The Northwest Files

For What It's Worth

“Something’s happenin’ here, what it is, ain’t exactly clear.”

That’s of course a line from “For What It’s Worth,” the iconic song performed decades ago by a band called Buffalo Springfield. You know, Neil Young, Stephen Stills, a couple of others.

Certainly, something is indeed goin’ down. Certainly, what it is, ain’t exactly clear.

As I wonder about that something, here are a few of the questions that I find interesting to ponder.

1 – It’s looking like hundreds of thousands of people, some perhaps without health insurance, could be about to rack up some medical debt. What, if any, impact will this crisis have on the debate for medical coverage for all?

2 – We know that medical care, for-profit or otherwise, is getting much more difficult for people who live in rural areas. What impact might this crisis have on that sad fact?

3 – What impact might it have on the hundreds of thousands of small businesses that are in jeopardy because their customers are locked down?

4 – What impact might it have on the millions of individuals who work on contract or in the gig economy? What will happen to bartenders, wait staff, musicians, and others who work in restaurants?

5 – What about those of us who are getting used to buying groceries on-line? Will any of us want to return to fighting our way through our local grocery stores when we can shop for our stuff on the Web and have it delivered to our homes?

6 – As a part of question number 5, with companies large and small hustling to build infrastructure to support home deliveries, when this mess is all over and done, will anyone want to shop person-to-person again, except when absolutely necessary? Will the result be an all-new level of the gig economy that we could never have seen coming?

7 – What will the level of unemployment be when we emerge from this mess? Will those laid off during this crisis be quickly rehired?

8 – Will the markets bounce back to their previous stratospheric highs?

9 – With nobody working and paying into their Social Security accounts, how soon, if a lockdown continues, will the Social Security Administration run out of money to send retirees every month?

10 – With people worldwide locked down, traffic is almost nonexistent, so air pollution is almost nonexistent. Are scientists in their labs measuring the differences between today’s air quality and air qualities worldwide a month, or two, or six, ago? Will anyone want to go back to what we had?

11 – As we all cut back on our driving, will our reliance on petroleum, the automobile industry, and the subservient industries, be so greatly diminished that many of them go bankrupt?

12- Is massive and lasting disruption happening right under our noses? Is it so big that we scarcely notice it? Or will things snap back to normal?

13 – Finally, do the American people want government that looks after business first? Or do we want government that looks after people first? Or is there middle ground that would allow both sets of values to be equitably served?

I doubt that any of us will be able to guess the answers to these questions. But it is indeed time for us to, “stop, people, what’s that sound, everybody look what’s goin’ down.”

It might be time to ask, “what it’s worth,” pertaining to our daily lives and the ways in which we conduct them; then find some answers that will help us all survive in whatever new reality awaits us.

-JFT

Quarantine

We’re approaching the end of our first week of almost total quarantine. I thought I’d list some of the ways in which we’re coping with this.

(Yes, we’re taking this seriously. I gather that some folks are not. Fine. They get sick, it’s on them. They make others sick, it’s on them. We’re not going to do that.)

I drove a car this morning for the first time since Monday, when I cruised into town for a haircut. It will be my last haircut while this is going on. By the time it’s over, I expect to resemble Sasquatch even more than I already do.

My drive this morning involved a trip to the recycle dump here where we live. I needed to get rid of four big bags of wine bottles. It’s an amazing thing. Either they reproduce out there in the recycle box on the deck or some dastardly neighbor is adding to our collection of empty bottles when we’re not looking.

I think it’s the latter. Why do I think that? I think that because the supply of full wine bottles in the rack down in the den seems never to grow.

That nearly unbearable situation will end Monday when we receive a mail-order shipment of wine that won't last long enough.

We just got a big mail-order box of food for Rio and Vivian, our two cats, who seem unperturbed by what’s going on. They’ll be happy as long as they are fed. Should we run out of food and die of starvation, they’ll be quite content, I’m sure, to take bites out of us. Starting, perhaps, with our lips. Revenge, I should think, for all the kisses they get from us.

I think that for now, at least, as long as the supply chains remain healthy, that we are not in danger of starving. We have discovered Instacart, which probably you know about. You shop online and your stuff is delivered to you in a matter of just a couple of hours. As long as you don’t ask for toilet paper.

