The Mandelbear's Musings

So... this morning my phone greeted me with a notification that started with "Possible exposure reported. Someone you were near has tested positive for COVID-19." Further investigation showed that the exposure took place on March 17 or 18. I'm not worried. Since I was home alone on Whidbey on the 18th, that narrowed it down to our housekeeper or one of the stores I stopped at for groceries on the way up. Or conceivably someone near my car on the ferry.

Our housekeeper hasn't called, and if she'd been the source of the exposure everyone else who was in the house at the time would have been notified as well. I shop with a mask on, and Molly just had her passenger compartment air filter replaced last month. So the probability that I've actually been exposed is rather small.

For the next couple of days, I'm treating it as an excuse to hang out in my apartment and spend more time with the cats, who really deserve more attention anyway. Food choices are a trifle limited, but include tinned sardines, which Desti for one has no objection to at all.

I'm starting this post on March 6th, 2021 -- I expect to put it up in a week or so, but next week promises to be busy and I want to put some thought into it. I see that I posted "COVID-19: Episode 1 -- Household notes and links so far" exactly a year ago, so that makes it a particularly good day to start.

A week later, I wrote I'm 73 years old today. In the middle of a pandemic that disproportionally kills older people, in a country with a totally broken public health system. That was also the day that COVID-19 was officially declared to be a pandemic; I made Monday the 16th (Colleen's birthday) my last singing lesson and PT appointment, and the 17th my last in-person shopping day. We didn't go anywhere but medical appointments after that, until last week when (about three weeks after my second shot of Moderna vaccine) I started going into the drug store rather than arranging for curbside pickup.

At this point, with everyone else in the household having received their first doses, I could theoretically go back to being the one who does almost all the shopping, but I rather like having L' do the grocery shopping from a list. Much less expensive.

... and now it's March 24th, and I can no longer recall what I meant to say in this post. Something about how the year has gone, or what I feel about it. But feelings are not my strong point, and the year has mainly been more of my usual procrastination, not much different from the year before, and the year before that. See also, mdlbear | COVID-19: Planning and accountability revisited, from last November. For what it's worth, here's New Year's Day 2021. If I look sideways at the time I spend reading DW and so on, I suppose I can count it as self-care. And I've done a little organizing, though with the addition of the stuff from Mom's apartment it's been something like one step forward and one step back. Around here it takes all the running you can do just to stay in place.

They say that people procrastinate things that make them uncomfortable. That's part of a feedback loop, of course: I procrastinate things because thinking about how much I've procrastinated makes me even more uncomfortable. AARGH.

A couple of links that felt relevant when I started this post. Whether they still are is left as an exercise for the reader.

• What it felt like to live through a year of the coronavirus pandemic - Washington Post
• Coming of Age: Teens on Coping With a Pandemic Year - The New York Times

"Interesting" week. Not bad, really, just a little weird. Thursday, the 20-box shipment of Stuff from Mom's apartment arrived. (It was a week earlier than their initial estimate. Just as well, given what will be going on next week.) I think a couple of items might have been mis-delivered, though it's a little hard to tell from the spreadsheet. And one particularly nice abstract painting turned out to be much bigger than it looked on the wall in Mom's apartment. There's a lot of nostalgia in those boxes; it's going to be a strange couple of weeks while I sort them out.

Friday we took Colleen up to Oak Harbor to get her first vaccine shot.

Island Drug's setup is inconvenient and stupid compared to Whidbey General -- you check in by text, and wait in your car until they tell you to come in. At which point you stand in line, potentially in the rain, with no social distancing that I could detect. Fortunately, after waiting in the car about 40 minutes, I went up to the guy at the door (there were actually two lines, for first and second dose) and asked what to do given the fact that Colleen uses a mobility scooter. He looked at the crowd inside, told me to re-park in front (between the two handicapped slots) and sent a pharmacist out to give her the shot through the passenger-side window. (This only worked because they had us fill out the paperwork, including scans of insurance cards and ID, in advance.) I intend to take try it next time, too.

