain the event rate of GN-z11-flash-like events,” he told The Daily Beast.

It’s possible that, a year ago, astronomers caught a fleeting glimpse of the universe’s infancy. It’s also possible they caught a fleeting glimpse of Russian space trash. For the foreseeable future, we probably won’t know which it was.

THIRD WORLD USA

Some people face eviction even after getting COVID-19 rental assistance. ‘Did this do what we thought it would do?’

Cecilia Reyes, Chicago Tribune
Tue, December 28, 2021

Tenants can once again apply for COVID-19 rental assistance, the latest wave of a $1 billion program that has sought to financially stabilize Illinois renters and landlords.

But although the program has succeeded in protecting some renters, tenant advocates say others are being evicted or threatened with eviction despite receiving thousands of dollars to pay the money they owe. The problem has taken on greater urgency in recent months, as the state’s moratorium on evictions expired in October.

Sara Heymann, a member of the neighborhood group Únete La Villita, said the group helped about 50 tenants in Little Village fill out paperwork for rental assistance through the city of Chicago. But after getting the payments, a lot of landlords still filed for evictions or declined to renew leases, she said, making the experience bittersweet.

“Working so hard to get those tenants rental assistance, and then they weren’t completely out of the woods yet, they didn’t have a job, and then their landlords follow up by just kicking them out? It sucks,” she said.

La Shone Kelly, director of housing for the Garfield Park Community Council, said the program has benefited the community but her agency also has fielded calls from tenants facing evictions or nonrenewals after getting rental assistance.

Many tenants still don’t have jobs when their rental assistance expires, and some landlords, who get many months’ worth of rental assistance in one single payment, lose track of how many months are covered, Kelly noted.

One of the issues, advocates said, is the lack of follow-up by government officials to ensure tenants understand their rights or landlords abide by the rules tied to receiving the public money, such as waiving late fees or temporary bans on filing evictions for nonpayment of rent.

The Garfield Park Community Council has begun following up with tenants on its own, Kelly said.

“That’s a lot of money that went out,” she said. “. .. Did this do what we thought it would do?”

The Illinois Housing Development Authority, which administers the bulk of pandemic-related federal aid for rent arrears in the state, said in a statement that it “unfortunately ... is not in a position to take any action that could be immediately helpful” to tenants who continue to face eviction after receiving assistance. The agency referred tenants to legal aid groups and other service providers.

The Chicago Department of Housing, which also administers rental assistance, said in a statement it has been focused on getting money out quickly “due to the emergency nature of the pandemic crisis.” The department said it was aware of some cases where evictions are improperly filed and has dealt with them on a case-by-case basis.

The department partnered with the University of Chicago Inclusive Economy Lab to follow up with applicants and track their outcomes, but a department spokeswoman did not immediately respond to questions about the partnership.

Evon McAllister applied for assistance with the Illinois Housing Development Authority in July after falling behind on rent for her South Shore apartment this year.

An acute stroke had left McAllister unable to move the right side of her body, which prevented her from working and made it hard for her to manage in her sixth-floor unit, she said. She had hoped the rental assistance would encourage her landlord to move her to a more accessible apartment.

In November, she notified her property manager, WPD Management, that her application for assistance had been approved. The company responded by noting she could still be evicted and offering $1,000 — and movers — if she found a new home by Dec. 15.

“If the IHDA does not process the payments in a timely manner you can still be processed for an eviction if the owner decides to,” a company representative wrote in a Nov. 11 email McAllister provided to the Tribune. “Please try to start looking for some places on your own.”

“This is wrong,” McAllister said in an interview. “He got the money.”

According to IHDA, the property management company cashed the $8,010 rental assistance check, which covered nine months of back rent, on Nov. 17. The company also received an earlier round of rental assistance for McAllister that was processed through a Chicago nonprofit.

McAllister said she’s upset the management did not improve the condition of her South Shore unit or move her to another apartment, given that the assistance money meant she was more than caught up on her rent. “Nobody should have to live like this,” she said of the mice and roach problems she reported encountering at her unit.

