March Madness Indeed

 Enough said. A month of ups and downs by almost any measure. Use weather as a chart. Up to 70s and down to 20s, a roller coaster drumbeat. Covid hits home everywhere with a new variant. I try to rally a first cousin into some awareness of why she should not doubt the value of the vaccine. She "doesn't trust the government" and won't say more, except that she was hospitalized at some point with the virus. The son who lives with her and her husband (husband has had a stroke of unknown origin) had forcibly removed her from the hospital on grounds she 'wasn't getting any better,' taking her home and watching over her. Presumably with more attention (i.e. the loving medicine..) than what she could get among other patients. Did she not receive the treatment drugs authorized? She doesn't know, doesn't question her son's move, when she tells me on the phone how her memory has changed. She can't find the letters to spell out the name of the small Indiana town where she lives. I decide not to go after her anti-government stand, not on the phone when she is so obviously suffering from the disease. She is cheerful, repeating much of what she has told me before about her family - she is now a great grandmother. She laughs. Humor is what we have, she says, and an occasional visit from a friend basically involves laughing.

I commend her spirit and withhold any sense of shame of blame on her behalf. She lives on 100 plus acres in country where cell phone service is rare.  She can't quite explain why. Nor does wifi work. I had been sending emails to an old address that never made the target. She keeps saying how she had 'got along' before with a massage business, the comfort of helping people be more comfortable. She is pleased with the photographs I sent her in a Christmas card - when the only reply I received was a note saying she was unable to send cards this year. She didn't mention Covid then.

February Follies

 

        Not exactly a folly to feel captivated by the New York Times cooking column. (see previous notes) The almost-daily review of their editorial suggestions on recipes and assorted cultural artifacts online is comforting, even at a distance. There is the  thrill of imagining the results should you, eager reader whether hungry or not, seek to bring forth by creative action something both visually and sensually stimulating. Often that is enough to mend the day's listless mood. The mind's eye takes over from descriptions (and photographs) on the page.  Long live vicarious living and all that. Such are the needs of pandemic days when everyone, each in his/her own way, feels trapped in a lull:  past, present, future. Where do we invest our energy? 

Bring on the wintry chill, then get to love: French Union-Braised Lamb Shanks with Barley and Greens and/or Roasted Orange Chicken

Take refuge/heart from whatever is near.

It isn't a mystery why an obsession with recipes is so strong, especially during pandemic light (or whatever the current phase should be called).  It gives the feel of connection - with lovely and varied tastes, and with others equally engaged in productive efforts.

A January Thaw?

 

    A thaw  would be a relief from many things, for many reasons.

    What else can one expect after two snowfalls in four days (counting the nights)?  This is a month that is best lived day-to-day in search of sun and anything else conductive to good health and personal welfare. The country now more than ever is in search of its  democratic foundations  and a way out of the misinformation tide threatening to drown all civility.

    I had, for a while, at the top of a list of notably negative signs the titles of notably popular books (at least on one December poll). 'The Bitch Is Back.' "Thug Matrimony' and 'Empire of Pain,' plus Congress member Robert F Kennedy's anti-Fauci rants.  But there is only so much ill will a person can absorb before rejecting omens of any kind.

    Especially when one's birthday falls on the date of the Christian Orthodox Christmas. Bring on the lights and flowers and celebrate.

    At this point in the pandemic (capitalized or not?) it makes sense to identify the many different emotions and patterns of daily living can be attributed to what for most people is a very attenuated life. At least a life lived to the fullest. Lessons or habits learned throughout a seesaw nearly-two-year scourge?

    I write in haste, the two that occur to me: how important it is to keep a schedule - but not too perfectly; and the necessity of reading at least one book a week. Book titles are my diary of sorts. The object of holding on to some sort of daily schedule is to know how and when to break it. Finally late January 2022, I do just : I become a tourist in New York City - traveling by train to Manhattan and staying two nights in a hotel while visiting friends whom I have not seen and barely talked with in two years. In normal times such a trip would involve theater and some semblance of social life.  For one couple who are keeping strict discipline to be apart from strangers inside a building, this involves dinner outside under a plastic tent. A single heater bar overhead sustains us - barely - along with the handout plastic packet revealing a sheet of shiny silver mylar to cover our legs. A compromise, always the compromise. To enter museums it is necessary to order a  visiting period ahead online and to give proof of ID and vaccinations at the door. The upside is fewer people around, a less crowded city, and a vague sense of time suspended. I miss the absence of spontaneity: strangers communicating. The mandated mask policy inhibits such a thing. 

