Meandering on the Way

Monday, September 14      Deaths   511  (+0)   Cases  29,484   (+141)

Meet the new day, same as the old day. M was out for a few minutes sweeping up ash from our back patio. As recommended in the poem, he spread a bit of the ash at his shrine to the dead. The rest went into a trash bag destined for the landfill. Air quality still quite bad.

While M was working, E went to look for a couple of take-out lattes. No luck. Coffee Culture is down; Starbucks is down. While she was out, she heard the announcement of a Level 3 “Go Now” evacuation order for the area in and around the town of Holley, Oregon. Holley is a little town on the Calapooia River, and is another place that M has driven through recently. It’s about 27 miles southeast of Corvallis. We know all about evacuation alerts levels now. Level 1 means get yourself prepared to evacuate. At Level 2 people are encouraged to leave; those who stay should be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. The system is fine if the fires give enough time for the alerts to be issued and if everyone gets the word. For a day or two there, the fires were moving faster than the alert system could deal with.

After dinner, there was a Level 2 Brownie Alert (Be ready to bake at any time) and E had to go over to Market of Choice and get a mix. When she got back, she turned around and made them.

Tuesday, September 15      Deaths   519  (+8)   Cases  29,662   (+178)

The window project moves forward. A estimator from Smith’s Glass came today to finish measuring. He had planned to come last Thursday, but the area where he lives was put on Level 2 and he was occupied with preparations for the family to evacuate. E had made the brownies mostly for the purpose of giving some to him as a gesture of support. Today he reports that they are still in the house but still all set to go. There are two different fires burning near where he lives, one four miles to the south and another 14 miles to the east. The former is the fire that we mentioned yesterday, near the town of Holley.  

Despite the fires still burning, our air quality improved overnight, from Hazardous all the way up to Unhealthy. M went out in the garden for half an hour or so, wearing a pretty much useless mask. He says that at first it feels wonderful just to be outside and that the air doesn’t matter. But after a while it feels distinctly unhealthy, especially if you do any exertion. Time to go in. 

E has been trying to keep up with her walking regimen indoors. By alternating step aerobics with tramping around from room to room, she eventually convinces her watch to give her credit for several thousand steps.

Wednesday, September 16      Deaths   521  (+2)   Cases  29,850  (+188)

E had her hair done today and got some big news there. Claire, her hairdresser, has announced her retirement at the end of the year. Inveterate traveller and very smart cookie, Claire is someone we have depended on for insights into all sorts of things. Hopefully we can keep in touch with her through this transition. Otherwise, we shall be lost. 

We also did some chores today, dropping off things at both Bottle Drop and Good Will. The garage was filling up with empty seltzer bottles and donation goods. We still have two large items that we would normally donate to Habitat, but they’re been shut down for months. Bleh.

Thursday, September 17      Deaths   521  (+0)   Cases  30,060   (+210)

Reasonably good COVID report today: no Oregon deaths yesterday and a daily test positive rate of just 4.84%. Wildfire news is also promising as rain is forecast for this evening and through the night. We’ve had a number of days now when rain was forecast but failed to arrive, so we shall have to see. If rain comes, most of it should fall on the western slopes of the Cascades, which is exactly where the fires are, so our fire officials are all “cautiously optimistic.” Already many of the worst fires have been partially contained in the places where they were approaching population centers.

Air quality remains in an issue. At 4:30 this morning it was in condition orange, the best we’ve seen for a long, long time. But by 6:00 A.M. it was back up to red, by early afternoon it was purple, and just now, at 4:30 in the afternoon, it is back into the dark purple Hazardous zone. We’re thinking we should have gone for an early walk. 

We’re into Season Four of Cable Girls and the fearless foursome remain really busy. Carlota was framed for murder. When she was convicted, she had a kind of breakdown (which was distinctly un-Carlota-like, but the writers have no shame). Her lover couldn’t stand to see her like that and decided to save her by confessing to the crime herself. She manufactured enough evidence to convince the judge and now Carlota is free but Sara/Oscar is in prison condemned to death. No problem, though, the girls are planning a prison break and Detective Cuevas has inexplicably agreed to help them. This is, of course, ridiculous, but fortunately it all goes by fast, like the pages of a comic book in the wind, so we don’t need to resort to the fast forward button. In other news, Francisco has awakened from his year-long coma but has amnesia. Pretty much everyone knows about his miracle recovery except Alba/Lidia. Carlos, whom she has just agreed to marry, has been hiding it from her because Francisco was her first love and he and Carlos have always been rivals. Last night’s cliffhanger was Lidia coming home after a tough day of planning the prison break and running into Francisco, alive and well in her living room, dressed in a really sharp suit. Presumably we’ll see how that scene goes later tonight. Lurking in the background, Doña Carmen is out of prison and plotting again, some dastardly business having to do with once again kidnapping innocent toddler Eva. E’s friend in Spain warned us that the writing deteriorated after the first two seasons, which caused her to give up on the whole deal. We get that now, but we’re not giving up quite yet. We only have about 12 40-minute episodes to go.

Friday, September 18      Deaths   521  (+0)   Cases  30,342   (+282)

So the promised rain finally came, starting about 8:00 last night. It came accompanied by lightning and thus had the potential to douse some fires while starting others. So far, however, it appears to have done mostly good. The biggest fires are not out, but all have been knocked back a little, a welcome development. 

This morning, the air quality index was around 70, roughly in the middle of the yellow zone. This afternoon it is 30, roughly in the middle of the green zone. Wow. Great to be getting outside. Pandemic and wildfires aside, it was nice to finally get some rain again. 

Saturday, September 19      Deaths   525  (+5)   Cases  30,599  (+257)

A couple of walks today. Wonderful air. And then in the evening, Magnum Infinite Chocolate ice cream bars, one each. All is well.

Sunday, September 20      Deaths   526  (+1)   Cases  30,801   (+202)

A lazy Sunday. Septembers are often lovely around here, sunny and cool with damp, misty mornings. The smoke ruined all that for days and days, but today was very fine. Waffles for breakfast, an hour or two of walks and gardening, Burgerville lunch, iced decaf on the patio at 4:00. Nice.

After dinner we tried to watch Cable Girls S5-E2, but it was just too dumb. We’re saying goodbye to the chicas. Also tried to watch Laundromat with Meryl Streep. We weren’t in the mood for that either. E wants to watch Derry Girls. After that, we might go back to Turkish things, especially as we’re getting serious about an online Turkish class taught by our friend Umut. It would start October 5th.

Thursday, September 10      Deaths   497  (+3)   Cases  28,654   (+183)

After three windy days, today has been mostly dead calm. So of course it’s still smoky. Our air quality was rated as Unhealthy this morning but then deteriorated to Very Unhealthy. M finished off his outdoor painting chores while it was still relatively good. Otherwise we’ve stayed inside. But E and her Lemon Merengue Pie buddies are planning a brief meeting in the late afternoon despite the difficult conditions. H is hosting, A is the instigator, and E plays the role of perpetual guest.

Friday, September 11      Deaths   499  (+2)   Cases  28,865   (+211)

Another smokey, windless day. We are back in the Very Unhealthy range, with occasional spikes into the Hazardous zone. No more orange glow or red sun poking through, just dirty gray smoke as far as you can see, which isn’t all that far. We’re so fortunate that there are no fires in the forests nearby. The closest fire to us is about 35 miles away. Much of the area between here and there is agricultural land, which does not offer much for a wildfire to chew on. That’s good since we hear that one fire last week travelled through 50 miles of forest in just a matter of hours.

We looked at an aerial video of the Talent to Phoenix corridor a hundred miles south of us. Sad to see whole neighborhoods gone. Amazing to find several places where you can see a row of houses all intact while across the street there is another row reduced to nothing but foundations. 

The video showed both built up towns and semi-rural areas. It made us think of our old house in the forest. When we lived there, we used to fret about what fire officials called defensible space, a wide area free of trees and brush on all sides of a house. Looking at the aerial footage of this fire, we could see that space was only one factor. Some houses that were closely surrounded by trees and brush mysteriously survived. And though many buffered homes survived, some others were consumed. Nothing about nature is simple. Reported deaths from the Oregon fires are few at this point, but everyone is saying that it’s too soon to tell.

