NOTES FROM HERE

 "Sometimes you got to burn to keep the storm away." - Patrick Watson, Here Comes the River

"After an unequivocal experience of the inefficacy of the subsisting Federal Government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new [Administration/President/Executive Branch] for the United States of America." - me, borrowing and adjusting the first sentence of Federalist No. 1

I just finished the introduction of Simon and Schuster's Pocket Books edition of The Federalist Papers .  In order to claim my philosophical bearings on the subject of government, my list of who to read is as follows:

I did a few collages when quarantine hit. It's been a weird few months. I think I need to do more of these. It's interesting trying to say something about the current situation using words limited by what print sources I have lying around. Like cooking meals from ingredients I pick up once or twice a week from the grocery store, when I used to pick up food a couple of times a week if I needed to.

A lovely moment at the end of an article about older people and COVID-19 from The Washington Post :  

If this is the new normal, at least for awhile, what do you want that new normal to look like? How do you want to operate within the confines of our current experience? The temptation —  if indeed it is a temptation and perhaps tendency is a better word here —  so there: The tendency of humankind will be of course to mourn and grieve our losses. And one should. There is plenty to grieve over. The normalcy of one's day has been significantly altered for some, and altered to some degree for everyone. But in setting up our new shop, I think the trick is to not carry that mourning around with us all day. I'm not sure our natural instinct is to shape a new normal, when our old normal is what we want. We are inclined to float down the river we're in. But given the choices at hand, what will make us able to be as productive as one can be in an altered state? We will have to evaluate the choices that lay before us. They will consist mostly of small things. We will have to say...

It is the evening before we begin the experiment of moving public school out of the school buildings and online, thanks to COVID-19.  The kids have had yesterday and today off.  Their teachers have been sending out emails with a list of things that will come, or with the promise of such.  It's been a lovely few days weather wise, temperatures reaching briefly into the low 60's and tomorrow they sink again with the promise of rain and then snow in a few days.  It feels apropos. And daunting. One hopes for the feeling of a snow day, everyone hauling down their blankets and snuggling on the couch while we watch the Great British Bake Off or Harry Potter.  But that feeling has been elusive. The girls in high school have already started on what assignments they can start on.  It might have been better to wait, but some enterprising teachers wouldn't. So it goes.  It's an experience everyone has to settle into, even or, maybe especially, the teachers, I ...