No, Thursday's Out....

The phrase “silver lining” has gone sour for me.  I resisted it from the beginning, but now I’m protesting. When people say “silver lining,” I react as if they had used a racial slur. I say: I can’t tolerate “silver lining” but I will accept “the gift in the garbage” as an alternative. This is just quibbling, I know. There is no real difference between the two phrases, or what they are referring to. But I think “silver lining” has long been detached from its cloud, while “gift in the garbage” requires you to at least SAY the word “garbage,” and that seems to keep it a small distance further away from fatuous and/or heartless happy talk. Having said that, I am not even talking about the gifts in the garbage very much. Yes, yes, birdsong and very little traffic and lower levels of pollution and home cookin’ on the rise. Sure. All well and good. I just don’t know how to talk about that stuff in quite the right way, without sounding like, “Oh, you haven’t been able to com...

This is so nice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpAKcQufacc I long for your embrace. It's all that I hope for....

My mom, who has been dead since January, 2018, got a letter from the President yesterday, telling her that her $1,200 was on its way. I just want to let it be known that my mom cannot be bought, dead or alive.  My mom won't be voting for Trump even if I have to not-drive her urn to the non-polling-place (Oregon votes by mail) all by myself.  She says no. (We've covered this, I realize - no was her default stance for her last many years. But she really means NO, this time.) I'd also like to add that her last name was never "Decd."  She was born an Edmonds and died a Scher.  That Decd indicates she is deceased. While we are saying NO.... No, you can't have her check. Because they have promised to direct deposit it in an account that no longer exists. Also because I said No. (That was fun. I see why she liked doing it.) If it somehow shows up, I will get very expensive legal advice about what to do with it and if possible I will give it to a cause tha...

The choir had that great Zoom call a few days ago, which was truly touching (though not physically touching at all, natch).  And feeling a bit teary afterward, I said, "We don't know when we will see each other again in real space," which was true. But we DO know when we WON'T see each other again. We won't see each other again this school year (which is also the choir year), because Portland Public Schools are not going to reopen, and choir isn't going to restart, and that's as it should be. And we won't see each other on the summer tour, which was cancelled, so we won't sing in Canterbury Cathedral and Yorkminster, both of which are GIANT BIG DEALS for a choir, long anticipated, and not incredibly likely to come our way again. (Cathedrals schedule visiting choirs three years out - plus our scheduled stop in Canterbury backed up on this once-every-ten-years sortof Episcopal Olympics, the Lambeth Conference. We were going to be singing IN ...

So, as I've mentioned, I used to find people wearing masks scary, and now I find people NOT wearing masks scary. I started painting a series of mask paintings a few weeks ago, back in my youthful "masks are scary" phase. They were scary, or scared themselves. I thought of them not as people, but as masks-wearing-masks. Then they started to change, to become friendlier, more human, less mask-like. When I painted the first, scary ones, it was just to get something out of my system. I didn't think of them as the beginning of a series. Now I'm painting them for fun. I didn't think I'd want any of them on the wall of the studio. I thought I'd get rid of them right away, exorcise some demons and go back to landscapes. But instead, they are my little group of companions, just like the girl dogs of the Resting Bitch Face series were my companions. Apparently, I paint series when we suffer a national cataclysm. (The compa...

I clean last. I know people who clean as therapy, creating order out of chaos.   A friend called me once when she was going through a divorce, and said, “Don’t you have a sock drawer that needs organizing?” This was one of those perfect double-jokes, upon herself for needing to organize something in her distress, but also, she has known me a long time, and knows that I always have a drawer than needs organizing. Every drawer needs organizing.   And some people clean first, when things get rough, almost as a way of clearing the decks, getting ready for whatever comes. And some clean regularly. I do none of those things. A friend of mine posts a little daily discussion prompt, and last week she did one asking: What is your favorite chore, and which chore do you dislike? I responded like the Roy-Lichtenstein-style cartoon women on those magnets that were around a few years ago:   Uh-oh, I forgot to have children! Uh-oh, I left the baby on the bus! For m...

