Tag: COVID

June 4th, 2024

Every time I look in the mirror my face seems smaller. My hair, which I usually keep short, is very thick. It looks as though my head is being swallowed by a Lhaso Apso.

This morning I heard Michael get up. He walked into the living room, then returned to the bedroom. After a few minutes I went in to find him propped up on his pillows reading his Ipad. I put my hand on his forehead to check for a fever (felt normal) and asked if everything was all right. He insisted he was fine. Just felt like relaxing in bed.

I pointed out that this kind of somnolence is a bad precedent. In quarantine, we need at least some sort of shape to our days and we wouldn’t get that by spending the day in bed. I was going to toast him a bagel with artichoke spread and would put it on his desk. If he wanted it, he could go there.

He’s now at his desk eating his bagel and typing away.

This is the time of year when we usually get our check-ups, and even before the pandemic that made me uneasy. I have long considered myself a borderline hypochondriac. I once convinced myself, via a Facebook post, that I had cancer of the tongue because I had an allergic reaction to a mouthwash our dentist had given me.

Now I’m going to have to go get my blood drawn in a couple of weeks for my yearly lab work, and I dread going to that crowded, dirty little office downtown. Michael, in the meantime, is due for some yearly tests and has to find a new specialist because his physician abruptly retired last January. Everything has to be done and seems twice as complicated. Nail biting time.

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June 1st, 2024

Yesterday I phoned my mother for Mother’s Day. Caught her on her cell phone, running her dogs outside, and for a moment I was — vicariously at least — on the mountain, listening to that eternal sigh of wind in the leaves, breathing in its wonderful air.

Amazon is too backed up to send flowers or chocolates, so I conferred with her about what books she has or has not read and sent her A Gentleman in Moscow for her Kindle. It only occurred to be afterwards that it’s a novel about a man “quarantined,” a Russian aristocrat who ends up imprisoned in a ritzy Moscow hotel after the revolution, forbidden to leave it. I believe the sight of our pharmacy down on Polk, its windows and doors boarded up, has affected me more than I realized. It’s now a pale, plywood-covered spot in my consciousness.

So, yesterday I took a sort of vacation. After getting my writing done for the morning, I spent much of the rest of the day playing Sims. It did me good. I’ve played Sims ever since the first version came out, and it always puts me in the mood to work. It sparks the part of me that tells stories. Not a complete vacation, of course. Dinner had to be prepared. We now have a large pot of chicken etouffee in the fridge. Comfort food.

Part of getting older is seeing your life, your world, divided into segments of before and after. In my lifetime, there has been before the Kennedy assassination and after, before 1968 and after, before the Reagan era and after, before the AIDS epidemic and after, before the Murrah building bombing and after, before 9/11 and after…

Deaths also divide your life. At first you barely notice them. Grandparents die, and only later do you realize how your memory of sunlight changed color.

Before and after my gay friends from college began showing up in obituaries. Before and after my childhood playmate died from the heart condition she was born with. Before and after my ex fell dead in his house from an embolism at the age of 43. Before and after my father-in-law died, my father, died, my mother-in-law died… A crisis like this hits, and I think of the dead who missed it. They are all fading into the distance, along with the world that existed when they were alive. I don’t think you can truly understand mortality until you see for yourself the passing of eras and those left behind in them.

Now is not forever, any more than was the 1918 epidemic. This time will change us forever, but an adapted version of normalcy will return. Before this pandemic, my generation looked back at 1918 puzzled about why that flu pandemic was so rarely spoken of by those who survived it. Was it too traumatic? Too terrible to remember?

I don’t think that’s why my grandparents, all of whom lived through and remembered the Spanish Flu epidemic, never brought it up. I think it changed things so profoundly that they would simply have shrugged and asked “what is there to say about it?”

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May 29th, 2024

Pancho’s is no more.

Yesterday, a little after noon, the sun came out, and I went on the longest walk I’d taken since the shut down began, a trek down Polk Street.

It seemed only a little less crowded than usual though almost everyone was masked, and even those who weren’t looked oddly blank. Most were carrying purchases. A family on bicycles passed by, a husband, and a wife with a toddler riding in front of her in a child’s seat. All three were barefaced and grave. Even when the mother cooed to her child (“look, look, look at the people…”) as they swept by, she did not smile.

