Quarantine - Day 46

Ella played outside nearly all day with her friends. Abigail hosted Drama Club in the afternoon. Laura has less than a 100 pages left in Stephen King’s The Stand, which she has clung to like Tom Hanks’ character clung to Wilson in the movie Cast Away. I spent part of the day cleaning trash out of the alley that had appeared out of nowhere and the evening chasing trolls around on social media while the gals got their strut on watching more “Drag Race” before a heated game of Scrabble ensued.

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Quarantine - Day 45

Wednesday featured an all day, steady rain with a cloud deck that looked like it was resting on the treetops. Abigail, who at times acts as if she is allergic to sunlight, decided it would be a great time to go for a long walk. Her mother remarked that she is a true London girl, and this is her kind of weather. Ella’s Remote Learning took a twist as her classmates wanted to initiate their own Zoom session in the afternoon to work on math together. This led to another long session of getting together just because, and then a migration to Houseparty, a new app currently enjoying a bit of buzz with the younger quarantine crowd. Ella, who does not like being alone, soaked up the social interaction like a wick.

Abbie and Laura have taken to watching RuPaul’s “Drag Race” on VH1. This has led to phrases such as “ConDragulations!”, Yass, Queen!”, and “Sissy that walk!” entering our vernacular here at home. They want me to join in watching the show, and I am bluntly refusing.

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Quarantine - Day 44

Ella on her way to the grocery store

During the last 44 days, a disturbing problem has started to present itself. We have now had two cases of food poisoning so far and thrown out another two pieces of bad meat. So far, the supply lines for our local groceries have been fairly resilient with only the occasional hiccup. Both cases of food poisoning came from visiting area restaurants, which we have relied on sparingly overall. Yesterday, Tyson foods ran a full page ad in the New York Times warning of possible shocks to the supply chain in the future. This morning, the Chicago Tribune reports that pork production is being disrupted by plants closing due to outbreaks requiring farmers to look at the possibility of euthanizing lots of pigs in the near future. According to the Tribune’s reporting, wholesale prices are already trending 20% higher, but this has yet to be fully revealed in consumer prices. Much of the disruption is due to the restaurant/hospitality/institutional markets which consume around 50% of all food production. With the steep, sudden drop in demand, this is derailing production capacity in unanticipated ways.

In other news, back in early April when masks and gloves were difficult to obtain, as an experiment more than anything else, I ordered both items through AliExpress direct from China.  We had cloth masks that our neighbor Chrissy made for us, but I ordered some extra to have on hand.  They arrived some 23 days later from halfway around the world. On the date the order was placed, Target, Walmart, Amazon, McMaster Carr, Grainger, Uline, and American Hotel Registry had all been unable to fulfill my order. AliExpress, with some delay, at last came through.

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Quarantine - Day 43

Ella bakes a cake

This morning Laura and I set out with a load of books to deliver to a couple of schools. As President of the Chicago Area Reading Association, Laura donated books to Nash Elementary in the Austin neighborhood. As Play In A Book, we delivered our books to Ella Flagg Young Elementary. These books were paid for by a grant, and they were not donated. We will invoice for these, and both are acts of kindness in my opinion. It is an act of kindness that we are allowed to continue to do business in the midst of all this, although I am not sure others may fully see it this way. Regardless, I felt pretty good about the entire exchange.

Laura delivers books

Meanwhile, in spite of the Governor’s orders, our small trip witnessed a city coming back to life. Many people were out, traffic was becoming a thing again, and although many businesses remain closed, many are not. Masks are clearly considered optional apparel no matter how much the Mayor may fume. There have been 773 deaths due to Coronovirus in Chicago in the past six weeks. 74% are minorities. Of the 18,679 known cases, 66% are minorities. In this sense, the word “minority” is entirely redefined. It means that many in our city seem to have less access to healthcare, more chance of chronic underlying health conditions that may exacerbate COVID-19 until it is fatal, and less a chance of just shaking the thing off. How does a city like ours reemerge from this thing with such a disparity there for all to see?

