Week 6
Day 36. Monday April 20 2020.
Gaspard de la Nuit
Gaspard de la Nuit is a set musical pieces written by Maurice Ravel back in 1908 that actually stems from a book of prose poems written by Aloysius Bertrand way back in the 1830s. I guess it is famous in France, but - oddly - nowhere else. It is the only book written by Bertrand, who spent most of his life in poverty. The book was published only after his death of tuberculosis at the age of 34. It sold only 20 copies at the time. It was only after his death, that it found acclaim from later generations of poets who saw it as seminal to their own work.
Interestingly, the book has never achieved any sort of fame outside of France, and I wonder why, whether the themes - or the verbage - of it are so essentially French that it does not translate well. It makes me want to read it - or attempt to - if I can.
Gaspard de la Nuit translates to "Treasurer of the Night" and somehow - maybe translates to the devil, or Satan. I am not sure. An old man hands a book - his life's work - to a young poet and tells him he will return the next day to retrieve it, only to be never to be seen or heard from again. I am perplexed and mystified by the idea of it.
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Not much on the viral front. I didn't do much reading on it today because this was a very social day for me. I usually do a lot of my reading on my morning walks. Six miles a day equates to about 2 hours of walking. The roads are usually quiet, so I have lots of comfort time to read and listen to music. This morning I was just into my walk along the beach heading north to the South Jetty when my sister Jill called. We talked for over an hour, and when I hung up and immediately ran into my friend Susan and then we chatted for awhile. I begin to head home and my friend Steve rolls up behind me in his truck so we chatted for awhile as well. After talking and catching up with Steve, I was only a block from my house, so I did not get much reading in on the local news today.
No doubt the virus will still be with us all tomorrow. The unthinking, overpowering beast, slouching ever onward towards Bethlehem, already screeching. already born.
Day 37. Tuesday April 21 2020.
- The weather has turned so it is nice out most days now, lifting the spirits. I can be outside now doing garden work, etc. Makes walks much more pleasant as well.
- I - and probably most people by now - have had to structure my days so that I am not bored to death. I think that being bored to death is a real danger. I have good long walks in the morning, and usually have chores set up for my self for the rest of the day.
- I am managing to stay in light contact with various people here through texting, phone calls and email. This is a small town so I run into them a lot, and we keep our six foot "physical distance" while we catch up.
Today I had a good 7 mile walk down south along the beach to Face Rock park, then turned around and walked up to the south jetty, through old town and shopped at McCays and came home. Ran into Eric at McCays and we talked and confirmed that we would both show up for the radio show on Friday.
I had a bag full of potatoes that were starting to get eyes in them, so I planted two in the garden yesterday as part of my grand garden experiment, and then with the rest of the potatoes made POTATO SOUP, or a minor variation thereof. Mine has bacon, onion, green pepper, garlic, heavy creme, milk, some flour and water, salt and pepper. and a little bit of chili powder. and some Italian seasoning. that's all I can think of. Oh. And half a tub of sour cream. All of it off of the internet.
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Virus numbers still going up. I don't see the virus case or death totals flattening in any kind of way. I think they should have been by now. Trump has closed off all borders, for, Why? Cause he wants to. God help us all.
A military jet went by overhead this afternoon. No one knows why.
A military jet went by overhead this afternoon. No one knows why.
Day 38. Wednesday April 22 2020.
Rainy Day. I am looking at the weather app on my phone and it looks like one of the last rainy days of spring, and a week from now sunny with temps up near 70. Hard to believe looking out the window now.
I still got my six miles in, sort of. The pedometer app wasn't working this morning, and it would not allow me to manually add in my steps afterward that it did not register, so I removed it, and downloaded a different google "fit" app that has a pedometer and I will see how that goes. On the other app I had reached the top tier anyway. It told me better than 99.1 pct of people. Yay. 250 miles of walking in 35 days. I have been doing a lot of walking.
I ran into my friend Christine this morning, just by chance. I was walking by and had forgotten that Wednesday mornings she runs a food distribution center called "Coastal Harvest", and I was walking right by it at just the right time. I told her about my potato soup I made yesterday and that I was proud of it, and then somehow I ended up committing to making a whole batch this weekend for her food distribution next week. I am happy to do it. It's for a good cause, and I trust her completely. She should run for mayor one day. That lady can organize.
