Tag: COVID-19 diary

Cloister Commentary, Day 326: ‘Castin’ and Cookin’

I woke up at 3 with nothing that stress-inducing on my mind–nothing specific, which is usually what sends my mind too wakefully searching–but I was totally alert and unable to even imagine going back to sleep. I just got up, performed my morning rituals, and tip-toed around so Nicole could catch up on her shut-eye (I hate it, but she doesn’t sleep well when I’m gone). Fortunately, the cats cooperated, Tux and Junior delaying their daily thunderous hallway wrasslin’ until later in the afternoon.

Chase Thompson, one of the many excellent educators at Stephens and truly among the most enthusiastic, curious, and creative teachers I’ve known, invited me to visit his class and be interviewed in podcast style. He’s teaching his students to construct those, but he’s also making his own with fellow Stephens folks as subjects. I was very humbled to have been asked, since I am so low on the academic totem pole I’m under ground, and we had a blast. We talked about masks, Facebook threads that last multiple months, mentors that find you rather than vice versa, ground-breaking musical moments in our youth that change everything, and so much more. Speaking of those far-unfurling Facebook threads, Chase made me relive one that happened on my wall (“Pick one and justify it: Otis Redding or Wilson Pickett” is an example–remember that one?) by letting his students interrogate me: Pink or Ariana Grande? Genesis or Rush? Pink Floyd of Tame Impala? None of those are my particular cuppa, but I survived!

When I got home, I found Nicole in full-on cooking mode–she had a kind of snow day, as her school’s heating system was down and they were needing time to install a part. She made some delicious hummus, some dangerous oatmeal-cherry cookies with raw sugar crusted up on top of ’em, and a belated crockpot full of her famous Chiefsburger Soup. That’s the kind of cooking I love cleaning up after.

Closed out with The Durrells in Corfu and All Creatures Great and Small and crossed my fingers for 7-8 hours of sleep.

Streaming for Strivers:

Her voice, guitar, and spirit have rung out eighty-plus years and show no signs of slowing.

Cloister Commentary, Day 325: Miles to Go Before I Sleep

I’d driven about 1,000 miles over the past five days, and finally came to rest back home in frigid-gettin’-more-frigid Columbia. Left Mom in Monett with some ideas I hoped might help, and maybe they did: after eight months–that was a smart delay–she boxed up my dad’s clothes (with the help of Phyllis and Mike Garrett) and took them to Crosslines. Few things are harder to do after the death of a loved one, but few things are (at least eventually) more necessary. I am very proud of her! And grateful: I’m perpetually underdressed for cold snaps and she sent me with one of Dad’s big coats. The roads were fine, but freezing drizzle had been forecast, and she didn’t want to see me trudging up a shoulder of I-44 in worn ol’ hoodie.

Nicole was at work when I arrived, but homemade peanut butter, chocolate chip, and oatmeal cherry cookies were waiting for me, as well as some of her famous sweet-potato-enriched enchiladas. I got caught up on my reading, filled out some endless paperwork for my upcoming pulmonary appointment (I tell ya, it never ends!), and had an enjoyable FB Messenger convo with the mentally energetic Adam Sperber regarding The Five Royales, Tony Williams, Sonny Sharrock and other geniuses.

When Nicole got home, we cooked a pizza and some spinach, got under the covers, lounged, read, transformed into cat furniture, and hit the sack early (well, the time was normal for one who awakens when we do). There’s no place like home, especially right now.

Streaming for Strivers:

Speaking of Black musical history titans who left us too soon and are too little known to the general public, the inventor of chainsaw jazz!

Cloister Commentary, Day 323: Wally’s World of Books

Headed out in the morning to drop off Mom’s recycling, grab pre-Super Bowl groceries, and swing by Wal-Mart for some meds I left in Columbia. I do not mean to sound condescending or snide–though I’ve never quite been hopeful, I have been cruising Wally’s book section for many, many years–but I was stunned, then happy to see Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Anti-Racist and Robin DeAngelo’s White Fragility displayed right next to Bill O’Reilly’s new Killing Trees. I grabbed a copy simply to mark the auspicious occasion, then remembered my resolution to refrain from buying books this year (and just read what I have)–then came back five hours later and bought it anyway. (Yes, I was masked as were most of the customers.)

