The View from the Hermitage, Day 77

The novel coronavirus accounts for only one smallish article on the front page of today's Washington Post along with an even smaller article about yesterday's first launch of US astronauts from US soil in nearly 10 years. (The capsule successfully docked at the International Space Station this morning.) Unfortunately, the rest of the front page was nothing but articles on the (quoting from the lead headline) "wave of rage and anguish sweep(ing) U.S. cities." I wish I had profound words to express how sickened I am by all this. I find it hard to comprehend the mindset of people such as the policemen who, with their treatment of George Floyd, set this all off. I use the plural because there is evidently some evidence that Mr. Floyd was killed not by the officer with his knee on his neck but instead by the two officers who sat on his back. Pressure on the two places--neck and back--results in different types of suffocation, and it appears that the type from which Mr. Floyd died was the kind resulting from back pressure on someone lying face down.

Because of how friends become friends, I can't think of anyone I know who would think this is okay. As I write that, however, I am reminded of my father's racism, something that got more extreme as he aged. I wrestle with whether that racism would have led to his taking the life of another person. I would like to think it would not, but I honestly do not know, and this frightens me. I know that attitudes such as racism come from nurture not nature, but I still wonder. It makes me thankful for the people I have met and the experiences I have had that help me keep my faith in human goodness, as unrealistically idealistic that may be.

Closer to home, I have three loaves of bread in the oven. I've made bread for the family for a couple of decades. We do buy bread if life gets in the way of my baking, but then I somewhat miss it. Working the hands kneading, smelling the bread as it bakes. My current go-to recipe is a whole wheat and oatmeal bread from The Secrets of Jesuit Breadmaking. That book has several recipes I have tried and liked. It's getting pretty dogeared, though, from frequent perusing if not using.

We went to the park again this Sunday morning. I'm not sure what the dog likes better, the car ride or the walk and different smells once we get there. There was a new Stop sign at the entrance and two people sitting there in lawn chairs (at least six feet apart) reminding people coming in to practice social distancing. We assured them we would and got a thumbs up when we held up the masks we were going to put on before leaving the car. The part of the park where we usually park had one or two more cars than are usually there, but there was still a lot of open space.

While the area around the softball fields was relatively empty, the area near the river was anything but. 

We don't know if the occupants of these cars were using the trail that runs beside the river for quite a distance. They might have been swimming; if so, I hope they stayed safe. Someone drowns in that river just about every year. We did see one car with two kayaks on the roof and another with two canoes, so at least some people were on top of the water rather than in it.

We did not go to the park last Sunday, instead visiting the university cemetery, so I can't say whether the crowds were due to the state's having entered Phase I of reopening or the nicer weather today than last weekend. Older son thought it was Phase I, which led to a rousing discussion of the metrics shown on the state health department's website. Our reading is that the arrows are not going in a direction that suggests Phase I has been a good thing. I can't see the governor pulling the state out of Phase I and back to staying at home; I don't think he has the courage (I really wanted to cite male genitalia here, but decided to stay PG-rated) to do so. I can see, and hope he does as well, extending Phase I for several more weeks. We'll find out on Tuesday or Thursday when he has his pandemic press conferences. In the meantime, I shall enjoy fresh, homemade bread sitting in an Adirondack chair on the front porch while I continue reading John Barry's The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.

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.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 75

I'm calling it a day of rest here. I spent most of the day going through 150 photos, sorting them, giving them meaningful names (a string of numbers is not meaningful, but Name001 can be), and labelling them with who (else), when, and where. Lots of memories that made for a good day. Perhaps I shall wax philosophically tomorrow.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 74

Coronavirus cancellations continue! (I shall resist the thought of adding more hard C sounds to this sentence.) This morning, I modified the website of our local quilt guild to reflect that the workshops scheduled for early October have been cancelled. If that sounds as if it might be too far in the future, a quilt show scheduled for February 2021 in Atlanta several weeks ago announced it would become a virtual show. Among the reasons cited were the difficulty attendees might have in making and breaking travel or lodging reservations and the fact that making the switch from on-site to virtual was much cheaper now than it would be further down the road. I've been waiting to hear whether the early October Fall Fiber Festival at which I usually work might be cancelled.

Older son sent me the reopening plan put out by the Brazilian ju jitsu gym to which he sometimes goes. It is so well laid out not to mention so safely conservative. The plan runs from whenever the state enters its Phase III of reopening to January at the earliest. Meanwhile, the gym or fitness center to which we belong has offered no real specifics as to how they plan to reopen. They did note in the latest email that their summer camps would be opening on schedule and that registration for camp was ongoing. They offered no details of what mitigation measures they might have planned, but you can't tell me they will be able to keep 5- or 6-year-olds at a social distance all day every day. I certainly would not be sending my kids to camp this summer.

No complaints about the governor today. He announced that the state would remain in Phase I of reopening for at least one more week, and that moving to Phase II in a week was not a given.
I can live with that.

