Meandering on the Way

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. 

Monday, December 21   Deaths  1,347 (+6)   New cases  846

It’s the 270th day of Pandemic Diary record keeping, time for another chart update.

The number of deaths per day in the most recent 10-day period it was 21.1. The trend is still upward, but the increase is noticeably less steep than it was in the previous thirty days. In terms of COVID deaths per 100,000 residents, Oregon’s rate is now 31.3.

Tuesday, December 22   Deaths  1,382 (+35)   New cases  1,282

We packed a lunch and went up into the Cascades today. We didn’t know exactly what we would find, so we thought of it as a hike and/or a snowshoe walk, which is pretty much what it turned out to be. We went to a place called Lost Prairie, which is just the other side of Tombstone Pass. It’s closer to us than other sites, but generally has less snow than the really good places, especially this early in the season. For that reason we hadn’t been there in years. 

Wednesday, December 23   Deaths  1,403 (+21)   New cases  1,000

We had our Turkish lesson today (Christmas Eve Eve) and reviewed what in English would be called gerunds and infinitives in before/after clauses.  The teach gave this example: “After learning grammar, understanding is easy.” “Dilbilgisini oğrendikten sonra anlamak kolay.” I know it sounds like teacher propaganda, but it’s more or less true. Even people who hate and fear grammar and who are convinced that their grammar is terrible–even those people–have in fact learned all of the really important grammar points if only through natural absorption, which they didn’t notice at the time. 

We got another Christmas card with a short letter. Toward the end of the letter our correspondent noted that 

My cat, Bootsy, went to Kitty Heaven last March. 11 years old. He bit  R really bad, tore skin off of wrist and arm. R feared him. Also nipped at 2 friends who were trying to play with him. I miss him, but it was necessary. 

No boasting about great trips and awesome accomplishments, and yet this writer never whines or complains either. A national treasure.

Speaking of treasures, E made chocolate peanut butter squares. She makes them just like chocolate peanut butter balls except that she doesn’t waste time making the silly shapes. Just whips ‘em right up in time for dinner. Yum.

Thursday, December 24   Deaths  1,415 (+12)   New cases  871

Last minute trip to the grocery store to pick up salmon, etc. Yuck. Busy. E went to visit with PF in the afternoon. They sat outside for a bit. P seems to be doing well. M checked air pressure in the tires on the car that we don’t use. Right rear was low, just as the dash warning claimed. Then it was time to make pecan pie. M made a crust, E made the filling, leaving M to monitor doneness. It looks pretty good. M’s night to make dinner: fondue, french bread and a green salad. After dinner we tried to watch the new Dolly Parton movie. Sigh. Good message, but too much singing of too sappy lyrics. 

Friday, December 25   Deaths  1,422 (+7)   New cases  908

Christmas itself is upon us. We breakfasted on scrambled eggs paired with a raspberry coffeecake. And of course we had stockings and presents. E got a couple of maple sugar snowmen and M got a Lego Ferrari. At elevenish we set off for Salem where we met up with the Andees at K and J’s house to exchange presents with them. C and her new beau were also there. They all came out to meet us and we talked for bit in the front yard. It was wonderful to see all of them. M noted later that there was a strong Becca thread running through the gathering–a mother, a sister, and two good friends. After our visit, we took the freeway south and stopped at the Ankeny Wildlife Refuge to walk through the ash wetland. We wondered if it would be crowded or not. (Christmas is national bird counting day.) But as it happened, we had the place all to ourselves–possibly because it was raining and the temperature was around 37 degrees. We walked to the end of the boardwalk and back–at a fairly brisk pace–and then ate our lunch in the car with the heater on. Nice.

Back at home E had a phone call with her brothers and a little later we did a Zoom meeting with the Andees to watch each other open presents. This was followed by a light but very delicious champagne and salmon dinner followed by a very delicious not so light serving of pecan pie. 

Also today, the OHA reported that a total of 17,130 Oregonians have received COVID-19 first vaccinations, all of them hospital workers or people in long-term care facilities. 

OHA also reports daily test numbers and daily new cases confirmed. Results for the past seven days are shown below.

	Daily tests	Daily new cases	Rate
Saturday 12/19	21,708	1,542	7.10%
Sunday 12/20	17,426	1,153	6.62%
Monday 12/21	17,506	846	4.83%
Tuesday 12/22	18,993	1,282	6.75%
Wednesday 12/23	26,459	1,000	3.78%
Thursday 12/24	19,586	871	4.45%
Friday 12/25	25,892	908	3.51%
weekly average	21,081	1,086	5.29%

Saturday, December 26   Deaths  1,422 (+0)   New cases  612

A quiet day on several fronts. No COVID deaths reported, which is a nice Christmas gift. One thing we have to say about this Pandemic Diary idea, it does get depressing when the news is bad. So let’s celebrate for just a moment.

We’re mostly just cleaning up and resting, though E is still doing Christmas related correspondence both on paper and via the great web.

Sunday, December 27   Deaths  1,427 (+5)   New cases  1,416

A sunny day drew M out to work in the yard. The temperature was in the low forties, good conditions for sod turning. E got the house ready for another visit from Pepper, whose owner is going in tomorrow for her second cataract surgery. Then at 3:00 we had a Zoom call with Jim and John, with the Andees dropping in as well. Technical difficulties delayed the start of the meeting slightly, but by 3:40 we were doing pretty good… We ended at 4:00 so as to give E time to go out to the country and pick up the dog before it got dark.

Monday, December 14   Deaths  1,161 (+35)   New cases  1,180

M went shopping at Market of Choice while Eve waited for word from the Co-op about when her order would be ready. Before lunch we took Pepper for a longish walk in the forest, something he doesn’t often get to do. He was happy on the trail and mostly quiet at home all afternoon. 

We’re both working on homework for the Turkish class. There’s a lot to look at this week, including everyday vocabulary like seasons, months, days of the weeks, colors, numbers, and household items. All very useful. In case anyone is curious: Bugün ondört aralık pazartesi. (Today is Monday the fourteenth of December and the days of the week and the names of months are not capitalized in Turkish–I think.)

Eve’s grocery order was ready by around three in the afternoon. She paid over the phone, including the $5 service fee and then went over to the shop to pick it up.

Tuesday, December 15   Deaths  1,214 (+54)   New cases  1,129

A very high number of deaths reported today, but the Oregon Health Authority reports that this is partly due to the fact that there was a sizable backlog of death certificates that needed final processing by the CDC before the results could be announced. The backlog was cleared today.

Speaking of the pandemic, it seems that the Post Office has issued some COVID-19 commemoratives just in time for the holiday season. E got this sheet today when she asked for international forever stamps. 

Wednesday, December 16   Deaths  1,262 (+48)   New cases  1,562

An eventful morning for E, who had to prepare breakfast for both herself and our guest and also take the guest for a walk, all of this before 9:00 when our Zoom Turkish lesson started. M helped by making breakfast for himself and enough coffee for two, but was otherwise mostly useless all day. Pepper was picked up by another member of the care team before lunch, which left us once again dogless–and ready to relax a little. But E went right to work on some Christmas letters and cookie making. 

Rainy, cold, and dark today, typical December. In Turkish today we practiced adjective clauses by saying things like “Is August the month you like the best?” and “No, August is the month I hate the most.” In theory, then, we should be able to say something like “What’s the name of the president that you liked so much?” Actually that pushing things a bit, but let’s try anyway. How about this: O çok sevdiğin başkanın adı ne? (Literally, “He much that you like president’s name what is?) For the grammarians among you, one interesting thing here is that the verb in the clause is not marked for tense as it would be in English. Also, in English, the use of “that” as a clause marker is optional in this kind of clause, whereas in Turkish the “diği” part is required.

