Theatre: Memorial

 Here There Are Blueberries by Moises Kaufman and Amanda Gronich Conceived and Directed by Moises Kaufman, Seattle Rep through 15 February.

Yes, here's another review for the Rep. And a big part of it is that we were late attending The Heartsellers (see next entry), so this one is next in queue. And the comparison is pretty darn amazing, showing the huge range of what theatre can do.

So. Nazis. 

Here There Are Blueberries is about a photo album sent to the Holocaust Museum in 2007. The photo album, a relic of WWII, has photos of Auschwitz. But not photos of the prisoners, but instead of the guards and administrators. Julia Cohen (Barbara Pitts) is a junior curator who gets the initial offer of the album and follows it through, unpeeling the onion of who had the album made (an officer at the camp) and what the album showed. 

And what the album showed was the banality of evil. It did not show the prisoners, the showers, the crematoriums. It did not show the dead, the victims, or the survivors. Instead it showed the guards in their everyday lives of picnics and visits from the top brass. Posed pictures and candid shots, captured with the Leica cameras that were coming into vogue at the time and made affordable for most Germans (in America, the Kodak cameras were much the same). The photos are of the type that show up on the social media these days, of people laughing and enjoying themselves IN THE CAMPS THEMSELVES.

The album poses questions - who are the people in the photos and how could they condone the extermination of others? Plus, what to do with the photos from a group dedicated to commemorating the victims, not the oppressors? We follow not only the discoveries in the albums (like size of the Auschwitz complex and the lodge on the far end, used to reward the guards and workers with days off from their monstrous tasks). And the post-war effects of the individuals and descendants of the criminals - the silence about the war years, and the denial of the participants. "How were we to know that the crematorium right next to our living quarters was used to incinerate people? That the air we breathed was the carbonized remains of our prisoners?".

The play touches on the mechanization and compartmentalization of the Holocaust. It was a genocide made possible by the technology of railroads and record-keeping and modern poisons. It was a crime against humanity of which each individual person in the chain had but a small part and as such could not consider themselves completely culpable. It was very similar to people talking about lynching here in this country. "I didn't kill him, your honor. I just held the rope for a little while, and sometime in a the confusion, the victim just died". These people held the rope.

So yeah, it a sobering, stunning play. The presentation is matter of fact, aided by the pictures themselves presented in multimedia. The stagecraft supports but does not overwhelm. The ensemble switch from museum workers to descendants to the victims themselves. Against the current background of ICE, authoritarianism, detention centers and Nazis once more marching in the streets, it hits harder. The only change is that the Leica cameras and Kodaks are replaced by the cameras are on our phones, recording atrocities in real time, giving us no excuse to say "How were we to know" when the butchers bill finally comes due. 

A tough play. Go see it. More later,

At Home in the Storm

Yes, there was some flooding. We're doing OK. Thanks for asking. 

 I don't talk that much about my neighborhood in the blog these days. Grubb Street is located on the East Hill of Kent, in the most northernly part near Panther Lake. When we moved in (years and years ago), the area was a mix of small farms, orchards, and houses with big yards and a lot of trees. Since then we've seen much more development. The horse farm at the corner became a huge development, and smaller developments have shown up on a lot of the side roads. Next door was when we moved in a wooded lot with a small cottage, but that plot is being developed into 13 huge houses with very small yards.

And despite the neighborhood disruptions, that development has been doing generally OK by us. We have a lot more sunlight in the yard for the gardens. The developers hooked up to our water main badly and we got some nasty water bills (which they offered to cover, which is nice). And at one point they cut my internet connection (Wire from the house across the street to a main line) with a backhoe as they were re-digging the sewer line, and again, put it back in working order by the end of the day. They did take down two huge pine trees on the properly line, which provided shade for the house during the summer. Those, I really miss. 

Anyway,

We have a horseshoe driveway in the front of the house, which is good for access and parking when friends come over. And in the center of that horseshoe, we have a couple more big pines and a dead/dying maple. The maple has been dead/dying for years, had split into two large trunks, and one of the two looks like it had be struck by lightning somewhere along the way. At the base we have a number of rhododendrons (the property two lots over was a rhododendron garden, and these are descendants). But we like the level of separation between the house and that street the maple and the other trees in the front provides. 

Cue the atmospheric river. 

The atmospheric river (A term that thrown around a lot out here these days) is a steady, heavy stream of water-laden air that starts in the Philippines, crosses Hawaii (gaining another title of "Pineapple Express") and then makes landfall between Alaska and California. Usually we don't get hit that hard. This past month, the Seattle area got hit hard. Our rivers in King County tend to be short and shallow, and our valleys steep and narrow, so that when we get hit with rains, the rivers swell quickly, to flood stage and beyond.

You've seen the pictures. The Skagit and Snoqualmie Rivers in the northern parts of the county overtopped their banks with the first wave of storms, swamping farms and communities.  Then the Cedar River, which runs down Maple Valley and through Renton itself, hit well over flood stage. And then the Green and White Rivers, which broke levees and flooded entire housing developments and warehouses. Pumpkins from an inundated farm upstream have been spotted floating down the Green. Roads through the passes have been closed due the flooded streams undercutting and collapsing the road surfaces. So, yeah, that's pretty bad.

As I say, we're OK from the flooding, being on a hill. The nearby Panther lake overflowed, flooding the local fields but not coming up over the road (there was work on the drainage system there about ten years back). But we were hammered by the wind coming through with the variety of storm fronts. 

And one of the massive trunks of the dead/dying maple snapped about 20 feet up and toppled. The good news is that it did not take out the power line. The bad news is that it blocked one of the entrances to the horseshoe driveway and took out our Internet connection and the mailboxes.

Oh, I haven't mentioned the mailboxes. We had three mailboxes out front, which, like everything else out here, have a history. The original post was put in by the neighbor's father-in-law in the 60s, and was fashioned by convicts guilty of drunk and disorderly charges (the neighbor's father-in-law was a local sheriff). When we moved in, we had to adjust it, and the Lovely Bride and the neighbor built a flower box support for the three boxes, using tools the neighbor had gotten under the GI Bill. Like I said, everything here has a story. And this is what was splintered and crushed by the falling tree, the mailboxes smashed and buried under a tangle of branches.

And we recovered. I managed to hack away most of the medium-sized branches, and was pleased to discover that my electric chainsaw worked after all these years, and that I had enough extension cords to reach from the garage to the front. We called a tree service that hauled away the huge main trunk and got a bid to take down the rest of the dying/dead maple. I spent a week cyber-crashing at a friend's house, mooching his Internet to do the day job. Eventually we got the Internet service restored (after long discussions about which corner of the house they needed to hook it up to). The Lovely Bride purchased new mailboxes, built a new support for the boxes (using a perfectly good piece of cedar planking we had in the garage), and restored the mail service (which will need to be adjusted and cemented in once the rain finally stops). 

And like I said, we're doing OK. It was a bit more eventful than we would have liked, but a way to end the old year and begin the new. And we're just waiting for the next big storm.

More later, 

Bomb Cyclone

 So, I'm writing this from a friend's house, about 15 minutes south of Grubb Street. Because Grubb Street is currently without Internet. 

You may have heard that the Puget Sound was hit recently by a "Bomb Cyclone", which is a scary term and in real life is no picnic either. A Bomb Cyclone is a tropical depression that develops quickly (The Bomb part) over the ocean, creating high winds (The Cyclone) along its periphery. It is not a hurricane, though it can have hurricane-force winds. 

And what it does is pull in air from the surrounding area to power those winds. And in the Seattle area, this means that said winds get pulled through the mountain passes to the east of us. The passes are currently closing due to snowfall already, but the winds get HOV access. These winds get concentrated by the passes before blasting into the more settled foothills. 

And that's why its a bad thing for those living in the foothills. Whenever we get a bad windstorm, it's because the winds are coming out of the east, being pulled through the mountains. That's the case here.

