August moon.

Autumn 2021 incoming and returning students were greeted with a fleet of self-piloting delivery robots bringing food and drink from OSU Food Service to destinations all over campus. The future is now. (The Russian-made Yandex robots were removed from service March 2, 2022 in response to Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine.)

Honey Cup Coffee at the SoHud Collective street market. Every weekend on the vacant lot at the corner of Summit and Hudson.

Masked Brutus Buckeye in the lobby of the Ross Heart Hospital 18 months after the pandemic began. 18 MONTHS.

Safe, highly effective vaccines have been available for all since Spring. For free. They even offered people cash to get it. 40-50% of the population resolutely refused and rejected science for right-wing nutso conspiracy theories, urban legends, Mark of the Beast bullshit, and tribalism.

"Horny Summer"--the expected blowout party of the century--fizzled in a fog of uncertainty and ambiguity. Herd immunity vanished as a possibility. None of us reckoned on how much a year apart had changed us, changed how we thought about people, and changed the people and the world we came back to. More than that, societal trust was broken. Anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, COVID scoffers, coup plotters, fascist terrorists, abusive and murderous cops all gave the sense that fellow citizens and institutions could not be trusted.

Just as we were maybe starting to get it figured out along came Delta. In August, a highly contagious variant of COVID began tearing through the US as Republican-led Southern and Midwestern states passed laws AGAINST public health measures and stoked anti-vaccine hysteria.

Here we stand in September with vaccinated people immune from serious COVID but able to spread it and the unvaccinated getting sick and dying in numbers not seen since the winter peak, overwhelming hospitals, providing opportunities for new strains to emerge, and endangering children who are susceptible to the Delta variant but not yet approved for vaccines. All unncessary.

Wee lil jack-o'lantern welcomes the coming of Halloween from a campus porch.

Freddy haunts the porch roof of the old Cottingham mansion at N 4th and E 17th. Porch haunts and homemade decorations are huge part of the charm of Halloween in the neighborhood.

Very happy to see this. The older man on Hunter Ave who has been putting up lavish, largely homemade, holiday decorations for decades has put out another epic outsider Halloween spread.

It has been a weird Halloween season retailwise. Late COVID supply chain disruptions have hit hard. View in the seasonal section at the Graceland Target, October 17.

Rare c. 1910 RPPC aerial view of The Oval. Presumably taken from a balloon or low-flying airplane.

Halloween 2021. In-person again. (All fully vaxxed.) How I missed it.

New WOSU radio and TV HQ at Pearl Alley and E 14th. Boozy college kids can now check out "Call the Midwife" or "Vicar of Dibley" as they stagger by.

Last day of Autumn 2021 classes was December 8. Finals nigh. Both Starbucks locations on High packed. Food delivery robots busy. Prime campus study spots at libraries and Ohio Union filling up fast.