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  • Pandemic life

    You know, up until a year or so ago, reading about the global Spanish flu pandemic from a century ago seemed like so much abstract history, like something that couldn’t possibly happen in this age of modern medicine and advanced technology.

    So… that happened.

    I’ve been fortunate; Friday, March 13, 2020 was the last day I worked in the company office as we transitioned to remote work, and I’ve been working from home since. It’s worked out better than I’d hoped, so I count myself very lucky in that regard.

    But like so many, we haven’t gone anywhere, done anything for a year. Just the essentials: grocery shopping (when we can’t shop online), doctor or dentist visits, necessary errands, helping my mom out. Occasionally “dining out” by picking up food to bring home. Wearing masks always, always when out. All the measures that have kept us safe and healthy.

    And we’ve gotten vaccinated, which is a huge relief! But we’re still laying low until more people get theirs, of course. Until case counts stop rising, and until epidemiologists deem it safe. No, we won’t stop wearing masks.

    The collective PTSD we’re all going to suffer from this—are suffering—is going to be staggering. I often wonder how this is going to be reflected in creative output for the next few years; what sort of psychic imprint and influence will the pandemic have on the literature written over the next decade, for instance? If the patterns are traceable. And I wonder the same thing about the Spanish flu, if we can trace how the collective psyche changed by tracing its influences in literature and art. (Spoiler: yes, we can.)

    This Mother Jones article tackles just this topic in an interview with Elizabeth Outka, author of Viral Modernism: The Influenza Pandemic and Interwar Literature.

    Did you ever predict that this would come out during a pandemic?

    No. I started working on this book about five years ago. I’m a scholar of modernism—end of 19th century, early 20th century British literature, for the most part—and I’ve done some work in trauma theory. I had never heard of the influenza pandemic. When I started to read about it, I thought, huh, that’s odd. It’s right in my period, 1918-1919. Fifty million to 100 million deaths. Which means the United States lost more lives in the pandemic than we lost in World War I, World War II, Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, and Iraq combined. I know enough about trauma to know that you can’t kill off 100 million people and not have it have an impact on the art or the culture.

    Then I started to wonder why, in modernist studies, we don’t study this right alongside the war, as two big mass death events of the early 20th century?

    We do a lot with World War I, but nothing with the pandemic. It began with that mystery, and then I started to find [the 1918 pandemic] everywhere.

    What are some of the examples? Any that people could read now?

    If you are interested in pandemic literature, there’s a lot of great things. I think Katherine Anne Porter’s novella Pale Horse, Pale Rider is one of the best pieces of literature we have specifically on the 1918 pandemic. It’s absolutely terrific. William Maxwell’s They Came Like Swallows is a short, beautiful, elegiac novel about the 1918 pandemic. It’s quite sad but it’s really beautiful. I think reading things like W.B. Yeats’ “The Second Coming” or Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway or T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”—these are difficult texts, but this is a moment where you could see that they do match our mood.

    We’re seeing some of this already with television shows set concurrently with the pandemic, with people wearing masks and doing the quarantine shuffle (those shows that deign to portray this, anyway), and I wonder in however many years’ time when people are binge-watching this or that particular series, what will they think? Will it be a reminder? Traumatic, or taken in stride? Regarded as historical curiosity?

    Anyway. Right now I’m at the same stage as everyone, experiencing pandemic fatigue (covid cabin fever?), with a fuzzy sense of times and dates, general ennui, general distrust of and disdain for the anti-mask, anti-science, anti-vax idiots out there who don’t seem to understand there’s a deadly disease running rampant through the population.

    Otherwise, besides working, there’s been a lot more reading, watching more TV, baking bread (just standard white bread for sandwiches, nothing fancy), noodling around with potential beer writing ideas, life with cats (a different experience when you’re always around), cooking more (a lot more)… pandemic life.

    But! We’re healthy, and vaccinated, and many of those close to us are too. I realize we’ve been very lucky with me being able to work remotely and staying safe and generally getting through this; so many haven’t and it’s hard to get a handle on that to a certain extent. We’re all going to need support groups or some sort of therapy or other coping strategies when this is all over, that’s for sure.

