A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 94

Solomon Northrup, author of Twelve Years A Slave.

Monday,  June 15

It’s a somewhat presumptuous thing to write a memoir—or a memoirish blog like this one: You’re presuming that someone will actually want to read it. But as a sometime historian, I know how important such memoirs can be, particularly when they cover very intense periods of history. History is contested terrain, as is attested by current controversies over U.S. military-base names or the presence of Confederate figures’ statues, and that means witnesses need to weigh in.

Who cares about old diaries? Lots of people do. Think about the slave narratives such as Solomon Northrup’s Twelve Years a Slave. Or there’s Mary Chestnut’s influential portrait of slaveholder society, A Diary from Dixie.

Think of the many accounts of life during the Great Depression, notably Studs Terkel’s Hard Times. Our time is not quite as extraordinary as either of those periods, but no one would deny that we’re living through an astonishing era that people may care to read about in the future. 

I also intended from the beginning that this blog might be read right now by our friends, who are wondering just what we are up to during the lockdown. I, in turn, wonder what they are doing—just how they are filling their potentially empty hours.

I was mulling over all these matters when I recalled that in a recent e-mail, our friend Sonia Jaffe Robbins had noted that she has an Internet-posted memoir of her life and work. 

Sonia is a former law client of Emily’s, a plaintiff in the landmark Tasini v. The New York Times et al. case over the electronic reproduction of freelancers’ work, and the wife of a late, former BusinessWeek colleague of mine, Jack Robbins.

Her memoir covers a much broader swath of time than does my blog—from her birth in 1942 up to the current date. I suspect that she pieced it together over some years, as it details the nine different places she lived as a youth, the several institutions of higher learning that she attended, and eight different places where she would go on to work. Amazing to me is her ability to recall the names of various public-school teachers (I can remember maybe three). 

She also remembers various possibly embarrassing moments, such as how students at her Connecticut elementary school had to recite an unfamiliar litany: “Are father who artin heaven halloween be thy name….” She recalls being afraid of the ducktail-haircut boys at her new high school, her subsequent facility in learning French and the rules of football, and her parents’ early cold-war-era caution about political activism. After college, there were jobs at publishers Bantam Books and Bobbs-Merrill, The Village Voice, New York University, and freelancing here and there. And beginning in the 1990s, Sonia became active in an international women’s organization, the Network of East-West Women, which helps forge links between women in the West and in formerly communist lands.

It would be great if everyone I know could write such a memoir, even a short one: Sonia’s is only 56 handwritten pages. Such efforts are gifts to future generations. Yet memoirs can also evoke ghosts, as W.G. Sebald reminds us in his book The Emigrants. “The memoirs, which at points were truly wonderful, had seemed to him like one of those evil German fairy tales in which, once you are under the spell, you have to carry on to the finish, until your heart breaks….”

Dinner: A simple broiled eggplant, tomato sauce and Parmesan cheese thingy, with a little pasta, and some asparagus.

Entertainment: More of the Polish TV show The Woods.

A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 93

A friend from the Galapagos.

Sunday,  June 14

A turtle appeared in my dreams. A box turtle-size guy, it was dark brown—so dark that it was almost black. And as it lumbered along the ground, a much smaller turtle—about the size of a quarter—jumped from the rear of the larger turtle’s shell. Then another, even smaller turtle emerged. And as the larger fellow continued to walk along, the two little ones began jumping past each other, almost like crickets, they leapt past each other again and again in what seemed to be a game. 

Does such a dream have any meaning—a portent of anything?

Glancing out the French doors in our bedroom, I see a baby cardinal sitting on the stoop. He’s munching on something, for once not hassling its parents about food the way the babies often do. They can be seen flying around in pursuit of mom or dad, all the while squeaking demands. Or sometimes they alight near a parent and whine while eagerly flapping their wings. “Feed me, FEEEED  me!” they seem to be saying, imploring as aggressively as the carnivorous plant in the movie Little Shop of Horrors

There are many box turtles here, but none are brown like the one in my dream. Instead, they are dark green. Once we encountered two in our front yard. It was a nightmarish scene: One turtle’s back foot was somehow trapped inside the shell of another turtle. You could see the entrapped one growing more and more angry, even as the imprisoner seemed willing to let go but somehow unable to do so. We wanted to help, worrying that the angry one might harm the other. But we couldn’t separate them. Then, somehow the entrapped one got loose, and they both wandered away. Since then, we just see single ones, and sometimes they can move very quickly. I think they live in the woods nearby and come out on very hot days hoping to find some water in our yard. Like the birds, they seem excited by the sound of running water.

