No, Thursday's Out....

For some reason, I’ve been thinking that our animus to 2020 and longing for 2021 is setting us up for a fall. I don’t know why this is,  but  a strange little voice inside keeps saying, "We didn't fix our societal horrors, and the virus doesn’t know what year it is .” If we were using the Jewish calendar year, for instance, we’d be in 5781 right now, and we’d make the switch to 5782 in September. It's not a new year except by our own conventions. You see my point. It’s okay if you don’t see my point, honest. I’m not sure what it is. I’m just nervous ; people are so full of “good riddance!” and “at last, that’s all behind us!”   Knock wood, somebody, please! But the sense that better times are coming is for good reason! We’ve got a vaccine, going into 2021, or rather three vaccines so far, however slow the roll-out has been, however much to blame our incompetent and uncaring Administration is. The vaccines are here! Things are looking up! In fact, late last ni...

I have a weekly Zoom call with three friends, thank God. One is tired of people asking what she’s doing these days, since she’s doing Nothing. (Not true – she works long days at a worthy job. But we all know what she means: she hasn’t had a social life, or traveled, or done anything she finds newsworthy, for ages. As Jon Lovett of Pod Save America says , these days we don’t have as many stories to tell each other, and our stories aren’t as good.) What she is actually doing these days is Resisting the Urge to Do Anything But Social Distance. Another friend on the Zoom call just got bangs. You would have thought she had run a marathon, the way we all oohed over the change. Bangs! Way to GO! I’m resisting bangs, for now. My hair has reached my shoulders, for the first time since…. Does anybody remember? High school?   I’m resisting bangs for the sheer novelty, but without them, I look more like my mom. I told my husband I don’t want to look like my mom, and he said, “Too late....

Pandemic bright notes: The Oregon Health Authority reports zero COVID deaths today - probably just because the holiday season is delaying the reporting, but we’ll take it for now.  By the end of tomorrow, I will know eight people who have been vaccinated. Yes, they are all doctors and nurses, and no, I don’t know any vulnerable olds who have gotten a shot. But I’ll take eight people. Eight people is a lot better than zero people.  The nation’s homeless folks are  suffering less  from the pandemic than was predicted. That’s because of the salutary effects of being isolated and outdoors – so this is extremely bittersweet good news, but it could be worse. Racial justice bright notes: Thanks to the efforts of Oregon politicians Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkeley, a nasty piece of anti-Indian legislation, The 1865 Treaty Nullification Act ,  got nullified itself.  The nullification of the Nullification made it through the House and the Senate, and the Presid...

Last year, on December 23 rd , our old dog died. It was time. It was sad. And it was time. And I posted something about it, and people were kind and sympathetic. The next day, I pulled myself together and went off to Trinity to sing back-to-back Christmas Eve services. At the end of the kids’ service, I was standing in the back of the cathedral, listening to the postlude, when a nice young guy came up to me, holding his baby in his arms. “Did your dog die?” he said. And I gulped a little and said, “Yeah, yesterday.” And he said, “Would it help to hold a baby?” And he held his little boy out to me, and I said that it would help a lot, and we stood there side by side and listened to the music. I just went to send him a note of thanks, and I see that we aren't Facebook friends any more. We weren't real-life friends in the first place, just acquaintances who went to the same church and had a Facebook connection from that. And I'm not surprised he unfriended me, because ...

Remember when the pandemic hit, and all of a sudden, you (or at least, I) got emails from every entity you’d ever done business with, or considered doing business with, which was why they had your email:  We Care About YOU! Here’s what Wells Fargo is doing to help flatten the curve! Here’s what Obscure Dogwalking Service, or Little Store That Sells Cushions, is doing to help flatten the curve! Does it feel to you like the advent (sorry, Christmas joke) of the vaccine has brought on a repeat? I’m hearing from the Muslim Educational Trust and from the Pope , both recommending I get the vaccine when it is available.  (The original of this photo was taken by an AP photographer named Andrew Medichini. Medichini seems almost too good to be true, in a vaccine article.) My PCP recommends it, as do the doctors at clinics I visited years ago. I will do it! I promise! Our president-elect and our outgoing VP both made sure we saw them getting their shots, to “reassure” us the vacc...

