Cloister Commentary, Day 22: Grasshopper

As I mentioned yesterday, I videoconferenced with the two Mizzou teacher interns I am supervising this year. Their student teaching journey was abruptly truncated by COVID-19–they are still assisting their as they are able with grading and virtual lessons–so we discussed the possibilities they’d encounter next fall: content challenges and limitations, stressed students with fragile economic support, explaining what is happening right now in the context of their instruction, isolation (if teachers can’t yet work in person in the fall). The potential environment is daunting, and I do not envy them. I usually let them do the talking, but I did offer them each these words of advice: try to find a crusty old veteran who still has ahold of their joy and sidle into a “grasshopper” role. Nothing helped me get my footing better; it’s not that I avoided my fellow greenhorns, but “the older guys know what it’s all about,” as someone once sang. They helped me dodge several potholes–right, Bob Bilyeu?

Nicole and I started some new shows: HBO’s adaptation of Richard Russo’s novel Empire Falls, which I just finished reading; Netflix’s The Stranger, recommended by our go-to Anglo-American TV critic Susan McDermott-Griggs; and another Netflix item, Self-Made, an impressive limited series tracing the life of Madame CJ Walker, who’s played by the always-great Octavia Spencer. It’s got fire, spunk, wit, and a surprising style and soundtrack–plus Tiffany Haddish, who threatens to steal every scene she’s in.

Streaming for Shut-Ins:

Sample an early ’80s album by Nina Simone that was just reissued and might even surprise big fans if they haven’t heard it.

And: if you want to sample Self-Made‘s soundtrack?

Cloister Commentary, Day 21: Blithely

I am writing these to a) share how Nicole and I are making our way through this crisis, and b) keep a record of our journey so we can look back when we have better perspective. Sometimes, though, when I re-read them, I’m dumbstruck by the good fortune that allows me to move about securely and comfortably in my home environment, and I feel a pulse of self-loathing that just makes me want to stop writing.

But–no matter how blithely I may seem to move through my days, I’m all too aware that we were in trouble before COVID-19, we’re unbelievably vulnerable now, and we’re surrounded by many (who happen to have access to the buttons, levers, and strings) who have only scorn for vulnerability. So…one can carry that around all day, into the night, and as dawn breaks. Frequently, I can’t turn my projective mind off; I do stay (and have stayed) well-informed, and that information constantly feeds the projector. Today, I video-conference with the two student teachers I supervise, and I know I won’t be able to help from asking them to project what their teaching environments will be like in the fall, and how they hope to respond to their students who’ve been hit the hardest.

I am so grateful for the books, music, laughs and love that allow me to be distracted meaningfully and healthily from these concerns. If it does seem I’m responding too blithely to our troubles, perhaps I am, but a quickened heartbeat has been disrupting my sleep.

Streaming for Shut-Ins:

Maybe we need to talk to the spirits.

Cloister Commentary, Day 20: Beet Box Bounty

I had hoped to vote for Bernie again in the general election, but no. As Nicole told me yesterday, if we can all be and think more like Bernie, the country will be better off if anything like THIS happens again. As my friend Ken wrote recently, an economy where folks don’t have to work multiple jobs and more than 40 hours a week to survive, and a health care system that’s inexpensive and accessible to all are both reasonable requests of the wealthiest nation in history.

We went out to eat for the first time in over three weeks yesterday. I love my wife’s cooking, we’ve been eating smarter, and is it easier on the wallet! But our restaurants need patrons to survive, and we have some damned good ones in town. We chose Beet Box, called in our order (two falafel sandwiches and an order of Za’atar fries), carefully picked it up, returned home, plated the food and tossed the containers, sanitized the table and our hands, microwaved the plates for 30 seconds, and dug in. WOW!!! I have plugged this restaurant here before, but I have never eaten a falafel sandwich so good, and I’ve eaten many. Co-owner Benjamin Hamrah, as hardworking, talented, and ebullient a person as I know, has got something great going–think about supporting Beet Box. (The process above may seem laborious–and that’s a truncated version–but we believe it’s safe. It is also intense, which is why we always have a drink afterward!)

A tiny detail of my new normal: no matter what time of day it is or where I am in the house, I have a laser pointer in my pocket. #catkingdom

Three joys of the day: our front yard trees, bushes, and flowers popping out, an early evening breeze and sunshine combo, and a Zoom double-date configured (what a word!) with our friends Vance and Liz Downing.

