We went out for an errand today. We, being the responsible sort, wore masks.
It’s odd, somehow, that we’re the responsible ones. We went out to get gas for the cars. More so because we had to use some fuel points before they expire at the end of the month than needing fuel. We missed the expiration of fuel points last month. And the month before that we got fuel because it was cheap, and we had a big discount and not-at-all empty tanks.
We’re staying at home. (I mean, just look at that hair.) We’re wearing masks. I hope you are too. Keep yourself safe. And, do it for others.
Also, these masks — highlighting the mascot, Gritty, and the band, Guster — were presents from The Yankee’s god-sister, who is very kind and works with this stuff in a university laboratory. So she wants you to wear a mask, too.
I had this setup in place today:
And if the many pieces of foam are up that can only mean one thing in my tiny home-office. It’s time to record something.
This gentleman is the director of the Eskenazi Museum here on the IU campus. They have 45,000 objects, with about 1,400 on display. Wikipedia tells me the collection ranges from Picasso to Pollock. There’s ancient jewelry and artifacts from all over the world. Coming up, when they reopen in the next few weeks, will be a wide array of exhibits. But, here, we talked about how museums, in general, are doing without foot traffic.
It’s a great museum, even if he wasn’t ready, today, to say when they are re-opening. That news, he said, is coming next week. I’m guessing late August, early September.
All are well here after another quiet weekend. We had a bike ride on Saturday morning and had the traditional weekly Chick-fil-A. Chatted with some friends that evening and did a lot of reading yesterday. It was a pleasant way to spend another stay-at-home weekend.
The cats are having a fine time of it. Poseidon enjoyed checking out the box their food came in.
We have to hide the bag because, eventually, he’ll become interested in the plastic and begin to chew through it. He’s a continual piece of work. But the box proved a good distraction for putting the food away in a closet that he will sprint toward should the door open at any time, day or night.
Phoebe had a nice night of it. This is comfortable.
She stayed like that for more than an hour.
I’m back to running, after a six week layoff. I’ve decided to concentrate on pace for a while, so I’m working on bringing down mile times. Today was my fourth run back and I’ve chipped away 35 or 44 seconds from that first run, depending on which of the two equally suspect apps you prefer. I bet, now that I’m writing these numbers out, that I’ll hit a wall later this week, but everything feels pretty good so far.
I’ve no illusions of ever seeing any of the actually respectable times of my youth. Not that youthful anymore, after all. But I’m just in the top quartile for my age group, and today’s pace puts me in the top half of the 17-21 cohort.
The biggest differences being they could probably breathe when they were done and they’ll be able to move tomorrow. It’s sometimes an open question these days.
I walked by this little turtle right after my run.
He wasn’t especially happy to see me, but we’ve only just met. So I took a quick picture and let him go on his way. You don’t disturb turtle buddies when they are on a mission.
There was email and a Zoom meeting and a look to the weekend, which would be nice enough, a change from the week, but it will look like all of the recent weekends. It’s a weird experience.
The stasis.
I’ve stopped looking at various social media platforms for related reasons. I’ve long since quieted most of the wacky people, but now you can live vicariously through the photographs of others and wonder what that’s about. Shouldn’t you be inside? Should I be out there?
It all varies based on locales and your circumstance and how you choose to see the moment, which is much longer than a moment.
Maybe that’s what it is. This moment is very long; I am getting a little fidgety over it and it’s really just getting started.
Also the blog is suffering. The poor, long-suffering blog is suffering. We’ve got a nice enough house and we’re enjoying warm weather but there’s only so many times you can tell the same story about walking down the hall to the home-office. (I flipped my desk around last week, and I didn’t tell you about that, dear reader. It makes for the third office move since the spring. I’m considering a fourth.)
I’m going to have to get back into some hobbies or find some new thing to learn. These are tense times, indeed.
Went out for a run today. It was my third run of the week. My first week running in a few months. Even though I’m running a mile at a time, we’re still calling it a run. I figured I’d do the shorter distances to get the times down and so far it’s working!
I found a bit of Queen Anne’s lace (Daucus carota) after my little jog.
You can eat them. The flowers are battered and fried, but don’t eat too many leaves. No idea how many is too many. The leaves can also give you blisters. And the plant has been used medicinally and as a dye.
Some places look at is as a beneficial weed. It can help with tomato growth and lettuce production. It attracts the right kind of insects in some areas. Some states list it as a nuisance or noxious weed. It’s native to the area where the Himalayan and Hindu Kush mountains bump into one another. It moved to Europe and southwest Asia between the 11th and 14th centuries. It made it’s home in China, India and Japan in the 14-17th centuries. It’s naturalized in the U.S., Canada and Australia.
I took a picture of it just to have something to put in this space for the day, but I’m getting an education. You can learn all about it, all about it, here.
No Phoebe and Poseidon on Monday? No. We had other cats to feature. I also had to do my work in the actual building on Monday. And the world has gone mad.
