Month: January 2021

Monday, January 18   Deaths  1,803 (+3)   New cases  666

It was grocery shopping day. E handled the Co-op and M went to both Market of Choice (for general items) and Trader Joe’s for wine, dried fruit and nuts. E and M may be foolish, but not so foolish as to buy wine at M of C. Also in the morning E finished up her Pandemic Diary entry about the surprise package and last week’s PD got posted. M charged up the battery on the Porsche and took it out for a spin. A beautiful day for it. Now we wait to see if the battery will hold its charge. Knowing that he may have to replace the battery, M took a long look at it. Looks pretty nice, as batteries go. Moll Kamina 80Ah, made in Germany. Lasted ten years so far. Little translucent dollar signs floating all around it… 

Tuesday, January 19   Deaths  1,88 (+5)   New cases  637

We drove down to southwest Corvallis this morning and walked through the Denawi Creek wetlands. It’s just a few acres with development all around it, but it’s quite lovely. On one side it borders on Sunset Park, where there is a playground and two of the city’s best softball fields. M remembers playing ball there many times back in the last century. He hadn’t seen the place since. Back then there were three softball fields at the park. One of them could only be used in late summer because the ground was too soggy to play on–even in June and July. 

Nowadays that third field has vanished, leaving not a trace, and what we see now are seasonal ponds and a lazy stream running though a soggy prairie full of native grasses, sedge, and small riparian trees. We saw ducks who swam over hoping to be fed and some kind of large rodent chomping on some grass just a few feet away. E decided it was a beaver and M decided it was a nutria. 

After lunch E mailed letters and talked for a long time with her friend H. M mowed the back lawn, a ridiculous thing to have to do in January, but what else can you with long shaggy grass on a warm sunny day?

Lately we’ve been watching another Turkish series on TV. Its English title is Love is in the Air and it is set in Cappadocia. It was made about ten years ago and it’s a little different from the other series we have seen, which have been more modern and more urban. It concerns two sisters, Toprak (Earth), who is terribly innocent, and Havva (Eve), a ruthless schemer. Toprak is grieving for her recently deceased baby and is working as a wet nurse for a wealthy family. Havva is bent on snagging the town’s most eligible bachelor, the young heir to the same family, who is named Yusuf. The baby that Toprak is nursing is in fact Yusuf’s son, born out of wedlock to a young woman who died not long after giving birth, hence the need for a wet nurse. Toprak is married, but she is living, for now, at the home of the above mentioned wealthy family, leaving her husband on his own, free to carry on his affair with a floozie named Yasmin, nicknamed Yaso. Meanwhile, Yusuf’s younger sister, Münevver, is secretly in love with Yiğit, the housekeeper’s son, who has just graduated from teacher’s college. The name Yiğit means valiant, but he is not living up to that name, and Münevver (Enlightened) is getting annoyed. 

Wednesday, January 20   Deaths  1,832 (+24)   New cases  674

We watched the inauguration this morning. It was very moving. We loved Biden, and just like the rest of the country, we liked Lady Gaga, J-Lo and Bernie’s mittens. Some of the speeches were a little long. But the main thing was that it happened. Not many countries have ever needed new leadership as bad as we did.

After the swearing in, we went for a walk up in the forest so that E could visit an old friend with whom she has been sharing important moments with since the first Obama victory.

On the way back we saw how our old maple was doing. About five years ago the it was cut as part of a thinning operation, which left nothing but a three foot tall stump. Hard to kill a maple, though, at least in this climate. 

It’s the 300th day of Pandemic Diary record keeping. After twenty days of only moderately high daily deaths, the number this week climbed back up to very high, 21.7 deaths per day. Here’s the chart.

Thursday, January 21   Deaths  1,843 (+11)   New cases  849

Although COVID is still raging in Oregon, there is one mildly hopeful sign: the test positive rate has averaged below five per cent for the past eight days. And on the national scene, masks will now be required at all federal facilities. What a concept. 

A cold damp day around here, no real rain but lots of mist and drizzle. M went to Bi-Mart and got a bag of manure. Why? Because the Extension newsletter says that now is the time to manure one’s rhubarb. We wonder if this recommendation comes from the latest horticultural research or if it is traditional lore that has been passed down by untold generations of rhubarb growers? The article didn’t say. 

E ventured into town and came back with a nightlight. We really need a nightlight because we had to close the shades to keep out the light from the Christmas lights at the house across the street. The lights have been on 24 hours a day since Christmas, even though no one lives there. Ask us if we understand this.

M is cooking tonight–saag lentils, rice, and fried eggs. On Love is in the Air, the secrecy of Münevver and Yiğit’s secret love is beginning to unravel. Both of their mothers now know about it. Yiğit’s mother is deeply concerned–about herself–because she knows she might get fired. Münevver’s mother, Hamiyet, is furious and lays into Yiğit with the old “How could you do this to us after all the nice things we did for you?” She banishes him from the mansion and comes very close to exiling his mother as well. Of course, this is all still women’s stuff. Yusuf and his dad Yilmaz (Undaunted) are still in the dark. Yilmaz continues blithely along, and is nearly finished with his plan for getting Münevver engaged to the provincial governor. Meanwhile, has innocent Toprak’s dunce of a husband rented a house for himself and his floozie? Of course he has. Has Toprak found out about it? Uh-huh. Has the scheming Havva managed to lure handsome good guy Yusuf into her web? Not yet. Fate has dealt her a couple of setbacks. Has she given up? No. She’s a spunky one. When fate slaps her, she slaps right back.

Friday, January 22   Deaths  1,865 (+22)   New cases  877

A walk today at a Benton County Natural Area called Fitton Green. Just a stroll really, about 3500 steps. Nice day for a walk, warmish and partly cloudy. The other major event of the day that a M finished another of his British crosswords. Here’s an excerpt. The clue is Idle socialite, ages out of university, finding way to embrace flower-girl. The answer is a two-word phrase, each word containing six letters. The known letters and blanks are as follows:   _o_n_e    _i_a_d.  If anyone sees this and thinks of the answer immediately, well, that’s good, but you probably shouldn’t mention it to M, because it took him forever. 

