It’s hot. Is it hot? It’s hot in here. It’s hot out there. It’s so hot. Squirrels are dying. Baby hummingbirds are abandoned. The crows are clearly pissed. For three days in a row Portland saw temperatures in triple digits—three record breaking days in a row. The fourth day promised to be a chilly 97Continue reading “A Journal of the Plague Year: #29”
Category Archives: The Plague Year
A Journal of the Plague Year: #28
Here are some details about a typical Saturday over the last month or so: I’ll have a leisurely morning, drink coffee, eat a light breakfast, walk the dogs, make plans for the yard, eat a heavier lunch, drop off cans at the bottle drop, buy records at the curbside of Music Millennium, dog bones atContinue reading “A Journal of the Plague Year: #28”
A Journal of the Plague Year: #27
Be Drunkby Charles BaudelaireYou have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it—it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk. But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. ButContinue reading “A Journal of the Plague Year: #27”
A Journal of the Plague Year: #26
What a terrible time to stop drinking. In the first week of this glorious new year, I was so disheartened by the attempted coup, the insurrection in our nation’s capital, it would have been SO easy to drown out that despair with alcohol. Similarly, it would have been so simple (and yet impossible) to self-medicateContinue reading “A Journal of the Plague Year: #26”
A Journal of the Plague Year: #25
This morning I got up to find a comment posted to one of my blog entries! How exciting is that? I will tell you. It’s pretty exciting. It’s rare, these days–it’s rare in general, but it seems more rare these days–in part, I know, because I have not been writing. Guess what the blog entryContinue reading “A Journal of the Plague Year: #25”
A Journal of the Plague Year: #24
September 15, 2020 Yesterday was the first official day of school for students in my district, the first time in my 32 year career that the school year would open with distance learning on account of a viral pandemic, and, as it turns out, the first time in my 32 year career that school wouldContinue reading “A Journal of the Plague Year: #24”
A Journal of the Plague Year: #23
If it ain’t one thing, it’s another thing. Welcome to the shit-show that is 2020. First, we had the coronavirus. Schools close from March all the way to the end of the 2019-2020 school year. Teachers learn on the fly to conduct the business of teaching and learning from a distance. George Floyd is murdered,Continue reading “A Journal of the Plague Year: #23”
A Journal of the Plague Year: #22
I live in a suburb of Portland, Oregon. You might say that it is the closest suburb to downtown, just south of the city center by a 15 minute car ride. In my town of Milwaukie, there are often small groups of people on the sidewalks of 99 or at the Farmer’s Market downtown holdingContinue reading “A Journal of the Plague Year: #22”
Journal of the Plague Year: #21
Oregon’s governor, Kate Brown, has made an executive order that as of July 1st, all Oregonians must wear face masks in indoor public places, or outdoors whenever there are concentrations of people and 6 foot distancing cannot be maintained. As if on cue, my DEVO face masks were in the mailbox the day that orderContinue reading “Journal of the Plague Year: #21”
Journal of the Plague Year: #20
As a high school English teacher, I believe that on Friday, June 12, 2020, I experienced the strangest last day of school in the history of last school days. I mean, on the surface, it was somewhat unremarkable. I got out of bed at 8:30 a.m., took a shower, didn’t shave, moseyed on downstairs inContinue reading “Journal of the Plague Year: #20”
michael jarmer 