Given the fact that it was essentially a drive-by shot, there was no place to wait for 15 minutes afterward to see whether Colleen would turn green with purple spots. But 15 minutes was just enough time to be passing the hospital on the drive home. So it worked. (And Colleen stayed her usual color, though she probably wouldn't have objected to purple spots.)

The high-order link this week is to my Curmudgeon post about a particularly nasty (and widespread -- over 30,000 sites) Microsoft Exchange Server exploit.

( Notes & links, as usual )

Yesterday I said "I'm not worried" about side effects. Maybe I should have worried a little more? Maybe I should worry a little more about the next dose?

Yesterday I felt pretty good (modulo slamming my left middle finger in the front door on my way out to pick up a prescription for Colleen) up until 9:30 or 10pm, so about 28 hours after the shot, when I started getting some pain around the injection site. Then I started feeling chilled. No fever, though -- 97.1, so a little low if anything. I seem to recall getting low temperatures during viral illnesses back... a long time ago.

Then came the muscle aches, and then the headache. Pretty close to what I remember from some of the times I had the flu. Night-time was pretty miserable; getting out of bed for water, taking care of Colleen, or a bathroom break proved to be a major undertaking. Breathing was complicated by my usual post-nasal drip -- I don't think that was connected to the vaccine after-effects -- but it made the night pretty bad. I was strongly reminded of The Nightmare Song from ‘Iolanthe’ by Gilbert and Sullivan.

I don't think it would have been a good idea to drive today; fortunately I don't have to -- V is taking Colleen to her CAT-scan appointment this afternoon. (There's an amusing comment to be made about a Cheshire Cat getting a CAT scan, but I'm a little low on spoons at the moment.)

( lyrics, if you don't want to click through: )

If you live in Washington State, a new set of restrictions go into effect tonight at 11:55 pm (except for bars and restaurants, which have until 12:01 am Wednesday), running through December 14^th). The best place to start is probably This post on Medium from the governor's office; then hit this PDF for the full list.

There are links to the press release, proclamation, and a Seattle Times article (with more complete titles) under the cut.

( Links )

Also, there's a High Wind Warning in effect tomorrow from 10am to 6pm They're predicting 60mph gusts; I don't expect to have power tomorrow here at the North End, and I may have to cancel rescheduled our dentist appointments.

NaBloPoMo stats:
   8219 words in 17 posts this month (average 483/post)
    179 words in 1 post today
      1 day with no posts

So far I have kept myself from doomscrolling the news today. I've seen enough snippets to know that the race is still undecided; I am trying not to get my hopes up. Does being a pessimist help in this situation? Not sure.

At this point, I think I'm too brain-fried to put together much of post -- this will have to do. I wouldn't have bothered if not for NaBloPoMo.

NaBloPoMo stats:
   2225 words in 5 posts this month (average 445/post)
     62 words in 1 post today

Arkham Board of Health Feedback On Miskatonic University’s Draft Plan for a Safe Campus Reopening.

Today's music (it isn't all songs) is very much a mixed bag stylistically, but it's all pandemic-related, because of course it is.

Let's start out on the creepy end. From @siderea, we get The COVID-19 Fugue. (You may want to start with her post about it, which is more descriptive than this brief mention.) Basically it's a fugue built around "C° V-I D 1-9", which is composer Nicholas Papadimitriou's musical respelling of "COVID-19". The results are impressively dissonant (which you might predict from the C-diminished at the start), and absolutely riveting.

From there by way of this comment by @adelenedawner, we go to "Hide Away" by Alice Dillon, a nursery rhyme along the lines of "Ring around the Rosie" (except that the latter's association with the Great Plague appears to date to some time after the Second World War, but it still makes a good story). There's an expanded version here. Lyrics for both versions are in their comments.

From the back alleys and schoolyards we go to Broadway, with The "Zoom Block Tango".

That's a good segue to our final number, "Bolero Juilliard" -- a nice piece of choreography and video editing. You might conceivably want to compare the ending with this version.

You may remember that, somewhat over a month ago, I asked whether there were any tools for voice teaching online. I didn't get any useful suggestions. (Discord was suggested, but with an inherent 200ms delay it would be pretty useless for teaching or band practice.)

