Everydave Life

May 5, 2020

May Hooray 1

May is a cheery month, I think. Or at least it should be one. It’s bright, the weather’s getting nice, flowers are blooming, birds are singing, baseball is a quarter-way through the schedule and getting interesting (well, most years!), we’re able to shed our winter clothes. If you’re a student, the end of the school year is almost upon you and if you’re at work, we’re getting to the time of long weekends and summer holidays. May should be a fine month which uplifts us all.

Of course, this year is a bit different. “Covid 19” and “Social distancing” are running neck-and-neck for the most used new entries into our lexicon and both can make us nostalgic for ones which popped into popular use in recent years… things like “Gangham style.” Even “impeachment” see downright warm and fuzzy by comparison.

So since we’re all quite probably stressed about the virus, about our health and the health of the economy, this May looks a bit darker and drearier. But there’s still lots of good out there, lots to enjoy,so this month I’ll try to put out a few thoughts on things which we can be thankful for, or enjoy even in Pandemic Times. It’s an idea that’s not altogether new to me. In 2015, I put out a book (Thank Goodness – 101 Things To Be Grateful For Today) designed to do the same – make one see the good all around them every day.

So let’s start with a simple one…we can still spend time with our families and the ones we love at home. People are finding ways to have fun with their kids. Some families might even be re-discovering forgotten pleasures like playing board games together or running through their library of favorite old movies. And while many, like me, are missing pro baseball and the kids can’t play organized little league that doesn’t stop everyone from having a little fun on the diamond, like this father and son:

Try to enjoy your day, and if you have little ones, remember any day can be a special one.

April 28, 2020

This Music-loving Dave Reads About The Other Music-loving Dave…

The art of storytelling is not necessarily a dying art, but is one which is getting a little gray on top and wheezing a little. In the last week or so, I revisited one of its finer recent practicioners, reading Stuart McLean‘s Vinyl Cafe Unplugged. It was the third compilation of his “Vinyl Cafe” stories which he put out with some regularity for over 20 years until his death in 2017.

McLean had decent careers as an English professor, then a news journalist before settling in to become one of Canada’s most beloved media types by telling stories about folks who felt like family. If that sounds a bit familiar to Americans, it probably should. McLean’s often been referred to as “Canada’s Garrison Keillor.” The comparison is obvious, with both telling stories of ordinary small town folk on public radio then publishing them in compilation form. Of course, while Keillor’s stories were set in his fictitious Lake Wobegon and was mainly heard on NPR, McLean’s were set in Toronto. Now, Toronto is anything but a “small town” but it is also a city of neighborhoods, and McLean made us feel like residents of Dave’s little corner of it.

For those unfamiliar, the Vinyl Cafe stories center around Dave, a middle-aged proprietor of a vinyl record store, and his family, wife Morley and two kids. The stories flip back and forth between his record store, his home life and quirky neighbors and the odd reminiscence of his youth in rural Nova Scotia or his career as a rock roadie when young and single.

The stories are generally relatable, sometimes warm, sometimes witty. The term which seems to fit is “gentle humor”. Not many of these stories will make you fall on the floor laughing, but in general they do make you feel like Dave and Morley are family, have you cheering on their little victories and nodding along with their foibles or frustrations of having a teen girl and ‘tween boy to shepherd into adulthood.

The themes are familiar, lower-case ones. Dave’s buddy’s wife doesn’t like him much and doesn’t realize he didn’t go with said buddy on a run to the beer store when she dashes to the kitchen in the nude to get a drink. An old customer comes back to his store after being away for seven years and the most valuable record Dave owned ( a 1930’s 78 by Geechie Wiley) has them reminiscing and catching up on each other’s lives. A stodgy old aunt comes from Britain to visit and go to a Due South fan convention – she’s obsessed with the Canadian Mountie show – but ends up being taken away for an impromptu fling on a little fishing boat. The family decide it would be nice to make each other Christmas presents but find the idea is nicer than the stressful reality of doing so. Nothing earth-shattering but then again, nothing that causes us to have much “suspension of disbelief” nor to flinch or have our hearts miss a beat. No Stephen King scary clowns or rabid dogs in the Vinyl Cafe.

I’ve read a number of his books (there are around 10 different “Vinyl Cafe” titles, although some of them are essentially “best ofs”) and enjoy them. I like his style, I like the references to my homeland and a city I’ve strolled the streets of and shopped the stores in, and feel no small amount of kinship with a 50-ish year old guy called Dave who loves Blue Jays baseball and mostly, music. However, as I got further into the book, my honest assessment was … “this is OK, but it’s a bit weak for McLean.” To put it into parlance Dave of the store would understand, it’s like a compilation of B-sides. Worthy enough, but not representative of the heights he could attain. No “greatest hits” this one. Until I got to the final short story. “Love Never Ends.”