Reached by phone, Robert Ellis of WPD Management said he thought rental assistance had worked for McAllister, as she was not taken to court. He acknowledged problems with the apartment but said McAllister didn’t have sufficient income to live in the building, a problem the temporary rental assistance wouldn’t solve. “She can’t cover the rent moving forward for the unit,” he said.

“We’re doing our best to work with her,” Ellis said.

Ellis suggested that McAllister apply for rental assistance a third time, but McAllister said she just wants to move on. “You’re not gonna get any more money from me,” she said.

McAllister said she applied to live in a low-income apartment but was told there were many more people in need ahead of her.

The rental assistance program, together with other pandemic-related safeguards around eviction, has left renters and landlords more stable than they would have been otherwise, said Michelle Gilbert, legal director of the Lawyers Committee for Better Housing. The organization represents low-income tenants in eviction proceedings and is also connecting residents to public rental assistance.

But the assistance push alone can’t promise long-term housing stability for tenants, Gilbert said.

“There are people who are experiencing housing instability either because they’re not back to the amount of money they were making, or because their savings took a hit, or because they were unstable to begin with,” she said.

It also doesn’t address the power imbalance between landlord and tenant, Gilbert added. “We’re not able to represent everyone,” she said.

Susan Brewer and her wife, Le’Denise Henderson, got help with their rent this year through a city of Chicago assistance program that predates COVID-19. They fell behind on rent after Henderson was laid off as a lead barista at DePaul University at the start of the pandemic, Henderson said.

On March 31 they were approved for $5,355, which would cover nine months’ worth of rent. But a new landlord purchased their South Shore building shortly afterward, then filed for eviction against Brewer and Henderson for failing to pay rent during the months he owned the building. The case was dismissed in October.

Brewer and Henderson’s landlord, Anthony Glispie, referred questions to his attorney. The attorney, John Norkus, said the eviction case arose out of confusion surrounding the rental assistance when Glispie purchased the property. They decided the eviction case was not worth pursuing because paperwork on the assistance was muddled, he said.

Now the two women are again behind on rent. They said they did not receive rent invoices and could not access the payment system. They are now able to view invoices and pay rent, but can’t come up with enough money to make multiple rent payments at once, Brewer said.

Norkus disputed that Brewer and Henderson were blocked from making payments. Their landlord has again filed to evict them, he said.

Brewer and Henderson said they had not yet been served with eviction papers but were expecting a knock on their door soon. They are considering loans and asking for help, and plan to apply for the most recent round of rental assistance. But they are worried about how much time the process takes.

“That will leave us pretty much in a homeless state,” Henderson said.

Indonesia says will turn away stricken boat of Rohingya refugees



Indonesia says will turn away stricken boat of Rohingya refugeesA boat carrying Rohingya refugees, including women and children, is seen stranded in waters off the coast of Bireuen

Tue, December 28, 2021
By Hidayatullah Tahjuddin

BIREUEN, Indonesia (Reuters) - Indonesian authorities will help repair a stranded boat packed with over 100 Rohingya off its coast but will not allow its passengers to seek refuge in the Southeast Asian country and will turn the vessel away, officials told Reuters on Tuesday.

Fishermen spotted the skiff on Sunday, adrift off the coast of Bireuen, a district on the western island of Sumatra, with around 120 men, women and children on board.

"The Rohingya are not Indonesian citizens, we can't just bring them in even as refugees. This is in line with government policy," said Dian Suryansyah, a local navy official.

Authorities would provide humanitarian aid to the stricken vessel, including food, medicine and water, before turning it away, he added.

Indonesia is not a signatory to the 1951 U.N. Convention on Refugees and is predominately seen as a transit country for those seeking asylum to a third country.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement on Tuesday that the boat had suffered engine damage and should be allowed to land.

"UNHCR is concerned about the safety and lives of the refugees on board," the statement said.

Badruddin Yunus, a local fishing community leader, said that the refugees had been at sea for 28 days and some of them had fallen ill and one had died.

Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar have for years sailed to countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia between November and April when the seas are calm. Many have been turned away, despite calls for assistance by international rights groups.

More than 730,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar in August 2017 after a military crackdown that refugees said included mass killings and rape. Rights groups have documented killings of civilians and burning of Rohingya villages.