Power went out at the height of the storm and stayed out for about 9 hours. The Lovely Bride had years ago (after the last outage) purchased a large cinder-block-sized battery and so got to hook up her CPAP machine there. I did not, and didn't want to take the chance of draining her battery too much. But we had some level of preparation. And we still had land-lines phones, functional cell phones, a gas stove in the bedroom and a gas stovetop in the kitchen. So we were not knocked down to "Little House on the Prairie" status. But a lot of folk (like, hundreds of thousands) lost power and a lot of them still don't have it restored, particularly in the valleys leading down from those windswept passes. 

Anyway, nine hours. Good work on the recovery from Puget Sound Energy. Our neighbors are on another line, and they are still out, but have an extension cord long enough to plug into our socket near the back yard, so their freezer is still running. 

But also, as the storm passed through, a large branch from one of the firs out front came down and neatly severed our Internet cable. So even when power got restored, we still were without Internet. So we called Comcast, and they sent out a guy. Guy shows up and explains that the area still does not have Internet service at large (something about a nearby Node being out), and until they repair the Node, they can't re-hook up the house. Something tells me that the "Node" may be on the same line as our unfortunate neighbors, so we'll have to wait until power comes back up for them, and then they can fix the node. And THEN they can come back an hook up the house again. 

No, Comcast has no idea when all this is going to happen. The guy's suggestion was to keep calling in to complain. Yay.

Anyway, we are Internet-less for the immediate future. A road crew from Kent came by the morning after the storm and cut up the fallen branch and hauled it away (just as I was coming out of the garage with a handsaw in hand and my face set with grim determination). So, good work Kent Road Crew.  And Wednesday morning consisted of cleaning up the mid-sized branches. Thursday is when we got the bad news that Comcast was neither as cool as Puget Sound Energy or the Kent Road Crew. And by Thursday afternoon I was already looking for a way to get back online.

Yahsee, my current gig (Senior Writer for Elder Scrolls Online - I don't know if I mentioned that), requires I get online to communicate with coworkers and put things into the engine. So no connectivity, no work. It was a forced vacation, and while I still had some PTO left for the year, I was planning on spending it elsewhere. And after two days of quietly reading in a warming waterbed, I was pretty much chomping at the bit to get back to it. 

So, I made some phone calls. Some friends were still without power at that point, but one had both power and connectivity, and I hauled my desktop down to his place and set up on his usually-unused dining room table. And then had to get a "wifi usb dongle" to hook everything up to the friend's Internet (at home I use a long Ethernet cable plugged directly into the router). But now I am back in business, such as it goes, for the foreseeable future. Just in time to lay down my tools for Thanksgiving.

I will update this when/if we get to the stage where I return to my former haunts. In the meantime, I am in a bit of exile here. But at least I can contact the outside world again.

More later, 

[The Updates: On Saturday our neighbors got their power and Internet back. Comcast's website said they could get to us by Wednesday. The Lovely Bride called them and got an appointment for the next day. Sunday morning a young man came out on his lonesome and hooked us back up. Good work, young man!]

Life in the Time of the Virus: The Great Forgetting

I probably should rethink the title of this series. It is now ALWAYS the time of the Virus, as we wait for it to mutate once more, or for something EVEN WORSE to show up on the horizon. It's not going away.

New York Restaurant, Edward Hopper, 1922

But in the meantime, we are in the throes of the Great Forgetting. Having passed through the worst of times, we are trying to forget they even happened. The pandemic that crushed our medical infrastructure and cost a million lives in the US alone has subdued to endemic levels. Maybe even just demic levels. And so we kinda forget it was only yesterday.

At first I thought it was just me. I'm at the age where I think of the 90s as only five years ago or so, and my entire computer game career to be some sort of side gig I took between writing campaign settings for RPGs. And that I have to THINK about things to remember that 2004 was twenty years ago.

But it's just not me. We seem as a people to have "moved on" and dumped what collective experiences we had down the memory hole. Everything since the millennium has been just a couple years ago. We seem to be stuck in neutral, and part of it is throwing out stuff we don't want to remember. Like the pandemic. Facebook sends the occasional reminder from four years past, and there is the much-rarer news report of someone flipping out about someone else wearing a mask, but it has all been pushed to the sidelines. There is more talk about people working from home than WHY they were working from home in the first place.

And yeah, we've done it before. In the wake of the misnamed Spanish Flu (which is not truly Spanish, but got its start in the trenches of WWI), we wanted to pass on that ever happening. There were occasional references in later years to the Great Influenza, but by the time I started learning history, it was a footnote. We were so damned determined to return to normalcy (heck, politicians even ran on the platform in the 1920's), that we pretty much learned nothing, and reacted in surprise when other flus and diseases rolled through like summer storms.

In part my concern is that I'm personally moving into convention season, in a year when D&D turns 50 and I'm traveling more than normal. I returned from Gary Con (great convention in Lake Geneva, WI) with a killer cold that literally knocked me out for a couple days (and I am still gravel-voiced for a while). It was the first time since I had COVID that I was seriously ill. A colleague returned from the con with a nasty case of the flu and exhaustion, and another colleague tested positive from COVID. So as we're moving around more, it is getting more likely we'll pick something up.

So that's where we are. Challenges still lurk out there. Caution recommended but not expected.  We've kinda forgotten.

More later, 

Twenty Years Before the Blog

Not a Hopper piece, but Van Gogh -"Two Crabs" (1889)
I just liked the way it looks.

Today, Grubb Street turns 20. The first test post was made at Thursday, 14 August, at 1:50 in the afternoon, PST, followed by this one, which talked about where the name came from (with more info about it here). And it is a surprise that it has lasted 20 years, particularly in such an ephemeral media as the modern Internet.  Other platforms for medium-length writing have blossomed and faded/disappeared over the two decades - Myspace, Google Plus, Livejournal, Twitter, yet this trusty little Blogger has survived (perhaps Google don't realize they are still running it). Though even this has diminished, as the practice of blogging has receded into the depths of hobbyist activity, like model railroading or HAM radios. Those hobbies are still around, but you never hear from them anymore.

Part this reduced throw-weight is Facebook. You look at the blogroll over to the right and you see a sudden drop about in entries starting in 2011. That was about the time I started in on Facebook, and those spur-of-the-moment bon mots that I dealt with HERE suddenly went over THERE. But mostly, I use Facebook to send people HERE when I make a new posting, chiefly because there is an easy link at the bottom of the entry to do so. Ditto X/Twitter. I actually only have a Twitter account because Stan! set one up for me. And I use it to send people HERE.

But I do pay attention to Twitter, even in its now-diminished times. There are enough people that I find interesting that I follow there, in particular Gail Simone, Jennell Jaquays, William Gibson, and Paula Poundstone. And I find the New York Times Pitchbot amusing (It does headlines you'd actually believe seeing in the NYT - "Cure for Cancer discovered - Why This Is Bad for Biden" plus REAL headlines that sound like the Pitchbot made them up) If they go away, I will probably go elsewhere as well. No, I would never pay for a blue check, and have so far been spared the whackos.

I do pay attention to Facebook, and do my part to train the algorithm. I've been liking every Edward Hopper painting I see, so as a result I'm getting more Edward Hopper (and other art) links. And every so often there are a raft of promoted right-wing links pushing books of dubious nature ("Slavery - think of it as a long-term internship") - they all get reported. I put this down at the level of weeding a lawn - mildly irritating but necessary.

I am paying attention to Reddit more as well. Their /news subreddit gives me different versions of the same story of the day. And I pay attention to subreddits about flags, maps, and leopards eating people's faces. There are two Seattle subreddits - /Seattle if you live in Seattle and like it, and /SeattleWa if you live in Bellevue and want to tell everyone that Seattle is dying. 

Will I join the new kids like Mastadon, Post, and BlueSky? No idea. They may join the roster of Dead Media like MeWe and Tapatalk or not. Haven't gotten a Bluesky invite yet. And I would still use it to post links back to this blog. 

In general, though, it feels like the environment of the Internet has gotten worse. The web pages are laced with pop-ups (which are a relic of the 80s) and adverts, crowding out real content. Useful content moves behind paywalls. Wikipedia and Internet Archives have survived, but seem to be under constant threat. Library access has gone up as a result. 