  • RIP Dog

    Our dog Porter had been ailing for a time—a mix of allergies, bad legs and joints, a ruptured disc, and possible Cushing’s, among other things—and sometime in the wee hours of Friday morning last it all finally caught up with him and he passed away fairly peacefully.

    I’m not delving into sentiment or stories, suffice to say it was an odd weekend and I wanted to mark the passing here. And no, there are no plans to get another dog.

  • Robot garbage can

    That’s the new toy in the house from this weekend: a garbage can whose lid opens automatically (via infrared sensor). It was from Costco, but I can’t find it on their site to pull up a picture; and since I’m too lazy to go look at the brand on the actual thing itself, you’ll just have to use the awesome power of your imagination for now.

    So far, the sensor has been tripped by standing too close to it; walking by it; intentionally (via Jedi hand-waving magic); and the dog. That dog one only happened once; he sniffed too close to it, it popped open, and he jumped and scrabbled away. That was pretty funny.

    Now, what is that goofy phrase they always use on Slashdot and the like? …I for one welcome our new robotic garbage can overlords…

    …because really, it’s just a matter of time at this point.

  • Mortality

    One year and two weeks after we lost our first cat, we lost our second cat today. We had to have him put to sleep, the same as before; he was essentially end-stage advanced urinary tract disease. We’d spent the last two weeks doing everything we could for him.

    This was our cat Lucifer. He was 13. We’d also raised him from a kitten. He was a big Maine coon, with six toes on each of his front paws; he looked like he was wearing mittens. He was also the sweetest cat you would ever meet.

    Yes, it sucks. It’s like that, sometimes. But at 13, he lived a full, happy, loving life with no complaints; there’s not much more you can ask for.

  • Blogday, Earth Day, and a lawn rant

    When I said “the first part of my day” in my earlier post today, I really had no idea that actually meant “the entire day.” Somehow I always undershoot these estimates with the misplaced optimism… like also thinking I’d only need one load of compost…

    In order to topdress the lawn with compost, I had to borrow my dad’s truck so I could haul it in bulk (ever tried to cover several thousand square feet of lawn with only bags of fertilizer? Me neither, and I wasn’t about to try). My mom had suggested steer manure compost, and most places in town that offer it (always in a mix with “yard debris”) were outrageously expensive, so we settled on getting it from Hershey Cattle Company over in Redmond for only $15 per yard. This is actually a 40/60 mix of manure with topsoil or something, but it was still half as costly as the next place.

    The catch, of course, to borrowing Dad’s truck was that I had to drive out to his place (in Alfalfa) and help him load a couch into the back of the truck, which he’d promised to a co-worker. So out I went at 8:30 in the morning. We loaded up the couch, tied it up, and I followed him back into town.

    I helped him deliver the couch, to an apartment complex behind COCC, which of course was on the second floor, up a narrow, cracked concrete staircase. Once that was done, we were back to my place, where Dad took my car back home and left me with the truck. By now it was about 10:30.

    Let me digress for a bit about Earth Day, since I did mention it in the title to this post. Today being both the anniversary of this blog and Earth Day, it was of course the perfect day to do Earth-friendly yardwork with (ahem) organic eco-friendly fertilizer. My wife transplanted flowers. I worked out in the sun all day. So it doesn’t get any more “Earth Day” than that, despite the goofy guy in a “Cat in the Hat” hat on Z21 yapping about how cool it was that there was some parade downtown to celebrate… how cool the Earth is, or something (hey, his words, not mine). Okay, digression over.

    I left around 10:50 or so for Redmond. (I actually had to turn back after two blocks because I forgot my tarp. You didn’t think I was going to drive all the way back from Redmond with a truckload of manure and not have it tarped, did you?) Let me just say this about my dad’s truck: I know it’s been awhile since I had my S-10, but holy crap the clutch on his truck is way looser than mine was and that truck’s seen some miles (and it was only a year older than mine). I was about halfway to Redmond before I got used to driving it.

    Got to the Hershey place, paid for a yard (which pretty much fills up an S-10 truckbed), and panicked a bit when the guy dumped the load of manure into the truck with the backhoe and I thought for a moment the shocks were going to go. All of a sudden I was driving a rear-wheel low-rider—really low. I wasn’t looking forward to the drive home (on busy Highway 97 nearly the whole way). So I tarped up the load, tied it, and was pulling out when I realized another nasty little surprise had crept up on me.