Saturday, January 23   Deaths  1,877 (+13)   New cases  775

A mostly sunny day, cold in the morning but mild in the afternoon. E went out to the country to walk Pepper. Pepper was glad to see her, but not happy at all about going for a walk, possibly because it was pretty cold at that time. So E got in only a few steps toward her daily goal of many thousands. After lunch, therefore, she had to take M for a walk around the neighborhood. E also spent time today searching for a new pot for a house plant that is outgrowing its current home. By the time she found one to her liking, it was late in the day and she wisely decided to postpone the actual repotting phase of the project. While she was out searching, M worked on doing a makeover of a little iris bed that was choked with grass. It was so warm that he had to take off his heavy shirt and work in his tee. Weird. 

We’ve been getting information about vaccinations in Oregon. A total of 285,914 doses have been given. The state is averaging 12-15,000 administrations per day. At that rate it will take a while. The state government has released a schedule for when various groups will become eligible. So far only health workers and caregivers have been getting the vaccine. Starting on Monday, teachers, school staff and child care providers will become eligible. Two weeks after that, people 80 and older will become eligible, followed a week later by 75 and older, and a week after than 70 and older, and a week after that 65 and older. So Eve will become eligible sometime around Valentines Day. Because M is in a different group, he will become eligible later. 

But wait, what does “become eligible” actually mean? Not much. Apparently all it means is that you will have permission to put your name on a waiting list somewhere. Where are these lists? No one is saying. How long will you have to wait once your name is on a list? No one knows. Oh boy.

If E does get her shots before M, things could get interesting. According to M, it means that E will have to do all of the grocery shopping for a while. E says that’s right, but M will have to do all the cooking because she’ll be so tired from all that shopping. 

Sunday, January 24   Deaths  1,880 (+3)   New cases  582

No sun today, cold and dreary, light rain most of the time. E braved the weather to repot her giant plant. M helped by making suggestions (mostly useless) and by helping lift the whole deal back in into place once the repotting was done (quite helpful). E says the change will be good in the long run. Meanwhile, the plant seems ungrateful.

E also took a long walk today, in spite of the rain. M took advantage of the weather by staying inside and watching an OSU women’s basketball game. Due to a long series of COVID related postponements and cancelations, it was their first game in over a month. The game went to double overtime, but they lost.

For anyone who didn’t guess it immediately, here’s the answer to Friday’s crossword clue: Idle socialite, ages out of university, finding way to embrace flower-girl. We’re looking for two six-letter words. The semantic clue was ‘idle socialite.’ The anagrammatic clues were very obscure. Let’s go word by word: “ages” = a LONG time; “out of” = on the outside of; and “university” = U. So, we have to put the two parts of LONG–LO and NG–around the outer edges of the U. That gives LOUNG. The ‘way’ is road whose abbreviation is RD. Those two parts–LOUNG and RD– ‘embrace’ the ‘flower-girl’, which is to say that one is on the left side of her and one is on her right. So now we have LOUNG_  _ _ _ _RD with the flower-girl in between. Who, then, is the flower-girl? Think sixties musicals based on British plays.

(Türkce versiyonunu görmek için aşağı kaydırın.)

Monday, January 11   Deaths  1,613 (+8)   New cases  939

The Pandemic Diary tracks Oregon deaths daily and calculates averages for successive ten-day periods. This is the 290th day of tracking. For the period January 1 to January 10 Oregon recorded an average of 12.8 deaths per day, a very slight decrease from the previous period. Here is the latest curve chart.

Concerning the plague of fascism, Arnold Schwartzenegger has posted a statement concerning events in the nation’s capital. It is very moving and draws upon memories from his early life in post-war Austria. 

Schwartzenegger says that this is America’s Kristalnacht, the night of organized anti-semitic violence that occurred in Germany and Austria in 1938. It seems to M that our recent experience also has things in common with the Beerhall Putsch, the failed Nazi coup attempt that occurred in 1923 in Bavaria. Bad precedents both.

In Corvallis it was another grocery shopping day. Mother of Markets was pretty quiet at eight in the morning, so that was nice. Too bad M forgot some crucial items and had to go back at two in the afternoon. Between the two trips he went to the dentist for a fitting of his implant crown. He found out that the dentist and at least some staff have already had at least a first dose of vaccine. So that was nice. Too bad the assistant who did much of the fitting and spent the most time close to M had declined the vaccine because “I get sick from vaccines.” Hmm. That’s not what M wanted to hear. The correct response from M, of course, was “Oh, that’s too bad. Get another job. I’m leaving.” But M is hardly ever correct, though he does file things away.

E did some critical correspondence in the morning, then after lunch had an hour of Zoom yoga. Later in the afternoon she went with her friend A and A’s dog Pumpkin to hike in the forest. She found yoga and forest walking to be a winning combination. M made some stew for us to pack and take to Bend for tomorrow’s dinner. E made dinner for today. 

We have a reservation for two nights at a resort just outside of Bend, a place that was one of the nicest in the area thirty or forty years ago, so nice that we could rarely afford to stay there. It has been far surpassed since, but it still looks acceptable and is now affordable. 

Bend has some wonderful restaurants and we plan to get take-out for our Wednesday dinner, but we’re taking food with us for all our other meals. It’s a little like camping, but with a complete kitchen. We’ll see how it works out. 

Tuesday, January 12   Deaths  1,667 (+54)   New cases  1,203

Well here we are just outside of Bend Oregon, where we have come to play in the snow. Unfortunately there is no snow, so that may not work out. We’ll go higher up mountain tomorrow and see if we can find some. Tonight we are safely settled into an old rental condo unit in the Seventh Mountain Resort. We’ve just had our evening meal brought from home and we’re fine. The place we’re staying is very much so-so. The kitchen is minimally equipped with a tiny fridge, a tacky little cooktop and a very noisy convention oven / microwave. Of course the unit has been redecorated and repaired many times in its long life. It’s nice enough–spacious, not really shabby anywhere, but a little bit of a hodge-podge. It’s now a Worldmark by Wyndham property and they’re trying hard to push some kind of worldwide time-share and condo scheme. Our check-in was a two step process. First we registered normally at one counter. The friendly woman did everything except give us a key. For that she sent us to another counter where another friendly woman welcomed us again and strongly urged us–for what seemed like hours– to sign up for a sales pitch tomorrow morning, saying we would get a $100 gift card just for attending. Wow! We weren’t real excited by that. Kinda wanted to just get to the room… Anyway, if you like high pressure selling and tired condos, you should definitely come here.