And lest you think I am just bagging on the newer tech, "traditional" television has pretty much died as well. I haven't been a "sit down and veg in front of the tube" guy for years, but when I do get on, there always seems to be SOME cable station that is running Harry Potter, LotR, or the Pirates movies. Those channels which used to have some sort of theme are all doing the same thing, and those that remain are just doing blocks of old content. I don't remember when the last time there was music on MTV or heres-how-you-cook shows on Food Network.  I still pay attention to television for sports, but even that has diminished with Apple+ taking the rights to Major League Soccer.

And when they split the cable feeds to create new channels, those feeds filled up with cheap reruns of old shows from the last century. Yeah, that's where the H&I, Retro, and ME TV stations came from. Cheap content. But, on the good side, Son of Svengoolie is back, who I haven't seen since WGN stopped broadcasting out here. 

I know, I'm sounding like the new age version of the old guy shooing kids off the lawn. So be it.

The blogroll has shrunk over the years. Colleagues and friends have slowly drifted off from media, but I keep them there only because they may sometime come back to life. I keep most of the other links available since I check on them semi-regularly. A lot of the local news links have soft gates - after visiting a certain number of times they cut you off and hit you up for a subscription. And the comics section is still there, though webcomics can be sporadic as well, since they're mostly run by the creatives. 

Does this environment have a future for me? I dunno. I'll probably keep going. I have a couple books in the till that need to be review. I do plays, book, and game reviews. I cannot avoid continuing my look at collectable quarter designs, which is something that I just can't seem to break the habit. Politics I tend to deal with in election season, and then keep it to stuff I can actually vote on. There are still SO many political blogs out there, so I don't think you need one more, and watching the GOP fall down the stairs yet again is SO EXHAUSTING after a while

And that's about it. I think I'm in this until they shut down the service, and doing this primarily for my own amusement. You're more than welcome to tag along.

More later, 

Another Change in the Life

 The challenge of sharing personal information is that there is an internal pressure to continue to share personal information.

Back here, I mentioned that I had a new job. Now I feel a need to post that I have ANOTHER, ALL-DIFFERENT new job.

I left Amazon for a new position with a small independent operation. Which, to be polite, did not work out. Details of woe and intrigue are only available to those who buy me a beer at a convention. Well, 1d4+1 beers.

In any event, I have spent the past two months looking for a new job. And it was pretty straight-forward, and I found a lot of opportunities, before joining up with the fine folks at Zenimax, working as a senior writer/designer for Elder Scrolls Online (ESO). I am still working from the home-office in Panther Lake, but the bulk of my colleagues are on the East Coast. 

So what did I do in my "time off"? Well, first off, I hesitate to call it time off, since what really happened was that I suddenly gained a new job, which was securing a full-time position. I hit the metaphorical and electronic pavement, renewing old contacts and scanning the linked-in for related positions. I had lunches with a lot of former colleagues. I filled out a lot of forms. I read. I played a lot of games, in particular games for companies that I was interviewing for. For example, I FINALLY uncracked the copy of ESO a colleague (now boss) gave me a couple years back. And that was all good. 

 But also I stopped blogging for a little bit, taking a break from that part of my life as well, though not intentionally. A LOT of blogs have gone by the wayside over the years, and it sometimes feels like I one of those old guys who keeps a short-wave radio in the basement. Some bloggers have graduated into paid accounts, some have moved onto youtube and twitch, and some have just run out of things to say. And that's cool. I think I'm going to stay with it, for a little while, if for no other reason than to bore others with plays, books, and collectable quarters. And the Lovely Bride has heard all my stories. 

So, new deal is that I am working with a company on the East Coast and concentrating on writing. That's good for the moment. I can use some stability for the time being. And if things change again, I will post. Or maybe not this time.

More later, 

Life in the Times of the Virus: Mandate's End

So, an end of things is in view, I think. It is not as clear-cut as I would like, but rather is a ragged tear, a muffled gasp, and a hopeful (if chancy) outlook.

Blackwell's Island - Hopper, 1928

The numbers have come down, and with it the barriers are slowly falling. Mask mandates and working from home decisions are falling, one by one. There are no church bells ringing - this is not a war declared won. It is merely a war declared over. A draw, if we are lucky. A resurgence if we are not.

And the reasons for declaring this cease-fire are good enough, but not great. We don't have maximum vaccination, but we have enough in our region to staunch the outbreaks. Those who are vaccinated seem to be having milder symptoms, but are still getting "Breakthrough" Covid. The stories have shifted from "Public anti-vaxer who then dies horribly" to "Famous person, vaccinated, who tests positive and secludes for about a week". A lot of those reports, ironically enough, have declared Coivd is like having the flu, something the nutjobs were claiming at the beginning of all this. It might be the worst flu of your life, but still .... the flu. And yeah, the flu can kill people.

But we are no longer overloading ERs and storing bodies in refrigerator trucks or buried in mass graves. We still have people super-spreading (most recent, someone attending GDC, a big game developers' conference, after they tested as positive with the disease). We still have people catching it and yeah, dying from it. But the numbers are almost in the manageable state, and we really, really want to forget about it.

So the mask mandates are elapsing and not being renewed. Compliance varies from situation to situation. My grocery store is about 50-50 right now. My friendly comic shop has dropped mask requirements and resumed evening gaming events. Theaters are definitely still requiring masks for the audiences. My favorite rib joint has done away with them entirely. On the other hand, the airline industry is completely fouled up because it doesn't have enough staff in the face of folk calling in sick.

Me? I'm still comfortable with masks, so I keep using them for the moment. If the workers where I go shopping are masked, I'm going to help out by wearing a mask. If not, I'm still going to go with masking becuase they are not horribly uncomfortable (speaking as someone who spent many winters in Wisconsin, and used to something called scarfs). I have a mask in my jacket pocket. And a spare mask in my zippered jacket pocket. And one in the car. And a door mask. And a desk mask, still in its original plastic bag. Just to be sure. 

As I write this, the numbers are slowly bumping back up again. They are talking about a new variant. Omicron XE, which sounds like it was named by Microsoft's marketing department. There are articles on long-term effects of Covid. And the Feds have approved a second booster for us late-middle-aged folks. It does not feel like it is truly over, but I really, really want to be done with it this time. 

But if it is not, well, we know what we have to do. 

A Change in the Life

 So, long-term readers (both of you) may have noticed that I rarely talk about my personal life up here on Grubb Street. Yeah, I talk about the effects of the recent pandemic on our daily lives, and often talk about the weather, the seasons, and local wildlife. Sometimes I talk about food. Sometimes I talk about adventures with the Lovely Bride But mostly it is book reviews, theater reviews, collectible quarters, and the ongoing saga that is local politics. I know, boring stuff.

However, it this is a good place to mention a major change in my life. As of last Friday, I am no longer with Amazon Games. It was a good run, and really like the people I was working with and the projects I have contributed to. I have great hopes that the current project I left will be a smashing success. You want any gossip, the deal is you have to buy me a beer. Several beers. 

As of today, I have joined Tempo Games, and am working on The Bazaar, and new game they have under development. I remain a Senior Narrative Designer, responsible for sorting out the lore and minimizing the typos. My new team includes a lot of new folk, but also a lot of veterans I have worked with before at ArenaNet and Amazon Games. I'm looking forward to it, and not just because I spent the bulk of the afternoon playing the game intensely. I like it, and I think a lot of other people will like it as well.

I am also serving as a design consultant on a new RPG called Everyday Heroes. A descendent of D20 Modern brought up to date for the 5th Edition, I serve as the "old guy" walking around behind the others and giving various warnings about how we used to do things. I am not the primary designer - those roles are Sig Trent and Chris "Goober" Ramslay, and they're doing a bang-up job. But beyond that, I will say nothing (OK, there's a Kickstarter coming. There. You happy?)

