recall recalled

It looks like the attempt to force a recall of California Governor Gavin Newsom has gone down with a flaming bullet. That's a relief. Because the conditional vote to replace him, should the recall have passed, went fairly overwhelmingly to Larry Elder. (Which means, by the way, that those Democrats who voted for Kevin Paffrath not because they liked him, but because they perceived him as the only Democrat with a chance to beat Elder, sold their souls for nothing.)

It is at least a terrible relief not to have to deal with Elder, since if his ideas of how to deal with the pandemic had gone into effect, I would have had to utterly isolate myself for over a year, until he was kicked out of office.

As it is, I'm trying to decide whether to attend any concerts at all this fall-winter-spring. I just finished writing a survey article of the mid-peninsula classical groups' season, checking each for its virus safety policy, and found universal adherence to a policy of full vaccination required (with certification to prove it, and ID to prove that's you) and masks, with variations on maintaining social distancing, and a few outliers on the details of vaccination: some allow the unvaccinated, like children, in with a recent negative test; others explicitly exclude children. Since the Delta is easily transmissable even among the vaccinated, I'm uneasy. I suspect even a "mild" case of the virus would be very hard on me. I've told my editor I'm still unsure whether I'll be submitting any reviews this year; and so I watch and wait and contemplate.