Since then, a couple of things -- not necessarily answers -- have turned up. From the National Association of Teachers of Singing, we have a COVID Resources Page and two video panel discussions: Emergency NATS Chat Calming the Coronavirus Crisis and Taking Your Teaching Online #natschats, and A Conversation: What Do Science and Data Say About the Near Term Future of Singing. The description of the latter is:

The National Association of Teachers of Singing, the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), Chorus America, Barbershop Harmony Society, and Performing Arts Medical Association (PAMA) present an important webinar about the near term future of singing as we seek fact based solutions in protecting our singers, teachers, and conductors during this time.

There are more specialized services specifically for jamming that were mentioned in some of the related discussions -- JamKazam, Jamulus, and NINJAM, and a couple of others. With the possible exception of JamKazam they all work by delaying sound by an integral number of beats or bars, which may work for improvisation but probably not for teaching. It's difficult to find good comparisons. There's a conversation going on in this forum; the 2020 part starts on Page 3. Jitsi might work, too, perhaps with a lightly-loaded private server.

(added 5/12) VoiceLessons.com was recommended in one of the NATS videos; didn't make it onto the list in the previous paragraph because it wouldn't be useful to most of my readership, but definitely worth a look if you're teaching.

Disclaimer: I have not (yet) worked through all -- or even most -- of the stuff linked from NATS, and I have not tried any of the remote jam software.

For performers who want to stream concerts, there are lots more options. Here is a blog post on the Pros and Cons of 6 live streaming sites for musicians (from 2016, so a bit dated), and Lynn Noel's Crosscurrents Blog. Lynn has been hosting virtual "house concerts" recently, and has written a great blog series about how to do it.

• Live From the Mermaid's Tavern Part I: Digital Houseconcerts in the Age of COVID-19
• Live from the Mermaid's Tavern Part II: Set Up, Schedule, and Announce a Livestream
• Live from the Mermaid's Tavern Part III: Going Live on Facebook
• Q&A for Online Sessions I: Is It The App, Or My Internet?
• Q&A for Online Sessions II: Livestreaming Setup Checklist
• Q&A For Online Sessions III: Managing Performers, Singers, and Listeners
• Live From the Mermaid's Tavern Participant FAQ
• Live From the Mermaid's Tavern Houseconcert FAQ
• Live From the Mermaid's Tavern: Reflections on Our First Six Weeks

I'll close with a quote from the last section, titled "Crisis and Transformation" of Reflections on Our First Six Weeks. (I'd link to it directly, but the sections don't have IDs.) Then double back and read the rest. (taken out of sequence because it makes a good closer)

Crisis builds community from within. Six weeks ago, my mom had just died, I was laid off, my knee replacement had just been postponed as an elective surgery, and the Mermaid's Tavern was a pile of old Macs and cables in my basement. I needed motivation to face a pandemic day to day. I found it in a community that urgently needed to sing together. Thank you all for making me believe I too could be essential.

We WILL make harmony again in real time. Harmony is like bread: staple soul food, powered by a living community organism. There's nothing like it hot and fresh. Still, once you've sung with dear friends across five time zones, there's no going back. Online community is here to stay. Come on down to the Mermaid's Tavern.

Feel free to point me at other resources in the comments.

It isn't often that I see the name of someone I've met, and respect, in the lede of a New York Times article, but here you go:

Tim Bray, an engineer who had been a vice president of Amazon’s cloud computing arm, said the firings were “evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture.”

A prominent engineer and vice president of Amazon’s cloud computing arm said on Monday that he had quit “in dismay” over the recent firings of workers who had raised questions about workplace safety during the coronavirus pandemic.

But first go read his blog post - it's scathing. Here's a sample:

Management could have objected to the event, or demanded that outsiders be excluded, or that leadership be represented, or any number of other things; there was plenty of time. Instead, they just fired the activists.