We’ve discovered something else, too. The restaurant here where we live, which shall remain unnamed to protect the guilty, just announced that it will prepare meals for pickup or delivery.

To this news would we ordinarily exclaim, “Bah! Humbug.” The place has been that dreadful. None of the residents here use it. It stays in business because, I think, it has a captive audience in the form of those who come here for the three golf courses, the hotel, and the convention center.

But a few months ago, a new owner took over. The new owner seems to have hired a new chef and revamped the menu. We are going to give it a try tonight through the pickup-option. Laura and I are optimists, so we do not expect to be poisoned. If we are, I hope it’s not transferrable to the cats when they nibble on our remains.

Nothing at all going on in the world of music. No choir rehearsals, which along with performances, have been canceled. It’s the same everywhere here. Bend is a resort town that is filled with craft breweries and clubs that have live music. The clubs are all closed. The musicians are having a terrible time, as you might imagine. This makes me very sad, but also very happy that I did not major in music when I went to college. That’s what I set out to do. I was dissuaded. That seemed unfortunate at the time. Now I recognize it as an enormous boon, an escape from the jaws of financial death.

From financial death are we saved by the fact that we are old folks who live on a fixed income. That used to be not such a good thing. Now, with so many workplaces closed and so many people laid off, it looks like a very good thing indeed. Isn’t perspective interesting?

The snow nearly is gone from our golf courses, which means that Laura soon will resume one of her favorite pastimes – chasing a little white ball around a lawn. She’s looking forward to that, and to resuming gardening.

The lore here is that planting anything before the snow on Black Butte melts is fruitless. Literally. That will take a few more weeks. But she’ll be out on the course, celebrating golf and spring, soon.

Me, I will celebrate spring my own way. I will pick a little banjo.

If that isn’t a foolproof key to social distancing, I don’t know what is.

Stay safe and well, my friends. Talk all this seriously. You can’t afford not to. I’ll see you all when this is over.

-JFT

Prisoners

The reality of the COVID-19 mess is sinking in, isn’t it.

I went out for a haircut today. I suspect that it will be one of the last times I leave our home until this whole thing is over.

That’s difficult to contemplate. Laura and are both are of an age group that is said to be vulnerable. We need to stick close to home.

I this morning read a piece in The Lancet, the respected British medical journal, that the mortality rate for COVID-19 could run as high as 5 or 6 percent. For reference, the mortality rate for the common flu is about 0.1 percent.

So we are compelled to imprison ourselves.

We still need food. Yes, and wine.

Wine, we can mail-order. Same with food for the cats. Food for us is more difficult. A quick canvass suggests that the few stores that deliver are overwhelmed.

My guess is that very soon, stores like Fred Meyers, which does deliver, will iron the kinks out of its presently overworked system and we will be able to get deliveries.

For now, there’s lots of stuff in the freezer. There’s even more stuff stashed in the pantry. But we will run short of fresh veg, coffee, butter, and also half-and-half, soon.

That’s when I resort to my secret weapon: Whole Foods. Well, and maybe also Market of Choice. I do not think that the Whole Foods store here delivers. I’m not sure about Market of Choice.

Both are lovely stores, neither is ever as crowded as Safeway, so keeping a reasonable distance between me and an approaching COVID-19 zombie-spreader won’t be difficult.

The project that has been taking so much of our time and energy (we’re members of a board that is determined to build a center for the arts to Central Oregon) now is officially on hold. No meetings. With anyone. Phew. The intensity ratchets down a notch.

Mastersingers also is at full stop. No rehearsals, no concerts until this is done and dusted.

If nothing else, this pause in life, this time in the lovely, comfortable prison that our home is, might just bring a bit of clarity. Time to practice my banjo, if nothing else.

At least we can get wine by mail. And if getting hold of food proves difficult, hey, I could afford to lose some weight.

You gotta look at the bright side.

-JFT

The Gentleman's Relish

I was last week reading a spy novel that was set in prewar England, especially London. In it, one of the characters, who has been exiled because he is a disgraceful person, yearns for a tin of Patum Peperium.

What the hell is that?

Bam! Straight to Google, look it up.

It’s called The Gentleman’s Relish. Good on eggs, toast, almost anything, supposedly. Served in gent’s clubs like The Garrick (you’re a member there, of course), and sold at places like Fortnum & Mason and the better restaurants.

If you don’t happen to shop at Fortnum’s, you can buy it from Amazon. But better to make it.