In the afternoon, Ella busied herself baking a cake. The President of The United States came on the Tee-Vee to once again remind us that he had, with his own two strong hands, carefully constructed the world’s greatest, most tremendous and powerful economy the world has ever known, and then the Chinese wrecked it. If not for his early, decisive action, the dead would be piled up to our ears by now. He, along with his adoring Labrador Retriever, Mike Pence, are out hunting for a cure which they will bring back to us soon. By the election, the cure will be found and the economy will come roaring back to life like a once silent calliope after being supplied with a head of steam.

No one gives him credit for all he has done. The press smirk their nasty smirks, the Democrats moan and curse, even a few Republicans fail to fully supplicate themselves still. It is infuriating to him. After all he has done! He reminded us that he has not had a day off in quite a while. The only time he has left the grounds of the White House was to present New York City with his Navy’s Comfort ship. He is looking into what can be done about China’s recklessness. He is talking to lawyers, and is not going to take this sitting down. It could have been stopped! One way or another, they will pay. We will spring back to life like a reanimated scarecrow and dance, dance, dance. It is only a matter of when.

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Quarantine - Day 42

A Black Crowned Night Heron

Today we resumed shooting video, and for perhaps the first time (and 16 videos in) there were no technical glitches or equipment breakdowns. Our workflow is finally established and everything is operating correctly! Ella and I got out to make a trip to the store in the afternoon, and it is obvious that more and more people are itching to get out into their surroundings. Our neighbors were showing an interest in possibly getting together at a safe distance for cookout, but the low-fifties temps caused us to wave this off. We are getting there. The numbers are looking better, and normality is promising to emerge just a few more bends down the river.

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Quarantine - Day 41

Cool, rainy day, 40 degrees and rather bleak looking. For whatever reason, it did not look like a workday, so after breakfast it was decided that no work would get done. Naps would be taken, minds would wander, Netflix would be binged. Ella’s room slowly transformed itself from a little girls room to a young girls room who has an emerging design sense and a flair for subdued sophistication. While the rain drizzled down the windows, we puttered and mused and monkeyed around. Sometimes it is good to let the psyche catch up with the rush of events and for our perspectives to have a moment to take in where we find ourselves. Where do we find ourselves? We are still here and still hopeful.

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Quarantine - Day 40

Ella bakes cookies

Ella baked cookies today and began a project rearranging her room. She drew up a floor plan and got busy. Meanwhile, Abbie had a full day of remote learning, and Laura participated in a Zoom discussion with various people from the literacy community.

During Laura’s meeting, a disturbing theme began to emerge. One of the educators on the call expressed her concern about the challenge students will face getting caught up in the fall with the steep difficulty of distributing teaching resources citywide. There are, of course, many students who don’t have devices to access the internet or even connections to broadband. Even getting paper packets to them in a timely manner is an exercise that is not going smoothly. Contrast that with how Ella’s teacher started the day by reminding all the 5th grade parents that no student is behind. She reassured us that the teachers will get them caught up in the Fall because that is their job. There are clearly two different methods of instruction at work. One practically insures that a number of students are going to be scrambling to “catch up” to some arbitrary benchmark of achievement that for many was already practically impossible before the crisis even began while another abolishes the benchmark and sets a new goal while relieving students of unnecessary anxieties that add nothing worthwhile to their current experience.

The remote learning experience cannot supplant what was occurring in the schools prior to March 17th. The spring testing cycle that is relied upon to help determine college placement, academic performance, and even factors into school budgets and teacher salaries will not occur this year. The carefully constructed system that incentivizes based on such metrics as attendance, and academic ranking has got a gaping hole blown right through it. Pretending it isn't there won't work.  Forcing students to try to catch up now places some ahead and some hopelessly behind and is a only a strategy for increased failure. I heard the deep worry in the administrator’s voice on the call. She is hoping for help to arrive so that so many kids will not get left behind. I am waiting for leaders to say what my daughter’s teacher said today. So far, there has only been silence on the subject.

