Status Update, June 2020

No time like now to write this! For one thing, I have clients. Jobs! I'm earning money at home in my spare time.

I'm getting exercise. When I felt I had to stop going to the gym, I increased my walking to six times a week, three miles each time. First, I went toward town on the paved sidewalk, but I spent too much of my time stepping aside, calculating whether I actually could step aside (between a fence and a puddle), and resenting people who don't step aside when I do. I sat down and figured out a three-mile path in this neighborhood, where everyone walks in the street and it's fairly easy to be six feet away from someone coming toward you. After some weeks of that, I've started exploring a little more, and have rediscovered the overland route to the railroad trail. It makes the walk a little more than three miles, and includes uneven terrain and a bigger hill. Presumably, that's all good. I carry a camera and an umbrella much of the time. The latter not only repels rain, but gives me moving shade. I also use the occasion to research the best way to keep my glasses from fogging up with exhaled breath that comes up from my mask. So far, the second best is the folded-tissue-at-the-top trick, and the most effective method is carefully folding the glasses and placing them in a pocket.

Today.

And I'm making music. Once a week I record a piece for the Irish group that can't meet at the college at present, and send them to Jane (mandolin player) to forward to the group, and then for a couple of days, people thank me, and some of them record tracks of their own, or record themselves playing along, or send a link to something else musical.

mrkip w · Ashokan Farwell [Ungar]

I'm also getting together with a violinist who wants to play the same music I'm interested in. We had been sending mp3s back and forth. I'd send her an accompaniment, and she'd send back the track with her playing on it. We finally got together here, outside, and practiced under the tree out front for a while, properly distanced, and since then we've been playing at her place in Victor while her husband applauds (gently, as he is recovering from shoulder surgery). Next week, we're going to try this wild idea I have of practicing in the garage here. Better acoustics, and there's an outlet right there, and we can still be far enough apart to feel fairly safe.


Now and then, I send a link to the Shakespeare group, which has had its last two meetings via Zoom, which I still haven't installed on my laptop. It doesn't feel like a meeting. Only one person can talk at a time. How am I supposed to whisper to the person next to me?

I'm also slowly collaborating with an old friend in Colorado on new comic projects. It would go faster in person--for me, drawing is often a social pursuit, passing a clipboard back and forth across a kitchen table, that sort of thing.

I also have a project to transcribe some of my sister's songs to sheet music format. Robert Benchley once explained that you can get all kinds of things done, provided you have a big job you are doing all the others to escape from. I'm hoping something bigger will come along so I can devote more time to this worthy project.

And sometimes I blog.
.