Dean at Home: The Pandemic Blog

Day 15, March 31, 2020 The other day I signed up on the Western Massachusetts Mutual Aid Network as a Neighborhood Pod  volunteer. The idea is that various neighborhoods can identify at least one person they can turn to if they need help with errands, picking up prescriptions, groceries, or something like that. On the site you can request help, volunteer, or give a monetary contributions for people in need. It seems like a great model of a Community Economy that is grassroots organized, non-profit, and has helping people at its core. I feed the chickens, and the chickens feed me. Debbie used to live, in what I called, an intentional community-lite. Laurel Park in Northampton originally was a Methodist summer camp, and many of the houses that are still there are dormitories and cottages from that original incarnation. Almost all of the houses are small, not quite tiny houses, but quite small, and very cute. The residents own their homes, but communally own the land, which

Day 14, March 30, 2020 So this is what 14 days feels like... what a typical quarantine is for people who have been exposed. It has been fourteen days since I was last in my office, plus a weekend, I guess. So aside from my short forays out into the world, I have stayed in a mostly insular prescribed space.  Debbie and I went out for a quick trip to CVS and the grocery store, and for the first time wore her homemade masks out in public. Mine is a nice vibrant blue, and hers is yellow with little flowers on it. At the grocery store there were several other customers also wearing masks. Some people seemed to respect distance better than others, but everyone's wariness was palpable. I have been reading about the xenophobic virus response, and therefore felt hyperconscious about appearing in public wearing a mask, but at least at these stores, it seemed like everyone was equally wary of one another. The trip made me wonder what will happen when this is over. How will we come

Day 11, March 27, 2020 I remember learning to ride a bicycle. It was summer and we were out in Pittsfield because every summer my family moved out to the Berkshires for the Tanglewood season (my father plays violin for the Boston Symphony Orchestra). My dad took me to the K-Mart parking lot on a Sunday so we were the only car in the lot and surrounded by a sea of asphalt. It was a picture perfect vision of a father teaching his son how to ride without training wheels, like something out of a movie. He ran alongside me holding the chrome bar on the back of the banana seat as I pedaled along, and then, as all fathers do, when I was least suspecting it, he let go and I pedaled off into the void. That is, until I realized he as no longer supporting my balance and, faced with an obstacle, I did the only thing one can do in a sea of asphalt, I crashed into the only light pole in the near vicinity. I'm sure I scraped a knee and probably cried. I have trouble letting go as a fath

Day 10, March 26, 2020 I started the morning by making a perfect fire. A perfect fire has just the right three logs perched in a nice triangle, with good airflow between the base logs, the right amount of paper rolled up to get things started, and a little bit of luck. When everything aligns, you can light it up, open the vent, and step away until everything catches, then you close the vent and bask in the glory of a job well done. This was such a morning.  Years ago, I had a friend Robert Smith, who was a writer and an avid outdoorsman. When he was in college, at some Ivy League school, he quit his senior year to go and become a lumberjack up north, and then chronicled that adventure in a memoir. Even into his eighties he was adamant about only cooking over a wood fire and would split the wood himself before throwing it into the grill. He too, was a connoisseur of the perfect fire. I can still hear him cursing at the logs that wouldn't stand on end on his chopping stump.

Day 9, March 25, 2020 I made a pandemic panic purchase a week or so ago. I've been trying to be good and restrain any sense of panic or fear, so when I went to the grocery store, I bought only one package of toilet paper. When I was at CVS, I only bought one bottle of Tylenol... but sitting a home on the evening of our first work-from-home-night, scanning Facebook I saw an ad for the complete collection of Studio Ghibli films and my mind raced.... What if I have so much time on my hands I don't know what to do? What if I run through the entire catalog of television shows and movies available online? What if I read all the books on my bedside table? What if I break a string on every guitar I own? So, I discreetly pulled out my credit card and placed the order. Now, I think I have to be a responsible citizen and tell you, do not order things on adds from Facebook. A larger percentage of Facebook ads are too good to be true, are scams, or at the very least, what might seem