“Love Never Ends” sees Dave take a side seat to his old childhood baseball coach, and wife. It’s astonishing. It’s not one of McLean’s funnier tales, but it may well be his crowning achievement as a writer and a person. It says in about 14 pages as much about the meaning of life and the Human Condition as many philosophers and theologians have been able to deduce in a lifetime of work and pondering.

So the overall review is, a decent enough set of stories, and a pretty good introduction to the Vinyl Cafe for a newcomer, and if you come to it first, you might be pleasantly surprised with other books in the series you read later. If you like Garrison Keillor, you probably will like Vinyl Cafe Unplugged. But if you want to be moved, touched… made to feel, track down the “Love Never Ends” story from it, at a library, online, while sitting in a bookstore. But have a Kleenex ready.

April 22, 2020April 22, 2020

Boffo Beer Blog : Week 12 (or so) Vanilla And Beer Together Again

Week 12…or so. I think we missed a week or two in there. Anyhow, I hope you’re all keeping well and safe out there. And treating yourself to a nice meal and bevvie from time to time.

This week I taste tested something that sounded a bit different – Breckenridge Brewery’s Vanilla Porter. If it sounds like a drinkable candy for adults… well, it’s not quite. But it isn’t far off either.

Breckenridge is a Colorado brewery begun in 1990 in the town it was named after. Apparently the little craft brewery and restaurant/tasting room is still there, but they quickly outgrew that spot’s output capability so they moved. They built a large brewery in downtown Denver in 1992, right across the road from the Rockies’ baseball stadium, but in time that too became too crowded to meet demand so they relocated to 12 acres in nearby Littleton where they now have their main brewery and a farmhouse restaurant featuring “dining …indoors or a leisurely outdoor experience around fire pits, playing bocce ball” and enjoying their majestic views of the Rocky Mountains.

The company is, like many smaller craft breweries, altruistic and donate to any number of local charities including a local conservation group, Metro State University and food banks, of which they proudly have donated over 100 000 meals to. Most unusually, they also say they last year donated over 500 cases of their beer to non-profits! And why not? After a hard day volunteering handing out some boxes of food, or planting trees, why not reward the folks with a cold one?

Breckenridge seems to specialize in darker, heavier or more unusually-flavored beers than many of the larger competitors or even than some of the IPA-focused other microbrews of the Great Plains. The vanilla porter is one of their regular mainstay brews, along with Hop Peak IPA, an oatmeal stout and Agave wheat beer as well as “nitro” nitrogen-charged cans which just about explode the beer out with “velvety cascading heads.” Among the flavors that come nitro-blasted are the vanilla, Chocolate orange stout and an Irish stout.

Speaking of which… porter? Stout? Draft mag says they are very similar but porters are a little less bitter than stouts, both are “well-hopped and dark” due to their use of unusually brown malts. Guinness is probably the quintessential stout.

So that leads to my Vanilla Porter. I would have liked to pop open one of those nitrogen-exploding cans but settled happily for a conventional 12 ounce bottle. I had it with a mighty fine jalapeno-topped cheeseburger and a few finger-food veggies on the side.

Popping open the bottle,and pouring it, I was reminded very much of Guinness. Why not – remember, stout, porter, tomatOH, tomAHtoe. It was very dark, and produced a thick, caramel-colored head that filled half the glass. Swigging the remaining ounce or two from the bottle, it came across as intriguing. Definitely a strong flavor, but with a hint of sweetness and a remarkably smooth, creamy feel to it. It rates at 5.4% alcohol, about average to a Canadian like me but just a bit stronger than norm in the U.S. Kicking into the burger, the beer really ramped it up a notch … while still strong enough to taste, it blended wonderfully and cut the heat of the jalapeno which had a lot more character than I expected! Somehow, it added an unexpected layer of flavor to both the food and the drink and left a decent feel to the mouth. It did still have a bit of an aftertaste, not unpleasant but odd , both bitter and a wee bit vanilla at the same time. And to note, while there is a definite vanilla hint to the flavor, this is not like a dark, melted ice cream.

All things considered, a nice drink that seems to do well with a strongly flavored meal. I give it 8 out of 10 for strength and 7 out of 10 for flavor and

four out of five mountain goats for the Colorado brew.

April 11, 2020

Time To Be Like A Crow

A CNN headline grabbed my attention this week – “Birds that learn new behaviors less likely to go extinct.” Being a birder and environmentalist, I was hooked. I read it and found that a study by people at McGill University in Canada found that birds which adapted their diet or hunting techniques to the situation they were in did better and were less endangered than ones which didn’t. It cited examples like crows, which have been known to pick up nuts and drop them on roads so cars would run over them, with the birds eating the innards when the coast was clear, and cormorants which would follow fishing boats in hopes of getting some of the catch the boat would drop or throw away.

My first reaction was “duh!”. My second was “how do I get in on research money to do a study like that?” Maybe I could spend a few years getting paid finding that “people prefer cuddly kittens to feral rats for pets” or “people prefer a nice breeze to tornadoes ripping the roof of their houses.” I mean it seems abundantly obvious enough, doesn’t it?

