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A Journal of the Plague Year 2021–chapter 194

Sunday, February 14

On Friday, Emily and I each got our COVID vaccination shots. Yesterday, the Senate voted in the impeachment trial to acquit Trump.

Who says life is dull during the lockdown?

“If only because they last so long, real misfortunes are monotonous,” Camus wrote in The Plague.  Yes, there has certainly been monotony, but then lots happened in the past few days.

The adventure of our vaccinations involved some monotony. We had traveled back to our NYC apartment on Thursday; then on Friday, I reported for my 12:30 appointment at a Duane Reade drugstore, around a block away from our apartment. I was about 20 minutes early. There was a check-in, during which I answered lots of questions about any current maladies, etc. Then 15 minutes of waiting outside of the vaccination room; then another 20 minutes of waiting inside for the shot-giver to appear. 

She gave me the jab and a certificate stating, to my surprise, that I had gotten the Pfizer vaccine. I had imagined I would be getting the Moderna version, since my appointments arranged via the Walgreen’s website are four weeks apart—the interval recommended for the Moderna jab. It was 1:15 p.m. before I was able to leave.

Emily went over to the same drugstore one hour later. And, fortuitously, while she was there two people came in to announce a serious problem: They had gotten the first shot of Pfizer, then went to another location weeks later—only to find that the second place was giving out Moderna shots. The two aren’t supposed to be mixed. So these people had been turned away, and had now returned to the site of their first vaccinations.

We face the identical problem: Our second appointments, slated for March 12, are at the location that has only the Moderna stuff. So somehow, there will have to be an adjustment. (I telephoned the second vaccination location, told them of the problem, gave them my name, and await further instructions.)

In the hours after the shot, I felt some soreness in my arm and a little dizziness and fatigue, but not much else. Emily, though, experienced a very sore arm and lots of nausea. Two days later, she still doesn’t want to do much other than to take lots of naps.

It has been gray and cold, threatening snow every day since our return. New York seems as depopulated as it did in September, when we were last here. 

I have sorted through the vast pile of waiting mail, dispatched various tax documents to our accountant, listened to 20 voice mail recordings, and prepared various simple meals. This afternoon we visited ourdoors with our niece, Montana, in Madison Square Park. There were plenty of people with kids and dogs wandering around and playing in the accumulated snow.

We’ll probably drive back to our Long Island house on Thursday.

Does this sound tedious? For people who for several months have done little other than read the New York Times or do its word-game puzzles online, I assure you that all of this is quite taxing.

Dinner: leftover pasta with asparagus pesto and an avocado and lettuce salad.

Entertainment: episodes of the French comedy Call My Agent on Netflix.

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A Journal of the Plague Year 2021–chapter 193

Tuesday, February 9

This morning at 7 a.m., I was able to make appointments for the two doses of COVID-19 Moderna vaccine at Walgreen’s back in our NYC neighborhood. After I succeeded, Emily followed suit, making appointments at the same location and on the same days, February 12 and March 12. 

I couldn’t believe it. Emily came out of the bathroom and, she says, I told her in a very matter-of-fact way that I had made appointments. 

Like it was no big deal. Actually, I think I was in shock and disbelief. 

We have also been trying other Walgreen’s locations, including East Patchogue and Manorville. If either had succeeded, we’d have had to employ GPS to figure out just where these stores were. Instead, weirdly enough, we’ll be going to locations that we know well. One is a Duane Reade/Walgreen’s where I have historically picked up all of my prescriptions.

So we’ll go back on Thursday, and get the first jabs on Friday. 

We are told to print out and bring with us both the Walgreen’s e-mail regarding the shots and the NY State consent form. So it’s just as well we didn’t bring our computer printer out to Long Island—we’ll print these out in the apartment.

We’ll be reversing some of the moves we made when we first came out here in March of 2020: packing up foodstuffs, cooking gear, and clothes to take back. But for now, we figure we’ll only stay in the city for a few days. We’ll want to see if there are any negative effects of the vaccinations and possibly we’ll want to get some supplies that are more available in the city than out here. Various must-do ideas–like maybe getting haircuts–will occur to us between now and then. 