And speaking of things that people like or don’t like, we got a card yesterday that included a Christmas letter. Here are the first few lines of the letter:

2020, what a dismal year. China virus, grandchildren not in school, extra-curricular sports cancelled or very limited, shelter in place, travel bans, quarantines, unnecessary political investigations, a vindictive impeachment process, and the radical left will be in the White House.

So yeah, it’s been that kind of year. 

It strikes us that this letter could serve as a template. For that to work, we could just blank out a few words here and there and then people could fill in the blanks according to personal preference:

2020, what a dismal year. _____________ virus, grandchildren not in school, extra-curricular sports cancelled or very limited, shelter in place, travel bans, quarantines, ______________ investigations, a _______________ impeachment process, and the __________________ in the White House.

Thursday, December 17   Deaths  1,2830 (+21)   New cases  1,339

Tertulia today with R and J. We compared notes about Christmas dinner plans. We’re all of us thinking of salmon. J is going to bake hers in phyllo dough with rice and kale. She plans to make a lot so as to have some to share with her kids and their families who all live here in town. Our plans are not fixed, but I suspect our salmon will be simpler. 

We drove over to the coast today, a lovely hour or so featuring periods of bright sun with lots of clouds and showers in between. We stopped in Newport for a coffee and then went south to Ona Beach. We walked across the bridge and onto the wide, flat beach that was littered with foam. It was windy and cold out there, but it was nice to see the far horizon away beyond the chaotic breakers. Just a few minutes after we turned back toward the parking lot, the rains came. We stayed comfortable in our hooded coats with the wind at our backs. When we arrived back in Corvallis a little after 4:30, it was already early evening. It made us remember that the winter solstice is not so far away.

Friday, December 18   Deaths  1,304 (+21)   New cases  1,390

The sun is low on the horizon these days, but at least it was shining today all morning and into the afternoon. That was long enough to dry off our outdoor table–the last thing left for us to winterize. We’re leaving it out again this year, so it just needed to be covered. M gave it two layers, inner green and outer beige. The only question now is how soon they will blow loose. As if on cue, the rain came back strong in the early evening. The table was fine, but we got kind of wet on our before dinner walk.

Saturday, December 19   Deaths  1,340 (+36)   New cases  1,542

More rain is expected today and tomorrow, lots of it apparently, as we’ve been getting flood warnings. They expect the rivers to rise. Well, that happens a lot here this time of year.

We’ve been planning for Christmas. Looks like we’ll see the Andees at least briefly to exchange gifts and greetings on Christmas day. Before that we’re hoping to get in a snowshoe trip on Monday or Tuesday. And we have been thinking, just a little, now and again, about food: salmon, coffee cake, chocolate pecan pie, things like that. Dinner today is take-out from Ba’s Vietnamese, large portions that we can stretch to make two meals.

COVID vaccine is now being administered to local health care workers. There is some confusion about how many doses will be available and how soon, but at least it has begun. The bad news is that the death rate is higher than ever and still growing. Oregon marked its 1,000th COVID death on December 4, about nine months after the pandemic began. Since then there have been 340 additional deaths in just 15 days. 

Sunday, December 20  Deaths  1,341 (+1)   New cases  1,153

We made an emergency trip to the grocery store this morning. Just had to buy some jam for cookie making. Was this really essential? Hard to say. It was relatively quick and painless. We walked over to MofC, then E went in while M hung around outside sheltering from the rain in the doorway of frozen yogurt place, which happened to be closed. Lots of rain these days with temps pushing 50. 

E organized a Zoom birthday celebration in the early afternoon. Beside the two of us and Andrea, guests included our old friend Helen as well as her daughter and her son, his partner, and one of Helen’s grandchildren. It was fun to catch up with this group and see how everyone is doing. Three different members of this crowd have birthdays in December, hence the need for a celebration. Eve prepared a three-candled birthday cake–which resembled half a bagel– and we all sang Happy Birthday. 

Once that was done, E got right into cookie making. M did a little email, a little Merleau-Ponty, and a little sampling of cookie dough. Dinner comes from the freezer today–leftovers from Thanksgiving.

Monday, December 7    Deaths   1,045 (+12)   New cases  1,331

Early on a Monday morning the Mother of Markets was almost empty. We went there together. We know you’re not supposed to do that. But it’s a big airy place and E is getting tired of the Co-op, with its low ceilings and narrow aisles. We split up to do much of the shopping, so we were in and out fairly quickly. We spent a lot of money, though; there’s nothing cheap about Mother of Markets. The good news today was that our grapefruit shipment arrived from Pittman-Davis in Texas. Otherwise, just the normal stuff, a Zoom class, some puttering around outside, naps in the afternoon, and a long walk after dinner to see the Christmas lights in a nearby neighborhood. 

Tuesday, December 8   Deaths  1,080 (+35)   New cases  1,341

Grapefruit for breakfast. Harika! After that, we had to attack our Turkish homework to prep for tomorrow’s lesson. We had a couple of vocabulary worksheets focusing on more or less common adjectives. Go ahead, ask either of us how to say “soft cotton” or “slow turtle” in Turkish. You could even ask us to say “soft turtle” and “fast cotton” if you wanted to. We could do it. Of course you’d have to ask us to do that pretty soon, because, at our age, we don’t know how long we’re going to remember these words. We also had to prepare short oral presentations. E’s is about a dog; M’s is about a car. This took all morning; it was past noon when we knocked off for lunch. In the afternoon we went for a walk in the forest. The weather was nice, partly cloudy with temps in the high forties.

The Turkish word for forest is orman. The word for in is da and in Turkish it comes after the noun instead of before. So ormanda means in the forest . The word for walk is yürü and and the past tense first person plural verb ending is dük. So yürüdük means we walked. Therefore, We walked in the forest would be Yürüdük ormanda. Except it isn’t. In Turkish the verb and all its endings come at the end of the sentence. Hence: Ormanda yürüdük. All this stuff is really easy once you get used to it. We know this from personal experience, not because we personally are used to it because we’re not, but we have personally listened to Turks speaking Turkish. You should hear them when they get going. None of it bothers them at all. Little kids even…

After our walk M found time to wrap two presents and waste some time online. E found time to continue to support local clothing stores in their time of trouble. This time she didn’t want to go inside the store, which is a bit cramped. She found, however, that they have put much of their inventory onto a website. So she used that to make her selection and to pay. Then she called and made arrangements to go downtown and have the sweater brought out to her rather than shipped.

Watched another episode of The Crown. The Duke of Windsor has died. Charles has fallen for Camilla. Good acting and writing. Nice cars. But it’s a swindle, this mingling of fact and fiction. It’s just another kind of reality TV. 

Wednesday, December 9   Deaths  1,110 (+30)   New cases  1,205

Turkish class. Walk up the hill. Wrap presents. Prepare xmas letter. Random reviews via Zoom. Country Strings via Zoom. The guest on Country Strings was David Alvin. David and Phil Alvin came to some prominence in the 80’s in a band called The Blasters. David’s musical inspiration, then and now, was roots music, especially blues, about which his knowledge seems vast. In the Zoom session from his home in California, Alvin played some of his own songs that featured wonderful acoustic blues guitar. Awesome. American Strings is a local university-sponsored free concert series, and since it is now on Zoom, it is available to all. We don’t know the line-up for 2021, but past guests have included Noel Paul Stookey, Tom Paxton, Sarah Jarosz, Roseanne Cash, Country Joe McDonald, Carlene Carter, and Bill Frisell. The format is half an hour of music talk followed by a half an hour of live performance.

