LAKEWAY—GO VOTE!
If you didn’t vote by mail or during Early Voting, then Election Day, Tuesday Nov. 8, is your LAST CHANCE. Hours are 7AM-7PM. Lakeway’s closest locations are the Activity Center (105 Cross Creek) and the Lake Travis ISD Educational Development Center (607 RR 620 N., with easy access at the Kollmeyer stoplight).
Lakeway Transportation Bond–$17,500,000.
If you have NEVER complained about Lakeway traffic, then you can vote no. For the other 99.9% of Lakeway residents–VOTE YES on Lakeway Prop A.
The city made a pretty cool explainer video that in under 4 minutes highlights how the bond money will be used. Go here to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc_uOhlHjRI
Lakeway’s unhinged far-right conservatives threaten their neighbors.
One Lakeway couple who got this hate letter due to their Beto sign did an interview last week with Austin’s Fox 7. Here’s the link: https://www.fox7austin.com/news/voter-intimidation-lakeway-texas-threatening-letter-beto-orourke-greg-abbott
Info on the candidates and the LTISD bonds is in the Texas Election section below.
What is going on in Lakeway?
Art Exhibit at the Library
Starting Nov.1 and continuing through December, Lake Travis Community Library’s meeting room will display award-winning entries and honorable mentions from the annual Teen Read Week Art Contest. Participants created original art inspired by personal reading experiences. Friends of the Library provided cash prizes.
Christmas Sale
On Nov. 8, 10AM-6PM, Ladies of Charity Lake Travis Thrift Store (440 Medical Parkway) kicks off the holiday season with a winter wonderland of Christmas décor items for sale.
Veterans Day Ceremony
City of Lakeway will honor all who served in the military at a ceremony on Nov. 11, at 11AM, at the Lakeway Activity Center (105 Cross Creek). Go here for more info: https://www.lakeway-tx.gov/1426/Veterans-Day-Ceremony
The Nutcracker and more classical ballet
On Sunday, Nov. 13, 4-5PM, at the Lakeway Activity Center, Metamorphosis Dance presents professional and aspiring dancers performing excerpts from The Nutcracker and other classical ballet pieces. For more info on this FREE performance, go here: https://www.lakeway-tx.gov/civicalerts.aspx?AID=1685
Lights On!
On Friday, Dec. 2, 6-8PM, Lakeway’s Lights On FREE event marks the beginning of the holiday season, with the first lighting of the Trail of Lights behind City Hall (at Lohman’s Crossing and Sailmaster—park at City Hall or the adjacent Activity Center). Santa and Mrs. Claus will of course be on hand, supervising the cookie decorating, marshmallow roasting, Reindeer Games, music and more. FREE, but please bring non-perishable food items to benefit Lake Travis Crisis Ministries. All the fun stuff is detailed here: https://www.lakeway-tx.gov/1427/Lights-On
Lakeway Sing Along Christmas Show for Green Santa
On Dec. 4, there will be TWO performances at the Lakeway Activity Center of the Sing Along’s Annual Green Santa Performance. Choose from 2PM and 4PM. Price of admission is an unwrapped gift for a child 17 or under.
New Rules for Golf Carts
In October, Council (IMO, unadvisedly caving in to a few loud voices and ignoring safety and traffic flow considerations) passed a new ordinance allowing golf carts on many–but not all–Lakeway streets. THIS DOES NOT GO INTO EFFECT UNTIL JAN. 1, 2023. Importantly, drivers must be licensed (NO KIDS AT THE WHEEL), everyone must be seated, no lap riding (no babies/toddlers held by adults), during DAYLIGHT only, must have liability insurance, must have a State of Texas license plate, must have safety equipment, etc. Violations subject to $500 fine. For the MANY more rules and links to state regs, go here: https://www.lakeway-tx.gov/2033/Golf-Cart-Use
Council SPECIAL Meeting on Nov. 2
The ONLY Agenda items for this special meeting were two Executive Sessions, on hiring of a new City Manager and re: sale/lease/exchange of real property.
There was NO ACTION TAKEN at the meeting on either Agenda item. They did spend 2.5 hours in Executive Session on the hunt for a new City Manager, before adjourning at 8:44PM.
Next Council Meeting will be on Nov. 7, 6:00pm, at City Hall. Topics include another try at revising the Code of Ethics rules on gifts to employees/police officers, adjusting night flying rules and penalties, annexing Bee Creek Road, and HOT Fund requests by 2 groups.
Consequential items include:
ITEM 5: Officer pinning ceremony.
ITEM 6: Texas Special Olympics 2023 requests $200,000 from the Hotel Occupancy Tax Fund.
ITEM 7: Lady Cavalier’s Holiday Basketball Tournament requests $56,000 from the Hotel Occupancy Tax Fund.
ITEM 8: Annexation of the section of Bee Creek Road from the Highlands Blvd. traffic circle to State Highway 71.
ITEM 10: Revising Code of Ethics as to gifts received by city employees, including police officers.
ITEM 11: Revising the penalty ordinance against night flying to comply with recent changes to the Aviation Code defining the term, as well as specifying a maximum fee of $500 per offense.
View the Agenda, Meeting Packet and/or Presentation (scrolling down to City Council documents) here: https://www.lakeway-tx.gov/archive.aspx
Go here to watch the Council meetings online (live or later): https://www.lakeway-tx.gov/1062/Videos—Meetings-Events
Texas November Election
VOTE VOTE VOTE Election Day is Nov. 8, 7AM-7PM VOTE VOTE VOTE
VOTE ALL THE WAY DOWN THE BALLOT, for Democratic candidates. For instance, the Republican candidate running for Travis County Clerk is a MAGA devotee who campaigned on getting rid of election machines and returning to paper ballots, so vote for Democrat Dyana Limon-Mercado.
ELECTION INFO
In the governor’s race, Beto and Abbott held a debate on Sept. 30. Go here to watch the fast-paced and quite entertaining 55-minute debate (there is also a handy synopsis): https://www.reformaustin.org/elections/missed-beto-abbotts-debate-watch-it-here/
This in-depth account covers ALL the Texas races. Just add your address, and it fills in the local races on your ballot. Here’s your ballot for the Nov. 8 Texas midterm elections https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2022/texas-ballot-2022-midterm-election-nov-8/
Here’s what you need to cast your ballot in Central Texas. https://www.statesman.com/story/news/state/2022/10/18/early-voting-texas-election-2022/69568897007/
Candidates aside, Lake Travis ISD will ask voters to approve $703 million in bonds, during the November election. There are 3 separate bond issues to vote yes or no on–for new facilities, district technology and athletic facilities. Go here for details: https://communityimpact.com/austin/lake-travis-westlake/education/2022/08/18/lake-travis-isd-to-hold-703-million-bond-election-in-november/ You can also listen to LTISD Supt. Norton’s succinct review of the bond proposals to Lakeway Council, by going here and fast-forwarding to minute 22: https://lakewaytx.new.swagit.com/videos/186702
Daring Mighty Things
As shown above, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory caught the sun smiling on Oct. 26. Viewed in ultraviolet light, coronal holes are dark patches on the sun and indicate where solar wind is escaping into space. Whether this particular smile appears happy or kind of menacing to you (I vote for the latter), the result was a solar storm–mass and energy from the solar surface–that reached Earth last weekend. As a result, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration, which among other things predicts space weather) issued solar storm warnings for several days, including possible power grid fluctuations, interference with satellite operations, and increased aurora visibility. Luckily, the resulting changes to our planet’s magnetic field had no serious reported negative impacts. https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/alerts-watches-and-warnings
Above, 2 images show the difference between the venerable Hubble telescope orbiting Earth and the brand-new Webb telescope parked a million miles away. Both show the same cosmic landscape known as Pillars of Creation—mountain-like formations of gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula, one of the busiest star nurseries in the Milky Way galaxy. The Hubble shot was taken 27 years ago, using visible light, while Webb now captures infrared light to produce gobsmacking images highlighting details no human eye has ever seen.
