Category: Plague Diaries

Gitano’s mouth opened for a word, and remained open while his brain sought the word. “I think it was quiet—I think it was nice.”

-Steinbeck, The Red Pony

I found this handy resource. I’ll be interested in seeing what the totals look like after 2020 is over:

………

You might remember a brief note in my 25th entry, wherein I talked about Seattle’s new “Stay Healthy Streets” program. They closed streets to through traffic in order to give people more freedom to walk without getting too close to each other. Kinda silly and excessive and transparently meaningless, considering you can technically still drive there, you’re just not supposed to unless you’re a resident on the street or your destination is within the zone. And because you remember that, you also remember that I (and countless others) said:

They’re simply not even considering an end to this. And while I’m no doomsayer, no conspiracy theorist, this is precisely the kind of “temporary” measure that finds a way to stick around after it’s supposed to go away.

Now note yesterday’s headline at the SDOT blog:

2020 bike investments to accelerate, including 20 miles of Stay Healthy Streets to become permanent in Seattle

I read a comment from a delivery driver who noted the obvious, which is that the streets are not closed to traffic by this order, but people are walking around on them as if they are. There are a few theories about why the city’s done this. I’m sure some or all of them are at least partly true – even the good ones from the apparent minority who are in favor. In the end it was done for the same reason that everything’s done: the sweet trifecta of 1. saving money (for themselves), in order to 2. get money. And also 3. Votes. Nothing is done by any politician anywhere if he or she doesn’t think it’ll secure more votes.

Not that I care a heck of a lot, but a man eventually gets to feeling like he’s shrugged off one too many things. Inner peace gained by submission is an illusion. I guess I’ll make sure to vote.

………

I’m a morning person if anything. Not that I relish it – if you see me at a time that might be considered “early,” it’s perfectly ok if you don’t say good morning. And feel free to not turn on any lights if you don’t need to. But I would rather get up early to get things done than stay up late. After enough attempts at both, I know I am a morning writer far more than a night time one. I am becoming older and more interested in getting ahead of things, rather than dragging them out past their usefulness. Things grow too thin in the twilight.

I always want to spell that “twighlight.”

………

The Patio:

As I get closer to consequence, I consult my brother more and more. He builds houses in Massachusetts and could sneeze a patio better than I could build one. Don’t mind the string – I just moved it around a bit to make sure I was deep enough across the entire dig. Haven’t marked the actual boundaries yet. Then I went and watched this:

“it’s also the tool that will label you either a pro or a beginner, about as quickly, and about as clearly, as any other tool that you might pick up and try to use.”

My base material doesn’t get here until Wednesday, so I have time to practice. (H/T Gerard, who is the reason I know The Essential Craftsman exists, from a riveting post some time ago wherein Scott Wadsworth taught me the Truth about using ladders.)

………

Your “Homeless in Coronafornia” update for today:

“It’s exactly the same as always, hahaha.”

There wasn’t much else. He moves around a lot and is dependent on free wifi spots, so a lot of convesations end pretty abruptly. There’s also a lot of unintended poetry in the way the abbreviated communications come out on messenger, if you’re looking for it. This happened just before we spilt for the day:

The governor spoke of things gradually opening but
not church for heaven’s sake
I thought we were protected by the lord
Guess not
It’s like a spiritual facemask
Church

— Find your poem, Comrade Citizen!—

And here goes another week. 36 entries. Have I been doing this for 7 weeks now? Lord hammercy.

Whatever that means. Seems to me that as the numbers stay lower, the weird explanations for why we shouldn’t be comforted get more creative. Governor Inslee told us on Friday that we’re going to have 6 more weeks of wint – sorry, wrong unreliable authority – he said that we’re in lockdown until at least May 31 now, with this “phased approach to reopening” beginning then:

We’re essentially in phase 1 already, so not much help there. Whatever. It’s a (laughably small) step in the right direction.

………

The grocery stores are now requiring masks to be worn while shopping. Grocery stores have been the lightning rod from the beginning, being as essential as anything else out there, and the most voluntarily visited indoor place where many people are likely to be. When people want to virtue signal now, it usually involves a reference to their last trip to the store:

“There were only, like, 40% of the shoppers wearing masks, and the seafood guy wasn’t wearing one, either. What don’t people understand about the SCIENCE? They won’t be happy until they’ve killed everyone.”

Oh, my. Your handwringing is audible everywhere in a 3 mile radius. Or there’s this stalwart fellow…

“I went to the store without a mask on yesterday. You should have seen all the weak, obedient little sheep that were terrified to walk past me! Just to mess with them I went the wrong way down the one-way aisles!”