I was going to make that joke. But the local world has actually gone mad. There’s a banner on an overpass right now that says “A man was almost lynched” because a man here was almost lynched. There’s a video of the confrontation. A putrid, two minute and several seconds video of it.
So, last night there was a demonstration downtown about this troubling weekend event, as you might imagine. Someone chose to drive a car through some people. One or two people were hurt. One of them apparently mildly. The other was treated at a local hospital and released with a reported head injury. I’m also hopeful they’ll address arresting the driver of the car that did this terrible thing.
There’s certainly evidence. But there’s evidence of both, isn’t there? You can see it. I’m not putting any of that here, but it is out there if you want it, and it is all repugnant.
This is the thing about video: someone will always say “You don’t see what happened before the video.” And that’s a true and powerful insight you have there. What a keen legal mind you have. This is the real thing about video: no matter what happened before someone whipped out their phone and got the camera up, no action calls for what is seen before the unblinking eye.
At least one of my students was out there reporting. Apparently eye witnesses say the driver ran several red lights. So, in other words, done deliberate. And I’m really stuck on this part: one of my students was out there.
So vehicular assault in broad daylight, that ought to go somewhere, one assumes. One also assumes that state officials, the appropriate authority for where the almost-lynching confrontation happened, will figure out the threatened or attempted lynching. But they haven’t managed to do that yet, despite, you know, daylight video and plenty of incriminating evidence like work shirts, prominent tattoos and faces.
Madness.
But the FBI came down to look into the first crime, too. This was announced at this evening’s demonstrations which were, seemingly, much more peaceful for everyone.
So we’re having Phoebe and Poseidon on Tuesday this week.
Poseidon should also get a name for his love of cabinets. Cardea, if I recall, figures into hinged doors in Roman mythology, but I can’t think of anything close enough in the Greek, so we’re giving it to the mighty Poe, who was surveying his kingdom with great contentment here:
Phoebe and three of her favorite pursuits: a spring, a stair landing and the pursuit of belly rubs:
And they decided to sit together on the stove cover of my own design and creation. A rare display of getting along in proximity in their sibling rivalry.
So, yet again, spending a few hours building that little thing one weekend was worth it, I guess.
You know what else is worth it?
I talked to an epidemiologist today. We discussed whether the coronavirus is airborne. We talked about looking at the data and masks and the bubonic plague. We discussed whether I should get a haircut.
We also briefly mentioned the task of getting kids to wear a mask. Of course, she said, her children wear masks. She doesn’t have too much trouble with them, she said. But they are of a certain age now. And, being someone that tracks diseases, she probably brings home terrible images and scares them to death, as would be her parental right.
I’m sure she doesn’t do that. She’s a perfectly pleasant individual and probably her children listen to reason. And if they don’t, both of their parents work in public health, which means they’ve got plenty of adult experts in their lives to scare them senseless while mom and dad are conspicuously working on backyard appetizers.
Anyway, she says wear a mask. And be willing to leave places that have people not wearing masks. Stay distance and stay in well ventilated areas she said.
It keeps coming up: we had the stay-at-home orders handed down to give hospitals a fighting chance. Supplies were needed. Beds were needed. Crush the curve. Remember that, a few months and oh so many outrages and personal inconveniences and national outrages ago? Medicine and science needed time. Well, we gave it a bit of time, and now hospitals are filling up. There are a few more supplies headlines popping back up. And the consumer knows it. Stores are limiting paper goods and cleaning products again.
Let’s say everything about your health, and the health of the people around you. Mortality rates are lower than earlier projections. Thank goodness. Hard, hard earned trial-and-error have been teaching physicians for future rounds of patients, hallelujah. One of those things we’ve learned is this isn’t just about the sniffles, and it’s not just about your lungs. There are big, and varied impacts. One of the things still to be learned is how varied those impacts. Is it your lungs? Some other organ? Your mind? Medical science is still trying to figure that out. Another thing on the board, how lasting can the problems be? You can find nightmarish stories aplenty about that, too. You’re living in a big world of uncertainty right now, friends.
What’s amazing, according to every doctor and epidemiologist I’ve interviewed and seen interviewed, your best defenses are something so exotic as washing your hands and putting a protective covering over your mouth and nose. As most of us would prefer not to have our quality of life impacted in a negative way, please and thanks.
We didn’t discuss the covid19.healthdata.org charts, but we should have. They now have death projections stretching out to November 1st as a status quo, wherein some restrictions are being held and many are being eased, versus mandated mask wearing. And it looks like this.
We went to the nearby feline rescue this weekend. It was our first time out of the house for anything more than groceries or takeout or exercise since March. The place made at least a passing effort at taking everyone’s temperatures and masks were required. Smaller groups would be preferable, but they were limiting it to 10 people per tour.
It’s hard for people to stay out of each other’s way when they’re gazing in wonder.
Or just, you know, in general.
Anyway, our tour was supposed to last for 45 minutes, but it’s slow out there so our guide let us linger so everyone could get their national geographic photographs. We stayed on the property for just about 90 minutes. They have 150 or so cats they take care of — it’s a rescue and you heard some of the bizarre and some of the sad stories — and a few dozen of them were on display for the gawkers.