I am sort of living my old days again today. Making change requests on the earth day web site for a woman who is nickpicking me to death. I used to calle it "moving living furniture around" whereas you are not really changing content, just moving it around. I have also spent multiple phone calls and an hour each on the phone with two different people who are trying to use the video app I taught them how to use this past month. Both smart people, but new at it. What makes it hard is that they do not actually LIKE technology but know that I have limited time for them, and they have to learn it to get their stuff done by themselves, and with the current virus pandemic, we cannot sit with each other and just have me show them. It has to all be done over the phone. and its tough. Plus, they don't want to use an app where I can just show them on the desktop, as they do not really believe in technology. It makes me realize and appreciate how tough teaching really is.
So, just like the old days, its a techie day for me. Trying to cram in work for 3 other people, and get my own stuff done as well. My days used to be filled with these kinds of days, one after another. For years. I had forgotten what it was like.
I still got my six miles in, sort of. The pedometer app wasn't working this morning, and it would not allow me to manually add in my steps afterward that it did not register, so I removed it, and downloaded a different google "fit" app that has a pedometer and I will see how that goes. On the other app I had reached the top tier anyway. It told me better than 99.1 pct of people. Yay. 250 miles of walking in 35 days. I have been doing a lot of walking.I ran into my friend Christine this morning, just by chance. I was walking by and had forgotten that Wednesday mornings she runs a food distribution center called "Coastal Harvest", and I was walking right by it at just the right time. I told her about my potato soup I made yesterday and that I was proud of it, and then somehow I ended up committing to making a whole batch this weekend for her food distribution next week. I am happy to do it. It's for a good cause, and I trust her completely. She should run for mayor one day. That lady can organize.
I am sort of living my old days again today. Making change requests on the earth day web site for a woman who is nickpicking me to death. I used to calle it "moving living furniture around" whereas you are not really changing content, just moving it around. I have also spent multiple phone calls and an hour each on the phone with two different people who are trying to use the video app I taught them how to use this past month. Both smart people, but new at it. What makes it hard is that they do not actually LIKE technology but know that I have limited time for them, and they have to learn it to get their stuff done by themselves, and with the current virus pandemic, we cannot sit with each other and just have me show them. It has to all be done over the phone. and its tough. Plus, they don't want to use an app where I can just show them on the desktop, as they do not really believe in technology. It makes me realize and appreciate how tough teaching really is.
So, just like the old days, its a techie day for me. Trying to cram in work for 3 other people, and get my own stuff done as well. My days used to be filled with these kinds of days, one after another. For years. I had forgotten what it was like.
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Virus is scary. Numbers still rising. Politicians fighting over what is real and what is not. Who would have thought that America would succumb to a population of people who do not believe in science at all, in addition to experts in any field. If they deny reality, it allows them to believe in their own fairy tales. It makes getting anything done near impossible.
Day 39. Thursday April 23 2020.
I must have walked six miles this morning, though it is tough to know. All the pedometers I have been trying have problems. "Google Fit", supposedly the premier pedometer, loaded at first, and now just crashes every time I try to use it. I get on the internet and search on it, and everyone else is having problems with it crashing as well. I will keep looking.
Ken and Christine brought over a brownie for me, and I gave them some of my potato soup. Then they came in and I showed them my garden stuff I am working on. I still have Next door Nancy's chicken and dumplings mixed with the pasta I got from Christine Roberts the other day.
Life is quiet. People keep dying. Everyone is saying that life will not resume like it was before, but no one has any idea of what that will look like.
Day 40. Friday April 24 2020.
Day 40. Friday April 24 2020.
KBOG Show tonight. Every Friday 5:30-7:30. Bandon Traffic Report, which is a bit of a joke because Bandon has absolutely no traffic. I even bring in the background noise of a helicopter so that we can have our "eye in the sky" report. And then I sometimes bring in the sound of a tugboat to get the view of our "harbormaster on the Coquille". small fun.I am of two minds about keeping it up. First of all, I already have a show on Fridays called "The Last Reel" which airs on Global Community Radio, so my ego is somewhat fullfilled there. Secondly, every friday night I do the show with Eric, and sometimes Avery, both of whom are right wing deniers of almost everything, climate, the coronavirus. It gets tiring trying to bring Science into the conversation with people who have learned - like much of the right wing - that whatever science and health experts say that the right does not want to see or hear, its all "fake news". Jesus, it's dumb. Like dealing with idiots.
On the other hand, the show is fun to do, as I get to play some music that I like, and I otherwise like Eric and Avery as friends. Eric because he is a really hard worker, and is always the first to volunteer a hand whenever anyone needs help, and Avery because - despite his obstinance - demostrates an ability to listen, and respond, and has a way of paying attention. I just think he has been using really bad news sources for a really long time. Oregon reactionary.