Saturday, September 12      Deaths   505 (+6)   Cases  29,158  (+291)

It’s the 170th day of Pandemic Diary record keeping, which began in earnest way back at the end of March. The overall fatality rate in Oregon is up to 11.74 per 100,000. In the last ten days the average daily death toll was 3.7. That’s down from the previous 5.1. The current test positive rate remains less than 5%. Here’s the new chart.

Air quality today is in the Hazardous zone. It’s frustrating to be trapped inside by both pandemic and bad air. Also frustrating are the weather forecasts. In the middle of last week the prediction was that conditions would change by Friday afternoon. Didn’t happen. The next prediction was that conditions would change by Sunday. Nope. Now the prediction is for conditions to change by Tuesday. Harumph. Also, our house is looking shabby as hitherto invisible cobwebs are now covered with very visible black debris. 

So it’s best to just stay in and watch Cable Girls. Unencumbered by pandemics, bad air or shabby looking houses, these four young women are really busy. Marga, for example, has had to deal with her husband’s twin brother coming to live with them. Pablo, her husband, is sweet and caring and she loves him dearly. Julio, the brother, is charming and lazily amoral. What could go wrong? Well, for one thing, she could accidentally have sex with Julio thinking he was Pablo. When she realizes it, she is horrified, especially as it was the best sex of her relatively inexperienced life. She feels terrible. Meanwhile she has been promoted out of the switchboard rooms to become a secretarial assistant for Carlos, who has just returned to the company as its new CEO. Carlos is the scion of the family who first owned the telephone company. In one of last season’s episodes he argued violently with his father, causing him to have a heart attack and die, thus leaving Carlos to manage the company under the watchful eye of his mother Doña Carmen. But just when he was getting used to that, he was aghast to find out that his mother was a repulsive manipulative monster who was trying to crush all his dreams and especially to separate him from Alba, the woman he loved, who is also one of the four cable girls and thus a good friend of Marga’s. So Carlos broke with his mother and left the telephone company to start a radio station. A new character appeared, Sr. Uribe, and he took over as telephone company CEO, eventually marrying Carlos’ sister Elisa to solidify his position. But Mr. Uribe was not sufficiently docile, so Doña Carmen had him killed and orchestrated a preposterous series of events that convinced Carlos to come back and be company manager again, catching him in a vulnerable moment because he had just broken up with Alba because he thought she was insane to keep on insisting that their baby daughter had not really died in the fire at the church but instead was being sequestered in a convent somewhere by Doña Carmen, which was of course true, but who would believe such a crazy story?

So while Marga has been having sex problems and Alba has been going crazy trying to get her baby back, what’s been going on with Ángeles and Carlotta, the other two members of the formidable foursome of cable girls? When we last checked in on Ángeles she had just rid herself of abusive husband Mario by means of an accident involving Sr. Uribe’s baseball bat, at which point she and her three friends had to figure out what to do with the body and so on. They did their best, but because of bad luck and the work of a determined–and handsome–police detective, it seemed like their efforts were futile and Ángeles was doomed to go down. But sparks were flying between Ángeles and Detective Cristóbal Cuevas and before he could really figure it all out there they were in bed together and he was smitten. But not so smitten that he did not follow up some leads that led him to finally decide that Alba was the murderer. (We said he was determined; we did not say he was bright.) So then Ángeles had to confess the truth to Cristóbal so as to save her friend. The good detective was anguished. Finally he gave her two hours to get out of town never to return. “If I ever see you again,” he told her, “I will arrest you for murder.” Off she went and stayed away for a while, but eventually she just had to come back to attend Alba’s wedding to Carlos. She came in disguise, but she was injured in the fire at the church and woke up in the hospital stripped of her disguise, and there was that handsome policeman again telling her she was under arrest. But then Cristòbal got all smitten again–or at least pretended to be–and told her that he would spare her from prison if she would agree to work undercover to help him trap a notorious underworld figure named Guzmán, offering to see to it that some schmuck already in prison would confess to having offed Mario. Ángeles was forced to agree.

And Carlota? She was a rich girl who was doing the telephone operator gig because wanted to be independent of her military father. But he didn’t go for it and dragged her home and locked her in her room for a month or two. But then she found out–via her friends who listened in to her father’s phone calls–that he was in a conspiracy to overthrow the king. In return for her silence, he had to let her go back to work, where she rapidly got involved in 1929 style feminism as well as an ongoing ménage à trois with another operator (female) and one of the company engineers (male). Her father had a change of heart, apologized for trying to suppress her natural rights, and conveniently died, leaving her very well off. Using the code name Athena, she became a well known radio personality at Carlos’s station and managed to attract so much positive attention to her cause that she was attacked and almost raped by the leadership team of a radical conservative group. Her anarchist friend Lucia convinced her to spend some of her money to hire some leftist thugs to apply some lead pipe to the guys who attacked her. This led to one of the men ending up in a coma on the edge of death, which made Carlota feel really bad at which point she tried to break off with Lucia. She also had to worry about her lover Miguel, one third of the ménage, who has slipped back into his old cocaine habit and been fired from the phone company. 

Not to worry though, because at the end of Season Three everything works out. Unfortunately we cannot go into the details of how it worked out because of our editorial policy which requires us to maintain high standards of plausibility and strict historical accuracy at all times. Suffice it to say that Alba reunites with Carlos and finds her baby, Miguel gets a job in Alba’s old boyfriend’s nightclub, evil Doña Carmen gets arrested, Ángeles survives death threats from Guzmán and breaks up with the detective (who says he really loves her and in fact she likes him too, but she knows she can’t trust him), Carlota thwarts the worst of Lucia’s plans and feels a little better about herself, and Marga confesses to Pablo that she slept with his brother by mistake and sets about trying to make it up to him. Next up, Season Four.

Sunday, September 13      Deaths   511  (+5)   Cases  29,337   (+181)

Another day of thick smoke and no wind. Reported air quality is still in the Hazardous zone, but hey it’s at the bottom of the Hazardous zone, which is better than the top and even more better than that time when it went past Hazardous and climbed right off the scale, well into the dreaded Zone With No Name. Okay in the house though. And in fact, at this moment, (4:00 P.M. Sunday) visibility is better that it’s been for days. 

Our new neighbor across the street was out in the worst of it this morning, unmasked, using a leaf blower to clear ash from his driveway. This is, we believe, the worst possible method for cleaning up ash. (Do you have a problem with ash falling on your property? Just blow it back up into the air. You’ll be fine.) And why do it now, when the event is so clearly not over? Though he is blowing only a little of his ash our way, E is not pleased. If she wasn’t such a basically nice person, she’d shoot him. 

Finally, here’s another way to think of ashes, a poem circulated by the Willamette Valley Friends of Wildlife…

Do not forget that the ashes falling from the sky are all that remains of the pine and grass and thistle and bear and coyote and deer and mouse that could not escape. Gather some up in a sacred manner. Take it to your altar. Offer prayers for these beings. Honor their death. Pray for life. Call in rain. Remind Fire that it is full, has gobbled enough, and can rest. May all beings be safe. May all beings be loved. May all beings be remembered. May all beings be mourned.

Copyright Sadee Whip 2020

Tuesday, September 8      Deaths   486  (+4)   Cases  28,355  (+165)

We woke up to an orange glow at sunrise, but that soon changed to a dirty brown. There is ash in the air, some of it clearly visible as ghostly gray flakes drifting in the wind. So now we have two reasons to wear our masks outside. The smoke is coming from the east, they say now, where there are two different fires in the Cascades. 

Here’s the view from out our front door

The scene from the back yard.

It got even smokier here on Oak Avenue in the late afternoon. Our air quality has been designated very unhealthy, one step below hazardous, which tops the scale. The worst fires are on the western slopes of the Cascades, one east of Salem and another east of Eugene. East winds, gusting to 60 to 80 mph are pushing the fires down the mountain slopes toward the valley. Towns in the foothills are being evacuated. We’ve stayed inside. 

In other breaking news, the New York Times–a great publication but a little slow on the uptake–has an article today about how dentists are reporting an epidemic of cracked teeth. The surge in dental stress fractures was first reported, of course, in the Pandemic Diary, by co-editor Eve Chambers on June 19. (We’re not sure how the NYT learned of her report or why it took them so long to follow up.)