And it was a warm day, being July. So there was a lot of shade for the cats, which was nice to see and no doubt appreciated by the animals.
They’re a mixture of oblivious to people …
And oddly curious about you. In fact, they’ve probably seen more people than I have in the last few weeks. And they get their space, too. So it’s a happy little setup, as these things go.
And almost all of the tigers were interested in me.
This guy seemed to know it, and he was telling me RUN!
As in, “No, please, go. I feel the need to chase something down … ”
Here’s a thing you learn about tigers when you’re just a few feet away from them. All the sounds a house cat makes, a giant cat makes too, and they scale up. Just the sound of one of these massive things giving himself a bath gives one a lot to think about.
And the cats really liked me.
Almost all of them. Maybe it’s because I’m a Tiger. Maybe it was something I was wearing, or my animal magnetism, or that I’d slathered myself in chicken juice before we got there.
And, look, I don’t want to question the craftsmanship of a professional here, but when a tiger is casually walking directly toward you, you have a moment to think about the durability of a chainlink fence. There’s just enough time to hope that guy had a good day at the fence factory. No hassles at home, no aching joints, no in-law distractions or musings about his weekend on the lake. Just good, solid, earnest, pride in his work.
You don’t have enough time, though, to consider the plant that makes the nails, whether the second shift was on their game when they made the ones holding the fence against the wood. And, goodness knows when that wood was installed and it may be rotten already. You don’t have time to think about those things, or the team that assembled all of this here in 19Who Knows When.
You become keenly aware of the idea, percolating in your head and not yet verbalized, that all of this would merely slow down a properly motivated machine like this.
I liked how she was sneaking up on me from behind the maple tree. Completely fooled me.
There were two of these on our part of the tour today. Got a glimpse of one, and while I try to avoid the fence aesthetic, it couldn’t be helped here, and I hope you’ll overlook it. How beautiful is this creature?
Anyway, a warm day also allows for the indulgence of a cool bath. All of the tigers have giant plastic barrels. Those big heavy duty things that are in no way a simulation to tender human flesh because the barrels are much more sturdy. They are playthings. All of the barrels are destroyed.
The tigers don’t destroy their baths though. They’ve got this whole thing figured out.
“Wanna come in for a dip? It’s hot out.”
“But it’s so nice in here … ”
Thanks, tiger, but no thanks.
Fourth of July was even more subdued than normal. No big civic events. We almost saw the little parade one of the nearby neighborhoods runs. We rode through the route on our bikes twice. Just missed it both times. We were the beginning, and the end of the parade, then.
We had cheeseburgers and corn off the grill, and cheesecake out of the fridge. Everything was delightful.
The neighbors, who have been working on their ballistics and trajectories for several days now, put on quite the impressive display. Had to be the better part of a mortgage payment. Anyway, this isn’t how you properly record fireworks, of course, but this is how I always remember them, fuzzy and dreamy.
There were just things exploding every which direction. And neighbors elsewhere were launching things from decks. Here’s to prevailing winds and sensible precautions and the good old American technique of eyeballing flammable projectiles. But the big show was still going on. And it went on and on.
This was the fourth of five finales. They had a good time, and many of the neighbors approved. It was festive when there were few festive things taking place out of sensible precaution. How he managed to keep the really big explosions out of the woods that were just feet away is a mystery.
And, to his credit, they stopped promptly at 10:30. It’s a decent gesture and makes sense. He had to get up early the next morning to clean the debris.
(He did not.)
Back to work today. It’s my first time working in the building since mid-March, 116 days for me. Everything else has been work-from-home, which we are both fortunate enough to be able to do. I’ll be back off and on campus sporadically for a while, in the hopes of having a semester. And then, if things go according to plan, we’ll have an oddly structured semester. A lot of things have to go right for that, however, and while that is the plan and the hope, it’s easy to be skeptical about it.
But! Yet! We are still a considerable ways removed. It is impossible to say from this vantage point what our reality will be in August, September and October. Why would you want that sort of certainty in your daily routine, anyway?
So today, we moved furniture. Large rooms will stay the same size, but their capacities are considerably reduced. Our commons, which would seat 50 something is down to 17. Our largest classroom has a fire code of 72, or thereabouts. It has a covid code of 21. Our standard sized rooms will seat eight plus an instructor. It’s going to be a strange school year, to say the very, very least.
So after this morning’s bike ride I got cleaned up, donned a mask went to campus and got sweaty again flipping tables and stacking chairs. When this comes up I like to smile and say “This is why I went to college. And grad school!”
Also, today, Harvard went entirely online. And the U.S. government said “If your school goes entirely online and you’re an international student, you must go home.” It’s going to be a strange, sad school year. We’re going to be a hybrid institution. I’ll be doing a lot of my work from home, and I am incredibly fortunate in this respect. That’s been a lesson for a lot of us this year, hasn’t it? You can be both in a fortunate situation and still not in an ideal situation.