Wednesday, January 13   Deaths  1,708 (+41)   New cases  1,346

Nice sunny day and we did find snow, quite a lot, just twenty miles farther up the road. When we checked the snow surface, we saw that old snow had been rained on and refrozen to an icy crust, then covered with a thin layer of new snow. It promised some fun times on the well-used cross-country ski trails, maybe a little too much fun. We pulled out the snowshoes instead. We ended up going about four and a half miles, which included tromping a few hundred feet upward to the top of a mini-mountain. Here’s what that looked like.

When we got to the top, we were tired. We looked for a place to sit down and have lunch. The place we found had nice décor.

For lunch we had a carrots and celery starter followed by sandwiches and chips. To drink we each had a small can of pineapple juice, chilled on ice at the table. This was followed by hot mocha coffee, a few bites of Swiss chocolate, and a sip of Aberfeldy. Then it was time to strap back in and try to find our way back. 

It was Eve’s night to cook. She got us take-out from Hola, the Peruvian/Mexican place. The interior of the restaurant was off limits, with pick-up taking place at an outside makeshift counter. It felt very safe and the food was excellent. We went to bed early.

Thursday, January 14   Deaths  1,737 (+29)   New cases  1,152

Another sunny morning in Bend. We had our usual tertulia with J and R, who told us about the big storm that struck the Corvallis area just a few hours after we left for Bend. There was lots of rain and a whole lot of wind. Near where E used to live, several homes were cut off when not one but two big fir trees fell across the entrance to their cul-de-sac.

We had a leisurely morning and finally started for home at about 11:30. It was a good day to view the mountain peaks and we stopped at the usual place between Bend and Sisters. 

As we passed through the town of Sisters, we did NOT stop at the Sister’s Bakery. We can’t remember now exactly why we didn’t stop. It might have been because we summoned enough willpower to resist their fatty treats. Or it might have been because they were closed for remodeling. I guess we’ll never know for sure.

When we got home from our trip we found a surprise package on our doorstep. The excitement deepened as E. opened the package to find a bonanza of beautiful cloth bags and masks. Turns out they were a thank you gift from a local seamstress with whom E has shared some stimulus money to compensate for the COVID-induced downturn in business.

Friday, January 15   Deaths  1,758 (+21)   New cases  1,012

COVID rages worse than ever and the whole country is edgy about the inauguration. The only good news today is that Trump’s approval rating did in fact decline after the riots. A miracle. Around our house it was catch up with the chores day. E worked on organizing the pantry cupboard with her new round-n-rounds, then had Zoom yoga, then organized another few hundred photos. M washed and vacuumed the car and swept wind blown tree litter from the patio and driveway. We also went for a morning walk and saw evidence of the storm, at least five big trees down in a nearby neighborhood.

The OHA reports that a total of 146,137 vaccine doses have been administered in Oregon. This includes both first and second doses. We were happy to hear that Andrea got her first dose. She hopes to get her second dose in about thirty days. The OHA also says that a total of 321,425 doses of vaccination have been delivered to Oregon, which means that there are approximately 150,000 doses now available for administration. In recent days the state has been averaging around 12,000 vaccine administrations per day. At this rate, Oregon has only about a 12-day supply. 

Health workers and caregivers of all kinds continue to have first priority. The next priority group would include school teachers, people with chronic illnesses that increase COVID susceptibility, and all people over 65, which would be us. According to one source, vaccinations for the second group could begin as early as January 23. Others say that we should be thinking about April.

E highly recommends a book called Educated by Tara Westover. It’s a memoir about Westover’s childhood and early life. She’s grew up in a survivalist household in eastern Idaho. Her father was a Mormon who had come to believe that the vast majority of Latter Day Saints had been completely corrupted by the devil. Tara Westover and several of her siblings were born at an isolated house in the mountains and their births were not registered. The memoir is essentially the story of her relationships to her parents and brothers and of her struggle to find her way. M is reading it now. Spoiler Alert: Tara has had one tough row to hoe.

Saturday, January 16   Deaths  1,799 (+41)   New cases  1,173

E got up early this morning walked over to Market of Choice to obtain emergency supplies. M stayed home and made coffee. Breakfast was good. Later E went out to the country to walk Pepper and M worked a bit in the garden and then came inside to work on the Turkish version of the PD. Dinner was take-out Italian food. We have enough of it left for another meal. 

Lots of COVID deaths these days, just as Fauci and others had predicted. As measured in terms of deaths per 100,000 residents, the Oregon rate is now 42. Here’s what has been reported for a few other places using that same metric. (World numbers are from the Johns Hopkins. State data is from the Washington Post. We are mindful that these may not be true numbers; true numbers are a dream. These are just the numbers that we have.)

Italy: 135

United Kingdom: 132

United States: 120

Spain: 114

Mexico: 110

Sweden: 101

Switzerland: 101

Brazil:   99

Germany:   55

Canada:   48

Australia:     3.6

Japan:     3.2

New Jersey: 230

New York: 207

Louisiana: 173

Florida: 118

Wyoming:   90

California:   84

Utah:   49

Vermont:   26

Sunday, January 17   Deaths  1,800 (+1)   New cases  799

A lazy morning. The weather is warm, mostly cloudy. The sun, when it’s out, is still far to the south, more than halfway down the sky even at noon. But it warmed us right up when we went for our walk before lunch. 

