A Journal of the Plague Year . . . Week 11

Week 11 of our new reality — in which I returned to work for Portland Streetcar, among other things. . . . 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 20

9:50 a.m. — Sure wish this country had a competent leader at the helm. A woman would be a refreshing change, for one thing.

I love New Zealand. I got to experience a nearly lifelong dream of getting to visit that country last year, courtesy of my mother. There was so much to savor, not the least of which was the opportunity to visit three friends I hadn’t seen in decades:

— an international consultant in development and feminist economics, former Member of Parliament, and professor of public policy at the Auckland University of Technology

— the director of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Wellington (whom I met and interviewed in the early 90s when I was working on my book)

— and a former AFS exchange student who lived with my family in Coos Bay in 1993-94 and graduated from my high school: our Kiwi sister, Natasha “Taz” Tawhara.

Three cheers for a great and beautiful nation!

This selfie dates from March 3 of last year: the second morning aboard the Majestic Princess, which took Mom and me down the west coast of New Zealand from Auckland to Wellington and other stops to round the southern tip for a climactic visit to Fiordland National Park, then across the Sea to Tasmania and Sydney. Here, we’re departing the port of Tauranga.

10:46 a.m. — This is astounding. Who could have predicted it?
There’s still more than five months for the fickle voters to come to their senses. . . . 

1:31 p.m. — More than 1,500 deaths nationwide in the last 24 hours.

This puts us on track to hit six figures by Sunday.

THURSDAY, MAY 21

5:07 p.m. — Back in the saddle again.

About 3:30 p.m., between showers and hail on Thursday, May 21, 2020.

7:31 p.m. — For my birthday a year ago, Carole advised guests to bring a gift of bourbon, if they were inclined to bring anything. The resulting bottles of Woodford Reserve, Elijah Craig, Know Creek, 1792, Buffalo Trace, and others lasted all year.

When I went downtown to pick up some medications for Carole and the dog a couple weeks ago, I swung into 10th Avenue Liquor on a whim, and bought a bottle of what is probably the equivalent of cotton candy or bubble gum in terms of bourbon whiskey.

If you haven’t tasted this, it’ll remind you of cinnamon red hots; remember those tiny red candies that sizzled on the tongue?).

But it’s helping me get through this.
(I also purchased a bottle of 1792 Small Batch and stowed it away for later. . . . )

10:39 p.m. — One of my Facebook friends today was bemoaning the rampant division in this country, and wondered how the nation “all came together” in past times of national crisis such as World War II . . . or was that more a rosy telling of history?

This was my response:
It’s never the case that “all sides come together” — never.

My paternal grandmother told me about racist violence against German immigrants in Fairbanks, Alaska Territory during the First World War when she was a teenager there. The local German-Americans closed down their community center/social hall to protect themselves against their neighbors’ animus.

Of course you’re aware that Japanese-Americans like my mother and the rest of her family were sent to prison camps during World War II without due process (AFTER her older brothers had enlisted or been drafted into the U.S. Army and would serve in the Pacific).

[This is a photo of Ralph Sherrieb. He owned West Side Store, just down the road from the farm owned by my mother’s parents. The day her family was shipped out of Hood River — May 13, 1942 — he came down to the train station, shed tears, and gave them an address book as a gift with entreaties to write letters from camp. But this is how he looked after they returned home in 1945.]

If you dig a little, you’ll find out about discrimination against African-Americans, and even race riots with fatalities, in the service during WW2. I just Googled “were there race riots in the US Army during World War II?” and an array of interesting links came up.

I think part of what drives our perception that it’s so much worse now — I take no firm position on this; there are just too many variables — are, among other things:

— our rosy view of the past (the survivors and victors tell the story, etc.)

vs.

— the reach of social media and the Internet today, such that not only are individuals who would have been too isolated from one another and generally ashamed to air their ignorant, racist, and just plain ill-mannered side in public can now do so from the safety of their homes. . . . 

. . . but their content (legitimate and otherwise, generated on phones they can take with them anywhere) can race around the nation and the globe in seconds, and even sometimes drive mainstream news.

Thus, there may not necessarily be any greater ugliness and division in this country today than in the past . . . but they enjoy much higher visibility, move more swiftly, and can manage a broader reach than they used to.

FRIDAY, MAY 22

10:35 a.m. — For my blog, “A Journal of the Plague Year . . . Week 7”

. . . including my first long-distance, post-pandemic video chat with my family . . . my brother’s online musical collaborations in self-isolation . . . a happy solution to an erroneous grocery delivery . . . a photo of my home workspace . . . a visit to the PSU Walk of the Heroines, with my Japanese grandmother’s name . . . another gratuitous photo of our 5-pound dog, Pixie . . . and my discovery of Little Free Libraries in Portland (which would lead to other, planned encounters during my long walks about the city).

