Journal of the Plague Year 5-18-2020: Books Do Furnish a Room (Or Not)

Up at the crack of dawn (or at least before 7 am) to visit Trader Joe’s for the geezer hour.   Lots of cheery young employees wearing masks and taking care of the old folks who crave Joe’s frozen appetizers and other good stuff.   Every customer seemed to fit the over-65 criterion.  Is this our future?

And that is not the only event of the day.  We have an online literary gathering tonight.  In previous years, the prose and poetry were accompanied by wine and goodies.  This year, it is strictly BYO wine.  And I don’t have to get dressed (ladies, you know what I mean). 

Retiree shopping and virtual poetry salons do not take that much time, leaving opportunity for decluttering.  We have gone beyond closet cleaning and are now focusing on books.  A forty-year career in academic social sciences results in lots of books. Sadly, books do not have the utility or resale value they once did.  Hubby tried giving them to his university library, but they did not want old books. He tried taking them to a used book dealer, who gave him $50.00 store credit for a few boxes. He tried Half Price Books, which gave him even less.  So, he turned to me, a one-time rare books librarian whose first job out of library school was with a used book dealer. We worked out a way to reduce his library to a manageable size. 

First, we agreed that if he agreed to get rid of a volume he would accept that it might be recycled. Painful. Second, he would not keep books with library stickers and markings. Easy. Third, he would not keep paperbacks with underlining, highlighter, or cigarette burns. Fourth, he would not keep books in generally poor condition.  I estimate that about one third of the collection falls in these categories.  They will either go in the recycling bin or find new life in the Little Free Libraries around town. 

I estimate that hubby will want to keep one third of the remaining volumes.  That means that I will need to figure out how to dispose of the final third. Because we cannot overwhelm the recycling bin, this will be a long-term project. The way things are going, this project will have the joint benefit of keeping me busy while reducing the weight load of his second-floor library. It’s all good.

Journal of the Plague Year 4-26-2020

Lots of TV watching (see below), but first I must report progress in the decluttering department. We tackled a closet that was a dumping ground for one of my sons plus assorted stuff that I had no place for. The closet is now empty!  The best finds

Art nouveau music stand used by my grandmother the violinist. It wound up in the closet because it needs repair and I wanted to get it out of the way. Now it is elsewhere, but still awaiting repair.

Fencing socks, sword blade and sword holder. Returned to the fencing son who lives here in Minneapolis and hopes to be able to start fencing again.

Sleeping mask, also returned to Minneapolis son.

Five heavyweight hoodies in the colors of Roosevelt High School, where Minneapolis son was a debate coach some years ago. Now they are in the pile destined for Goodwill when they reopen. 

A blueberry box from Wyman’s, the blueberry king of Washington County, Maine. It was filled with rocks picked on various trips, including amethysts from a visit to a Canadian mine near Thunder Bay, Ontario. My new plan is to get them polished. The box could go back to Maine if we ever get there.

Old New Yorker magazines. I read everything but the cartoons online, so I looked at all the drawings and then tossed them in the recycle bin. 

Lest you think that we are all work and no play, here are samples of our recent TV watching:

Righteous Gemstones and Succession: Both are disappointing series about families with larger than life patriarchs and three adult children (in both shows the three children are two men and a woman) who are not filling their fathers’ shoes. Neither show is particularly great, although I usually like John Goodman, who plays the patriarch of his televangelist family in Righteous Gemstones. We have not gotten through the first season of either. Maybe they will get better.

Informer: A well-written British series about an engaging young man of Pakistani descent who becomes a police informer after he is threatened with the exposure and deportation of his stepmother, who is in the UK without papers. This is worth watching. 

Giri/Haji (Shame/Guilt): This British-Japanese production is about a Tokyo detective who is sent to London to bring back his gangster brother. The characters are well-drawn, the plot complex (sometimes I had to rewind to figure out who was who), and the writing good. The star, Takehiro Hira, is a heartthrob. Hard to see how there will be a second season, but if there is, I would watch. 

Journal of the Plague Year 4-20-2020

While the rest of the world slept, we watched TV. Or maybe it’s the other way around. In any event, here’s our watch list for the last few days:

Tiger King: Let’s be honest. This is trash TV. In the end, none of the characters are particularly appealing or redeemable. Nevertheless, we did watch to the bitter end. And apparently there's one more episode coming soon, back by popular demand. Cute cats.

Freud: Managed to get through four episodes of this costume horror series, each one bloodier and crazier than the one before. It had all the clichés, with the benefit of a few lines in Hungarian spoken with a German accent that even I could understand. But it also had the ages-old trope about Hungarians being closer to the dark side due to … something in their blood. I find that irritating but maybe true, given the politics right now of that country. 

Bosch, Season 6: Based on the Michael Conelly novels, this is a well-written series about an idiosyncratic LA cop who wins some, loses some, and tries to keep victims from falling through the cracks. 

Sour Grapes: A 2016 documentary about wine fraud, the film is really a story about the vulnerability of hedge fund managers and others with too much money. If you enjoy drinking Burgundy, it’s worth watching. 

Nothing much else has happened. We have not bought gas since March 14 and still have about 90 percent of that tankful. New chairs that we ordered in the fall finally arrived. The delivery and setup crew wore masks and gloves. My Minneapolis son decided he could safely visit the old folks without infecting them, so he showed up with mask and gloves and we sat in lawn chairs on the driveway six feet apart. It was wonderful to see him in person, but I wish I could have hugged him.

Stay safe and keep watching!