Some relevant photos:

Streaming for shut-ins:

If you need to get up and move (and you do), here.

Cloister Commentary, Day 19: Please Don’t Bury Me

This stuff can kill us, is killing us at a very rapid rate. If it doesn’t, something else will, we are assured. It’s just that we’re getting reminders at a rapid rate, too, from thousands we do not know to the few who we imagined could live forever (they may, through their work) but understood could not, like that old crust John Prine. I’d like to recommend his work to those unfamiliar with it, because it has the soul nutrition we need to put these days in perspective. Take, for example, the mortality song I have shared below, which he wrote before he turned 30. A grinning, shrugging, generous acceptance–and an invitation to kiss his ass goodbye.

In other news, Nicole and I moved the lawn furniture out into the backyard and onto the deck. That was a simple action that made us both feel good, and gave our external felines Goldpaw and BB hope for more strokes than usual. I actually executed a decent Zoom class–I just said eff it and used my phone–and participated in two other video sessions, with some Stephens folks (having to lean on it more heavily than this part-timer, they’re tiring of it but are digging in) and my parents, to whom I told the vanilla-ice-cream-loving penguin joke (this time). I tried to tell it to the fabulous furry Frissell brothers, George and Lee, via text–in short bursts to match the timing necessary if we had been together in person–but Lee let me get all the way to the verge of the Paragraph Four punch line before he inserted it himself (George had told it to him long ago). Never trust a Texan. I won’t tell you the one he told me, a COVID-19 joke worthy of Ken Weaver’s immortal but scarce Texas Crude.

Short, contained note: it’s all I can do to keep from screaming at our judicial, executive, representative, and military leadership right now, but fortunately, Mike, I tucked away The Inchiridion the other day and found the necessary restraint. I suspect you may have returned to it in recent hours. Your leadership deserves no screams, only praise.

Streaming for Shut-Ins:

I like to offer full albums, but this single song is a must for the moment.

Cloister Commentary, Day 18: Escape to Reality

If you’ve not read Richard Russo, I strongly recommend you do. Known best, perhaps, for the novels Empire Falls (which I’m currently reading) and Nobody’s Fool, he is expert at chronicling small town life in our modern world and–especially–capturing the subtleties of human interaction. Very, very funny, observant, and wise, his work is an excellent opportunity for the reader to, for change, escape back INTO face-to-face community.

You will not surprised that we are trying our best to support book and music stores remotely. We received a package yesterday from Lafayette’s fantastic, big-hearted Lagniappe Records, which specializes in items from the deep well of Louisiana sounds. Check ’em out on IG–you may find yourself helpless to order.

Wasn’t that a classic “Better Call Saul” episode? (This link includes spoilers.)

Our dog Louis is currently plagued by something around his butt area that I don’t want to look at closely (even if I could–it’s obscured by fur), so he wears a small donut collar during the day, then a bigger Elizabethan collar at night (because he’s figured out a way to get around the donut when we’re asleep). It seems too minor to bother our vet about, but he’s damn restless, so I’m sleeping out in the living room with him, where his “nook” causes him to calm down. The things we do for love…

Streaming for Shut-Ins:

Speaking of Louisiana music? A full album of it for you (full of rhythm and hijinks, that is).

Cloister Commentary, Day 17: Everybody Disco!

Work: Nicole made delicious buttermilk biscuits out of Southern Living as well as some spicy hummus. I put together an order for us from Powell’s Books (is that work?) and drifted into a project I had not planned: moving these over to one of my blogs to improve their readability.

Play: When I came up from the man cave after finishing said project, Nicole was playing disco songs from her computer. Without really discussing it, we switched the sound over to the stereo, turned it up, and danced until we got tired–about 15 minutes, probably, but it seemed longer, and that’s a positive statement.

We didn’t even shut the blinds, so any neighbor watching got to see me mincing like ’70s Jagger (scolding, pointing, wrists on hips) and helplessly gyrating. Partial playlist: three Hot Chocolates (“Emma,” “Every 1’s a Winner,” “You Sexy Thing”), Chic’s “Real People” (the greatest song of all-time), Bowie’s “Let’s Dance”–I forgot how great that one is!–two “Last Dance”s (George Clinton’s answer to Bowie, and Donna Summer’s), James Brown’s “Super Bad, Parts 1, 2, and 3,” Sylvester’s “Mighty Real,” Maxine Nightingale’s “Right Back to Where We Started From,” and Trammps’ “Disco Inferno.” Those are the ones I remember, as cognac Old Fashioneds were involved. But it was the definite highlight of the day. You should try it!