The Walgreens near California is completely boarded up and looked derelict, but I suspect the big squares of plywood were to protect its windows and glass doors, because a masked woman stood in front, plainly waiting to go in. Common Sage, the little Japanese deli where they sell my favorite rice balls was open, but I did not go in. I saw what I could swear is a new taqueria, El Capitan (strictly take-out), but perhaps I noticed it because Pancho’s is gone. Cheese Plus, the gourmet wine and cheese shop, is open, and has the regulation lines drawn on the pavement before it and what looked like a hand-spritzer stand set up just in front of the door. One customer waited.

Wags, the dog grooming place, is open, though they are not allowing customers to come in. On normal Saturdays, three or four people usually stop to look through the broad front window to watch all the dogs dropped off by their owners waiting for their cuts and shampoos. They’re usually a churning mass behind the counter, some anxious, some resigned, some wagging their tails at the watchers through the windows, while miserable-looking spaniels and pitties are lathered and rinsed in the stands behind them. Yesterday, I saw only three dogs and two groomers in masks in front of the counter in the dark little shop, undoing their leashes.

I’d planned to walk all the way down to the bay, but ended up only going as far as the Russian Hill Bookstore. It used to be one of four in the neighborhood — There had also been Aaben on California, Acorn around the corner on Polk, and the landmark “metaphysical” bookstore, Field’s, across the street from Acorn. Aaben, Acorn and Fields went under years ago, but the Russian Hill Bookstore, cavernous, enticing, stocked with games, puzzles, tarot cards, pens, diaries, cups, candles, used books and new, has managed to survive.

Locked, of course, and dark inside. On its window, a desperate placard asking for donations.

I found where Pancho’s had been on my way back. Even when it was open, Pancho’s had been hard to spot, just a narrow little joint with a few tables. When I pressed my face against the glass door, I saw the inside had been been scoured, all furniture, all decorations gone. No more framed posters of bullfights and old Mexican films, no more brightly colored drums and maracas. The mural mimicking cracked adobe walls and desert landscapes through glassless windows had been scrubbed away, the little sign post pointing the way to Los Angeles, Mazatlan, Timbuktu etc. vanished. The woodcut from 1918 of “The Doctor surprised” on his rounds by a skeleton in a sombrero and serape, gone. The framed early ’80s Herb Caen column recommending Pancho’s on Polk, gone. All that remained was the faded word “COCINA” above the door to the back. Michael tells me Pancho’s has another location a few blocks away, but it’s still another scrap of life before the epidemic erased.

I visited the revered Golden Veggie Market just across California on Polk (now in new hands and simply called “Golden Market.”) I was one of two customers, they had almost no spices left, but the shelves were well stocked with produce. and I picked up beautiful red and yellow peppers for the chicken etouffe I’ve planned for this week. No shopping bag, thanks, just the little plastic bag for the vegetables.

Halfway back down California I had to stop, unwrap the scarf over my nose and mouth, and take some draughts of fresh air, looking up at the white clouds being pushed across the blue sky. I’ve never been able to bear the feel of my own breath against my face. Then I wrapped up again, turned onto our street and stopped in another store, Chico’s, partly to pick up some salt, partly to show some support. Only the owner was there in his mask behind the counter and we talked for a bit. His wife, who’s usually there too, was absent. He told me he is well, his wife is well, I told him I am well, my husband is well, and we both thanked God for 21st century medicine if not 21st century American healthcare.

I hope I’m not the only person who went in to Chico’s yesterday. And I hope his wife is truly well. I’ve never before gone in and not seen her there. This neighborhood has not been hit as hard as SOMA or the Mission, but there have been cases of CV19. (One at the Trader Joe’s a couple of blocks away.) I can’t imagine someone struggling to keep open a store during a pandemic admitting to a customer that someone who worked there had gotten sick.

Broccoli soup last night, made with English cheddar and a few of the potatoes from the large bag Michael brought back from Costco last week. They’re starting to sprout, and I need to use them up. A good night for a soup, chilly, with the wind loud and wuthering across the rooftops.

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May 26th, 2024

Naturally fog rolls in on the morning when I have time to go out.

A mental weariness has set in today. It’s not so much dejection as a longing to stop thinking for awhile. I want climb inside a jar and screw the lid on behind me, sealing myself in. I want to spend the day playing Sims 4 and thinking about that instead of navigating the new rules of this new time.

Actually, what I really want is to walk casually into Le Beau Market, to stand at the deli ordering a Turkey Buttah sandwich and picking up a pack of dosa chips. I want to walk down Polk Street to the bay and the Maritime Museum, to go out onto the Maritime’s porch, look at the beach below it and see swimmers, children making sand castles and wading in the shallows. parents relaxing on towels and watching them.