Snap! · At that point I snapped. VPs shouldn’t go publicly rogue, so I escalated through the proper channels and by the book. I’m not at liberty to disclose those discussions, but I made many of the arguments appearing in this essay. I think I made them to the appropriate people.

That done, remaining an Amazon VP would have meant, in effect, signing off on actions I despised. So I resigned.

The victims weren’t abstract entities but real people; here are some of their names: Courtney Bowden, Gerald Bryson, Maren Costa, Emily Cunningham, Bashir Mohammed, and Chris Smalls.

I’m sure it’s a coincidence that every one of them is a person of color, a woman, or both. Right?

Here are a couple more quotes:

at the end of the day, the big problem isn’t the specifics of Covid-19 response. It’s that Amazon treats the humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack potential. Only that’s not just Amazon, it’s how 21st-century capitalism is done.

[...]

Firing whistleblowers isn’t just a side-effect of macroeconomic forces, nor is it intrinsic to the function of free markets. It’s evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture. I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison.

The post links to other press coverage of Amazon's cavalier treatment of its warehouse workers during the pandemic.

Personal note: I met Tim at a Web conference twenty years or so ago, when I was working on an XML-based project at Ricoh -- Tim was one of the authors of the XML spec. Turns out he's also an environmental activist, and a signatory to an Open letter to Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Board of Directors calling for Amazon to adopt "an immediate company-wide plan addressing climate change". That's well worth a read, too.

Blank list copied from marahmarie: Quarantine Meme's spreading like...the plague. I apparently started working on this Wednesday and got distracted before I could post it.

1. Are you an essential worker?

I'm retired, so not even a worker.

2. How many drinks have you had since the quarantine started?

Maybe 0.5/day? Would be more, but I'm out of gin.

3. If you have kids... are they driving you nuts?

I have kids, but they're adults and living with their respective partners.

4. What new hobby have you taken up during this?

Refreshing news sites and maps way too often.

5. How many grocery runs have you done?

One for curbside pickup, and a couple that were run for me.

6. Do you have any special occasions that you will miss during this quarantine?

Yes. More than one.

7. Are you keeping your housework done?

Yes.

8. What movie have you watched during this quarantine?

Haven't watched any movies. I don't think streaming filk concerts count.

9. What are you streaming with?

YouTube.

10. 9 months from now is there any chance of you having a baby?

No. For several reasons.

12. What's your go-to quarantine meal?

Don't really have one; we're trying to get a decent variety.

13. Is this whole situation making you paranoid?

Not about the virus. And I'm not paranoid about my country's government; they really are out to get me.

14. Has your internet gone out on you during this time?

Thankfully, no.

15. What month do you predict this all ends?

I don't even want to predict which year.

16. First thing you're gonna do when you get off quarantine?

Go out for dinner with as much of the family as I can collect on short notice.

17. Where do you wish you were right now?

I'm an introvert. Right here is fine.

18. What free-from-quarantine activity are you missing the most?

Somewhere between singing with my band and my weekly singing lessons.

19. Have you run out of toilet paper and hand sanitizer?

Not yet. And we have plenty of soap.

20. Do you have enough food to last a month?

Probably, but rice and beans gets old pretty quickly.

It's been a week. Among other things, it was the last time Colleen's caregiver will be coming over for at least a month, and our housekeeper is working outside on yard care (which absolutely needs it). We picked up groceries, and last night's dinner from our favorite bistro, curbside with minimal interaction, and otherwise stayed home. I need to decide whether I feel safe going to a dentist appointment tomorrow -- should have made that call last week, but for some reason the combination of stress, depression, and anxiety makes things like that hard.

An article on making a will and other documents was pretty disturbing (I have one, but Colleen doesn't, and neither of us has an advance directive or financial power of attorney.) I was somewhat reassured, however, to note that Washington allows remote notarization, so we can do those without going out. I'm not sure whether the many articles I've linked to about how to make a mask -- including this particularly simple one and this No-Sew Pleated Face Mask with Handkerchief and Hair Tie were exactly reassuring, but at least they're sort of encouraging rather than alarming. "Don’t panic about shopping, getting delivery or accepting packages" was definitely reassuring. (Though I'm being a bit paranoid about the mail anyway.)

