getting out of the house

we had an excellent morning visit to hyde farm in the wilds of east cobb, the furtherest i've been from peachtree street since early march --- the place looked really great, especially as the newness of the massive rehab in 2014 has worn off ---

also too kenny got to see how sidewalk chicken bones are grown and i got to visit with a dear friend as well

the dog world

dog loves the afghan ma made me ca. 1980, and i think she would be proud

garden is back!

the atl bot gdn has finally re-opened, except for the conservatory and orchid house! members only this week, but opening to the public on saturday --- timed reservations but open every evening until 9, which is wonderful ---overcast, upper 50s, virtually no one else there made for a delicious evening --- i've  missed that place this spring more than anything

corona update

everything continues to verge on the surreal, but things are beginning to feel a bit more nermal --- a few restaurants are trying to open, but not a whole lot of people are quite ready to venture out like that --- still, you gotta start somewhere

cafe intermezzo on p'tree at 11th is one of those trying to reinvent their seating, including tables on the sidewalk ---

i think something finally clicked in kenny's little brain, and he now understands that he should pee in the house only under very controlled circumstances, like directly on the pee pad --- we have settled on four dog walks per day, on fairly set routes and times, so the pee pads get minimal use --- i can live with that 

new crick trail

we checked in with ms byrd and her young'uns this afternoon and looked at part of the trail along the lower reaches of the south fork of peachtree creek --- the underside of I-85 (between piedmont and lindbergh) is not as impressive as I-75 over the river ---

dog found the remains of something dead to rub his head in and slept happily every after

canola virus times

the novelty of an empty peachtree street has worn off --- but no problem, with 65k+ dead people, gov. skeevy has "reopened" the state, although at least here nobody much is buying it

demolition of the hundred-year-old apartment building on eighth st has added to the overall melancholia

making the best of a bad situation

another excellent diversion for a saturday night, which i thought might not happen again after some of the reaction to the last one, see below .......

gah

olden times

i've been rooting around in records from west yorkshire, uk, from whence some of "my people" emigrated in the seventeenth century --- research is centered around barwick-in-elmet, a village a few miles northeast of leeds and one of a handful of places that remembers the last of the britonnic kingdoms, elmet, to fall to the anglo-saxons in the seventh century --- it's the only place in the british isles that i have connected with an ancestor, and it's a place that connects to prehistoric times --- the village developed around a 2,000-year-old hill fort and remains proud of its maypole --- the church was built in the 8th century or so --- "my people," twelve and more generations ago, lived there, although they called themselves Settle back then. 

they were originally from a little burg called settle in northwestern yorkshire, established by the angles in the 7th century --- a mile or so from that village is a cave where they found the first evidence of humans in the yorkshire dales, an 11,000 year old harpoon tip --- i spent much of today reading the parish register of births and deaths and what not --- a surprising number of "bastards" being baptized --- a note that on 9 June 1638 was buried, "a woman, being a stranger, whose name is unknown, who died at Scoles" made me a little sad

best place name so far today is nether shitlington, a few miles south of leeds --- it was recorded as "schelingtone" in the domesday book, so who knows --- unfortunately, they dropped the "h" to make it "sitlington" in 1921 --- a great loss --- also unfortunately, it's a few miles from barwick-in-elmet and so not my ancestral homeland

easing over to the dark side

feeling the need for more mindless entertainment, i splurged and got a big-ass teevee (54" for $375!!) for the living room, so i could put the semi-big-ass teevee (46", which cost three times the new one when i got it several years ago) in the bedroom --- now if i can just find something i want to watch besides "deep space nine"

plague hysteria

someone felt compelled to blast out a condo-wide warning about the dangers of our all being out on our balconies at the same time, since the wind could come and blow germs up all over everybody ---

we went ahead and had an excellent saturday night dance party on our balconies anyway

and then you have to put up with these goddamn preachers and cultists --- "i'm covered in the blood of jesus" and it won't get me --- gah