Maybe I felt a bit jealous. Not to toot my own horn… oh, OK, “toot toot”… I said exactly the same thing about five years ago in my first e-book, The Mockingbird Speaks. In that, I suggested that many life lessons could be learned by watching Mockingbirds and one in particular was that the adaptable thrive, be they birds or people. I pointed out that the birds were expanding their range and increasing in numbers at times when many other birds were becoming scarcer by the year. Mockingbirds eat almost anything – I’ve personally seen them consume everything from wasps to wild cherries to millet seeds at feeders and records show they won’t turn down cut up oranges, baby lizards if they find them, suet, and almost any kind of berry known to man or Mother Nature. They’ve learned to live in our city gardens, the edges of forests and along the weedy right-of-ways along rail lines. That’s adaptable.

Similar success stories are birds like the Cooper’s Hawk and Pileated Woodpeckers. The hawks have skyrocketed in population since DDT was banned in the 1960s partly from that helping their health but also in part due to a sudden change in habitat. The bird-eaters used to live almost exclusively in dense woods. In the last thirty years, they’ve somehow come to realize that they do equally well in suburbs. Feeders and populations of city robins, sparrows and pigeons ensures them a steady food supply and as long as there are a few big trees around for their nests, they seem to thrive. The Pileated Woodpecker is similar in that they’ve somehow changed from needing vast tracts of forest to living in and feeding in neighborhood trees in green towns and cities.

Contrast that with well-known endangered species like the Ivory-billed Woodpecker or Kirtland’s Warbler. The woodpecker, a larger version of the Pileated, lives – or lived – in dense, old southern swamps eating pretty much just one type of beetle found in decaying trees of a certain age in only certain floodplain trees. When most of the forests that fit the description were felled, their populations crashed and now a record, even if accompanied by grainy video, is viewed with a lot of skepticism.

The colorful little Kirtland’s Warbler is similar. For whatever reason, they seem to only eat select insects that inhabit only Jack pine forests of a certain age. That type of forest only occurs in a small area of northern Michigan and a few hundred acres in Ontario. One large fire could potentially wipe out the species. The individual birds, I’m sure aren’t being obstinate or dumb… they aren’t making a conscious choice to only eat one type of bug and saying “I’d rather die than live in a different variety of tree”… they were just dealt a bad genetic hand.

The implications, to me, were obvious. Birds which adapt do well, those which didn’t were not much better than doomed.

By extension, the message carries over to us. As I put it, yesterday’s expert typewriter repairman is today’s chronically unemployed person. We need to adapt to changing times and situations. If a type of food becomes scarce, we need to be able to substitute something else for it in our diet. If our employer goes belly-up, we need to be able to take our skillset to new ones. Needless to say, the more we can learn and adapt our skills (be they job related or personal ones), the better off we are. It was a message that made sense in 2015. It’s imperative now.

This pandemic is challenging all of us, and I don’t think anyone is liking it much. Maybe it’s doing your 9-to-5 at a bedroom desk, maybe it’s getting shopping done before work instead of late at night. Maybe its shopping less and being less picky about what brands of soap or toilet paper we’ll accept. Even when this eventually calms down and we go back to a new “normal”, adaptations may be called for. Dr Fauci already suggests that business meetings won’t be opened by everyone shaking hands in the future. Some stores won’t throw the doors open again after Corona virus is a distant memory and maybe the person coughing and sweating away across the corridor from you at work won’t be considered an admirable example of work ethic and rather, a selfish sickie down the road. It’s hard to say.

What isn’t hard to say is that we need to be flexible. Need to be able to adapt like a crow. Or Mockingbird.

I’m off to round up some fuzzy little kittens and angry rats…

April 7, 2020

Local Celeb, Universal Messages

“I’m walking through this world not in search of a trail to follow but in recognition that the trail is waiting for me to blaze.” Wise words to live by from Clint Harp, in the latest book from my reading list, Handcrafted.

I love nice furniture, but have little interest in the process of how it gets made. Given that, my latest read might have been an odd choice for me, and could’ve been dull as mud. Thankfully, it wasn’t.

Handcrafted by Clint Harp is much more than a biography of a carpenter…I’m sure he’d say that the New Testament is much more than a biography of a carpenter as well, so it pays to be curious. Although then again, I doubt Harp would want to compare himself to Jesus in any way.

Harp is the carpenter sidekick of Joanna Gaines on Fixer Upper, and host of his own slightly less well-known show, Wood Work which ran on DIY Network a couple of years back.

