I like this shiny blue shirt on Judy. Doesn’t clash with the hair, is seasonally appropriate and the earrings go well. Good job!

COVID dominated almost all segments of the NewsHour today, from 130,000 deaths in the U.S., to India outpacing Russia’s tally, to the loss of a young Broadway star, to Atlanta’s mayor, to Hong Kong.

If you wonder why the U.S. is lousy at following health professionals’ guidance, just ask this sage:

He put it in a nutshell for us: “I’m an American, and I feel I should be able to do what I want to. I pay my taxes. I live free. I want to be free.” Well O.K., pardner.

Meanwhile, Trump waded into the world of professional sports again. It’s a fact that, before the Presidency, he was dying to join the bizarre billionaires’ club that is the NFL ownership. They wouldn’t have him. Perhaps that was in his mind as he tweeted today that the Washington football team and the Cleveland baseball team are “politically weak” if they change their names from the racist ones they have today.

When I started this blog, I had no idea that I’d have the opportunity to write so frequently about NASCAR. Thanks, Trump! He also took time out from running the free world to say that Bubba Wallace, the NASCAR driver who found a noose in his garage, should apologize to NASCAR because the noose had been there for years. I don’t quite follow that logic, but consider the source. Trump added that, thanks to Bubba Wallace and NASCAR’s decision to ban the confederate flag, NASCAR ratings were down. In fact, NASCAR ratings are up. (I know this blogger did her part, holding on through the one-hour storm delay to watch the at least the first stage.)

The Brief But Spectacular segment was strong again, featuring Mike Smith, the co-founder of the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, who has now turned his attention to making masks for people who don’t have access to them, in this, the second pandemic he has lived through.

The AIDS-related segment is a plausible segue into a book recommendation: The Great Believers, by Rebecca Makkai. It is a novel chronicling the lives of people who lived through the AIDS epidemic and many who didn’t. I would not have read it had it not been the pick for book club this month. Somehow, it’s a real page-turner and, though this blogger sobbed her way to the end, a story about the power of love in all its forms.

Read it!