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Today I defrosted my freezer. I’ve been defrosting this particular freezer for 27 years now and yet I came up with a new refinement in my technique just this time -- I sponge out the water from as soon as there is any in the drip tray, rather then waiting until the end.
The refrigerator is actually a little larger than I need and I wouldn’t object to a frost-free machine, but this little machine just keeps on working so I find it hard to replace. And it would be a shame to let this defrosting skill set go to waste along with so many others. I’m only half kidding about that.
Day 35 of Shelter In Place and I made my first trip to a supermarket (Trader Joe’s). The last time I was there, shortly before SIP started, the shelves had been almost empty. Today the shelves were stocked, with a few exceptions, but the store was nearly deserted with only a few customers allowed in at a time, and a long, well spaced line in front and extending for almost a block down the side of the building. Took well over thirty minutes to get in the front door, but then everything went quickly. I usually only buy a bag of groceries at a time, but this time I filled two bags and limited myself to just the items I couldn’t get at my corner markets. (Forgot to get better potatoes because I didn’t write it on my list. Baked potatoes have become one of my staples.)
You can’t give them your reusable bags now, but I had the checker leave the heavy items in my basket and only bag the lighter, bulkier items. Then I took the basket outside and emptied it into my usual cloth bag. Aside from the potatoes and the fact that I was exposed to more people than I’ve seen in 35 days -- I had my n95 mask on -- it went as well as it could have. I suspect there will be new rules in a month when I need to return. But now I have my favorite hummus, trail mix, granola, and brown rice, not to mention a few of the other unexpected items you always add in when you’re browsing TJ’s.
Less than 10 “known” cases in my zipcode (zipcode with most cases has 171) and my zipcode covers more blocks than I knew. I have to say this makes me feel a little better. By no means does this means I’m in a virus free zone, but it certainly isn’t rampant here.
You can’t help wondering, every time you leave your house, if you’re making a big mistake. Sure, I’m taking “reasonable” precautions and I’m only going out for food and exercise; but I know other people my age are not going out at all. I’m doing a good job of keeping fit -- and I do live in a tiny apartment -- but if I were to come down with COVID-19 I would probably spend some time kicking myself for taking the risks I’m taking. I’m sure I would quickly fall back on “Good luck. Bad Luck. Who knows?” but in this particular case I would just as soon not learn anything from this path of illness.
April 22, 2020 is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Seems like only yesterday. And we, and by “we” I mean the SARS-CoV-2 virus, have finally done something meaningful. The demand for oil is so reduced that if you had an empty oil tanker in the right location you could have oil companies pay you to take the oil off their hands. So of course thousands of Americans are protesting that they would rather die than live this way.
I covered the first Earth Day for my high school newspaper, which involved riding my 10 speed bike back and forth between Scottsdale and Arizona State University in Tempe collecting information and documentation. I would have to dig out my copy of that issue from storage, but I seem to recall I had the better part of a two page spread all to myself, The high point of my journalism career.
I think I had already sold my little Fiat, my first and last car, but I wouldn’t become a vegetarian for a couple more months. It still amazes me how few people have been motivated to change their habits by Earth Day and later Global Climate Change. The shared consensus seems to be that these are problems either the government or big business should address. Instead, it’s taken a virus to make a change.
Combray continued
Vinteuil and Swann
P86 “M. Vinteuil... had retired to the neighborhood of Combray, we used often to invite him to our house, but with his intense prudishness he had given up coming, so as not to be obliged to meet Swann, who had made what he called ‘a most unsuitable marriage, as seems to be the fashion these days.’”
This is a perfect example of something you can only appreciate when rereading. The “little phrase” in The Vinteuil Sonata plays a key role in Swann’s romance with Odette. I can’t recall if Swann’s passion for that music survives his passion for Odette, and Vinteuil is such an ass I doubt that Swann would regret missing his company at dinner, but it is still a shame.
P88 “Although Saturday... passed more slowly than the other days for my aunt, yet, the moment it was past... she would look forward with impatience to its return, as something that embodied all the novelty and distraction which her frail and disordered body was still able to endure. This was not to say... that she did not long, at times, for some even greater variation, that she did not pass through those abnormal hours in which one thirsts for something different from what one has, when those people who, through lack of energy or imagination, are unable to generate any motive power in themselves, cry out, as... the postman knocks, in their eagerness for news (even if it be bad news), for some emotion (even that of grief); when the heart strings, which prosperity has silenced, like a harp laid by, yearns to be plucked and sounded again by some hand, even a brutal hand, even if it shall break them; when the will, which has with such difficulty brought itself to subdue its impulse, to renounce its right to abandon itself to its own uncontrolled desires, and consequent sufferings, would fain cast its guiding reins into the hands of circumstances, coercive and, it may be, cruel...”
It occurs to me, this reading, that much of this about his “aunt” must really be about the author.
“...She was genuinely fond of us; she would have enjoyed the long luxury of weeping for our untimely decease; coming at a moment when she felt ‘well’ and was not in a perspiration, the news that the house was being destroyed by a fire, in which all the rest of us had already perished, a fire which, in a little while, would leave not one stone standing upon another, but from which she herself would still have plenty of time to escape without undue haste... must often have haunted her dreams, as a prospect which combined with the two minor advantages of letting her taste the full savour of her affection for us in long years of mourning, and of causing universal stupefaction in the village when she should sally forth to conduct our obsequies, crushed but courageous, moribund but erect, the paramount and priceless boon of forcing her at the right moment... to go off and spend the summer at her charming farm of Mirougrain, where there was a waterfall...”
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