That's 24 little boxes you see, but 27 humans, since a few boxes have multiple people in them. And this wasn't everybody - a few others beamed in late, and some had to go early. In the end, I believe it was more than half the choir. Some folks are working. Some are working overtime and beyond: health care, grocery stores, suddenly-distance teaching, all sorts of fields. A couple have new jobs, and several have lost their jobs. Many have lost their additional-jobs-in-music, being folks who have always had a number of ways to earn a living.  Some are breaking even because the lost income equals what they would have paid in day care. A goodly number are suddenly home-schooling. A few are enjoying the unexpected return of college-age or grown kids. A few are worrying about elderly parents they cannot visit. Many are baking, and one has made four batches of chocolate chip cookies in eight days. I am a little jealous of the cookies. Nobody has died. A few, like me, h...

One of my new pandemic pals hosts a weekly short-story discussion group. I used to avoid book groups at all cost, and now I’ve got a monthly book group and a weekly short-story group. Go figure. Anyway, she (I’m going to call her Abby, because she’s a new friend, and might want a pseudonym, who knows) was talking about how she had been listening to the week’s short story on her headphones, while taking a solo walk through her neighborhood, and she had been crying, and she imagined the neighbors were wondering what was up. She said, “I’m not a sad person. I’m just easily moved.” I told her I loved that explanation. I generally refer to the same condition by saying, “I’m the designated crier.” I used to think this was a failing.   I remember some years ago, my sweet former colleague Ted died, and I went to his funeral and got on an unstoppable crying jag. Ted was a dear man, and we had worked together for decades, and then his ancient mom died and he came into a small...

I went to the “community care” early morning shopping hour at the most prudent of our local grocery stores – in and out in no time, one person allowed in each time one person leaves, six feet apart, etc. It’s only four blocks from home, so I walked. On my way home, bags in hand, I ran into one of my shopping cart neighbors, one of several named John, though this one rocks a strong Ernest Hemingway look, so I think of him as Ernest. “What’s the line like?” he asked. I said, well, I’d gotten there during the community care hour, but now it was after nine, so I would imagine the line was longer. He sighed dramatically.   He said, “I have a $100 gift certificate for that place, but the LINE is terrible. And I can’t use the gift certificate on hot food from the deli! It’s no good! Safeway doesn’t have lines! Safeway just lets everybody in! You can get anything!” I had an uncharitable thought, that he was complaining about having a $100 gift certificate. But then I reco...

I wandered around the nearly-deserted Reed campus yesterday, and it was glorious in the spring sunshine, trees in bloom, birds in song, the whole bit. Reed was once the home of Lloyd Reynolds, a professor of art and creative writing, and an extraordinary calligrapher, and there is still a strong calligraphic tradition there. Little weathered tags of parchment were   hanging from a number of  trees and bushes, some of them quoting Reynolds himself:                       We don’t throw rocks at rainbows.                                       The space between flowers is a flower. Some were exquisitely done, and some looked to be the hand of beginners. I was taken with a quote from Jane Austen’s novel, Emma:                       One cannot hav...

In the oldest versions of the fairy tale “Rapunzel,” (by the Brothers Grimm and their predecessors, back to 1634), Rapunzel’s mom-to-be gets a pregnancy craving for “rapunzel,” a type of lettuce* that is growing in a nearby walled garden.  She refuses to eat anything else, and her desperate husband scales the garden walls to bring back some lettuce for her. (There are those who think this tale is about micronutrients in the days before multi-vitamins. Really, there are.) The scheme works the first time, and the wife is most gratified, but on a return trip, the husband gets caught (of course) by the sorceress (of course) who owns the garden. The sorceress says he can have all the lettuce he wants, if she can have the baby when it is born.  He agrees, and when the little girl arrives, the sorceress takes her, and locks her in a tower, and names her “Rapunzel,” after her mother’s craving. We have a lot of “Maiden in a Tower” tales, in a lot of cultures, and I know p...

