covid thanksgiving and black friday

 Part of an email I sent to a particular friend, on dealing with Thanksgiving and Black Friday while managing COVID:

---

(Are we w)ell? No, we're not well... but we're better. I woke with a sore throat, which has mostly passed; we had a bunch of Black Friday chores to do this morning, and we got them all done - gas for Regina; special sale at ShopRite; sale at Talbot's for Regina; two-for-one black Friday deal at Hand & Stone massage (I'd rather have dental work than a massage, but Regina likes them, so she got the deal, and I did as well as a Christmas present for her); stop at Costco. It's been a slow afternoon, I suppose, but I did a load of laundry; cashed two checks (remote; just uploading pics from the dining room); ordered a gift card for my sister's Christmas present; paid the water bill. With all that, I'm mostly falling asleep with the computer playing videos on my lap, and I hear Regina's computer in the bedroom; I suspect she fell asleep watching something or other.

...

I'm actually glad I missed the Thanksgiving dinner; I have one sister-in-law who's well-meaning, but perseverates on her belief that all government benefits are wasted on the undeserving; another sister-in-law is (redacted). We sent most of the dinner to them (and their children and the one newly-married-in wife), and kept out a few servings of the side dishes for ourselves... and bought turkey club sandwiches to round out dinner for ourselves. We set the good china and sterling (I inherited five settings of sterling), and decided this was a really good Thanksgiving for us, COVID or no.

If we could just hang out with the younger generation of her family, and leave out my sisters-in-law (and the one Trump-y husband), it would be a much better time.

...

Thanks for checking in. We're OK; we won't starve before we can get out to stores again... and I'm only a little sorry that I can't go infect some people of choice wit this illness, or that it would't be as crippling as it might be, if I did.

---

I expect we will look back on this holiday, and smile at each other as we do. The story may improve with age and retelling; stories often do.

local barbershop

 I got back from the barber a few minutes ago, and this came out of my head.

---

The crones, or almost-crones
Giving the haircuts, are standing at chairs
Marked with the names of the men (all of them were men)
Who gave haircuts in these places forty years ago.

But they were not the first barbers here. In the arms
Of the chairs are ashtrays, now clean,
But still with the memory of ashes, from when
Everybody smoked at the barber’s. On the counters

Are products I only remember seeing
When I was getting 25¢ haircuts, beside men
Who looked old to me then, although they
Were decades younger than I am now.

This floor has had hair swept from men
Who fought Nazis, or North Koreans,
Or who could make a living with only
A strong back and a willing attitude.

The pictures by the licenses are of grandchildren
Rather than of lovers and parties of their youth.
And despite my directions, and the crone’s obedience,
My hair comes out in a style from a movie
That was popular twenty years before I was born.

 

---

I almost never write poetry (I wrote one about a year ago, and none before that for decades), and I have no idea where this came from.

the tune without the words

 Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

A nephew died last week. The viewing was two days ago; the funeral was yesterday. Initially, I hadn't felt much over the death, but as the family gathered to pay last respects, I found myself mourning Daniel harder.

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I'll bet hundreds of people came out for the viewing. The line went on for hours. There were relatives from Croatia and Ecuador that came; friends from France and Switzerland; coworkers who spoke only Spanish; classmates and workmates; family on top of family. In addition to mourning Daniel, I wept for the meaning of so many people taking time and effort to offer support for the survivors of the young man they knew. There will not be so many at my funeral. Perhaps that is as it should be.

I'd recently been reminded of this Emily Dickinson poem in a video, and thought to myself at the funeral, "Hope is the thing with feathers", and I have not been able to keep long from tears since. It will not always be like this. For now, though, I am not ashamed that I am so moved.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

mercer juneteenth ride

 

It's a shame those guys don't look like they're havin' any fun, right?

Today was the fourth annual Mercer County Juneteenth Ride. I've made a resolution to do this one every year I can, because I had a great time on it last year (and this year, too); because I want to get out for more charity and big group rides, and because cycling has not been great to black people (the League of American Bicyclists, of which the Princeton Free Wheelers is a member [see our logo], is the successor organization to the League of American Wheelmen, which actively kept blacks out of cycle racing at the end of the nineteenth century). So I like supporting this ride.

I found out Bobbi B was going, so I asked if I could drag along with her, and got put on her team.

Look, you can get most of the info you want at the Juneteenth Ride info page (linked above), and you can get our performance on my ride page (which almost none of you care about). So the rest of this is gonna be pictures, with minimal explanations.

Registration:

Above, Doug S, the organizer, does a video interview.

At the start (I love these pics!):

That guy above had that bike wrapped at a car-wrap shop. He is justly proud of that unique finish. 

Or team did the 50-mile route; Stacey P did the 75, and we ran into her a few times.

First rest stop was at the historic AME church on Hollow Road:

Second stop at Sourland Cycles:

Since we got a picture of Stacey getting a picture of us, Bobbi and I decided to get pictures of each other, each getting a picture of the other. Self-referential rabbit hole warning...

Sourland Cycles has this painting that Larry Chestnut did of Erich Woisetschlaeger. Someday I need to do a post about Erich.

At the third stop at a school in Pennington. They cheered as we came in!