12:19 a.m. — When I got up from dinner this evening, I certainly didn’t expect to add four more numbers to my lifetime total of karaoke songs — especially not the three I ended up doing by Devo, Dire Straits, and Queen.

But my brother Toby was hosting a Physically Distant Karaoke party online — the second he’s organized this month — and by gosh, I managed to locate some bare-bones instrumental arrangements for several songs I’ve always wanted to do, but could never find in a karaoke bar catalogue.

One (Queen’s “Don’t Try Suicide”) consisted of nothing more than a single guitar line which I had a hard time hearing — and no karaoke-prompt lyrics, of course — so I had to read the lines off a separate sheet, but it worked all right.

Other people sang Roy Orbison, Foreigner, Tina Turner, Norah Jones, Sinatra . . . it made for a remarkably intimate and heartwarming evening.

With Dire Straits’ “Water of Love” and Devo’s cover of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” my lifetime total of karaoke songs tackled is now 244.

SATURDAY, MAY 23

5:15 p.m. — Second day back on the job. I’m testing the waters with Portland Streetcar.

We haven’t been ordered back to work, nor are we expected to work shifts; management has left it entirely up to us, and I’m not aware that any other customer service reps have clocked any hours yet.

Three days ago, at the direction of the state of Oregon Health Authority, streetcar instituted a policy of requiring masks on all riders. Signs to that effect have been posted on the doors.

We are not in a position to enforce this, however; and it’s certainly not in my job description. Today I merely observed activity and reported back to administration. Most of the time, riders have been sparse throughout the day and the lockdown since mid March . . . especially after 7 p.m., an operator told me.

From my observation, mask compliance on board is roughly 80 percent, depending on the part of town and time of day. Passengers are mostly steady regulars who are dependent on the trolley, especially elders and disabled citizens; plus a smattering of what I took to be thoughtless teens and twenty-somethings as well as occasional street people. The former wear masks; most of the latter two groups do not.

The majority of street people are docile, polite, even humble. Occasionally you get a prickly shouter like the man who repeatedly barked “NO!” for no apparent reason at the elder disabled man in a power wheelchair across the aisle from him, who glanced up the car at me questioningly.

I moved in closer behind the shouter to monitor . . . and a seedy kid with his arms full went toward the doors to get off at the next stop, dropped an empty plastic water container and scooted it off the train with his foot while the shouter yelled “PICK IT UP!”

They faced off through the open doors. I wandered silently up the car to stand within the direct view of the verbal assaulter, maybe 10 feet from him; studiously pretending I hadn’t noticed him at all, never looking in his direction — just hovering.

As I’d calculated, he shut up for the remainder of his ride.

8:10 p.m. — Online chat with family in Ashland and New Zealand tonight, 7 to 8 p.m. Pacific time.

MONDAY, MAY 25

11:22 a.m. — Last week I predicted the U.S. would top 100,000 deaths due to covid-19 by Sunday. I was wrong . . . but it’ll probably happen in another day or three.

Now that some states (and many counties here in Oregon) have opened somewhat for retail and recreational activities, we’ll see how well the average American has been paying attention, and whether everyone can behave him- or herself enough to avoid a sudden spike and resurgence of infections and mortality in June.

These are the national totals as of noon on the East Coast.

11:34 a.m. — My “meta” literary experience yesterday afternoon:

Reading about the concept, technical design, funding, and corporate politics involved in the creation and promotion of the Kindle . . . on a Kindle.

4:51 p.m. — Third day of post-lockdown work for Portland Streetcar.

I actually helped a couple of riders today: directed several people to the proper stations and trains to get where they wanted to go . . . assured a woman she wasn’t going to get in trouble because she’d lost her pass and was trying to get to her office to secure another one, but couldn’t buy a ticket on board because all the cash machines have been disabled or removed from the trains.

I talked to an operations manager at the maintenance office to get the bigger picture. Two days ago streetcar started putting free masks on the trains (in the former map and activity brochure slots by the center doors), but they’re not sealed and cannot be replenished each day if/when they run out.

(I saw several trains with no more masks today, and observed an elderly rider who had his own mask on take another from the train.)

Streetcar is operating on a modified Sunday schedule: a train roughly every 20 minutes on each line, but shifted earlier than normal Sunday operations . . . in other words, starting at the regular weekday morning times (at or a little before 6 a.m.), and shutting down earlier in the evening.

Final train runs at about 10:15 p.m. rather than 11:30. We’ve been shorthanded for operators. The plan is to extend the schedule in mid June.

A train operator had told me riders pretty much disappear after 7 p.m. — nobody’s riding because nothing’s open and there’s no place to have to get to — but the operations manager also told me folks have gotten wilder after 8 p.m. There have been incidents of fights and spitting.

Tomorrow, the maintenance team is scheduled to begin cleaning/disinfecting every train roughly once every 4 hours.

I ran across this while working: a classic example of something you can walk by dozens of times without ever noticing it.

(It’s not readily apparent, though: behind a low wall and metal fencing bars through which I had to point my camera lens for this shot….)