Here’s the recipe, along with some background that makes for fun reading:

https://lukehoney.typepad.com/the_greasy_spoon/2015/11/make-your-own-gentlemans-relish.html

This, we are told, is the recipe from The Hawksmoor, a high-end restaurant in London that serves Patum Peperium. Supposedly, the secret ingredient is just that: Still secret.

No worries. Out of curiosity, I’ve just ginned up a batch. It’s delicious, thanks in part to the interesting mix of spices, which I overdid just a little because that’s what I do. It’s brown and rather fishy in taste, and very rich, thanks to 16 ounces of butter.

Secret ingredient or not, I like it. I will be making more of this stuff.

-JFT

If I didn’t Have It Earlier, I’ve Probably Got It Now

I do some of the cooking around here. Only seems fair, right? So far, I haven't poisoned anyone.

Tonight is one of my nights for dinner. I needed a few things. So I went to our local Safeway.

Now, shopping at this particular store usually is a mellow experience. It’s large, clean, very well stocked, and never crowded.

It was almost all those things this morning. Except that it was jammed with shoppers. The parking lot was full. That never happens. The checkout lines were long. That never happens. Even the self-checkout lines were long. I’ve never seen that before.

The place looked like Costco before the July 4 weekend. Shopper after shopper pushed carts loaded to the gunnels with essentials.

Me, I just needed a few things. Potatoes, capers, sardines, wine. Especially wine.

I brought all that stuff home with me. I mean, after all, it’s my night to cook.

I’m hoping I didn’t bring anything else home with me. We shall see.

-JFT

Scenery and Water

One of the many wonderful things about living where we live is that the scenery is gorgeous and the fly-fishing waters are abundant. To provide ourselves with a little taste of each, we recently ventured out to take a look at the Metolius River, which is about an hour from us.

We wanted to see more than the river. We wanted to see one of the major springs from which it flows. Yes, the Metolius, one of Central Oregon’s premium fly-fishing rivers, is fed by springs – about 100 of them, we’re told. But there is at least one major one. It just appears a pond. Look closer, though, there is water flowing from it. Lots of water. Be sure to click on these photos to see them fullsize.

You see just how much by turning your head just a few degrees north to see how the river immediately widens. It’s impressive.

But not as impressive as it is downstream a mile or two at a place called Wizard Falls. There’s a whole lot of water rushing down these rock formations on its way to Lake Billy Chinook, a large reservoir about 40 miles north of us.

It’s prime fly-fishing water. It’s catch-and-release only and the angler must use barbless hooks. That’s how we both fish in any case.

Wizard Falls is also the home of an elaborate fish hatchery. There are rainbow trout here, certainly, but also other varieties. By the thousands, and from tiny hatchlings to very large adult fish apparently ready to be introduced to the Metolius.

All in all, it’s a great way to spend a day.

-JFT

Trickery and Subterfuge

Rio, our Maine Coon cat, is much smarter than I am. You knew that, right?

But Rio has been unwell. First, last month he spent about a week with symptoms that I can only describe as those of a bad cold or the flu. We worried about him for a few days and then made an appointment for him to visit our veterinarian.

The day after we did that, he was much better. The day after that, he exhibited no symptoms.

OK, fine, cancel the appointment.

A few days ago, he began exhibiting intestinal/digestive problems. So, I made another appointment.

The day after I did that, his symptoms, with the help of a change in diet, disappeared.

Too bad, Rio, I told him, you’re going to see the vet anyway.

Hey, Rio is 17. He’s a senior cat. He’s not had a check-up in several years. It was time. He hates being taken outside in a carrier, so we are loath to put that stress on him. But we are even more loath to take any risks at all with the health of this beloved feline friend.

This morning I brought the carrier in from the garage and put it on a sofa in the living room. Rio took one look at it and disappeared. He knew exactly the portent of that cat carrier. He installed himself under our bed where I couldn’t reach him. There was no way at all he was going to tolerate what I had in mind.

Would he come out for a few Greenies, his favorite treat? No.

Would he come out for a nice bit of albacore? No.

Ah, but he has a new favorite toy. He has many toys, but this one is the one that cranks him up. It’s a ratty old shoelace from a pair of my dress shoes. (These are very nice ones – uppers of woven leather, toe caps from a crocodile, which in my view is the highest and best use of anything croc. Nasty things. They will kill you and eat you. So: Toe caps and nice new shoelaces.)

