Last night was warm, which meant we slept with the fan on and I woke up frequently, walked down the hall to the bathroom, came back, took a few swallows of water, went to sleep woke up a couple hours later, walked down the hall to the bathroom, etc. A hot night in San Francisco would likely be considered pleasant in Louisiana, where I grew up. I can remember a couple of times as a teenager when I grabbed the glass of ice water next to my bed and dumped the whole thing over my head. You’d think I’d be tougher about heat. But I’ve lived here now for most of my adult life, and I no longer have much tolerance for balmy nights spent looking for a cool place on the mattress.

We had a staff meeting yesterday — by Zoom of course. Strange to hear that a few people are still going into our building. Our CEO goes there once a week to check the mail and sign checks, and the plant and building managers are using this time for maintenance, cleaning carpets, repainting, and doing repairs. I felt a bit jealous as I listened to them. Wish I could be there in that beautiful old early-twentieth century building, even if it’s mostly empty now.

As employees, we’re all pretty lucky. Those in charge seem to be doing their best and our salaries are still being paid. We’re also fortunate in that the library banks with a small financial institution actually interested in helping all its clients, even modest non-profits. I’m hearing accounts of banks like Wells-Fargo ignoring less well-heeled customers in favor of the large, sleek, and well-funded, even though assistance is supposed to be on a first come, first served basis. A rumor circulates about an executive at another small library phoning their big, famous bank to ask about assistance and being told “We’re not even accepting paperwork yet. Call back tomorrow morning and we’ll send you the documents.” She called first thing in the morning and learned all the assistance had already been given out to a bigger, wealthier customer.

Another Zoom meeting yesterday afternoon with our film curator, talking about next week’s film discussion. His husband could be seen in the background through an open door moving about in what was plainly their sunlit kitchen. After we’d hashed out how we’ll handle the zoom meeting next Friday, Matt’s spouse came over to show off the two perfectly baked loaves of bread he’d just taken out of the oven. They live in Oakland in a house that has an unusually large, narrow back yard. “I think this used to be a goat farm,” Max said. That back yard is a garden now, and they grow their own vegetables and herbs.

I’m enjoying The Mask of Apollo, my bed-time reading these days. There are occasional over-large chunks of dialogue-driven exposition — a frequent flaw in historic fiction — but the personality of the actor narrator is deftly and believably conveyed, the classic ego of a star. My favorite passage: “The Amazons is one of Theodektes’ better plays, and won the poets’ prize. He had ridden over from Athens, and was so pleased with us that he never said a word about the places where I had sharpened up his lines.”