It faces NW 10th from the Ecotrust Building parking lot, midway between Kearney and Lovejoy in the Pearl, about 40 yards south of the streetcar platform at 10th and Johnson.

The source might be green scientist Robert K. Watson, who wrote “Mother Nature is just chemistry, biology, and physics. That’s all she is. You cannot sweet-talk her. You cannot spin her. You cannot tell her that the oil companies say climate change is a hoax. No, Mother Nature is always going to do whatever chemistry, biology, and physics dictate. Mother Nature always bats last, and she always bats 1,000.”

I’ve also seen the tagline attributed to biologist and population theorist Paul Ehrlich, but it may well predate either of them.

Apparently, this particular iteration has been in place for years, but I’d never seen it (it’s behind a low wall and some bars along the sidewalk), but it seems especially apropos in 2020.

[NOTE: Of relevance to future events, it was on the evening of this day —  between 8:19 p.m. and 8:28 p.m. local Central Daylight Time — that Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin held down George Floyd with his knee on the man’s neck, steadily, until after a full minute after an ambulance arrived; and Floyd was pronounced dead at Hennepin County Medical Center emergency room at 9:25 p.m.]

TUESDAY, MAY 26

3:34 p.m. — Total books read so far in 2020:

58 (about 21,020 pages)

Books read since the coronavirus shutdown circa March 12: 23

Total e-books read on a Kindle:
lifetime = 9

this year = 6

Total books read so far after retrieval from a Little Free Library: 2 completed, 2 in progress

10:07 p.m. — This evening I was reading Paul Elie’s fascinating Reinventing Bach — the chapter about Pablo Casals and his 1936 recording of the cello suites in London — but the author wandered off into a detailed discussion of the cantata “Christ lag in Todesbanden,” and I realized I had no idea what music he was talking about.

I’m not sure I’ve ever sung a Bach cantata. So I went to YouTube to listen to the work, which is what I’m doing now. . . . 

*       *       *       *       *

If you haven’t seen my thoughts, observations, political commentaries, and jokes during the preceding weeks of the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic, you can go to them via the links below:

“A Journal of the Plague Year . . . Week 10”

(more Russian bot attacks, the thrilling conclusion to our search for unemployment benefits and federal stimulus payment, my initial experiences with heavy use of a Kindle, a visit to River View Cemetery, more about masks and covid-19 stats, and a list of at least some of the things that terrify the President)

“A Journal of the Plague Year . . . Week 9”

(what it really means to “get out” during a pandemic, previous plagues in history, my ongoing effort to obtain unemployment benefits, more photos of Little Free Libraries, streets without sidewalks, tactics courtesy of the Wall Street Journal for keeping your glasses from fogging and the long slow death of my hair dye job)

“A Journal of the Plague Year . . . Week 8”

(which includes another visit to downtown on foot, an online reunion of most of the principal cast of “Grimm,” our address courtesy of the USPS, how the pandemic outed the real “snowflakes” and made “socialist Sweden” the unlikely hero of U.S. libertarians, and my first official visits to Little Free Libraries)

“A Journal of the Plague Year . . . Week 7”

(online video chat with family, my brother’s remote musical video collaborations, a long walk from the northern border of the city, birthday wishes to my wife, a happy quarantine coincidence, and my discovery of Little Free Libraries)

“A Journal of the Plague Year . . . Week 6”

(the yellow fever epidemic that almost killed Alexander Hamilton, post-lockdown pleasure reading, invasions by Russian bots, capitulation to the Kindle, more long walks about the city, the distinction between an “excuse” and a “reason,” and an outing by car to run errands and finish a video voiceover job)

“A Journal of the Plague Year . . . Week 5”

(long walks through NE and SE Portland, tactics for maneuvering through the streets in mask and gloves, the current plague of faux certainties, and visits to the Rose City Book Pub and Reed College campus)

“A Journal of the Plague Year . . . Week 4”

(the start of my exhausting efforts to obtain unemployment benefits, first long walks about SW and SE Portland, idiocy from the governor of Georgia, an online reading with the cast of my March play production of a new short play by the lead actor, and how this is all Obama’s fault)

“A Journal of the Plague Year . . . Week 3”

(a visit on foot to a remarkably deserted downtown Portland, my analysis of the initial patterns of coronavirus testing and spread in Oregon and major metro counties, several dismissals of the worthless Incumbent)

“A Journal of the Plague Year . . . Week 2”

(the remarkably dry and beautiful weather that has brightened our self-isolation, a library books pile-up, a visit to the Portland Farmers Market after lockdown, the Whole Foods “early elders shopping hour,” a hike up the hills to visit my best friend from grade school, and thoughts about Nevil Shute’s On the Beach)

“A Journal of the Plague Year . . . Week 1”

(the weird hand-washing behavior of men, the shutdown of Portland arts events, and the run on guns and toilet paper)