Wednesday, September 9      Deaths   494  (+8)   Cases  28,471  (+116)

News reports today say that multiple large fires in Oregon have burned more than 530,000 acres. Fire officials are focused on preserving lives and property; containment of the fires is out of the question. The winds around our house have lessened a little, but it is still very smoky and air quality remains very poor. Our housecleaner came today and we usually get out of the house at least part of the time when she is here. So we went downtown for coffee and scones then had our breakfast in the car. Although the air seems terrible, today must be a little better than yesterday because while we were out we noticed that today we could see the sun–at least we think it’s the sun. (It’s very odd to be able to look at the sun without it hurting your eyes.) The first photo is how it looked from a spot a few miles north of town where the smoke was a little thinner; the second is how it looked in Corvallis. Both images are straight from the camera–no filtering.

Monday, August 31    Deaths: 459 (+1)    Cases 26,713 (+159)

Busy day, what with grocery shopping at two different stores by two different people at two different times, M going to Winco and E going to Market of Choice. Good thing they had some Vermont maple syrup with blueberry pancakes on the side to get them started. (An early version of this post accidentally omitted the maple syrup. This error was spotted by our ever-alert proofreader.) After all the shopping E worked in the garden planting asters while M worked on materials for the TESL seminar in Chile. Dinner was grilled salmon and roasted vegetables, including a crookneck squash that E picked up from a neighbor’s giveaway box.

Then there was another action packed episode of Cable Girls. The highlight was when serial abuser Mario dragged his wife Angeles and up onto a rooftop and started whaling on her. He was mad because he suspected that she had been trying to poison him, which was, of course, quite true. Three friends of Angeles saw her get dragged away and followed them up to the roof. They all jumped on Mario and tried to stop him. But Mario repulsed them and got one of them around the neck with both hands seemingly intending to strangle her to death, at which point Angeles took a big swing and hit him upside the head with something heavy and Mario passed from this world. Well, that was plucky and no one will mourn Mario, but now the four women have a whole new problem…

Tuesday, September 1    Deaths 465 (+6)    Cases 26,946 (+233)

We both sent some info off to Chile today, more or less agreeing to participate in F’s TESL seminar via Zoom. E will use some mostly tried and true pronunciation activities and M will try a totally new writing thing, based on a reading that E thinks is totally impenetrable. M says that yes, it’s challenging, but hey, at least it’s not Merleau-Ponty. In the garden E did more aster planting and M did more ceanothus pruning. For lunch M went to the Taco Time drive up. They gave him the wrong bag, which he didn’t notice till he opened it up back at the house. It was only partly different from his real order, and it wasn’t bad.

Wednesday, September 2      Deaths   468 (+3),   Cases  27,075 (+129)   

On the 160th day of Pandemic Diary data collection, Oregon COVID fatalities have reached the level of 10.88 per 100,000 residents. The curve, as per the Pandemic Diary system, looks like this:

Thursday, September 3      Deaths   470  (+2)   Cases  27,336   (+261)

Today M got a haircut and took a little drive and E went clothes shopping. M went out just for fun, but for E it was serious business. She needed some new shorts for this hot weather, nothing grand but they had to be comfortable. She called her favorite local shop to ask if they had a selection of shorts that she could try on at home. They were ready and willing to work things out. The sales clerk asked what E was interested in and offered to pick her out a group of items. All E had to do was come in and pick them up to take home. All were charged to her card, and then, when she returned the items she didn’t want, the charges for those were refunded. This required two trips to town, but E was pleased to know that there was a relatively safe way for her to shop. In the end she bought two items. Neither is quite right but she can modify them to suit her needs.

M reports that the Oregon coast is cool and beautiful but that visitors are swarming over every inch of it to take advantage. In contrast, the narrow and winding secondary roads that M took to get over there were almost deserted. That was fun, once or twice just a little too fun. Sakinol, M, sakinol. 

Still to come today: Laughter Yoga, another episode of Chicas del Cable, and possibly a start at watching Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, a DVD lent to us by a friend. 

Over the last ten days the Oregon Health Authority has reported the results of 47,793 COVID tests, of which 2,181 were positive. For that period, the ratio of positives to the total is 4.57%.  

Friday, September 4      Deaths   475 (+5)   Cases  27,601 (+265)   Daily test rate  4.78%

Another 5-mile hike today, but this one a lot closer to home. We went into an area of the OSU forest very near where we used to live. We started out at about 9:00. It was a lovely, cool morning. The temperature climbed slowly as we hiked, but we were always in the shade and quite comfortable. The parking lot at Peavy Arboretum was quite crowded, so we spent the first hour on a route we knew would be less traveled.

We took Road 510 almost to the end and then went up the Road 516 spur. From the 516 cul-de-sac we bushwhacked steeply up to where the Section 36 trail passes by a couple of wolf tree firs. Slow going in that stretch as we had to keep a sharp eye out for poison oak as we waded through the undergrowth in our hiking shorts. What a dumb idea! One of us should have thought to think. Needless to say, we didn’t meet anybody on that route. So that was the bright side–no masking. Anyway, we then took an older section of the 36 trail up to the top of the little mountain. The old log bench, though partly broken down these days, still serves its purpose. We sat to rest a while, remembering all the times in past years when we used to hike up to that same bench early in the morning, carrying kibble and water for Lucy’s breakfast, coffee, bread and olive oil for ours.

Saturday, September 5      Deaths   480  (+5)   Cases  27,856   (+255)   Daily test rate  5.65%

E went out to the country to help her friend by again taking her dog on a walk. A fairly cool day today, a nice time to be out walking. M stayed in and finished another of the crosswords from his book of London Sunday Times Jumbos. These are hard puzzles and M works has to work off and on for days and days to get one done. This time, when he looked in the back of the book to check his answers, he found that he had been right about every clue except one. The same thing happened the last time he did a Jumbo. Sigh.

It was Kentucky Derby day. Usually run in May in front of thousands of spectators, it was delayed four months this year and took place with only owners and staff on hand. The winner was Authentic, trained by Bob Baffert and ridden by John Velazquez. Tiz the Law, a Saratoga-based horse that E was rooting for, started the race as a heavy favorite but faded down the stretch. Thank goodness she hadn’t put her money down. Authentic is Baffert’s sixth Kentucky Derby winner. In the winner’s circle after the race, the horse bumped Baffert and knocked him down. What was that about? 

Sunday, September 6      Deaths   481  (+1)   Cases  28,044   (+188)   Daily test rate  3.54%

The pandemic has gone on for a long time. The hot days keep coming. The ground is parched. And of course it’s not our country’s most shining hour. We’ve both been feeling in the doldrums lately. 

Was that why we broke our relax on Sunday rule and worked on our house project for much of the day, despite the heat? Anyway, there we were, out in the sun, overdosing on Vitamin D. The idea was to hang shade cloth on the outside of our two big living room windows. The windows face south and the sun hits them hard this time of year. E finished making the two shades, hemming the sides and making rod pockets on top and bottom. M mounted some hooks above the windows, and while he was up there he removed about a dozen old hooks and brackets leftover from things the previous owners had done, probably to address the same problem. This left lots of holes in the siding and window frames. M filled those and also did a little scraping in places where the paint was bad. Once the hooks were up, E got on the ladder and measured where to put the mounting loops onto the shades. We are using the little-known fishing line method to enable easy mounting and dismounting. So now the shades are up, but there is still priming and painting to be done in all the areas where M made a mess. Hm. Maybe sometime next week. 

Monday, August 24    Deaths: 420 (+3)    Cases 25,155 (+218)

Shopping day and also coffee with R, at Susan’s garden shop café. M and R talked while E got groceries at the Co-op next door. When the shopping was done, E sat down and helped M finish his latte. R is looking much better, having mostly recovered from his back surgery and having been able to get off the pain meds. 

E made pisto Manchego for dinner. Great summer fare. 

Tuesday, August 25    Deaths: 427 (+7)    Cases 25,391 (+236)

The Republican national convention is going on this week. Yesterday, there was a speech by Kimberly Guilfoyle, a “senior campaign advisor.” M watched a little. There seemed to be no content, just a screeching, histrionic call for obeisance to the supreme leader. Over at Daring Fireball, John Gruber responded to it by mentioning a racist 90s era speech by Pat Buchanan and quoting Molly Ivins’ fabled response: “It probably sounded better in the original German.”