Viewing: Mom and I watched Mizzou’s cage squad temporarily crush the Crimson Tide, then almost cough up a loss. Later, we looked for a series we hadn’t tried, and, remembering friends’ recommendations, sampled Peaky Blinders. Is watching three straight episodes “sampling”? I don’t know about Mom, but I’m in. Now to convince Nicole….

Ultra-cold weather’s moving in. Winter and mourning are a devastating mix, but we are fighting through it. We talked through some strategies and it made a difference. Jigsaw puzzles, books, hardwood and historical dramas did, too.

Streaming for Strivers:

Wisdom of the elders. A classic Black history document.

Cloister Commentary, Day 322: Merging

The past two days have been a bit of a whirlwind. Fortunately, I returned from my sleep study in time to have a breakfast of black bean and salsa tortillas (courtesy of the Tortilleria El Patron group) with Nicole before she took off for work. I did some house-tidying, buzzed over and renewed my drivers license (the Real ID renewal went relatively smoothly, but I damn near flunked the vision test–I only wear readers!), made some appointments for a couple felines at the vet, finished a book…then hit the road back to Monett again. I’m going to spend a few more days with Mom and watch the Super Bore with her–and with luck dodge any bad weather. Unfortunately, I bustled out without my backpack–how will I survive without my styling mousse, my new copy of The Week, and my just-found-after-weeks-missing bamboo toothbrush?

Listened to more late-Columbia-period Billie Holiday on the drive back and finally satisfied my Rascals craving that must not have been too intense since I kept forgetting it–but damn, that group was good! I can listen to “Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore” on repeat for an hour–a long-time favorite. Also, I deeply enjoyed (as always) the greatest album of the most dissonantly catchy indie rock band of all-time: Archers of Loaf’s Vee Vee. A dude who should have already changed lanes to let me in off the Highway 5 off-ramp to I-44 STOPPED COLD on the interstate to let me in AS I REACHED THE VERY END OF THE RAMP AFTER I’D ALREADY STOPPED. He and probably I are lucky to be alive.

My mom and I had her quick and delicious recipe of Parmesan chicken (plus peas and roasted Rosemary potatos), then suffered through the very bad opening episode of Netflix’s Firefly Lane (Mom says read the book). We switched to the Nets – Raptors game to witness Kevin Durant removed from the bench due to contact tracing and NBA health protocols and see my observation that Brooklyn should never have traded Jarrett Allen further validated.

I then did the impossible: I slept nine hours.

Streaming for Strivers:

I’m not sure what’s up with the thumbnail, but I tell you what–take a chance and click to hear one of the greatest compilations of African music ever released.

Cloister Commentary, Day 319: It Was a Good Day

It was a good day, and that’s saying something. It started with a mild disappointment–because Springfield didn’t ship Monett’s hospital enough doses, Mom couldn’t get vaccinated (she is rescheduled for Friday)–but then I drove her to our old hometown of Carthage to visit with some of her best friends (at distance, masked, plus most of them had already been vaccinated). We visited happily for around three hours, and the host, Sunny Michel (my childhood friend Sherri Marney’s mom) laid out a terrific lunch spread for us. I love sitting back and listening to their generation chat, but I actually found some space to talk: I had forgotten that Kay Vaughan once taught at my elementary, Columbian, and actually knew most of my grade school teachers–including a really, really, really bad one who indirectly caused me to become a teacher. I told a few stories none of them had heard….

Mom likes basketball, so we spent the evening watching a ripping good tussle between the Brooklyn Nets and the Los Angeles Clippers.

Streaming for Strivers:

A powerful early American Black (Musical) History lineup to dive into.

Cloister Commentary, Day 318: This is The Break

For the first month in I’m not sure how long–many, many years–I didn’t buy a single CD, vinyl record, or download. I don’t really feel like I cheated myself; if anything, I didn’t contribute my share to gifted musicians. I’m going to keep going with this resolution. Also, I only bought four books: three digital Virginia Woolfs for a total of five bucks and Brian Coleman’s Check the Technique, Volume 2, which our libraries don’t have and which doesn’t exist in digital form. Self-abnegation is the bomb!