The West Windsor cops were helping us across some of the tough intersections. I've never had so many conversations with cops that didn't end with either a warning or a fine:

Yeah, I'm definitely doin' this again.

a little pilgrimage

 So when you're driving the five-hours-or-so from Ashland Oregon up to Portland, and you've got a little less than an hour to kill before you have to refill the rental car with gas and return it to the airport, and then go check in for your red-eye flight... what do you do?

I went to Powell's Books, the largest independently-owned bookstore in the country.

It was a delight. I was giddy. I didn't have time to browse for a book, but I got a sticker.

I hope to be back to the world by Monday. I've got customers lined up, and bikes to fix.

morning walk in ashland

 In the rest of the world, it may be spring, but the mountains around Ashland Oregon care not a whit for that, and make their own weather; it snowed in the mountains last night. I took a walk to get some pictures.

The AirBNB where I'm staying is in the lower left of the picture above.

And in my ramblings, I found a path that led to Railroad Park, on the other side of the tracks from the AirBNB. There is a Names Project installation there, after the Black Lives Matter protests.

Ashland being situated where it is, the installation has, of course, been vandalized. I think that's a good thing: it's a reminder that, as far as managing racism goes, we're nowhere near done.

in buffalo for the eclipse

 The Excellent Wife (TEW) and I have just moved to a new house... and two days after we moved, we were off to Buffalo for a long-planned trip to see the eclipse. It had been one of my wife's "bucket list" items, and I make a practice not to stand in the way of those.

It was great. I wrote the following to an acquaintance who lives in England:

==

Buffalo, NY was cloud covered most of the day, which worked reasonably well for viewing the eclipse. While we had the approved protective glasses, we only needed them for those few occasions when the clouds broke and what was left of the sun showed through. Instead, the clouds provided protection, and while they did sometimes completely block our view of the sun, more often the clouds we just enough so that we could see the eclipse happen without the need for protection.

Totality was scheduled for about 3:18pm local time, but occlusion of the sun started about an hour earlier. We went out to the street and stood where we would be able to see. Across the street, there was a bar where a number of customers had been preparing (ahem!); one was so prepared that he fell over backwards, but we later saw him up on the roof with the others. There was a festive atmosphere; we had three locals standing on the street with us sharing thoughts and politenesses, and later the excitement and giddiness.

It takes a LOT of occlusion to change the quality of the light locally, but as the sun got more and more covered, darkness came on. It wasn't the darkness of sunset - the colors were different, and it came on much more quickly. As totality approached, the darkness became more complete: streetlights came on, and we noticed cheering and shouts from other bars on this street. Even through the clouds, with totality we saw the irregular corona, and a bright spot towards the "bottom" of the sun that we later learned was a sun flare.

And then the light began to come back, and within about a half-hour, the light was back and we went on our way. My wife had made this a "bucket list" item, and was still excited and grinning at bedtime.

==

My wife got some video of the event:

 

We came back to a house full of unopened boxes, and we still can't find anything. Moving is crazy. But the eclipse was immense.

some different roads

 

It was late in the week before Laura OLPH got to emailing around her plan for the ride she was going to lead today, and it was only last night that she got it listed on the club's calendar. But since we knew we were planning on going, we got signed up, and six of us went off on the ride today from Twin Pines. (Maybe I didn't get pictures of everybody.)

Laura had said she wanted to try some different roads, and a different stop in Lambertville. Yeah, I'm up for that. So off we went on the route she'd set up.

One of different roads was Mine Road west of Stony Brook. It's a different road from the ones we usually take in that neighborhood, largely because it climbs about 100 feet in about two-tenths of a mile. I was too busy breathing hard to complain at the time.

Another of the different roads (like, do you think I had any idea where we were at the time?) brought us to a farm with cows, triggering the obligatory photo stop.

This vista was better in person than shows in the picture.

 We rolled into Lambertville, and stopped at the new-to-me Lambertville Bakehouse, where the clerks sang the praises of a product called a bostock, a slice of Japanese milk bread, sugared and covered with almonds. Not real sweet, it had what I refer to as a "grown up" taste. They weren't wrong; I liked it. We haven't been there in the year-and-a-half they've been open; here's wishing them success and longevity.

Out front, in the rack where some of us put the bikes, was a cute girls bike.

I didn't notice until Heddy pointed it out, but the basket is unique: it's a plastic Tupperware-like thing, held on with blue painter's tape. Ingenious! I hope it works!

On the way back, we rode for a few miles on 579 Linvale-Harbourton Road. No shoulder, and lots of traffic; dozens of cars passed us in the three-or-so miles we rode it. I found the experience enervating, and when we turned onto Woosamonsa, I slow-pedaled to try to get my composure back again.

The "try some different roads" thing reminds me of a story Joe M told me about Joe McBride, for whom the old McBride Rides were named. The two Joes would go riding together, and Joe McBride would complain about riding the same old roads and plan to ride on roads they didn't often ride... and then would complain about the conditions of those roads: traffic, surfaces, hills, and so on. The other Joe would remind him that we often ride the same roads, because we know that their condition would be conducive to a safe, pleasant ride. Still, sometimes it pays to do something different.

Go check out the ride page (yeah, I know you won't do it, but Imma link to it anyways).