After posting last week’s Pandemic Diary, we have had an outpouring of support for our Christmas tree. We have been urged to be more mindful of its feelings when we report about it and we are taking this advice to heart. However, honesty compels us to report that the tree has developed a drinking problem. The tree’s caregivers have noted an extraordinarily high level of liquid intake. This is not meant as a criticism, merely a matter of concern at this point. The tree’s behavior has been placid and uncomplaining with no sign of wobbling or other instability, at least so far…

Thursday, December 10   Deaths  1,123 (+13)   New cases  1,286

FaceTime tertulia with J and R this morning, then E went right into Zoom Better Bones and Balance while M noodled around on the computer. Dull weather today, thick morning fog giving way to a featureless gray sky. Cold rain showers in the late afternoon. With not a breath of wind, the raindrops fall straight down, thousands of perfectly parallel vectors. 

E’s hair stylist is retiring at the end of the month; they had their last appointment today. E’s hair looks great. But what will she do now?

Friday, December 11   Deaths  1,138 (+15)   New cases  1,610

It’s the 260th day of the pandemic and the Oregon death rate continues to rise steeply. The number of deaths per 100,000 residents has reached 26.5. 

Saturday, December 12   Deaths  1,149 (+11)   New cases  1,440

Lovely day, not too cold, cloudy with periods of sun. E went out to the country again to take dog Pepper for a walk. Around midday, both of us worked outside doing fall chores, including pruning our respective roses. M pruned the ones in the back, a motley assortment inherited from the previous owners. E pruned the miniatures that we brought from our old house. They’re in large pots and are nice enough to go in front of the house.

In the afternoon M ventured out to the liquor store. Business was booming and the store was enforcing a limit of five customers in the store at any one time. At the checkout counter the store was still using a credit card reader that required a signature on a touchscreen. That seemed primitive at a time when other stores have moved to no-touch credit card readers. Ah but wait. As soon as M removed his card and the signing screen popped up, the clerk pulled the reader back, made a quick X on his behalf and wished him a nice day. Very sensible. 

Thus resupplied, we had a lot of fun doing a Zoom happy hour with B and B. For a Zoom background we used a photo from the last time the four of us went snowshoeing. 

Dinner was take-out from Pastinis. We ordered online, which we have done before, but this time the process failed. We received our confirmation email as usual, but when we arrived at the appointed time, the staff at the restaurant had never heard of us. Sigh. We reordered right then and waited in the car. It didn’t take too long, but it is not good to have such problems when one is hungry. As best we can tell, the transaction failed as soon as it was made, but despite the failure, the system (TableUp) sent us a confirmation anyway. TableUp baka desu. TableUp çok aptal. TableUp es estúpido.

Sunday, December 13   Deaths  1,155 (+6)   New cases  1,048

A day of rest. After we read the paper, M did the crossword and finished a mystery novel. E had a Zoom get-together with some old friends. We opened a shipment of new cotton/rayon towels, cabernet for M and raspberry for E. They are made in Turkey of course, because that’s where we became towel snobs. What a treat it was to buy towels there! Bur never mind the history. These new ones are lovely and feel very nice. As for how they perform, we shall see.

We’re trying out the idea of online grocery ordering and curbside pickup at the Co-op. E has submitted her list and the Co-op site tells us that they will call us when our order is ready, promising that this will be either Monday or Tuesday. We’ll pay on the phone and then go pick it up.

But the big news today is that we are having a houseguest. Pepper’s owner is having cataract surgery on Monday and won’t be able to care for him properly for a few days. E will go out and pick him up today just before dark. M will stay home and make spaghetti. 

We continue to hatewatch The Crown. Hopefully, we’ll be done soon.

Monday, November 30    Deaths   912 (+7)   New cases  1,314

Grocery shopping again today. M braved the vastness of Winco at 8:15 in the morning. It was far from empty, but it was even farther from its usual packed condition, which we have not seen lately but clearly remember from days past. Prices are good there, and it’s easy to find Reser’s bean and cheese burritos. Winco also has graham cracker crumbs, condensed milk, chocolate chips, and coconut–four critical Christmas items. Check-out was slow, with only two lanes open, and M was late getting back home. E was impatient, stamping her foot, probably the left one. Immediately as he arrived, she departed for the smaller and somewhat claustrophobic Co-op, where she did her part of the dreaded shopping. At least it was a nice morning to be out and about. Both shoppers reported seeing rainbows during their respective journeys. 

In the middle of the day, M glimpsed the sun and started putting up lights on the house, while E, with all critical items in hand, started work on The Bars. Later on, E delivered a birthday cookie to her friend A and picked up some take-out falafel for dinner. After dinner we sampled the bars. And after bars a little TV, the last two episodes of Bir Başkadır. The series had a nice ending. Basically everybody got in touch with their feelings–well, almost everybody–and felt a lot better. Even the little boy who never spoke started talking. Meryem fainted again, but that’s all right since it was mostly from happiness. 

Tuesday, December 1    Deaths  936 (+24)   New cases  1,223

The Oregon Health Authority reports today that there were 24 COVID deaths on Monday, a new daily record. Today is also the 250th day of the Pandemic Diary and so it is time for another chart. The news is grim. As always, the chart tracks average deaths per day per ten day period. Again the scale of our chart has had to change; the vertical axis now extends to twelve. 

The overall total of 936 COVID deaths brings Oregon’s per 100,000 rate to 21.76. The current rate for the U.S. as a whole is 81.93.

Wednesday, December 2    Deaths   953 (+17)   New cases  1,244

We started the day with Turkish class, always a bracing experience. After that, the main event was that we did some Christmas shopping. Stores are open in downtown Corvallis, but they seemed, from our limited experience, to be mostly empty. We were wondering about E’s favorite store, the place where we often get her present. So E called to see what the situation was there. They talked about how they were sanitizing everything after every customer and even offered her a private after hours appointment. It was also clear that hardly anyone was coming in. Also relevant is that the store is in an historic building with high ceilings and an open loft level. All in all, we decided to take a chance and do a modified version of our usual Christmas time custom. First, E went down to the store at 11:00 in the morning just as they opened. For most of her time there she was the only customer and there was only one person to assist her–which happened to be the owner. E picked out a number of things to try on, focusing on sweaters and eventually narrowing down her choices to half a dozen favorites. She then asked the owner to hold a group of the best items, so that M could come in and make final choices. (In this way E is sure to be pleased on Christmas Day and is generally also semi-surprised because by the time the day comes, she can’t really remember all the ones she tried.) M did his part of the process after lunch. The store was slightly more populated when he got there–two assistants and two other customers–still not much for such a large place.

For dinner, E is making her famous spinach lasanga. M will assist by opening and pouring a modest domestic red. Now that we have finished Bir Başkadır, we are somewhat at a loss for TV. 

Thursday, December 3    Deaths   973 (+20)   New cases   1,151

E was out walking early this morning and found the moon still bright in one direction and the sun just about to rise in the other.

