Immunity. The concept seems intuitive. But whose immunity? How long? How strong? What kind? I’ve spent half the morning trying to reconcile these two recent reports from CNN: “Immunity to coronavirus lingers for months, study finds” and “British study shows evidence of waning immunity to Covid-19.”

The Silverado Fire is about 25 miles away. I just packed an overnight bag and ten cans of dog food into the car. Not that I expect to evacuate, but you never know. Besides, it felt good to act on the only news I can actually do something about. Flee. Hey, it’s an option.

Did I mention there’s a election going on? The elephant in the room, as they say. And the donkey too, of course. We can hardly chronicle the Great Pandemic of 2020 without talking about how it’s impacted our election year process. It would be easy to call this election year unique, but I can assure you as an historian and from a lifetime of observation that every election year is unique. This one just happens to have a pandemic.

Have you sent a postcard lately? With so many of us isolated, maybe it’s time to revive this old-fashioned means of communication. I remember how excited my mother used to be to get a postcard in the mail. Every week Grandma would fill every inch of that card in her little spidery handwriting

The fall headlines proclaim it. COVID-19 cases are rising worldwide. But not everywhere. Why are some countries able to keep their numbers down? What are the success stories?

Have you ever noticed how counting to something is more fun than counting from something? Anticipation builds as the time gets closer for a homecoming, a wedding, a holiday. We know it’s 76 days until Christmas and 83 days to New Year’s Eve. But how do you count the days until something will end?

As I scanned the headlines this morning, I was struck by two colorful images. There was that familiar gray and red coronavirus which we see all the time, and just below it was Hurricane Delta in vivid shades of magenta and scarlet bordered in yellow and green. Both are examples of “false colors,” the science (and art) of assigning colors to photographs of objects

As we enter the fourth quarter one thing becomes clear. 2020 will be remembered as our COVID year. Even the Christmas card companies have caught on to it. Displays at Shutterfly, Zazzle, and Personalization Mall led off with themes like “the twelve days of corona,” “Good Riddance 2020,” and what a “Ruff year” (with a sad dog picture). None at Hallmark, though. I even looked through the “funny” ones.