In the garden there are new shoots starting to poke up–crocuses, hyacinths and daffodils. They’ll be here soon. Right now though, it’s sarcococca time! Sarcococca blooms every year in January, the middle of the winter when there’s nothing else. Its flowers are small and quite unspectacular, but their smell is amazing. We brought a sarcococca from our old house and had the good sense to plant it just beside the front door of our new one. So these days we notice the wonderful smell every time we go in or out. Sarcococca is from the Himalayas, so it conflicts with our current Oregon native plant agenda, but never mind. Moderation in all things.

In the afternoon we talked with E’s brothers on Zoom. Jim is at home in upstate New York while John has ensconced himself in South Carolina where it’s warmer. They seem to be doing well. Alas, our talk was marred again by technical difficulties. E also had a long phone talk with Andrea, who was taking a much deserved day off. We also made a quick run out to B and B’s house to deliver a birthday cake. We wanted to take the little car, but its battery was dead and we were back in the Mazda. Never mind, it was still good to take a drive through the country on this rather nice day.

Later, we plan to watch Part 2 of the new version of All Creatures Great and Small on PBS. E was a little annoyed by Part 1. She has read the original stories several times and she finds that in this production some of her favorite details have been altered or omitted. 

(End of this week’s post. Turkish edition follows.)

Pandemic Günlüğü 11-17 Ocak

pazartesi, 11 ocak Oregon’daki ölümler: 1,613 (+8)       yeni vakalar: 939

Pandemi Günlüğü Oregon’daki ölümleri her gün sayıyor. Her on günde bir ortalama hesaplıyoruz. Bu gün 290. gün. İste yeni grafik.

Faşizm başka bir beladır. Arnold Schwartzenegger bunun Amerika’nın Kristalnacht’ı olduğunu söylüyor. Mesajı çok güçlü.

Corvallis’te alışveriş günüydü. Süpermarket sabahın erken saatlerinde sessizdi. Sabah E Zoom yoga yaptı. Beğendi. Öğleden sonra ormana gitti. Arkadaşı A ve köpeği Pumpkin ile yürüdü. Daha sonra E bugünün akşam yemeğini ve M yarın akşam yemeğini pişirdi. Neden? Yarın iki günlüğüne Bend’e gidiyoruz.

M on birde implanti üzerinde çalışmak için dişçiye gitti. Ofisteki neredeyse herkesin COVID aşısı olduğunu öğrendi. Sadece bir kişiye aşı yapılmadı. Bu kişi M’un ameliyatı sıasında asistandı. Aşılardan hastalandığımı söyledi. M bunu duymak istemedi. Asistanın farklı bir işe ihtiyacı var.

salı, 12 ocak Oregon’daki ölümler: 1,667 (+54)       yeni vakalar: 1,203

Yani şimdi Bend’deyiz. Otelimiz tamam. Çok güzel değil ama pahalı da değil. Karda oynamaya geldik. Maalesef kar yok. Yarın daha yükseğe çıkacağız. 

çarşamba, 13 ocak Oregon’daki ölümler: 1,708 (+41)       yeni vakalar: 1,346

Güzel güneşli gün. Yolda yirmi mil ileredikten sonra çok fazla kar bulduk. Kar ayakkabılarını giydik ve küçük bir dağa çıktı. 

Zirveye çıktığımızda yorgunduk. Güzel bir yer bulduk ve öğle yemeği yemek için oturduk. Kar ayakkabılarını çıkardık ve rahatladık. Dekor zarifti. 

Öğle yemeğinde havuç ve kereviz yedik, sonar sandviç ve çips, sonra çikolata ve kahve. Sonra kar ayakkabımızı giyeriz  ve güzel piknik yerimizden ayrıldık.

perşembe, 14 ocak Oregon’daki ölümler: 1,737 (+29)       yeni vakalar: 1,152

Bend’de bir başka güneşli sabah. Yaklaşık on bir buçukta ayrıldık. Yolda dağları görmek için durduk. Bunlara Üç Kız Kardeş denir. 

cuma, 15 ocak Oregon’daki ölümler: 1,xxx (+29)       yeni vakalar: 1,xxx

COVID durumu çok kötü ve açılıştan herkes endişeli. Tek iyi haber, Trump’ın onay notunun biraz düştüğü. Bir mucize! 

Oregon’da 146.137 COVID aşısı yapıldı. Yaklaşık 150.000 dozumuz kaldı. Bu on iki gün sürecek. Ne zaman daha faslasını alacağımızı.

Educated adlı bir kitapı okuyoruz. Yazar Tara Westover. “Survivalist” bir ailede büyüdü. Hayatı çok zordu. O çok iyi bir yazar. 

cumartesi, 16 ocak Oregon’daki ölümler: 1,799 (+41)       yeni vakalar: 1,173

Bugünlerde çok sayıda COVID ölümü. Oregon oranı artık 100.000’de 42. İşte diğer bazı yerlerin numaraları.

İtalya: 135

Birleşik Krallık: 132

ABD: 120

İspanya: 114

Meksika: 110

İsveç: 101

İsviçre: 101

Brezilya: 99

Almanya:   55

Kanada:   48

Avustralya:     3.6

Japonya:     3.2

New Jersey: 230

New York: 207

Louisiana: 173

Florida: 118

Wyoming:   90

California:   84

Utah:   49

Vermont:   26

pazar, 17 ocak Oregon’daki ölümler: 1,800 (+1)       yeni vakalar: 799

Bu sabah tembeldik. Hava ılık, kısmen bulutlu ve kısmen güneşli. Güney gökyüzünde güneş alçalıyor, ama sıçaklığını hissedebiliyorduk. 

Bahçede bazı yeni yeshil filizler var–çiğdem, nergis ve sümbül. O çiçekler yakında burada olacak. Ama şimdi sarcococca zamanı! Sarcococa çiçekleri küçüktür ve muhteşem değildir, ama harika bir kokuları var. Evimizin ön kapısının yanında bir sarcococca var. Her dışarı çıktığımızda kokusunu alabiliyoruz. Çok hoş.

Öğleden sonra Zoom’dan Eve’in kardeşleriyle konuştuk. Ağabeyi New York’te, küçuk erkek kardeşi Güney Carolina’da. Onlar iyiler. 