And that's about it for right now. I didn't have a lot to say about what I was working on before, and probably will not have a lot to say about it right now. And a big part of it is that most of what I am working on is "in process", which means it can change, evolve, revise and otherwise mutate between now and when it seems like the light of day, and I don't want to say things on Monday I will have to correct on Friday.

Back in the old days, before everyone carried a recording device in their pocket, the TSR gang could go to GenCon and say any number of things to small rooms of people, confident that we would not be called upon to make corrections when things changed. And often, things WOULD change after we talked about them, because our bosses would ALSO be at those conventions and listen to a lot of fans about what THEY would want us to do. Such things are a part of the past, since we live in a real-time world these days, so I will wait until the cake is done and iced before inviting everyone in for a slice.

That's about it. It's a new adventure, and I am looking forward to it.

More later,

Life In the Times of the Virus: Omicron Update

Drug Store - Edward Hopper 1927

So, are we back to normal? No, no we are not.

Am I tired of this? Yes, I am. You're tired too. We are all tired. And yet we row on.

When last we spoke on the matter, some six months ago, Delta was just blooming. Viruses mutate over time, and on occasion, one shows up that is more adapted to its environment and overtakes the previously popular model. And it was the case with Delta, and now Omicron (which sounds particularly threatening - wait until we get to Omega in the alphabet). Now, Omicron is a more successful virus because not only is it more virulent (spread faster and more easily) but it has the added feature of not killing its host immediately (Dead host = dead virus, so actually Delta is not an very effective virus from a continuing existence standpoint, but speaking as the potential host, it is nasty enough).

Anyway, the end result is after declining numbers, we are seeing more cases and hospitalizations, and the resources are strained right now. In Washington State, we have seen fewer deaths over time, particularly among the vaccinated, but still have hit 1 million cases and 10,000 overall deaths (WA's population is 7.6 million). And people are saying it is going to get worse in the next couple weeks.

And why? Well, part of it is because Omicron is better adapted to its environment. But part of it is because we've gotten tired of it. We want to go out. We want to go back to work. We want the kids back in school. We want to put this whole thing behind us. We want to miss it, but we can't miss it if it doesn't go away. 

And yeah, most of the current casualties are from people who decided that the vaccinations are not for them. There is an entire sub-Reddit dedicated to people who have publicly come out against vaccinations, then catch the coronavirus and die. And that makes me more sad than angry. Yeah, it is the perfect sort of inverse Boy Cries Wolf tale, but I am still saddened by people who are deciding to take the risk that somehow they won't be victims, and then lose. Despite this, I don't think they should be turned away at the hospital, or charged more, or otherwise punished for decisions that overclog the hospitals. I'm just sad.

But there are breakthrough infections, and those who have gotten vacced and boostered are catching the coronacrud as well. It is not nearly as fatal, but still is no walk in the park. The vaccinations can reduce the severity of the disease, but not limit exposure to it. Sort of like seat belts - they can increase survivability in a crash, but not take that drunk driver running the redl ight off the road.

Here on Grubbstreet we got boostered, and the results were a lot more severe than last time. Last time was no biggie, but this round of boosters left both the Lovely Bride and I wiped out of the day. Which makes a little sense, since our immune systems were prepared for something coming in, and then responded heavily. So it was an expected day off.

Mask discipline has changed. Over time, I've lost the hand-made masks I started with, and the logo-ed masks from my company (discarded/lost masks have replaced cigarette butts as the urban refuse of choice). I've switched almost entirely to the black KN95s that are this year's fashion statement. And we are fortunate, because our neighborhood is pretty solid as well - I go to the grocery store and the overwhelming majority are masked, and the overwhelming majority of those are wearing them correctly. Good going, team.

No one wants to shut everything down, but we may not get a choice. Schools are closing for lack of teachers. Alaska is losing 10% of its flights because it doesn't have the manpower. We've called out the National Guard to support the hospitals. I hate the idea of returning to quarantine and to vaccine mandates, but I am just so tired of it all. And yeah, you probably are too.

And the most frustrating thing about it is that we have shifted in an attitude of "Let's do everything to stop the spread!" to one of "Yeah, you're probably going to get it, but it (hopefully) won't be too lethal". So this contributes to the feeling of frustration and exhaustion.

And here's a thing. In the before times, I remember how we talked about the Spanish Flu of a century ago. Not Spanish in origin, but that's where it first identified (sort of like people getting made at South Africa for announcing Omicron). There were a bunch of hygiene attempts and resistors and overburdened hospitals, and yeah, it sounds AWFULLY similar to the present. But then there was the Great Forgetting, as the news of the Influenza got swallowed by the Roaring Twenties and Prohibition and labor disruptions and rising Fascism and ...

Hey, the future doesn't repeat, but sometimes it rhymes. And the rhymes are pretty tight these days.

More later.

Snowed In

As you may have heard, we've had a a bit of snow up here in the Pacific Northwest. It is not unusual to have snow once or twice a year, and by snow I mean snow-level-at-sea-level, lasts-more-than-a-day type of snow. We're used to snow with visiting rights - if we want snow, we can just go up to the passes, or to watch it at a respectful distance from the foothills. Rarely does it come to visit, squatting down in your driveway, and showing no intention of moving on.

After the first wave

This is one of those times. The there was a light set of flurries just before Christmas, and the main onslaught began that night. About 6 inches up here on Grubb Street, judging from the pile-up on the deck railings. Then a few days of flurries as the high
dropped into the 20s, then another wave of about 3 inches more. Currently it is hovering just around freezing, with most of the blacktops clear from melting.

So, enough to shut everything down - this level of snow is so rare that the local authorities are limited in response. King County has all of 14 plows. Kent itself has 8 de-icer or sander trucks that have snow blades on them. Kent does have a priority list of streets to plow. Odds are that your street is not on that list. Businesses are either shut down, running with reduced staffs, or closing early before the roads freeze. I haven't had a newspaper delivered to the house for a week, though the Post Office, Amazon delivery guys, and milk deliveries have been uninterrupted (thought one of them has lost his gloves in our driveway - if you're missing brown fur-lined gloves, they are on the bench out front).

Snow Halfling

Still, this is an opportune time, and not just because so many folk are still working from home. Hitting the Christmas break puts a lot of kids at home from school. Our department had already decided to take off between Christmas and New Year's. We managed in the break between storms to get out to the grocery store, and while the deli counter was shutting down (not enough workers that day) and the bread aisle was severely depleted, there were neither major shortages or panic in the aisles.

Swedish Snow Lantern

And the housemates have been playing in the snow, making both a snowman and a set of Swedish snow lanterns. The Lovely Bride and I have been keeping to the warmth of the house, and I have enough new books to tide me over.

We still have power and the Internet, so that puts us ahead of game, as opposed to several years back, when the power went out and we relied on the fireplace and wind-up emergency radio. So we are fortunate. Rumors (meaning the weather report) say that it should warm up in the next few days, then we get hit with another round of snow. Nothing is overheated, nothing is on fire, so we are doing well. And we at Grubb Street hope you're doing well, too, and have a safe and sane New Years.

More later.

Seattle Weather

When we moved to Seattle twenty-some years ago, I started encountering weather features and climate conditions that I hadn't encountered before, or had few references to. Here's a handy list for new arrivals:

Weather Forecast: Fiction. 

5-Day Forecast: Science Fiction. 

Mountain Day: We are surrounded by mountains - Cascades to the east, the Olympic range to the west. But when we say "The Mountain is Out" (and we do), we are talking about Mount Rainier (rah-NEER), which looms to the south like something out of Greek Myth.If we can see it from base to tip, we call it the "Full Mountain".  People are usually happy when we can see the Mountain, despite the fact that Rainier is an ACTIVE VOLCANO (not erupting, but not quite dead, either).

Sunbreaks: The opposite of Partly Cloudy, but rarer out here. It a term used from the Fall to Spring, and usually means "You might see some sun today." Most of the summer is pristine, blue, and cloudless. That's when your relatives from back East visit and tell you how nice it must be to live out here. You want people to stop moving to Seattle? Invite them out in the dead of winter.