Disco did not and does not suck, even though I was once kicked out of high school for an afternoon for hypocritically wearing a t-shirt that said as much. At the time, I was regularly crossing state lines to dance under the glitter ball in Columbus, Kansas, and that shirt was tight and black, with the offensive message decorated in glitter and colored pink and green.

We made contact with Planet Earth again with “Call the Midwife”, which we never miss. You shouldn’t, either.

Streaming for Shut-Ins:

Cloister Commentary, Day 1: Happy Anniversary, Here’s Your Pandemic!

My good friend Ken Shimamoto, probably remembering that, in 2012, I began documenting daily what I then thought was my last year of teaching, suggested yesterday I do the same for this science (non-)fiction fix we’re in. That seems overwhelming, but I’m going to take his advice and just write what comes to mind and not fuss.

My head is daily spinning. Its preoccupations have grown from the immediate (“What’s the best way to teach these kids remotely?”) into the long-term (“When will I see my friends and family again, and how will this change us?”), from the rational (“This too will pass.”) into the paranoid (“How will we be exploited this time?”). My revelation-flickers have been both comical (“I need to at least have a stretching routine!”) and horrifying (according to Brecht-Weill, food is the first thing morals follow on). I have more ideas than I know what to do with, but for once I actually have plenty of time to do them, so to speak. In a weird way, and I know I’m not alone, in the explosion of change I feel more alive and more clear-eyed; for a second time in recent memory, a big national scab has been ripped off, and it is time to deal or die. But then there are also kitty litter boxes and windows to be cleaned! Don’t scoff at mundane rituals: what the tortoise sees as sustenance, the hare hops past unwittingly.

I’m lucky to be cloistered with my soul mate–it is our 28th wedding anniversary today. We have always liked spending time with each other and have hardly been averse to seclusion, so we seem to be well-equipped for the task at hand. Reading together in silence we both find exciting, we share music and viewing preferences (reggae and Rickles roasting yesterday), and we are immune to each other’s imperfections (#snorers). But the first 7-10 days of this adjustment have brought us to the necessity of rituals–not just exercising, but writing, meditating, working (new kinds of work), and especially helping. We’ve joined a local Facebook group that is networking concerned citizens in order to help each other and wrestle with COVID-19, and a crowd-funded effort to keep our local healthcare heroes well-fed seems to be in the offing. I’ve volunteered to mentor local students (kids or adults) who need reading or writing help, because I am not sure classes will ever resume in person before summer.

One of my biggest worries is if, as a nation, we are equal to the level of personal discipline required to arrest this virus as quickly as possible. All I can do is make sure I’m trying and succeeding.

From Mary Oliver, some worthy words:

Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last! / What a task / to ask / of anything, or anyone, / yet it is ours, / and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.

And: Streaming for Shut-Ins.

Cloister Commentary, Day 2: Humbled

I was talking to my dad on the phone the other day; he’s 84 and Mom’s 82, they’re down in southwest Missouri, and we’re keeping close tabs on them, of course. I was expressing my concern, when he very evenly, very matter-of-factly, very stoically replied, “Well, it’s just nature’s way of thinning out the population.” The wisdom of an elder: so comforting. But…yeah. Perhaps we require some humbling, just as a reminder of our essential insignificance to the overall works.

Speaking of, I am really enjoying the budding of the plants in our landscaping this year. I did the fall clean-up and pruning myself, and apparently didn’t KILL ANYTHING! But watching those buds pop out made me a mite envious: they’re outside opening up to the sun and sky, we’re hunkered down inside and…well, we don’t need to close up, for certain, but you know what I mean. Maybe I’ve been reading too much Mary Oliver. We did walk the old pooch up the block to drop some books off at a neighbor’s curbside loaning library (on Leslie, if you’re curious), but I locked us out of our house–during a pandemic, well-played! Fortunately, a friend has our spare key and we were able to recloister ourselves.

Yesterday was also our wedding anniversary, and we celebrated with the following: a great “quarantine concert” on Facebook by Edward Hamell (he’s playing another show Thursday we will also check out); some powerful music from the Sahel (see below); a couple beers; breakfast dinner (poached eggs, bacon, fried taters, grapefruit–I ate that under duress–and waffles with real maple syrup); and a further episode in Hulu’s adaptation of Celeste Ng‘s LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE. Not bad for being locked in with each other.

