Do the Yak

...is undergoing a tectonic shift (thanks, Internet): Don’t bail out newspapers – let them die and get out of the way Post-Newspaper Media Wars: Small-Town Blogs

They’re closing the borders with Mexico and Canada tomorrow. My periodontist just canceled my oral surgery next week — what a surprise. From a personal standpoint it all seems sort of less dramatic than I expected, maybe because I don’t know anyone who’s gotten sick yet. And I work from home so my life hasn’t really changed. I’ve been posting lots of updates in the Lincoln Squirrel (latest closure: playgrounds) but that’s slowing down now that basically everything has been canceled. One thing I notice this week is that there are zero traffic stops in the police log. I wonder if people are driving better (certainly way less cars on the road) or the cops just aren’t bothering. I read that in Philly, they were told not to go after minor crimes fir the time being. Sort of makes you wonder if they’re spending the time training on how to fight looting and bury bodies. At this point I have to think that this semi-lockdown is going to last for many months. As soon as they lift it, there’ll ...

Amazing how news become obsolete so fast in this pandemic. Two days ago I had a flight all booked for Becky to return on Wednesday. On Saturday night after I last posted, I got an email saying the Jewish National Fund had contributed $500,000 to charter a plane so America kids studying n Israel could get home ASAP. This was to JFK, so I quickly had to book a connecting flight to Boston for her and cancel the Turkish Airlines flight. The plane left Tel Aviv last night and landed this morning, and I went to Logan at about 10:30 to pick her up, not sure what to expect after the shitstorm that hit after Trump's half-assed travel restrictions resulted in people packed like lemmings into airports for hours, which is of course a GREAT way to slow down a pandemic. Well, it's done a 180. The Mass. Pike looked like a Sunday morning rather than Monday morning, which isn't surprising, but Terminal C was eerily empty (see photo). Becky said her flight from New York was only about...

The list of restrictions and cancellations grows almost hourly — Disneyworld, the Boston Marathon, sports, Broadway, concerts, schools, the entire country of Italy... Most if not all colleges have kicked out their students, and six states have closed elementary schools. Lincoln schools are closed, of course, and they just announced Boston schools will close as well, which is going to be a real problem for low-income kids with food insecurity, not to mention working parents. Reportedly the governor is being pressured to close schools statewide. Thursday night and Friday were... busy. Becky is in Israel and is not due to return until March 24. Needless to say, all parents (and many of the kids) in the program. are freaking out and want to leave early. There was a Zoom call Thursday night from the school in Israel saying they were working on it, but many parents are going ahead and booking flight themselves. I did the same, getting her on a Turkish Airlines flight on Wednesday — a 15-ho...

Last post: eight years ago. I used to write in this blog when I had a job with too much time on my hands some years ago. Now I have less free time even though I'm self-employed and working from home (which, don't get me wrong, is fabulous). The reason I'm starting again is to create a diary of the coronavirus situation. Here's what's happened so far, but first a bit of background to get caught up. Becky (now Becca to most) is 18 and is on a half-semester program in Israel. The 10-week program was already a bit rocky because they overbooked incoming group, so they moved all the kids to another campus and then moved the back again after much parental outcry. We're in touch via WhatsApp, of course, and today Becky reported that one of the groups at her location is being sent home due to virus fears. Many of the kids are entitled rich girls who say things like "Time to spend Daddy's money!" The group being sent home, according to Becca, is from L....

Becky in Florida mode (she's a lot more cheerful than her expression would indicate). We wake up around 9:30 or 10. The pool is bright blue in the sunshine. A little cereal, a little coffee... the girls are having a blast in the pool. Ben joins them. I jump in as well and we play Shark. Ben retires to the adjacent hot tub. I eventually get out and sit in the lounge chair and read for a bit ("Friday Nights" by Joanna Trollope). Then I sit on the screened porch and read the New York Times cover to cover. Now time for a little lunch -- I boil some hot dogs for me and the girls, Ben eats some cold chicken and pickles from the fridge. Then more lounge-chair time. This is one of the rare times I do nothing but stare at the sky, watching the clouds and trying to guess which layer will cover the sun and which will move away. I love when the cloud layer is just the right thickness so I can look directly at the sun and see a perfect, sharply edged circle of light. I get a lit...

I left work at about 5:10 p.m. last night, It usually takes an hour or a bit less until I'm walking in the door. Last night? Not so much. I stood on the platform in Kendall for about half an hour until a train came -- packed like sardine can, naturally -- and I literally couldn't get on. (Meanwhile, a train going the other way was sitting at the opposite platform with its doors open. For about 20 minutes.) But my patience was rewarded, or so I thought, when 10 minutes later another train arrived, and I crammed myself into the last few cubic inches of space by the door -- which also satyed open as the minutes dragged by. I overheard another passenger say it had taken the train 45 minutes to get to where I was from Park Street (two stops). That's about when thought to myself, "Do I really want to be snuggling upright with my fellow commuters for an indefinite period in a train packed to tight that I can't even move my arms enough to get at my iPhone or magazine?...

