Grocery Shopping a year later

I went to the local grocery store today. The first time in over a year. It sure felt strange. I basically helped my wife. I went to the deli and bought the lunchmeat, and then walked back and forth getting simple things that didn't require a lot of thought.

You would think we were stocking up for a year, but not really. It's only for a week or so. We did get our free ham for Easter dinner.

I double-masked to be on the safe side but didn't see anyone else who did. As we continue to get more and more people vaccinated, I am wondering if I need to do double-masking. Now if I went somewhere I knew was not into masking - first I would have to convince myself I need to go there - I think I would definitely wear two masks.

Watching people in the parking lot I observed everyone donning masks as they parked their vehicles and before they got out. And the reverse procedure when they came out. They waited until they got into their vehicles before they took the masks off.

Books, Books, Books

 It's raining cats and dogs and books in my study today. I am trying to get next year's books for the B&B assigned to months. I've sent the emails out; now just waiting to hear back. The first is taken care of because one of the members stepped up and volunteered to do two this year and I asked she would do the first one. She said yes. Takes a load off right there.

I've also been working on the new book club, The Mysterious Book Club for now, gathering members and an initial book list. Typical me, I've already changed my list twice. But it's not all my fault. A couple of people chose a book or two on my list. I figure I have more variety in my library than they do, so I just deleted from my list and went hunting again.

Back to the B&B club - I still haven't chosen my selection yet. Don't know whether to go with fiction or nonfiction. Maybe I'll select a fiction for this club that won't fit in the other. Thinking out loud now. 

In other news, COVID is continuing to be the pandemic the scientists and medical experts feared. The country will have 250,000 deaths in a few days. Still, not as deadly as the Spanish Flu of 1918, but then people have very short memories. And they don't like to study history. One of the things that we learned from the 1918 flu 1) wear a mask, 2) avoid crowds, and 3) wash your hands frequently. Sound familiar? People today believe it is their right to decide whether to wear a mask. Yes, until it affects others' health.

Sorry, I made a rule not to get into politics on this blog. But it is difficult at times. That's why I spend so little time on Facebook. I'll leave you with a picture today and talk about it next time.

Election and Reading

 Today is finally here. We will be eating dinner - pizza and wine - in front of the TV tonight and will watch the returns as long as we can before finally going to sleep. Neither of us has anywhere to go tomorrow so no need to get early. And of course, there's the pandemic.

I've been spending most of my time this past week and a half attempting to choose a book for my book club that I will lead during one meeting. I began my hunt thinking I would need to choose two, but another person stepped forward and volunteered to do a second book this year. Her books are often a little out there, almost always about a foreign country, or at least an immigrant recent to this country. But I must say they are usually something I would not normally read.

I have it whittled down to three books - I think. The one in the lead is fiction - can I say science fiction - about Albert Einstein in 1905, the year he publishes his famous paper on time. He works in a Swiss post office and he has these dreams, 30 of them, one a night over a period of two and a half months. Each dream has time doing something different - speeding up, going slower, repeating itself, traveling back in time, and giving three different endings to things - just to name a few. I've read it before and enjoyed it. Maybe it will be this year's Flatland. The name of this book is Einstein's Dreams.

The second book is a novel about an older woman living in Seattle, or maybe Portland, who grew up in Russia during the siege of Leningrad in WW2. She was a young woman who was a guide in the famous museum (Hermitage?) giving tours. They had to take the pictures out of the frames for protection and store them. But the frames were hung back up on the walls and the guides were required to memorize everything about the pictures and give tours as if they were still hung. This story is juxtaposed against present-day Seattle where she lives and her granddaughter is getting married. This is complicated with the fact that the woman is suffering from early stages of Alzheimer's and has difficulty remembering things; but she can still remember vividly her tours of the WW2 museum, what she had to recite, and working as a plane spotter on top of the museum at night. Again, I've read it before. The title is The Madonnas of Leningrad.

