Alan Alda now and then
Alan Alda is now eighty-five. How did that happen? He was the speaker at my college commencement, Fordham College, 1978, forty-three years ago.
Amateurs
From Chaplin’s Limelight: “That’s all any of us are — amateurs. We don’t live long enough to be anything else.”
Accounts, multiple and definitive
Do we need multiple biographies of Philip Roth? Can one biography of Bob Dylan be “definitive”?
Zombie cicadas
“Infected cicadas, despite the fact that a third of their body has fallen off, continue to go about their activities like mating and flying as if nothing happened.”
Out of practice
Elaine and I went out to visit friends last night, our first nighttime social effort in well over a year. And we didn’t remember to turn on the outside light when going out. We’re out of practice.
Advice from Raymond Chandler
“It is never stupid to ask questions. It is only stupid to guess at the answers and take a chance on being wrong.”
Seven vs. eight
Jon Gruber juxtaposes Jon events.
Thankful
Typed during the memorial service for William “Billy” Evans, Capitol police officer.
Advice from Gabby Giffords
Jeffrey Brown: “What do you tell yourself when things are difficult?” Gabby Giffords: “Move ahead.”
Inside
On Friday, March 13, 2020, my life on pause began. Elaine and I went out to eat at our favorite restaurant that night (Thai food) and made a quick run to the supermarket, where I took a photo of an aisle emptied of paper towels and toilet paper. I remember that empty aisle as a sign of strange times.
Orange Crate Art: Soup’s on
To the left, Nancy and Sluggo sup soup. To the right, Elaine and I do the same.
“As seen in Wal-Mart”
A customer, in her fifties at least, no mask, wearing a sweatshirt with this motto: I’M JUST WTF-ING MY WAY THROUGH LIFE
“Effeminate”?
“He was a skinny high school student who had asthma, a high-pitched voice and effeminate mannerisms”: it’s a good story, in The New York Times. But isn’t characterizing someone’s way of being as “effeminate” part of the problem to begin with?
And speaking of AOC
She’s leading an effort (one of many, of course) to raise money for Texans in need.
Small pleasures
The first seconds of music in a Disaronno commercial tricked me.
Decluttering, continued
An easy plan for living a richer life with less stuff, or at least the same life with less stuff: put this book in the box for donations.
Small pleasures
No. 1 in what I think will be a series.
An unexpected question
“Are you [unintelligible]?”
SASE, PetSmart
Yes, it’s called life-long learning.
Did I really have this conversation?
“Just so you know — the card reader at the first pump isn’t working. I tried two cards.” “How isn’t it working?” “It doesn’t read the cards.”
Mar-a-Lago
That house with the signs and the pool and the lawn furniture all over the place: it would be really immature and small-minded to make fun by calling it Mar-a-Lago, don’t you think?
“The antithesis”
“He’s like the antithesis of public health”: Dr. Irwin Redlener of Columbia University, speaking of you-know-who.
Reality just got a little weirder
Stormy Daniels will be conducting a paranormal investigation at a nearby location.
Love thy neighbor?
What might it take to persuade some people to take COVID-19 seriously and act accordingly? I’ve wondered if this message might work.
“What?”
“Giving you a wide berth, son!” I shouted.
“The scale of betrayal”
On Trump*’s COVID lies: "The scale of betrayal is almost beyond political analysis": Mara Gay of The New York Times.
A reminder
TRUMP = DEATH.
A letter of appeal
A young Chicagoan, makes an appeal to the people of her home county, a COVID-19 hotspot, asking them to help keep her mother alive.
Play Music on the Porch Day
“I got blisters on my fingers!”
Source?
“I’m not afraid of death. It just don’t suit me to be lookin’ at it.”