Last year, when I put away this string of Christmas lights, I taped a note to it, warning my future self that it was “HIGHLY problematic.” I don’t know why I did that, but there it is. I also tucked notes next to two favorite winter sweaters, alerting Future Me that they were both “Kinda sad.” In particular, I labelled the long green hooded sweater that my daughter calls, “the bathrobe” (not in an admiring way). The bathrobe has put in many faithful years, and it’s thin in unfortunate places. But it is PERFECT for this kinda sad, or very sad, but definitely “highly problematic” holiday season.   Speaking of alternate selves, and on a cheerier note, I have loved Julie Nolke’s four YouTube videos, “ Explaning the Pandemic to My Past Self.”   If you haven’t seen them, they are probably best watched in order. They’re only about 4 minutes apiece. (The one where Future Julie tries to get Past Julie to stop using the phrase “proud boys” as a tribute to NBA players speaking out for...

The lipstick wasn’t the only wedding prep I performed. In a fit of becoming more presentable, I took the truck to the car wash. It had been months, it was muddy, and the cab had a thick layer of dog hair.  Also, and most importantly, I really wanted to go to the car wash. It’s so stimulalting - the noise, the giant brushes, the big plops of suds and jets of water, the way the car jerks forward on the chain and shakes as it gets buffeted by the big blowers, PLUS (at my car wash) the corny flashing neon lights for no reason at all. Ooh, pink suds! Ooh, yellow beads of water! It’s an amusement park ride for those who are easily amused, namely, for me. The kid taking my money at the entrance asked, “What’s the occasion, Boss?” He may say this to everyone, but I took it as a gentle joke about how dirty the truck was. Clearly, we only got it cleaned for an occasion, so… what WAS the occasion? I said, “A wedding!” He was duly excited. “Oh, a wedding!” said he. “Will you eat lots of g...

If it ends in a wedding, it’s a comedy. If it ends in a death, it’s a tragedy. I learned this handy classification tool long ago, and I believe it was meant to apply only to books and plays. I also think it was just a definition: “Manhattan Clam Chowder has tomatoes, and New England Clam Chowder has milk.” It wasn’t an opinion about weddings being funny or happy (though most are), but rather a rubric: if you can’t tell how to classify this story, look at the ending. I will be officiating a wedding in a few days, so I have weddings on my mind. It’s first wedding in 2020, just under the wire. One Whole Wedding- take that, 2020! HA! (There ought to have been four in my world this year, but the others took a rain check.) Seven people will be there, masked and distanced. The couple wanted a small affair, and COVID obligingly made that the right thing to do. I asked the bride to rule on my planned outfit, and she approved. She didn’t say, “Wear anything you want,” which I appreciated, becau...

I've got several friends in medicine, and some on the front lines of this virus effort. One, a nurse who has been working in "Camp COVID" in a Seattle hospital since the beginning of the pandemic, is set to get vaccinated in the next couple of days.  I'm so thrilled, I can't even tell you. 

The Portland Garment Factory teamed up with the Oregon Health Authority and Wieden+Kennedy to offer Ugly Holiday Masks , with some of the proceeds going to the Oregon Food Bank.   Alas, they quickly sold out all of the truly ugly ones (though there are some very attractive burgundy velvet masks still in stock), so you'll want to just send the Food Bank a check.  You can sigh over all that might have been by clicking on the link, but if you are in a rush, I'll just share my favorite here. It's not the ugliest by a long shot, but I think it's grand.  I once had an ugly holiday sweater (a gift, not intended to be a joke, but it was truly dire). Eventually, I got rid of it. I don't have an ugly-sweater-party sort of life, and it was taking up real estate in the closet.  This year, of course, I don't have a holiday gathering at all. But there might have been a Zoom call.... Anyway, by the time the stocking mask swam across my screen, there were none left. I'd say...