And Minneapolis burned last night. I'm sure the stress and pressures of the pandemic contributed at least a wee bit to people's being on a very narrow edge. Older son pointed out that the Los Angeles riots of his childhood did not occur until after the officers who beat Rodney King were acquitted. These riots occurred despite the cops in question having immediately been fired and an investigation started. I'm not going to visit the question of whether the riots would have happened if the cops had immediately been charged with murder. Not gonna go there.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 73

The university recently sent a rather long survey to three years of next year's undergraduates asking their opinions on various scenarios for next academic year, the one that starts roughly three months from now. Last night, the professor husband got the analogous survey for faculty. It's pretty clear from that survey that the university plans to be open for in-person instruction. The questions were all about scheduling classes save for one on possible mitigation measures. In terms of mitigation, a list was presented that included quarantining if exposed. Faculty were asked to comment on the list of measures and offer any not listed. I suggested that the husband respond that if he were supposed to quarantine, the university should pay for him to do so somewhere other than home. I haven't been hermitting so seriously only to have him bring something home when he comes to quarantine.

Some of the scheduling options sounded better than others. It was clear that online instruction would be an option. How about evening classes to deal with time zone differences? Evening classes up until now have traditionally been limited to continuing education and the rare graduate class or two. How about weekend instruction? Does this make anyone else think of Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday classes to go with the Monday-Wednesday-Friday ones? How about classes at different times, as in 1:00 pm on Monday and Friday with the Wednesday class being at 9:00 am? Also mentioned were shifting fall semester classes to the two-week long between-semesters January term or shifting spring semester classes to summer terms.

Bringing students back assumes that said students are willing to wear masks and practice social distancing. Apparently, there was a large party at a frat house just yesterday with students on a balcony standing shoulder to shoulder. Drinking beer--or any other liquid--through a mask might be difficult. I would love to know how the university administration plans to enforce mitigation measures. They can plan all they want, but I don't expect those plans to be successful.

In other news, today's Space X launch was scrubbed due to weather. The next launch window comes on Saturday. Fingers crossed all goes well.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 72

The governor, who left his mask in his car while visiting Virginia Beach over the weekend and who got up close and personal with some folks who wanted a selfie, today announced that as of Friday, anyone over the age of 10 must wear a mask inside any public building or brick and mortar establishment. Masks do not need to be worn if a person is exercising or eating and drinking. This did not make many people happy judging by the number of angry faces shown rising up on the Facebook feed I was watching.

So can a person be arrested, fined, or otherwise penalized for not masking up while inside a business? Not likely, given that the mask issue will not be enforced by law enforcement but will instead fall under the purview of the Department of Health. A reporter's question of how this enforcement might be manifested was given a somewhat rambling answer about how a business that did not enforce the wearing of masks might, at an uncertain point in the future, find their business license in jeopardy.

The governor announced that it was likely that the localities who did not enter Phase I of reopening a week and a half ago would enter Phase I on Friday. This of course raised the question of whether the rest of the state could move on to whatever Phase II might be on Friday. The governor hedged on this, which I hope means he's not going to move to Phase II that soon. He said that Phase I had not at this point lasted two weeks, and the time scale of the novel coronavirus suggested now was not the time to study what had happened in the last ten days. He said officials would be looking at the relevant metrics as the two-week point came closer, and he would be able to say more about that on Thursday. I've got my fingers crossed that he announces two more weeks of Phase I, putting the whole state on the same schedule.

My Facebook feed this morning showed me my post on this day in 2017. The husband and I were on a Treasures of Peru tour and visiting Machu Picchu. It was the afternoon that six of us with an average age of 67 hiked up the side of a mountain from the main tourist area to the Sun Gate. I was the baby of the group at age 60. It was not an easy hike but was well worth doing. Reading this memory reminded me that the husband and I have discussed how good it was that we did not keep putting trips off until some nebulous point in the future such as after he retires. Because of that, we've visited the places we most wanted to see which, for me, were Angkor Wat, Iceland, and Machu Picchu. If I had known how great it would be, I would have added taking the mailboat along the coast of Norway to that list. There is no way of knowing whether international travel will ever be the same or how long it might take for that to come to pass. There are international places I'd still like to visit--Nepal and Bhutan, Morocco, possibly some of the 'Stans--but it won't break my heart to not be able to go to those places.

I'm working on a new list of places to visit that are closer to home. The first on the list is Yellowknife in Canada's Northwest Territories, a trip to be taken at a time when viewing the aurora borealis is probable. Except for the fact that I really have no desire at this point to visit Hawaii, it would be nice to knock off the US states I have yet to visit. There aren't many besides Hawaii: Arizona, Mississippi, Louisiana, and possibly Oklahoma. I can't recall if I went through part of Oklahoma while driving to Dallas, Texas back in my single days. And if we're going to knock off the US states, we might as well add the Canadian provinces and territories. And I have no desire to go to Mexico unless the safety issues there have been addressed.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 71

I'm taking a break today and remembering all those who have given their utmost in defense of, yes, in defense of us and the freedoms we hold dear. I shall particularly think about the uncle I never knew who gave his life in 1950, during the early months of the conflict in Korea.