Today, Trump was shown welcoming immigrants, pardoning a criminal, and basking in the support of a number of black citizens. Having recently re-negotiated her pre-nuptial agreement, Melania Trump was the featured speaker. Here are a couple of points she made about the Donald. None of it strikes me as remotely true, but of course that’s not the point.  “Whether you like it or not, you always know what he’s thinking. And that is because he’s an authentic person who loves this country and its people and wants to continue to make it better. He wants nothing more than for this country to prosper and he doesn’t waste time playing politics.” 

Wednesday, August 26    Deaths 433 (+6)    Cases 25,571(+180)

The test positive rate was quite low today: 3.79%. This continues a somewhat positive trend for that statistic in Oregon. 

M and E hosted backyard tertulia today and made a coffee cake for the occasion. E was in charge of batter and M made the filling/topping. Eve got the recipe from a friend while both were living in Spain in the seventies. It still works. 

Thursday, August 27    Deaths: 438 (+5)    Cases 25,761 (+190)

Five new deaths, but the test positive rate was low again, 3.18%. 

We talked today via WhatsApp with our friends F and I in Chile. Nice to see them. F wants us to help with a special Zoom-based seminar for students about to graduate from the TESL program where she teaches. We’ll see what we can think of that we might do. Everyone tells us that adapting activities to Zoom mediated learning is a lot of work. F, of course, says that it’s pretty easy. 

As soon as Laughter Yoga comes to an end, we’re off to Sisters, Oregon to spend the night. In the morning the plan is to get breakfast from the Sisters Bakery and then hike up to Chush Falls. The trailhead is up 6 miles of gravel road, so it’ll be interesting to see how crowded it is. 

Friday, August 28    Deaths: 447 (+9)    Cases 26,054 (+293)   (10.38 deaths per 100,000)

It was 39 degrees outside when we rolled out of our Best Western bed in Sisters at around 7:00 AM. At least that’s what our phones said. And, yes, it did seem a bit chilly when we got outside a little while later on our way to fetch breakfast. We found the Sisters Bakery up and running and as popular as ever. E got in line and M went off get gas for the Mazda. Only two “parties” of customers were allowed into the shop at any one time. When it came E’s turn to enter, she saw that the customer group in front of her included a young woman who was getting a selfie in front of the counter. She had come out for do-nuts wearing a tee shirt and hot pants. Cold? What cold? E got us a few of our favorites: one chocolate bar, one plain old-fashioned, one maple old-fashioned, and one massive apple fritter that we meant to keep and  share for breakfast on Saturday. Just as E came out the door with her box, M pulled to the curb and whisked her away back to the motel room. We then used the in-room coffeemaker to create two steaming cups of half-caf complete with artificial creamer and a touch of sugar. It was a magnificent breakfast. M overdid, as he always does, downing both a the large choco-frosted bar and the normal sized plain. Eve underdid at first, eating only her maple old-fashioned. But since that wasn’t quite enough for a hiking day breakfast, she sliced off just a bit of the fritter, which made everything all right. Here’s a picture of the fritter once it had made its way back to Corvallis. When it was purchased, there was a serious irregularity of shape on the lower left. But, as mentioned, E was able to fix that right up.

Having given breakfast the time it deserved, we eventually set out for the trailhead, arriving there at about 10:30. The road was rough, but we found that it wasn’t rough enough to have prevented eight other vehicles from having arrived before us. Still, it worked out pretty well. We passed some people now and then but spent most of our time with the feeling of having the place to ourselves. There was lots of room up at the top and a surprising amount of water coming down the falls. 

The hike was 5.2 miles in all with only 400 feet of elevation gain, not too difficult though a little on the long side. M’s right hip was bothering him toward the end. E had a few difficulties at the start but often seems to get stronger as a hike goes on. She’s a tough one. 

Saturday, August 29    Deaths: 454 (+7)    Cases 26,293 (+239)

This morning E went out to help her friend S by taking the dog for a walk. S is a former yoga teacher who lives in a lovely spot out in the country but who now has mobility issues. Several of her friends are taking it in turn to help out in various ways. The dog is very nice mini Australian shepherd and it was a lovely morning, so E enjoyed the walk. She noticed again today that a dog of that size is a lot easier to manage than the labs she remembers from her dog owning  years.

M spent the morning in the garden trimming ceanothus and spreading the last of this year’s homemade compost. The day was warm-almost-hot and cloudless, a lot like summer and also just a bit like fall. M spent the middle of the day in the garage trying to rejuvenate a 40-volt lithium ion battery that had fallen into a coma and refused to accept recharging. There is lots of advice on the internet about how to solve this problem and M tried two different methods. After both failed he ordered a new battery online and spent the next hour in the kitchen making chocolate chip cookies to console himself. E’s new garden umbrella arrived in the early afternoon. She spent some time unpacking and assembling it and found it good. But alas, not all is perfect here on Oak Avenue. While she was out there, E saw a large rat climbing down the inside of our fence and finding shelter beneath M’s monster blackberry bush. E now refers to the berries as Rat Berries and refuses to eat them.

Sunday, August 30    Deaths: 458 (+4)    Cases 26,554 (+261)

E did a Zoom meeting with old friends S and Mrs H and had a nice time catching up on what’s going on back there in upstate NY. Mrs. H runs a food bank and has had the challenge of keeping it going in times of pandemic. S has plans for kayaking by moonlight two nights from now. M joined in briefly and said a few words about Merleau-Ponty and the building of philosophical castles upon sand–shifting sand. M himself is working on an essay called “What is Real?” He’s pretty sure that once it is published it will clear everything up. 

Cirello’s Pizza will be providing our main entree this evening. Entertainment will be provided by Episode 8 of Cable Girls, a Spanish series about a group of women telephone operators in Madrid in the 1920s. The main themes involve romance, money, and women’s rights issues. Great stuff. There was only one killing in the first few episodes, but now we have another, a mysterious murder near the end of Episode 7. Francisco went to meet the evil blackmailer Beltran, intending to kill him. But when he got there Beltran was already flat on his back on the floor in a pool of blood. Thinking quickly, Francisco searched the room and found the incriminating photos of himself and Alba that had been the basis for the blackmail, but in the process he dropped his gold cigarette case that has his name engraved inside. And just after he left, we saw a woman’s arm pluck up the cigarette case and presumably bear it away. Francisco and Alba now believe they are safe, but for how long?   

Monday, August 17

Oregon Health Authority: deaths 388 (+0)   

M has reached page 140 of Phenomenology of Perception. Things are heating up.  

“Insofar as I have a body through which I act in the world, space and time are not, for me, a collection of adjacent points nor are they a limitless number of relations synthesized by my consciousness…I am not in space and time, nor do I conceive space and time; I belong to them, my body combines with them and includes them.” 

Tuesday, August 18

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 397 (+9)    cases 23,676 (+414)

Here’s another passage from Phenomenology of Perception, this from page 142. In it, the word ‘motility’ refers to our ability to move. If we see a friend across the way, we can move our arm and wave a greeting. If we see a piece of pie before us, we can reach for a fork. If we are otherwise paralyzed, we can move our eyeballs. The quote within the quote is from A. A. Grunbaum, Aphasie und Motorik, 1930.

“(Space)…is already built into my bodily structure, and is its inseparable correlative. ‘Already motility, in is pure state, possesses the basic power of giving a meaning.’ Even if, subsequently, thought and the perception of space are freed from motility and spatial being, for us to be able to conceive space, it is in the first place necessary that we should have been thrust into it by our body…” 

Earlier in Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty has suggested that it is not our ability to think that makes us sure we exist. Instead he says (if I’m getting this right) that it is our ability to make movements that defines the reality of the space in which we find ourselves. “I think, therefore I am” is fine, but thinking actually comes later.  So if we’re serious about understanding this (rather ridiculous) stuff, we’d do better to start with “I can, therefore I am” or “I move, therefore I am.”