    You ever drive a pickup truck when it’s fully loaded in back? And by “fully loaded” I mean overloaded? Yeah, besides the obvious (it takes a lot longer to speed up and slow down), the entire front end seems to float around, like you’re suddenly piloting a wobbly boat. I hadn’t really remembered that little phenomenon since living at home and hauling over-burdened loads of hay. I was less than thrilled.

    The drive home was uneventful, though (if a little tense). By the time I got back it was nearly 11:30.

    Now, this compost was really good, really soil-like in composition. It still stank like steer manure, but it might as well be topsoil in appearance. I figured it would be easy to spread, because we have this little Turf Builder® spreader with adjustable spray opening, and I could just walk around the yard, pushing the spreader and blithely spraying manure all over the place. So I load it up, and the thing won’t work worth a damn. It’s just too small for what we’re dealing with.

    So that meant back to the tried-and-true method for cursing gardeners everywhere: wheelbarrow and shovel, and spreading it by hand.

    And of course today was a windy day. Not just breezy, but big wind gusts that would come in and handily blow steer manure dust from the shovel all over the place—in your shoes, on your clothes, in your face and eyes. Very lovely. I think I can still sense the stuff in my nasal cavity. But I got a rhythm going finally, and went back for a second load at about 2:30.

    Same routine as before, only I think this load was heavier: piloting a jerky boat down the gusty highway. This load went quicker, thanks to my wife helping, and we even had a couple of wheelbarrow loads left over (now in a pile out by the shed). By the time I’d showered and was sitting down to relax, it was 5:20! Where’d the day go? Oh yeah, I got a bunch of shit done… (rim shot).

    Now I don’t want to get off on a rant here, but I’m really getting tired of owning a lawn. I think I’m beginning to hate it, actually. The stupid thing is full of dry and dead patches, there’s not enough topsoil underneath the front half (thus necessitating the topdressing), watering is a joke during the summer months (we’re on the edge of the High Desert, remember?), and general maintenance of what amounts to a crop of an invasive plant species is wearing very, very thin with me.

    And what are lawns good for, anyway? Let’s see, sitting on (watch out for bugs)… avoiding dog poo… playing croquet on (if you’re British)… lawn darts (try not to kill the opponent)… hmmm. Jeez, when I was growing up, we had very little lawn, and we kids always ran off to play in the dirt and rocks and trees anyway. Go figure.

    (Okay, not entirely true; the lawn made a good wrestling ring when we were trying out WWF wrestling moves. But they say kids shouldn’t do that nowadays, so…)

    Me, I’d be perfectly happy with a little more natural Central Oregon wilderness. But that’s just my opinion; I could be wrong.

    The rest of my day involved drinking some beer and reading my favorite new book. Now that’s the right way to end a day.

    And oh yeah, I even sunburned my neck a bit. Now I’m just a red neck hauling manure around in an old truck.

    Go figure.

  • Smoke alarm batteries

    Beep! Yesterday afternoon one of the smoke alarms started the intermittant beeping that indicates when the battery is getting low. These are smoke alarms that are actually wired directly into the electrical system of the house, but have nine-volt batteries in them for backup (in case the power goes out). No biggie, I knew we had newer batteries.

    Beep! Well, a bigger task then I thought; I couldn’t figure out at first which smoke alarm was beeping. We have a total of seven in the house, one down at the bottom of the stairs and six others upstairs. And due to the acoustics in our house, I was moving from one alarm to another waiting for the telltale beep, but everytime I’d get close to one the Beep! would chirp out, seemingly from behind me.

    Beep! I finally traced it to the smoke alarm in my bedroom. Popped out the battery, replaced it with a fresh one. All good, the beeping stopped. Case closed. Had dinner, went to bed.

    Beep! Wha—? Huh? I roll over in bed, echoes from whatever dream I’d been having shredding away in the onset of consciousness. Peer at the clock; 4:40. In the morning.

    The hell—?

    Beep! Oh, shit. Another smoke alarm is warning me its battery is too low. I do not want to get out of bed for this—

    Beep! Beep! Uhhhh… If I’m not mistaken, that was two different beeps. Son of a bitch.