My mom Jane has been due for a break. Her husband died suddenly midsummer and during a pandemic; they’d been married almost 61 years, and had lived together in the same house for 40. In November, she fell when a strong wind caught her umbrella as she went out to get the paper and suffered a rotator cuff tear; the injury worsened to the extent she couldn’t lift either arm more than a foot, couldn’t sleep in a bed (only a chair), and felt such pain she was frequently reduced to tears. Her surgery to repair the tear was scheduled for 6:15 a.m. yesterday, and she was filled with anxiety about its prospects. However, she’d demonstrated as we sat drinking coffee that she could lift both arms, and when I looked surprised, she said she wasn’t feeling pain at all. Then, as she was being prepped for the surgery and the nurse asked her to rate her shoulder pain from zero to 10, she said zero: “I haven’t felt pain in several weeks.” This I didn’t know–and I began quietly freaking out about the procedure: was it necessary? As I was messaging my brother to share my concern, the surgeon arrived, introduced himself, and, after having flipped through Mom’s chart, asked her, “Do we need to do this surgery? I like to operate to relieve pain, not cause it.”

15 minutes later, with the dawn light still not peeking through, we were back at the house, trying to wrap our heads around a new reality of no sling, no extreme pain and meds, no six-week rehab and PT. That break had arrived.

And she got her $600 gummint check in the mail! Note: I’m no fool–I’m grateful and happy for her, but I’m still holding my breath.

Special thanks to my “niece” Madison Dickens for constant health professional wisdom and reinforcement. Bow to your school nurses today for me and my mom if you get a chance.

Streaming for Strivers:

Black History Month Heads-Up, Hip Hop Division.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=EPkQl6fpU_g

Cloister Commentary, Day 317: Road Catalysts

My day got off to a great start. Nicole and I did some very early shopping for essentials then snagged a half-dozen bagels at Goldie’s with which to finish off our smoked sockeye salmon. I’m tellin’ you, if you’re in Columbia, Missouri, and you love bagels, hit ’em up.

I hit the road late morning to visit my mom, get her to a surgical procedure, and help her during recovery (that procedure was canceled–more on that tomorrow). The day was cold and gray, so I needed serious musical fuel to power me for the three-plus-hour drive. Few rock and roll bands catalyze me like Dead Moon and Wussy. Who are your musical catalysts?

My mom and I watched Netflix’s The Dig (Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan on point, plus the story and camerawork are fascinating) and most of All Creatures Great and Small–Mom’s surgery was scheduled for 6:15 a.m., so we retired early.

Streaming for Strivers:

Black History Month is every month, because it’s everyone’s history. I always celebrate it to the best of my ability, and largely through music. Don’t know J. B. Lenoir? I invite you to click.

Cloister Commentary, Day 313: Pandemic Silver Linings Playbook

Nicole and I awakened to snow, beautiful and dangerous like human beings. Dad’s truck did pretty well without being put into four-wheel drive, and the snowfall was a calming backdrop to a few hours of work.

When I returned home, I networked with some former Hickman colleagues regarding the upcoming May scholarship in memoriam to the life and work of the only materially departed George Frissell. We have some very deserving candidates.

Dinner was smoked salmon, fresh spinach, and a baked potato. We read for a couple of hours with a Jimmy Smith soundtrack.

As promised (and it’s not that I am enjoying it or ever want to experience a repeat), here are…

The Ten Best Things About Being Isolated by the Pandemic:

  1. We have been eating far more healthily.
  2. Nicole and I will have been together 31 years in May. We have been in each other’s presence more in the last 313 days than we ever have, under stressful circumstances, and we feel strong. I guess the honeymoon period isn’t over yet.
  3. Oddly, being stranded from work has made me more available to respond in-person to tragedy and need.
  4. The virtual freshman comp class I taught for Stephens College this summer was truly one of my favorite educational experiences and I learned a few skills that will probably increase my professional lifespan.
  5. I have been able to talk to my mom almost every morning since mid-June. I have no love for talking on the phone, but I have enjoyed that, even though we’ve had to talk through hard things.
  6. We have been able to meditate and reflect on our days more consistently than ever.
  7. I’m not sure a new president would have been elected with the last one’s predictably cruel and inept response to the pandemic, and I’m happy that change happened. I should have included January 6 on yesterday’s list, because that’s always going to be tempering my optimism.
  8. Though I complained yesterday about being sucked into whirlpools of self-involved thinking, another perspective is I’ve had the quiet in which to really come to terms with realities about my self, which I think is always in flux but has some stable attributes.
  9. In the category of domestic felines, I have improved my relationships with Goldie, BB, Cleo, Tux, Smoky, and especially Spirit. Junior and I have always seen eye to eye.
  10. This. I have always enjoyed writing, and knocking these out every day has been good for me in many ways. When the project was suggested to me by a friend, I was skeptical and scared–I really didn’t want to do it–but (as with many things) once I got rolling, I truly took to it. Early on, after I’d already begun, the local historical society called for pandemic diaries, and I let them know what I was doing. Maybe one day these will be a primary source for a researcher trying to shed light on these times from a historical distance. In truth, I know I am unaware of much of what they really say; I just hope it’s been valuable.

Streaming for Strivers:

I’ve been DOOM-scrolling.

Cloister Commentary, Day 312: Listing Through the Day, Part 1

Yesterday really was a slowwwww news day. Other than sampling The Durrells in Corfu, reading portions of six different books, taking the recycling to the center, and going on a Beefheart binge (yes, I’m an old ‘fheart-heart), I was in a bit of what I think they call stasis. Thus, it’s list time.

The 10 Hardest Things About The Pandemic (So Far–I’m Braced 24-7):

  1. Mourning without proper closure.
  2. Missing friends’ handshakes and embraces.
  3. Having to regularly confront how much I am my job (occasional self-loathing and sadness stemming from the fact that I’m not in a catalytic in-person classroom several days a week).
  4. Trying and failing to sleep seven hours / at least five consecutively. (Bad this week.)
  5. Sitting on my ass far more than I prefer.
  6. Adjusting to an almost totally immutable routine (teaching is hard but always unpredictable).
  7. Falling into a self-involved thought-whirlpool far too often for my liking.
  8. Slipping into cynicism about human beings in general (was it Charles Schulz who quipped that he liked people, it was the human race he couldn’t stand? “You stupid a**h**e / Baby, I’m one, too!” – Angry Samoans) since the great corrector (a public school classroom) isn’t available.
  9. Experiencing moments, even days, when I look at stacks of books and records and have no enthusiasm for plunging in.
  10. Resisting the charms of a well-made martini or a perfectly toxic margarita.

Tomorrow: The 10 BEST (?) Things About the Pandemic.

Streaming for Strivers:

Mood these times can bring…

Cloister Commentary, Day 311: What If?

My brother called yesterday morning to tell me Mom has shoulder surgery scheduled for Monday. She sustained a tear in a wind-and-rainblown fall in November that’s gradually come to torture her, and the news that the procedure’s just around the corner was the best we’ve received lately. Also, barring an emergency between now and then, she’ll be the first surgical patient ever at Monett, Missouri’s new hospital. Not exactly the thing one longs to be known for, but hey–she’ll take it. If only COVID vaccinations came that quickly….

I’m deeply enjoying an old book I picked up used a couple years ago called What If?, in which esteemed historians look at the possibilities had major events in world history happened just a touch differently (example: what if Alexander the Great had died at 22 at the Battle of the Granicus River, as he nearly did…or what if he’d lived into middle age?). I might have ended up a history major if high school teachers had taught the subject the way these experts frequently do. I found myself wondering whether a similar entire book couldn’t be written about the past year.

We finished Season Three of Cobra Kai (the series needs to be roundhouse-kicked at this point, but a future season looms) and sampled Kim’s Convenience, which frequently drew explosive laughter from both Nicole and me. It felt a touch…broad, but perhaps my Korean-American friends can weigh in with a perspective if they’ve seen it. Also, I wonder how good the book from which it’s adapted is.

Streaming for Strivers:

Slip inside this house.