I was given the book by someone who knows how much I liked the Fixer Upper show and what the Gaineses- Joanna and Chip – have done for their hometown of Waco. I didn’t grow up in Waco, so it’s hard for me to imagine just how run-down and deserted the downtown was only a couple of decades back. Now, it’s a hot tourist destination (well, not now…thanks Corona Virus!) full of trendy little bistros and clothing stores, a busy renovated theater and crowds of people from all over. Although the success of the university football and ladies basketball teams have helped as had the mere fact the city is about half-way along the highway between the exceptionally fast-growing cities of Dallas and Austin, a great deal of that newfound popularity owes itself to just one thing – Fixer Upper and the charimsatic Gaines family. Their Magnolia companies. renovated some old grain silos downtown, turned it into a store and food truck center and have since opened a bakery and cafe (with plans to add a church, softball field and whole row of new shops soon). It’s been amazing to see the city catch on in the past few years and the likable couple of Joanna and Chip go from being home renovators you’d sometimes glimpse standing outside a construction site to regulars on magazine covers and on TV shows like Today.

They play a huge part in Clint’s book and success too. Clint was the go-to carpenter on the smash reno show, and as a result his own business, Harp Design has become a tourist spot in its own right and he’s hired on a busload of helpers to keep the shop and his resultant store running. But as the book shows, it’s not been an easy road for him, nor a destination he foresaw.

And that’s the interesting part of the book. Clint never aimed to be a professional carpenter as a kid… in fact, for some time he figured maybe he could become a professional musician (and hey, he’s an REM fan apparently…more reason to like him!). He did fine as a high-paid salesman, which was great except he hated the job. Handcrafted outlines just how odd, and difficult a walk for him and his family. Be it God or good luck, Harp’s followed his gut so to speak, and it seems to have turned out quite well. At times when many would turn around and backtrack, he’s pressed onwards. But there’d been arguments along the way and sleepless nights working away to meet deadlines which loomed large. Along the way, he learned how little he knew, an important lesson the wise among us all come to find out sooner or later..

In short, the book shows the value of following one’s goals, and priororitorizing one’s life. An ordinary guy who believed in himself, was lucky to have a wife who did the same and has fumbled on through, not getting sunk by the losses and appreciating the little wins along the way.

I once saw Clint trying on shoes in a local department store, just as Fixer Upper was starting to take off. I recognized him from the show, but didn’t approach him. I rather regret that now. I hope now I’ll have the opportunity again some day. The guy’s wasn’t born with a silver spoon and has a lot of lessons to teach… and hey, two R.E.M. fans are seldom at a loss for conversation!

March 30, 2020

Boffo Beer Blog, Week 11 : I Voted For 903’s Brew

What could be more American that having a cold beer while watching a baseball game? Well, of course right now staying at home and not watching baseball – there is none after all – would be, but we can still enjoy the cold beer part. So for the new brew this week, I voted for an odd-sounding Texan beer with a patriotic-looking can. I Voted is an unusual fruity beer offered by the 903 Brewery in Sherman, Texas, a small city near the Oklahoma border. They describe it as “a straight-forward cream ale we’ve added raspberry and blueberry to” , resulting in a “fruity aroma” and “coating feel”.

Somehow, I expected a relatively light beer, but when I popped open the 12-ounce can and poured it, I found a dark, effervescent beer that looked reminiscent of a root beer soft drink, with a little less frothy head. The flavor was fairly strong, and definitely fruity. I could detect a decidedly fruity flavor, although pinning down which fruit was more difficult. Rather than raspberry and blueberry, it seemed almost like grapes and the drink seemed reminiscent of a sparkling red wine.

I’d just had a taco lunch, but actually had this afterwards with a tangelo orange ( a very fine specialty fruit I must say in both taste and ease of peeling!). Drinking it with the orange created a very nice fruit salad sort of effect, although there was still a bit of a bitter aftertaste. I would’ve been curious to taste it with the spicy taco; it seems like it might go fine with anything a wine connoisseur would enjoy a red with. But it seems like a decent choice for a dessert drink. The brewer simply suggest pairing it with “rock, flag and eagle.” They by the way describe it as purple in color.

The website for 903 needs a little work but does tell us a little about themselves. Like some of the other microbrews I’ve highlighted, it seems to be a small business started by a couple, and they have a taproom and restaurant (currently closed due to the virus)which hosts trivia nights and features well-reviewed grilled cheese sandwiches. 903 definitely isn’t the typical lager-lugger brewer. they seem to specialize in odd, unexpected flavors for their roster including a French toast stout, Sasquatch chocolate milk stout and a coconut-pineapple ale.

As for this raspberry-blueberry offering, they suggest “we don’t care if you’re blue or red, or purple like this beer, as long as you make yourself heard.” I vote for following that advice. As for the beer, it might be like a lot of candidates on the ballot – not ideal but better than some alternatives. I give it a 7 out of 10 for strength (the flavor is quite strong; the “kick” is quite average … the website give it a strong 6.5% alcohol rating but the can I had read a more typical 5%) , 6 out of 10 for flavor and all-in-all

Three Uncle Sams out of five.

March 30, 2020

Bryson Book Badgers Britain

I imagine a lot of you will be getting in a bit more reading time these days, even if not by choice. Publishers thank you, corona virus.

