Pandemic Diary — September 28 to October 4, 2021

Tuesday, September 28, 2021

E had her first exercise class of the term and we went for a walk up the big hill on Garryanna. After lunch E spent an hour or three working in the yard and M spent some time inside at the computer and then, for balance, spent some time outside trying to figure out our patio light problem. The yard is more lovely for being a little less parched. We have early fall tidying up to do and also a a few bare spots still to fill.   

Wednesday, September 29, 2021

A busy day today. Early on we did a walk in the forest. It’s the height of the season for poison oak viewing. The vines grow high up the trunks of the fir trees. The leaves are dark green in the summer but they’re bright red now.

As we were walking past this one, a gust of wind blew up and we had a gentle shower of urushiol laden leaves drifting down around us. E did not appreciate it.

After the forest we visited a nursery and got plants we needed for our various projects. M got pearly everlasting and Oregon geranium; E got Russian sage, a white mum, and some other crazy thing with blue flowers. 

In the evening E went to dinner with her friend D, while M dined at home. Later, between 8:00 and 11:00, we worked our way through a bunch of episodes of Love Me As I Am (Sen Böyle Sev.)Today is the last day that the series is available on Netflix, so it was now or never. We skimmed the last three episodes of Season 1 and several episodes of Season 2, just to see if anything ever actually got resolved. Well of course nothing ever did; that’s not what these shows are about. Like lots of soap opera drama, it’s more about suffering. Chances for happiness do arise, but they are always ruined, sometimes by the machinations of the evil characters, and sometimes by the insecurities and general emotional incompetence of the good characters. Whew. Thank God this one is over.

Which is not to say we didn’t love it, because we did, and we should try to figure out why. First, the acting was good. Sometimes the lines the actors had to speak were a little dumb, but the actors were able to use facial expression, gestures, and body language to make the scenes work anyway. Mediterranean cultures communicate a lot by facial expressions and gestures. They do it more than most Americans do, more than Northern Europeans, more than most Asians. Good Turkish actors can do it especially well and it’s fun to watch. The Turkish directorial style takes advantage of this by focusing in on gestures and expressions and also by not being afraid to record relatively long stretches of silence, which allow non-verbal communication to develop depth and nuance. (And also drive you crazy, but that’s another story.)

We also came to really like the supporting characters. Several of them were really interesting in funny and off-beat ways. This is very common in rom-coms of all kinds; but trust us, off-beat Turkish characters are really off-beat. The fact that the English subtitles are not totally reliable just adds to the fun.

Another thing was the location shooting. They do lots of it. You get to see the exteriors of real houses; people meet for coffee in real cafes (usually really nice ones next to the Bosphorus); people say goodbye to each other at the real bus station of the real town where they are supposed to be. There are lots of transition and establishing shots and they’re usually quite nice, often featuring scenes of either the Black Sea coast or the Bosphorus, which are two beautiful places. The series also shows specific customs and styles. We really enjoyed seeing the wedding celebration because it included some very specific Black Sea traditions, songs, and dances. We really enjoyed it when the rich young man had to move his bride into an unused ‘kapacı’ apartment in the basement of a very nice apartment building. In this case we didn’t learn anything new. Our joy came from already knowing exactly what that meant because the kapacı (super) of our building had invited us down to see his place and meet his little girl.

The show is also built around contemporary Turkish social issues. There is a rich boy/poor girl thing going on, but the bigger issue is that the two young people fall in love, decide to get married and announce to all their friends that they are getting married before saying anything at all to their parents. That extreme may not be very realistic, but that’s not the point. Its function is to provide a dramatic opening to a general conversation about how much say your parents should have in the selection of your life partner. In the U.S. a lot of parents have had to cede a lot of control–but not quite completely and certainly not in all families. In other parts of the world, India and South Korea being two examples, the issue is still very much up in the air. (The producers of Sen Böyle Sev surely know this and that’s probably the kind of export market they’re aiming at.) It’s a universal human issue and for us, listening in to a conversation about it in another cultural context is interesting, partly because it illuminates our own context. It’s hard to analyze your own culture from inside; it’s a little easier from outside. Whatever it is that we have come up with concerning parents and children in our culture, how is it working out for us?