June-uary: When we say "summer" in Seattle, we don't count the first two weeks in June. Sure, May is nice, with soft rain in the evenings and fogs in the morning, but a grey overcast dominates the landscape in early June, so much so that it gets its own month. Also called June Gloom.

Atmospheric River: A recent term, it reflects the fact that Washington State doesn't really have any large agricultural states to the west of it we can call up and ask for steady weather forecasts.What we often see on the doppler radar is the thick stream of heavy red bearing down on us. Makes the weathermen on the evening news excited.

Pineapple Express: When the atmospheric river commutes from Hawaii. Really makes the weathermen excited.

Convergence Zone: I mentioned the Olympics, they are a massive upthrust of mountain due west of us. They tend to stand in the way of the atmospheric rivers that buffet the coast. Of course, the weather tends to go AROUND this big chunk of mountains, so Seattle is often at the point where the weather coming around the northern side hits the weather coming around from the south. When they hit, we get interesting, local effects. So Kirkland can get heavy rain and hail while Kent gets nothing.

Rain Shadow: The flip side of the convergence zone. Because the mountains are in the way, some places get untouched by rain while it rains heavily to both the north and south. The Olympics become Seattle's umbrella, and like an umbrella, a treacherous wind can turn it inside out.

Microclimates: As a result of the differences in altitude, plus the rain shadow and convergence zone, microclimates mean that you can have radically different weather in relative close proximity. While in certain parts of the country, the saying is" If you don't like the weather, wait fifteen minutes" in Seattle it is "If you don't like the weather, drive fifteen miles."

Misting: What Seattlites call it when it really ISN'T raining. You don't need a slicker. You don't need an umbrella (a sign of being a tourist). It's just misting. Works up to the point when you start seeing hail.

Thunder:  A rarity. It happens maybe once a month, consists of one long, rolling peel. and people will talk about it at the office the next day. It is so cute to those who come out from the Midwest. 

Snowed In: More than a quarter inch on the roads. Everyone forgets how to drive. Archaic term now that everyone is working from home.

Snow Level: Snow is measured by altitude here, and as winter proceeds the snow level descends down from the mountains to the sea. So we really pay attention to where the snow level currently is. "Lowland Snow" sets off alarm bells and closes schools. Grubb Street is located at the 500 foot mark, just in case you were wondering. 

Seattle Freeze: Has nothing to do with the weather, but is as close as we get to feeling chilly. 

Black Ice: Not a uniquely Seattle phenomenon, its the scarier way of saying "It's a little slick out there".

Closing the Passes: The main east/west highways out of/into Seattle go over the Cascade Mountains, and as winter arrives, travel over them become perilous and often avalanche-y, until finally the passes are closed, sealing us off from the rest of the northern US. We're pretty happy with that.

Polar Vortex: Not so much a Seattle thing, this is a weather effect that has been picked up on the national reports. It is bitter cold with heavy snows and wind - what Wisconsin used to call "A pretty average winter".  The weakening of the Jet Stream around the Arctic Circle results is sudden bulges of cold air descending on the heart of of the country, giving Climate Skeptics the chance to complain "Where's your Global Warming, now?"

Pyroclastic Flow: We have an active volcano nearby (see Mountain Day, above). Someday, it will go off, and send a cascade of molten rock, hot mud, and melted snow down the surrounding valleys, including the Green River valley, where Renton, Kent, and Auburn lay. This is a reason that Grubb Street is up on a hill. Have a pleasant day. 

Subduction Zone: The Big One - that massive earthquake that will cause the West Coast to fall into the sea, belongs to us, Oregon and California, so it not unique to Seattle. However, we DO talk about the tectonic plates far out to sea that have the potential to slip and create a Tidal Wave, which, given the narrowing of the Straits leading to Puget Sound, will channel it like a shotgun blast at the city.

Tsunami Route: You can see signs occasionally. I'm not sure they're being kept in order. They are usually pointing towards higher ground (well, yeah), in case the subduction zone triggers a tidal wave that will swamp the low-level areas of the Sound.

Solstice: Solstice is an important holiday in Seattle. We are the furthest north major metropolitan center in the continental US. We are further north than most of the population of Canada. So this means that our day/night cycle takes wide swings back and forth during the year. In the summer months, we are used to the sun setting in the Northeast, and twilight showing up around 10 PM. In the winter months, we are looking commuting in the darkness both to and from work. Both are a bit wearing on the senses, and the Solstice is the moment when the pendulum reaches its furthest point, and starts slipping back.

Happy Solstice. More later.

Weekending in Seattle

View from the Balcony

I tend to celebrate my birthday by not being around. Often the Lovely Bride and I decamp for some hotel, like the Salish Lodge or Alderbrook, where we get massages and I can sit in a comfortable chair and read. I've spent previous birthdays kayaking on the Bellevue Slough and riding in a zeppelin over Everett. This year, the usual haunts were already sewn up before we could make reservations, and I did not want to travel far. 

And so we chose the Edgewater in downtown Seattle. The Edgewater is a luxury shoreline hotel built over the water before they stopped letting people do that, and the Beatles once stayed there once, which they don't let anyone forget. The interior has been redone a couple times, the most recent in 1990 or so, and has a PNW/Frank Lloyd Wright/Rock and Roll vibe to it. The rooms were large, comfortable, and most importantly for our case, had balconies overlooking the Sound which were perfect for reading books, drinking wine, and watching the sun go down.

The first night out we walked to Ohana, a favorite sushi spot in Belltown (an area north of downtown Seattle, which they are trying to rebrand as "Uptown"). Walking was the exercise of the weekend, even though it meant challenging a particularly steep hill on Wall Street. The food was great, the drinks were strong, and we ended up getting back to the hotel in time to watch the sun drop down in a cloudy sky.

Sudden neighbor

Then, in the early hours of next morning, the cruise ship arrived. The Edgewater is right next to the Port of Seattle pier, where the cruise ships dock, and in the morning our window had a nice view of the Celebrity Millenium, registered in Valletta, Malta, which had snuck in around 5 AM. Despite its sudden arrival, we breakfasted and headed for the aquarium, a short walk south.

The Seattle Aquarium is very nice, but always had a vibe of "work in progress" to me, set up within a renovated warehouse on the docks. It keeps that vibe, since it is currently working on a "ocean pavilion" across the street in the shadow of the Pike Place Market's parking structure. High points were moon jellies, a particularly cranky-looking octopus, harbor seals, and sea otters (the latter in the midst of second breakfast, dining on crabs). Everyone was masked, but there was an onslaught of children, which made me feel a little uncomfortable.

For lunch walked over to Place Pigalle, in the aforementioned Pike Place market. Place Pigelle is a small restaurant down a hallway right next to where they throw the fish. Light meal of mussels and soup (French onion in my case). Good view of the Sound, and we were serenaded by an accordion and violinist in the courtyard below. I went down to tip them and found that the musicians were wearing full cat-headed masks.So, yeah, Seattle.

View of the city, without cruise ship

Afternoon was the SAM - Seattle Art Museum, which was hosting an Monet exhibit of his work at Etretat.  Etretat is a fishing village on the English Channel that in Monet's time was becoming a tourist destination. Monet (pre-Lillies) was seeking to rekindle his vision, and went to the village to paint the landmark cliffs in ways different than all the other artists of the times were painting them.

As an exhibit I really liked this a lot, primarily because it got really down into the details with the process of painting of the "open air" school. This involved such things as where Monet got his canvases, and the importance of the recent invention of tubes of pigment from America that gave the Impressionists the ability to take their work on the road. The works themselves were small for the space they provided - usually such shows are jam-packed, but this one had a lot of bare walls and creative use of empty space. That's OK, because it gave them the chance to really get into the bits and pieces of the creation of art, how it fit into Monet's life at that moment, what other artists were doing, and his technique and technology. I enjoyed it tremendously.