And of course, there may be some surprises that must be taken care of back in the city. Is the apartment O.K.? Are all of the plants dead?

Dinner: a goat cheese and cheddar omelette, asparagus, toast, and a small green salad.

Entertainment: Episodes of The Sinner on Netflix.

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A Journal of the Plague Year 2021–chapter 192

Sunday, February 7

Mid-afternoon and it’s snowing to beat the band. Three to seven inches are predicted. The stuff is sticking to the boxwoods like big clumps of cotton. But we won’t need to go out for a couple of days, unless we get a vaccination appointment, which is about as likely as winning the Powerball jackpot.

This morning Emily and I each checked New York State and City websites, along with those of druggists CVS and Walgreen’s.  At one instant, the Walgreen’s site said there were appointments available in Manorville, which is about an hour’s drive from here. But you have to keep clicking, certifying that you are eligible, haven’t had the virus, and so forth. Before long, it said the closest place with vaccine appointments was in Connecticut. 

The whole exercise is preposterous—frustrating, demeaning, and futile. 

Everyone is maddened by it: the vaccine rollout, they call it…more like a limp-out or maybe a crawl-out.

The whole thing reminds me of a discussion years back at McGraw-Hill about employee profit-sharing. Those were fat times, and thanks to Silicon Valley, sharing the takings with the hired help was becoming more common. I’ve got mine, the BusinessWeek publisher remarked, thinking he’d made a great joke. Nobody applauded.

So, them that’s got shall get, them that’s not shall lose. To those in charge of vaccine distribution, the population only matters in an election year. Biden needs to demonstrate otherwise…and quickly.

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

Entertainment: Episodes of The Sinner on Netflix.

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A Journal of the Plague Year 2021–chapter 191

Friday, February 5

Unfortunate circumstances and the politicians have turned the COVID-19 vaccination process into a competition. Celebrities, many attempting to encourage the wary, go online or to the media, saying how easy the whole process is: Nothing to fear, just go to this CDC website and arrange an appointment. Meanwhile, millions cannot get an appointment and are left thinking there’s just something wrong with them: They must lack persistence or maybe computer skills.

In New York State, there’s just not much information. Every day, I go to the N.Y. State website, and to the sites of druggists Walgreen’s and CVS, only to learn that there are no appointments available. We’re willing to take an appointment in the city or out here on the East End of Long Island. The announcement yesterday that there would be lots of shots given at Yankee Stadium but only to Bronx residents made me wonder: just what sort of ID does one have to show? My driver’s license and our passports have a New York City address. If we were to get an appointment out here, would those be sufficient—supplemented perhaps with a property tax receipt or some letters addressed to Emily and me at this address?

Someone on Twitter asks: Why don’t they go door to door administering the vaccine, especially in poor areas? Well, because the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines must have ultra-cold refrigeration, and that means they’re not very mobile.

Emily’s high-school chums on Facebook report a much more sane process in Colorado. Rather than playing frantic website speed dating in an attempt to get an appointment, Colorado-ites merely go to one website and register—then, in due course someone telephones you with an appointment schedule and perhaps a registration number. 

But it’s typical capitalist thinking to make everyone see the socially necessary inoculation as a competition—a meritocracy, if you will. Mia Farrow, Mike Pence, and 20-something “educators” rate a jab—isolated and aged folks do not.

Suppose we make an appointment in the city or in Stony Brook, which is one of the state’s vaccination points? We’ll have to travel there once—and then again, a few weeks later for the second shot. If it’s in the city, should we stay there during the interval?

Who can say? In this life, as the artist once known as Prince suggested, you’re on your own.

This morning also features the exciting prospect of a Stop and Shop grocery delivery, likely sometime between 10:40 and 11:10, they now say. The truck could show up earlier, but they’ll let us know via text message. Emily must remain attentive. Will they get here before it begins to rain?

Dinner: an Amy’s frozen pizza and a green salad.

