My family has a little text-message chain going on – perfect for this time of troubles: Two elders and six certified adults. On Sunday, we started playing can-you-top-this for comfort food, with accompanying photos. Upstate: Quarantine with saag chicken. Long Island: Sausage in wrap. Bit of birthday cake from the freezer. Deepest Pennsylvania: "We see your saag paneer and we raise you by homemade chicken and minestrone soup." That got us through Sunday. The Monday NYT in the driveway brought a column by Margaret Renkl, who has become one of my top-ten favorite bylines in the paper – from Alabama, now living in Nashville. She writes so well about ecology, and life. Her column was about making corn bread on a cast-iron skillet, to ward off the blues. The words reminded me how much I loved roaming the region a few decades ago. I remembered a modest luncheonette in Oak Ridge, Tenn., which featured – in the early 70’s! – a fresh vegetable plate, okra, white beans, tomatoes, whatever was in the kitchen, plus buttery, crumbly corn bread. I’ll bet Margaret Renkl’s corn bread is even better. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/15/opinion/comfort-food-coronavirus.html Then there was the email from my man Mike From Whitestone, supplier of daily wisdom via the Web, designed to get us through. I had never thought of it that way. Mike also sent this one: To close, may I suggest this chorus from the Grateful Dead. Make it your mantra for the day, for this time of the troubles -- with fresh cornbread on the side. 3/16/2020 04:54:19 pm
There is something very comforting about doing special things with food. It is even more rewarding when using cast iron.
George
3/16/2020 05:08:29 pm
Alan: you are a very versatile guy. Good for you. GV
Randolph
3/16/2020 05:24:13 pm
George and Alan, 3/16/2020 05:48:51 pm
Randolph, that is fantastic. Using great tools is even more special when they have been in the family for a long time.
Andy Tansey
3/17/2020 09:38:02 am
I have shared this with family and Grateful Dead fan friends, and it resonates. Comfort food and song. I hear that the Italians and Spaniards are singing. On Friday, in a depressed and anxious mood, I joined a friend in the community room at this coop apartment complex with our guitars. After a couple of comfort drinks of beer and singing and strumming, I realized I had forgotten all about the crisis until we strummed and sang Touch of Grey, heartened but also reminded by the chorus:
George
3/17/2020 12:48:48 pm
Andy: thanks. You could Wander around like a troubadour — public service. I love the photo in the NYT of people on balconies in Italy. Do you have a balcony? GV
George Vecsey
3/17/2020 01:49:56 pm
Andy,, hope I didn't sound facetious. Every loss hurts...whether it's lunch with friends or BB not around or plans changed. No SNL. Until further notice, the music is still there. Thanks for making it and sharing your good time. GV
Roy Edelsack
3/17/2020 05:14:20 pm
Ok. I'll see your "Touch of Grey" and raise you with the Dead's "The New Minglewood Blues":
George
3/17/2020 07:27:20 pm
Roy: thanks for words of perseverance from 20s blues and 60s Dead. I had never looked up genesis of songs. Amazing the things you learn on quarantine.
Andy Tansey
3/18/2020 07:25:44 am
Roy, thanks for the reminder of that verse, as I recall from an older rendition. We had played The New, New Minglewood Blues two weeks ago, with all sorts of verses from the '70's and '80's, but not that one.
Randolph
3/18/2020 09:27:47 am
George, Alan and others,
George
3/18/2020 10:16:09 am
Randy: thanks. I will look it up. When i was around Nashville, Clements was everywhere. Couldn’t make a record or have a country show without him.
Randolph
3/18/2020 10:29:30 am
George,
Andy Tansey
3/18/2020 06:43:00 pm
Far reach into my memory, but "You're either on the bus or you're off the bus. You cannot be both on and off the bus." Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests, or just a rumor from an old Dead Head bus driver?
Randolph
3/18/2020 10:39:28 am
George,
George Vecsey
3/18/2020 07:09:10 pm
Randy: Yes, what a series of careers he had. Died in Australia in his 70s.
Randolph
3/18/2020 07:36:25 pm
George,
Mike From Whitestone
3/19/2020 03:58:12 am
George, Everyone, wishing you all safe travels and somewhere to be safe these days in particular. There certainly is no place like home.
Andy Tansey
3/19/2020 07:24:35 pm
Mike:
Mike From Whitestone
3/19/2020 08:31:50 pm
Hi Andy, its my mantra for a few reasons and a core value I share with Bill W , many more including our hosts friend, Bob Welsh.
George
3/19/2020 09:00:25 pm
Andy: one day at a time works for all. I will get by — today. Serenity Prayer, too. I learned from AA people while helping my friend Bob Welch, RIP, write his book.
George
3/19/2020 09:22:28 pm
Andy/Mike: speaking of food (above) and Queens, Lemongrass and Ginger on 150 st. Was terrific Vietnamese place a year or two ago. Haven’t been lately. Not the Queens of my youth, and thank goodness for that. Comments are closed.
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QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online. The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal…. After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness. The progress stems mostly from three factors: First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot. Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.) Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year. “Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.” That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.” That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data. One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines. Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks. Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths. The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions. Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately Republican and white. Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.) *** From the great Maureen Dowd: As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop. But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels." --- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing. *** "Putting out the paper," we called it. Much more than nostalgia. ---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html Categories
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