Also in the morning came Zoom tertulia with J and R, a Zoom exercise class for E, and a haircut for M. For some years now, M’s barber has been splitting his time between the cutting business and the home building trades, especially painting. Lately he’s been into painting more and more. In times of pandemic it’s a lot less stressful to go into an empty house to paint it than it is work in close quarters with a parade of people. Good for him, not so good, maybe, for M.

After lunch we went up to the Baskett Slough refuge and walked around a bit. The refuge consists of oak savannah hills above many acres of wetland that provide winter habitat for ducks and geese. 

Friday, December 4    Deaths   1,003 (+30)   New cases  2,176

A busy day today. E spent the morning preparing and packing up Christmas presents for the faraways, then rushed off to the post office to mail them. She came back pleased with herself for having got there before the noon rush and having had to share the place with just one other customer. M, meanwhile, dealt with a failing kitchen light. It was a new LED type fixture, which means, as M discovered early in the process, that there are no bulbs to replace. Instead, the fixture is “integrated” which is to say that when one wears out, you buy a whole new one. Fortunately the replacement that M found was 1) not very expensive, and 2) required a kind of installation process that was not new at all. (Newness is all very nice, but there is only a certain amount that can be tolerated.)

After lunch, E and M should have just rested on their laurels and taken a couple of long naps. But instead, we ventured out to get a Christmas tree. And indeed we did get one. That is, we visited a kindly tree seller, selected a tree, paid $55, stuffed it into the back of the CX-5 and took it home. We placed it in a stand and looked at it. We noticed after a few moments that this was the most fundamentally misshapen tree that either of us had ever seen. The main trunk was in fact curved throughout much of its length, and not curved in any particularly elegant way. There was no possible way to make the top point straight up without somehow making the bottom go sideways. What kind of people could possibly have picked out such a tree? We shudder to think. Somehow we will just have to make this do. We will not, of course, be inviting anyone to our house to view our tree because of the pandemic, so there is that. We just have make sure that we don’t accidentally include it in a Zoom or FaceTime backgrounds.

To distract ourselves, we had to watch two episodes of The Crown. (We’re still in Season 3.)

Saturday, December 5    Deaths   1,027 (+24)  New cases 1,847

The number of COVID deaths in Oregon has been high recently, especially in the last five days. All signs suggest that this trend is likely to continue, at least for a time. As we learned very early on, deaths are the only reliable measure of the seriousness of the situation. Other numbers, including those based on case counts and those based on test positive ratios, may be useful and interesting in some ways, but they are problematic. The total of confirmed and presumptive cases, for example, rises steadily as more and more people are tested. But it is not feasible to establish with any certainty the relationship between that number and the number of people who actually have the disease, either during any one period or at any one moment . And those latter numbers are the ones that would be most interesting and most useful. As always, PD will continue to report daily Oregon death data. We will no longer report total cases as this number is becoming more and more complicated to interpret. We will continue to track the number of new cases reported daily. This number is heavily dependent on the number of tests given, but as long as testing in Oregon remains robust, the number of positives will generally be of interest. 

Sunday, December 6    Deaths   1,033 (+6)   New cases  1,290

Tomorrow is our major grocery shopping day, but this morning we made an early run to Market of Choice, so as to have some fresh salmon for dinner tonight. That was just after we had some croissants that E picked up from Le Patissier on Saturday. Darn good, even when a day old. And speaking of Saturday, that is when M took advantage of the dry weather to take the Porsche out for another spin. Went down Peoria Road a ways, turned east and made a loop back. Interesting route. The way back up passed a little more quickly than the way down. One advantage to driving in this season is that there were no bugs on the windshield when he got home.

Today after lunch we had Turkish coffee. Then E finished making the tree beautiful while M made refrigerator pickles. We keep thinking about the treats we’d like to make for the holidays season, but then we think about the weight we’re gaining. So far we’ve just had the bars; we’re holding off–so far–on the cappuccino truffles and the shortbread. We hardly need more treats when the sweets cupboard is bulging! Burst’s nonpareils, two bars pf Hershey’s dark , Dove dark chocolate hearts, Nestles semi-sweet chips, some leftover Halloween Almond Joys…Jeez.

Monday, November 23    Deaths   826 (+6)   Cases  66,333 (+1,163)

Shopping day. M drifted through Market of Choice and purchased a half turkey. Yes, a ten-pound half turkey, which was a twenty-pound whole turkey not too long ago. But let’s not think about that. Now if we can only find a half-oven to cook it in. E again went to the Co-op and bought whole versions of a veggies, fruits and a cheese or two. She then began her serious daily work and made crust for the blackberry pie that she is making for the Andees. After that she sent out twenty-one email notices telling everyone who they’re supposed to be giving to in the Chambers family gift exchange. She also went on two walks, cooked dinner, and finished the blackberry pie. Meanwhile, M went out to the back yard and pruned apple trees with his new toy, a cordless electric chainsaw on a ten foot pole. It worked fine but left him pretty well tuckered out. Did I mention that E also did a Zoom yoga class today?

Tuesday, November 24     Deaths   847 (+21)   Cases  67,333 (+1000)

We drove up to Vancouver WA today and dropped in on Andrea to deliver birthday presents. It’s  Andy’ b-day today and Andrea’s is coming up soon. We were able be in their living room for a bit because Andrea opened the patio door and the entrance door and there was a stiff breeze. We kept our coats on and had a nice visit. Andrea had made cake balls, which we got to see. Didn’t meet Andy, of course, since he was slaving away working long hours for the post office–which is not necessarily a great place to be at this time of year, especially in this particular year. We chose to go up in the middle of the day looking to avoid traffic problems and that worked out well with smooth sailing both ways. We reviewed our latest Turkish homeowork to pass the time. Not much rain while we were on the road, but in the early evening it rained like crazy (deli gibi yağmur yağdı.) By midnight the storm had passed and before going to bed (yatağa gitmeden önce) M spent a few minutes (biraz zaman geçmirdi) watching wisps of cloud float across the bulging moon.

Also in there somewhere, we found time to watch the last two episodes of Winter Sun. It was a very satisfyihg ending. That which had to be resolved, was resolved. And nothing overly ridiculous was required to make it so. We recommend this Turkish soap to all. 

Wednesday, November 25     Deaths   867 (+20)   Cases  68,503 (+1,170)

Turkish lesson today and then a couple of quick shopping things that we missed on Monday. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving Day is never a good day to shop, of course, but actually Bi-Mart was relatively empty, and for vegetables, we went to Natural Grocers, which is never crowded. 

The Thanksgiving feasting, for us, has already begun. M made a pie crust and E mixed up a pecan filling and baked it. After dinner (akşam yemeği sonra) we had some. It was good. It was very good. We were encouraged in this early start on the goodies by our friends B and B, who are doing exactly the same, except that the pie that they have already cut into is apple. E has also started the cranberries. Tomorrow, of course, is the real thing.

Thursday, November 26     Deaths   882 (+15)   Cases  70,006 (+1,503)

And so there it was. Şukran Günü* in time of COVID. Turkey cooked, potatoes mashed, gravy stirred, wine poured. And then, at about 1:30, some small portion of it all was eaten, along with stuffing, green beans, cranberries, and a small relish tray just right for two. Despite a minor misstep or two, upon which we will not dwell, all was delicious and all was well. We delayed dessert for a few hours, and finally made a very satisfactory supper of pecan pie–Chambers pieces. Could be worse. Could be much, much worse. 

E moved furniture to create a cozy window table. 