Entertainment: episodes of the British drama Collision on Kanopy.

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A Journal of the Plague Year 2021–chapter 190

Monday, February 1

It showed overnight—by 9 a.m., only about an inch, but it’s still continuing to snow off and on. The National Weather Service says that by early afternoon, there will be a combination of rain and snow that could be heavy at times. Also, it’s supposed to be very windy and cold. Total accumulation could be from 3 to 7 inches. Tomorrow, though, there’s supposed to be light rain, and the low is to be only 35F—so maybe any accumulated snow will melt. Then, there could be more snow, with little accumulation.

In the city and points west, it’s colder than it is here and total snow could be up to 14 inches. By Thursday, temps should be in the upper 30s.

Just before I awoke, I had the following dream: We are staying at a large, colonial house with a big front porch. When we drive up, we find that there are three dogs waiting on the porch. Two are German shepherds and one is a small English bulldog. (Could these be the Bidens’ dogs? Hmmm, a large colonial house….) No humans are around. The shepherds, with their expressive faces, seem a bit unhappy. Do they belong to the owner? Do they want to go inside? We leave and when we come back again, they are still there waiting. I find a couple of buckets and put water in them for the pups to have a drink. What to do?

The New Yorker has a sad and frightening article by a Midwestern professor whose wife one day begins having hallucinations. An art lecturer, she takes students to museums for discussions of paintings—and the students tell him, confidentially, that she has been describing figures in the paintings who aren’t in fact there. She also begins imagining people in their house, such as The Flowery Man (in actuality, a hallway flower pot).  Having read that it does no good to deny the presence of such figures, he plays along, even providing a place setting at the dinner table for one such visitor.

Then one day, the police and an ambulance arrive at the door. It seems the woman has been having over-the-backyard-fence conversations with neighbors about her visitors. They take her away to a hospital, but by now the pandemic has hit and the husband is not allowed to visit. After a bit, though, he is discovered to be suffering from malnutrition and exhaustion, and he is admitted to the same facility but not allowed to see his wife. Before long, he is sent to a psychiatric hospital and his belt and shoelaces are taken away from him. Their daughter having signed the proper forms, the wife is driven away to a different state where she is to live in a long-term care residence. There, she will die of COVID-19. The professor has been allowed to return to his home, and his last communication with his wife is a phone call in which he reads her a poem.

Horrifying, no? Could my dreams turn to such hallucinations? Could Emily and I be forcibly separated for some reason?

We’re doing O.K. for now, but the article’s subtle description of these folks’ slow drift into mental illness, old age, decrepitude, and institutionalization—well, you know, it’s likely to happen to all of us. The only really new wrinkle in the story is the addition of COVID-19. I’d just as soon avoid that, thank you very much, but no vaccines seem available to us. It can seem as though only the likes of Mia Farrow,  Queen Elizabeth, and those whose institutional affiliations—such as our twentysomething niece or a friend of Emily’s—are getting the shots.

Emily reads that the snow has led to closing of the state’s vaccination sites. So all those lucky enough to have an appointment for a shot will now have to reschedule. Do they have to go to the end of the queue?

At night we lost electricity at around 8 p.m. But it came back on at 9:36. Then came a succession of five phone calls from PSEG-LI, the utility, saying that the electricity had come back on, then that it was expected to come on by 4 a.m. or maybe 4:30 a.m. One phone call’s robot voice said simply: “System error. Try again later.”

Dinner: turkey chili and a salad.

Entertainment: half of an episode of The Bay on Britbox. Then the electricity failed. 

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A Journal of the Plague Year 2021–chapter 189

A poster for De Sica’s very silly “Scandal in Sorrento.”

Tuesday, January 26

Jason of Energy Associates has become a regular caller. One can no more shake Jason—who has telephoned at least ten times of late—than one can evade the college alumni magazine. 

Unlike other marketers, whose unsexed, android voices might wish you to be aware of a Medicare benefit to which you are entitled, Jason seems to be a real, bona fide human—although Emily tells me that the most recent “Jason” isn’t Jason at all: She knows his voice, and this isn’t he. 