In other wildlife news, our rabbit reappeared and then disappeared again. The cardinal family is here constantly, as are the very talkative gray catbirds and the usual profusion of finches, chickadees, and titmice. Sometimes we see woodpeckers, who come in three different sizes.

There’s also a young deer in the front yard this morning. A couple of days back, when I was grilling something out on our brick patio, I heard a strange, bleating noise. I thought it must be an unusual bird. Instead, in just a moment a very, very small deer ran right by me, making a weird, I’m-in-distress sound. I’ve never seen such a small deer—at the Westminster Dog Show, it would fit into the “toy” group. 

I always worry about these little animals. There are no predators to keep the numbers of deer down—no predators, at least, aside from automobiles.

Dinner: leftover chicken paprikash, noodles, and a green salad.

Entertainment: Episodes of the Polish TV show The Woods.

A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 92

A “works council” in Britain.

Friday,  June 12

It has been over six months since I’ve taken our car in for servicing. So even though it has traveled only a little over two thousand miles since the last oil change, I figure that the car is probably due. In addition, I just received a notice from Subaru that there has been a “safety recall”: Our vehicle “may be equipped with a low-pressure fuel pump assembled with an impeller that may become deformed.” The car could stall out “increasing the risk of a crash.” 

No one wants that. So I called the dealer to make an appointment. In the process, I learned that the service manager that I have dealt with for several years was “no longer with us.” Wha’ happened? The woman I spoke with disclaimed any knowledge (as I suspect she was told to say). The dealership is open, in fact she said, despite the lockdown, they had never closed. Nonetheless, they had been compelled to let several people go.

So in other words, the Riverhead Suburu dealer had taken advantage of the lockdown and coronavirus crisis to lay off a bunch of longtime employees. 

This is likely the norm across corporate America. Never let a good crisis go to waste. Dump ‘em, and the V-shaped recovery of Trumpian fantasy will be hastened.

Only it won’t be. High unemployment and forced retirement means lower consumer spending and a longer recession. What’s good or even necessary for individual employers is not likely to be good for the country as a whole.

Dumping workers is not so easily done everywhere. “Leaders of multinationals need to use all their skills as negotiators, not just their checkbooks, when planning layoffs in the European Union (EU),” according to HR Magazine.

Since 1997, French courts have required companies to lay out “social plans” and may well deem these inadequate if a court disapproves of the time frame for layoffs, the rationale for a reduction in force, or the plans for worker retraining. It is not enough just to pay severance. Nor can companies expect to dictate terms: They must approach worker representatives with a willingness to listen to proposed alternative arrangements.

Negotiations over layoffs are typically long and hard in Spain, where the magazine notes that loss of a job carries significant social stigma. In Britain, many companies must inform and consult with works councils (a set of worker representatives) and with individual affected workers as well. Germany also requires such consultation, and every employer with five or more employees is entitled to have a works council.

Here, of course, in the land of the free, companies can do basically whatever they please. Employers have the right to fire “at will” so long as there is no union, in which case a company generally must demonstrate “just cause” for worker termination. But union membership is at an all time low, now running around 10%.

Dinner: Penne with roasted red peppers, goat cheese, and toasted walnuts, along with a green salad.

Entertainment: Icelandic film A White, White Day.

A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 91

MISSING!! If seen contact either Hardy or Emily at this address.

Thursday,  June 11

Gusty winds are blowing the beautiful pink blossoms off of our rhododendrons. Oh well, they don’t last long anyway—and then they just wind up as brownish clutter on the ground. Another metaphor for the human condition, as if we needed another one.

Emily is already concerned about the next plague: a mosquito-borne illness called eastern equine encephalitis (EEE), which causes severe brain inflammation and seizures. The sickness is rarely transmitted but results in death for 40% of those infected. And climate change is likely resulting in a proliferation of mosquitos in the east.