Oh, my. The exhaust on your pickup is audible everywhere in a 3 mile radius.

Yay for both of you.

Still, an axiom that I’ve always lived by:

………

You may accurately deduce that the boy and I watched The Princess Bride over the weekend. First half Friday night, second half Saturday (with mom!). The movie is perfect in so many ways, especially one that I had no way to recognize the first dozen or so times I watched it. All those moments when Fred Savage gets annoyed at Peter Falk and interrupts him because the story gets too mushy are exactly right. The Boy could sense the mushiness coming and would already be hiding his face to avoid having to see Westley and Buttercup kiss. He loved that the kid in the movie felt the same way. Man, the kids hate that stuff. And in classic kid form, he squirmed a bit and even complained a little while we watched, but oh boy was he pissed off when I told him we had to turn it off and go to bed on Friday night.

I did story writing with him on Thursday last week. They get the big gray sheets of paper with blue lines – two solid with a dashed line in the middle for practicing the handwriting – to write their stories on. It’s usually something topical: What did you do over the weekend, where will you go this summer, what did you do for the holiday (that’s pretty much the topic after/before every holiday in the year). Favorite pet or pet you’d like to have, etc. When school was in session I volunteered in his classroom on story writing days, helping them spell and trying to keep their stories from being too disjointed and wild. Since the homeschooling began he has resisted it somewhat, and last week one of us (I can’t remember who) had the idea that maybe I should sit next to him and write one, too. So I did. I grabbed one of those pieces of paper and wrote a story in what I hope is a sort of grade school-ish language. It turns out that keeping it simple makes for easy and enjoyable reading (take that, Joyce). We decided to write about how we’ve been spending our weekends. I even drew a picture like they always do when they’re finished:

I’m going to turn it in with the Boy’s work when I go make the bag swap this morning. I hope they like it.

………

Lots of little doing over the weekend – I’ll throw up a supplemental post with pictures here pretty soon. Otherwise, little else to report.

— Be a giant, Comrade Citizen! —

 “The animals were thoroughly frightened. It seemed to them as though Snowball were some kind of invisible influence, pervading the air about them and menacing them with all kinds of dangers.”

THE MENACE:

“Let’s just keep it around ten until the turnip’s dry.”

“Yes, sir.”

THE ANIMALS:

The city’s picked someone to stabilize the bridge while continuing to figure things out. Maybe it took them too long, maybe it didn’t. I have no idea. It’s an enormous bridge with, literally and figuratively, and awful lot riding on its present and future. I’m sure this is ridiculously complicated and frustrating for the people making (or not making) the decisions. This is where, love him or hate him, someone like Trump would have been the right person to be in the mayor’s office. 5 minutes after the closure he would have said “tear it down and build a new one, starting right now.” There would have been an uproar and all kinds of shouting and disagreeing, and experts would say why they shouldn’t do it, and the people would have stamped their feet over the costs and been upset that the option to repair instead of replace wasn’t considered. Which of course is exactly what’s happening now, anyway, without a whole lot of progress yet. But that bridge would be half demolished (or more, I don’t know how fast these things go) by now, and we’d be well on our way. Best decision? I don’t know. But eating your dead shipmate and bailing water on a leaky raft is better than starving to death while treading water and being slowly eaten by sharks from the toes up.

I should mention that there is a very long term plan to build light rail between West Seattle and Ballard, just north of downtown Seattle, plus a few other branches around the city. The Future is coming! And it’ll be…a train? Another train? Nobody rides the last one we built. Anyway, it’ll be on some undetermined route over Elliott Bay, with at least a couple neighborhoods along the way getting a nice, new, concrete canopy in the process. You can imagine the tumult, the neighborhood associations mobilizing like angry rabbits, and now, the calls to incorporate the light rail into the new West Seattle Bridge. I have no doubt they’re considering it. Here I am again: good idea? Bad idea? Here, again, is a place where politics will strangle progress, and the usual administrative paralysis will set in, all because of people being afraid to upset anyone (read: lose votes).

THE MANY SNOWBALLS:

• We christened the new freezer by putting ice cream in it yesterday. Now it’s time to stock up on meats and let that thing earn its keep.
•  I started a dough for a loaf of bread that’ll be kneading (oh, dad) my attention again at 9:00 this morning.
• The Boy and I took a walk. He rode his scooter. That sucker’s at least 7 years old and has been on the verge of being thrown away more times than I can count. But it keeps getting used:

I let him wear pajama pants yesterday. Apparently the kids on our not-so-dead-end street have decide that it’s what they’re doing. I told him it’s ok, but tomorrow it’s real pants again. It’s still a school day, I have to keep reminding him, not a vacation. Then my daughter came down in her pajama pants and I was a little more stern. 6th grade now, she’s on Zoom classes, etc. I said that I have the same policy as her school (which is true): you don’t attend classes from your bed, and you need to be dressed. “But tons of people are in their pajamas.” “Well, then they’re breaking the rules.” That’s all it takes for her – she doens’t like breaking rules. She got huffy about it, but went back up and changed her pants. She’s awesome.

