The View from the Hermitage, Day 76

Several years ago, one of the local camera stores had a special in which you took them 150 photographs, and they would digitize them and return a CD of all the images. I took advantage of it but never really did anything with the CD. Since all my time now is supposedly free, I asked the husband to transfer the images from the CD to a thumb drive (I was too lazy to look for the portable CD/DVD device). Given the the file names were all of the form "some 17 or 19 numbers strung together with a .00# suffix," I decided to rename them after the person(s) shown. Older son and younger son can find the photos containing themselves, with the photos containing both of them named BOTH00#. I started an Excel spreadsheet with the name of the image and a brief description. This was going swimmingly until I slipped up and sorted the file names without having them linked to the relevant description. Did I do this and remain able to undo the sort? No, because I actually sorted the file that way a couple of times. Checking each image and giving it the proper description took a while and did not make me happy. It took until late afternoon to finish all 150 images.

Why am I mentioning all this? Because, as you might imagine, going through the images brought back a wealth of memories, virtually all of them good memories. Many of the shots were from family vacations, and seeing those brought back a flood of memories of that year or that place or whatever we were doing at the time. Events such as the husband and sons trying to (and succeeding in) robbing a Pepsi machine that had somehow caught and sucked in the hackeysack they'd been kicking back and forth. I think I had four of five different shots of that escapade. Not to mention the image of the fly younger son decapitated using a cheap souvenir shop "mosquito trap" that looked like a leg-hold trap. Younger son had me set it with a piece of orange when we went to bed. The next morning, the family awoke to my "Holy shit!" upon seeing the dead fly with its head off to one side.

Continuing with memories, I've been skiing to nowhere daily to DirecTV's music from the '70s feed. The second song I heard this morning was "Seasons in the Sun," a song that always has at least a minor emotional effect on me. The second line is "We've known each other since we were nine or ten." This morning, I found myself thinking that I can't say that about anyone. We moved across the continent after I'd completed Grade 5 (I was ten) and two years later moved one state over, which is where I went to high school followed by the local college. Did I retain any high school friends? I did not, though I have reconnected with some via Facebook. Friends from college? One, who was a bridesmaid in my wedding, but others only through Facebook. Because I've stayed in the city in which I went to graduate school, I've retained friends who were not fellow students. I do see one fellow student who also stayed here but only when she comes to vote at the precinct for which I am an election official. Considering all that, I may be more anti-social than I thought, not to have formed any real lasting friendships with peers.

Songs of the '70s, a time in which I was in high school (I'm high school class of 1973), college (class of 1976), and grad school (master's degree in 1980). As each song starts, I try to place it in its proper period. (Note: It may be notable how many songs come up that I do not recognize or are by musical artists or groups I do not recall at all.) To what event or person do I associate each song? Was it on my spring break trip to Florida? The year between college and grad school in which I worked at Vanderbilt University? Memories, some embarrassing, flood back.

I do not really listen to contemporary music now. I'm usually on an oldies-type channel or listening to an artist from a past life or a playlist based on some time in the past. Will there be music by which I will remember the pandemic of 2020 or the burning of Minneapolis? There is not a song I currently connect to the pandemic, but there is a song for Minneapolis. With every report--and there are far too many--of a black person being shot by a police person, I think of Bruce Springsteen's "American Skin (41 Shots)." I always wonder while hearing that song how differently I would have had to have raised by sons had they not been of the ethnicity in power. My heart skips a beat whenever I hear Lena getting her son ready for school.

I may not have a song to pandemic by, but how will I remember these days in the Hermitage. One reason to keep this blog is to be able, if I want to, to see some of what I was thinking as the pandemic wears on. I get frustrated seeing the number of cases in a state head straight up starting two weeks after mitigation measures are loosened or done away with. Re-imposing mitigation measures such as stay-at-home orders will be harder than imposing them initially. I expect the resistance to re-imposing them will be greater than the initial resistance. I wonder in how many cities the frustration at pandemic restrictions is fueling part of the demonstrations, and how large that part might be. Thoughts for another day when I might be more focused on the present than the past.