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NY Health Authorities did a random virus check on 3,000 people out in the public and found that 17 pct of them already had the virus. This points to a growing realization - and possible comfort - that maybe many people in the US has already had the virus as a minor cold and have just not realized it. There is also data coming out that the virus has been in the US since early January, much earlier than previously thought, and that it may have been circulating in cities since then. Interesting, anyway
Day 41. Saturday April 25 2020.
I drove up to Coos Bay this morning and had a series of walks up there. From Walmart to Cascade so that I could buy myself a pair of overalls, then back to Walmart then over to the SWOCC campus and around it. It was raining pretty much the whole time. A Weird Kind Of Rain. sort of heavy mist wispy and floating in a way that - like walking through a dust storm, and even though I had an umbrella, the rain sort of just was going in all directions, up, sideways. It seemingly defied gravity, and was everywhere at once. The umbrella isn't made for precipitation like that.
This made me think that of the apocryphal sentiment that the eskimos had 50 different words for snow, depending on the type, and lent me the recurrent idea that maybe the native americans who lived here in Oregon for the thousands of years before us must have had as many words for rain, as it comes in all types and flavors here.
I was up in Coos Bay shopping for ingredients for the BIG POTATO SOUP I am making for Christine Roberts so that she can hand it out next Wed in her food baskets to families. A big bag of potatoes, cauliflower, onion, pepper, heavy cream, milk, carrots, celery, etc. She wanted a vegetarian potato soup, and alas I am not a vegetarian, so this is my anyway attempt. I am not overly concerned. Soups are all experiments for me, and usually turn out ok, and its hard to make a bad one. Still, I have made bad ones in the past, but most of them turn out good.
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One of the key symptoms of coronavirus is difficulty in breathing, so it was natural that the world health systems were giving patients in breathing difficulty ventilators to help them breathe. This has always been a standard course of action in the past. However, yet again this virus is so different than anything else that has come before. Now they are finding that maybe ventilators might actually be killing people with the virus, and - like everything else about this virus - no one knows why. Its a clever little bugger.
The good news is that the human race has usually figured out every major species threatening problem that has lain before it in the past. This is why we are all still around. This virus however has presented our species with a new life facing challenge. And just when we thought as a species that we had left major species challenging problems behind us. Well, there you go. Life itself. Hopefully we will figure out this one as well.
Day 42. Sunday April 24 2020.
Noodles, I slipped
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| the new normal |
I miss being with my kids, as Michelle has them both staying with her. This frustrates me as Michelle is the one who killed the marriage and the family and yet now she has the kids. I understand that Santa Clara is their home, but it does seem unfair. Jana and I text almost every day, but Mara is not talking to me again. I don't know why.
In six full weeks I have walked 294 miles now, a good weekly average of about 49 miles per week or seven miles per day. Bandon is not that big of a town, so my walking options are varied, but not that varied. I have to be creative. This makes me think of when I used to walk the two dogs Nalla and Annabelle while the kids were growing up. They lived +-11 years, and I did most of their walking - twice a day. I reckon that was about 700 per year easily, or roughly 7,000 plus walks I did with them around Santa Clara. I had to come up with enough varied loop walks that it would not drive me insane and I probably had 10 different walks, so I probably did each loop 700 times. I can also reduce the walks down to how many pounds in poop I picked up of theirs during their lifetime, but whatever. Its my OCD, or whatever version I have of it.
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I imagined a story where a man finally makes the cognitive leap and learns to control the world around him. First he manipulates the markets to make himself rich, then women to make him desirable. Then he learns how to extend his own life. And then came the hard part, the learning the hard lessons about loneliness and loss, and the ephemeral nature of life and of all things. Welcome to the universe. They are gods for a reason, those who can suffer so much loss and still keep their hearts open.
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Bandon City Council has voted to open up the hotels. Because of the dearth of Federal leadership and the current clown of a President, virus management is being handled by the individual states. In this state of Oregon, everyone is expecting Governor Kate Brown to allow some businesses to start opening up May 15, 19 days or so from today. We shall see. There are way too many people out of work. People with kids. People with families to feed. It would make me crazy if I was raising my kids during this time. Normally placid Men will commit violence to keep their kids fed. Government has to open for that reason alone, and let people get back to work. At some point you begin killing more people than you are trying to save.
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