“Viruses are a paradox of civilization,” writes Oscar Schwartz, describing EEE in his highly literate article on the science blog OneZero. “These protein-ensconced splinters of DNA — animate only when infecting a host body — are so primitive that scientists cannot quite agree as to what side of the living/nonliving border they belong on. As our species has acquired dominion over nature, these zombies of the microscopic realm, devoid of thought and culture, emerge from nowhere to upend our lives, as if to remind us that our achievements are fleeting and fragile….” Schwartz’ digs deeply into the history of EEE, which first seemed to take effect in the 1830s among horses in Massachusetts. Unlike COVID-19, one human cannot give it to another, but let’s avoid mosquitos, O.K.?

Our rabbit has once again disappeared. On a given day, he’ll be around for a few hours then absent for a couple of days. I suspect that at some point he’ll just be gone for good. But it’s reassuring just how much he has seemed to like our yard, especially the tall grass, even if he didn’t get along with the fractious squirrels.

This morning, I’m trying a different strategy with the bread machine, which has been failing to produce nicely risen loaves. The usual recipe calls for adding the yeast after the water, honey, flours, and gluten. Today, imitating the approach I used in making pizza dough, I’m combining water, sugar, and yeast and allowing them to bubble up a bit before adding them to the machine and topping with dry ingredients. Stay tuned. (It turned out great.)

Damark’s market was not crowded at 10:30, and I got lettuce, radishes, eggplant, onions, and eggs but no charcoal. Maybe later, they said.

It’s looking a lot like rain. It’s supposed to be heavy this afternoon, says the weather service.

Dinner: one final installment of steak, plus capriccio salad (mozzarella, olives, tomatoes, celery, and balsamic dressing), and a little leftover potato.

Entertainment: House of Cards, American version via Netflix.

A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 90

A high-point of 20th century satire, the Kubrick-Southern movie “Dr. Strangelove”

Wednesday,  June 10

“History will be kind to me,” said Winston Churchill on the eve of his retirement, “for I intend to write it.”

But who will write the history of our current, event-chocked and confusing period? It’s difficult to think of any elected official whose voice, or recollections, we need to hear. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, maybe, in 40 years? We’re more likely to hear from Trump hacks or unreliable, wacky narrators such as Senators Rand Paul or Ben Sasse. Certainly numerous science and politics journalists, from the Times’ Donald G. McNeil Jr. and Maggie Haberman to The New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert, are likely sharpening their pens and memories. And of course publishers would kill to have a book by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or even the much-quoted Vanderbilt University infectious-disease expert Dr. William Schaffner. (Unsurprisingly, there is a “coming wave of coronavirus books,” according to The New York Times.)  

But only time will reveal the true meaning of our triple-crisis.

When the Nixon administration was wooing China back in the early 1970s, Henry Kissinger reportedly asked China’s No. 2 man Zhou Enlai for his evaluation of the French revolution. “Too soon to say,” Zhou allegedly responded, possibly mishearing Kissinger’s query. But it was a profound response anyway—nearly two centuries had passed since the French events and it was perhaps yet too soon to offer an evaluation of Robespierre, Saint-Just, Danton, Marat, the sans-culottes, the Terror, the Committee of Public Safety, Thermidor, and ultimately Napoleon Bonaparte.

Even with the passage of time, some questions from our current period may never be answerable. This began, of course, with a health crisis presided over by a number of incompetent and would-be authoritarian governments, eliding into an international protest movement against racial injustice. Just how were these related? The health crisis hit minority communities hardest. Did that fact encourage the protest movement? Just how did the witlessness of Trump, Boris Johnson, Bolsonaro, etc. feed into the worldwide protests that remain centered on U.S. police brutality against African Americans? 

What about the lockdown? Did thousands rebel against social isolation by going out into the streets to demonstrate? Did job losses and recession have anything to do with the looting—or was that just a crime of opportunity?

And what about the possibly astro-turfed protests against the lockdown by weapons-toting yobs? “I need a haircut!” shouted one such profoundly thoughtful youth. Some of these not-so-well-attended gatherings, it turned out, were coordinated by the likes of the Michigan Freedom Fund, a conservative group with ties to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

But were all of them phony? Or has an anti-science, quasi-anarchistic tendency arrived as a permanent part of the U.S. political scene?