On the gripping hand, there is Filk Streams – Where to find the best Fannish concerts online. It looks as though there's going to be a virtual con or housefilk at least every weekend. I haven't gotten to more than a fraction, but I did sing in one of HELIOsphere's virtual circles last night, and expect to (um... "go to" isn't exactly right, is it?) the dead dog tonight. Another good place to find online filk is the "Festival of the Living Rooms" group on the Book of Faces.

Zoom appears to be the best software for circles, with Jitsi Meet an open-source alternative with end-to-end encryption but somewhat worse performance. (See Mozilla Foundation's article about Zoom for why you might want end-to-end encryption.) Note, though, that Jitsi's security depends on having an unguessable meeting name. They offer suggestions.

I've seen streaming concerts over Zoom as well -- that's how HELIOsphere is doing them -- but also YouTube and FB among others. I stay away from FB when I can, so I used YouTube for the mini-concert I gave two days ago. I wouldn't call it "great" by a long shot, but I think "not too awful for a first attempt" is a fair description.

( Notes & links, as usual )

Last Wednesday, Pocket, which populates Firefox's new tab, pointed me at an article in Harvard Business Review titled That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief. It goes into some more detail about what grief is and some of the things you can do about it. ("Just get over it" is not one of those things.)

You don't get to my age without having done a fair amount of grieving, and any discussion of it is likely to attract my attention for some reason. Probably Dunning–Kruger effect if truth be told -- simply having done something a few times doesn't make one an expert. Nevertheless, I'm available for hugs if needed, and advice of dubious quality if wanted.

I was going to say something else here, but it seems to have fizzled and I want to get this out there so that it doesn't sit in my drafts folder and get moldy.

( Notes & links )

If you've been reading this journal for a while, you probably know that I've been taking singing lessons. (Comparatively few of you have heard me sing recently; those who have say that the improvement has been noticable.)

And even if you've only been reading for the last week, you'll know that I've been "socially distancing" myself -- I'm in a high-risk category due to my age, and not going out of the house for anything but medical appointments and food. Singing lessons aren't "essential", so I've stopped going -- and Nancy, my singing teacher, has a huge problem.

So I'm asking the lazy web for help finding a videoconferencing system that can be used for singing lessons. I want Nancy to be able to play something on a MIDI keyboard and hear me singing along with it. That would require suppressing the normal simultaneous monitoring on the teacher's end -- the MIDI should play only on my end, and get mixed with my voice at that point. But when Nancy is using her microphone, the return channel has to be muted. And if she wants to sing along with something she's playing, she needs to hear the keyboard at her end, without the round-trip delay.

I'm beginning to suspect that the only way to get all of this is to write it myself, but I'd love to be proved wrong. Meanwhile, I'd settle for something with extremely low transmission delay; that would mean point-to-point rather than going through a server.

And if any of you are giving lessons remotely, I'd love to hear what works for you.

Today I am grateful for...

• The fact that nobody in my family has developed COVID-19 symptoms. So far. To my knowledge.
• Spring. Well, except for the weeds. I can do without weeds.
• Restaurants that deliver. Assuming they do, of course; haven't tested it. Yet.
• The internet, streaming multimedia, video conferencing, and other ways of staying connected while staying home.
• A retirement income stream that does not require me to work.
• Amazon. Although gloves and tissues are out of stock. Of course.
• I'll be grateful for the surgical masks I ordered, if they arrive. I have doubts.

This is going to be rather disconnected. Not stream-of-consciousness; I think a live stream costs extra.

Social distancing here at the North End isn't a whole lot different from business as usual. Not that I'm getting a whole lot done. And I have been out of the house, most recently for a trip to the pharmacy. And Colleen has a MAC clinic appointment Thursday. But we're pretty well set to at least avoid trips to the grocery store for a couple of weeks, and more if we have to. I don't think Colleen will notice any difference at all, unless her caregiver has to stop coming, which would only happen if her household or ours needs to be quarantined. Although we probably ought to discuss that.