Apparently, Christmas tree sales are booming,  which makes sense. People who are home will have more time to admire their tree, and smell that wonderful smell. And a Christmas tree provides light and cheer, particularly helpful right now.  The NYT article about this boom can’t quite settle on whether it is caused by panic-buying or some weird hoarding thing (though they did NOT report people with 20 trees in the basement), or whether people just bought their trees early because why wait, or whether zillions of people who never had a tree before are thinking this seems like a good year to start (they found one such person). It’s a pretty incoherent article, so, until proven otherwise, I’m going with “mostly, people bought earlier than usual.” But the good news is: people in the Christmas tree biz are having a strong season, so more power to them! We’ll head out for our tree in a couple of days, when our self-imposed post-travel quarantine ends. Although the Times says some ...

There are five days to go in my pretty-much self-imposed (as in, “recommended, but not mandated”) quarantine at home, after our epic journey. This time around, I’ve learned how to use the grocery-delivery service, so I’m feeling savvy and responsible. New Seasons is four blocks from our house. Before the trip, it was my habit to shop there during old-folks hours, between 7 and 9 am. Actually, it wasn’t just a habit, it was a bit of a thrill.   Grocery stores are so full of color and possibility, and while there weren’t enough people to make it feel dangerous, there were guaranteed, live, 3-D people, not dear friends or family, but the all-important acquaintances or even strangers, masked up, who would say hello at check-out. Saying hello to me was their job! Saying “How are you holding up?” was mine! We had it DOWN. Anyway, delivery turns out to be fun in a different way, not so much socially as in the surprise factor. Long story, but we have more cabbage than we can handle. ...

I commend to you all Episode 47 of the podcast What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law , titled Lame Duck.   It's about half an hour long, so you will need a stretch of time, but if you can do it, it's worth it. Like all the episodes in the series, it is hosted by Roman Mars, who is also the creator of the podcast 99% Invisible, and by Elizabeth Joh, a professor of Constitutional Law at the UC Davis School of Law.  (If you haven't listened to any of the episodes, they are pretty wonderful. Have questions about the Hatch Act? Quarantine power? Obstruction of justice? You can learn much here, in a fascinating example of Law for Laymen. Okay, Laypeople. You can choose your preferred term. It is highly understandable, without feeling dumbed down, and Mars and Joh have a measured, non-ranting, often remarkably cheerful delivery, even when they discuss outrages perpetrated by Trump and his enablers.) The Lame Duck episode begins with a review of the transition arrangements from o...

Wow, catch this:  disgruntled customers are complaining that their scented Yankee Candles have no scent.  This is remarkable for two reasons:   1) in our house, there has never been a scented candle that had too little scent (and most scented candles disappear pretty quickly after being unwrapped), and 2) It's (probably) because of COVID!  It's an artifact of that "lose your sense of smell" symptom! Kate Petrova , at Bryn Mawr, looked at roughly 20,000 candle reviews and counted the average number of stars awarded, and the ratings for scented candles have dropped One Whole Star . The ratings for unscented candles have held steady. Ms. Petrova, a research assistant who I think should get an honorary doctorate right now, so I can call her "Dr. Petrova," stresses that she did not perform a peer-reviewed study, but just did a quick and dirty "big-data" scrape, but ours is not to quibble. Ours is to celebrate her work. 

Quarantine ended! We moved in with the family. Life went from very slow to very full. In lockdown mode, England had no open pubs or restaurants, and only stores selling “essentials” could operate, so we were pretty home-based. But outdoor exercise was okay, so we walked around the neighborhood and to the park. (Rainbows everywhere! I thought they had found the Bristol equivalent of Portland’s Hawthorne district, but no, here it means, ‘We appreciate the NHS.’) We visited forests and National Trust estates and stunning (outdoor) historical sites. They all felt very safe and breezy and underpopulated, many with timed entrances and one-way loops on the paths. We went to the allotment and admired the view of the city, and picked chard and herbs. Most days were lovely. A few were cold, or wet, and still lovely. We searched for mushrooms, and found them nearly everywhere, and left them for the squirrels. We were made supremely welcome. We ate well. We hung out. We loved on the old do...