A couple of years ago, when I was attending a lot of protests, I commented that while I might be sympathetic to the arguments of folks in the Antifa community, I just really found people in masks scary. That's all fixed now! Now I find people who aren't wearing masks scary!

The checkout line (6-feet apart) in my favorite grocery store goes down the frozen food aisle. So I found myself, the other day, gazing upon a bag of frozen "Millet Tots." (They also contain poblano chilis, which seemed like a nice, though unexpected, touch.) It got me thinking.  Are there "Sorghum Tots?"  If there are, was my store out of them? "Barley Tots?" If not, why not?

On Tuesday, March 10, (back when the Right Thing to do was to support your local small businesses (because, you know, they might have to shut for two weeks , and that would be a financial hardship on them)) we went out to dinner at a restaurant owned by our friends. The next day, Wednesday, March 11, I went to Portland State for my last Linguistics class of the term, and then a friend and I went to see The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time at Portland Center Stage, having talked about how maybe it would be the last time we could do live theater for a while. (Support local arts!) We were right. That was the last show, and the theater shut the next day. On Thursday, March 12, out of an abundance of caution, choir practice was cancelled. (Let’s just pause to appreciate how great that timing was – I would have gone to rehearsal that night, because I was still feeling fine.) With no choir to occupy me, I quarantined myself (“quarantine-lite,” sleeping in the guest roo...

This whole week, I’ve been wanting to circle back to the original imperatives, because I feel as if they are starting to blend together a bit, and also because even if they are distinct, it feels as if they aren’t really competing quite so much as they were. We need herd immunity We need to flatten the curve We need to protect the vulnerable We need to keep the (global, national, and local) economy afloat We need tools (and a bunch of stuff we'll call "tools" so we can have five categories) Just for fun, let’s take #3, protecting the vulnerable.   Way back when I got sick, it looked as if “the vulnerable” were people over 60, or over 70, or maybe the homeless who had to live squished into shelters or be terribly ill on the streets. But then quickly it became clear that “the vulnerable” were going to be frontline health care workers, and EMTs without health insurance (oh, god), and everybody who lost their job (now in the tens of millions), and the ...

I went on a run to Pure Spice, masked and gloved and overcome with yearning for har gao and Singapore noodles, after more than a month with not even one non-home-cooked meal. (Do not lecture me about having somebody deliver. We’ll get to that.) This could be classified as 3 – Protect the vulnerable and 4 – Keep the local economy afloat, since supposedly Jade District merchants are still struggling more than average.   In some way, I think we all worry about which of our personal favorite businesses will survive these times. If Kim Jong Grillin’ and Pure Spice survive, the new world will still hold Asian-food culinary joy for me. If not, it’s going to be a slog. As instructed, I called in my order ahead of time, and waited, far apart from a few other customers, outside the shop. Please: one person in shop at a time. It was a nice day to wait outside. We all knew who was next. Here’s a picture of the counter at Pure Spice, a marvel of clear plastic with a little hole...

My friend Elizabeth, who works at a long-term care facility, was coming home each night and sewing protective gowns. Apparently, gowns are scarce. I offered to assemble some, and she gave me what she called “kits:” five bodies, ten sleeves, some homemade bias tape (bias tape is also scarce) for necklines and ties. I picked up my kits last Thursday, and commenced. It was a steep learning curve on the sleeves. A year or so ago, inspired by a friend who was making cool clothes, I bought a new sewing machine. I did own a machine already, a Sew-Mor (honest) that had belonged to my mom. It was a workhorse, and could stitch forward, backward, and - by turning a little dial- zigzag.   I needed nothing more (“nothing mor”) in terms of features. If I sew, I generally make flat things, curtains and pillowcases and such. But I had a grandkid coming and I thought I might suddenly develop some sewing chops (note: this did not happen). And mainly, I wanted a new machine because I c...