    Beep! So for the next 30 or 40 minutes I’m stumbling around the house, trying to catch a smoke alarm in the act, failing miserably, swapping out fresh batteries only to find I don’t quite have enough because I just know that all the damn batteries have chosen 5:00 in the morning to sputter out, and all the while Beep! Beep! and I can’t figure out which ones are chirping.

    Beep! Screw this, I get vicious and pull the batteries out of all the smoke alarms. They’re wired anyway, and I’ll just buy brand new batteries tomorrow to make sure I’m covered.

    …Did it work? Did the beeps stop? Looks like I was—

    Beep! No. No no no nonononononononononononono.

    It dawns on me that we have a carbon monoxide detector plugged in to the wall in the hallway. It’s supposed to beep when it detects high levels of CO gas… and I think there’s a battery in it too.

    Check it… sure enough, the damn thing says “Err” on it’s tiny beeping fu—ahem, LCD screen. Okay, pull the detector, pull the battery, and…

    Silence.

    Ever notice how peaceful it is at 5:45 in the morning?

  • Snow drifts!

    Not only was it about six degrees this morning in Bend, but we woke up to blowing snow and snow drifts in our backyard and cul-de-sac. Fun! You can see the ground in some spots, others are buried in drifts up to six inches deep.

    On the radio they claimed it was an Arctic front that has moved in. Stellar.

  • Bad, bad day

    I may not be posting much this weekend. Today we had to have our oldest cat, Bob, put to sleep. He had a cancerous intestinal tumor that was inoperable. He was also 12 years old, he lived a long good life; we’d raised him from a kitten so this is especially hard.

    …it’s like losing a member of the family. He really was the best cat you could ask for. Thankfully I got to be there with him in the end, and bury him.

    I’m not functioning all that well right now, good thing it’s a long weekend.

  • Almost seemed like a long weekend

    Seemed long because we had so much going on. Friday night my wife and I stayed at the Pine Ridge Inn here in town for an early anniversary trip (my mother stayed with the kids). While having dinner at Cork Friday night, I happened to see an old friend walk by the window, and this was about as unlikely an encounter as it gets: this is someone I knew and worked with in Spokane, back in the mid-90s, whom I haven’t seen in nearly five years, and currently lives near Seattle. So when I first saw him (and his wife and son) walk by the window of a restaurant in downtown Bend, at first I thought I’d had too much wine.

    Turns out they came down for the weekend, pretty much spur-of-the-moment, and hadn’t had a chance to call us yet.

    Saturday we checked out the Saturday Market (pretty small around here), then hit the Bite of Bend. We hooked up with our friends again there, and made plans to have Father’s Day dinner at our place with my family. Of course, we had to go shopping to get everything we needed, so we picked up the kids, hit Costco and Safeway, and had a quick dinner at Subway.

    As to the Bite of Bend, I’ll write up a mini-review after this.

    Sunday, Father’s Day. Nice, leisurely day, except for all the house cleaning in preparation for having everyone over. Everyone had a good time, even when the massive storm hit (we were barbecuing, wouldn’t you know). Rain, hail and thunder—it hailed so much that there were still drifts in the backyard hours later. And actually the rain pretty much stopped by the time I was out cooking on the grill, so it was no big deal.

    So yeah, it definitely felt like we had a long weekend. After leaving work on Friday, I didn’t get on the computer at all (except to shut it down) the entire weekend, til work on Monday… that was kind of nice. Kind of a mini-vacation from it all.

    But, back to it.

  • June!

    June already? Geez, where’d the time go? It’s not like May wasn’t a full month… some highlights:

    • Put together a monster swingset
    • Dental cleaning… with novocaine. I had two back teeth that needed periodontal work and scaling. Nasty stuff. My mouth was sore for days afterward.
    • The end of the TV season (I have another post on this sometime)
    • Beautiful, 80-plus degree weather… dampened (no pun intended) by massive flash flood inducing thunderstorms
    • We were more socially active than normal… we went to at least three barbecues, which is a lot for us

    Hmm, that’s all I can think of right now. June promises to be a busy month, too. There’s a potluck at work tomorrow, a neighborhood BBQ on Friday, a kids birthday party on Sunday, our anniversary, a friend’s college graduation, and more I’m sure.

    Perhaps we should do a blogger get together this month?