I mentioned my favorite bakery the other day. Went by it on our walk yesterday and it looks like this now:

The takeout windows are new. No doubt they’ll get plenty of use even after the (indefinite) lockdown. The ordering area inside is small and gets crowded easily, mostly with people who aren’t staying anyway, so this will help ease that. No word on opening yet, but we’re all looking forward to it.

The weekend is upon us! I’ll probably take my usual break for the next two days, unless something comes up. Until then it’s just me and the miserable patio project that’s just gotten into the serious phase. Am I capable? Yes. Am I willing? Not very. At least I’m building this particular windmill for Snowball, and not Napoleon.*

*Full disclosure: I don’t know the Animal Farm story. It’s one of those classics I’ve never read. For now I’m assuming that Snowball is a good guy because of the way things have fallen out so far. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong.

— The Leader wants you in pants, Comrade Citizen! —

“Their most faithful disciples were the two cart-horses, Boxer and Clover. These two had great difficulty in thinking anything out for themselves, but having once accepted the pigs as their teachers, they absorbed everything that they were told, and passed it on to the other animals by simple arguments.”

– George Orwell, Animal Farm

THE PIGS:

Today Governor Inslee extended the stay-at-home order, without giving a new end date. There’s another presser on Friday, I hear, and I really hope he says something to regain some of the faith that I’m starting to lose in him. What used to look like steadiness is starting to look like indecision. This next part is good, though – remember that alliance between Washington, Oregon, and California that had me worried? Worry no more!The West Seattle Blog reports:

3:38 PM: He’s asked about the value of the Western States Pact if other states in it are making different decisions. He says the pact is more for “communication.”

I guess you need a “pact” in order to communicate these days. But anything that keeps us untethered from the only two states in the union that are battier than we are is good news to me. The key, though, is the part about other states making different decisions. Every governor is going to try to be the one with the cleverest solution, and none of them will put this debacle behind them, none will let it go, until they’ve done something to distinguish themselves as the one who got it the most right. But as is usually the case when refusing to acknowledge success and competing for the crown of legacy, you sail right past your last chance to get it right and relegate yourself to the regressive consolation of, in the end, admitting your mistakes. Not that they ever will.

THE CART HORSES:

There’s a quarantine site in nearby White Center which is not going to open, and may never do so, because there hasn’t been a need for it. From White Center Now:

3:11 PM: Angie Malpass from King County verifies that the Top Hat facility “is on hold”:

There continues to be plenty of capacity at King County’s COVID-19 isolation, quarantine and recovery centers that are currently open today in Kent, Issaquah, North Seattle/Aurora, Harborview Hall and Shoreline.

We saw peak demand about one and a half weeks ago at 74 guests and have seen a plateau now at 61 guests today.

But of course:

Public Health is anticipating an inevitable second wave of COVID-19 and we will continue to keep White Center ready to open for when than second surge happens, should the current 5 facilities that are operational reach capacity.

It’s just impossible for these people to look at success without seeing it as a cause for alarm:

“You’ve just won the Super Bowl, but the champagne is likely poisoned, your plane is expected to crash, your wives are all projected to divorce you, and our experts are predicting that if you don’t spend all of your bonus money right now you risk not having it to spend irresponsibly later.

But good job, everyone.”

I’m just looking for a politician to commit a little political suicide, because at this point a bad move, politically, is pretty much guaranteed to be a good move, intellectually and morally. And vice the hell versa.

………

THE SIMPLE ARGUMENTS:

We got a freezer. When I called the local company a couple of weeks ago to ask about one, they first told me not to get my hopes up. Not only were they in high demand, but pretty much every compressor on Earth comes out of China, and nothing was coming out of China (except, well…). She predicted zero availability until late Summer. “But do call around.” I had asked for a chest freezer because, being a noob in the supplemental frozen storage category, I assumed that when you put a cooler in the garage, it was one of those big boxes with the lid on top that was good for burying things so deep that you were guaranteed to never see them again. She said to get an upright. They’re much better.