Hundreds have reached Indonesia over the last few years, after months at sea.

(Writing by Stanley Widianto; Editing by James Pearson)

Analysis-South America, battered by COVID-19, now winning global vaccination race
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South America, battered by COVID-19, now winning global vaccination race

Tue, December 28, 2021
By Gram Slattery and Augustin Geist

RIO DE JANEIRO/BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Throughout much of 2020 and early 2021, South America was ground zero in the global fight against COVID-19.

Oxygen ran low in Peru. Gravediggers worked through the night in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Bodies were stuffed into shipping containers in Guayaquil, Ecuador.

Brazil, the largest country in Latin America, saw its COVID-19 death toll rise to the second-highest in the world, while Argentina and Peru reported some of the heaviest death per capita figures anywhere.

But in recent months, despite patchy health services and lower income levels than in Europe or the United States, the region has emerged as a surprise winner in the vaccination race.

South America is now the most vaccinated region in the world, with 63.3% of the population fully inoculated, according to the Our World in Data project, which collects official numbers from governments worldwide.

Europe comes in second with 60.7%. In Africa, just 8.8% of the population has completed a full vaccination regimen.

Infection and death rates have plummeted compared to the middle of the year when Latin America and the Caribbean accounted for almost half of global deaths and infections. Now it is Europe where - due to the spread of the Omicron variant - contagion is rebounding.

Epidemiologists point to several factors to explain the speedy vaccination drive. But the most important, they say, has been decades of successful inoculation campaigns that have created the infrastructure needed to deliver jabs en masse, while instilling trust among the population.

In Brazil, successful inoculation drives in the last half century against smallpox, meningitis, polio and measles means that very few people are opposed to vaccines, said Paulo Lotufo, an epidemiologist and professor at the University of Sao Paulo.

In some major cities, including Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, over 99% of the adult population has received at least one dose, authorities say. Brazilians commonly claim with pride that the nation has a "cultura de vacinacao," or "vaccine culture."

The same can be said for several other nations in the region, which have previously launched expansive inoculation campaigns after traumatic infectious disease outbreaks in recent decades.

"This confidence, built up over several years, is based on the benefits of our extensive vaccination schedule," said Leda Guzzi, a Buenos Aires-based infectious disease expert.

Effective public health messaging has been key, too, said Albert Ko, a professor at the Yale School of Public Health and a collaborating researcher at Rio de Janeiro's Oswaldo Cruz Foundation.

In Brazil, for instance, a mascot resembling a docile white droplet, known as "Zé Gotinha," has been heavily used by health officials to promote the vaccine, even as President Jair Bolsonaro has himself declined to be jabbed.

Earlier this year, baile funk star MC Fioti released a viral video with a modified version of one of his hits in association with the Butantan biomedical institute in Sao Paulo promoting the vaccine.

STORM CLOUDS GATHER

The region, however, is far from out of the woods, particularly as the Omicron variant spreads across the globe.

Even with an impressive 63.3% of the population vaccinated, the region remains below the threshold that most scientists say is needed to offer mass protection. Omicron is now raging in much of Europe despite similar levels of inoculation.

Among children, vaccination rates also vary dramatically from country to country in Latin America, with authorities in Mexico and Brazil relatively slow to approve shots for minors.

Another potential issue is the vaccines used.

Many countries, such as Chile, Uruguay and Brazil, relied heavily on Coronavac, a vaccine produced by China's Sinovac Biotech Ltd, particularly in the initial phase of their vaccination drives.

While the vaccine is credited with getting jabs into arms quickly, its efficacy is lower than that of its peers, and at least one initial study has indicated it may not produce antibodies against the Omicron variant. Earlier in December, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that recipients of Sinovac - as well as all other "inactivated" vaccines - should get boosted.

Epidemiologists also say, Omicron may be more adept at dodging the immunity generated by previous COVID-19 infections. That could be bad news in a region where the virus ripped through entire neighborhoods in earlier stages of the pandemic.

"Many people, particularly in vulnerable communities in Brazil, have been infected," said Ko, the Yale epidemiologist. "We see this virus infecting people who had already gotten infected before."