Wednesday, August 19

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 408 (+11)    cases 23,870 (+194)

The Democratic National Convention is going on this week. On Monday we heard Bernie Sanders–sharp and on point–and Michelle Obama–tough and moving though a little overlong. The highlight for many was this passage from the former first lady: “Donald Trump is…clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. (sigh) It is what it is.” On Wednesday Kamala Harris made a strong impression and Barack Obama took his turn, praising Biden and saying that the current president “hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t.” Joe Biden’s speech on Thursday seems to have been generally well-received, with one Fox News commentator calling it a “home run.”

Thursday, August 20

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 412 (+4)    cases 24,165(+295)

We’ve realized that we have been socializing quite a lot lately, maybe too much. We generally meet our friends outside, we have an arsenal of masks, and of course we try to be careful. Still, perhaps we are not minimizing risk as much as we ought. We heard an amusing story from another couple. It seems there was an intervention of sorts in their family, with both of their grown sons taking it in turn to tell them that they were going out far too much and urging them to act more responsibly. The parents replied “But we’re only doing what all our friends do…”

For safety in socializing, hiking seems like a good idea, but of course everyone in the world has the same idea, so the good places are jammed. For example, today we went with B and B to Silver Falls. It was nice, but it was on the crowded side and we had to wear our masks pretty much the whole time. For our next outing, we’re going to seek out some not so good place and see how that goes. 

Friday, August 21

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 414 (+2)    cases 24,421 (+256)

Both M and E did some watering this morning and then their paths diverged. M got down to work on the Diary while E went off to drink champagne (at 10:30 in the morning!) with her friend P who is celebrating the seventh anniversary of her arrival in Corvallis. M is thinking that maybe he should go to the kitchen and drink a glass of V-8 juice just to help maintain the overall balance of nature. 

Instead he reads Chap. 5 of Part 1 of Phenomenology of Perception, which is titled “The Body in its Sexual Being.” Sounds interesting, eh? But Chapter 5 is tough sledding, eighteen pages of highly abstract generalities in which a single paragraph can go on for more than four pages. It has a kind of beauty and you could almost say that it has some kind of meaning, but it is hard to read and incredibly boring. Here’s one of the juicier parts:

Understood in this way, the relation of expression to thing expressed, or of sign to meaning, is not a one-way relationship like that between original text and translation. Neither body nor existence can be regarded as the original of the human being, since they presuppose each other, and because the body is solidified or generalized existence, and existence is a perpetual incarnation. 

This is language of a very high level, way up there where there’s hardly any oxygen. Consequently, there isn’t one living, breathing word in the whole passage. They’ve all died.  

Saturday, August 22

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 417 (+3)    cases 24,710 (+289)

After a quiet Friday, E and M both attacked the garden this morning. E picked some delicious late raspberries and then gathered rhubarb for stewing and apples for sauce making. M picked blackberries for breakfast and later did edging and weeding on the west side of the garage, any area that receives only sporadic attention and nary a drop of watering. These August days continue warm, mostly sunny with highs in the 80’s and cool nights. The days are noticeably shorter as the weeks seem to fly away. Tonight there is a sliver of a moon.

Sunday, August 23

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 417 (+0)    cases 24,937 (+227)

Time for a new Oregon pandemic curve chart. Thankfully, the sharply increasing trend that we saw in July and early August has not continued. Instead, average deaths per day have dropped by about a third, from 5.5 to 3.5. 

Monday, August 10

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 357 (+1)    cases 21,488 (+216)

M has penetrated a bit further into Phenomenology of Perception, where he found this:

“An object looks attractive or repulsive before it looks black or blue, circular or square.” Kurt Koffka, 1925

This an example of the kind of thing that phenomenologists think is important. Attraction and repulsion are immediate and concrete aspects of perception. Color and shape–as described by words–are abstractions that lead us out of the real experience of consciousness and into a world of systems and interpretations. Kurt Koffka is best known as one of the trio of German psychologists who developed Gestalt theory in the 1930’s. This quotation comes from earlier in his career when he was immersed in the ideas of Edmund Husserl, the founder of Phenomenology.

Tuesday, August 11

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 368 (+11)    cases 21,744 (+286)

Today we planned a park tour, so as to be away from the house in the early afternoon when A. would be working. First we got a take-out lunch from the 57th Street Grill, a.k.a. Taylor Street Ovens. This consisted of a couple of sandwiches and a big chocolate chip cookie. E, who has studied these matters carefully, says that Taylor Street has the best chocolate chip cookies in town, save only for M’s, which, by the way, have not been seen in the city for months. What’s wrong with that boy?

We ate the sandwiches at home. What a treat they were! So haphazard and homey, so old-fashioned, so delicious. As for the cookie, we saved that for later. We then got in the little car and headed east through Albany and Lebanon to a tiny town we’d never seen before called Waterloo. Waterloo Park is just north of the bustling town center, which is crammed with fast food outlets, monuments and two major museums. Oh, wait. Wrong Waterloo. Waterloo Oregon looks like this

Besides the little store, there are houses nestled at random intervals in the surrounding forest, at least a dozen, maybe two. That’s about it. Waterloo, Belgium actually looks more interesting. It does have monuments and museums and also this quite tasteful McDonald’s.

But anyway, back to Waterloo Park, the one in Oregon. It’s on the south side the Santiam River about half a mile from the store . The park has a boat landing, and most of the people we saw were headed toward the water, not with boats, but rather with inflatable plastic things of all sorts. We saw more than one such group floating slowly downstream with a bunch of rafts and plastic do-nuts all lashed together and bearing crews of many ages and sizes. 

We skipped the large campground and instead stopped beside the river to eat our cookie. Then we walked through the picnic area and saw some giant fir trees, one giant fir stump, and one monster tree whose species we have yet to identify. 

After the monster tree we got back in the car and set off to find McKercher Park on the banks of the Calapooia. Navigating by dead reckoning, eschewing all such sissified aids as maps or GPS, it took Michael most of forever to get to the damn place. It’s nice though, very low key, a big shady wayside with a picnic area and easy river access. This time of year the water is low and the popular thing is to just take your shoes off and walk around in it. The park is really quite easy to find–especially if you are coming from anywhere other than Waterloo. It’s just a few miles east of Brownsville, Oregon, which remains proud of having been the location for the filming of Stephen King’s Stand By Me in 1986.

Wednesday, August 12

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 375 (+7)    cases 22,022 (+248)

M has finished the Introduction to PofP. The main point of the Introduction seems to be about having a proper understanding of what the real world really is. Apparently, a lot of people have made assertions and/or assumptions about this topic and they have all been mostly wrong, according to Merleau-Ponty, which is why we need phenomenology. The mistake that he most objects to is the idea that the world has some sort of real existence apart from us. Next up in PofP, Part I: The Body. M just can’t wait.

Eve went out to meet with some of her buddies on AF’s farm in Kings Valley. There were kittens, ducks, chickens and llamas, and a wonderful baked zucchini dish. So a great time was had by all. When E left, however, she noticed that the gas was a little low in the CX-5. In fact, there were no bars left on the gauge and the range display read zero miles. Oops. The nearest gas station was about 20 miles away. Fortunately, she did make it that far, proving that the CX-5, like many cars, has at least a gallon in reserve that it is reluctant to tell you about. 

Meanwhile there was big to-do at E&M’s house, with jackhammers and mini-loaders pounding away at our little concrete porch and front walk. It was the first day of our sidewalk replacement project, partially fulfilling E’s dream of having a non-concrete sidewalk. The destruction phase is now finished, thankfully. The building phase promises to be quieter. 

Thursday, August 13

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 383 (+8)    cases 222,300 (+278)

The Oregon COVID mortality rate continues to climb, with 55 deaths reported in the last ten days, an average of 5.5 per day. The overall death toll as reported by the OHA is 383. This means that there have been 8.9 deaths out every 100,000 Oregon residents. The curve chart below shows how things have considerably worsened since the end of June.

And what about phenomenology? Can we escape the endless bad news by sampling the offerings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty? Well, so far, Part I of Phenomenology of Perception has been disappointing. The section title is “The Body” and there is a great deal of talk about visual and tactile perception. In discussing the physiology of perception, the focus is on the organs of sight and touch and on the nerves that carry visual and tactile impressions. There is a lot of discussion of certain abnormal “patients” who have odd deficiencies in these areas. But what about normal people? And where is the brain in all this? It is commonly understood today that the signals traveling from any sense organ to the brain are the only the raw materials. We don’t really see with our eyes; we see with our brains. In the 1960’s, when M-P was writing, neuroscience was fairly primitive. But still. You can see that he is working on the right problem, but isn’t the brain part of the body? Still, it is early days yet and M will persevere.  