Time passed, ve-ry slowly…. We had a week of quarantine still to go, the election was hanging in the balance, case counts in the US were exploding, everything was frustrating. I wrote a couple of blog posts, and then I stopped. Partly, I wanted to avoid writing about our Sore Loser in Chief (also a Sore Winner for the past four years, as my friend Gary pointed out). Having lost, he should by rights be starting to recede in importance, to leave some more oxygen in the world for the rest of us. I wanted him out of my brain, my gut, my clenched jaw,   my nightmares, and my blog, which he had occupied for far too long. He didn’t deserve the column inches. But what else to write about? Well, I could write about being in England! But it turned out I couldn’t deal with the feedback. If someone expressed horror that we had performed non-essential travel, I knew they were right, and I fell into a shame spiral. If they said that we had inspired them to travel too, I was wracked w...

We left Portland on November 1, spent 5 hours on a layover in Atlanta, and landed in London on November 2. We were double masked (cloth over vented N-95s) and laden with tiny, precious bottles of hand sanitizer. The planes were half empty, everyone was masked, the air was circulating every few minutes (if you believe the airline propaganda) and every little air vent was on full blast, and the only sardine-like moment was exactly what you’d expect, those minutes before people could de-plane, when they all smooshed into the aisles like they always do. The whole rest of the flight, everybody distanced, but that smooshing up in the aisles instinct must run deep. We sat still, and left at the end of the line. Five hours in the international terminal in Atlanta was weird. Every once in a while, a few people would straggle by, and it appeared a plane must have landed. Otherwise, the place was all but empty. There was a display of local children’s art (extremely good), and another of pop c...

  I’m having a very Happy Thanksgiving - free of all historical context and colonial horror, just purely being Happy and Thankful– and I wish the same to you and you and you.   Thanks for being my friends, and my family, and my classmates and choir mates and students and teachers. Thanks for providing entertainment and distraction (and recommendations for entertainment and distraction) and good music and good reads, and online Trivia and a listening ear, and the occasional amazing fact I got to ponder, this bizarre year. Thanks for writing back! Thanks for saying I Feel the Same Way.   Thanks for walks and bike rides and safe hellos in the park or on the porch or the patio. Thanks for a new Administration! Health and hugs to you and yours.

We're in the UK, in quarantine, for two more days, and then we will graduate and be in LOCKDOWN. WooHOO.   Being away from home is often surreal, even without pandemic, quarantine, and the US election season, all of which feel surreal as well. Quarantine is painless, and the food is excellent, thanks to the groceries and takeout dropped off by our family, and we have a small outdoor space we can use, when it isn't raining, though, again, the rain makes the tree bark pretty spectacular.  But I would very much like to say hello to a random stranger, or maybe admire someone's dog in the park. There's a lot of time to play poker and read and rattle around inside one's own head, a perfectly congenial place, but still.  And here inside my head (or my gut?) I can't land on how I feel about the election aftermath. I feel vastly relieved by the election itself, and would like to have felt jubilant, and we did open a bottle of Prosecco, but there were no parties here wher...

We are in quarantine in a converted garage. We are warm, dry, safe, well fed, healthy. We have WiFi, books, pastimes, and a TV I can't seem to turn on any more.  It's neither despair nor rage - it's something about the remote. I am TV impaired.  We are in limbo. (Anyone with an interest in the US election is in limbo, so we are in double limbo, with quarantine added on.) OR perhaps we are in Hell. I submit to you that these cannisters are from Hell. They may be a sign. I have put them in the cupboard.  

When phones were attached to the wall, and answering machines were but a dream, the surefire way to get someone to call was to get in the shower. It was a pain, and inconvenient, and chilly if you grabbed a towel and ran to pick up before your caller hung up, but getting in the shower worked.     A friend joked that since I was 8 hours ahead over here, maybe I could just let her know what had already happened. Perfectly innocent little joke, but I thought for some reason I should sigh about how I might be 8 hours ahead, but I wasn't in the future. So then she had to explain to me that it was a joke, and I had to say I knew that, and we murdered the poor little thing. Okay, I murdered it. My bad.   BUT!  Feeling all contrite, I realized that I do have the power to bring things to a head! All I have to do is go to sleep, and give the perverse little election a way to push one more of my buttons. I can do this for all of you. It will be my gift to a grateful n...