Rituals are good. And necessary.

Anyone else out there more beset than usual by thoughts of how the rest of the billions currently breathing are navigating this? When I start thinking about that, and reflect on my blessings–I’m coming back around full circle here–it brings me a sense of near-relief of how very minor my suffering and anxieties (right now, calculating what many months of this could be like, plus a danged pinched nerve in my hip that almost cripples me at times) really are. That may sound strange, but there it is. Comforting. The world doesn’t revolve around me–it takes a little pressure off.

Streaming for Shut-Ins:

This group recorded a beautiful album inside a dwelling in Bamako while outside a militant human plague was running rampant–it will inspire you. I can’t share it, but this performance might motivate you to seek it out.

Cloister Commentary, Day 3: Pandemic So Real

It was inevitable under these circumstances that I’d face up to the facts, and yesterday I just up and did so–I needed to organize my CDs. Yes, I still have CDs (do I!), and I have a system: in order to help Nicole stay aware of new acquisitions, I keep them out of the general stacks (yes, there are stacks…see below) so they don’t disappear. At the end of the calendar year, I then integrate them into the collection after thinning the library out a bit (with the help of Kylie and Taylor at Hitt). Except I forgot to do that in early 2019, so I had two years’ worth of CDs to integrate. Had I sold enough to make room?

Stacks

No. People who’ve done something similar will probably understand why I moved backwards from the Zs, but, unfortunately, Dizzee Rascal, Busdriver, and Buck 65 now occupy an overflow cubbyhole until I make more space. Those aren’t new acquisitions; in the process of shelving the new ones, they got bumped.

Yes, this is boring–but it’s all about control. I didn’t jump to it consciously, but I know that’s why I did so yesterday. Like yours, I bet, my mind has just been toggling relentlessly back and forth between the immediate present and the possible future, and I needed a regulator on that damn switch.

Elsewhere in the day: we started reading Alex Kotlowitz’s NEVER A CITY SO REAL (the city is Chicago, and we were inspired by having seen Steve James’ new documentary CITY SO REAL, which was inspired by the book); now that I have a yawning yawp of time, I can sample some podcasts, and I LOVED Zadie Smith’s appearance on Desert Island Discs; we had a Messenger conference call with our friends Kenny and Gwen Wright; we chuckled through episodes of KEEPING UP APPEARANCES (on BritBox) and KEY & PEELE (on Hulu); and we sampled a touch of Jim Beam Double Oaked.

Streaming for Shut-Ins: The Staple Singers, always good for Sundays and spiritual reinforcement, even for heathens.

Cloister Commentary, Day 4: A Marathon, Not a Sprint

This was a bit of a rough one. Nicole and I had decided several days ago to limit ourselves to two hours a day of COVID-19 news and research–this is a marathon, not a sprint–but it was difficult under the circumstances to disengage. The situation was not helped by a press conference we watched. The speaker was not the least bit inspiring, encouraging, or reassuring; in fact, he appeared unfamiliar with public speaking; inexperienced in either reading from a text or talking extemporaneously and authentically to his audience; at sixes and sevens when reaching for vocabulary (a septuagenarian, one would think by now, would have acquired a decent sized one by default); and unable to convince himself, least of all his audience, that his predictions about time were realistic. I felt shame and embarrassment for him (and us, to a degree), and as I reached for the remote, the local news station abruptly broke from the conference as if reading my mind. Oh yes, too, we were further depressed to see the agents of disaster capitalism stretching out their bony, abandoned-by-God fingers to claw more money into their coffers at such an opportune time (for them).

BUT. Simple pleasures.

Twining’s Irish Breakfast Tea (I have it in the afternoon). “Flipping the house”; we have a dog that’s hostile to cats upstairs and five cats downstairs, and we frequently reverse that. Starting new Benjamin Franklin-inspired journals. Reading about union victories in Chicago in the past–and yesterday (look it up!) Talking to a very cool teacher named Kelly Penn on the phone. Going for a walk in the sunshine. Eating very green and buttery peas for the first time in a long time. Finishing a book, and adding a new one to my stack, thanks to my ward councilman Mike Trapp. Admiring the parallel hijinks of Saul Goodman and Mike Ehrmantraut. And, of course, applying some musical salve…

Streaming for Shut-Ins: Thanks, Matthew, for the nudge! It’s not the full record, but the track is almost 25 (dazzling) minutes long. This musician evokes OTHER worlds: