Today ... is the day ... we've been waiting for!

Joseph Biden has been inaugurated as the President of the United States, and Kamala Harris as the Vice-President.

Clearly, this is cause for celebration. And what better way to celebrate the return of hope than the Doubleclicks' cover of Electric Light Orchestra's "Mr. Blue Sky", complete with cello and cat keyboards?

Watch on YouTube

Local COVID-19 updates

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Well, so much for good day-to-day news (on the COVID front, that is). Deaths and cases both way up, along with ICU and ventilator counts; positivity and total hospitalization counts both down slightly. The longer-term trends are ticking downward but are still in the way-too-damn-high range. On the other hand, those trends are a bit better than two weeks ago, so that's something.

And, of course, the current President of the United States actually gives a good goddamn about dealing with this pandemic, and has (as of a few moments ago) bare working majorities in the House and Senate with which to work to get going on said dealing. That's good news.

The town of Acton's current Google Data Studio dashboard is showing 63 active and 638 cumulative cases as of January 18, and apparently has not been updated since. The most recent "newsflash style update" at 10:30PM on January 13, 2021 reported 596 cumulative cases with 62 individuals in isolation, 504 persons recovered and 30 fatalities.