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Quarantine - Day 39

Today Ella finished the rough draft of her state report. She did her report on Indiana; home of the Wabash River, James Whitcomb Riley, and the place where the paper plate was invented. She was instructed to mail it to her teacher, but in order to save a stamp I offered to drive it over to her teacher’s so we could push it through the mail slot. On our way there, I asked if she would like to drive by her school since it has been over 40 days since she has been there. She said yes, so we did and she stared at the building with big eyes. It was like she hadn’t seen the place in years. Since her old school building where she attended early childhood through third grade was along our route, we drove by there as well and turned on the street to go by the side yard where she used to play as a Kindergartner. This released another flood of memories for her, and these continued as we passed Lazarus Park nearby where her classmates used to go too in 1st and 2nd grade. Then we went passed the Starbucks where her teacher would take the class for special occasions and buy them treats. All the way back, she was recounting all these memories from her young years leaping from one to another like rocks in a stream.

These days all blur together as they are so much alike and the world outside our window gets no bigger each day. One of the reasons I keep these thoughts in this blog is to try to differentiate each day so it doesn’t all seem like one Big day without end, and so later maybe we can recall some misplaced detail of this time and remember how we managed to keep ourselves occupied and somewhat sane. Ella remembers playgrounds, sidewalks, and Frappuccinos from five years past with great clarity. I can’t seem to recall anything at a moment’s notice. I have to wait while a memory slowly emerges and it never fully comes into focus. Did I ever have such an agile mind as hers? Probably not. We made it to the end of another day and I am thankful to have known it as briefly as I did. I will remember none of it ten days from now except for this brief recount. All I can say is it wasn’t so bad and the homemade pizza was good.

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Quarantine - Day 38

Laura and I headed out for a supply run making sure to get to Trader Joe’s before it opened. The line was evenly spaced all the way down the block. However, they were letting forty shoppers into the store at a time and the line went fairly quickly. Our intent was to divide our shopping list and shop in two separate areas of the store simultaneously. Laura had carefully constructed the list based on what was in each aisle. I wound up in her aisle and got hopelessly lost on what I was supposed to be getting, so our strategy for a quick trip to the grocery may not have been fully optimized in its execution.

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Quarantine - Day 37

Abbie decided around midday to go sit out front in the sunshine and write. She was outside for about an hour-and-a-half and came in having written a screenplay for a children’s television show with a working title of “Playdate”. The show features her puppets Gus, Buddy Rex, and Sharon the Snake and also had a couple songs included. She had written song lyrics and wanted to try out a couple melodies. I grabbed the guitar and we soon had two demo roughs to send along to her professor who loved her idea for a show and pledged her support. It was uplifting to see a new idea stroll through the door and immediately start manifesting itself.

Later, Laura went to start dinner and realized the recently purchased chicken had gone bad as had a package of beef meant for the next day. It was our first real problem with the supply chain since the start of the quarantine. So, Abbie and I took an evening stroll down to the nearby Thai restaurant, Greenleaf, and returned with some savory dishes.

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Quarantine - Day 36

Abi scores Gilgamesh

Have I mentioned how college interns make the world such a better place? Our paid intern, Abigail, who is also our daughter, who is also marooned here away from her life on campus as a St. Olaf junior and trying to make the best of it, offered to help edit video for Play In A Book.

She has now shot and edited 16 videos thoroughly on her own. For our Gilgamesh series, she took it upon herself to score each chapter with original music complete with leitmotif’s for each major character. She is doing all this for minimum wage. Perhaps we should task her with sales and set a goal of $500K in gross sales in order to qualify for the $500 bonus. I am convinced interns are like magic fairy dust for businesses. She is a finalist for a summer internship in LA at the Television Academy Foundation. If they want someone who can do whatever is needed using whatever is at hand, they should probably go ahead and choose her.