*Şukran Günü means Thanksgiving Day. Şukran (from Arabic) means thanks, gün means day and ü is the compound noun marker. Relatedly, güneş means sun, and in the title Kış Güneşi (Winter Sun) the compound noun marker is the final i. 

Friday, November 27     Deaths   885 (+3)   Cases  70,832 (+826)

Zoom meeting with the Chambers brothers. James has made news by being out in his Corvette and having it get away from him for a moment. Whether it was a spin or just a series of fishtails is not clear. The driver reports that the proximate cause was a slick spot in the road with “old gas” being another significant factor. We’ve not heard before of this connection between lack of control and old gas, but of course we are young yet and there is much we do not know. John is enjoying staying in his new lakeside cottage. Normally the Chambers Camp closes up in October, so he is getting to see a very different scene than in years past. The early winter views are lovely and with most of the humans gone, animals have reoccupied the area. Among other wildlife, he reports seeing groups of loons, as many as twelve together. Lacking a Corvette, he is driving a leased Volvo C60 plug-in hybrid, a somewhat better vehicle for a north woods winter. 

Later on we watched an episode of our new Turkish TV show, which Netflix calls Ethos, but which in Turkish is called Bir Başkadır.  Our Turkish teacher recommended it and it reminds us of something a teacher would recommend, i.e., not shallow, not ridiculous, not completely artificial, and not glossing over crucial social issues. It is also completely lacking in beautiful, expensive cars. So what is the point you might ask? Well, it’s still quite a drama, with lots of people angry and unhappy, often in conflict with those around them, and often unaware of how much their own blindness and self-absorption are actually responsible for their problems. And of course it has some scenes in a hospital, which is a box that all TV dramas must check off sooner or later. Another bright spot is that we recognized two of the actors, having seen them before in other series. One is the actor who was Naz’s husband in Intersection, and another is a woman who  played Efruz in Kış Guneşi. In Bir Başadır, she plays a soap opera actress! And one of the themes of the show is how real people spend time watching facile popular dramas in the midst of their own actual crises. So that’s pretty cool.  Our Turkish dictionary does not translate “bir başkadır” as “ethos.” We need to ask our teacher about that one.

Saturday, November 28    Deaths   896 (+11)   Cases  72,506 (+1,669)

E went out to the country to walk Pepper again today. While she was gone M moved an azalea and did some more pruning of the rearmost apple tree. After lunch Eve called The Inkwell and asked them to pick out four greeting card sized advent calendars for her. The clerk went and got them and gave her a little bit of a description, then took her money. The E got some stamps and address labels ready and found a driver to run her downtown, where she called again and had the cards brought out to the car. We sat in the parking lot for a minute, preparing two of the cards that most needed sending, and then cruised by the post office and dropped them in the slot. Slick. 

On the way home we stopped at a Coffee Culture drive-thru to get a couple of lattes and discovered they were having a one day sale, fifteen per cent off almost everything. We didn’t need everything, but we did in fact need some decaf beans, so we stocked up a little. When we got home, a Zappos box was on our porch with some new slippers for E to try. The package happened to arrive on the day that Tony Hsieh passed away, Hsieh being one of original founders of Zappos. 

Sunday, November 29    Deaths  905 (+9)   Cases  74,120 (+1,614)

A quiet Sunday. E and M got up late and sat around reading the paper, then went for a walk up Garryanna and down Rolling Green. What kind of name for a street is Rolling Green? M thought about putting up Xmas lights in the afternoon. He was waiting for a glimpse of the sun, which his weather app had promised. No sun was glimpsed.

However, we did get a surprise visit from H and T. It was nice to see them both again. We had a socially distanced tour of the yard and then sat for a time on the back patio. Was it cold? Yes. The guests, being intelligent people, were well-prepared and came bundled up in many warm layers. The hosts, being slower to grasp the nature of reality, hadn’t put on enough. We all had some hot tea, though, and some good conversation. From T we heard a little about how it is to be a pediatric clinician in these times. She is doing a certain amount of appointments remotely, and lots of those have been cases of childhood depression. Remote medicine keeps her safe, of course, but it’s basically a sedentary lifestyle. She misses the activity and natural exercise of work in the clinic. 

Also today, we finished our jigsaw puzzle, a painting by Robert Bissel. It should be titled A Couple of Bears Looking at the Sunset during a Butterfly Invasion, but the painter has inexplicably chosen to call it The Golden Hour instead.

After dinner, another episode of Bir Başkadır. It’s good, but kind of a downer. Just two more episodes to go. We fear it may not end happily, but of course we must see it through, just to find out.

Monday, November 16     Deaths   765 (+4)   Cases  57,646 (+781)

Grocery shopping, Yoga, revision of the instructional tech article. We’re still pondering the Thanksgiving question. We’re thinking now that eating together with the Andees is just too problematic. Might just meet briefly on the Tuesday before and give them a pie. 

Tuesday, November 17     Deaths   778 (+13)   Cases  58,570 (+935)

Quite a busy morning as we had to get ready for the cleaner, fit in a Zoom exercise class, make corrections to the latest diary posting, and pack a picnic lunch, all of this before 10:00. At ten, we drove out to North Albany to deliver a small birthday cake to the B’s and walk around to see how their greenhouse is coming. Then we went back to town and got shingles shots, for E it was her second, for M his first. Then we stopped at the post office before heading south on Peoria road, searching for the picturesquely named Snag Boat Bend Unit of the Finley National Wildlife Refuge. That’s a long name for a fairly small area, but it is lovely and not much frequented. We had only vague memories of the place and we were pleased to see how nice it was. It was a damp and breezy day with intermittent light rain and temperatures in the fifties.  We hiked along among the backwaters of the Willamette, past a picnic table at the halfway point and all the way to the blind at the end. On the way back we followed a flicker who flashed from tree to tree going our way for a minute or two and then disappeared. We saw some lovely tall slender trees, tops swaying in the wind. Poplars maybe?

Then we had lunch, not out in the wind and rain, but rather back in the car with the heater on. It was leftover Indian food. It was great! Once we got home we got down to the important business of taking naps and then had a cup of tea and studied Turkish for an hour. Then M made dinner while E did mysterious things on her computer. Later, there was an after dinner bon-bon for each of us and an hour or so of Winter Sun. As expected, there’s trouble. Efruz, the bright young doctor, has been fired for faking a death certificate in order to spring her long-lost dad from jail. He’s back in jail now and things look bad for both of them. Efe is jealous of Bora, the new guy in Nisan’s workplace and Nisan is jealous of Efruz, whom Efe seems awfully eager to comfort whenever she’s down. Plus, Seda knows that Nisan has not told Efe that evil Yakup, thought to have drowned, is actually still alive. Seda is plotting how best to use that little tidbit to make both Nisan and Efe as miserable as possible. And now for some vocabulary. First, Nisan means April in Turkish. We’re not sure what Seda means in Turkish, but we know it means silk in Spanish. The name Efe reminds us of the similar Turkish word Efes, which refers to Ephesus, a town on the west coat of Turkey, ancient home of the biblical Ephesians and modern site of some excellent Roman ruins. These days, Efes is also the name of a popular brand of Turkish beer. Good to know, eh? You betcha!

Wednesday, November18     Deaths   788 (+10)   Cases 59,669 (+1099)

Grim COVID news today with a relatively high level of both deaths per day and new cases per day. 