(Reporting by Gram Slattery in Rio de Janeiro and Agustin Geist in Buenos Aires, additional reporting by Diego Ore and Dave Graham in Mexico City and Oliver Griffin in Bogota; Editing by Stephen Eisenhammer and Aurora Ellis)

Trees that are vital to Kentucky bourbon industry facing decline, report says


Bill Estep
Tue, December 28, 2021

White oak trees that play a key role in the ecosystem and economy of Kentucky will see a significant decline soon without action to help the species regenerate.

That’s the takeaway from a recent report from an organization called the White Oak Initiative, which is aimed at bringing attention to the challenges facing the tree and recommending ways to counter the looming decline.

White oaks are a cornerstone species in forests of the eastern U.S., providing habitat and food for birds and animals and wood for wide range of products such as flooring and cabinets.

In Kentucky, that includes barrels for the signature bourbon industry. Bourbon has to be aged in new charred oak containers, which give it color and flavor.

All told, white oaks play a role in billions of dollars of economic activity in Kentucky annually.

The problem is that they are not regenerating at a sustainable level, according to the report.

Researchers estimated that 60 percent of the mature white oaks acres surveyed had no seedlings present, and 87 percent had no saplings.

White oak logs are moved from the receiving yard to the mill of Robinson Stave Mill in East Bernstadt, Ky., Dec. 13, 2021. Robinson Stave buys exclusively white-oak timber to use in making bourbon barrels.

There are still plenty of high-quality white oaks in Kentucky and elsewhere, but there are relatively few younger trees coming on, raising a concern about a drop in the white oak population without changes in forest management, according to the initiative.

The white oak population will begin to decline significantly in the next 10 to 15 years without intervention, the report said.

“What’s at stake is we have a lot of industries that are white-oak dependent,” said Jeff Stringer, chair of the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources in the College of Agriculture, Food and Environment at the University of Kentucky. “If this trend continues there’ll start to be a shortage in the supply chain.”

Stringer helped found the White Oak Initiative, and UK and the American Forest Foundation developed the assessment and conservation plan released by the initiative.

The organization is trying to get the word out now about the potential decline because of the lead time needed to turn it around. It can take a white oak tree 60 to 80 years to grow to the minimum size for use in wood products.

White oaks are widespread, with a range of more than 104 million acres, but face decline for a number of reasons, according to the report.

Workers turn white oak logs into staves for 53-gallon bourbon barrels at Robinson Stave Mill in Laurel County on Dec. 13, 2021. The staves are dried for nine-twelve months before they are crafted into barrels.

One is changes in forest management, including fire suppression.

Historically, fires caused by lightning or set by indigenous people, and later by white settlers, for a variety of reasons — from clearing land to making iron — killed tree species that competed with oak and created conditions favorable for oak to grow.

Modern efforts to put out fires on woodlands have changed that, allowing tree species such as maple and beech to thrive and shade out oaks, according to the report.

Other factors in the decline in the number of younger white oaks include a lack of active forest management to remove competing species, decreased demand for products made from other tree species and selective logging of high-quality white oaks, according to the report.

There also are threats and potential threats to oaks from invasive pests and plants and stresses related to climate change, the report said.

The looming decline comes as demand for high-quality white oak trees by the bourbon industry and others has shot up. The number of high-quality trees being cut exceeds the number growing to replace them, Stringer said.

William Larkey has seen the fierce competition for good white-oak logs in his job as timber procurement manager for Robinson Stave in Laurel County.

The company turns white oak logs into staves 38 inches long, which are then used to make 53-gallon bourbon barrels at the adjoining Cumberland Cooperage.

“The demand is worldwide,” Larkey said.

Workers at Cumberland Cooperage in Laurel County use dried staves made from white oak logs to make 53-gallon barrels used in aging bourbon in this Dec. 13, 2021 photo.

The report recommends several approaches to boost regeneration of oaks, including logging, controlled fires to create better conditions and tree-planting.

The decline facing oaks can’t be solved only by planting trees because of the time they take to mature and because there isn’t enough land available, so it is necessary to practice better management for them on existing woodlands, Stringer said.