Friday, August 14

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 385 (+2)    cases 22,613 (313)

The walkway is finished. We need to start working on its environs.

Saturday, August 15

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 386 (+1)    cases 23,018 (+405)

OHA reports more than 400 new cases today, but also reported a new daily high in the number of tests. The day’s 12,944 tests far eclipsed the old record of 8,058. The result was a surprisingly low positive test rate of just 3.2%, the lowest in Oregon since the middle of June. 

Sunday, August 16

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 388 (+2)    cases 23,262 (244)

Oops. A “script error” caused some distortion of the OHA test positive rates for the Saturday and Sunday reports. The actual positive rate was closer to 4.0 %. That’s still considerably lower than most days this month. Deaths have also been low for the last three days.

Tuesday, August 4

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 333 (+5)    cases 19,699 (+333)

M’s new tee shirt has finally arrived, allowing him to delve further into Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s The Phenomenology of Perception, a work of deep abstraction and profound irrelevance. Nevertheless, off we go.

Let’s start with Merleau-Ponty’s ideas about what is known as the Müller-Lyer illusion:

The German sociologist Franz Carl Müller-Lyer devised this diagram in 1889. We’ve all seen variations of it by now and we know the trick. When you first see it, the three horizontal lines are all different lengths. But of course they are not, say the scientists, as can be proved with a ruler. In fact, you don’t even need a ruler. All you have to do remove all twelve of the short diagonal lines and you will be freed from the illusion. 

Merleau-Ponty strongly objects to this reasoning. You will not be freed from illusion, he says, because there never was any illusion. The lines you saw at first glance in the diagram were not the same lines as the lines seen later, after you were instructed to ignore or erase all of the short diagonal lines. The lines in the diagrams were not just lines at all. What you saw first were three complex shapes, because that’s how perception works. If you erase all the winglets (the short diagonal lines) you’re not looking at the same thing any more. The horizontal lines that are component parts of the complete designs are neither equal nor unequal to the lines without winglets; they are merely different.

We know they are different because we just saw the difference with our own eyes. There is a reason that we see the difference and that reason lies in the nature of perception. We see the difference because–after centuries of evolution–that’s how our eyes and brains work. So we were never mistaken, never in the thrall of an illusion. In fact, we are being tricked, but we are being tricked by the scientist who is attempting to sucker us into believing that real experience and natural perception are inherently inferior to the idealizations that are the foundation of a scientific definition of knowledge. Scientists, says M-P, are both naive and dishonest. In the specialized vision of “objective” science, it is valid and useful to speak of equal and unequal lines. Science achieves its clarity by departing from the reality of experience into the realm of abstract reasoning about reality. But if we want to know what is really going on in the world, and what makes humans do what we do, the model fails because it is precisely the human perceiver that must be removed in order for the model to proceed.

For Merleau-Ponty, we cannot explain the Müller-Lyer illusion by assuming that there exists some thing in the world called a line, another thing in the world called consciousness, another thing in the world called the observer who has the consciousness, and an event in the world called perception which connects them all and which sometimes goes wrong. For M-P, the world is perception and that’s all it is. “I” do not “perceive” the “world.” Those three words are all just different names for the same thing.  

He goes on to say that we can reflect on our perception world, we can reason about our perception world, and we can also imagine different perception worlds. Humans do a lot of all those things. But our thoughts or acts of imagination about the world do not exist apart from us–and nor does anything else–though it is easy to mistakenly think that they do. Implicit in this critique, I think, is the idea that such thoughts and imaginings can help us, but they can also lead us very far astray. The difficulty about perception is that it is so basic and all-encompassing that we forget about it. And when we do that, we forget ourselves. The project of phenomenology, it seems, is to remind us.

Meanwhile…math. An article in our paper today has this headline: “Second-lowest COVID case total since July 8.” Inside, the article says “The new daily case total…is the lowest number reported in the past 12 days…and the second-lowest since July 8.” Does the article also mention that yesterday’s total of test results was the lowest since June 15th and that yesterday’s test positive ratio was one of the highest on record? No, these details are omitted. 

Wednesday, August 5

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 338 (+5)    cases 19,979 (+280)

Arrived at the coast a bit after 4:00 and got settled into our kitchen-equipped room at the Inn at Otter Crest. Here’s E getting settled.

When her kids were young, E had a time-share in the Otter Crest complex and has many good memories of the place. She hadn’t seen it though, for more than twenty years. It’s still very nice. We took a walk down from the Inn to the hamlet of Otter Rock, where there’s a Mo’s Chowder restaurant, a surf and skate shop call Pura Vida, and a café called Cliffside Coffee and Sweets. Mo’s was closed, but business was good at the surf shop, with lots of people returning their rented wetsuits after a day of surfing. The coffee shop was also busy, with a line of young people out the door, some masked, some not, and nobody distancing. Sigh.

Back in the room, our dinner was hamburgers with lettuce, cheese, ketchup, dill slices and a big beautiful tomato. It was great. The corn on the cob would have been great too, except that we didn’t remember to bring it. Fortunately, we had remembered the tempranillo.

Thursday, August 6

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 339 (+1)    cases 20,636 (+246)

This morning we drove about 50 miles up the coast to this place called Cape Lookout. 

It’s a two-mile finger of basalt that dates back to a time of massive lava flows about 15 million years ago. The hike is 4.8 miles in total, beginning at a parking area somewhere among the trees in the upper right of this photo. The first part of the trail goes along the south rim. Here’s the view from there.

Later the trail crosses to the north edge. Here’s a view looking directly down from that side.

The plant life on the cape is spectacular, with giant old-growth hemlock and Sitka spruce growing right up to the edges of the 400-foot cliffs on either side. The lush undergrowth of salal and ferns is almost impenetrable. The trail is smooth and well-graded–at first. Then it mostly isn’t. It had rained the night before and we ran into a little mud here and there. Also a few roots.

Friday, August 7

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 348 (+9)    cases 20,636 (+411)

Returned home today from our coastal adventures, tired and a little out of sorts. It’s not the coast’s fault. We had a wonderful hike that was followed by a fine take-out meal from Local Ocean in Newport. We shared a beautiful sunset and a very tasty Black cod dinner in our little dining nook looking out at the sunset. 

So that was all good. But then we made the mistake of watching the final hour and a half of Kördüğüm/I Am Blind, which Netflix inexplicably calls Intersection. The last few episodes had been a little clumsy. They had their moments, but there had been some continuity failures, such as the time Naz gave Ali Nejat his ring back at the end of one episode and was busy arranging wedding decorations at the beginning of the next. Then Naz was killed, which took a lot of sparkle out of the story. It was almost as if some of the remaining actors felt it too. By the second to the last episode they were just going through the motions, trying to get if over with. In the finale, lots of things were wrapped up and happiness seemed to be in the cards for several couples, but none of it was terribly satisfying or particularly moving. We blame the story runners for losing inspiration right at the end. But maybe it wasn’t all their fault. Maybe it’s just us expecting too much. The final stages of any addiction are much less fun than the beginning; that’s the way it goes. 

Saturday, August 8

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 355 (+7)    cases 21,010 (+374)

More gardening today. M mowed, dug weeds and extended an irrigation line; E fought in both the weed wars and the mite wars, fertilized a bunch of things, and picked up a bushel of fallen apples. She found a few apples from the far tree that were edible. M tried a good looking one from the near tree, but it was still bitter. Patience.

Dinner came from Ba’s in Albany. Ginger chicken with rice and kimchi for M, vegetarian noodle salad with egg rolls for E.

Then, continuing with the gardening motif, we watched a documentary called The Biggest Little Farm, which was suggested to us by a veterinarian we know. It’s the story of a couple who leave their tiny apartment in Santa Monica and go off into the wilds of Ventura County to do farming the old-fashioned way. Along the way they are mentored by Alan York, a master horticulturist with whom we were already familiar from having read about his work with biodynamic vineyards in Oregon. The Biggest Little Farm is an inspiring story and it’s helping us deal with our Turkish soap withdrawal issues. 