Things aren't as eerie here as they are in Seattle (I've seen pictures), but even on the island the streets are more deserted than usual. One unexpected advantage of having an electric car is never having to touch a possibly-contaminated gas-pump handle. Another is that you can wait in it listening to the radio for a loooooooooong time without running the battery down.

Regretting having procrastinated paperwork, e.g. durable powers of attorney. I need to face the possibility that one or both of us may need it. Nothing settles the mind etc... I know most of the forms are online.

I'm going to (try to) cut down on the time I spend chasing COVID-19 links and refreshing news updates; I think we're all either pretty well informed or pretty fed up on that front. The first couple of links are things to keep yourself amused with. The third is, arguably, also in that category. Look around -- there is a lot of free stuff out there. Not to mentiongutenberg.org. And many entertainment venues are streaming performances for free.

( Notes & links )

You've probably seen COVID-19: Episode 3 already. If not, go back and read it and the preceeding two episodes. We've started "social distancing" ourselves (easier for introverts, of course); leaving the house only for medical appointments and urgent shopping (which there isn't much of -- we've been stocking up). You should, too. The important thing is to FlattenTheCurve. Island County has six confirmed cases as of yesterday; that's up from three the day before.

We've canceled this year's Rainbow Con, or rather moved it to next year. We're working with this year's guests to pick a date that works for all of them. Consonance has been postponed to sometime later this year; Norwescon has been canceled. The island's UU congregation held its weekly service via Zoom. Zoom also looks like a possible way of keeping in touch with your family and friends, though there are probably better apps for home use.

I have been spending way too much time tracking the pandemic; I'm going to try to cut back on that. Presumably in favor of the other certainty: taxes, although my track record on that is pretty poor.

Take care of yourself. The immediate future is looking very bleak. For longer-range bleakness and some compensatory optimism, read Our Future on Earth (more info under Tuesday's notes) and The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis (more in this post.)

( Notes & links, as usual )

I'm 73 years old today. In the middle of a pandemic that disproportionally kills older people, in a country with a totally broken public health system.

We'd been planning a family birthday party for this weekend; if it happens at all it'll be via Zoom or Hangouts.

Doom destruction and despair People dying everywhere Happy birthday! Happy birthday! -- sing two verses while washing your hands

Going to stop here before I make myself more depressed.

So I've been doing a lot of reading, about COVID-19 among other things. Here's a household status report, and the current collection of linkspam.

The household has been making some prepararations. At this point we can, I think, handle being isolated at least two weeks easily, just on what's in the fridge, and four weeks without too much trouble. We haven't gone into full prepper mode, and hopefully we won't have to. We can handle more than that as long as we can get dry goods from Amazon and the power doesn't go out.

Things will get difficult if one of us gets sick. Everyone here at the North End is "At Higher Risk" except maybe S; L and Colleen both have underlying health problems that put them at risk, and Colleen and I are both over 65 -- 12 years over in my case. It says something that the healthiest person in the house is a 73-year-old with a bad back. I do what I can.

It's looking unlikely that I'll be able to go to Consonance. That's in just two weeks, and involves two shuttle rides and a plane ride each way and a hotel at the other end of it. If it was just me I'd be tempted to miss it, but I really don't want to bring con crud home to Colleen.

Santa Clara County Public Health Department is recommending that persons at higher risk of severe illness should stay home and away from crowded social gatherings of people as much as possible such as parades, conferences, sporting events, and concerts where large numbers of people are within arm’s length of one another.

-- note that other sources define "large numbers" as 10 or more.

Here are the links -- they're all either from last week's Done Since post or will be in this week's, but I wanted to get them all in one place. I don't guarantee that they're in any order that makes sense.

TL;DR: if you read nothing else, take a look at @siderea's series of posts tagged coronavirus2020, the CDC's Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pages, and for comic relief, this Joy of Tech comic.

( Notes & links )

I resisted the temptation to call this series A Journal of the Plague Year, but it was hard. The fact that I don't like long tags helped. It would work as a blog subtitle, but I'm hoping that I won't need it.