1. I read some more of The Age of Innocence. The Countess Ellen Olenska is the leading actor in the Grade B movie playing in the mind of the bored Newland Archer as he settles into the rut of his marriage to May Welland, who, by every convention of New York society, is a splendid match for him, but, when measured by the longings of his soul, falls fall short of Newland Archer's desires.
2. One day, I might look back on this blog as a record of life during the pandemic. In that spirit, I'll just note that the Idaho's governor issued a stay at home order for the state of Idaho.
Debbie and I imposed such an order on ourselves a week ago. I have left the house to go to Yoke's and the liquor store. Today, I shopped at Yoke's for some food. The store had the about the same amount of business as it usually does on a weekday afternoon and I found all the stuff I wanted.
I also dropped in at the liquor store to buy a bottle of George Dickel Rye Whiskey. Debbie has been enjoying a Manhattan or two some evenings and I wanted to make sure we had the right ingredients on hand.
3. For years now, when Debbie and I spend an evening together in the living room we call it a party. We had a slightly different party than usual this evening. For the first time since buying the Vizio nearly two years ago, we tuned into some news programming and listened to interviews with experts in epidemiology, public health experts, emergency room medical people, and other government officials and non-governmental people offering both their analysis of the pandemic and, in the case of the medical people, eyewitness accounts of their experiences in emergency rooms and intensive care units.
Around 9:00 or so, having taken in the television programs we watched, in addition to podcasts about the pandemic we listened to earlier in the day, we switched gears, and, instead of watching a movie, we watched an episode from the the second season of Foyle's War. In it, Foyle investigates a break in into the house of the head of a multi-national food company and discovers that all kinds of crime and even treason of a sort are connected to this burglary.
The episode, coincidentally, addressed questions of the role of business and commerce in a time of war. The corporate figure in the episode proclaimed that the interests of business matter more than war (thus, on behalf of his company, he was making trade deals with the Nazis). I couldn't help but think about his position (an amoral, money driven one) vis a vis current arguments going on about the tension between our country's economy and efforts to stem the growth of the pandemic.
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