When analyzed by age groups, the statistics continue to show that the infection is much more dangerous for older people than for younger ones. Ninety percent of all deaths have been in the age group of sixty and above. (Eighty years and above: 50%. Sixty to seventy-nine: 40%. Zero to sixty: 10%) 

This does not mean that younger people in Oregon are not getting COVID. On the contrary. People under sixty account for eighty-four percent of all confirmed cases. But when they do get the disease, younger people are less likely to require hospitalization and much less likely to die. 

Thursday, November 19     Deaths   808 (+20)   Cases  60,873 (+1,204)

FaceTime tertulia this morning with J and R. They are both doing well. After discussions with their family, they have decided that the best way for them to celebrate Thanksgiving is to just stay home and not try to sit down with anyone else. Instead, they will be dish sharing with the family and then having remote contact via Zoom. We have been thinking along similar lines , though it will be a bit trickier for us since Andrea and Andy are two hours away. Still, it can be done. E will make a pie for them at least and we will deliver it on the Tuesday before the holiday, when we hope that traffic will be lighter. 

Yesterday E went to Coffee Culture and got us two very tasty sweet rolls. We had them for breakfast today just before our FaceTime tertulia. They were delicious. It reminded us of what we used to do when we could meet J and R in person at the café. After tertulia, M went outside to work in the yard and E had her Zoom exercise class. M raked leaves and did yet more lawn mowing–hopefully for the last time this season. E came out too, to plant her ornamental cabbage plants. It was a splendid fall day, not too cold with a mix of bright sun and light clouds. Just a drop or two of rain. It’s time to get the patio and garden ready for winter. Besides cutting back some dead and drooping stalks here and there, we also put away some hoses and put the cover on the big patio umbrella. 

In the afternoon E went to a HEPAJ meeting. It was held in P’s garage, which she has furnished with a big piece of carpet and strings of lights. Also, of course, the place was neat as a pin. How do people manage that? P had also made cookies, which everyone thought were delicious. She confessed that when she had first tasted them, fresh from the oven, she had found them to be a bit dry. Her remedy was to spread butter on them. Very sensible. 

After that, E still wasn’t done. She got back in time to do her Zoom based Laughter Yoga class. The class is going on right now, actually, as M is writing these notes. The class theme for this week is Australia. What’s so funny, you might ask, about Australia? We shall see.

Tonight’s dinner plan is for M to make Haloumi pita sandwiches. Haloumi is a cheese from Cyprus, where we lived for a couple of years. Cyprus is a bicultural island, part Greek speaking and part Turkish speaking. Haloumi is the Greek name; it’s Helim in Turkish. 

Friday, November 20     Deaths   812 (+4)   Cases  62,175 (+1,302)

Some time ago we sent out four audio cassettes and 1 VHS video to have them digitized. E downloaded the results yesterday and this morning we spent time figuring out how to play and store the results. The cassettes were from Eve and were recorded many years ago. In one of them we hear the voices of both Becca and Andrea. Andrea was mostly incomprehensible. That seems strange for someone who is so articulate now. Of course she was only about six months old at that time.

The video that we sent was from M. It was a compendium of stuff from when he lived in Yemen in the late eighties. Boy did we get a surprise when we went to play that. Instead of an hour and half of Yemen scenes, we got three minutes and forty-nine seconds of a group of twenty contestants rehearsing a group dance segment for a statewide beauty pageant–Miss Minnesota, to be exact. The year wasn’t clear, but appeared to be in the eighties or nineties. The dancers were all enthusiastic and energetic, but somehow M was still a little disappointed. 

After that excitement, we did some garden planning and research. E then called around to some local plant places, but no one had Pearly Everlasting. We ended up ordering seeds from Joyful Butterfly. Besides the Pearly, we went for some Common Milkweed. (Seeds seem pretty cheap at JB.) That done, we rested until lunch. In the afternoon we ran some errands and took an hour-long forest walk on the Calloway Creek Trail north of town. For transportation we took the Porsche, which had been sitting unused for many weeks. We’re going to have to put that car into storage for the winter, especially if we want our garage to be as lovely as the garage that Eve was invited to on Thursday.

The days are short now and by the time we had done a grocery stop and had a rest, the daylight hours were over. Dinner was what E calls the week in review, with a green salad for freshness. Friday is nobody’s night to cook, so we had to cooperate. With two of us hungry, preparation just zoomed along.

After dinner, we watched Turkish TV. (Akşam yemeği sonra Türk televizyonunu izledik.) Burak bought a diamond ring and proposed to Nadide. (Burak bir elmas yüzük aldı ve Nadide’ye evlenme teklif etti.) So they’re very happy. (Yani çok mutlular.) But a lot of people are miserable. (Ama birçok insan mutsuz.) Efe is mad about everything. (Efe her şeye kızıyor.) Kadim and Efruz feel terrible. (Kadim ve Efruz berbat hissediyorlar.) Everyone hates Nisan and now she has leukemia! (Herkes Nisan’dan nefret etiyorlar ve şimdi lösemisi var!) Only Bora is being kind to her. (Sadece Bora ona iyi davranıyor.)

Saturday, November 21     Deaths   819 (+7)   Cases  63,668 (+1,493)

This is the 240th day of the Pandemic Diary curve tracker database. We use the db to generate average death rates per each ten-day period. As can be seen below, the Oregon death rate is continuing a steep rise. There have been 77 deaths in Oregon in the last ten days, for a daily average of 7.7. This has required a change to the scale of the PD chart. On previous charts the vertical scale went from zero to six. On the new chart it goes up to eight.

Our chart maker well remembers the early days, when thirty deaths in ten days seemed like a lot and when the drop down to one death per day at the end of May seemed like a such a hopeful sign. It seemed possible that the pandemic might soon end. Well…that didn’t happen.

Sunday, November 22     Deaths   820 (+1)   Cases  66,170 (+1,502)

So, this person goes into a store and asks ”Are there any eggs?” (Yumurta var mı?) and the person behind the counter answers “Nope, no eggs.” (Hayır, yumurta yok.) Hilarious, right? 

On Winter Sun, Nisan’s leukemia was not responding as well as the doctors had hoped, so she needed to be hospitalized. On her way to check in, however, she got kidnapped. The thugs took her into the woods and locked her into the back room of a charming little hunting lodge. She escaped by breaking a window shutter, but now she’s lost in the forest and the thugs are tracking her with a pair of bloodhounds. They will almost certainly recapture her, because how else could the head bad guy call Efe and make his demands? We shall see. 

Monday, November 9  Deaths   734 (+4)   Cases  51,155 (+707)

We did grocery shopping today. M went to Market of Choice and Eve to the Co-op. We know that some of the items that we buy in both these places are available elsewhere for quite a bit less, but we just don’t feel like chasing around town. Partly this is laziness; partly it is caution.

Partly cloudy today and quite cold, thirties in the morning and forties in the afternoon. M did a little yard work today despite the conditions. E did Zoom yoga and worked on her photo project. She has been planning with Andrea about how to get together on Thanksgiving.

Tuesday, November 10     Deaths  737 (+3)   Cases  52,770 (+754)

Still cleaning up the garage, M made trips to Bottle Drop and Goodwill and then did some raking and lawn mowing. Lawn mowing at this time of year? Bah! E did a dog walk with a friend and had Laughter Yoga in the afternoon. Her photo project is done–500 photos sent off for scanning, six or eight albums emptied. M made stew for dinner and E had a Zoom meeting with what we call the knitting group, a bunch of old friends from work.

