Plague Journals

 Indiana Historical Society is encouraging Hoosiers to document what it’s like experiencing this unique moment with an initiative called “Telling Your Story: Documenting COVID-19 in Indiana.”  In a sense, this is what I’ve been doing in my blog and occasional Facebook ramblings.  Post-Trib columnist Jerry Davich has endorsed the concept and publicized a Facebook site urging a similar practice. Former Valpo teacher Jerry Hager suggested starting by writing down 20 thoughts about something or someone. 

 

“Dear Amy” devoted her advice column to coping with the new reality and urged readers to provide anecdotes on plans postponed, cancelled or otherwise upset and creative activities substituted for them. She wrote:

    When you have so many externals stripped away, it is the basics that quickly emerge as daily blessings: Good neighbors.  Mostly reliable wireless service. Drive-thru Dunkin’

    For me, visits to the gym 10 miles away have been replaced by solitary walks in the woods.  Yesterday I saw the first signs of fiddle-head fern breaking through the forest floor.

    Faced with an empty facility, workers at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago released the penguins to roam the halls – and filmed their adorable escapades, as they went on a “field trip” to meet other animals.

 

Several people are posting photos of places they’ve traveled to, such as San Antonio (Dave), Iceland (Lisa Teuscher), Cabo observing humpback whales (Shannon Bayer), and a Long Beach Pow-Wow (John Attinasi).  Stay-at-home massages are prominent: Ray Gapinski showed Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” farm couple inside and a pitchfork lying unattended outside. Paul Kaczocha is still posting shots of Comet and Tamale romping by themselves on Sullivan Street beach. I have not yet mastered posting photos with my borrowed laptop (should have gotten a MAC if one were available).  I’m happy to do what I can, thanks to IUN’s Help Desk folks, Larry, Missy, Tony, Roger, and others.

 

My life has settled into a routine that includes watching daily a free OnDemand movie (preferably one with Scarlett Johansen, Ethan Hawke, or Richard Gere) and a documentary.  ESPN has some good ones; one I enjoyed documented the NBA Celtics-Lakers rivalry of the 1980s.  It helped that I had forgotten which team won the 3 featured championship series.  Having rooted against Boston during the era when Bill Russell-led teams almost always triumphed over Wilt Chamberlain’s squad, I naturally was pulling for L.A., especially since the Celtics employed dirty play to make up for being less talented than Kareem Abdul Jabbar and company.  What made it especially compelling was that both Magic Johnson and Larry Byrd were such great players and fierce competitors.

Toni has started a puzzle of Van Gogh’s “Starry Starry Night” that looks to me to be impossible.  She has completed the outside pieces and one corner.  I have contributed exactly one piece despite poring over it on several occasions.


I have completed the two books I got from Banta Center, B.B. King’s excellent autobiography and Len O’Connor’s “Requiem: The Decline and Demise of Mayor Daley and His Era.”  The latter got somewhat repetitive, as if the author had put the manuscript together from columns. Demonstrations of Daley’s oversized ego took priority over analysis, and even though Hizzoner suffered humiliation over Democrats faring badly in the 1976 election (Jimmy Carter losing Illinois, for example, to Gerald Ford), Daley’s grip on Chicago remained strong despite grumbling in black wards. Next up: rereading John Updike’s “Rabbit” series

 

Here’s hoping and knocking on wood that most journals, including mine, avoid having to document actually coming down with the virus.  Many years ago, Newsweek columnist Stewart Alsop wrote about living with a terminal disease.  My friend Dave Malham reported on learning h had ALS.  As instructive as these were, not to mention brave, I do not wish to travel down that path.