Stringer said the White Oak Initiative is giving policymakers information and developing education materials for landowners and loggers about methods to boost regeneration of white oaks.

It will be important to get landowners involved in the effort because 88 percent of the forested land in Kentucky is privately owned, said Bob Bauer, head of the Kentucky Forest Industries Association.

The Kentucky Division of Forestry is working with landowners on management plans that focus on growing high-quality white oaks and has developed demonstration sites, according to the report from the initiative.

Melissa Moeller, director of the White Oak Initiative, said participants believe actions to improve the conditions needed to give white oaks a boost will help the whole ecosystem.

The report paints a dire picture, Moeller said, but also shows there are opportunities to tackle the problem.

“There are definitely a lot of opportunities to improve regeneration in Kentucky,” she said.

Bourbon barrels made from white oak logs are charred inside on Dec. 13, 2021 as part of the production process at Cumberland Cooperage in East Bernstandt, Ky. The charring imparts color and flavor to the bourbon.

SECOND TIME CAPSULE
Experts pull documents, money from Lee statue time capsule


1 / 8
Conservators work on a box believed to be a time capsule left in the pedestal at the former site of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Va., on Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2021. Tuesday’s opening of the aged copper box appeared to mark the end of a long search for the elusive 1887 time capsule. (AP Photo/Sarah Rankin)

SARAH RANKIN
Tue, December 28, 2021

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Conservation experts in Virginia’s capital Tuesday pulled books, money, ammunition, documents and other artifacts from a time capsule found in the remnants of a pedestal that once held a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

The lead conservator for the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, Kate Ridgway, said the measurements and material of the box, copper, match historical accounts. As the contents inside were unpacked, they appeared to match the description of the 1887 time capsule they had been looking for.

“It does appear that this is the box we expected,” she told reporters.

Records maintained by the Library of Virginia suggest that dozens of Richmond residents, organizations and businesses contributed about 60 objects to the capsule, including Confederate memorabilia.

The box was discovered and carefully extracted from the monument site a day earlier, marking the end of a long search for the elusive capsule. Ridgway said the box, which weighed 36 pounds, was found in water in a little alcove of the pedestal. The contents were damp, but “it's not soup,” Ridgway said.

“I think it’s in better shape than we expected,” she said.

Historical records had led to some speculation that the capsule might contain a rare and historically significant photo of deceased President Abraham Lincoln. One line from a newspaper article listed among the contents a “picture of Lincoln lying in his coffin.”

On Tuesday, conservators found a printed image from an 1865 issue of Harper’s Weekly in the time capsule that Ridgway said seemed to show a figure grieving over Lincoln's grave — but did not appear to be the much-anticipated photo.

Harold Holzer, a historian and Lincoln scholar, had previously told The Associated Press he believed it highly unlikely that the time capsule contained an actual photograph of Lincoln in his coffin because the only known photo of Lincoln in death was taken by photographer Jeremiah Gurney in City Hall in New York on April 24, 1865.

The contents of the tightly packed box had expanded from the damp and stuck together, making unpacking difficult, so conservators decided to relieve pressure by cutting down one side.

“Not ideal, but it’s the way it is,” Ridgway said.

After Ridgway and other team members meticulously extracted each object, other conservators would then cart the pieces to the back of the lab for further study and cataloging. The team made sure to photograph each object in the box before manipulating it.

Many of the paper items were damaged from water and time but still at least partly legible.

Along with several waterlogged books, pamphlets and newspapers, the box contained an envelope of Confederate money, which conservators carefully separated, and two carved artifacts — a Masonic symbol and a Confederate flag said to have be made from the tree that grew over Gen. Stonewall Jackson’s original grave.

Conservators also pulled buttons, coins and Miniè balls, a type of bullet used in the Civil War, from the box. A bomb squad had checked the capsule Monday, partly to make sure there was no live ammunition.

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam ordered the enormous equestrian statue of Lee removed in 2020, amid the global protest movement sparked by the police killing of George Floyd. Litigation pushed back his plans, and the statue was not removed until September, after a court cleared the way.