It has become a commonplace saying in the Trump years, “you can’t make it up.” It doesn’t get any more absurd than all of this.

Which means that developments are ripe for a satirical rendering. Writers such as Joseph Heller and filmmakers such as Stanley Kubrick/Terry Southern found fertile material in the Masters of War death cult surrounding World War II and the cold war. (I made my own attempt at Jonathan Swiftish satire a few days back in chapter 88 of this blog.) Some writer is out there now, scribbling down an outlandish, weirded-out version of the bedlam that’s unfolding daily.

Dinner: leftover steak, baked potatoes and sour cream, coleslaw.

Entertainment: The slow-moving Polish policier The Crime.

A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 89

Will I be permitted?

Monday and Tuesday, June 8 and 9

To get rid of refuse at the town dump, you must have a permit prominently displayed on your car. On the East Hampton Town website, it says the old permits remain good “until further notice.” But this morning, when I went to the dump, I was told by a staffer at the gatehouse that this was inaccurate. I must apply for a new permit—mine would be expiring on June 15. 

This can only be done by mail, since all Town offices are closed due to the COVID-19 lockdown. You must fill out an application, send a check for the required fee, and include a copy of the relevant documents demonstrating that you are indeed a resident of the Town.

There’s the rub: The required document is a copy of your auto’s state registration, showing a local address. But where to get a photocopy made, since many businesses remain closed? I spent the morning in a fury at this assinine requirement as I searched around for a copier—and that meant going out more in public than I have for many weeks. There was no copy machine at the post office, nor at the nearby CVS drugstore, although someone there said she thought there was a place on Newtown Lane near the Stop & Shop supermarket. I tried a computer fix-it place, and they said to try the UPS store down the street. Success! And after only four once-discouraged conversations.

Got the xerox copy, swung by the Chase Bank ATM to get some much-needed cash, then back to the P.O. to mail in the recycling-center form. Oh, and while at CVS I snagged some TOILET PAPER!!!

The center of East Hampton appeared about as busy as any other weekday woud be in any other month of June. Many stores remain closed, but there were plenty of cars in the main parking lot and apparently lots of business going on. At the post office and UPS, there were lines of people—most wearing masks, many waiting to mail large packages. Stuff they had bought online and were now returning, perhaps?

I did all this while wearing my snazzy tartan face mask and lavender rubber gloves, beneath a coif befitting a cast member from the musical Hair. Except there were no gray mop tops in the ‘60s love-rock song fest.  No geezers allowed in the Age of Aquarius.

Will there be anyone at the town clerk’s office to receive my letter and mail me the dump sticker? Only time will tell, but I doubt that this drama will be concluded by the 15th.

Tonight: London broil, marinated in red wine, garlic, and olive oil, plus baked potatoes with sour cream, and green salad with avocado. Sounds artery-clogging and all-American for sure.

Entertainment: Polish alt-history thriller 1983.

A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 88

You could look it up!

Sunday, June 7

From the Encyclopedia Prosveshcheniye, 2050 edition

COVID-19—An infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-COV-2) at the center of the 2020 pandemic that killed at least 1.5 million people after spreading to over 300 countries across the globe. First thought to have reached humanity after originating in Asian bats or pangolins, it is now believed to have started among a West Texas (U.S.A.) evangelical cult that eschewed all vaccines created after the year 60 A.D., when the apostle Peter is said to have founded the Roman Catholic Church.

There were major outbreaks of the pandemic in China, Western Europe, and the United States during the spring and summer of 2020. The virus seemed to be on the wane in June, then returned in force in the fall of that year in South Carolina, Missouri, and Florida, where U.S. President Donald Trump (see Celebrity Apprentice, Mar-a-Lago) held a series of late-summer campaign rallies jointly sponsored by major police unions. The President’s putative electoral opponent, the Communist former vice-president Joseph R. Biden, also had plans to hold a series of rallies prior to the Department of Homeland Security’s cancellation of the election in the interest of national security. Biden was tried, convicted, and imprisoned for attempted election fraud in January of 2021.