Perhaps there is no true Jason—it’s just a non-threatening, New Agey name, suggestive of Argonautical questing but not at all of home invasions or midnight vandalism. No, Jason, I feel assured, is at home in bed early, preparing each evening for a long next day of friendly and helpful phone calling to those in need of reduced-carbon electricity options.

Walgreen’s, another frequent caller, wishes to inform us (not sure which one of us) of a prescription that has been delayed due to an insurance issue, which they are working to resolve. One might wonder just which prescription is at issue here. But wonder in vain…Walgreen’s friendly but disembodied voice isn’t going on record with that information.

Nor can I shake my worrisome dreams. They wake me at 5 a.m., like some insistent car alarm or military bugler, and then I begin worrying about an altercation I had with a co-worker or fellow Zabar’s customer back in the 1980s. These embarrassing life experiences cling to my unconscious mind, ever ready to spring forth in a new burst of angst and remorse. Take that time I had a fist fight in the 8th grade band room…or maybe that disappointing grade in 11th grade geometry class. I had so wanted, and felt I deserved, an A. Why? Who cares? I still do, it seems.

We recently viewed two very engaging streaming videos, each of which featured young male protagonists who are tempted by society’s glittery materialism, yet quietly choose more humane options. In the short French Entracte (or Intermission), a teenage boy all but accidentally watches Vittorio De Sica’s neorealistic classic The Bicycle Thief while his friends sneak off into another theater to see The Fast and the Furious 8. Afterwards, they rave about that action flick’s big budget and exciting title sequence, as our classic film watcher says nothing but silently reflects on De Sica’s profound depiction of father-son bonding amid desperate poverty. (Entracte is part of the online My French Film Festival.)

In Netflix’ The Life Ahead, an aged and ailing Madame Rosa (86-year-old Sophia Loren) adopts an African-migrant teenage boy, Momo, who secretly deals drugs. He clearly delights in the lucrative and hard-partying, fast-lane life, but gives it up when the sinking Rosa needs his support. Momo’s is a choice in favor of Rosa’s love and that of her community, which includes a prostitute and her child, a shopkeeper, and a physician. 

It turns out that Netflix has several classic Sophia Loren movies, including The Sign of Venus and Scandal in Sorrento. Actors in the latter, very silly farce include a middle-aged de Sica, who’s infatuated with the ravishing Loren but comically out of his depth.

Dinner: pork chops with apples, braised kale, and an avocado and lettuce salad.

Entertainment: Scandal in Sorrento.

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A Journal of the Plague Year 2021–chapter 188

A street scene in Dublin. Photo by Paul Joyce.

Wednesday, January 20

On the final full day of Trump’s term, there was much uneasy rejoicing online—like the emotions of a child who is happy that Christmas has arrived yet anxious that there could be nasty surprises waiting under the tree. There was also worry that among the 25,000 troops gathered to protect the city during Biden’s inauguration, there might be some closet seditionists. 

A photo much exhibited on Twitter purported to show how future assassins, including John Wilkes Booth, attended Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, standing very close indeed to the new president.

The Associated Press held that a dozen National Guard members had been removed from the inauguration security mission after discovery that they had right-wing militia ties or had expressed extremist views online.

But on the big day, nothing startling happened. There were the usual dull speeches, calls for unity, and appearances of ex-presidents and Republican grandees, almost as if no one had recently said or done anything really dishonorable. McConnell was busy repackaging himself as a never-Trumper.

Change of subject please. 

A new discovery to me is the writing of John Banville, whose memoir of Dublin, Time Pieces, is endlessly quotable, particularly now when I and so many others seem to be turning to the past for relief from the present. As he views places he visited as a child, he notes “in a sense childhood never ends, but exists in us not merely as a memory or complex of memories, but as an essential part of what we intrinsically are.” It was as children that we first apprehended the world as mystery; “the process of growing up is, sadly, a process of turning the mysterious into the mundane.” 