Thursday, September 30, 2021

After tertulia we did lots of gardening, planting some new things and moving others from the wrong places to hopefully better places. Also cleaned up the last of the pumpkin vines. Cloudy all day but no rain to speak of. 

In terms of the number of reported COVID deaths in Oregon, this past month was the worst ever, averaging more than 19 deaths per day. Oregon’s COVID history now looks like this:

Rural areas are now showing higher percentages of infection than urban areas. (During the Dec-Jan surge, the opposite was true.) The Pendleton Roundup rodeo seems to have been a significant spreader event, but rural counties in general have relatively low vaccination rates and hence are vulnerable.

The Oregon Health Authority has published some numbers concerning COVID case severity in the state. At the time of the report there had been 324,569 confirmed or presumptive cases. Of these, 17,582 were serious enough to require hospitalization, a rate of 5.4%. Of all of the hospitalized patients, 3,709 have died. Overall, 1.1% of Oregon COVID cases have resulted in death. Patients 60 and over account for 87% of all deaths. Ages 40-59 account for 12%, ages 20-39 for 1%, and ages 0-19 for 0.1%.

Friday, October 1, 2021

At S’s suggestion E got us a Jodi Picoult novel called Leaving Time. It’s a library CD and we’ve been listening to it sporadically in the car. But we don’t drive enough lately, so we had to pull the old CD player from the back of the closet and get serious. This is our first exposure to Picoult and we’re pretty much liking it. But we have to say, as interesting as elephants are, sometimes the human narrators ramble on too long.

Saturday, October 2, 2021

The Andees are coming for breakfast tomorrow, so E went quiche shopping today. This turned out to be challenging. Le Patissier let her down, producing a tiny individual sized quiche rather than the pie sized one she thought she was ordering.  She was forced to fall back on the Mother of Markets for a large one. Ooof. Still, it should be good.

We also decided to rearrange our living room back to more or less what it was before we rearranged it the last time. This involved unplugging and moving our Homepods and made Siri very confused. For a while we had one song playing from the left speaker and a different song playing from the the right speaker. This is not, M says, a good way to listen to music. To solve the problem. M pretty much had to kill Siri first, then gradually bring him back to life. (M’s Siri is a male voice.) As far as we can tell, Siri is now fine and no worse for the experience. M celebrated by listening to Syd Straw. E is having trouble accepting Siri’s sex change without an accompanying name change. She doesn’t think it’s right.

Later on, E went out basket shopping and M made a mess in the kitchen.

Sunday,  October 3, 2021

The Andees were here for breakfast, along with their pal Frankie. 

After breakfast we went for a hike in the OSU forest near Tampico Road, about three miles all told. Beautiful day. After a quick lunch at our place we all went out to B and B’s house in North Albany. Bobbye gave us some of her inari sushi and raspberry iced tea on their deck. She and Andrea hadn’t seen each other in a long time. It was nice for them to be able to catch up. 

Later in the evening, when our socializing was done, we watched an episode of a British TV series. We’re having trouble remembering the name of the show. Call the Milkmaid ?

Monday,  October 4, 2021

Shopping day went as usual, except that M went to Winco instead of MofC. We had some thoughts of a camping/hiking/moteling trip to southern Oregon this week, but it’s supposed to rain, so we’re astayin’ home. This afternoon E went to the eye doctor and afterwards was really bothered by having had her eyes dilated. She lay down in the living room and listened to Dame Judith Anderson reading Edna St. Vincent Millay. 

We got an estimate today for a new garage door and opener. Seems high, like COVID pricing or something. We’ll see.