The last book is a mystery from a series. It is my favorite mystery series and is about a Scotland Yard inspector who is a shell-shocked veteran of the Great War. He carries around with him in his mind, his Scots Sergeant who he had to kill for refusing a direct order. I won't go into the details here, but it a lot more interesting than how I am describing it. This particular story is actually a prequel, 14th in the series which currently stands as 22. Its title is A Fine Summer's Day, and as you might guess is just before the war in 1914. All of the others take place beginning in June 1919 and time-wise progress about 1-2 months each. I think we are at about 1921, but I forget which month. 

I'm half-heartedly thinking of also recommending a nonfiction book I read earlier this year. Written in 2012, Spillover is about viruses and how they spread. By taking and discussing several of last over the past 30 some years, the author gets us ready for the COVID by specifically identifying it. The book was written in 2012!

In addition to that, I am reading four books presently: The End of Your Life Book Club, a memoir; Good-Bye to All That, an autobiography by Robert Graves; On Conan Doyle, a small literary romp about Sir Arthur and his writings; and The Woman in White, a thriller mystery as they called them back then in 1860 when it was written by Wilie Collins. He also wrote The Moonstone in 1868 which I read last year. It was one of the best books I have ever read.

Oh, and I am still watching about two episodes of M*A*S*H daily. By next Monday  Colonel Potter arrives; except for whatever reason, the network, MeTV, is showing the episode where Henry Blake leaves and dies.

Now I have to read before I take a nap before I start to watch the election results. I'll talk about my doctor's visit to the sleep clinic yesterday at another time.

COVID Activities

 I was reading my favorite blogs today - Far Side of Fifty and A Percussionist's Notebook - and was amazed all over again how creative and capable people are. Whether it's whittling, growing flowers, replacing tamborine heads, making different sounds on a triangle, or making drum pads, I am truly envious of folks who have those talents.

The latter blog is my younger brother's. My wife says that he's "a man of action", while I am a thinker. But he thinks too. We talk every Sunday via Skype and get to reminisce about our younger days.

What do I do? I read. And I study. When I was younger and in the Army I was active. I led soldiers in tanks. I fought in Vietnam. I carried the Olympic torch in the 1984 Olympics. I ran marathons and ultramarathons.

But with COVID, my active physical skills are limited. But I still read. I learn. What am I reading about? A few things recently:

    - Time travel

    - History of major pandemics in the last 100 years

    - The Black Death in England in 1348

    - The 1920 Osage Indian murders in Oklahoma

    - The colonization and slavery of Africa in the 17th-19th centuries

What am reading about now?

    - Oranges

    - Making concrete for building

    - The discovery of the telephone

What's on tap?

    - The American ice trade in the 19th century

    - How to build a time machine

    - A memoir about working at menial, low paying jobs and trying to survive

    - The last voyage and death of Captain Cook

I guess I am too busy reading and studying to do any other things.

Another Pandemic-Like Episode?: TB to 2008

Going through this current crisis with COVID-19, I was reminded the other day of a slightly similar, though definitely not as deadly nor critical, that happened my last year at SSVC when I was superintendent.

It happened just after Christmas, 2008. We had restarted school after the Christmas break, the students were back, and we were preparing for semester exams. We had had some flu cases earlier in the year, but nothing our nurses and houseparents couldn't handle. This time it was different.

I don't know how or why it happened - maybe it came back with the students when they returned from their homes scattered across the state - but it hit the school hard. Normally, a sick child would be kept in the cottage during the day away from the school and other students. If there was a risk of spreading it to others, the child would be kept in the campus hospital.

The hospital was more of a clinic, with a nurse on duty 24 hours a day. It had a few beds, but its main function was to distribute medications to the 300 students who had prescriptions or needed something for whatever cold or pain they had. It definitely was not equipped for treating a flu epidemic. But that's what it did in January 2009.

We had to put beds in rooms that were originally meeting rooms or equipment storage rooms. Then we began to move beds into the hallways, just like I saw on TV recently. Many of our administrative personnel who were co-located in the clinic were enlisted to assist the nurses in many of the housekeeping chores. Some children were taken home by their parents, but that was the exception since almost all of them lived in either the Philadelphia, Harrisburg, or Pittsburgh areas, and those areas were dealing with similar illnesses.

We survived. After about three weeks, we returned to a situation where the nurses could handle things on their own with help from the houseparents. But it was close for a while. We had some great staff and kids. 

I think about it oftern these days.