I want to pass tourists chatting to each other in French, or German, or Spanish or Russian. I want to watch them taking pictures of Coit Tower or the Golden Gate. I want to give them directions to Chinatown, to recommend a restaurant or two, tell them about City Lights bookstore.

But most of all, I want to be able to live my life with politics and all is happening in Washington DC as a sort of background noise instead of a roar in my ears.

I love my country as I love my family, not because I think it is perfect but because it is mine. For better or for worse, it is what has shaped me and my life. I want what is best for it. That we will likely no longer be on the top of the heap after Trump is done with us does not keep me awake at night. Other western countries have been empires for awhile, stopped being empires, and survived it, even become better for what they lost. Spain, England, France, Germany…

But those Americans who have long despised the best part of what we are supposed to be — the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the First Amendment, the ability to change leadership without violence — are growing louder and more open in their eagerness to throw it all away with both hands. And they are the ones who are now pulling the levers of power.

I think what truly marked a turning point for me was something our Attorney General, William Barr, said this week. When he was asked about how he thought history would view the Justice Department decision to drop charges against a man who had pled guilty to colluding against his country with a foreign power, Barr said, “Well, history is written by the winners, so it largely depends on who’s writing the history.”

Barr does not merely imply here that the outcome of the election in November is a foregone conclusion. He implies that so is the outcome of the election after that and the one after that. I’m reminded of a passage from a recent book, The Order of the Day, by Eric Vuillard, which deals with the collusion of wealthy corporations in enabling Hitler’s rise. It describes a 1933 meeting between Nazi officials and various industrialists, in which the Nazis convinced them to finance Hitler’s rise to power. One of their major selling points was the possibility of those wealthy, powerful men not having to worry about the results of elections in the future.

There is growing doubt here about whether Trump will willingly leave office even if he loses by a landslide this November. I can remember a few similar doubts expressed about Nixon, but Nixon was not quite as open about egging on violence against those who opposed him. And as much as I hated Tricky Dick, I cannot imagine him, during a pandemic, acting in ways that seem calculated to kill as many Americans as possible.

I keep thinking of an old Annie Lennox song.

“…’cause when love is gone, there’s always justice,

and when justice is gone, there’s always force,“

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May 25th, 2024

Last night’s Zoom book event got off to a slightly rocky start when, after I’d already let the audience into the meeting and muted them, the author objected to everyone having their videos on and asked me to turn their cameras off en masse so he could see only their names. “Zoom bombing is terrible,” he said. I am still not sure how someone would “Zoom bomb” while muted. (Maybe make obscene gestures and hold posters with dirty words up to the camera?) I’m pretty sure I can set Zoom to turn the cameras off before people enter the “room,” but I could not figure out how to do it during the meeting and was not inclined to experiment.

After some back and forth we realized the author had his Zoom set to gallery view, which means all attendees (48) were shown in a grid on two pages of the screen like the old Hollywood Squares game show set. From Paul Lynde’s location on the upper left I advised him to switch to speaker view (“Look on the upper right of your screen.”) This would show him mainly the two main speakers and the host while minimizing the audience. He did and after that all was well.

Funny how shyness about public speaking manifests itself online. Obviously, we need to brief speakers about Zoom before events. It’s too easy to assume everyone is familiar and comfortable with it.

Last night another party in the gazebo next door, whiffs of barbecue, the sound of laughter and singing well past midnight. Michael did not even bother to mutter under his breath.

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May 23rd, 2024

A conversation with my mother yesterday on our weekly telephone call has left me a little less ambivalent about PG&E coming in to light our oven pilot. I’d been looking at videos on youtube about how to do it. (Like most online videos about home repairs that assure us “it’s easy and safe!” it didn’t look all that easy and safe to me, involving taking out the floor of the oven, using a long match which we don’t have, being careful to do this, do that, don’t do that other thing and for God’s sake, don’t forget to do that yet other thing…)

I mentioned to Mom our pilot light going out and said I remembered hearing about Dad relighting ours when I was a kid.

“Oh yes,” Mom said. “That was back when he was still at Tulane and we had that little apartment on Plum Street with a gas stove. The pilot would go out and your father would have to relight it.” She laughed. “Half the time we’d hear a POOF and when he stood up his eyebrows would be singed off.”

Then she reminded me of a family anecdote I’d forgotten, about one of my aunts trying to cook on that stove during a party and the pilot light going out. She’d called in one of Dad’s fraternity brothers to relight it and waited until he was bent closely over it and striking a match to tell him “I already turned on the gas, you know…”

I asked Mom how things were Western Carolina. “Crowded,” she said. “The Floridians are here.”