Bizarrely, the price for May Brent Crude plunged to -$30 below zero today having fallen from $71.32 per barrel a year ago. If this is Monday, what on Earth will Friday look like? With the sunshine still shining, after a decent day’s work Ella and I got out in the late afternoon for a bike ride around Horner Park and through the Manor. It was a good day and the beginning of another wild week in what has been a truly strange month in what will be likely known as a very unusual year. But each good day counts.

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Quarantine - Day 35

Ella up a tree

Warm and bright, a cloudless and confident day brought people outside from every direction with dogs and kids and bikes, skateboards, razor scooters, and jogging shoes. Everyone acting with a practiced distance. Cars got washed. People found excuses to do chores outside. Those with seeds planted them. Frisbees flew. I washed both vehicles and vacuumed the carpets while Joni Mitchell sang about the white lines of the freeway. The girls and I got out for a walk and everyone got outta our way. Ella and Laura walked along the riverbank avoiding the geese as well as the people. Tomorrow it turns colder again, but the sunshine feels good on my winter white arms.

Later, Abi roasted a chicken and we gathered at the table to check in with how as a small, legal gathering we are faring. We are still at the moment holding together quite well. The confinement has not been too confining. We seem to be keeping each other company fairly well. We haven’t driven each other to madness quite yet, although my jokes can wear thin, Ella does long monologues that fade into one another until bed, Abi sometimes isolates herself without even knowing she is isolating herself, and Laura at times just wants to be left alone with a scary movie, and some good cheese and crackers.

The President of The United States wants to raise insurrection against governors in battleground states and urges people to protest against guidelines his administration just put forth. Normally, in a national emergency someone trying to foment insurrection might attract the attention of an Attorney General. The US AG meanwhile stares soullessly at the situation without any thought except making sure the president is reelected. It seems this administration simply wants the power for the sake of holding it. There’s really no agenda beyond not losing. The pandemic is bad because it makes the administration look bad. It is not bad because it has prematurely ended 40,565 lives. Lives aren’t power. Power is divorced from them.

This national emergency has not brought people together. We are still in our separate camps even as we are in the same boat. We share no common destiny. As soon as we are released back into what little remains of our daily lives, our essential distrust of each other will still be there. Each contempt is matched with an opposing contempt, and we will not be stronger as a nation from this time. The fears that have been continually stoked for so long a time have taken root. We are a house divided and the walls are falling in slow motion.

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Quarantine - Day 34

Abi editing

While Laura took part in an IRC board meeting via Zoom, work resumed on editing and posting video today even though it is possible much of the work product may go unused. By noon Abi had already edited a vid and was working on another. Her computer arrived back from its second, and hopefully final, repair thus ending a 20 day ordeal. It had experienced a kernel freeze, a panic mode brought about by some fatal error in the logic board. It sprung back to life and quickly assumed its place in our workflow. In no time our little shop was humming once again.

Ella and her hot glue gun

Ella surveyed the packaging the computer had arrived in and wanted to know if she could use it. Given the go-ahead she sprang into action with a hot glue gun and fashioned herself a charging station for a phone and iPad and built a small shelf to hold things in a future RV she plans on purchasing. She pulled together used bits of fabric, cardboard, foam rubber, and using her own inspiration she spent the afternoon making her creations.

With the snow now gone, the sun came out and the outdoors was once again pleasant and Spring-like. Except for some quick errands, I didn’t get outside as I had hoped. I still was trying to make up for a lost deadline, even though one perhaps obsolete, and get our content back on track. People were out in number in the late afternoon when I did finally Liberate myself. This Stay-at-Home thing has clearly gotten old.