Anyway, my latest book read is The Road To Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson. It is, like almost all of Bryson’s books, a humorous travelogue. This one is a trip across Britain, a follow-up to his first look at the UK, Notes From A Small Island, back about 20 years ago.

For the uninitiated, Bryson seems like a terrifc and fun guide whom we’d probably hate to hang out with. He has an attentive eye and great writing skill and a droll, sarcastic sense of humor. One which seems to find fault in almost everything and every situation, making life a bit tedious for those around him I’m sure.(Trying to buy a ticket for a train trip for instance, he complains the self-serve machine wouldn’t serve, forcing him to line up to deal with a rail rep “who had once answered a British Rail ad that said ‘wanted: cheerless bastard to deal with the public’”)

Bryson is American by birth but chose to relocate to the British Isles while middle aged. One has to wonder why, given the amount of complaints he has about the British public (he notes, for example that a study shows the average American won’t walk more than 600 feet to get anywhere and speculates that while once Brits were energetic, today that stat would hold up there too but the difference is the Brit would have to stop to get a tattoo and throw some garbage on the street before going 600 feet). He loves baseball – non-existant there – and seems indifferent to soccer, “football” to them, which is nearly a religion on that island.

That said, he finds much to like about Britain as well, mainly the examples of old architecture and the landscape.

I don’t know if i’ll be getting to the UK any year soon, but if I do, I’ll be taking along the book to help find some of the better parks, museums and small towns to visit… and which train stations to avoid! But even if I never get there, The Road to Little Dribbling is an entertaining read. Recommended for anyone who enjoys traveling or getting a taste of foreign cultures.

March 26, 2020

The Trouble With Normal (Is It Always Gets Worse), Part 3

What will the new normal be when things finally revert back? Perhaps that’s the biggest question of all these days, even more than “when”.

I’m far from unique in pointing out that when things went back to “normal” eventually after the 9/11 attacks, we found that “normal” was different than had been on Sep. 10, 2001. It doesn’t take much imagination to suggest that Corona virus will be similar in that eventually, when it fades into the background or even disappears, things will be different. What does take imagination though is to figure out just how they’ll be different.

There will be some negatives for years to come, of that we can be sure. The economy’s already taken a major hit worldwide and we’re not even close to wrestling this illness to the ground. The “stimulus” package just passed in the U.S. is said to cost some two trillion dollars, and guess what – that’s got to come from somewhere. Yes, that’s probably very necessary to help out people losing their jobs through no fault of their own, temporarily at least, and having to pay unexpected out of pocket expenses but is also about $8000 per taxpayer country-wide. Expect either tax increases or cuts to other government services for years to come. Likely both.

Obviously, some businesses that are closed now may not come back. Many non-essential retailers are shut down for the time being in the name of public safety, and for some that are already teetering on the edge of oblivion, it may be too much to ever come back from. I’d be surprised to see an open Sears or JC Penney store in the future, personally. Same goes for Pier 1 as well. That company just closed about half of their whole chain just before this occurred, and I wouldn’t bet on the remaining 450 stores or so in the future. After all, the chain was already nearly completely bankrupt in good economic times; nice but expensive imported pillows, wall hangings and tableware may find an even smaller market in tough times that will follow. And yes, tougher times will follow.

People are going to lose their jobs, not only in companies like theirs which will probably go under. Right now the tourist trade is taking a beating, understandably, and while the beaches of Florida, the Eiffel Tower, Disney World, the pyramids of Egypt and so on will always be draws, if the economy shrinks, they may not draw as many people. It’s unlikely the government’s going to let major airlines or hotel chains fold entirely, but not unlikely they’ll shrink. Fewer tourists means fewer jets in the air, fewer pilots and flight attendants, fewer hotels needed. Not to mention fewer restaurants and bars near those attractions, fewer gas stations along the way.Hence fewer jobs.

I wonder too, if many businesses still operating but operating differently won’t choose to opt for the new ways. For instance, many stores have cut their hours (that made no sense to me in the case of supermarkets, which were already busy and seeing a jump in sales) … neighborhood “24 hour” Walgreens now close at 9 PM in many cities and it’s rare to find a supermarket or Walmart open before sunrise now. If they find people still find ways to shop during the reduced hours, will they revert to the old, longer hours that require more manpower and electricity down the road? Less all-night shopping, and thus fewer retail jobs may emerge from Corona. On the other hand, shopping online may become even more dominant than it has been up to now.

With many offices doing all they can now to get the majority of their staff working from home to prevent the spread of the illness, it’s not hard to imagine that if that goes without too many snags, they may not be anxious to bring their whole roster back to the home office five days a week. A lot more people may be telecommuting in the future, good for the bottom line of the corporations (less office space means less rent, electricity etc.), good perhaps for our environment (imagine the savings in gas for just an ordinary worker not driving perhaps ten miles a day to work… now multiply that by millions) but perhaps not good for socialization or for the real estate market.

