As everywhere, Christmas 2020 ends a year like no other for us on Waschke Road. Rebecca was scheduled for spinal surgery in March that was postponed by the pandemic lockdown. That resulted in a harrowing few weeks during which we decided that a two-story house was not for us.
Though we loved our spacious Ferndale house, a smaller house on Waschke Road we built for Rebecca’s parents was a much better fit for a pair of seniors with bad backs and arthritis. All on the same floor and a ramp to the front door, just in case the surgery failed.
We gave the renters notice, which, fortunately, they were glad to receive because they had already decided to buy their own house. In Phase 1 lockdown, we started moving on the 1st of July with much needed help from the family. (Even six-year-old Dario helped.) We made it in time for Rebecca to recover from surgery on Waschke Road. The Ferndale house sold a shade below our asking price in August.
Every morning, the sun rises in a panorama over the old homestead. It’s so good to be home.
2020 on Waschke Road
The Whatcom County Library System, where I serve on the board, has been open for digital lending, curbside pickup, and a raft of online events and videos. I’ve been amazed at the skill and alacrity of the library staff’s work to move the system online. Our grandson Christopher and I are working on a pilot for an online bookstore for the Friends of the Whatcom County Library System to replace in-library used book sales, which are blocked by the pandemic. I’ve been leading weekly bookstore project standup Zoom meetings, secretly promoting agile development methodology.
Software Architects Anonymous, a miscreant gang of cynical enterprise consultants, meets on Zoom Friday evenings for a little beer and a lot of gossip.
The best news of the year came from the old homestead farmhouse. On Tuesday evening, 24 November, our son Paul, wife Lanni, and a midwife brought Charles Theodore Arnold Waschke into the world in the very room his great-uncle Arnold was born a 100 years ago. My dad— Theodore, Charles’ great-grandfather— was born in what is now a chicken coop.
2020 the dismal
2020 is the year of the most devastating health disaster in a hundred years. The death toll is climbing rapidly, 318,000 as I write this. On September 11, 2001 3,000 Americans died in a single day from a terrorist attack. In December 2020, we have already endured 4 days that exceeded 3,000 deaths from covid-19. Looking at the climbing death rates, I am afraid we’ll exceed the number of U.S. military and civilian casualties in WWII (420,000) by the New Year. If you accept the Economist’s excess death method of calculating the death toll, we may already have passed that milestone.
Christmas 2020 the wonderful
As bad as all this looks, in 20 years, I am convinced we will look back on 2020 as a year of successes. I’m not crazy. At least I don’t think I am.
2020 medical breakthroughs
- We have 2, possibly 3, effective vaccines for covid-19 11 months after the virus flashed on the scene. The first flu vaccines did not appear until nearly 30 years after the 1918 flu pandemic. In June of 2020, the World Economic Forum reported that it takes 10 years to develop an effective vaccine. We got three in 11 months.
- Artificial intelligence has solved the problem of protein folding, potentially the most significant discovery for medicine development in a century.
Hope for arresting human caused climate change
- In sunny places, solar electricity became cheaper than fossil fuel generation in 2020. People will start using renewable energy because it is cheap, not from altruism, which is in far shorter supply than sunlight.
- BP, in its yearly market forecast, predicted that world oil consumption, currently suppressed by covid-19, will never return to 2019 levels. Not all oil companies agree, but the P in BP is still petroleum. Think of that. Ferndale depends on its refineries, but with the right planning and strategy, the jobs will remain and grow while the climate is preserved. A company that views the future clearly has a hand on success.
- Car sales plummeted in 2020 but electric automobile sales went up. People buy electric now because electric is cool and practical, not because the trees need a hug.
Technology marches on
- SpaceX now sends humans into space for $62 million. The space shuttle cost $1.5 billion per flight. The science fiction dream of visiting space is becoming practical.
- We are learning more efficient ways to teach and learn. With all the grumbling about Zoom fatigue, it is easier and cheaper to be trained in practically anything than ever before.
- Quantum computing is becoming real, hinting that a new level of computational power is on the horizon— a fresh set of batteries for Moore’s law.
- Although the economy has taken a massive hit, the digital economy is surging ahead. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development reports that Internet data volume, use of online conferencing tools has been surging. And network providers have been keeping up.
Forces are lining up for the biggest economic burst in centuries.
There is hope that Christmas 2020 will bring future peace, joy, health, and prosperity to us all.