The Lovely Bride

The SAM was also masked and generally less crowded. Many of the galleries were closed and empty at this stage, and the Monet was the major draw. Still, after surveying the area, the Lovely B and made the long trudge back to the hotel, and sat on the back porch as the huge cruise ship undocked and was gone before 5 PM. We had a very pricey, very good dinner at the hotel's restaraunt, repaired to our dockside porch to the finish the wine and watched the sun go down.

And the next morning there was a NEW cruise ship parked outside our window, but we breakfasted, stopped for the groceries at Pike Place (also seriously masked up, but crowded) for smoked salmon, crab, and bread.

And so we return. It was a good weekend, and I got a bit of reading done. And that's how I spent my 64th birthday.

More later,

Life in the Time of the Virus: Resurgence

Sailing, Edward Hopper, 1911, CMOA

 I thought it was over. I admit it. I was wrong.

We had the vaccines. We wore the masks. We washed our hands and did not congregate. We ordered out. We acted like grown-ups. We drove the numbers down. 

And now COVID is on the rise once more.

Part of it is biology - there's a new variant (Delta) which is swamping the original virus. And part of it is sociology as well - not enough of us took the damned thing serious. There are enough holes in the safety net that once hospitals are once more approaching overload, and all the work of the past year and a half is slipping down the drain.

My Facebook has been filled with stories in three acts: Act One is someone saying that they won't get vaccinated for some (usually stupid, often ephemeral) reason. Act Two reveals that they have been hospitalized for Covid. Act Three is a GoFundMe for their funeral. Skeptical me,  I've run more than a few of these stories to ground (because not everyone is THAT stupid, right?), and sadly they have panned out as true. Yet still people resist, or, just as bad, fail to act.

Some of it is political. There are a lot of folk that support the previous guy in the White House who also don't trust vaccines, but the Venn Diagram of the two groups is not a perfect circle. There are conservatives who have vacced up (including a lot of people who disparage vaccines publicly) and their are lefties who have passed on it. Sometimes it is distrust. Sometimes it is lack of opportunity. Sometimes it is a believe that they and theirs will somehow be spared.

And there is a problem even for the vaccinated. We speak now of breakthrough cases, where those who have been vaccinated get a does of the disease anyway. So far, the cases have been mild, and not requiring hospitalization in most cases, but they are still there, and virulent. The vaccines are damage resistance, not damage immunity.

And there is one study (not professionally reviewed as yet) which puts my brand of vaccine as being suitably less effective against Delta. No one else has moved forward on this, so I am a bit concerned. I have immunocompromised friend in the house, so I am staying masked up when outside the home and (still nearly empty) office. And yeah, if they say we need a booster, I'm doing it. I'll take a couple days of feeling "meh" to a trip to the hospital.

I've made two trips to Pittsburgh in the past month, and, outside the airport (where TSA rules still apply) and health care facilities, the masks are gone. It feels like we are just taunting the virus to pick us off (The Virus does not respond to taunts - it is not listening, but such is our need for narrative that we anthropomorphize it into a supervillain). The only masks I saw were with service personnel.

And we are as a people horribly resistant to returning to quarantine procedures, even as the hospitals fill up. Already propagandists have campaigned hard against existing limitations, and the slightest hint of reinstatement sends them to their microphones for another broadside. 

It feels like we declared victory too soon, and threw ourselves a parade while the enemy was still on the battlefield. And now we're paying the price.

Sorry to be a downer, but there will be more, later.

Life in the Time of the Virus: Finale

Dawn in Pennsylvania, Edward Hopper, 1942

 This is the last entry of this type. Not because COVID is defeated, but because we are moving into a (yet another) new phase. A new normal, with all the abnormalities we have seen in the previous new normals.

I am vaccinated. The Lovely Bride is as well (no side effects from the second Moderna, other than she took the day off anyway). Our housemates are vaccinated, as are the other members of our Pandemic Pod. We have resumed in-person gatherings of the Pod in the backyard as the weather has improved. We even held an in-person gaming afternoon over Memorial Day weekend and a dinner at a local restaurant (patio, but still). We have made plans to visit our families in Pittsburgh. And to make a trip to Disneyworld in the fall. 

So to claim that we are in quarantine, fighting the virus with distance and time, is no longer applicable. We will still be cautious, wearing masks for safety and courtesy. But things are changing. Like cicadas, we are now emerging from our long sleeps into a changed world. And like cicadas, there will be screaming.

At the time of writing, there are about 500 deaths/day in the US. For comparison purposes we are looking at approx 100 car deaths and a similar number of firearm deaths/day (all numbers per the CDC). So, good news by comparison, but still dangerous. The overwhelming amount of new cases are among the unvaccinated, and now we are vaxing teenagers, which makes sense. This past week, the Washington State Government has inaugurated a Vaccine Lottery that you are entered into when you get your shots. Vaccination sites are overrun again with those who have put it off. Man, I hate it when marketing works.

We are still talking about coming back to the office in the fall, and decisions are being made to what degree. I've been thinking about what I enjoy about working at home, and the list has been extensive:

• No commute.
• More flexible time to work, and I get to work earlier.
• No driving in the dark in the winter.
• I am available to run errands, go shopping, and do heavy lifting for the Lovely Bride.
• I am reading more.
• I am exercising more.
• I've been amazingly healthy. I've had a runny nose or a clogged head a few days, and I was exceedingly Meh after my shot, but I have not been taking sick days. 
• The cats like me to be around the house.
• Hummingbirds outside my window.
• Able to enjoy the rhododendrons and wisteria this spring more.
• Able to mow my lawn over lunch.
• End of the day alcohol on my back deck in summer.
• I can get comics at noon on Wednesday.
• No surprise snowstorms in winter.
• I've taken to singing show tunes while I work.
• I've walked more, but have not had to use a cane for about a year.
• I've lost a little weight over the past year. Yeah, be jealous. 

On the other hand coming back to office gives me .... um, hang on, give me a moment, I'll come up with something. Oh, here we go:

• It's good to talk with others.
• Closer to IT when your computer goes down.
• Someone might bring their dogs in.
• Odds of me pouring an entire bag of cat food out on the kitchen floor severely reduced.

So what this means in no more entries titled "Life in the Time of Virus" (I hope). Plague books go back to just being books. Life does not return to the way is was, but then again, it never does.

More later

Life in the Time of the Virus: Signs of Life

Morning Sun by Edward Hopper - 1952

 It's not over. Not yet. But it feels like there is a long, group, exhalation from holding your breath for too long a time.

The good news is that fatalities are down in the Seattle area, and cases and hospitalizations have leveled off. A recent map of the region put the vacc rate at 70% for at least one shot, the vaccine is plentiful, and a lot of sites are taking walk-ins. But we are still seeing new cases, particularly among younger people. I haven't seen a precise reason yet, but I wonder if it is connected in any way with the re-start of in-person schools. Of course, this was a thought that occurred to me as I was driving over to Covington Labs for a blood draw, and found myself behind multiple school buses. 

The rest of the world continues to pitch and yaw with the disease. India at one time was so untouched that people strained to come up with reasons why. Now it is being hit hard. Russia was under reporting its damage, which is of little surprise. Brazil remains a dumpster fire, and Sweden, who banked on herd immunity, has suffered worse than its Scandinavian neighbors. Island nations keep a tight watch on their borders. And our own official national count may be low as well, and the "real" number of deaths may be up to twice of what we reported.

On a more regional level, the governors are taking it on the chin, red or blue, for a) doing too much, b) not doing enough, or c) doing both at the same time. And even though I am wary of returning to "business as previous", I have to admit we have seen improvements. But improvements are not eradication. 

But the CDC has gone on record in the past week on  pulling off the masks, and though they bunker it in cautious, adult terms (IF you are vaccinated and IF you are outside), it seems like the reaction is as if Landru suddenly shouted "Festival!" (Original Star Trek reference, for the younger kids).  Will we see a bigger fourth wave moving forward, or are enough folk vacced to give us a fighting chance?