The area where she lives has been a summer resort for well over a century. Its population grows dramatically in the warm months and the pandemic has not changed this. For some reason involving tax rates and property, many affluent Floridians have houses there. She said that when she drives through downtown now, it’s bumper-to-bumper cars with Florida plates and the sidewalks are crowded with people. “They’re not wearing masks,” she said. “I do my shopping in Boone.”

Last night, on our weekly Zoom with friends, I asked for advice about the pilot light and was advised to tell PG&E we could smell gas in the apartment. “But we don’t smell gas,” I said.

“Say you do anyway and you won’t have to wait until next week,” Lydia said. “They’ll tell you to get out of the apartment. You just stand outside for a bit. They’ll be there in fifteen minutes to relight the pilot, and you can go back in.”

I think I’ll pass, given that PG&E is likely to be getting more calls like that than usual and I don’t want us to have to wait outside with the cat carrier for heaven knows how long.

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May 20th, 2024

Damn, damn, damn. Our oven’s pilot light is out. I discovered it yesterday when I tried to roast some broccoli for lunch.

Our landlord instructed us to call PG&E. I made an appointment for someone to come over in the first available slot — sometime in the afternoon a week from Thursday. In the meantime I’m watching youtube videos about how to do it. I’ve got to decide whether I’m more afraid of trying to light it myself than I am of a stranger coming into our house and possibly infecting us.

Michael has been getting rid of clutter. He sits in the armchair when we’re watching our nightly TV, a cardboard box on his lap, carefully dividing the trash from the memorabilia. Every now and then he neatly trims something with his scissors, an article he wrote, or one that interests him, and puts it aside. Sometimes he holds up some artifact and asks me if it’s okay to throw it away. Last night I held back one small bit of paper from the recycling bin — A ticket to Madame Tussaud’s in London, dated October 30, 1996.

I am culturally literate. I read Henry James, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and John Milton for pleasure. But I love wax museums. The history of waxworks fascinates me. One of my favorite books in my collection, along with To the Lighthouse, Dubliners, and Portrait of a Lady is a battered old biography of Madame Tussaud written by her son.

So, when we were a relatively young, freshly minted couple visiting London, we spent an afternoon wandering around Tussaud’s. I especially enjoyed the waxworks set up to fool visitors, realistic figures that looked like security guards or other tourists sitting wearily on benches. The house of horrors was entertaining, the true crime area, the figures of kings and queens, but the memory I truly treasure took place, I believe, in the section devoted to celebrities.

Michael was clad in his usual attire for walks back then — jeans, a scuffed up brown leather jacket, and a brown beret which I thought gave him a pleasantly artistic look. He decided he wanted a picture of me standing next to a wax figure. Michael’s method of taking pictures was to tell me to smile, then peer through his camera, and remain absolutely motionless as the seconds ticked by, waiting for whatever instant he decided was perfect. This is why my smiles in these pictures always look like I’m holding something between my teeth.

I stood. I smiled. I waited. He looked through his camera at me, hunched forward in concentration, eyes narrowed beneath his beret. He did not move.

A trio of camera-bearing visitors entered the room, conversing in French. They spotted us.

Michael did not move.

They paused. They conferred for a moment, heads close together, eyes on us.

Michael did not move.

They walked over, their eyes on Michael.

One of them was a couple of feet away from him, looking closely at his ears and plainly admiring the workmanship when he clicked his camera and all three jumped and shrieked.

I will never give up that ticket to Madame Tussaud’s.

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May 17th, 2024

Yesterday I overheard Michael on the phone talking to our downstairs neighbor and asking her “do you have any baking powder? You do? Can we borrow some? Well how old is it?”

She is cautious. Her method of lending something in the era of CV-19 is not to simply bring it up. She comes upstairs, leaves it at our door, and goes back downstairs. She did the same thing last week with the flowers she left for us. (She said it was “love your neighbor day” and left several bunches on the stairwell for us all to pick and choose. I have barely clapped eyes on her for several weeks, though she remains helpful and generous. It’s like having a brownie in the building.)

Michael brought in the can, glanced at the stamp on the bottom and said, “Well, it’s a little past the expiration date, but I think we can use it.”

I took a look. The expiration was sometime in 2011. At least we don’t have to worry about it being infected, given that it’s been sitting in the back of a pantry for almost a decade.