Contemporaneous news accounts from the late 1800s detailed the placement of the time capsule in the foundation of the pedestal, and imaging tests conducted earlier this year appeared to confirm its existence. But a lengthy search during the September statue removal came up empty.

Earlier this month, Northam ordered the pedestal removed as well, and crews working on the project again started to search for the artifact. A time capsule was discovered two weeks ago, generating excitement, but hours of painstaking and ultimately anti-climactic examination suggested that artifact was placed by someone else, perhaps someone involved with the construction.

Tutu: a man of empathy, moral ardor, and some silly jokes

By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA

Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu. When Tutu died Sunday, Dec. 26, 2021 at age 90, he was remembered as a Nobel laureate, a spiritual compass, a champion of the anti-apartheid struggle who turned to other global causes after Nelson Mandela, another moral heavyweight, became South Africa's first Black president. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe, File)

One Christmas Day in the 1980s, Desmond Tutu led a packed church service in Soweto, the Black Johannesburg township and fulcrum of protest against white racist rule in South Africa. An American family — mine — found standing room at the back.

We were among the few white people in the congregation and, as we shook hands with Tutu on the steps upon leaving, he made a joke. Something like: “So, it really is a white Christmas.”

Evoking the Irving Berlin song ’’White Christmas,” famously crooned by Bing Crosby, in tense, dusty Soweto was quintessential Tutu. He couldn’t resist a pun about race in an inflamed country suffering the agonies of apartheid, the system of white minority domination that was extinguished in 1994.

(Actually, every once in a very long while, it has snowed in Johannesburg, but certainly not at Christmas time, which falls in the Southern Hemisphere’s summer).

When Tutu died Sunday at age 90, he was remembered as a Nobel laureate, a spiritual compass, a champion of the anti-apartheid struggle who turned to other global causes after Nelson Mandela, another moral heavyweight, became South Africa’s first Black president. Barack Obama praised Tutu for fighting injustice wherever he saw it.

But the former U.S. president also recalled the activist’s ″impish sense of humor.″ And it is that Desmond Tutu — the funny, kind, gracious man behind the icon — whom I and so many others recall.

To see Tutu up close was to bask in his rollercoaster laughter, to revel as his eyes would widen theatrically, to luxuriate in his pristinely enunciated remarks, and to come away infused with the man’s joy and warmth. If he had a chance to dance, usually in church, he was on his feet — with the help of a cane in later years, as he grew more frail.

He seemed to embody the best of what it is to be human, at a granular level. The small generosities, the willingness to listen, the empathy, lightening the mood with … let’s face it, some pretty silly jokes.

He kept that up through grim times in South Africa, showing anger and frustration too at dehumanizing state policies, the violence of white-controlled security forces and the killing within Black communities as apartheid, a scourge that he described as ’’evil,” played out bitterly.

Not everyone was a fan. His moral ardor ran up against realpolitik. His notion of the ″rainbow nation,″ an idealized vision of racial tolerance, is at odds with the social and economic imbalances of South Africa today.

But he always reached out, always looked for and found the humanity in people. In advance of a small service at St. George’s Cathedral in 2015, participants were asked to send photos of themselves; I watched as Tutu went around the congregation, asking each person to say a little about themselves.


I was a boy on that Christmas Day when Tutu riffed on Bing Crosby, and my father was reporting for The Associated Press in South Africa. In 1989, my parents moved to Stockholm. A few months before they departed, a postcard arrived with Tutu’s scrawl on the back.

’’Go well. Thanks for your splendid service,” he wrote. “Will miss you. Will certainly try to see you in Sweden. God bless you.”

In time, I became a journalist and also worked for the AP in South Africa, sometimes covering Tutu’s post-apartheid commentary on corruption and other challenges, as well as his hospitalizations for the prostate cancer that afflicted him for nearly a quarter century.

I would recall the one time he visited our Johannesburg home for dinner. He didn’t stay long. He was charming, easygoing.

Afterwards, he sent us another postcard. On the front was an elephant; on the back was something that could be taken both as a bread-and-butter note and as an unintended valedictory from a remarkable man who, even at age 90, left the world too soon.