So I took her advice, called the big boys down by the mall, and asked for an upright freezer. I hit the sweet spot. The salesman said they had a shipment coming in, and there were several available. “Be here in about a week,” he said. Had I called a day later I might not have had another chance for months. It’s a 14 cu. ft. beauty that fits nicely in its place in the garage, and will be an excellent extension of the (always) too small freezer on our fancy fridge. We’re gonna stuff that thing with as many Pelosis of Ice cream as we can.

………

My daughter’s friend turned 12 yesterday. As an alternative to a party, her parents organized a parade. We got in line with about 10 other cars, two blocks South of her house, and drove in a slow, honking procession down her street. Most of the kids in the cars stood up through sunroofs and held signs/posters – it’s interesting to note how ubiquitous those are now (sunroofs, not posters). I’ve had one in each of my last two cars, and almost never used them. Like, at all. In fact, the way the searing heat of the sun comes through them when they’re open makes them rather unpleasant to use. In the sun. They can be mighty nice on a summer night, though.

Anyway. Signs were waved, horns were honked, hoots were hollered. It was 7:00 PM. Some of the neighbors probably thought it was obnoxious, and others no doubt took some joy in it.  Whenever, in my life, I’ve seen someone enjoying or appreciating something that’s simultaneously bothering me, I’ve felt so low. Their joy always put my droll resistance in high relief. My younger life had me on a greased trajectory towards curmudgeonliness. I was always so sarcastic, and like so, so many people do, I believed that finding fault with something was a sign of intelligence (kind of like, I don’t know, seeing success as a cause for alarm), while accepting and enjoying things was most often the blind submission of the cart-horse.  Many years ago I consciously took a few steps to correct that particular course of mine, nudged the tiller with some careful reading, and arrived in a better place. I screw it all up aplenty, to be sure, and there’s no guarantee that if a birthday parade came honking down my street, I would smile and be generous about it, but there’s a better chance of it now. Perfection’s not very much closer, but I can just see its gritty peaks when I look up through the sunroof, because I’m finally choosing to open it.

………

Yes, as a matter of fact, the fried chicken did come out beautifully:

There’s even a few leftover for breakfast.

— Don’t be alarmed by the sun, Comrade Citizen! —

Neon lights and slinking purple skies
Squeeze out soft regrets from all our lies
As I greet another door that opens in
To that place where we repeatedly begin

I’m tangled up in try
Slipping on I wonder why
I face
Affection, not embrace

Another urban wasteland thick with fears
Icy lights that shine like frozen television tears
Or dying embers of another day
Please tell me what it is I want to say

I’m tangled up in try
Slipping on I wonder why
I face
Affection, not embrace
Affectionate embrace

It was quiet on the local front yesterday – no big news from the guv, and nothing about the bridge. There was, however, this story brought to light, concerning the rather swift 20 month rebuild of a bridge that collapsed in Genoa, Italy. The collapse, while killing 40 people, gave them something we don’t have here with the West Seattle Bridge: a head start. The controlled demolition will probably add some time to the project (if it needs demolition at all, which hasn’t yet been determined), but I would also think that controlled demolition would mean easier, quicker cleanup. Though of course I know nothing about these things and am just wildly speculating. I’m not making improbably specific guesses in a dearth of knowledge and understanding, banking my chits for future claims of Nostradamian righteousness.

………

Go ahead, steal it and make your own. My brother-in-law has a print shop, maybe I’ll ask him to pretty it up a little and print one out:

………

We played trivia last night. Our neighbors here on our not-so-dead-end street invited us last year to a fundraiser for the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, which was enough to get us on the list for things like last night’s fund-raising virtual trivia happy hour, hosted by our neighbor who is an auctioneer and all around crowd pleaser, with a toolkit that includes magic and yes, trivia hosting. We took the 30 second walk to their house and sat on their deck under some heat lamps, teamed up with the other half of the marriage while submitting to all royal demands for social distancing, and finished in a dignified 5th place out of some 45-ish teams. Mind you, many of the other players were physicists, biologists, etc. from the Fred Hutch Center, so I’ll take it.

The three rounds were interspersed with some brief statements by a couple of the aforementioned contestants, who talked about the work they’ve done on COVID-19 – nothing as exciting as announcing a vaccine, but much calm and no claims to know how bad it is, was, or could be. No speculation about transmission, and no implications that they know better than someone else. It’s funny how the confidence of actual knowledge seems to inhibit the desire to wear it like a crown. That’s for the rest of us, who only know what we know from social media. They have work to do, and they’re doing it. One guy said that his colleague was losing tens of thousands of dollars worth of “very special” mice, something to do with genes. Fred Hutch does a lot of work with genetics.

Anyway, their work isn’t just for Seattle or Washington, so if you have any interest in donating, here you go.