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Quarantine - Day 33

©1976 Capitol Records.  Used entirely without permission

Today the Governor announced that schools throughout the state would not be reopening. Shortly after that we received an email saying our remaining contracts were being postponed to the “future”. This left us to contemplate what that future might be. Perhaps there will be flying cars, fully automated kitchens, and trips to other planets. The email didn’t really go into much detail. I am still somewhat amazed at how the people who are paid big sums of money to make big decisions leave so many details surrounding those decisions to be figured out by others who so much earn less. We, who now earn nothing, have much to figure out. The only real scarcity is the time, which as noted by the esteemed physicist Steve Miller, keeps slipping into the future.

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Quarantine - Day 32

Ella calls shotgun

Another April snow day and we mostly stayed inside out of the wind except for a brief run for supplies by Ella and I. In honor of the annual My-Tax-Return-Is-Late Day, Abigail sheepishly started on her tax return. I let her know that the filing day had been officially moved to July and the relief glimmered slightly through her poker face. Laura and I took part in a Zoom meeting with others from different art organizations. We brought up the question of what might happen if schools did not reopen, and few wanted to stare directly at the prospect opting for happy, hopeful talk instead. Against my better impulses, I sat down and started watching “Tiger King”. Good Lord. The show is morbidly addictive just like the first season of “The Apprentice.”

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Quarantine - Day 31

Trump's check

Today a lovely check signed by Donald J. Trump with a nice, handwritten note thanking us for our perseverance during this time arrived in our bank account via direct deposit. The check had other places to be, however, and couldn’t stay long. Wishing us well, it disappeared into the fog of memory.

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Quarantine - Day 30

Abi's Doodle

While hope springs eternal, often in Chicago it seems as Winter does too. Today it snowed sideways with the white stuff being whipped by winds for much of the day. Ella dutifully finished her remote learning assignments then proceeded to learn more songs on her ukulele focusing of selections from The Greatest Showman songbook. Abi started dialing in on a rather unique thesis for her Education class looking at the underlying nature of what is an education with a fresh perspective. Laura wrote articles for the next issue of the Illinois Arts Council monthly publication, while I resumed reaching out to CPS in the hope of finding out if classes might possibly resume or not resume as of May 1st. No one knows or know one is saying for sure although that is the official date.

Later Abi created doodles while chatting online with friends. I tucked Ella into bed and she wanted to know when she might be returning to school. She was surprised to learn she had been out of school for an entire month. I told her I had been tracking the numbers and they were looking better, and reminded her that this won’t be forever and that someday we will look back on all this as a long ago memory. A million dreams is all it’s going to take.

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Quarantine - Day 29

A spirited game of "Taboo

Today we resumed remote learning with both Ella and Abi busy with online lessons throughout the morning. Laura and I took a long look at our business prospects and we finally had to start facing the reality that there may be no real way forward for PIAB. We survived a rapid startup in the midst of the Long Recession, built the business to profitability only to see it lose half its revenue during the two year state budget crisis. For the last three years, we have been slowly rebuilding only to see this pandemic come and knock the legs out again.

Ella and I got out only for a brief skate/walk. It was sunny, in the mid-forties, and nearly all the store fronts were closed. Trump came on TV in the late afternoon and ranted incoherently about having total power to restart the economy and deriding the press repeatedly for being fake. He was upset about a NYT article that showed a White House in near total disarray throughout the latter half of January, throughout the whole of February and into March as the cases climbed exponentially.  If he is trying to convince people his administration is well organized, this is an increasingly odd way to do so.  He claimed that the rate of new cases is now flat. It is not. The average rate of increase in new cases over the past seven days is 7% nationally, 9% in Illinois, and 9% locally. How is that flat? The guy is clearly nuts, but half the country treats him like he was elected by God himself. Realizing the fate of the nation’s recovery rests in his hands is simply demoralizing at this point.

