My Birfday, 2020

Today is my birthday. I’m not observing it the way I had expected to. 

Until a month or so ago, the plan for this weekend had been for my mother and her sons (my two younger brothers and me) to gather at a downstate casino resort, where for two days we would play board and card games in our hotel suite, stuff quarters in the machines at the video arcade, and enjoy great meals and talks together.

There He Goes Again . . . Loftus Puns and Wordplay from 2010 and 2011

It’s been pretty somber around here, so I figured it’s time to supply a laugh. Starting in 2015, I systematically collected up all the puns and other wordplay that flowed across my Facebook wall. At the end of each year, I put together the past 12 months of same and uploaded onto this blog.

If you haven’t seen them — or if you can’t remember them, and I could hardly blame you if you can’t — the past six years’ annual rundowns are here:

• 2019
• 2018
• 2017
• 2016
• 2015
• 2014

Before that, I was certainly active on Facebook, going back to 2009 or ’08, but I wasn’t actively storing up whatever flowed out of my fingers. With the historic “Memories” function on Facebook, I’ve been able to pull up a smattering from those early years.

2010

Jan. 12:  I wonder, if a guy develops a carcinoma in his C-3, C-4, or C-5 vertebra, could he be said to have contracted cervical cancer?

A Journal of the Plague Year . . . Week 2

Here, lightly edited, is a representative sample of my thoughts and comments on social media from the second week of our new reality, starting Wednesday, March 18 (if you haven’t read Week 1 yet, that’s here). . . . 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18

10:27 a.m. — Another odd facet of this new, strange time is how much sunshine we’ve been enjoying while mostly shut in. Curious about rainfall in Portland this year, I did a little digging. Rain gauges maintained by the city’s Bureau of Environmental gathered between just under 19 inches to nearly 22-and-a-half at various locations around the city this rain year (since Oct. 1).

The total in an average year runs between 37 and 42 inches — at least, that’s what I’ve been telling my Portland Walking Tour guests for the past few years. Last year was a dry one; it saw only 30.62 inches.

Although Portland received an unusually high amount of rain this January of 7.39 inches (a full one-third of our total!), we’ve gotten less than an inch and a half in March, and zero for the past three days.

A Journal of the Plague Year . . . Week 1

Given plenty of time while self quarantined, many of us are undoubtedly poring over and sharing lots of online news. Some of us are writing, as well.

The traffic from your Facebook friends, however many or few you have, has probably been too much to capture. I’ve collected a representative sample of my thoughts and comments on Facebook as a sort of “journal of the plague year” (with a tip of the hat to Defoe — no, I’ve never read it) which I’ll upload week by week.

Starting with Wednesday, March 11, the last relatively normal day of our lives in 2020. . . . 

Faw Down Go Boom . . . part 2

My last commentary marked the one-week anniversary of our nation’s coronavirus crash with a description of how it had affected me thus far. Here, I want to expand the lens to some of the national implications of this crisis.

PRESIDENT FLIP-FLOP

By now you’ve probably seen the list of fatuous statements the President made over the past two months regarding the supposedly minimal threat posed by the novel coronavirus and how his team had the situation well in hand—from “It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control” on Jan. 21 to “Anybody who wants to get a test can get a test” on March 6 and “I’m not concerned at all” the following day.

Faw Down Go Boom . . . part 1

We are coming up on a week since the bottom fell out and we started life in the U.S. under a new socio-cultural and government regime—a new reality.

Last Wednesday morning, March 11, I took the streetcar downtown to act in two more shows of the first full stage production I’ve been in (for various reasons) since the spring of 2012. As with many of the 19 performances before that day, we played to two nearly full houses of school children: fifth graders, sixth graders, and middle schoolers, mostly. Later in the afternoon I did a commercial photo shoot, and in the evening I attended the book discussion group I’ve been active in since July 2002.

While my book group buddies and I were having dinner together and discussing Ken Kesey’s Last Go Round, the news broke about a Utah Jazz player testing positive for the coronavirus and the NBA promptly shutting down its season. The next morning, everything in the rest of our lives ground to a halt. When the cast of the play showed up at the theater about 8:45 a.m., did our vocal warmups and fight call, and got into costumes and makeup for the first show at 9:45 . . . the house was empty and remained so.

The Running-Off-The-Cliff Effect

A common convention in animated cartoons—but odd when you think about it—shows a running character race off a cliff and continue to move in a straight line through the air at least a few steps further—as if there is still a horizontal surface beneath his feet.

His progress eventually ceases—that is, he gets a few feet out from the cliff’s edge before coming to a halt—but he continues to stay at the same vertical level as the cliff top he left behind . . . as if he were still on a flat surface.

Pause for a second to ask yourself: When does this happen in reality? Precisely never. In the real world, downward trajectory in response to gravity begins the instant one steps off the cliff.

It’s only when our cartoon figure looks down and registers there’s NOTHING THERE, that he finally begins to plummet. We saw this happen a LOT to Wile E. Coyote, for example.

Another detail that often adds to the comic effect is that, right after the awful truth hits, most of the character’s body will shoot straight down, out of frame, while his head remains stationary in place for another half second or more (thus stretching his neck to an absurd length).

Tales from the Portland Streetcar, 2019 edition, part 3

Apr. 16:  On shift for Portland Streetcar today, I noted three Lime e-scooters parked neatly on the streetcar platform at SW 11th and Alder about 12:15 p.m. Though it’s possible for disabled persons in wheelchairs and with walkers to enter from either end of the platform, and there was sufficient room—I believe—to get around these . . . technically, they were parked in the disabled access and pedestrian right-of-way to the streetcar stop.

While I was photographing and documenting them for notification of my bosses, and the complaints I will file with PBOT and Lime, a young woman walked up and and asked me to explain how to use one. I don’t know, because I’ve never used one and I never intend to, I replied. But I want to try one out and I don’t know the rules, she said.

Well, you should have a bicycle helmet, do not operate it on the sidewalks, etc., etc. I don’t see bike lanes on many of these streets, she said; what do I do? Just ride it in traffic, I said. But what if I hold up cars, she persisted. Look around, I responded; how fast is traffic going downtown? If you fear you’re holding up traffic, pull over to the curb for a moment.

I proceeded to tell her some of the many reasons I feel e-scooters really shouldn’t be in the city at all—I mentioned the fatalities in San Fran and Nashville. You’re scaring me, me said. You should be nervous, I replied, because these are here for a pilot test period, and if riders used them nervously and defensively—with care instead of ignoring traffic laws and regulations right and left—then they might fit into the general transit matrix better.

As it is, I concluded, I see they fill no transit need whatsoever. She said, you’re not helping; I just wanted to try it out. Be my guest, I said. And off she went.