It’s a long, cliff-hanging election, and there’s not a lot of news to report while votes are being counted, so news outlets are more or less vamping. I don’t know exactly how they are vamping in the US, but here in England, they are vamping by interviewing pretty much anybody with knowledge or, in a pinch, anyone with an opinion.  Some are election officials, and as a group, those folks are doing a stellar job of being calm and reasonable.   Calm and reason – as we all know – are not compelling to your average viewer. So they need to punch it up a bit, which involves interviewing “ordinary” Americans. I listen to the BBC News Hour at home sometimes, mainly for the sheer pleasure of saying, “Nyews Aaah” at the top of the broadcast. I really like saying “Nyews Aah,” as opposed to “Noos Ourrrr.” Every single time, they say, “This is the BBC Nyews Aah,” and I echo, “ Nyews Aah!!!! ” It’s satisfying. Also, I like listening to news that acknowledges the rest of the globe....

 Along the motorway from London to Bristol, there were a number of signs warning of “Adverse Camber.” I knew what they were trying to tell me. I knew that in the US we give the same warning with a little pictogram of a truck threatening to tip over. The Brits do not require a pictogram. Everyone knows what “Adverse Camber” means. Impressive. What I could not dredge up, for the life of me, was the phrase we would use in America without recourse to the pictogram. What the heck do WE call it? I kept thinking about this place on I-5 in Southern Oregon, where the road makes a sharp turn, and all the signs say “SLOW,” “DANGER,” “25 MPH,” but I couldn’t think of how they said, “This corner is banked the wrong way and might dump you straight into the Umpqua River, so don’t say we didn’t warn you.” I mean, I knew they didn’t say that, but what’s the American phrase for “Adverse Camber?” Let me know, if you know. I’m still wracking. There’s a certain level of fatigue where everything...

Here's a fine, wise piece from the Pew Research Center, on polling and on patience, and on what rigorous polls can tells us.  This year, especially, exit polls are going to be problematic. What the heck, let's face it: this year, everything is problematic.  "[O]n the night of Nov. 3, Americans will be searching for hard data that may not exist. Millions of mail-in votes will need to be counted, even as exit polls – which traditionally provide important insights about where an election may be headed – will face unprecedented challenges. As Americans, we need to summon patience, accept the uncertainty of the moment and wait for election results and rigorous polling data to tell us what the voters decided and why." I salute the folks at Pew for getting out in front of election night. Patience and uncertainty are things I struggle with, and I know I'm not alone in that. Waiting, too, for that matter. This will be an interesting ride. 

Beloved Portland bookstore Powell's has decided to release its own perfume, Powell's by Powell's, for those who a) miss the smell of a bookstore or b) want to smell like a bookstore. Or both. It will come in a box fashioned to look like a book.  I'm extremely dubious, especially now that's I understand it will have notes of violet and wood. That sounds nice, violet and wood, but it doesn't evoke bookstore, for me.  (I'm offering you a distraction, during this ongoing election week, when you don't even want to open your social media feeds any more. Maybe it's more of an election season, or an election month. I don't know. But it may be a time when we need aromatherapy - Powell's by Powell's!) Here's another one!  It's an article by a food writer in Atlanta whose pandemic blues led her to open a restaurant for a chipmunk on the steps of her porch. It is worth it for the pictures alone (though if you click through, you will discove...

If all goes well, I won't be home on Election Day.  And Airbnb knows this, and is concerned. Airbnb wants me to figure out how to vote before Election Day! It reminds me, each morning, that I should vote before I go!  I cannot get a message back to it that I have voted, and my vote has been received.  I find this charming. Thank you for caring, Airbnb!  I look forward to hearing from you again tomorrow. I was driving home today, and the car ahead of me had a license plate that read ARRRRGG.  I desperately wanted a picture of said plate, and kept hoping for a friendly red light so it could happen. No dice. The driver pulled into a parking lot, and I pulled in behind, and followed along, but I felt guilty at such obvious stalking, so I hung back a little.  Turned out we were at a post office.  ARRRRGG didn't park, (so didn't give me a chance to get a shot), but tossed a ballot into the post box and zoomed off. You'll have to imagine the license plate. Bl...