After that, we watched another episode and a half of Kış Günesi. Sadly, Efe is now divorced from Nisan and married to Seda. But wait, you might say, how can he get divorced from Nisan if he was never married to her? And is he really married to Seda if he married her under an assumed name? Bilmiyoruz. Farketmez. (We don’t know. Never mind.) Whatever the legal tangle, the emotional tangle is worse. 

Wednesday, November 11    Deaths   742 (+5)   Cases  47,839 (+861)

Tis the 230th day of record keeping here at PD, time for a new chart. The death rate in Oregon has climbed again, up to an average of of 5.1 deaths per day over the last ten days. The latest deaths bring Oregon’s overall death rate to 17.25 per 100,000. The rate for the U.S. as a whole is now 73.26. 

Meanwhile, it is M’s turn to cook today, but he’s not really cooking. He’s getting a pizza and making a salad. (O gerçekten pişirmiyor. Pizza getiriyor ve salata yapıyor.) 

After a long internal debate, E decided to risk her life today by visiting the seamstress. The workshop is a vast, high-ceilinged room in an old bank building downtown and generally there is only one customer in the place at one time. Plus, if you don’t stop to talk too much, a visit can be quite brief. So that’s all good. But it’s also true that, for whatever reason, appointments don’t always go off like clockwork, shall we say. So E had to deal with a bit of overlap with a mom, dad and two children who were there unexpectedly. But the seamstress shooed them away fairly quickly. After the appointment E went to reward herself with a coffee from Tried and True just down the street and on her way came across a young man talking on a cell phone saying “Yes, I’m waiting for you.” Only he didn’t actually say those words but said instead “Evet, seni bekliyorum.” He said it twice and Eve understood it both times. She was excited.

Thursday, November 12     Deaths   746 (+4)   Cases  53,879 (+1,109)

Zoom terutulia today with J and R. Later, E took her friend’s dog Pepper to the vet, a major operation as Pepper lives way out in the country on the opposite side of town from the vet’s. As anyone could see from the energy Pepper exhibited running around our back yard today, the dog is not seriously ill; he just needed some shots. 

Eve’s turn to cook today. She’s making minestrone soup. (Sebzeli italyan çorbası yapıyor.) Delicious.

Last night we watched episode 30 of Kış Gunesi. The situation is grim. Efe and Nissan are both having personal crises related to what they are finding out about their families’ pasts, but they are estranged due to the Seda problem and thus each must face it alone.

Friday, November 13     Deaths   753 (+7)   Cases  54,937 (+1,058)

M worked today on some old work stuff. Long ago, he co-wrote an article about what language program administrators need to know about educational technology. It was published as part of a handbook used for administrator training. A few years ago, the handbook was revised and the article had to be updated. Now, there is the possibility of yet another edition of the handbook and once again the editors have requested an updated version. So there he was this morning, slaving away, thinking about things that he hasn’t thought about in a while. 

In the middle of the day, we went for a visit to the wildlife refuge to see the swans that J and R had told us about at tertulia on Thursday. First we took a rainy stroll on a boardwalk through a wetland ash forest. 

We finished our walk just as the rain eased off and then, while driving farther into the refuge, we came across a herd of about 40 elk, who were happily munching on new grass that often pops out in these parts when the fall rains come. Finally we went off to see the swans. They did not disappoint. 

The temperatures are no lower than they’ve been recently, but the dampness got to us and we felt chilly for most of the afternoon. For dinner we had thoroughly heated leftover stew, which helped. 

Another odd tweet from the President today. In the first sentence he boasted of his administration’s unprecedented success in ensuring that U.S. elections were unriggable and in the next sentence asserted that the most recent U.S. election was rigged. In other news, he has also asserted that the voting results that we now have show show him losing by just the “thinnest of margins.” He did not mention that in the electoral college his losing margin in 2020 was exactly the same as his winning margin in 2016, which he described at that time as “the biggest landslide in history.”

Saturday, November 14     Deaths   759 (+6)   Cases  47,839 (+790)

The COVID situation is worsening in many parts of the country and Oregon is no exception. OHA has reported more than 10,000 new cases per day for three straight days. Test positive rates have averaged more than 10% for the last fourteen days and daily death rates have climbed to near record levels. Governor Brown has announced a two-week freeze to begin next Wednesday. During the freeze restaurants and bars will be limited to take-out service, all indoor recreational and cultural facilities will be closed, church services will be limited to 25 people indoors and 50 people outdoors and the prohibition of indoor visits to long-term care facilities will be re-instated.

Up until this week, we had no personal connection to anyone who had the virus. But now one friend has reported that her daughter and granddaughter have both tested positive. Another friend reports that one of her granddaughters is also affected. 

Our activities today included Eve going out to the country to walk Pepper and Michael collecting leaves from the front lawn and taking them around back to mulch things. Dinner was take-out from an Indian restaurant, not exactly a low calorie meal, but pretty tasty. After dinner we watched TV, another hour or so of our Turkish soap. Big doings there, as Efe/Mete finally revealed to everyone that he is really Efe and that his twin brother Mete was the one who was murdered. Efe’s adoptive mother–the saintly Fatma–is ecstatic; his birth mother, Leyla, is devastated. Leyla has lost her husband (one of the guilty parties) and is also terribly hurt by Efe’s deception. And Seda, who was pregnant with Mete’s child, got so upset that she had a sad but convenient miscarriage. Efe is miserable too. He has succeeded in finding out who killed his father 20 years ago and his brother just recently and it seems that the guilty parties have been punished. But he now sees that this success has come at great cost and he just wishes that none of it had every happened. He just wants everything to get back to normal. We know, however, that this is only episode 34 of 50. There’s not going to be much time for regretting or for normal anything because his troubles aren’t even close to being over.

Sunday, November 15     Deaths   761 (+2)   Cases  56,880 (+862)

Andrea came by in the afternoon today. In the morning, E made an applesauce cake for the occasion. When Andrea arrived the three of us first did an exercise walk around the neighborhood and then we sat down with our cake and tea out on the patio. The rain held off for most of the day and temperature was in the mid 50’s, so being outside was not so bad. We talked about what to do about Thanksgiving. The tentative plan is for us to go up there and have a meal on their back patio, but that’s not ideal, especially if it is stormy. We’ve also thought about doing a meal in our garage, with doors arranged to give lots of ventilation. It’s all plausible, but is it worth the stress factor? Should we just all eat in our own homes and make a Zoom connection instead? Don’t know.

Monday, 11/ 2/20     Deaths   692 (+1)   Cases  45,976 (+549)

Shopping day, M going to one store, E to another. We had fairly short lists today; a lot of edibles were already on the premises. What shall we do with all that Halloween candy? 

M tore down the old cooktop, separating the metal parts from the nonmetal ones. Lots of metal in those old appliances. Simple construction too, easy to take apart with just a screwdriver or two. You get to see how it was made, which is fun. Then you haul the metal off to the recycling center. Just half a grocery bag of non-metal pieces left over for the landfill. 

Bright sunny day. Warm enough to be outside and have coffee with a friend. Met R at 2:30 at Coffee Culture. No free tables on the terrace when we arrived because everyone had the same idea. And then…just when our order was ready, a couple of guys got up and walked away. Had a nice talk remembering our adventures in various foreign parts. R had a new Dodgers hat, celebrating a World Series victory by his favorite team.

We’ve settled on one hour a week for this month’s Turkish lessons, starting Wednesday. Harika!