We long for an end to the Trump era, for it to recede into the past. Banville, though, asks: “When does the past become the past? How much time must elapse before what merely happened begins to give off the mysterious, numinous glow that is the mark of true pastness?” And as Faulkner fans will quickly interject, the past is never dead—it isn’t even past.

Before you know it, though, death—or a slide into mere triviality—will draw a line under the age. MAGA man’s time on earth cannot extend much longer, his obesity and bad habits will soonish take their toll. Perhaps he’ll tumble off of his golf cart into a Loch. 

Dinner: cornbread tamale pie and an avocado, radish, and arugula salad.

Entertainment: episodes of the Netflix’ scandi drama Equinox.

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A Journal of the Plague Year 2021–chapter 187

Friday, January 15

Once again, the squirrels seem to be engaged in some kind of gang fight. You hear them chasing around on the roof (their little footfalls, balump, balump, balump, balump, are quite comical), and see them charging frantically up tree trunks, often in pursuit of each other. They all look alike to me—they have no gang tattoos or identifying markings—but I wonder if there’s an invasion going on. Perhaps an outsider family is attempting to muscle in on those who currently occupy this desirable yard with its productive oak trees. 

Emily thinks it’s an echo of the Trump mob’s attack on the Capitol. It’s hard to think of anything else these days.

They really love running along the narrow top of the fence that divides our yard from next door. Nimble little varmints. 

Yesterday, a plumber arrived to make some necessary repairs in the kitchen. I don’t like having outsiders in the house during these pandemic days, but the kitchen faucet and some of the pipes below had worn out and were leaking. So, miracle of miracles, in an hour and a half the guy replaced the old defective faucet with a new Moen faucet (ordered online from Home Depot) that works great. I had been worrying that he’d have trouble removing the old one—but no. It all went swimmingly—so, what’s wrong? I’m left with a feeling that there should have been more hassle—and a not uncommon sensation that there’s something that I’m neglecting to take care of. Income taxes/1099s? When you have nothing specific (other than fascism) on the top of mind to worry about, the anxiety can be even more intense.

After the plumber left, I opened a lot of windows to air the place out…just in case. I also wiped down some countertops and doorknobs with diluted bleach.

Everyone who I’m in touch with is checking frantically to see just when they might get the COVID-19 vaccine. I get notices from my doctor’s office in Manhattan, saying that I can find out eligibility and maybe make an appointment on their website. Question: Are we better off traveling into Manhattan to get the shots—or better off just staying here in East Hampton, sheltering away from everyone and having no vaccine? I’m also checking the Town of East Hampton website to see what they have to say—so far, no facilities closer than Riverhead are offering inoculation.

Dinner: spaghetti with asparagus pesto and a salad.

Entertainment: episodes of Last Tango in Halifax.

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A Journal of the Plague Year 2021–chapter 186

Chilean President Salvador Allende under seige in 1973.

Tuesday, January 12

I’m gradually rereading the books in the house, but there are hundreds here (thanks largely to my former job as a book review editor) so it’ll take a while to consume them. My memory isn’t terrible, but I don’t recall the plots of a lot of books that I feel certain I have read before. So that’s actually helpful. Part way through an Eric Ambler or Graham Greene, I’ll have a feeling that I should know what’s coming—and as the narrative develops, maybe I will recall a bit of what’s next. But some of these books are so good, who cares? 

I recently finished Ambler’s State of Siege—sometimes called The Night-Comers—a political coup/action thriller set in Southeast Asia. As is common in Ambler, the hero is a Western innocent trapped in potentially fatal events not of his own making. The personalities with their ambitions, ideals, and delusions, the betrayals and hazy loyalties are all very convincing. And whether it’s absolutely accurate or not, the author seems familiar with the Southeast Asian culture and collective personality. 

It’s what might be called middle-period Ambler, published after the huge success of such famous early titles as Epitaph for a Spy and A Coffin for Dimitrios. Often books from this middle phase of a successful author’s career can be very good, as with some of John le Carré’s. The writer has had the time and resources to polish his skills, and has come to think that he should try something a little out-of-the-ordinary.