Usually Ben has little interest in this blog, but recently he actually suggested that I post something here -- something that tells a profound and historic story in images. I'll let him take it from here... Ronnie James Dio apparently is credited with inventing the heavy-metal hand sign that means "You rock!" In doing a bit more digging on the web, the honor also seems to have been claimed for Gene Simmons and even John Lennon. Won't they all be shocked to realize that the gesture was actually invented in Farmingdale, N.J., by Jewish chicken farmers. The historically important moment was recently discovered in a photo taken on February 24, 1946 at the wedding of none other than my parents (Ed. note: from left to right, person #1 and #3; person #2 is unknown but looks somewhat menacing and/or drunk.) Look carefully at this picture and you'll see one of the invited guests expressing his enthusiasm for the wedding, proudly proclaiming, "You rock, and d...

The aging brain. Perhaps instead of a senior moment, you could call it a WTF moment (in which the W stands for "where") By the way, we're supposed to get another foot and a half of snow in the next two days. If we hadn't bought that snowblower, we'd either be hundreds or even thousands into a plowing service, or dead of a heart attack about two weeks ago.

This can be verified by reading Steam Me Up, Kid (the same genius who brought you the classic Adventure of a Lifetime, Now With More Lethargy ). * * * First day back at work after Christmas vay-cay. We basically slept our asses off and watched a shitload of TV, because we're an active, on-the-go family like that. But not jusst any TV -- high-quality streaming Netflix (thanks for the Roku box, Chanukkah bunny!) including, most recently, "Grumpy Old Men" (Burgess Meredith as Jack Lemmon's horny old father: "Looks like he's taking old One-Eye to the optometrist!") and season 1 of "Soap," which I'd never seen. LOVE the young Billy Crystal, though I was expecting his character to be a cross-dresser or something more flamboyant -- based, I guess, on my vague memory at the time of how controversial the show was. Ironically, Wikipedia says it was attacked by conservative Christians (no surprise there) but also by gay groups who felt the chara...

This is where our next-door neighbor was fatally injured just before Christmas. His death was initially mysterious but ultimately just sad, as was much of his life. The final tragedy was his fall (probably) from the slippery roof of his house where he had lived his whole life. Early that evening, we saw an ambulance and police cars outside, but this wasn't a major concern because we'd seen emergency vehicles over there several times before. This is because Bill called them himself when the voices got too frightening. He took medication for his condition, but sometimes it stopped working, or maybe he stopped taking it. In the past, he went to a hospital for a couple of weeks to stabilize and then returned home. That night, after the ambulance had taken him away, a policeman came over to ask if we knew of anyone who had a key to his house, which was "like a fortress," he said. That's because Bill was afraid people were trying to kill him. He had an assortment ...

A phrase from a Beck song... yeah, it's been a while. In the interest of updating this blog a bit more frequently, I'm trying to be less of a perfectionist (MUST! TAKE! PERFECT! PHOTO!) and just throw over whatever I've got, because perfection is for the gods, as I keep telling everyone. So. One of the highlights of this fall was getting new tires for my car. I researched various brands and features and finally settled on buying from National Tire Wholesale because they had the nicest floor display:   See, that wasn't so hard, was it Yak? Lather, rinse and repeat...

And the proof is on Bye Bye Pie . Yes, that's MY ass looming out of your screen. Am I famous yet? They SAY the Titanic hit an iceberg, but inquiring minds know better. Last Saturday we drove to Connecticut and back to see an exhibit of Titanic artifacts. I've seen some version once or twice before, but this was a chance for the kids to absorb some of my sick fascination with this event. The artifacts were fairly lame, though the pictures and text on the walls were quite good. Turns out there are six sets of goodies touring the world at any one time, so RMS Titanic Ltd. is raking it in. This is not the Titanic story. The real downside, however, was that the exhibit was at Foxwoods, which I have never had an interest in visiting, and this just confirms it. The first thing you notice when you walk is is the aroma of stale cigarette smoke, which kind of goes nicely with the hideous turquoise carpeting and other decor. There are several casinos, including one -- ONE! smoke-...