At the personal level, the local groceries are still masked up, and I'm good with that, and I will continue to wear masks when indoors in public, and likely when I am outdoors in among strangers as well. My personal favorite mask has a purple octopus on it, and people assume that I am supporting Seattle's nascent hockey team. Our Pandemic Pod has resumed outdoor meetings when the weather is good, all of us grabbing various forms of takeout and camping in the backyard. The Lovely Bride has gotten a brazier for fires, and Housemate Anne has a mosquito-repeller she says will keep the Washington State Bird at bay. The pair have been renovating the garden with surprising speed as the LB emerges from tax hell.

And my company has been putting things together to return people to the office in some form. A lot of my former project-comrades have moved on to other things, but I still have my desk in the office (though last time I was there I had forgotten what floor we were on). And much of Queen Anne Hill and Lake Union are blocked by newer buildings that have gone up in the interim. I did manage to save an overstuffed chair that I call "The Story Chair", where people would come by and our team would talk about story with them. A lot about his (and many other things) is still unknown and unrevealed, but we are moving forward to some semblance of the before-times. 

But for me, I have adapted to working at home well. I've done it before, in the land of freelance, and the ever-available online calls mitigates some of the communication challenge. I have a tidy desk in the corner of my home office dedicated to "the day job", and from here I can see the hummingbirds at the feeder and the crows at the pond fountain. The wisteria and rhododendrons are in bloom. We're holding up OK, and looking forward to the next stage. 

More later, 

Comics: End of the Collection

.

Those who know me may be in for a bit of a shock: I have gotten rid of my comic book collection.

To call it a collection would be rounding up. It is more of an accumulation, forty-plus years of paper and staples that had been acquired, read and deposited in long white coffins, to rest in state in various locations. Most recently that location was a small room billed optimistically by the realtor as a Mother-In-Law apartment (When my Mom-In-Law stayed with us, she got the guest room - much nicer).  When we first moved to Seattle, the Lovely Bride built a storage rack for the collection, four bins wide and two bins high, each bin holding 9 "long-boxes" of comics, each long-box about 30" long and holding about 300 comics easily (or 350 the way I would jam them in). So that is, what, 72 long boxes with a total of about 2.5k comics. 

I read comics as a kid. Harvey comics like Sad Sack and Hot Stuff the Little Devil. I read DC comics, which were better than Marvels because you could never guarantee you would get the "next issue" at the drug store, never mind that a sizable chunk of the DCs were reprints from the early fifties. Original works included Dial H for Heroes and Legion of Superheroes and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen. I think I had the first issue of Luke Cage, Hero for Hire. 

Then I stopped, showing a preference for MAD magazine as my drug store read. The old comics, disposable culture, were disposed.

In college I got back into comics. I blame the Star Wars comic and Howard the Duck. The guy in the next room over at the dorm read super-hero comics (Hi, Joe!) and I started reading the Fantastic Four and Iron Man. The story about creating a superhero RPG from alL this can be found here. I stored the comics in the bottom drawer of my dresser in the dorm, and brought them home in grocery bags.

Out of college, I started picking up books regularly, and started storing them in "real" long-boxes. In Pittsburgh, the only direct-sale shop was on the North Side, Eide's, in the an area where urban renewal had not gotten around to renewing yet. There I found the Small Press Indies - Elfquest, Cerebus, and the like. The boxes started to pile up. When I had gotten them to about 3 by 3, I put a sheet of plywood over them and made them into a desk. The boxes were not bleached white yet, and while I was bagging I was not boarding them (and never would). 

The story of how Marvel Super Heroes came about at TSR is here (again) But the upshot was not only was I using my collection as a resource, Marvel was now sending me comics on a weekly basis. I got on their mailing list and got two copies of everything. One copy went into manila folders and was circulated around the office (for "research" purposes) while my own copy went home. We were now storing the comics in an attic crawlspace over the kitchen. The LB and I would drive up to Milwaukee to the Turning Page every other week on a Friday (then comic-book day), then go to Chi-Chi's at the mall for Mexican food  (table for two, good light source, please).  Eventually I went for weekly runs to Rockhead's in Kenosha, and finally a pair of fans started carrying comics at their video store/gas station in Lake Geneva.

About that time I was writing comics for DC (Story here) and got on THEIR mailing list, so I got a lot of comics coming in. And in the process of all this I got a lot of comics that I would never buy, like Barbie, and movie adaptations like Richie Rich and comics for Kiss, Alice Cooper, and Prince. And I got a lot of exposure to their full lines - Vertigo and Epic and Milestone. Some was very good, some was forgettable. I made a culling and got rid of four boxes at a shop up in Madison.

I no longer am on those mailing lists, but the accumulation continued. The brown boxes became large white boxes. I stopped bagging, and eventually I stopped sorting, instead just stacking. The boxes became time capsules, layered like strata of popular culture. I brought the collection to Seattle, and the LB built the storage bins. I filled up about half of them, but over the years they filled up, and there were a couple extra white coffins on the floor as well. The boxes got wider (to accommodate the backing boards I don't use), and the paper stock for comics has gotten heavier and glossier. A box of old newsprint was about 50 pounds, one stuffed with recent books was more like 70. Soon, I would not be able to move them again. They became a wall of paper, and I considered that, in case of a nuclear attack, I could build a fallout shelter with them. Viking funeral also came to mind.

And so it was time to get rid of them. Needed the space, and the necessity of keeping them for research had diminished - not only was I not designing RPGs, but a lot of the material was available through trade paperback reprints and online. And the fictional universes have rebooted multiple times, with a surge of destructive fury replaced by a flurry of number ones, so their usefulness as historical records was diminished. 

And I went through them all in the process of cleaning them out. Some we kept - Kate had some we wanted to keep - Starstruck from Epic and Jonny Quest from Comico and Power Pack from Marvel and the underappreciated Baker Street from Caliber (punk Sherlock Holmes). I kept Astro City (Various publishers), Planetary, Groo the Wanderer, and the various Handbooks, Who's Whos, and Secret Files. And multiple  all the stuff I worked on over the years, with the exception of a backup story for a TSR comic that set up the story and then was cancelled that issue.Going through them was like an archaeological dig. Newsprint gave way to glossy stock throughout. There were flurries of relaunched and renumbered Number Ones. There were stunts like  chrome covers and embossed covers and wordless issues and sideways printing, and even a couple three-D's. There were books that I don't even remember reading - Xombi and Ravage 2099 and Hokum & Hex and Leonard Nimoy's PriMortals. Sublines like Razorwire and Heavy Hitters. And most recently mega-epics that swallowed entire company lines with huge epic storylines.

And I'm done. Those we did not keep I took down, four and five boxes at a time, to the Page Turner, a thriving used bookstore in Kent, Washington (Online it can be found as Hasberts.com). The store has an excellent collection of comics, genre fiction, histories, and pop culture. I pulled out the black and white indies (which the store owner said didn't sell well for him) for a friend (and stored them in brown paper grocery bags). The last load went down this weekend, in celebration of Seattle's Independent Bookstore Day/Week. So far I haven't had a shred of seller's regret. Now the bins are stacked with plastic containers filled with sewing projects and old paperwork belonging to my late mother-in-law. 

I still read comics, but I doubt I will be hoarding them. Maybe it is time to look at electronic formats (which, oddly enough, may make the print comics of today more valuable in that there will be fewer of them, much like the paper drives of WWII boosted the disposal of old golden age books). It does feel like I have jettisoned almost two tons of albatross from my life. 

Now I just need to figure out what to do with all these National Geographics.

More later,

Life in the Time of the Virus - Not Throwing Away My ... Shot.

Doctors Looking At Art
from John Hopkins Magazine

 And so I am vaccinated. The Johnson & Johnson "one and done" vaccine.

It happened a couple weeks back, on a Wednesday. It turns out that the process of making appointments was tougher than the process of getting the stab itself. Being JUST under 65 in Washington State meant I missed out on the initial round, but when we finally cleared at the end of the month April, both the Lovely Bride and I when to the vaccine finder online and, finding out that shots would be given out at the local hospital, Valley Med. Great. Except to sign up, you went to the UWMed site, and once you signed up to be put on the waiting list, there was no confirmation one way or another. 