Bu akşam PBS’de Büyük ve Küçük Tüm Yaratıklar’ın 2.Bölümünü izleyeceğiz. E kitaplar sevdi ama bu TV programından emin değil.

Monday, January 4   Deaths  1,506 (+6)   New cases  728

The Oregon Health Authority reports that 190,500 doses of vaccine have been delivered to Oregon sites and that 51,275 doses of vaccine have been administered. The most recent daily report shows 5,550 doses administered–5,542 first doses and 8 second doses.

Another grocery shopping day for M and E. M went again to WINCO and Eve filled out an online order with the Co-op. M failed to find any frosted animal-shaped cookies, but otherwise it went okay. Fedex delivered a pair of new shoes for M. He’s afraid to try them on.

Tuesday, January 5   Deaths  1,550 (+44)   New cases  1,059

We went hiking today just west of Corvallis in the foothills of the Coast Range. The trail climbed steeply up Cardwell Hill, giving us this view of the Mary’s River, which is running high these days. 

The trees in the foreground are Oregon White Oaks, Quercas garryana, also called Garry Oaks. White oaks don’t make much of a show in the fall; their leaves just turn medium brown, as can be seen in the upper left above. In winter, however, the trees are quite striking. The light grayish green color is due to a horde of lichen species that cover all their smaller limbs and branches. On a typical dark winter’s day they have a spectral brightness.

White oaks prefer drier soils, so they generally grow on hillsides and plains, where they compete with Douglas Fir. In this competition the fir trees have decided advantages. Fir grow much faster than oak and also grow taller, depriving nearby oaks of sunlight. In the last two hundred years we’ve seen many places where oak forests are steadily shrinking before the relentless advance of the firs. But how did oaks ever compete at all? Why do reports from naturalist David Douglas, who came here 200 years ago, mention seeing vast areas of oak savannah, much more than we see now? The answer, so we are told, is fire. Oaks are more resistant to fire. For thousands of years, as the story goes, the people who lived in these low altitude forests deliberately set fires in order to beat back the fir forest and expand the oak savannah. (In terms of human food value, oak savannah is many times more productive than fir forest.) The coming of the Europeans, however, changed all this. No more fires were set and naturally occurring fires were actively suppressed. The oaks lost their main competitive advantage and began to decline.  

During the thousands of years when oak savannah was prevalent, many species adapted to it. As the savannah declines, those species suffer. But they’re not all gone. We’re not birders, but we think that this here photo contains a genuine Acorn Woodpecker on the side of a genuine oak.

Once we got to the top of the hill, the path descended gently and eventually looped back down toward the river. 

Wednesday, January 6   Deaths  1,558 (+8)   New cases  764

Unquestionably an historic day. First, it appears that Democratic candidates have won both Georgia senate seats. Second, rioters incited by Trump stormed and for a time occupied the Capitol Building before being cleared by police using tear gas, a shameful and traumatic event for the nation. Many Republicans, including McConnell and Pence, have finally broken with the President, but others remain fully supportive. 

It was a cold wet day around here and we spent most of our time indoors. E worked on her photo project. She has had many hundreds of her old photos digitized–about 16 gigabytes–and has been working on giving descriptive file names to a large group of individual photos. By day’s end she was almost finished with this phase. Next, she intends to get some thumb drives and make two copies, one for backup and one to give to Andrea. 

M spent the day mostly on the computer and got excited by an article in New York magazine that addresses the question of the origin of the COVID19 virus. The article, titled “The Lab-Leak Hypothesis,” was written by Nicholson Baker and is available online here. It’s long, but it’s interesting. The main origin question is whether the virus occurred naturally or was created by scientists in a lab. Baker emphasizes that the question is not really answerable at this point. But after doing his research, he does have an opinion. The article opens with this:

What happened was fairly simple, I’ve come to believe. It was an accident. A virus spent some time in a laboratory, and eventually it got out.

The article goes on to provide background about virology and virology research over the past ten years. Although there are some controversial issues around this subject, there are are also some facts that Baker says are not in dispute. 

One of these is that ever since the SARS and MERS epidemics in the early years of this century, large amounts of money have been devoted to virus research, much of it from the US government. The funding went to various researchers in the U.S., but U.S. money also ended up supporting virology work abroad. At a certain point the money flow was reduced on the grounds that some of the research was itself highly dangerous to public health, but this period of concern did not last and the flow soon resumed. 

One avenue of virus research, which has been generously funded, involves the process of taking a naturally occurring Corona virus, one that is not particularly dangerous to humans, and genetically modifying it in ways that make it very dangerous to humans. Hundreds of these new and very infectious viruses have been created and stored in laboratory freezers. The rationale for making them is that they would provide knowledge about how to quickly create vaccines for the next natural virus that jumped from animals to humans. 

It is widely agreed that the natural virus that the COVID19 virus most resembles is called RaTG13. The key difference between the two is that the COVID19 virus has the ability to find and break into human lung cells while RaTG13 does not. Scientists have also been able to find the specific structures within the COVID19 virus that give it this ability. And almost all virologists agree that it is possible that an RaTG13 virus gained these structures by natural mutation, thus creating COVID19. But the structures in question are complicated and for them to have originated naturally would have taken more than one mutation. So that’s slightly iffy. On the other hand, the idea that a scientist could add such structures to a virus is not iffy at all. Any sufficiently proficient virologist could do it. It’s what we’ve been paying them to do for at least the last ten years. 

Anyway, it’s a great article. I’ve summarized only the driest parts. If you haven’t already seen this article, the juicier parts still await you. 

Thursday, January 7  Deaths  1,568 (+10)   New cases  867

We had FaceTime tertulia with J and R and found that we had all been somewhat heartened by a brilliantly colored sunrise. We learned that J and R are soon to celebrate their 50th anniversary. E and M were suitably impressed, though E pointed out that she too has been married for almost exactly 50 years. It’s just that it took her two husbands to get there. (M and E are looking ahead to their 25th this year.)

