Dean at Home: The Pandemic Blog

Fire and Water Today was a tired eye day. I think maybe this is what happens when you sit in front of screens non-stop all day long for thirty days. When I used to teach English, occasionally I would get behind in grading (occasionally, I say!) and I would have to pull an all nighter to get caught up with student essays, and all the rest of the waking hours my eyes would feel like this. Or sometimes, after a late night Thursday gig at the Sierra Grille, the next day feels a little like this.  It has continued to be cold out, and aside from a few hours when I let the wood stove die, a fire has been burning all day. I did see a daffodil this morning... though I forgot to take a picture. The sun was out, but for all its optimistic presence, the temperature seemed to stay below fifty. It will be nice once it starts to get warmer.  A slowly growing fire pit. In anticipation of warmer days, one of my COVID-19 dalliances has been creating a fire pit down by the river. ...

First Kiss Apparently, in support of the class of 2020, on social media, people are posting pictures from their yearbook photos. I suppose for this year's high school and college seniors it is a chance to see how strange and silly we all looked, and that, clearly, life gets better after that. I couldn't find my high school yearbook, but a classmate of mine did and sent me my senior photo, which is even sillier than I remember. Imagine a faux casual pose leaning against a tree sitting in the grass, a dashiki sort of shirt, a long multicolored hippie belt, and shoes without socks. What happened to my socks? Why no socks? Oh, and short hair. The way I remember it, I was still growing into this world. Everything seemed awkward and hard, like a new pair of shoes, or driving a rental car. And yet, there was also all the brash bravado of an seventeen year old kid who thought he possessed insights about the world that were more profound and unique than the majority of the planet....

Flying Pyramids Yesterday, I played with my bandmates from Vimana for the first time since the pandemic started. Not in the same room, of course, not even at the same time (I'm envious of seeing friends like Lloyd Miller, who create these neighborhood concerts of social distance with people hanging out of windows and out on the sidewalk, as he thumps the upright bass on someone's lawn). But Bruce recorded himself playing drums, Brian did a bass video, and I recorded myself playing guitar, mostly all on iPhones. I then spliced everything together into a passable semblance of playing together. It wasn't really like playing together, of course. But it was nice to spend some time running through the tune and trying to get a clean enough take to use. Even after several hours, I think I still have room for improvement. I may even try to do one more take tonight and re-edit the video if I have the time. But what was nice, was inhabiting that space, the focus on the music. B...

The Beginning of Things We aren't always aware when something new begins. I was talking with my son yesterday about graduate school, and how this new amazing thing will begin in the coming year... even if the end of his senior year feels strange and surreal with the socially distant cafeteria meals, and Zoom music classes.  But often times, we don't know when something new is beginning, whether it is an innocent conversation outside a poetry reading, an initial meeting of musicians, a first attempt at a sour dough loaf, or reading a book on guitar building... and the next thing you know, years have passed and that thing, that person, that interest, has become an ingrained part of one's life and it is hard to imagine things otherwise.  For better or worse, most people who know me, recognize that I am easily infatuated. I leap wholeheartedly into things and emerge hours, weeks, months, years later with a very specific, perhaps mundane to most, knowledge about certa...

Labor and Love The latest fashion. One of my daughters sent us some of her handmade masks today. It is a beautiful bespoke item, with a pocket to load with some kind of filtration fabric (like the blue shop paper towels I have in the basement) and hand stitched straps to tie around your head, and ear elastics for an even tighter fit... plus it is paisley.  When my daughter was in high school (I think it was high school, but was it middle school?) she disassembled a store bought backpack, taking apart every stitch until she had a pattern that she then transferred onto materials she picked and reassembled into the most amazing object I had ever seen. When one's child plays Shostakovich on the piano, or writes a beautiful poem, or constructs a backpack out of nothing, it is an amazing thing.  I am lucky to have witnessed such things, and many more. For all my failings as a parent, still my children amaze me with their capacity, their focus, their dedication to the...

Retrospective Weather Report It was wet and colder today, so no ride. This morning I thought it might be funny to describe what the weather was like today like a weather forecaster, but in hindsight. But that feels like exerting too much energy at this point in the day. I'd rather imagine the weather I'm looking forward to, when my feet aren't cold and I can stop making fires in the wood stove... when I can open the windows to let in the fresh air, and when I can appear in all my Zoom meetings in a t-shirt. From my last trip to NYC. Just before bed last night, I started watching Paul Simon's videos from his home. I've always admired Paul Simon, since my early days with a record player. I can't remember who introduced me to Simon and Garfunkel, but I think I had every album on vinyl, and the Concert in Central Park on cassette. Of course then there was the One Trick Pony movie and Graceland . But the house concerts are different. In one he does an Eve...

Jet Planes From the junk drawer It is strange when the only plane in the sky is a military jet. It is late. I had to finish a draft proposal for a grant. Some days run long. You stare so long at the computer screen that there is a dim haze to everything. Despite that, this morning I found a little bottle of hand sanitizer in the junk drawer. Despite that, I rode today, to the second field, the one with big sky where I could see people in the distance, and the barn, and a horse. Despite that, I rubbed spices into a rack of ribs, baked them for hours in the oven, and grilled them a little too long, but they were still delicious. And this morning, somehow I bumped the stove with my hip and turned a knob, so that all morning I smelled the fragrant stink of cabbage and marveled how powerful the cabbage in the refrigerator still smelled, until I realized how close I was to igniting in a glorious burst of flame. From Our Friends: Nothing t...