Day 17: A Sorry State of Affairs

This just in: the government is recommending that we all do wear cloth masks in public places.

Perhaps I should be reading the U.S. news less because it’s terrifying: shuttered businesses (with USPS possibly closing in June) and massive unemployment claims, field hospitals set up in Central Park and ventilator shortages, the threats on Dr. Fauci’s life and Covid-19 conspiracy theories. Regarding the Administration’s stunning mishandling of the crisis, yesterday in an interview Noam Chomsky explained why the U.S. was so unprepared even though scientists have known for years that a pandemic was coming: There’s no profit in preventing a future catastrophe.

And maybe I shouldn’t be writing in this thing every day. Really, you guys: you don’t have to read it. With each passing day it gets duller. Should I turn off the feature that sends you an e-mail each time I publish? Would that help? I fear that my blog-writing efforts, intended in part to help me maintain (?) sanity, are a burden on anyone who comes here. Sorry.

I attempted to draw my friend’s beloved late dog, Daisy. It came out all wrong, but I’m putting it here anyway. Mom said Daisy’s nose, as I drew it, looks like a pig’s, so I darkened it some.

I took a walk yesterday and saw, in front of the Albany post office, what I guess is an ornamental cherry (please correct me if I’m wrong) but it was weird: it had a single, massive burst of blossom in the Y of two branches. I’ve never seen something like it. Dotted elsewhere on the tree were delicate single buds, and then this one dense blob of color that was a good six inches in diameter. At first I thought someone had stuck a rose-carnation bouquet up there. But no. I reached out and tested it. It was real, and attached.

As you know, my neighbors have been meeting out on the street every night at 7:00 since last week. You’d think, with my totally empty schedule, I wouldn’t keep forgetting such an event, but I do. I’m bored and lonely, but still quite antisocial. Tonight I remembered, and showed my wrinkly face for about fifteen minutes or so. It’s good to see other humans, but it’s also good to retreat from that effort.

I found another picture from Mom’s now-digitized scrapbooks. Here I’m exactly Ember’s age (nine, in 1963), fearlessly leaping from the top of a barn ladder onto hay bales eight feet below.

My friend PT told me a while back about a daily e-mail you can sign up for: Merriam Webster’s Word of the Day. Most days I know the word, which makes me feel very wise. But today’s stumped me: pleonasm. I tried without success to guess its root. It’s something you’ll find in abundance here on Bloggy. Give up? Can’t get it? Don’t know? It’s the use of more words than those necessary to denote mere sense: redundancy.

Ooh, look what just came in the mail. I feel wealthy and secure now.