Speaking of real estate, if the economy flounders for some time as a result of this virus, tough times may befall real estate agents. But it could be a bull market for Lowes and Home Depot, as well as books by those “Property Brothers” or Gainses of Fixer Upper fame as people decide to just “spruce up” the existing home instead of looking for a bigger and better one to move into.

Let’s hope though that some good things will arise from this mess. For instance, people are now hyper-vigilant about washing their hands and not standing near people coughing or sneezing. Perhaps that will become more of a habit down the road, and we’ll all be a little bit healthier in years to come. Same goes for staying home when you’re sick, which might become even more ingrained into our consciousness if more employers offer sick days as a result.On a bigger scale, perhaps governments, American especially (but others as well) will see a positive aspect to perhaps spending more on defending their population’s health, even if it means spending just a little less on defending borders with space-age jets and missiles.

People are getting by without going out to the malls for recreation right now; while we don’t want to see large chains go out of business and people losing thousands of jobs, our society might do well by having some people realize that shopping is more a necessity from time to time than a daily recreational activity. If our society becomes even a little less consumeristic and more people-oriented as a result of Corona Covid 19, it could be a bit nicer, and less wasteful world to inhabit.

The U.S. has a way of looking rather narrowly at the world and seeing itself not only as the Center of Everything, but as a bit of an island. (An example which comes to mind to me, as a Canadian, is how most American publications will refer to American records as the only ones… when they speak of “best-selling albums of all-time” for instance, they almost invariably are referring only to U.S. figures, ignoring the ones sold to the other 6.7 billion people elsewhere) If people come to look outwards a bit more, and see themselves as part of a global community besides just being a part of their own country, we might benefit. That of course is true of other countries as well, although I think that mentality is most applicable to the United States.

But the U.S. isn’t the only country which will hopefully go about things a bit differently in the future. It might be politically incorrect so say, but it’s true nonetheless that China needs to change the way of some of its people. I know, many think it hypocritical to say we can eat cows or pigs but others shouldn’t eat other mammals, but there’s a reason people don’t normally eat bats, cats or rats. Corona virus came out of a “wet market” in Wuhan, somehow making the jump from infected bats there to local people to wardrobe consultants for Law & Order SVU across the Pacific in a matter of about three months. These markets not only treat animals inhumanely, they crowd together any number of exotic species in close, and unsanitary conditions, proving a nice little petri dish for viral experiments. Corona came from there; SARS and the Swine Flu from similar situations in China earlier this century. Time for bats and wildcats to be left to the wilderness and the animals we choose to consume to come from farms which meet certain health standards, in Wuhan just as much as Wisconsin.

Last but not least, let’s hope we can all gain even a wee bit of a new set of priorities and appreciation for things we can take for granted. In the city I’m in, the large public park near me is closed down – presumably because the virus could infect kids playground equipment or a drinking fountain. It’s rather a drag. Maybe when things go back to “normal” , people will appreciate that park and walking through it a little more. And maybe we’ll rediscover the simple joys of things like walking around the parks enjoying the singing birds and blooming flowers; like doing arts and crafts or playing Clue with the family. Getting to appreciate what we have now, and those we have in our lives, a bit more. That wouldn’t make the current pandemic a good thing, but it sure could mean some good might eventually come from it.

March 23, 2020

The Trouble With Normal (Is It Always Gets Worse), Part 2

Wuhan, it turns out is a city that’s the same size as New York. Yet it’s only the ninth biggest city in China. The U.S. has one city (the Big Apple) with more than five million residents; China, 19 of them. Which along with it being about 5000 miles removed from the nearest port on our shore, explains why three months ago most of us had never heard of it. Until, that is, people who shopped in a “wet meat” market started getting sick, and in some cases dying with what originally seemed to be a weird pneumonia.

That was around Christmas time, but due to both the Chinese government’s secrecy and our own fascination with efforts to impeach the president and all those TV singers wearing a mask, we didn’t really begin to hear about the Corona Virus, or Covid 19, until about a month later.

The first news reports seemed bad, but also seemed almost irrelevant to us here. Yes, thousands were sick there but not here and China, seemingly to their credit looked like they had gone to lengths to contain it. It was downright bizarre to watch news reports from China – not even just Wuhan, but other major cities – and see huge modern expressways into skyscraper-sprouting skylines completely deserted; see reporters talking in malls bigger and shinier than ours which were modern, gleaming … and empty.

Then somehow, Iran became infected. Then Italy. People got worried. Japan shut down their whole school system for a month, despite not reporting many cases. Italy quarantined the whole northern half of their land. Then a couple dozen people contracted it on a cruise ship off the California coast and the president didn’t want to allow it to dock. All for a disease which we initially were told was nothing worse than the flu, which we already have over here and kills thousands of people a year, and for which we do nothing other than suggest people get an annual shot that may or may not help prevent it. It made very little sense.