Still, I tested the stuff by pouring a little boiling water over a spoonful and it fizzed nicely. Baking powder is more durable than I’d thought. Michael got his blueberry muffins last night and this morning, I took a couple down for our neighbor. She’ll get a share of everything I bake from here on.

It looks like the screaming minority opposed to the lock-down are getting more and more aggressive about it. A security guard was shot for telling a woman to wear a face-mask, and another man wiped his nose on the shirt of a store employee who asked him to wear one. In Ohio, the government is apparently offering workers the chance to rat each other out for following the advice of immunologists and staying home.

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May 14th, 2024

We had a minor supplying crisis yesterday when I had to tell Michael no, I couldn’t bake blueberry muffins because we have no baking powder. He was all for going out (for the second time that day) and getting some until I reminded him Le Beau and Chico’s are closed these days on Sundays. Michael isn’t usually that insistent. The poor man wanted his muffins.

Staying inside makes you aware of mental habits you barely notice in normal times. For instance, this morning, as I settled down in front of my computer with my coffee, I felt that brief stab of anxiety I have always felt on Monday morning about the Friday night movie. “Do I have the copy?” Before the pandemic, this meant that as soon as I got into work in the afternoon, I would reassure myself by going through the DVDs on my desk, putting my hands on the movie, and sighing with relief.

Now, of course, it’s not up to me to obtain a copy, so the next little gouge in my chest is about the book event on Thursday. Daniel Mason will be talking with Carol Edgarian about his new short story collection. “Should I go pick up the copies at Alexander Book Company?” I ask myself, and of course the answer is “no.” I’m not going to be trundling a cart across Market Street for a box of books.

“Oh.” My inner self sounds disappointed.

“Ah, but is the zoom set up?” Another little knife pricks me.

Some part of Jinx plainly delights in torturing me.

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May 11th, 2024

Friends had told me that when I do go out, it should be in the morning. “At about two or three, everyone decides they want to go outside.” In spite of this, I did not step outside until afternoon, a scarf wrapped around the bottom portion of my face.

The day was gray and rather uninviting, the kind of day that gave San Francisco the nickname of “cool gray city of love.” More people were out and about than I expected, most of them young, their faces uncovered. Every older person I saw had a mask.

My hopes of going into Le Beau for dosa chips were dashed by the crowd I saw in front. Yes, there were white lines painted on the pavement, but people seemed to be only roughly approximating them, standing closer than six feet apart, and again, most of them were unmasked. I walked around the block, giving a wide berth to any passers by. For the sake of exercise, I went a little ways down the hill and checked on the window where two little dogs like to sit. No sign of them, though their toys were there. As I walked back up the hill, I noted how out of shape I’d gotten. Before the pandemic, I’d walked up and down Nob Hill at least once a day. Maybe I should start doing that in the mornings, when fewer people are about.

Apparently there was an anti-shutdown rally near City Hall at noon yesterday. Not reassuring to hear. Judging from what I have seen on the news, these people are getting more and more aggressive, invading the statehouse with guns in Michigan, deliberately approaching cops and counter demonstrators and screaming in their faces, and implying that anyone obeying shut down guidelines is a traitorous coward who wants our economy to fail. I know everyone sees San Francisco as a bastion of liberalism and in some ways we are, but we also have a far right wing presence that is nasty, loud, and borderline violent. Those of us who work in bookstores and libraries are aware of them because they target local bookstores and libraries. A Communist Bookstore in Berkeley had to confront a mob of Proud Boys threatening to burn it down. A friend who works at a San Francisco bookstore here told us they have also been targeted and have had to hire security. “I don’t like walking home by myself” he said.

Stupidity is weaponized in this country.

Most of my day yesterday was spent cooking — Shrimp stew, which is time consuming, and not to be eaten until the following day. For dinner last night, sauteed bok choy with rice, and the frozen pot-stickers from Costco that Michael picked up because he knows I love them.

At dusk we heard the usual voices from the gazebo next door, saw the usual young folks sitting and standing around with wine-glasses, resulting in Michael’s usual frothing, profane reaction. They didn’t stay outside to party this time, perhaps because the wind had picked up and the temperature had dropped. Michael has not yet gone so far as to yell out the window at them.

However, on Thursday night, in the spirit of the 8:00 pm “Howl,” I went to our window and declaimed the first few lines of Alan Ginsberg’s poem.

“I saw the greatest minds of our generation destroyed by madness, starving, naked, hysterical, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix…”

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Pam Troy

A Writer’s Website

Tag: COVID