The family across the street, after missing two nights of the 7 p.m. healthcare-worker hullabaloo, reappeared. It was just Mom and the boys, but as we were all retreating back inside, Rick crossed the street and shouted an inquiry about Dad (who, you will remember, works at the long term care place where 5 residents have now died, not the one where 10 have died). The younger son, lugging the drum set back inside, shrugged and said, “He’s okay. He’s in the shower.” A couple of seconds later, Dad appeared in the doorway, clad only in a green towel. Check. Our family in England gave us a WhatsApp garden tour. The garden is looking great and the spinach crop is up! I got a video call from Theo, and a tour of the contents of his Easter basket. Theo is heavily into Japan right now, and the basket was mostly Japanese candies. Actually, the basket was empty. The candies, on the counterpane (!) had been neatly separated into the “still unwrapped” pile and the pile of empty wrappers, n...

A friend biked over, resplendent in exercise gear of many colors, and we shouted at each other for a little while. It was great, and made me realize I needed to up my fashion game. Why not start with Easter bonnets? You can see The Rag (above). I included my wall monkey, for no reason except that I have a wall monkey I happen to love. Also, you may suspect that our usual fashion photographer was, sadly, unavailable. Some years ago, I attended a workshop on making fascinators, the object being that we would be able to wear our fascinator for Easter. I made two, and never wore either, because the choir doesn't get goofy headgear even on holidays. I did manage to loan them out. Anyway, today, I'm going for both. The Doubly-Fascinating Fascinator

Timeline ramification I just realized:    I put myself in quarantine on March 12, a Thursday. I felt fine. I was just being a good citizen. Thursday nights are generally choir practice, but choir had been cancelled “out of an abundance of caution.” I got sick three days later, suddenly and unmistakably, at around 2 pm on Sunday, March 15. Let’s say it was C19, since we can’t prove otherwise.   Let’s say people who are coming down with COVID are capable of shedding virus for several days before they have symptoms. If so, I could have spread the virus at choir practice, if we had all been there. You have probably read about choirs that have suffered multiple losses.   We do a lot of breathing in choir, and a lot of   standing or sitting right next to each other. Sometimes we do these lip-buzzing warmups, blowing raspberries. Lots of spraying saliva into the air, in those warmups. To my knowledge, nobody in choir has been sick, except me. I am enorm...

I live in an old part of town famous for its weird street layout, and beloved by denizens for its alleys. We met our neighbors up and down the alley long before we met the neighbors across the street. It’s a quiet place, the alley, a good place to walk the dog, and though many people have back fences, there are still a lot of back yards that open onto the alley. It’s an easy place to see folks out in their gardens, and wave. It’s also where everybody rolls out their garbage and recycling bins every week, and where a lot of my shopping cart neighbors forage for deposit beverage cans and bottles, now worth ten cents apiece at the bottle return. (We are asked NOT to put deposit-credit goodies out in the alley, because it encourages foraging. It’s all very complicated.) In the Before Times, I’d often go out in the morning to the alley with the dogs, and I’d say hello to a shopping cart neighbor or two, and if the stars aligned and I had deposit stuff around, I’d say, Hang on, I ha...

I got on the church Facebook page again today. My pal is the administrator, but I don’t expect any special favors from her, and if she decides to block me after this post (and the World’s Bossiest Prayer Request, see a previous post), I will not blame her. It’s Maundy Thursday, the day commemorating the Last Supper, and Christ’s washing of his disciples’ feet, and his giving them a new commandment (MANDatum, comMANDment, MAUNDy - another very cool etymology moment). The new commandment is:   Love one another as I have loved you.   The foot washing is a sign of love, of tenderness, of service to others, however gnarly their feet may be, or at least, in Christ’s time, however gnarly they were. At our church, we have a really lovely service on the evening of Maundy Thursday, and there is some (mostly) highly “ritual” foot washing, a splash of water, big fluffy towels, etc., for those who like that sort of thing. I like that sort of thing, and I like the service, and I’m...