On Oct. 24, a cargo ship already docked with the International Space Station performed a five-minute engine burn, shoving the orbiting apparatus out of the path of space debris. Not for the first time, the ISS used a thruster burn to modify its orbital position and dodge an incoming fragment of a satellite destroyed in a 2021 Russian anti-satellite test. Normal station operations were not compromised. The proliferation of space debris resulting from this and similar tests has prompted several nations (including the Republic of Korea, Germany, Japan, Canada, New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom) to work to reduce the problem.
We get a total lunar eclipse on Nov. 8, as the full moon moves completely into Earth’s shadow. In Lakeway, the “blood moon” totality runs from 4:16am-5:41am.
Artemis 1 is back on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center and scheduled to launch on or after Nov. 14. Its uncrewed flight around the moon and back will lay the foundations for a crewed moon orbit mission likely in 2023 and then landing astronauts on the moon as early as 2024. Watch here for updates and to view the launch: https://www.space.com/
With liberty and justice for all … except women.
Women all over the country are turning to abortion pills, after the Supreme Court allowed states to ban surgical abortion last summer. One telemedicine service, Aid Access, openly provides pills in states with abortion bans; its average number of daily inquiries rose form 83 when Roe was in effect, to 218 currently. The legality is debatable, and red states are threatening action. Some blue states passed laws shielding providers who perform abortions for women traveling from states with bans. Over the summer, Massachusetts passed a law shielding its providers when they offer telemedicine abortions to people within red states. The New Abortion Landscape 11/2/22 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/briefing/abortion-pills.html
A kinder, gentler experience… That is something in short supply these days, isn’t it? Well, a service called Elevated Access was created to ease the difficulties—impossibilities in some states—pregnant people now face after the rights that women had for 50 years were stolen by the current extreme conservative SCOTUS. Pilots across the country are volunteering their services and their planes to fly women to and from the 3,000 general aviation airports scattered across the country. Elevated Access gets women to the health care they have decided is best for them–without money, delays, paperwork, TSA, or regard for state lines and conflicting laws. Already having completed hundreds of missions, the program recently flew its first all-female pilot mission, involving seven states and two solo female pilots flying a 1,400-mile relay to transport a client. (Just 6% of pilots in the US are female.) The passengers are anonymous; the only thing that those being transported need to divulge is weight, so the small planes can be balanced for safety. Elevated Access connects passengers to pilots through referrals by its partner organizations such as Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation. Volunteer pilots are carefully screened, with references and backgrounds checks; to participate, pilots must have twice the flight experience the FAA requires for a commercial license. Most pilots do these flights in their spare time, and their own anonymity protects them from possible reprisals at their regular jobs. Each flight costs several hundreds of dollars in fuel and plane fees, all borne by the volunteer pilots. The pilots flying passengers across US state lines for abortions 10/30/22 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/30/us-abortion-flights-elevated-access
Back to me….
Looking forward to returning to normal time this weekend, so that mornings are light sooner. I’m spending my “extra hour” cuddling with my sweet kitty girls.
Rut season is in full swing, and our bucks are quite full of themselves. Our does are skittish. There is lots of dashing around, and no one is checking for traffic both ways. PLEASE DRIVE CAREFULLY.
Here are recent photos I took of our herd.
The Coronavirus
Worldwide, 12.92 billion shots have been given, with 65% of the planet’s population fully vaccinated.
The pandemic insists on expanding our vocabulary. The latest new term is: variant soup. This term reflects the sudden proliferation of active variants, just A FEW of which are BA.2, BA.4, BA.5, B.1.1.7, BQ.1.1, BQ.1.1.10, XBB.1, XBB.3, BA.2.75, BA.4.6.3, P.3, and CH.1.1.
In China, Shanghai reported 10 new Covid cases over the last weekend of October. As a result, on Oct. 31, the Shanghai Disney theme park without warning locked its gates and closed. Not only were visitors denied entrance indefinitely, those already inside were required to show a negative Covid test in order to leave. Similarly, visitors and employees at a sprawling Ikea store in Shanghai were trapped inside due to a spate of positive tests in the area. Also, in Zhengzhou, employees at an iPhone plant jumped fencing to escape quarantine, after a rash of positive tests there triggered the country’s usual harsh zero-Covid policies. With a population of 1.5 billion, China is now recording 1,000 new Covid cases per day; that would be considered minimal in other countries, but China persists in a strict no-Covid policy with millions of people under lockdown in 200 areas nationwide.