E went to Office Depot and got her thumb drives, transferred her most recent 500 files, then packed and mailed one of the drives to Andrea. Only this last batch have been processed to give each photo a searchable and descriptive file name. The previous 900 are organized into folders with descriptive names, but have not been individually named. That, she says, will be the next phase of her work. After that, her plan is to continue on with one more box of albums, which she estimates will yield another 500 photos. All this is connected to her main project, which is to radically reorganize the storage space in our garage in order to make space for a bicycle! 

Taking advantage of the sunny day, we took a longer than usual walk, venturing outside our immediate neighborhood. After that M stayed outside and took down the remaining Christmas lights. This allowed him to return all the Xmas boxes to their places and generally tidy up the garage. Did we mention that it has been raining quite a lot lately? M found this out when he was trying to use a small ladder to reach up to unhook some lights. At one point, when he started up the ladder, its legs sank eight inches into the muddy ground, which left him four inches short of what he needed to reach. Christmas is hard. 

Friday, January 8   Deaths  1,575 (+7)   New cases  1,755

What started out as a dull, listless sort of day brightened up considerably in the late afternoon when E took a moment from her garage organizing labors to check the mail. M heard her cries of delight even from deep inside the house. Our care package from the Switzerland had finally arrived.  

Because we are civilized folk, we waited until after dinner to open the package. Before commencing on the chocolate itself, we read the card and letter. Our friends have three children and several grandchildren, all of whom usually come home for Christmas, but this year, like many of us, the grandparents found themselves dining alone at the holidays. Apparently schools and restaurants are both open in Switzerland, but the latter close at 7:00 and multi-family gatherings are severely restricted. We can say with confidence, however, that the quality of Swiss dark chocolate remains high–very high. 

We were also pleased yesterday to receive our copy of The Book of Ruthie, a volume of Eve’s mother’s writings and watercolor paintings that have been collected and made into a book by Ruth’s younger sister and last surviving sibling. It’s very well done and includes a fine preface by Son John, who also handled distribution. 

And, on a much more trivial note, M was pleased today to receive word that a digital version of his Yemen VHS videotape was ready for him to download. (This was supposed to happen a couple of months ago, but on that occasion the files that he was instructed to download were not of Yemen at all but rather from some kind of beauty pageant in Minnesota. So the whole thing had to start over.) Today M finally got what he had paid for, but he was even more delighted by the fact that besides his Yemen footage his download included a special bonus–additional video from Minnesota! In this one, he was able to identify the name of the pageant: the state finals for the title of Mrs. Minnesota America, probably from 1999 or 2000. Looks like quite an event.

The logo for the Mrs. America pageant, by the way, is a drawing of an angel posed in a modestly high-walled clawfoot bathtub painted the colors of the U.S. flag. Pretty cool. If you think we made this up, try googling it. One easy way to do that is to type this phrase into your search box:   4 days left to save $200 on Mrs. Texas  Then click on Images.

Saturday, January 9   Deaths  1,603 (+28)   New cases  1,643

After breakfast E went out to the country to take Pepper for a walk and on her way home stopped at the fabric store to buy some elastic. Remember when everyone was trying to make masks and  there was no elastic anywhere to be found? E says that judging from this fabric store, that shortage is over. E spent several happy hours making alterations to her new pajamas that she had not been able to try on in the store. She is pleased with the results. M spent a few hours reading The River Why and then did some Turkish work. Dinner was take-out chile rellenos from El Palenque. After dinner we watched two episodes of Love is in the Air (Yer Gök Aşk), a Turkish series first shown in 2010. It’s very different from some of the more recent series that we have watched.

Sunday, January 10   Deaths  1,605 (+2)   New cases  1,225

The number of vaccinations in Oregon is getting close to 100,000. That’s nice, but we still have a long way to go. A letter in the paper today had a rant about how poorly this was being managed; the writer had never seen anything so badly bungled. Didn’t mention any specifics though, and didn’t make any suggestions.

But we had homemade chocolate chip scones for breakfast! (Also for a part of M’s lunch.) Wonderful. Later we went for a walk up to our little 13th Street natural area. We both wore new shoes and got them a little muddy. Yes, life goes on. A damp, misty day, but not really raining. 

Later on M finished his Turkish version of last week’s post to the Pandemic Diary and appended it to the bottom of the English one. It’s a sort of primary school version of the real thing. We don’t know why he’s doing it; he said it was either that or watch more YouTube videos. We also spent time today planning a trip to Bend to stay in a nice hotel and have another picnic in the snow.

(Türkce versiyonunu görmek için aşağı kaydırın.)

Monday, December 28   Deaths  1,433 (+6)   New cases  865

COVID deaths in Oregon have dropped somewhat in the last few days. Is this the end of the Thanksgiving surge? Will mid-January bring us a Christmas surge? 

Cold overnight but sunny today. M got groceries at WINCO early. The store was almost empty. Then came a walk in the forest with guest dog Pepper, followed by some garden work. At 2:00 E had a meeting with her HEPAJ group. The group meets in an open garage. While she was there the Co-op called to say that her grocery order was ready, so she picked it up directly after the meeting. While she was gone, M stayed with the dog and watched Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom on Netflix. Quite a show. A powerful story with good performances by Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman.

Tuesday, December 29   Deaths  1,449 (+16)   New cases  713

Another cold clear day. We took Pepper on another long walk, up the hill to the top of Garryana. He loved it. M spent a couple of hours rebuilding our very modest smart home network. It consists of just one Homepod and one smart outlet, but both had gone haywire, resulting in Siri refusing to turn on the Christmas lights. M had to reset both the HomePod and the smart outlet, which is lot like unplugging something and plugging it back in, only with a lot more steps. Ridiculous. For dinner M made stir fry vegetables and rice with cranberry sauce on the side for color. 