Sunday, August 9

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 356 (+1)    cases 21,272 (+262)

A quiet Sunday. We had a long walk in the cool of the morning. Did a few errands, including the carwash and the candy store. E did some alterations and read poetry. M made some progress on his British crossword, a Sunday Times Jumbo cryptic from 2006. He’s been working on it for weeks. Just five clues left. 

Monday, August 10

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 357 (+1)    cases 21,488 (+216)

Monday is our new grocery shopping day. M went to Market of Choice; E went to Natural Grocers. No trouble with any of the things on our list.

M has penetrated a bit further into Phenomenology of Perception, where he found this:

An object looks attractive or repulsive before it looks black or blue, circular or square.

Cited by Merleau-Ponty in PofP, the quote comes originally from a 1925 book by Kurt Koffka, who is best known as one of the trio of German psychologists who developed Gestalt theory in the 1930’s. I don’t what exactly this sentence means. I don’t know if it is true or not. I don’t know whether it much matters. But it’s a good example of the kind of thing that phenomenologists find important. It is an indication, they would say, about the nature of reality, about what is important and what is not.

Tuesday, July 28

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 303 (+14)    cases 17,416 (+328)

We made a visit to the coast today, straight west to Newport and then north a few miles to Beverly Beach. Lots of traffic everywhere and the day use parking area was almost full. Beverly Beach goes on for miles, though, so it didn’t even begin to be crowded. There was a strong wind from the north and a hazy cloud bank just off shore. Three or four miles inland it was 80 degrees; at the shore it was 60 and the wind made it startlingly cold. It was wonderful to walk along the beach, seeing the varying colors of the sea, sand and shore. Whenever we walked on dry sand, if we looked down, we could see a constant flow of windblown grains at ground level, like a shallow tide running fast across an endless furrowed plain. The blowing sand was so fine that a fair amount got through the fabric of E’s shoes. After 40 minutes or so we had had enough and headed back to the car, which made for a welcome shelter from the wind. E emptied her shoes out before we left, but when she got home there was still black sand around her toes. 

Wednesday, July 29

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 311 (+8)    cases 17,721 (+305)

Tertulia at Bodhi’s once again. E tried a thing they have there called a breakfast roll, which is something like a cinnamon roll, but with the dough knotted. She loved it. Foolishly, M settled for a blackberry scone. After breakfast, we walked back across town to pick up the Mazda after its oil change. Met some old colleagues as we passed the Wednesday Farmers’ Market. 

Back at home, M went on line to spend one of his birthday presents, an Amazon gift card. Such a challenge! What sort of thing is there in the world that he might want? In the end, he spent $20 on a linen/cotton tee and $30 for a copy of The Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Exciting stuff, eh? As early as Friday, he could be wearing a new shirt and reading 75-year-old French philosophy. 

It was E’s night to cook and she put together a nice summer meal of shrimp cocktail, corn on the cob, Milton crackers, and a couple of glasses of cabernet.

Then…we watched TV…and suffered a blow which has left us reeling. Naz has been murdered! In the first episode of Season 3! Can Naz really be gone? Because you know, in the last episode of Season 2, Feyza appeared to have been killed, only to reappear in Season 3, the bullet apparently having missed her heart. But there is much less ambiguity about Naz’s death. It seems that she will be seen no more, except in flashbacks or dreams. More on this later. 

Thursday, July 30

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 316 (+5)    cases 18,131 (+410)

Corvallis school officials have announced that school will open in the fall, but that classes will be on-line only for at least six weeks. Also today, Barack Obama delivered the eulogy for John Lewis. E heard most of it on the radio and was impressed all over again by his decency and his vision. She mentioned how lucky she felt to have had at least the eight years of his tenure. M took a three-hour ride in his little car, setting out early in the morning while it was cool enough to have the top down. At 4:00 E had her laughing class; at 5:00 she had a meeting of the Lemon Meringue Pie Society, in the backyard of one of the members. M was on his own for dinner. 

E and M have talked a bit about the loss of Naz. It is a blow, because she was the character that we liked the best. The crux of melodrama is good against evil but the foundation is often the possibility of true love. We long for evil to be vanquished so that good people can find love and happiness. As we get more involved with a series, we more and more come to love certain characters and hate others. That’s the test; if you start a series and don’t begin to love some characters and hate others, you’ll probably abandon that series and look for something else. 

We’ve stuck with I Am Blind partly because we were longing to see things work out well for Naz. Her relationship with Ali Nejat was the deepest foundation of the story. Well, so much for that. Now what’s going to happen? Who even cares? Is it worth the trouble to watch the final 10 hours of the series? I suppose we’ll continue on, just to see. Could this have been an elaborate trick? Will Naz pop up alive somewhere? Doubtful. But one can never say never in soap land. 

Friday, July 31

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 322 (+6)    cases 18,492 (+361)

Went for a walk today at Minto-Brown Island Park, up in Salem. The park is named for Isaac “Whiskey” Brown and John Minto, two barbarian usurpers who established farms there in the 19th century. In 1857 Brown established himself on an island near the west bank of the Willamette. In 1869, Minto purchased land on another island near the east bank. The land on both islands was in agricultural use for many years. During that time, the main channel of the Willamette shifted and both properties ceased to be true islands. The land is subject to periodic flooding and was therefore never developed any further. In 1970, both properties were acquired by the City of Salem, creating an 883 acre park consisting of both agricultural fields and riparian woodland. M remembers visiting the “park” in the late seventies or early eighties. It seemed–to his untrained eyes–like nothing more than a very large vacant lot that nobody wanted. Since then, both M’s eyes and the park environment have improved. In 2013 the city purchased an adjacent 307-acre parcel, a former Boise-Cascade industrial site. Cleaned up and restoration began soon after.

So the park now comprises about 1,200 acres. There is a 30-acre (!) off-leash dog park and a total of nine miles of walking, running and biking trails. We walked a little over two miles, partly through the vastness of the dog park, partly along the river, and partly through the woods near the sloughs where there is lush growth everywhere, much of it in the shade of gigantic cottonwoods.

So it’s quite a lovely place. But still our overall experience was not so nice. We went in the morning when it was coolish, and so did everyone else. The parking lots were jammed and people were everywhere. The dog park was actually the safest part. It’s where several large agricultural fields used to be and there was plenty of open space with room for everyone. On the trails, though, things were less good. The main trails are paved and in some parts are quite wide, so in theory one could keep one’s distance most of the time. Other trails, the nicer ones, were very narrow. About 80% of the walkers we met were wearing masks, but that’s not quite enough. And even when everyone was masked, squeezing past oncoming groups was sometimes nerve wracking. Worse were the cyclists and runners, who were mostly unmasked and who of course were breathing hard, spewing droplets in all directions. It’s hard to say how dangerous it really was, but it wasn’t too pleasant. We were relieved to get out of the wooded areas and back to the car. 

Saturday, August 1

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 325 (+3)    cases 18,817 (+325)

E made another heroic trek over to the Patissier this morning and fetched us back some croissants–both pain au chocolat and almond paste. Oh they were good. Two were eaten; two were frozen for later. Then we worked in the garden on the two W’s: watering and weeding. After lunch Eve finished a new mask while M read and worked on the diary.  

Sunday, August 2

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 326 (+1)    cases 19,097 (+280)

Well…we’ve gone ahead and made reservations for a stay at the coast. We’re getting a room for two nights at the Inn at Otter Crest, a resort where E once had a time share. The restaurant and pool are closed, but that’s fine with us. We’ve reserved a room with a kitchenette and plan to eat most of our meals from supplies brought with us from Corvallis. The area is still in Reopening Stage 1 because of a largish outbreak related to a seafood plant. What we want is a view of the ocean and a base from which we can do some coast range hiking and perhaps a beach walk or two. We still thinking about getting a take-out dinner one night, but otherwise we plan to avoid nearby towns entirely. 

Amazon has delivered M’s copy of Merleau-Ponty’s The Phenomenology of Perception but not his new t-shirt. These two items were ordered on-line on the same day and have become conflated in his mind. M has already read a few pages of TPOP but is hesitant to continue. He fears he will not get the full effect without the shirt. Thoreau tells us to “beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.” But M is wary of enterprise of all sorts and has never truly desired to become new. He will wait.

