In yet another pandemic themed painting, I wanted to register the ‘zoomed out’ feeling of being not just tired of the pandemic in general, but also tired of the ways we now communicate over the internet. Experts say that we get especially fatigued because a lot of the non-visual cues that we usually use to communicate have become much more difficult or impossible to read. The ‘zoomed out’ feeling seemed to be perfectly exemplified by my brother Roal, as recorded in a recent screen shot of a family video chat. That became the subject for this painting. I am really hoping that the time when we can get together again in person is not too far away!!!
– Dorn’s self-isolation journal, day 5 (3/20/2020).
Public Service Announcement
Kathleen and I try to keep these posts upbeat, but the coronavirus is no joke!
It’s up to all of us to keep the rate of spread of the virus slower than the capacity of our hospitals to treat it. As a headline in today’s Washington Post put it, “Fate of outbreak in hands of 328 million”(that’s us!).
Please: If you absolutely have to go out, stay 6 to 10′ from others, and wash your hands obsessively, and do what health professionals and experts tell us to do.
And if you don’t absolutely have to go out, don’t!
The social distancing imposed by the virus has left us with plenty of time for the three W’s(Waiting, Watching, and of course Washing). We’ve started to notice things….
We’ve noticed, for example, that the shrubbery bushes out front that form a barrier and no-parking enforcer between our yard and the street are starting to show dead brown branches. We can’t really tell what caused them. It could be that I gave them an over-aggressive trim last time in a vain effort to make them look like boxwoods (although “aggressive” is not an adjective often used in the context of me doing house- or yard-work). Or it might be that the fumes from the cars and delivery vans that pass by are slowly asphyxiating the bushes. Or maybe some plant disease, or maybe just old age, or maybe the fact that each of the shrubs has grown about twice as tall and three times as wide as the label said they were intended to grow.
Whatever the cause, we now have to think of what to do about the problem. Prune the dead spots and hope the living ones will fill in the holes? Uproot all the bushes, and start afresh with new plants? Something in between? Just put up a fence? When we need a break from worrying about issues of medical and economic health of us and our loved ones, we re-invigorate by arguing about what to do about the bushes.
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I also noticed for the first time a delightful anachronism in Stella Gibbons’s comic novel Cold Comfort Farm (which I raved about here). This book was written in 1932 and the action seems to take place around 1920. The book is not in any way futuristic or science-fictiony: as I mentioned, it’s a silly comedy of class and manners mashed up with a tame gothic horror novel. It’s like P. G. Wodehouse tried to imitate Jane Austen channeling the Brontë sisters.
But there’s this one single encounter exactly halfway through (page 163 of 326), when the heroine Flora is talking with her quasi-boyfriend Claud. At first it seems like a phone call, but it becomes apparent that they are actually videochatting:
“Squalid or not,” said the small, clear voice of Flora, fifty miles away (for she thought she would answer his letter by telephone, as she was in a hurry to get the affair arranged), “he is all we can find, unless we have that Mr. Mybug I told you about.”
Claud twisted the television dial and amused himself by studying Flora’s fair, pensive face. Her eyes were lowered and her mouth compressed over the serious business of arranging Elfine’s future. He fancied she was tracing a pattern with the tip of her shoe. She could not look at him, because public telephones were not fitted with television dials.
What in the world is going on here? They didn’t even have television in 1920, or even 1932. Did they?
Well, it turns out they did. Television was invented in the late 1920s, and by the early 1930s there were demonstrations of videotelephone “booths” at various world expositions and in post offices. I’ll bet Stella Gibbons attended one of the expositions, and was so enthralled with the modern technology that she slipped it into her book! Aren’t people clever?
Source: Wikipedia article “Videotelephony”
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It’s a blistering hot day today (well, for March—it’s 80° outside). More folks are starting the exodus from their homes/quarantine cells down to the beach. The percentage of them that appear to be practicing social distancing, while greater than zero, does not fill one with confidence.