Day 8, March 24, 2020 Hello Everyone, It is a wintery landscape out there. It was a beautiful bright sunny day, but the touted heat never materialized so the snow is still out there, a good five inches or so. When I went out this morning to feed the chickens, I noticed an interloper had circled the chicken enclosure, then made its way down the slope into the gully that leads to the Saw Mill River following the path I annually rake from the undergrowth.  Some time in the early morning, two deer investigated the neighbor's yard, circled the chicken fence, maybe smelling the feed, and headed down to the river for a drink. I like thinking that we had visitors and it makes Franklin's sometimes random barking a little more intelligible.  I also had good timing with my egg check. One of my favorite things is to retrieve a still warm egg from the coop. There are few things in life as pleasing as holding a chicken-warm egg in the palm of your hand. It is up there with kissi

Day 5(7), March 21, 2020 Hello, I guess I don't know how I should be counting the days since I didn't write over the weekend. So is today day 5, or is it day 7? Maybe it would be better to keep track of all the days... So, officially this is the Day 7 blogpost. It is snowing as I write this, and just moments ago the woodpile tried to murder me by collapsing as I bent over to load my log carrier. Luckily, I had my big winter coat and gloves on, so it felt more like a linebacker trying to shield a quarterback, but it did take me a moment to realize what just happened. My instinct was to roar in anger at an unseen aggressor (there was the loud noise darkness of the tarp, in addition to all the logs), then another moment to make sure I was ok, nothing broken, no punctures, and I paused to regain my composure, bend back down to fill the log carrier, and make my way back to the house. I was lucky. So the remainder of our wood is now in a collapsed and chaotic tumble, but maybe

Day Four, March 20, 2020 Hello Folks, Well, I just completed the most epic marathon Zoom session ever. From 10:30 am to 6:44 pm, with breaks for lunch, and a few other 10 min. breaks. After that marathon I feel like I need to join a union. Even after moving my office chair from the basement, my butt is sore and my eyes are blurry. That said, it was a very nice meeting and wonderful to meet with colleagues from across the country. People were in good spirits and it was nice to be immersed in work outside of the deep day to day stuff (though I did try to answer emails when I had a chance).  So, I'm pretty much toast at this point, though I am excited I learned how to make custom Zoom backgrounds (we had fun randomly changing them during the duration of the meeting). For those of you curious, here's my basic set up in a corner of our eat-in kitchen. For today's tech heavy meeting, I had my iPad setup as a 2nd machine to the right... and a cup of tea seems to be th

Day Three, March 19, 2020 I'm getting to this a little late, so I'll try to keep it on the shorter side. After working from home for most of three days, my son at UMass needed some survival supplies, and rather than have him hike into town on a damp chilly day, I offered to run the errands for him. So I left the insular sanctity of our little home and ventured out into the world... and this is what I discovered. At CVS people were discretely cautious... no overt expressions of distrust, but nobody passed by anyone else in the aisles. If someone was focused on a purchase, the other person backed out of the aisle and went around. Three people were wearing surgical masks, and one woman had a scarf wrapped around her face. Another woman was consulting with the pharmacist about the potential success of using sunburn gel to make hand sanitizer (she was going to mix in alcohol). The pharmacy was cordoned off by boundary lines of bright yellow tape (stand behind the line), and

Day Two, March 18, 2020 One of my rituals each morning is going out to feed the chickens. I saved the leavings from last night's stir-fry (carrot peels and ends, the bottoms of bok choy, leaves and stems of broccoli) in a yogurt container, and added to that some sliced up cabbage (something Laurie Parker shared with me as a chicken favorite), and then added a scoop of scratch (seeds). In another yogurt container I got a scoop of pellets, and headed outside. The wonderful thing about chickens is how they express sheer joy. They hear the door open and see me come around the corner and they get all excited and start hopping from one foot to the other, they run back and forth along the fencing, and if they were busy inside thinking about laying an egg, all that is history as they hop down from the coop to see what's for breakfast.  I talk to them a little bit. This morning I explained that so much is going on in the world, and that they were lucky to live in such blissfu