In the US, in the last 2 weeks, the new case rate was up 6%, hospitalizations rose 2%, and deaths decreased 12%. We are averaging 40,000 new cases per day. Roughly 27,400 Americans are currently hospitalized with Covid, and an average of 318 people die each day. The national testing positivity rate is 8.9%.
The above shows the predicted start of the pendulum swinging upward again, after a summer of falling numbers and an early fall at plateau. Several western states (including Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah) saw new cases rise 50% in the last 2 weeks. Over 20 states had hospitalizations rise 20% or more in that period.
In the United States, the variant gaining ground is BQ.1.1. As of Nov. 3, it and near-twin BQ.1 together were causing 35% of our new cases; responsible for 17% of new cases as of Oct. 25, the doubling time is about 1 week. (BA.5 is currently responsible for 39% of our new cases but seems to be fading.) Experts are looking to France for guidance, since BQ.1.1 has been dominating infections there for weeks; the good news is that France has seen no increase in case severity, with hospitalizations declining there.
The new bivalent Covid vaccine protects against BQ.1.1, BA.5, and all the other known variants. So—GET THE NEW BOOSTER.
Symptom rebound has gotten publicity in connection with taking Paxlovid, an approved Covid-19 treatment. However, a recent study found that 44% of 2021 Covid patients (before Paxlovid was available) got better, then suffered a recurrence of symptoms one or more times, before final recovery within 4 weeks. So, Covid rebounds happen, Paxlovid or not.
As for vaccinations in the US, 68.5% of the entire population is fully vaccinated.
President Biden got the new bivalent booster on Oct. 25.
A new study at Emory University provided lab evidence that the new bivalent booster bolsters our defense against the new and more immune evasive variants (including BQ.1.1). Importantly, the study found that the antibody response is significantly better with the bivalent booster than with just one or two of the original boosters.
In addition, clinical results released Nov. 4 by Pfizer and BioNTech showed the bivalent booster caused a 4-fold increase in levels of neutralizing antibody directed to BA.5 compared with the original monovalent booster. One month after getting the new booster, clinical trial participants over 55 had antibody levels about four times as high as those who received the original booster. The study measured the levels of neutralizing antibodies against two sister subvariants of Omicron, BA.4 and BA.5.
Pfizer and BioNTech last week started a trial studying a COMBINED vaccine, protecting against Covid-19 AND the flu. The single-dose vaccine candidate is a combination of Pfizer’s mRNA-based flu shot and the companies’ Omicron-tailored COVID-19 booster shot.
In Texas, the positivity test rate is 6.2%. In the last 2 weeks, new cases decreased 1%, hospitalizations dropped 10%, and deaths fell 24%. We are averaging 1,600 new daily cases, and an average of 9 Texans die each day. As of now, there are 1,300 Texans hospitalized for Covid-19.
Only 62% of all Texas residents are fully vaccinated.
Recent Covid Articles I Recommend
New Booster Shot Targets Covid Variants More Effectively, Pfizer Says 11/4/22 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/04/us/politics/covid-booster-pfizer.html
New Covid Variants Are Circulating. Here’s What to Know. 11/4/22 https://www.nytimes.com/article/covid-variants-nightmare.html
Pfizer, BioNTech start COVID-flu combination vaccine study 11/3/22 https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/pfizer-biontech-begin-study-combination-vaccine-covid-flu-2022-11-03/
Covid-19 Symptoms Can Rebound Even if You Don’t Take Paxlovid 10/27/22 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/27/well/live/covid-symptoms-rebound-paxlovid.html
Over 2,000 Guardian readers told us about their long Covid fight. Here are their stories 10/25/22 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/oct/25/long-covid-fight-guardian-readers
Among Seniors, a Declining Interest in Boosters 10/22/22 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/22/health/covid-vaccination-elderly.html