“Just an inadequate note to thank you very much for your kind hospitality,” he wrote. “I enjoyed myself and was sorry to have to leave early. God bless you.”

It was signed, simply, “Desmond.”

Torchia reported from South Africa for the AP from 2013 to 2019. He is currently based in Mexico City.

Young South Africans learn of Tutu’s activism for equality

By MOGOMOTSI MAGOME and ANDREW MELDRUM

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A woman is comforted outside the historical home of Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa, Monday, Dec. 27, 2021. South Africa's president says Tutu, South Africa's Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist for racial justice and LGBT rights and the retired Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, died Sunday at the age of 90. (AP Photo/Shiraaz Mohamed)


JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s legacy is reverberating among young South Africans, many of whom were not born when the clergyman battled apartheid and sought full rights for the nation’s Black majority.

Tutu, who died Sunday at the age of 90, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for those efforts.

Even though they did not know much about him, some young South Africans told The Associated Press on Monday that they understood his role as one of the most prominent figures to help their country become a democracy.

Zinhle Gamede, 16, said she found out about Tutu’s passing on social media and has learned more about him over the past day.

“At first I only knew that he was an archbishop. I really did not know much else,” Gamede said.

She said Tutu’s death had inspired her to learn more about South Africa’s history, especially the struggle against white minority rule.

“I think that people who fought for our freedom are great people. We are in a better place because of them. Today I am living my life freely, unlike in the olden days where there was no freedom,” she said.

Following the end of apartheid in 1994, when South Africa became a democracy, Tutu chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that documented atrocities during apartheid and sought to promote national reconciliation. Tutu also became one of the world’s most prominent religious leaders to champion LGBTQ rights.

“As a gay person, it is rare to hear people from the church speaking openly about gay issues, but I found out about him through gay activists who sometimes use his quotes during campaigns,” said Lesley Morake, 25. “That is how I knew about him, and that is what I will remember about him.”

Tshepo Nkatlo, 32, said he is focusing on the positive things he hears about Tutu, instead of some negative sentiments he saw on social media.

“One of the things I picked up on Facebook and Twitter was that some people were criticizing him for the TRC (Truth and Reconciliation Commission) because there are still many issues regarding the TRC,” Nkatlo said, referring to some who say Tutu should have been tougher on whites who perpetrated abuses under apartheid and should have ordered that they be prosecuted.

South Africa is holding a week of mourning for Tutu. Bells rang at midday Monday from St. George’s Anglican Cathedral in Cape Town to honor him. The bells at “the people’s cathedral,” where Tutu worked to unite South Africans of all races against apartheid, will toll for 10 minutes at noon for five days to mark Tutu’s life.

“We ask all who hear the bells to pause their busy schedules for a moment in tribute” to Tutu, the current archbishop of Cape Town, Thabo Makgoba, said. Anglican churches across South Africa will also ring their bells at noon this week, and the Angelus prayer will be recited.

Several services in South Africa were being planned to honor Tutu’s life, as tributes came in from around the world.

Tutu’s coffin will be displayed Friday at the cathedral in Cape Town to allow the public to file past the casket, “which will reflect the simplicity with which he asked to be buried,” Makgoba said in a statement. On Friday night Tutu’s body will “lie alone in the cathedral which he loved.”

A requiem Mass will be held Saturday and, according to Tutu’s wishes, he will be cremated and his ashes placed in the cathedral’s mausoleum, church officials said Monday.

In addition, an ecumenical and interfaith service will be held for Tutu on Thursday in South Africa’s capital, Pretoria.

South Africans are laying flowers at the cathedral, in front of Tutu’s home in Cape Town’s Milnerton area, and in front of his former home in Soweto.

President Cyril Ramaphosa visited Tutu’s home Monday in Cape Town where he paid his respects to Tutu’s widow, Leah.

“He knew in his soul that good would triumph over evil, that justice would prevail over iniquity, and that reconciliation would prevail over revenge and recrimination. He knew that apartheid would end, that democracy would come,” Ramaphosa said Sunday night in a nationally broadcast address.