Yesterday was Easter Sunday and we had a big roast with all the fixings. Abi prevailed upon me to get out the guitar and play some songs. I hadn’t had the guitar out since October, and it felt like it. I fumbled around for some harmonies and there were brief moments of what it used to feel like. Maybe there will be more moments. Who can say for sure.

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Quarantine - Day 27

Easter Eggs

We resumed shooting video today assuming our various roles of best boy, gaffer, director, and on-camera talent like we all held union cards. The setup was a breeze and soon the teleprompter was rolling and takes were being taken. Then Abi’s computer went haywire once again, so it will be

shipped once again to its maker so they can take another stab at fixing it.

Ella and Rosie filled the sidewalk with a sidewalk chalk masterpiece and they came in tired and with multicolored hands. Our neighbor Chrissy brought by some starter yeast, so we no longer have to rely on getting some from the stores where it is getting harder and harder to find. Then it was time for the girls to dye Easter eggs while the day wound down with ice cream and the last of what once was a big birthday cake.

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Quarantine - Day 26

Ella finds a suitcase in a mysterious wooded area

Today Ella woke up lying on the ground in a mysterious woods and found a small suitcase. “What could be inside?” She asked. “Why am I in my nightgown in a mysterious woods?” She pondered.

Slowly she approached the suitcase and, gathering her resolve, tried the latch.

Today Ella and her mom went to Walking Stick Woods to shoot a movie that Ella has had stuck in her head since long before the start of the quarantine. Back in early February, she had asked me if we could go shoot a movie in the woods, and I kept putting it off and she kept insisting. Finally, her mother and she made a morning of it. Abbie spent hours on the phone with Apple tech support trying to get the brand new logic board they installed in her computer to function correctly. I fussed with the website and did bookkeeping (just the expenses, no revenue), and later went out to stand in a line five deep six feet apart for Mexican take-out. Fridays have been our day for takeout since the lockdown began, and I am always impressed with the insuperable will of our dauntless restaurant workers who bag your food, ring you up, and smile at you from behind their masks wishing you a nice evening. To them I say, “Thank You.”

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Quarantine - Day 25

Ella on her skates

Today it snowed. The picture is not from today. It’s from the day before yesterday right around the time that Ella said, “I love the summer!” And I reminded her that sometimes in Chicago it snows in April. Then it snowed in April. The wind blew as well. It blew the lid off the roof hatch next door and sent it down to our breezeway. It blew part of the fence down at Nana’s house in Vincennes. As Guy Clark would say, it was a wind that could blow the tattoo off your arm. Snow and wind and cold, then the sunshine came back out like it was playing a prank.

Last night I dreamed that I went to a restaurant down the street that each night at the end of its dinner service would change its decor and menu so that you would think it was an Italian restaurant one day, then the next day it would be a Szechuan place, then the next a taqueria. In the dream, I stay past closing time and find out it isn’t really a restaurant at all, it’s a criminal front of some sort and the cooks really can’t cook, and the waitstaff are merely pretending to wait on you. I learned long ago that dreams don’t have to mean anything, and I take comfort in this thought.

Today much was accomplished of possibly little importance. Everyone was busy. Ella was busy doing math, Abi was busy with remote learning and meetings. Laura and I were busy with our business emailing emails and putting up content. But we are a sailing ship in search of wind. We are busy staying in the same place. The wind is blowing, but we can’t feel it much. The sun is shining and the snow is falling except when it is summer like it will possibly be once again tomorrow.

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Quarantine - Day 24

Today was not just another day. Today was my birthday, and my family had no choice but to make it a special one, because what else could they do, and where else could they go? There was dinner and cake and well wishes and there I am with a napkin on my head.
In our family, sometimes after dinner napkins get thrown and they land on people’s heads. My extended family sent along well wishes, notes, and whatnot. I’ve always loved whatnot. Today I felt blessed to be among the breathing and the living. Tomorrow is tomorrow, but one thing tomorrow won’t be and that is April 8th.

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