Monday, August 3

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 389 (+0)    cases 19,088 (+330)

On the 130th day of our record keeping, it’s time for another update to PD’s Oregon Curve chart. But first, a little history. The chart immediately below is from the beginning of July, when things looked pretty hopeful. Remember those days? The second chart is the updated one, which traces how it all went sour over the last 30 days.

Tuesday, July 21

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 269 (+7)    cases 15,139 (+292)

The number of Oregon residents who have been tested for COVID has risen to 352,000, which is about 8% of the total population. As of today, the overall positive rate since March 30 is 4.37%.  The volume of testing has increased greatly over the last four months. In April, Oregon reported an average of 1,407 test results per day, in May the daily average was 2,435, in June it was 3,605 and so far in July it has been 5,216. 

Michaelsday, July 22

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 271 (+2)    cases 15,393 (+254)

A lovely day today. M got to install a new induction cooktop. First the electricians came and installed the new wiring, then M put it into place. Besides sawing and drilling, this process involved a lot of cursing and groaning, so we know he was having a good time. 

Meanwhile E went to a doctor’s appointment and got some good news. Part of it was that the doctor saw no need to fire a laser torch at her big toe. That’s always nice to hear. Another part is that he gave her a couple of those individually packed squares of Ghiardelli chocolate, which is also nice, especially during those times when your dentist is temporarily unable to give out cupcakes. 

Today’s food was generally excellent. Our tertulia with J&R was at Bodhi’s Bakery and we were able to sample their version of chocolate chip scones while seated outside on a nice cool morning. Hearty and delicious. Then there was that smoked salmon for dinner followed by Chambers sized pieces of birthday chocolate pie from the 57th Street Grill, aka Taylor Street Ovens. (Which is to be found neither on 57th St. nor on Taylor, of course.)

Later we watched two hours of Intersection, a.k.a. I Am Blind, our Turkish soap opera. Pediatrician Naz and race driver turned businessman Ali Nejat have been engaged for a while now. As far as we know, they haven’t had sex yet. The Pandemic Diary stylesheet says to avoid the expression ‘have sex’ and prefers ‘slept together’ cuz it’s classier. But Naz and Ali Nejat have slept together in the same bed several times. It’s just that in all cases adorable little Kaan slept in the same bed right between them, which has made adorable little Kaan very happy but has made E start to worry a little about just how they’re going to deal with this kid in the long run. 

But there’s been a lot more going on besides that little triangle. Naz’s mother Ayşen, who runs a real estate business, is becoming involved with Ali Nejat’s friend Ayhan. Ayhan is a cheerful and charming restauranteur who has been married four times. He mentioned this to Ayşen early on, saying something along the lines of “I’m trying hard to be a good guy and I think I am, but I have to tell you that if you talked to my ex-wives you might get another story.” That was a wise move on his part because Ayşen is smart enough to have already figured out some of that for herself. 

There has been a lot of action involving Ali Nejat’s sister Feyza and his father Tarik. Feyza, whose young son was killed in a car accident that occurred when Ali Nejat was driving, has just got engaged to the sinister Murat, who has gotten all chummy with her father and has dragged them into an investment scheme that promises Tarik a new level of wealth and power. Ali Nejat has come to distrust Murat and will have no part of it. He has sold his shares in the family business, which has estranged him from both sister and father. He continues the warn them about Murat, though, from time to time, which just angers them both. 

Feyza’s ex-husband, Enver, has returned from a long exile in Dubai. He had fled Turkey several years ago when a warrant was issued for his arrest for something or other. Resourceful fellow that he is, he has somehow arranged for the case to be dropped, allowing his return. The motives for his return to Istanbul are unclear. He has, in the past, been a mentor for Murat. But he has told Feyza that he still loves her and wants, more than anything, for them to be together again. So there are two men who say they love Feyza, but can she trust either of them? We in the viewing audience have started rooting for Enver, as we see more and more sliminess from Murat. 

And here comes another figure from out the past–Ali Nejat’s first love, Eylül, who happens to be Enver’s younger sister and who has been living in Germany working for a design firm, the same firm that–oh lord never mind. Needless to say, she still carries a torch for Ali Nejat and he’s not entirely over her either. And what about Gokçe and her boyfriend Emre, he of the white Porsche Panamera? Lots happening there. She dumped him after one of her friends texted her a photo of Emre kissing another girl. But Emre refused to accept dismissal. We will always be together, he says, until I say we’re not. He confronted Gokçe’s friend who sent the photo and roughed her up a bit. Then, a few days later, he really let loose on Gokçe herself, punching her several times, cutting her lip and bruising her cheek and left eye. Gokçe is in shock and doesn’t want anyone to know, especially her brother Umut (Naz’s ex) because she thinks that if he finds out he’ll just kill Emre and then have to go to prison. She knows, as do millions of viewers, that impulse control is not one of Umut’s strengths. But she finally does tell Genco, Umut’s old friend and assistant mechanic. Genco immediately wants to have some direct conversation with Emre, but Gokçe begs him not to do anything because then he will get into trouble. At this point Gokçe knows that Genco is in love with her and she’s starting to wonder how she feels about that. Anyway, Genco tells her not to worry about it and that nothing’s going to happen. He tells her he’s got to go off to work, but instead goes and finds Emre, stuffs him into the trunk of a borrowed car, and drives back to the garage where he works. After putting up the closed sign, he takes Emre out of the trunk and into the back room where he proceeds to spend some time beating the crap out of him, pausing when he gets winded but then going right back at it. (Or so we assume–not all of this is shown. But the initial blows were fairly graphic, as were the several blows that Emre dealt Gokçe.) To see what happens next, we must go on to the next episode…if we can find the strength.

Thursday, July 23

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 273 (+2)    cases 15,713 (+320)

It’s 4:33 in the afternoon and M is having difficulty concentrating amidst the raucousness of the Laughter Yoga class that is Zooming into the living room. Part of today’s lesson seems to be How to Imitate Animals Laughing.

Friday, July 24

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 282 (+9)    cases 16,104 (+391)

As this is the 120th day of PD record keeping, it’s time to update the Oregon curve chart. Grim news today on the virus front. There were nine deaths reported, the highest total ever for the state. Deaths per day in the last ten days averaged 3.8, also a record high, as you see.

Saturday, July 25

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 286 (+4)    cases 16,492 (+388)

In the fantasy world of I Am Blind, Naz has broken off her engagement to Ali Nejat. Lately it seems that she has been more of a baby sitter for Kaan, while Ali Nejat goes off and does what he does, which includes things like finding out who murdered his nephew, trying to save his father’s company, and, just by the way, having soulful conversations with former lover Eylül, whose intention of leaving Istanbul and returning home to Germany has first weakened and then finally dissolved. Hmm. Now, Eylül is taking care of Kaan–that was quick–while Ali Nejat goes to an important meeting. Kaan, the fickle little beast, thinks Eylül is wonderful because she took him to a stable so he could ride a pony. 

Umut and Genco were pretty pleased with themselves for beating up Emre and then dumping him in a vacant lot; but now they’re nervous. When they dumped Emre off, he may have been much the worse for wear but he was very much alive. Later that day, though, he was found very much dead by a vagrant searching through a nearby dump. Darn it! Why does life have to be so complicated? 

Sunday, July 26

Oregon Health Authority:  deaths 289 (+3)    cases 16,758 (+266)

A nice Zoom meeting today with with the three J’s: Jim, Joanne and John. E took her iPad out to the back yard and we sat under the apple tree for a bit. At one point Joanne noted that we should all be going out for ice cream, a sentiment of which we all approved. We also got an update on John’s new little house at the lake, which now has plumbing and an appliance or two. He claims that a Certificate of Occupancy may be signed within the week. Hopefully, we will be able to travel sometime and go see it. Also during the meeting we picked up the iPad and gave a quick tour of our yard, in the course of which we noticed that our wireless signal reaches to the farthest corner of the garden and also that the our rhubarb patch was flourishing. Well. After the meeting E went out to pick some and then later in the afternoon she turned around and baked a pie.