………

Mostly uneventful day yesterday, otherwise. My wife noted recently that for all of our eating at home, we haven’t had anything Asian yet. I checked what we had on hand and made some lettuce wraps with ground beef. It was damn good and a nice change of pace. But I also put a bunch of chicken into a brine so that I can fry it up tonight and get us back to basics (though I don’t know what’s more basic than ground beef and iceberg lettuce). Fried chicken gets us all a little excited here, especially the kids, who can’t get enough of it. I don’t think there’s any food, short of dessert, that they’ll eat more of. It’s a cliche, but it’s true: there’s very little in life as satisfying as putting food in front of your people and watching them enjoy everything about it.

Expect some obnoxious and obvious quotes from  Animal Farm here in the coming posts. Orwell in a time of Government overreach? I’m so proud of my daughter’s school.

— Don’t be trivial, Comrade Citizen! —

I listened to Gov. Inslee’s latest presser yesterday – briefly, anyway. Things are easing up ever-so-slowly, and ever-so-oddly:

Good, ok, outdoor recreation is getting the go-ahead, albeit rather cautiously. They are still prohibiting overnight stays anywhere, but at least it’s ok to – wait, what does that say? Golf? I actually heard that part of the presser, and have been waiting for the confused outrage. Hunting and fishing are controversial in the best of times, but they’re utilitarian and meaningful activities that people – even those who wouldn’t do them – are generally able to stomach and understand. Golf is purely fun (for those who like to do it), and frankly little more than an excuse for 5 hours of day drinking. It isn’t even exercise, so it is difficult to imagine the justification for green-lighting it in a time when sitting on a park bench was briefly verboten, and is still strongly discouraged. I can only assume there was some kind of irresistible political pressure that came from The Golf Alliance of Washington, who Inslee credited in his presentation. The slime trails glisten in the sun.

I read a comment that lamented the rather male-centered nature of the allowable activities, as if sexism is playing a part in the return to normal. Having graduated from college just last year, I know how common it is to hear, concerning equality and civil  rights, the flat stupid claim that “we’re no better off today than we were 100 years ago.” Some people will even bleat that we’re worse off, and that we’ve gone backwards; these are either 19 year-old girls with really big glasses and even bigger girlfriends, or 6-figure tenured female professors with a “partner” at home whom you can be sure doesn’t hunt, fish, or golf. Anyway, I know we won’t be back to normal without irrational complaints of injustice, so I read this as a good sign.

………

The wind must have been pushing out to sea last night, because I could barely hear the ferry’s engine as it idled. So I went inside, and listening to nothing but tinnitus and the ticking clock, I finished with The Whale. It was 10:57. I think I felt compelled to note the time so precisely because Ishmael wouldn’t have had it any other way. That last 100 pages or so were harsh and tense and frantic. With 60 left it was nigh my usual (loosely held) bed time, but there was no way that I was going to put off the finishing until the next day. I note one of the novel’s lessons being the power and contagiousness of obsession, wherein a dubious crew and openly rebellious Starbuck can’t help but pursue the whale beyond all reason, even amidst thoughts of mutiny, though the purpose was never their own. I wonder if that’s applicable somehow, today, in these trying times.

I know that a college class would quickly turn the brown and black characters in the book into some crime committed by Melville, but it’s clear he meant their mysticism, religiosity, and faith to be read as compliments, as indispensable qualities for a man to carry into combat, as an example for the less constant white members of the  Pequod’s crew to follow. The soothsaying Fedallah especially; Ahab’s soul ultimately lashed to his own prophecies, as we are all tied fast to the body of our own surging, foaming, gliding, raging destiny, when our doubts are not there to hinder (or protect) us.

Of course, in college, using faith as a compliment is a crime all by itself, so Melville is fairly dragged to the depths before he even pushes off.

………

News has arrived that my favorite writing spot will be re-opening soon, though only for takeout. It looks like some new pick-up windows have been installed. I love their donuts and other pastries, but I love the people who work there, too. The Original Bakery (I call it the OGB) has been around since 1936 and Bernie, the short man who owns the place, is in there baking away in his white, V-neck t-shirt and an apron at obscene hours. They’re a low-key, somewhat dilapidated little oasis a half-mile or so from my house. I need it to come all the way back so that I can sit there and write while snacking on butterhorns and sugared rings, and on Thursdays the glorious glazed buttermilk knots. For now it is enough to know that they are not going under – they’ve been completely silent since the beginning of the restrictions, and I worried that because of their size and age they’d decide that this was time to close the doors forever. I rejoice.

— Don’t use the ladies’ tees, Comrade Citizen! —