A number of popular 21st century celebrities are thought to have succumbed to the COVID-19 pandemic. Country singer Pecos “Heartbreak” Medvedev and pop artists Ariana Warcraft and Angelina B were all probable victims, as were three members of the steampunk revival band Wehrmacht. FOX News on-air personality Gretchen Marie Kosciukiewicz was quarantined but recovered, something she attributed to to her mother’s home remedy, a mix of Rebel Yell whiskey, Hydroxychloriquine, and Calvin Klein’s Eternity.

There were no cases of COVID-19 in Russia or in North Korea. The countries are widely respected for having charismatic and visionary leaders.

Although a number of pharmaceutical companies such as Moderna, Gilead Sciences, and GlaxoSmithKline worked to create vaccines, no successful vaccine ever emerged to put an end to the pandemic. Instead, COVID-19 is still raging around the world, with seasonal outbreaks still the norm.

Dinner: leftover broccoli stir-fry with chicken and mushrooms, cold noodles with sesame sauce.

Entertainment: episodes of the Netflix series Traitors.

A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 87

Citizen Kane’s vast collection of junk.

Saturday, June 6

We’re missing a bunch of stuff that’s at the apartment. Thanks to our leased auto, we get the satellite-music channel Sirius both in the car and on a laptop. But one would like to have a little more control over music, and that means recordings that aren’t necessarily out here. There are various cooking equipment items, and a store of pantry supplies, back in New York. And, especially as the weather changes, there are some clothes that we each need.

Accordingly, each of us has begun making lists of things we would retrieve from the apartment if we ever go there again:

CDs-
Thelonious Monk—Underground
Thelonious Monk—Misterioso
John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman
Kenny Barron Trio—Book of Intuition
Charlie Haden and Christian Escoude—Duo
The Beatles—Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Dr. John—Gumbo
and plenty more I am sure

KITCHEN STUFF
Tramontina nonstick skillet
immersion blender
herbs and spices: turmeric, paprika, bay leaves, oregano
grains: wheatberries, quinoa, Irish oatmeal

ELECTRONICS
computer printer
photo scanner
alarm clock

CLOTHES
Hardy’s shorts
socks
polo shirts
shoes
Emily’s bathrobe
jeans
shorts
hiking boots

ETC.
throw pillows
oximeter

What about old photos, including my mother’s photo albums? It would be nice to have digital scans of my parents in their young adulthood, my sister, my own school photos, and more. 

And there are hundreds of books. In writing this journal, I’ve drawn on many books that are out here, but there are loads more that I am missing. Still, there’s hardly any place to put them here.

If we were really going to move here semi-permanently, we’d want to bring old tax records and other documents. Just going through such stuff would constitute a major project. Thinking about that makes one despair—someday, maybe, I’ll hire someone to help me winnow down the boxes of documents used in writing books, old medical records, insurance papers, and bank records.

My stuff doesn’t exactly compare with the miles of possessions shown at the end of Citizen Kane, but there is plenty. Which makes one wonder: What do landlords or building managers do with the huge stores of possessions left behind by the victims of the pandemic? Relatives are encouraged to come and claim it all, no doubt—but what if they don’t? Is there a small industry disposing of unwanted stuff? And what did civilization do before the invention of paper shredders?

Dinner: Broccoli stir-fry with chicken and mushrooms, white rice.

Entertainment: the final episodes of the Belgian policier The Break.

A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 86

Dali’s The Persistence of Memory.

Friday, June 5

“Time…was by far the most artificial of all our inventions, and in being bound to the planet turning on its own axis was no less arbitrary than would be, say, a calculation based on the growth of trees or the duration required for a piece of limestone to disintegrate….If Newton really thought that time was a river like the Thames, then where is its source and into what sea does it finally flow?”

 —W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz

We humans are hardly the only creatures whose days are linked to the sun’s light. The wild rabbit in our yard has customarily been awake and munching on our lawn when I get up between 6:30 and 7 a.m. But today, he didn’t show his face until around 4 p.m. 

Rabbits are crepuscular creatures, Emily reads to me, generally spending their days snoozing in their holes below ground, only to emerge in the late afternoon or early evening, when the light is low. 

Out here in the country, much more than in the city, my daily habits are linked to the light, which streams in through our large windows in the morning. In Manhattan, you find a way to block out or amplify light, according to your wants. And you grow accustomed to the fact that noise is always present.  