Wednesday, December 30   Deaths  1,468 (+19)   New cases  1,052

A normal winter day, sorta cold, sorta wet, the kind of weather that’s unpleasant but is not really trying to kill you. We took Pepper up to the Chip Ross Natural Area. Four thousand steps and twelve stories up and down, said E’s smartwatch. A few years ago the country parks department went through and took down the fir trees. They also removed blackberry and other invasive undergrowth, leaving just the the native oaks and a few native madrones, making it a kind of savannah. In the winter the oaks are bare of course and on a wet day they’re all stark and colorless. With a grey sky, grey branches, faded grass, and the dark gravel trail, it seemed as if the scene had been filmed in black and white. But whenever we passed by a stand of young madrone, the world was colorized again. They’re bursting with health this time of year, showing off their deep green waxy leaves and red branches. They say the madrone population is declining in the Northwest, but the ones we saw today looked fine.

Thursday, December 31   Deaths  1,477 (+9)   New cases  1,682

It’s the 280th day of record keeping here at Pandemic Diary and time to update the chart. After forty days of record breaking increases, the number of reported Oregon daily COVID deaths has finally declined, falling from 21 deaths per day to just 13. 

We had a kind of hectic New Years Eve. We started the day off with tertulia to check in with J and R. They are doing well and their cat is less radioactive every day. It was eight in the morning when we talked to them, but they had already received New Year’s greeting from folks in Australia where the new year had already begun. After that we straightened up the place and packed up our guest dog’s things so that he could be picked up at 11:30. Once Pepper had departed, E was downcast, partly because she missed him already and partly because he had seemed so excited to leave. She started thinking maybe she hadn’t given him enough treats. Nor had she allowed the dog onto the furniture. Plus she had made him take long walks up steep hills. He must have thought he was in boot camp. (But in fact he loves E dearly and very likely misses her too, if M is any judge.)

After that trauma we ventured out, first to get gas for the car, then to the liquor store to get a pint of Southern Comfort. (Why, you might ask, would we do that? More later.) The first liquor store we tried was jammed with young people. The store was limiting the number of customers who could come into the aisles, which was good, but the people who were waiting were merely mobbing together just inside the doorway. Someone was a little unclear on the concept. So off we went to another store where things were easier. Then it was lunchtime. We got sandwiches from the Vietnamese Baguette downtown and ate them in the car parked by the river. 

After that we drove down to Finley Refuge. On the way, E checked in with brother John, who has finally left the north woods was just then arriving in Virginia, on his way to South Carolina, where he intends to spend the coldest part of winter. After a walk in the refuge–where the water levels are pretty high in the ponds and wetlands–we headed back to town and got a couple of lattes to reward ourselves. We saw a very shiny gold Mustang GT in the Coffee Culture parking lot. It was awesome, paint so bright it actually looked like gold. Who knows, maybe it was. 

Then it was time for E’s New Year’s Eve Zoom with S and Mrs. H. M found a Happy New Year Zoom background while E fixed drinks–Southern Comfort Manhattans. This cocktail had been suggested by S to commemorate the days of yore. There was a time, it is said, when the three friends frequently made a meal of SC Manhattans and pizza. M was not acquainted with this dissolute trio at that time. He remembers just one Southern Comfort occasion in his life, an overdose which occurred roughly 55 years ago and which had caused him to avoid that particular beverage ever since.

The meeting, 4:00 to 5:00 Pacific time, 7:00 to 8:00 in the East, was fun for all. No one managed to recreate the storied meal exactly. Mrs. H got a lot of points having dined  this very day on Hart’s pizza–their old favorite. She paired it with some mere wine she had around, but still edged out S, who had a BLT made with veggie bacon and brought a martini to the Zoom party. E hadn’t yet eaten but was looking to have a veggie hot dog with beans both baked and green. No points there. She got significant credit for her Southern Comfort and vermouth but was compelled to confess that it contained no cherry.

After the meeting, M and E had their dinner and then moved on to the next event: a jigsaw puzzle and a bottle of champagne. The puzzle was a present from the Andees, a picture of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Waters house in Pennsylvania. It had only five hundred pieces and would have been fairly easy except that it had an awful lot of green. 

New Year’s Eve is the only night in the year that we are still awake at midnight. Accomplishing this requires both extraordinary motivation and extraordinary fuel. Things worked out pretty well this time. Year 2020 ended with the puzzle lacking only its last 15 pieces and the champagne supply nearly exhausted.

Friday, January 1   Deaths  1,490 (+13)   New cases  1,446

E dreamed last night that we were eating our Christmas tree. So far, the dream has not turned out to be prophecy and our tree is still intact. Instead, E made her New Year’s scalloped potatoes. For many years she has made them to take to the traditional New Year’d Day black-eyed peas gala at A’s house out in the wilds of King’s Valley. There’s no gala this year, but she made the potatoes anyway and decided to take half a pan out to A so as to have a least a socially distanced outdoor chat. We sheltered under the porch roof and had a nice talk, though we had to shout just a little to be heard above a host of very vocal red winged blackbirds. A is an EMT and has learned that she will be getting the COVID19 vaccine next week. She reports that more than 40,000 doses have been administered in Oregon so far. 

Our the way home took us along Tampico Road on the edge of Dunn Forest, so we stopped for a short hike at Road 400, a route we had never explored. Being graveled, logging roads are a nice place to hike on these days of continual intermittent rain. By the time we got back to our car the daylight portion of January 1 was close to ending. Once home, we had our potatoes along with some of A’s black-eyed peas, watched some TV, and went to bed early.

Saturday, January 2   Deaths  1,492 (+2)   New cases  1,010

It was another dark and rainy day, but despite the weather E attended an outdoor retirement party. The time has come for our friend J, youngster that she is, to finally part ways with OSU and cast her lot with PERS. A group of her friends, organized by the indomitable MS, all met up at J’s house to sing her a congratulatory song composed just for the occasion by the Pointless Sisters. The masked performers spaced themselves many feet apart in the front yard. E reports that she kept well back and did not sing. She did, however, hold up a cardboard sign that said Happy Retirement in large letters and provided a gift of a new hiking guide. J accepted this homage while standing on her front porch. When the song was done, J made a brief speech of thanks, and the event concluded.