Tuesday, November 3     Deaths   701 (+9)   Cases  46,460 (+482)

Here we are finally at election day. A scary moment. All kinds of optimism among those hoping to get rid of Trump. Living in a dream world. Why do we have so much faith in polls when we know for sure that polls don’t work, a lesson learned just four years ago? Humans are strange. 

At 8:45 p.m. Pacific Time Biden is leading in the electoral college race 192-114. But all the decider states are leaning red. What would it be like to be in a state where your vote really mattered? Maybe not so good, considering who half your neighbors would be. I read a thing that suggested that most voters are casual voters. They mostly vote party lines and don’t pay a lot attention to the issues, especially if they are complicated. They feel no need or desire to dig out the truth behind the slogans. They don’t much care because the government is mostly not real. The government never actually helps you, they just take your money and tell you all kinds of things that you’re not allowed to do. No wonder people instantly respond to the idea that making the government smaller will make a lot of problems just go away. 

It was another busy day for E and M. E went over to the optician and ordered herself some new glasses, something she’d been meaning to do for a long time. She also got some fabric for our custom made storage rack, which will consist–if we get it finished–of a cloth-covered wooden frame with two shelves. After lunch she went over to H’s house for a visit, walking part of the way there and all the way home. M stayed home working on cleanup and organization of the garage and shed environments. He broke up some stuff, again separating metal from other materials. The metal pieces are now stowed in the back of the car waiting another run to recycling. He then started installing hooks and holders in the shed so as to bring forth order from chaos. Busy hands are happy hands.

At 10:15 it’s Biden 215 to 171, with Trump closing fast, having just won Florida. At 10:30 it’s Biden 219 to 209.

Wednesday, November 4     Deaths   705 (+4)   Cases  47,049 (+589)

We had the first of our new Turkish lessons today and had a great time. We learned how to say “seventy million idiot voters” (seçmenlerin yetmiş milyonu aptal)  and “We want a new country.” After that, to pass the time while waiting on election results, E researched native plants and wrapped a package. M worked on the garden shed (bahçe kulübesi), installing the last of the wall hooks and then giving the place a good sweeping. For lunch we went for a short walk and picnic up in the forest, stopping off at the recycling center on the way. After that we had some Türk Kahvesi and worked on a couple of other projects. 

By 4:00 p.m. both PBS and Fox have Biden up 264 to 214, with four states still in play–Nevada, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia.  

One of M’s projects involved wandering through different times and different places. Somewhere or other he ran into this cowgirl. Quite a looker.

Thursday, November 5     Deaths   710 (+5)   Cases  47,839 (+790)

M went in for dental surgery today, part of the implant process. All is going well. Post-op instructions require a diet of (and we quote) “ice cream, pudding, yogurt, milkshakes and cold drinks.” Dutiful patient that he is, M jumped on that train immediately. Another appointment in two weeks, then on to the business of getting the crown. Nine months or so from start to finish. 

Later on M opened up his new iMac up and got it running. Somewhere along the line it had been stored in a place with water on the floor. The bottom two or three inches of both the outer and inner boxes were permeated, the outer one being a little drier. Because of the way it was packed, the dampness never reached any part of the computer. Still, it was disconcerting.

The electoral vote count is unchanged. Sigh. Surely something will happen tomorrow?

Friday, November 6     Deaths   716 (+6)   Cases  48,608 (+769)

Lots of seasonal garden work today–M was raking leaves and E was planting bulbs and seeds that need to winter over. M is mulching the new meadow area in the back with leaves from the neighbor’s tree in the front. It’s a big tree and it’s upwind from our yard. It should provide all the leaves we need before it’s done. M keeps on working despite being forced to survive on a diet of ice cream, chocolate pudding and liquids. Enough is enough, though, and he is planning to eat the food he is cooking for dinner tonight: samosas, sag paneer, and leftover purple cauliflower. 

The election seems to have gone to Biden, but the interminable wait for a final count goes on and on. Meanwhile virus case numbers are rising steeply all over the country, including in Oregon.

Saturday, November 7     Deaths   729 (+13)   Cases  49,587 (+979)

The AP called Pennsylvania for Biden at a little after 9:00 this morning, which put him past the 270 electoral votes that are needed to win the presidential election. E and M heard about this almost as soon as it happened by means of an email from a friend in Chile. Lots of people are celebrating; there is even a certain amount of smiling here at the house on Oak Avenue.

Part of the festivities included a Japanese take-out dinner from Sada. E had vegetable tempura and grilled salmon. M had curry katsu, which he loves, partly because he considers it one of the most ridiculous dishes he has ever run across. For TV, we watched two episodes of Winter Sun (Kış Gunesi). Not much politics there. Who has time? Someone is trying to have Kadim killed while he is in prison, but Kadim is very hard to kill. His long lost wife Farise has finally stirred from her coma. She can’t move but is able to speak, at least enough to tell Efruz about the key to Reşat’s safe deposit box, which contains information that may help Kadim get out of prision. Reşat, a dirty cop who for many years took orders from criminal mastermind Yakup, is dead, having been killed by another of Yakup’s henchmen because he knew too much. Efe and Nisan now have the key and are trying to figure out how to access the box. But Efe has been busy dealing with Seda, who is pregnant with Mete’s child, but who has become Efe’s problem because Mete is actually dead. Efe and Mete are twins and Efe has taken Mete’s place because he thinks that’s the only way to find out who is actually behind all the killing and gun running. (Only E, M, and 300 million other viewers worldwide know that the real bad guy is Yakup, who also happens to be Nisan’s father. And of course Nisan and Efe are becoming friends, so, you know, possible trouble ahead there.)  Anyway, Efe (as Mete) has just promised to divorce Nisan and marry Seda because Seda convinced him that otherwise she’s getting an abortion. Both Efe and Nisan want the baby to be born because it is all that is left of Mete, their childhood friend, who was also Nisan’s husband although they never really clicked. She knows he’s dead and has agreed to help Efe unravel it all, but nobody else knows that except for Kadim and Efe’s best friend Burat. But the point of it all is that Efe and Nisan are living together as husband and wife even though they totally aren’t. Of course they’re not sleeping together or even kissing, but boy are they starting to think about it. 

Sunday, November 8     Deaths   730 (+1)   Cases  50,448 (+861)

We did grocery shopping today. M went to Market of Choice and Eve to the Co-op. We know that some of the items that we buy in both these places are available elsewhere for quite a bit less, but we just don’t feel like chasing around town. Some of this is laziness; some of it is caution.

Partly cloudy today and quite cold, thirties in the morning and forties in the afternoon. M will do a little yard work today despite the conditions. E will do Zoom yoga and work on her photo project. She has been planning with Andrea about how to celebrate Thanksgiving. Possibly, we will be having a meal on their back patio. 

A couple of things about the election come to mind. One is that the margin of victory was much smaller than any of the polls predicted. That makes two elections in a row wherein pollsters seriously underestimated Trump’s appeal. Will poll makers learn from making the same mistake twice in a row? Probably not. Will we all pay really close attention to the polls next time anyway? Oh yeah. There are some arguments against having polls at all. Some countries have laws that prohibit release of polling data in the weeks immediately preceding an election. Which reminds us that 22 countries worldwide, including Australia, have laws that require all citizens to vote. There’s a thought.

Beyond election technicalities, however, there is a larger issue. How do we come to terms with the fact that more than sixty million people would vote for a candidate like Trump? We want to find an underlying cause. Maybe it’s something that could be fixed. But–people being what they are–that probably won’t happen. And you know what they say: You can choose your friends and these days you can even choose your gender, but you can’t choose your species.