It really seemed like it wasn’t our problem until very recently. That’s the striking thing – how quickly our world has changed. Not as fast as if a jet had flown into a building, but quickly nonetheless. And the impact might be just as resonating.

The first sign things were really haywire was only about two weeks back, when the NBA suddenly suspended their season, only a couple of weeks short of beginning their playoffs. Hours after that announcement, we found one Utah player had the illness. Then two. Then four New York ones. I was dumbfounded when I read that news before going to bed that night, less than two weeks back now. Personally, I don’t care for basketball, so it mattered little at all to me, but it was shocking because it matters to millions of people, and generates hundreds of millions, billions even, of dollars. You don’t just erase dozens of games (many with 18000 or so tickets pre-sold for them) at a drop of the hat. Within 24 hours, the NHL had followed suit and the writing was on the wall for baseball which was ramping up to full speed about a week and a half away from opening the regular season. A day or two later, MLB had stopped all spring training games and delayed the opening of the season to who knows when. That’s when it started to become a bit of a real annoyance to me… and people began to panic.

Fast forward only about three days from there and we get to two Saturdays back. By now, the U.S was up to a few thousand known cases, and about 11 or so fatalities, mainly in one old age home in the Seattle area. It seemed alarming, but still entirely controllable. Not to the masses though.

I ventured out to one of the larger mid-town supermarkets that Saturday night and left basically empty handed. Entire aisles had been cleaned out as if a Biblical plague of locusts had descended. There was not one roll of toilet paper to be found, nor paper towel. Only a handful of loaves of bread remained in the 40-foot aisle, and those were mostly those oddball “organic, gluten-free, quinoa with fig bits” loaves that sell for about $6. Or actually, don’t sell. Most of the canned goods were gone. The next afternoon at Walmart, more of the same. No milk or eggs either. And that’s about when the craziness really set in.

We know a couple in Austin who weren’t feeling well. We see them about once a year. Somehow, communications lines got crossed and there was a rumor they had Corona Virus. The Kiddo here told someone at her workplace that and the boss jetted in like a 747 into an office tower and told her to leave immediately and not set foot back in the store until she’d been tested and could prove she was corona-negative. This for a teen girl who was showing no symptoms.

Her mom and I kind of rolled our eyes and sighed, and said well, fine if that’s what they say we’d better take you to a hospital and have you tested. Mother phoned both of the large regional hospitals only to be told they had no tests available. On Monday we found that there was testing in a city 80 miles away… but you had to have symptoms and be referred by a doctor. We began to realize why the current administration was being raked over the coals for not handling this crisis well. Not handling it at all actually.

The kiddo tried to explain that to her manager, and the latter reluctantly let her come back to work in the store which had by then cut its hours. All a moot point now as that retailer has shut all of its doors until some time in April at best.

Well you know the rest, because it seems like whether you’re in Tennessee or Florida or north of the border in Ontario, it’s the same. We’ve had a week where people are panicking, lines form around the block two, three hours before supermarkets open in the morning with people eager to have a chance at getting a 6-pack of toilet paper or case of bottled water and by mid-day, most shelves in the food and cleaning aisles are empty as if the Grinch had just gone through leaving one crumb too small for even a mouse.

On the plus side, city streets which are usually gridlocked at 4 PM are a nice easy glide and the gas to do so cheaper than it’s been for years, because people have nowhere to go. Businesses are shut down, you can’t go out to eat or watch the game (which isn’t taking place anyway!) , telecommuting has in 10 days gone from the unlikely and a perq of the few to the way offices do business now.

My sweetie works in a large, modern office for a large local company. She handles customer inquiries and complaints, quite well I must say. Flu swept through it last winter, the company seemed not to notice. Corona though, is a different breed of virus. By mid-week last week, they were asking workers to work from home. Today she started doing so, for the forseeable future. The company even sent home one of her large monitors so she could use a bigger screen than her laptop offers. So far, it’s going well though she already misses some of her “team members” and her bigger, liftable desk there. Which is understandable to me, as I’ve found that the thing that makes most jobs mentally worthwhile is the co-workers you interact with and the friendships you make there.

Of course, it’s not just her, nor just offices. Can you imagine being an NBC exec and suggesting three months ago, “I think we should prepare for when Savannah Guthrie and Al Roker have to do the Today Show from their own living rooms and our nighttime talk show guests will be being interviewed remotely via Skype?” The company would’ve shown you the door and stuffed a map to the local mental hospital in your pocket on the way out. Yet that too is the new reality.

It’s scary. The illness seems random. Some have it and barely feel “under the weather”, others get it and are in the ground a week later. That’s scary. In Italy and elsewhere, it seems to explode like a bomb after the public makes real efforts to do what we’re told – wash hands, stay indoors and so on. That’s scary. Every day that passes makes it less likely fans like me will be watching baseball this year, or like my dad, the Olympics this summer and that’s … well, not exactly scary, but mind-blowing nevertheless.