Electric light, of course, made it possible for humans to exert absolute control over time. But before electricity, it was capitalism that prompted an urge toward time management: Workers in early U.S. industrial towns such as Lowell, Massachusetts, were quite aware that they were required to report on time in the morning, take no more than 15 minutes to consume meals, and accept the fact that management was always stretching out the length of the work day. In 1856, one mechanic wrote to that city’s reformist newspaper, The Voice of Labor, that bosses had “fixed” the mill clock, so that it slowed down to add minutes to the laboring day, then sped up at night to summon operatives early. In Pawtucket, Rhode Island, citizens raised $500 to purchase a town clock that would not be subject to the manipulation suspected of the factory clock.

And it was that quintessential capitalist development, the railroad, that imposed time zones across the U.S. and the synchronization of different cities’ clocks. How else could train timetables exist? 

Does the COVID-19 lockdown threaten to break down the dictatorship of the clock? I doubt it. Probably like me, many folks go about with their watches still strapped to their arms. They may not get out of their pajamas until afternoon—or maybe not at all—but they know more or less what time it is. Their smart phones or computers or smart watches keep them in line.

Just now, I looked at the top of my MacBook Pro and found that it was 5:53 p.m.—time to begin making dinner.

Tonight it will be: leftover lentil soup, corn muffins, and a lettuce salad with cucumber, cherry tomatoes, and avocado.

Entertainment: More episodes of the Belgian thriller The Break.

A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 85

The twisted Mr. Whipple.

Thursday, June 4

Not so long ago, the object of the most intense consumer demand was the mobile phone. Right now, it is apparently toilet paper.

It’s all very symptomatic. Mobile phones can be used to take selfies, the embodiment of self-centeredness. But they are largely used for communications with others: text messages and e-mail, posting musings on Twitter, and uploading photos for others to see on sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. 

In contrast, toilet paper is consumed in moments of extreme isolation. And that’s what everyone is most preoccupied with at present: isolation, aloneness. The lonely crowd in the loo.

What if we run out? Then I will be stuck there, all alone with no way to clean myself off. Better stock up.

Once long ago, Procter & Gamble won notoriety for its ads featuring fictional supermarket manager Mr. Whipple who scolded customers for “squeezing the Charmin.” Weird and perhaps even disgusting. We didn’t usually talk about such things back in the early ‘60s.

Now, there’s no need to advertise at all. TP sells itself.

Phones, and particularly mobile service carriers, advertise relentlessly. Apple touts its latest iPhone models. T-Mobile and Verizon flood the airwaves with competing service offers. 

The incessant ads suggest that there is still a lot of competition in this field—but also, maybe, that the market is saturated. Providers have to keep advertising to get consumers to switch devices or carriers in pursuit of low prices and deals, but also to upgrade to the latest technological innovations. The ads tell folks that they are disgracing themselves, the phones they are carrying around are shamefully obsolete. 

Apple’s iPhone ads illustrate the truly astonishing level of photos that you can get with their little gadgets. Google and Samsung’s android devices struggle to keep up.

Of course, there’s no tech with toilet paper. It’s not quite a commodity, in the way of certain raw materials. With a commodity, the product from one supplier is pretty much indistinguishable from the product of another suppler. But in the current scarce TP market, differences don’t matter much. Scott’s no-frills TP will do, even if you’d rather have the plusher Cottonelle.

Have I gone on enough about this?

I am, I admit, rather obsessed with mobile phones, which I dislike. New York City has stoked this feeling—and an abhorance of the pedestrians who walk about with phones glued to their eyes and ears, oblivious of all else around them. People staring at the screens or even continuing loud phone conversations while getting onto crowded elevators. No, I don’t really need to hear your argument with your mother, thanks.

I’m not the only one who’s unhappy with our gadget obsession. In the 2013 Spike Jonze movie Her, probably now forgotten, the Joaquin Phoenix character falls in love with his phone’s Siri-like virtual assistant. But the film also portrays a phone-mad society, with waves of people all cemented to their devices as they exit from a public-transit station. 

That was a matter of concern seven years ago. What would a socially conscious movie of today focus on? Any thoughts, Mr. Whipple?

Tonight’s dinner: lentil soup and a green salad.

Entertainment: more episodes of Belgian policier The Break.