M, meanwhile, stayed at home and watched an old detective movie called Too Late on Prime. The movie stars John Hawkes, a wonderful actor that he had never seen before and who is–I think we can agree–not conventionally handsome. The movie isn’t conventionally handsome either. It is off kilter–way off kilter–and yet very good, sweet at heart if nowhere else. 

For dinner we treated ourselves to take-out from Sybaris, crab/shrimp Louie for E, chicken tikka masala for M, and key lime pie to share for dessert. Pick up required a long drive over to Albany in the dark and the rain, but it was worth it. After dinner we watched the final two episodes of Bridgerton. That long drama is also sweet at heart–I guess. As for being conventionally handsome (and conventionally ridiculous), it pretty much nails those.

Sunday, January 3   Deaths  1,500 (+8)   New cases  1,421

A nice morning, mostly sunny. It was warm too, around 50. We went for a walk in the neighborhood and found lots of like-minded others. We dodged them all. After that we started dismantling Christmas, first the lights in the back of the house and then the tree. E picked out some décor items that we don’t really need. She put them in a vintage, Christmas-themed, plastic shopping bag from AlphaOmega in Nicosia and set them aside to be donated next October. She’s an optimist. We haven’t yet removed the big light string from the front of the house. Best not to end all the cheer just yet. 

Today’s paper noted the death of Dawn Wells, who played Maryann on Gilligan’s Island. This reminded M that E has never seen Gilligan’s Island, not ever, and has no clue who any of the characters might be. M long ago decided not to be too concerned about this fact, as she seems otherwise fairly normal.

After dinner we watched Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain starring Paul Newman and Julie Andrews. The film is set in East Germany during the Cold War era and it is terrible. It’s so bad that we both burst out laughing several times and eventually wondered if we wanted to even finish it. There’s a scene where the two stars walk together up what is supposed to look like a little hill on a university campus in Leipzig. If this little hill set had been created by a class of fifth graders, their parents would surely have been proud. But in the context of a major Hollywood production…we can only hope that the set designer insisted on a pseudonym in the credits. The movie does have some good moments, but basically the story is preposterous and it all moves so slowly that you have plenty of time to notice just how dumb it is. Not one of Hitchcock’s best. 

Pandemi Günlüğü   28 aralık – 3 ocak

pazartesi, 28 aralık Oregon’daki ölümler: 1,433 (+6)       yeni vakalar: 865

Dün gece soğuk ama bu gün güneşli. M WINCO’den bakkaliye aldı. Sabah erken gitti çünkü dükkanlar kalabalık değil. Alışverişten sonra misafirimizle ormanda yürüduk. Ziyaretçimiz bir köpek. Onun adı Pepper. E bir grup arkadaşıyla saat 2:00’de buluştu. Guvenlik için açık bir garajda buluştular. M Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom adlı film izledi. Viola Davis ve Chadwick Boseman filmde. Güçlu bir hikaye.

salı, 29 aralık Oregon’daki ölümler: 1,449 (+16)       yeni vakalar: 713

Soğuk bir gün. Pepper ile uzun bir yürüyüş daha yaptık. M daha sonra akşam yemeği pişirdi: asya sebzeleri ve pilav.

çarşamba, 30 aralık Oregon’daki ölümler: 1,468 (+19)       yeni vakalar: 1,052

Normal bir gün. Biraz soğuk, biraz yağmurlu, fena değil. Chip Ross Natural Area’da yürüdük. Meşe ağaçları ve madrone ağaçları gördük. Meşeler çıplak ve renksizdi. Madronelar çok farklıydı. Bu havayı seviyorlar. Derin yeşil yaprakları ve kırmızı dalları çok güzel. 

perşembe, 31 aralık Oregon’daki ölümler: 1,477 (+9)       yeni vakalar: 1,682

Oregon’daki günlük ölümler biraz azaldı. Bu iyi bir haber çünkü son 40 gün çok kötüydü. İşte yeni grafik. 

Yeni yıl arifesi çok meşguldü. Zoom üzerinde J ve R ile konuştuk. Onlar iyiler. Avustralya’da ailerleri var ve orada yeni yıllar vardı. Sonra Pepper’in eşyalarını topladık. Arkadaşı onu almak için 11:30’te geldi. E köpekleri seviyor ve üzgündü. Öğle yemeğinden sonra Finley Refuge’te yürüdük ve sonra kahve içtik. 

Saat 4:00’te Eve’nin arkadaşlariyla konuştuk. New York’ta yaşiyorlar. Zoom kullandik ve bir saat konuştuk. Genç oldukları zaman hakkında konuştular. Eski zamanlarda en sevdikleri yemek Manhattan kokteylleri ve pizzaydı. Tsk-tsk.

Yemekten sonra yapboz yaptık ve şampanya icidik. Gece yarısına kadar kaldık. İnanılmaz!

cuma, 1 ocak Oregon’daki ölümler: 1,490 (+13)       yeni vakalar: 1,446

Öğleden sonra arkadaşımız April ziyarete gittik. (April Türkce nisan.) Evinin dışında biraz konuştuk. O bir EMT ve bir itfaiyeci. Yanında bir COVID aşisı olacak. Oregon’da 40.000 aşı yapıldığını söylüyor. 

cumartesi, 2 ocak Oregon’daki ölümler: 1,492 (+9)       yeni vakalar: 1,010

Başka bir soğuk ve yağmurlu gün. M Too Late (Çok Ğeç) adlı eski bir dedektif filmini izledi. John Hawkes ana oyuncuydu. O çok ilginç ve film çok güzel.

pazar, 3 ocak Oregon’daki ölümler: 1,500 (+8)       yeni vakalar: 1,421

Sabah güzel, sıcak ve güneşli. Mahallemizde yürüdük ve başka birçok insan gördük. Bugünün gazetesinden Dawn Wells’in öldüğünü biliyoruz. O Gilligan’s Island adlı bir programdan unlu oldu. Amerika’da neredyse herkes Gilligans Island hatırlar. Sadece bir insan hatırlamıyor çünkü onu hiç görmedi. O kişi Eve. Gerçekten.