No, Thursday's Out....

As everyone in the Pacific Northwest knows already, it is going up into the triple digits this weekend. And that is entirely my fault. I brought it down upon us. Here’s how: we were in Las Vegas recently, visiting my mother in law, who moved there to escape the rain. She overshot, in my opinion. But regardless, it was in the triple digits while we were there: 108, 111, 113. And I said (not to her, but aloud) things like, “This place is trying to kill us,” and “People shouldn’t live here. It’s hostile to human life.” I was all PNW chauvinistic. So, you know the karmic retribution that was just heading my way after that. Now it will be 108, 111, etc., in Portland, and - even though I haven’t lived there since I was 18 -   it’s going to be nearly as grim in Seattle. My bad. PSA: I only know a few tricks for the upcoming onslaught, but by way of attempting to mitigate something, I thought I should share. Take showers. Don’t towel off. Lie around until you air dry. Evaporation...

I had a late afternoon checkup with the periodontist, way out on 122 nd , and got another text message asking me if I’d left with a smile on my face.  (Eye roll.) But, yes, sortof. I felt cheerful upon leaving, because I had noticed, while tooling down 122 nd , that the parking lot of the Midland Branch of the library was full.   I remembered reading that Midland is now open to the public. Maybe I would Actually Go In, if they were still open after my appointment. It would be my first visit to a library since! That was an exciting thought! Belmont is my beloved neighborhood branch, and it’s a tiny jewel. I’ve never been to Midland, which is new and vast, with a lot of cool artwork. They were closing shortly, and only a few patrons were there. I was greeted by three friendly women when I walked into the lobby. I hate to be ungrateful, but I wanted much less greeting. They asked if I had come to pick up my holds. No, I’d just come to be inside of a library for a few minute...

We held a tiny choir rehearsal on Sunday, the first one since March, 2020. We were all masked, and only nine people total, a small fraction of the regular choir, widely spaced in the otherwise empty cathedral. Somehow, because we spent a few minutes warming up, it still felt like a real rehearsal. In addition to some Handel and Purcell and other things, we sang an anthem we’ve sung before, Parry’s “I Was Glad,” and I WAS glad. The plan is that we will sing it in September, when we hope to be back together, and if that comes to pass, I am certain we will all be quite glad. (Here's a YouTube video of " I Was Glad ." You can find lots of other renditions, featuring Queen Elizabeth at her jubilee, or Kate Middleton in her wedding procession. I like this version because, as is customary when it's sung by an American choir, the "Vivat!" section is cut (Long live the Queen!), so it's not too terribly long. But mainly I like it because the choir takes foreve...

The Oregon Health Authority has a whole bunch of gorgeous charts and graphs on which they count all things virus and vaccine .  Six counties are more than 65% vaccinated, and another 15 are more than 50% vaccinated.  And then there’s Wheeler County, nudging right up to 50%, but stalled out at 49.6% I’ve started watching Wheeler as if it were a longshot horse on which I’d placed a bet.  Wheeler could come from behind! In order to reach 65% of its population vaccinated, in order to leap into the seventh slot, Wheeler needs only 189 denizens to step up to the needle. SO CLOSE! And yet, so far! Yes, Wheeler is at 49.6%, and yes, 189 people would vault them up to 65%, so YES, very few people live there, and I won’t make you do the math: Wheeler is home to 1,226 souls, all told. And things are not moving swiftly, vaccine-wise. Every single county in Oregon saw more vaccinations this week than in the seven days previous. Hooray! No county had a falling vaccination rate. Hooray...

I keep saving articles on How the Pandemic Will End (or Won't End), and others on Looking Back, or on Relearning How to Do X, and they are sometimes illuminating, but often slightly unsatisfying.  We seemed to be grasping at a type of closure that we can't yet achieve. But I loved a long, thoughtful piece in the New York Times this week, by Alejandro Zambra, titled, "What Will My Son Remember of This Horrible Year ?"   The author's son is barely three, and the piece often wanders far from the headline, pondering the elusive aspects of memory, especially the memories of early childhood. It's sometimes scientific, and sometimes almost poetic. I especially loved this section, and found myself enjoying both the son's passing obsession, and the dad's gentle attention to his little boy's ways: My son’s most frequent act of vandalism used to be seizing control of the toilet paper and carry out a long series of mysterious games that were at times unfathoma...

You know those little “Please rate our service” text or email surveys you get from some outfits, after you’ve done business there? I got one yesterday from my periodontist, and it arrived pretty much the moment I got home from a grueling, four-hour surgical procedure. It asked, “Did you leave our office with a smile on your face?” I mean, they just saw me leave. I was looped on Valium, draped over my husband, staggering and maybe moaning a bit. The surgery took an hour longer than planned. Was there a smile on my face? A little convex mirror over the door would give them all the info they needed on this point. What a dumb question. I tried to get a problem resolved with CenturyLink, but the customer service person dropped my call. Seeing as she knew my number and all, did she call back? No, but I got the survey text right away: Was my problem resolved? Nope. Well, thank me for my feedback! It would be so refreshing if their automated answer to “No,” was a jaunty, “We aren’t going...

A year ago, June 1, 2020, I listed a bunch of words that had been caught by the New New York Times bot . Said bot searches the NYT and flags any word appearing for the first time there (not for the first time anywhere, but we'll take it).  I was struck, in mid-2020, by a bunch of new words that had appeared during the month of May, many of them words that related to the pandemic: doomscrolling, virusphere, cyberbabysitting, overmoderate (the verb, to moderate too much), quarancut (the hairstyle), boondocked.  So here we are a year later. I have not listed all the newly-appearing words from May, 2021, just my favorites. But what I want to celebrate is that the words this past month are wide-ranging, some relating to the pandemic and/or the waning of same, some related to the storming of the capital on January 6, but a good many words from articles on various interesting topics. Our horizons have, at least for now, widened a bit. Herewith some favorites: greynaissance semiroboti...