“He knew that our people would be free. By the same measure, he was convinced, even to the end of his life, that poverty, hunger and misery can be defeated; that all people can live together in peace, security and comfort,” said Ramaphosa who added that South Africa’s flags will be flown at half-staff this week.

“May we follow in his footsteps,” Ramaphosa said. “May we, too, be worthy inheritors of the mantle of service, of selflessness, of courage, and of principled solidarity with the poor and marginalized.”

UK

Our Cabinet League Table: Johnson
falls to his lowest ever negative
rating.

https://www.conservativehome.com/

• Perhaps the only good news for Boris Johnson is that his score, woeful as it is, is nowhere near as dire as that of Theresa May in the spring of 2019 – when she broke the survey’s unpopularity record, coming in at a catastophic -75 points.
• Nonetheless, this is the Prime Minister’s second consecutive month in negative ratings, his third altogether, and his lowest total of the lot.  The explanation? Parties, competence, Covid restrictions, Paterson, taxes and Net Zero, not necessarily in that order.
• Nadine Dorries is down from fourth (plus 61) to mid-table sixteenth (plus 25), Michael Gove from twelfth to sixth from bottom (plus 43 to plus 16) , and Sajid Javid from eighth to twelfth (plus 54 to plus 29). All are associated with support for Covid restrictions.
• Mark Spencer stays in the red and Priti Patel inches into it: in her case, the explanation is “small boats”. Liz Truss is top again, Ben Wallace is up from second to fifth, and Anne-Marie Trevelyan and Nadhim Zahawi are scoring well. Generally, there’s a drift down.

State Papers
1995: Irish Government was advised that then-journalist Boris Johnson’s views on Northern Ireland were ‘naive’

Boris Johnson at The Spectator

Ralph Riegel
December 28 2021 

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s views on Northern Ireland were described as “naive” by an Irish embassy official who had gone for lunch with the then-journalist in 1995.

Details of the lunch were revealed in confidential Department of Foreign Affairs files released as part of the State Archives.

Mr Johnson – a well-known journalist in the 1990s who had worked in both Brussels and London – was described by the Irish Embassy official as being ‘Eurosceptic’, a prescient summary of the future politician who would become a standard-bearer for Brexit and getting the UK out of the EU.

Colin Wrafter was press officer at the Irish Embassy in London and had gone for lunch with Mr Johnson on April 24, 1995. Details of the journalist’s views on major Anglo-Irish and European issues were then forwarded to the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin on April 27.

No details of the venue for the lunch or its cost were included in the memo.

At the time of the lunch, the then 31-year-old Mr Johnson was editor of The Spectator magazine and was also working as a Daily Telegraph columnist.

“Johnson was previously Brussels Correspondent for The Daily Telegraph and was recalled to London to succeed Simon Heffer at The Spectator when the latter was made Deputy Editor at The Daily Telegraph,” Mr Wrafter wrote.

“His own politics would be Thatcherite and Eurosceptic but he has, he told me, incurred the wrath of the editor of The Daily Telegraph, Charles More, for a piece in The Spectator in February which argued that the (Northern Ireland) framework documents were deliberately pitched by the British in the nationalist direction so as to ensure that a final settlement would be much more sensitive to unionist concerns.

“He has written approvingly – if naively – of the Northern Ireland Tories in his weekly column in The Daily Telegraph. Our lunch took place before the announcement by the British government that it would commence ministerial talks with Sinn Féin.

“It says something for the standing of The Daily Telegraph that he knew what the British government would announce that afternoon and that his (press) lobby colleague, Phil Johnson, had time to travel to Belfast for Minister Ancram’s briefing at 5pm.”

Mr Wrafter advised Seán Ó hUigínn at the Department of Foreign Affairs there was one element of the luncheon that should be noted.

“Boris made one remark of which you may wish to be aware – the prime minister is determined to proceed with the peace process at a pace just a little on the right side of ‘stalling’,” Mr Wrafter wrote.

“In this he was reflecting a view widely held by political journalists in Westminster.

“While the prime minister wants history to acknowledge his role in helping to bring about peace in the North, he is determined to move cautiously in order to avoid the risk of exposing himself to Tory backbench unrest...”