Now I am reading Journey Into Fear, a 1940 Ambler that seems more drawn from his conventional playbook. An unsuspecting engineer gets caught up in a deadly competition between the adversaries of the looming World War—he’s another “man who knows too much.” Can he get back to Britain before the villains murder him? Which of his fellow ship passengers are foes—and which if any can he regard as allies? As I say, it seems a little like earlier Ambler but it’s enjoyable nonetheless.

And even if State of Siege is fiction, it offers an accurate picture of what a coup d’état is really like. Armed forces divide into competing factions. Men with powerful modern military weapons battle it out on the streets, oblivious to the fate of the civilian population. There’s little theater—no figures in Viking hats and face paint, no flags and banners. There are just mortars, tanks, high explosives, and combat gear. Airplanes fly above, dropping bombs on those on the ground. The injured are not merely maimed—they’re blown to bits.

The 1975 documentary film The Battle of Chile showed it all: Chilean president Salvador Allende facing a coup in 1973, sporting an army helmet and looking up as the traitors’ aircraft soared above, strafing the presidential palace. Allende died, an alleged suicide. 

During Joe Biden’s upcoming inauguration, some 15,000 troops are slated to guard D.C.. Will they all be loyal to the constitution?

Dinner: potato soup and salad.

Entertainment: Episodes from season three of Last Tango in Halifax, plus a bit of Netflix’ Pretend it’s a City featuring the witty Fran Lebowitz.

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A Journal of the Plague Year 2021–chapter 185

Monday, January 11

In 1968, the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger lamented that “in sleepy London Town there’s just no place for a street fightin’ man.”

My name is called Disturbance; I’ll shout and scream, I’ll kill the King, I’ll rail at all his servants

Later, Jagger explained the song “Street Fighting Man” to Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone: “These endless disruptions … I thought it was a very good thing at the time. There was all this violence going on. I mean, they almost toppled the government in France.”

So what would the Stones—or those more typically identified with the 1960s counterculture and Vietnam War opposition—say about the events of January 16, 2021 in Washington, D.C.?

They’d probably agree with me that, yes, it was sedition. Yes, it was vandalism and yes, it was reprehensible.

And it threatened to spiral into even more unthinkable violence. Imagine how we’d feel if any member of the Congress had been beaten or shot by Trump’s hooligans. What if Nancy Pelosi or even Mike Pence had been assaulted or killed?

That said: What if it had been 1968? What if the issue on the floor of Congress had been sending more troops to Vietnam or appropriating more money to bomb Hanoi or Haiphong? What if the most flamboyant demonstrator had been Abbie Hoffman or Jerry Rubin rather than the horned-headgear wearing Jake Angeli? How would I feel then? 

Sympathetic, I must admit. (But I must also quickly admit that Hoffman, Rubin et. al were more likely to be attacked by police than to be doing the attacking, as the Chicago demonstrations showed.)

Trump’s hooligans—albeit unknowingly—likely took clues from the 1960s Youth International Party, or Yippies. Rather than showering dollar bills onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, these folks were defacing artwork, maiming and killing police, and stealing speaker’s lecterns.

“Raw, lascivious, and disgraceful,” even murderous, Trumpism has a lot in common with the pre-Lenten blowouts known as carnival, as The New York Times’ David Brooks has suggested. Trump himself is the Lord of Misrule, making outrageous pronouncements simply in order to foster outrage and uproar.

Meanwhile, observers are left fumbling for the terminology appropriate to describe the Capitol events. In The New Yorker, historian Jill Lepore agreed that it was an insurrection, but also noted that it “looked to be a shambles: a shabby, clownish, idiotic, and aimless act of mass vandalism.”

Whatever. Here’s hoping we can get through the inauguration without seeing any more of it.

Dinner: leftover turkey meatloaf, out-of-season asparagus (from Peru!), and a green salad.

Entertainment: Season two episodes of “Last Tango in Halifax” on Netflix.