    As for getting through ordinary days, I am not the only person I'm sure to fall prey to addiction to New York Times cooking column or App or whatever comes with my print subscription. Sam Sifton is my guide most of the time. I ignore the lures of games and crosswords in favor of parsing recipes and treating them as treasure hunts: do I/will I have the ingredients to try this or that new or familiar challenge and what will happen as I must boldly reduce each one by three-quarters.  (The live-alone syndrome.) Mainly I fail in the attempt, being an impatient soul, but I end up with some sense of being on a journey that substitutes in some small way, for being out in the world.

December Decides

     

About our pandemic future. Will we be able to adjust to future requests (demands) for protection? Boosters forever?

November brrrrr

     Ideally, relief. The autumn chill removes the growling sound of the feisty ground level AC compressor that my California neighbors use most of the year. The autumn leaves turn red and gold for the longest time - right outside my door, on one of the busiest streets in town. (Meaning, my part of town, a sort of village known as Easter Market.)

    And I no longer fret about cooking recipes ideally served warm or more.  So at 50 plus degrees, a group could sit outside near a charcoal grill and take an long length of time to prepare paella while gradually forgetting that night is coming on....

    And I find it no problem to enjoy mixing and matching a round of stuffed peppers done with custom blends of no-beans, no-wheat, no-carbs etc. Suiting tastes of my neighbor family whose parents are either lactose intolerant and keto happy. 

    Thus, the upside of oncoming return to regular 'standard time' with an extra hour along with the downside of adjusting to nightfall at 5 pm. onward...

    So what did you do during the pandemic, grandma? The question I expect my two granddaughters one day to ask. Expect and hope they will be curious enough even though their own lives will (god hope etc.) not be touched by the most dangerous virus in their own world to date. How to answer? Well, I read 64 books in 2020 and am working on my 2021 list, now about 40. It's not likely I will get to finish 20-some more in six weeks to match my old record. What have the books taught me, now that's a question to avoid. I can also tell them I was busy translating New York Times  Cooking columns into a fake copy that might pass as food.

    'Explain please:'   So when I download a recipe such as Roasted Salmon With Miso Rice and Ginger-Scallion Vinaigrette ( 8 words), I must account for 11 ingredients that are given for 4 people. I am only a one with no hope of sharing since the outcome will be muddled even if I do follow exact instructions. Do I do a dance in the kitchen, open a bottle of wine, pretend to divide the four into one number - and take my chances. Likely I fail since I'm impatient. I want to hurry up the process, argue with the suggested time involved of 30 minutes - presumably the total between assembly and finale. It's a game, I tell myself. Just produce something that is colorful enough so I want to eat it: cabbage and  sweet miso flavored rice atop a skinny salmon filet. Usually I'll manage a few bites, depending on whether the radio offers me a program worth chewing to...

    Image shown is a Statement - about how weary we have grown with the pandemic rules. A mask thrown off or lost in the weeds by a busy city street. Bedraggled as we all often are...

On to December and then?

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blogger woes

 okay, so no more photos to go along with my blathering, or at least until I can find out what is upsetting the system...

October's Odds

 

    Could there be any such thing as an ordinary day?  That may depend on how a person regards 'ordinary.' So when I go early to a local garden center, thinking about possible plantings for my patio (not an ordinary phrase!), I  wander through greenery observed by a store clerk who is watering greens around me. "I like the color of your hair," he says out of the blue with a smile. "What color is it?" I reply in a teasing mode. "Burgundy," he tells me. 

A win for spontaneity perhaps. 

    And leaving another more distant garden center with friends, I witness them arguing in the car over whose memory of the site where the wife had recently found herself rear ended on a highway that ended the life of their other secondhand car. Neither would give in to the other though both were involved, the husband arriving on site later after a few frustrating conversations with 911 and his wife about the name of the place. The wife had thought her directions to him to come to a certain plaza was the correct name, when it turns out (or seems to have been) she was mistaken. The only way the couple could connect physically that day was by having the wife's daughter  several hundred miles away trace the accident scene  (and her mother's  not totaled car) on an iPhone and send the photo to the husband.

This sleight of hand is taken for granted as a common sense solution in these confusing times.

At the garden center itself, we three had met a woman loading into her car a substantially heavy cypresss  - "a native," said the woman, noticing our interest. Her car was parked in the loading zone where I stood by my new purchases on another trolley . She couldn't be stopped from  giving us more information about the deliciously graceful looking green plant. There was no stopping her. She was no longer working professionally, she said, though she was 'a master gardener, ' thereby all-knowing about such things. An entire education for us, freely procured, in only ten minutes time.