Funny how running out of toilet paper brings out the poet in some people. * * * Things I noticed about the kids this morning: 1. Sarah was sleeping with just the top sheet over her (never a comforter, even in winter), curled up on her front with her butt in the air and knees almost to her chin. This position was extremely cute when she was a baby in a one-piece sleeper and it still is. I hated to wake her, especially since she hates waking up. Starting at about three months, she's fallen asleep quickly and slept soundly for at least 10 hours at night -- lucky us.Which reminds me of something that happened around the time she had just started to sit up on her own. One night I heard her on the baby monitor uncharacteristically fussing after we'd put her in her crib -- not outright crying, but still. Finally she was quiet. An hour or two later I went in to check on her and found her sound asleep sitting up in her crib, leaning over with her forehead resting on the crib bars...

My good friend from J-school, John Godges, just published a book called "Oh Beautiful" that he wrote about his family's experiences as immigrants and as Catholics growing up in America. I read it in manuscript (the first book I ever read entirely in PDF form, actually) and it was really good. I mean, REALLY good. I was afraid when I agreed to read it that I was going to have to grope for something nice to say about it so as not to hurt his feelings if it sucked, but this was not a problem. John is an excellent interviewer, writer, and thinker of deep thoughts about all sorts of interesting stuff. Go to his website and you can learn more about the book and even read an excerpt -- and of course buy it if you're so inclined, which would be nice for John even though I won't see one penny of the avalanche of proceeds that the blog post will generate. Being raised by strict atheists, I didn't know much about Catholicism before I read the book. Actually that...

Over the weekend the following things happened: I thoroughly cleaned the inside of my car, (including the disgusting floor mat, which I put in the "bulky items" cycle of the wash with a heap of Tide and Oxy-Clean); I swept the garage floor; and Ben made the inside of the fridge sparkle. No more nasty science experiments, and you can actually look at the shelves and bottom of the fruit and veggie drawers without having a sudden urge to take a long hot shower. These are things that have been on the to-do list for a long time, yet I didn't feel any particular sense of satisfaction while doing them. Mostly it was very boring. BUT! Now my heart soars like a hawk when I open the fridge or look at my impossibly clean floor mats in the car, which now also smells better. It really makes a difference after six years of sippy-cup spills, ground-in Cheez-Its, pulverized crayon, sand, salt and snot. I jut feel sorry fort the washing machine, which just gave up several years of its lif...

I was shocked to realize I hadn't posted during the entire month of August. What a twat, right? The random title of this post refers to the impending Hurricane Earl, which is supposed to brush Mass. tonight. A bit of wind and rain is all we're expecting in the Leafy Suburbs, however. Not like the last one that made landfall, Bob, on Aug. 19, 1991 (my 30th birthday, actually). It was a Monday; I had been visiting my mother in England and flew back Sunday afternoon with no inkling of the impending excitement. Monday morning I awoke to no wind but a torrential downpour and went to work at the paper to covering the storm and its effects, which mainly involved a lot of tree damage and downed power lines. The wind soon picked up quite a bit. The day's highlights included watching big long waves roll backwards out from land into Long Island Sound, and then trying to interview some hardy soul who had stayed in his oceanfront cottage. I knocked on the door and asked if he would ta...

A blog post by Peter Bregman linked to two really interesting other pieces: an interactive graphic showing how different portions of the population spend their time each day , and a New Yorker article by Atul Gawande asking some pretty profound questions about what we -- and health care providers -- ought to do when death is clearly approaching . I think about this latter topic probably more than I should, but maybe that's understandable since my father and Ben's parents are all in their 80s and having had the experience of my mother's death in a hospice in 2002. When I read these things about all this denial by doctors pussy-footing around and patients who can't accept the inevitability of death and prepare appropriately, I think, jeez, I could do better than that, I would face the truth and concentrate on quality of life, yadda yadda. But maybe I'm kidding myself. Especially with young children, I might fight to the end for a few more minutes with them. The thin...

A while back, I posted a link to this Snuggie parody  that was so funny I snorted at work. Imagine my delight when I found this sequel . But I'm a traditionalist. I'll stick to my plain red Snuggie, thank you very much. (UPDATE, June 2022 — I cleaned out a closet full of literally moth-eaten blankets and the Snuggie had to go. I was today years old when I figured out that I can just turn the damn heat up in winter.)

The other day I was rushing off to work and I grabbed a pile of bills on the counter that needed paying. But Ben stopped me and said there were important things he needed to explain about some of them. In other words, they weren't all your basic log-on-to-BillPay-and be-done-with-it kinds of things. There were phone calls that had to be made to enlighten various entities about the torturous history of our health insurance, like when this policy in my name changed to that policy in Ben's name on such-and-such a date, and so the doctor's office resubmitted a claim to the wrong insurance company and SNZZZZzzzzzzz... SO. BORING. Which reminded me of these two great posts on Steam Me Up, Kid, where she described trying vainly to take in the workings of her furnace and how to jump-start a car. So fucking hilarious. I sent them to Ben and now he sort of realizes when my eyes get all glassy during one of these conversations. I don't even care that it reinforces negative stere...