So after a week I went back to the vaccine finder, and signed up for a bunch of locations. I found they were giving the vaccine at the local sports complex (the ShoWare center, a local venue noted for never turning a profit every year). But by the time I filled out all the forms, they were out of appointments. So I ended up signing up down for a vaccination site down in Auburn, at the Outlet Center (formerly known as the Supermall). And filled out the online forms pretty fast to keep from losing THAT one. 

Now, because of what I do (designing computer games), I am extremely sensitized to UX (user experience) - how people navigate the complex web of their online experience. Every site had their own format, their own questions, and their own process. and for anyone who was not computer-savvy, it was a frustrating experience (The Lovely B, by the way, got on her iPad during a Zoom dinner party, and struck a win very quickly with a local Rite-Aide, which did not have any openings when I went looking four days before - BUT since then the J&J vaccine was halted as a result of potential blood clotting, so she's been moved further back in the line).

So, the Supermall. A friend had had a horrible experience locating the vaccination site, so I went down early for the first appointment of the day. The web site gave the location of the site by the Suite number of the store, but the maps of the mall itself did not identify anything by Suite number. And there was not a lot of signage in the mall parking lot (Supermall - big parking lot on all four sides). parked near by best guess, and found that the mall ITSELF was closed at that hour. I drove to where I had seen a number of cars parked thinking it was another entrance. And indeed, THAT was the site where the vaccine was being distributed. Spoilers: It was on the north side of the building, with a HUGE white tent for people to queue up in.

It might have been the hour, or the fact I was there early (9:30, even after going to the wrong entrance), or the fact that the web sites had confused so many people, but the huge white tent was empty, and I walked in. The place (an abandoned Sports Authority with an external main door) was swarming with helpful volunteers in orange jackets (far outnumbering the patients). One asked me if I had brought along my ID and QRCode from the confirmation message. I had not brought the QRCode, and she sent me to Guest Services, which was a long set of tables with more volunteers. I was the first of the day, so the young woman that was helping me had an older volunteer at her side, and four more volunteers hanging over her shoulder to understand what needed to be done. It turned out the first volunteer at the door was wrong - you did not NEED to bring along your QRCode, it just makes it easier. I was confirmed and sent on my way to the long, empty queue area leading to the shots itself. It was sort of like arriving for your flight early, and No One was ahead of you at security.

And here's the thing - everyone was extremely friendly and upbeat, something I rarely see in malls these days, so I was actually taken aback. The friendly volunteer at the empty queue directed me to a table with two more friendly volunteers (trainee and trainer) who took my information, and when I confirmed I had an allergy (sulfa drugs), called over a friendly firefighter who said there should be no problem but I should wait 15 minutes after the shot to be sure, and another friendly firefighter administered the shot. Now, I have an INTENSE dislike of needles, but this was probably the easiest shot I've ever gotten. I was sent to another friendly volunteer who was stationed near a widely spaced set of chair, and when I did not fall out said chair in 15 minutes, I was released into the (closed) mall itself, where a string of friendly volunteers in orange jackets showed me to the exit. 

I had taken the rest of the day off (because I was topping out my vacation time in any event), so I ran some more errands and went home, and napped. Felt a little "meh" the next day, but avoided any serious reaction.

So, it's over? No, it is not. First off two weeks to have the vaccine run its course. Plus, in D&D terms, the vaccine is Damage Resistance, not Damage Immunity. I am not immune to fire, but I will take less damage from the fire, hopefully to the point where, if I suddenly find myself in a fireball, I would not be hospitalized.(I will refrain from torturing this analogy any further in the name of the Geneva Convention). The end result is that I will continue to use a mask when I go out, and work from home until the situation changes further.

In the outside world things are trying to lurch back to normal, with a rise in number of cases in several counties out here, but a decline in fatalities (A separation of the sick and the dead). King County is verging on slipping back to Stage 2 from Stage 3. Traffic is starting to suck again, more people are being shot in public places, and I'm getting a lot more spam calls. So, I guess America is slowly becoming America again. The local grocery has pulled up the one-way arrows for the aisles that everyone was ignoring anyway. The local newspaper did a long piece on Sunday on museums that were slowly and cautiously reopening.  There was an article as well about how, despite expectations, there was a decline in suicides in the past year, as people did not deal with each other as much. And there remains much concern about new variants that are spreading and replacing earlier waves. 

So we have hit a milestone (instead of a millstone), and there is some glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. On the 15th the floodgates open, and everyone else will be allowed to get the vaccine (which, to continue the airport analogy, feels like when they have boarded the first class, business, gold, platinum, jade, and radioactive metals classes, along with people with children, those who are serving/have served in the military, and Seahawk fans, and now are ready to board "All Other Rows".

And that is where a lot of my younger colleagues are: All Other Rows. This too, I want to say, will pass.

More later, 

Life in the Time of Virus - The New Year

City Roofs by Hopper, 1932

 A year ago, my company sent everyone home. It was thought at the time it might be a few weeks, then a few months, then by Fall at the latest.

And now it may be by early Fall of this year, and even then it may be only for a few days a week just to keep touch in the flesh.

I've been back in the office a few times since then, and it still looked a bit like the Mary Celeste. Our department were in the process of reshuffling our desks around when the word came down, so some desks are empty, some have boxes, and some still have everything on them as if the occupant had just stepped away. Looking out the windows, I can see new skyscrapers that been erected while we've been gone, further blocking the view of Lake Union.

I haven't gotten my vaccine yet, though not through a lack of desire. Each state has its own schedule and rules, and, alas, I am neither old enough or nor sick enough or nor vital enough to get priority. And, to be honest, I don't want to jump the queue to get a shot when there are people who ARE old enough, sick enough, or vital enough still waiting for the situation.

However, every report I get from family and friends says that when it DOES become available, and one figures out how to get it, the entire process is well-run and fairly painless (painless compared to coming down with the coronavirus). So I have something to look forward to.

The numbers continue to climb, though a lower rate than the winter highs. But also climbing has been the number of doses administered. At the time of this writing, there have been 29 million cases in the US, and 538,000 deaths. But 113 million doses of vaccine have been administered and that number is climbing rapidly. 

In the meantime, the dawn has begun to claw its way back from utter darkness. Seattle is the northernmost major city on the continental US, further north than the bulk of the population of Canada. So the winter darkness hits us hard. Back in the beforetimes I was used to watching the dawn from an upper floor of a Seattle skyscraper. So working at home has had that advantage, but I follow the sun - the earlier it rises, the earlier I will be at work. 

There is the other social distancing going on right now up here - this one involving birds. Due to wildfires, we have an "irruption" of pine siskins. Now while "pine siskins" sounds like a snack food, it a small, mostly-Canadian bird that is now is hanging about in large numbers in the Puget Sound region. This sudden overpopulation is called an irruption, and would not be a big deal, except that they are currently carrying a deadly form of salmonellosis . So birds need to socially distance. Which means that we can't use the bird feeder in the back yard until the beginning of April. Maybe longer. Yeah, I know how the birds feel.

And we have housemates up here on Grubb Street. Some friends were having housing issues, a situation made more serious by one of them having to undergo chemotherapy up in Seattle. So they have joined us, and we have been doing a lot of cleaning and moving things about, as well as adjusting to other peoples' rhythms in the house. Part of this has been to encourage the Lovely Bride and I to do some projects we have been meaning to do for some time, like strip out the carpeting in the guest room or (slowly) dispense with a lot of my comic collection in the basement. (OK, it is no longer a collection, it is an mere accumulation - if you're looking for something in particular, I am sending it all to Page Turner Books down in Kent - good store, check it out).

But as a result of all this, my time usually spent screwing around has been diminished, and there are things that still need to be done all around me. Sort of a spring cleaning on overdrive.

It will still be a couple months before I can spend the evenings on the back deck with a good book and a strong drink, but I am working towards it. In the meantime, I remain confined to quarters, wearing a mask on the rare times when I do go out, and generally bearing up.

More later,