 

so much of this situation reminds me of the hysteria surrounding AIDS in the 80s when nobody quite knew what was going on --- nevermind the preachers and what not, we're gonna look back on a lot of this in the same way, i think

purties

books, flowers, and rocks --- all beautiful in their own way --- this unit is one of a pair that were gifted to me in early october last --- six months and counting and still setting buds

especially when they smell like coconut

or absolutely never quit blooming

borrowed time

thousands dead across the country and tens of thousands around the world, half the damn planet being told to stay home, unemployment records falling day after day, with over 700,000 added in march alone --- hospitals are running out of supplies, while the feds leave the states to their own devices, including bidding against each other for supplies --- i asked alexis if they had enough personal protective equipment at the hospital and she replied:

Unfortunately no. Everything is being rationed. We get issued an N95 and have to wear it until basically worn out. They are meant for a few hours of protection. Not a weeks worth of work. It is absolutely absurd.  And we are out of plastic gowns. They brought us 30 gowns the other day with Virex spray to spray on them so they can be disinfected for the next person to re-wear. This is just unheard of. And the peak of this mess hasn't even hit yet. I was talking with one of our infectious disease docs and she said the peak will hit around April 24th then we should (and hopefully) start to see a decline in new cases. God, I can only pray. . . . It's like healthcare in a third world country.

and expectations are that it's only going to get worse --- as many as 200,000 dead in the US by some estimates ---

angela sent me some masks which i guess i will start wearing to the grocery store at least --- i really don't want to catch this thing until we're a little further along in treatment, etc

and the republicans, under the guise of national emergency, are unilaterally abrogating environmental laws and disregarding congressional oversight of how the $2 trillion appropriated for the emergency is spent, and generally amping up their support for the oligarchy's looting of the country

meanwhile the putative president continues to poison the body politic with petty insults, threats, and raw partisan politics and generally acting as president of the red states, and to hell with the blue, which includes the country's largest cities --- he is a despicable human being and far and away the absolute worst president this country has had

so happy birthday to me --- 71 and officially living on borrowed time

big times

these are clearly such big times that i feel i ought to be blogging, but it's kinda overwhelming when there's talk of 20% unemployment (it was just short of 25% at the depths of the great depression), with st patricks day parades and all cancelled in ireland and everywhere else, while restaurants, bars, atl utd matches, symphony, the botanical garden, museums, and what not are nearly all shut down indefinitely --- vegas is shut down so kevin won't be playing for at least two months --- san francisco, nyc, and other places in "lockdown" (although it's not like they'll shoot you if they find you outdoors --- not yet anyway --- i can still walk to the grocery store and macs and around with the dog), but everything is about "social distancing" --- midtown is like it usually is over the xmas holidays when everybody leaves town ---  nevermind the tragic state of my 401k, although i recognize that the real tragedy is those with no 401k or anything else in the way of retirement savings to piss and moan about to begin with --- and when the republicans start talking about the [really urgent] need to just give people some money (the latter being a contrived notion in the first place, especially when one remembers how valuable cowrie shells were at one time), you know that the wheel is turning --- this is a year like 1860, 1941, 1968, when there was a great big revolution in our way of being

animals

they keep me semi-sane

a good read!

yesterday, i made my quarterly pilgramage to the city's best book store, at the carlos museum at emory ---

this has to be the pick of the litter --- wonderful little synopses of various dyes, pigments, and what not, with a history of color woven through --- i knew about prussian blue and cochineal, white lead and titanium, but mummy brown and vanta black, e.g., not so much

beautiful photography, like this of lead white

 orpium and malachite

and instructions on how to make a few, including cochineal and lead white

keep on building

i guess the project here at the southeast corner of p'tree and eighth is a go ----  next year and a half will be a pain in the ass for the neighborhood

the people in the south tower are not happy ---

an excellent read

i was gonna post some images, but i managed to lose them all between the phone and pc --- they weren't all that in the first place --- this book, however, is the bomb --- i rarely read a book twice, but . . . .