Eventually, we’ll go back to normal. But what will the new “normal” be? It might be bad but maybe, just maybe it won’t be that scary….

March 22, 2020

The Trouble With Normal (Is It Always Gets Worse), Part 1

People older than me often talk about remembering exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard JFK had been shot. It was before my time. I do remember Lennon being killed; it saddened young teenage me but didn’t have that kind of “time stands still” effect people on me people refer to with Kennedy.

To me, so far in a bit beyond five decades and counting, there’ve only been two really big things that changed the world. Not changed my world (things like a parent dying or moving to another country can do that easily but don’t really make much difference in the overall grand scheme of things) but changed the whole world. The first was Sep. 11. And now the second is this Corona virus pandemic.

I remember 9/11 as clear as the skies outside were that morning. I was driving to work, a short commute cross-town, and for some reason I flipped on the AM news channel in the car instead of my usual switching between the in-town rock station and Toronto alt rock one. I think I actually hadn’t heard the previous night’s baseball scores and wanted to catch a sports update. Instead, I got a live news report from New York, about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center. That seemed bad, needless to say, but the radio details were scant at that point. I figured it was some little Cesna piloted by an incompetent novice flyer. Bad, but nothing much to worry about.

Of course, the world changed very quickly that morning. By the time I got into work, the second plane had hit the other tower and they were no Cesnas nor the pilots simple incompetents. 2001 was a different time in many ways, and we had only limited internet at work (and no TVs) but we were not allowed to use the computers to surf the web or do anything personal. That day though, we stood around the monitor at the front desk, owner and hourly people alike, watching the events unfold and getting frequent updates from terrified customers who walked in. At the time, offices like the Chicago Sears Tower and even Toronto’s CN Tower were evacuated because we didn’t know what would come next. There were of course, wild unfounded rumors as there usually are when terrible things occur. At one point in the morning, we were led to believe there were probably a couple dozen more jets up there which had been hijacked and could be targeting anywhere. My sweetie, whom I didn’t know at the time, was in Waco, Texas and scared they would be a target, not so stupid a worry considering then-President Bush had his own ranch just a few miles down the road and was known to fly across the city in a helicopter.

When I got home, I had on the TV – what channel didn’t matter, since they were all doing nothing but cover the story – and phoned my Mom, who was crying. As most of us were.

I guess I went back to work the next day. I don’t really remember. Well, we all know what happened afterwards. Things slowly went back to normal, but it was an entirely new “normal.” Soon the U.S. would be invading Iraq for goodness knows what reason and both they and my Canada would be sending troops into Afghanistan for the futile reason of trying to bring that country into the capitalism-loving, Christian-based 21st Century. Got your shampoo in your carry-on bag? Think again. Homeland Security became not only a new catchphrase but a whole new governmental department. And of course, Middle Eastern people, many of them not even Muslim and almost all of them good, harmless, were viewed under a microscope and with widespread disdain and mistrust.

That indirectly was one of the odd personal effects it had on me (no, I’m not Middle Eastern nor Muslim.) At the time, I’d been laboring away on a novel. I likely had about half of it done, maybe 100 or so pages. I wasn’t absolutely sure of its direction and outcome, and it wasn’t going to be shelved beside Wuthering Heights and The Great Gatsby in the “you must read this book now!” section of future libraries. Nevertheless, I was proud of parts of it and some bits of prose in it.

Strangely though, for what reason I cannot recall now, I’d put in a secondary character who ran a small convenience store in the protagonist’s hometown. The shopkeeper was very friendly and polite… and very foreign looking. Spoke with a strong accent. And midway through the story, he got carted away by the Feds on suspicion of funding a terrorist cell. My protagonist had to work through it all in his head, and figure out if the friendly man behind the grubby counter was an evil mastermind or an innocent victim of rumor and prejudice. (Strangely, as I said, that was not the main storyline, just one tangential to a larger picture of small town life.)

Well, needless to say that got trashed. It seemed inappropriate at best to write somehting like that then, and in fact, at that time it just seemed suddenly a waste of time to write some work of fiction. Trite. The novel ceased and eventually disappeared into a landfill I suppose, with the rest of the hard drive of a now long deceased computer.

I wish nowI’d kept going on it, even if I changed the story around some. In retrospect, the philosophy of the cast of Friends was the right one. They believed, after some reflection, that what they were doing was important, that entertainment was perhaps more important than ever then as people needed relief from the worries and uncertainties of the day. They decided to keep going, make a few subtle signs of respect for the victims in their show but try to make people laugh more than ever. Likewise, the players who went back onto the field to finish the baseball season later that month; they knew the public needed a diversion. But that wasn’t my mindset then.

In the years since, things have gotten back to normal, but it’s not quite as good a “normal” as it was in the spring of 2001, or in 2000. And things kept going along as normal until just a few weeks ago when people started getting very sick in a city in China we’d never heard of…