I grabbed the old shoelace, dangled it where he could see it. I could see from the gleam in his eyes as I peered under the bed that he would be unable to resist. I teased him a bit with it, he approached, I grabbed him. Stuffed him into the carrier, hauled his furry butt to the vet’s office for a checkup.

Turns out he’s fine. And apparently, he’s forgiven me for hauling him into town. The vet is doing some lab work, but for feline his age, he’s doing great. And he’d better be. I need him around here.

-JFT

Introspection

I seem to have fallen out of the habit of writing. Indeed, out of the habit of doing a lot of things. Been thinking about this a lot recently. There seem to be a couple of reasons for this.

First, Laura and I both have both been completely overtaken by a project that involves finding ways to build a center for the arts here in Central Oregon.

This thing is called the Central Oregon Center for the Arts. Laura has been spending a great deal of time on this, sometimes more than 40 hours a week. I spend a great deal of time with it as well, mostly writing and assembling materials for use on the COCA brochure, web pages, press outreach, e-mailing back and forth with other board members, and more. Yes, we both are on the board of directors. COCA pretty much occupies our dinner conversation every night. Yes, every night.

Second, if I’m not occupied with COCA, I am following the political and election news as we careen toward what surely will be the most important election in our lifetimes. The White House currently is occupied by a lunatic, a robber baron who is empowered by other robber barons. Democracy, our right to vote, seems imperiled. So does our environment. So does our access to clean air and clean water and much more. I am determined to help change that.

COCA and politics seem to leave me little time to think about anything else.

Just as I’ve not been writing, I’ve not been playing my guitar. I’ve not been playing my banjo or mandolin. I’m not sure why, except that there seem to be more important things to think about, more important work to accomplish.

But the weather is just a few weeks away from being nice enough to start fly fishing again. Just the thought of that makes me smile.

Good banjo music also makes me smile. Lightens my mood. Duh! Guess I’d better start pickin’ again. Guess I’d better sort through my fishing gear to make sure it’s ready to go. 

Doing so might even make enough room in my feeble brain to contribute to this blog more frequently than I’ve been doing. We’ll see.

-JFT

Anthems of Anger

I just watched a You Tube clip that showed Graham Nash telling an interviewer how he, David Crosby, Steven Stills, and Neil Young, the members of CSNY, came to record their song, “Ohio.”

You will remember that it came right after the National Guard shot and killed four students at Kent State University in Ohio. They were Alison Krauss, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Lee Scheuer, and William Knox Schroeder.

The date was May 4, 1970.

Our own National Guard troops opened fire on a group of unarmed students. All of them were about 19. A few had thrown rocks. All had hurled imprecations.

Imprecations and stones against live rounds and the fury of Richard Nixon’s “tin soldiers,” as Neil Young’s lyric has it.

The power of this song was, I think, one of the things that unified resistance against Nixon, a thug and a scoundrel.

“Tin soldiers and Nixon comin’, we’re finally on our own. This summer I hear the drummin’; four dead in Ohio.” That’s the opening verse.

The tune as a whole, with Stills’ guitar, Young’s vocals, the minor key and dirge-like tempo, and the harmony of that much beloved band. Moving stuff. I felt compelled to fire up the stereo system and once again listen to that song, which Young wrote in about 90 minutes, and which the band recorded, start to finish, in another 90 minutes. I turned it up loud.

It made me angry all over again. It grabbed me by the lapels and shook me. Just as it did back in 1970.

This is the power of music, the power of what happens when four musical geniuses, cranky and argumentative though they may have been, sit down with anger and a common purpose.

So, here’s what I want to know: Where is our Anthem of Anger for today? Where are the members of CSNY when we need them? Where is the music that will bring tears to our eyes, boiling anger to our hearts, and fierce resolve to march and resist until change comes?

Where is the 1970-like unity of young people who have had enough of the Trump* cult’s ridiculous charade, of the threat to their common future that Trump* and his thugs represent?

CSNY has broken apart. Expecting those worthies to step once again into the breach may be an expectation too far. But if not them, who?

Who has both the integrity and the audience to come up with an Anthem of Anger for today?

And upon which of Trumps*’ crimes can it be based?

Loss of food stamps for the poor? Children in cages? Use of international politics to enhance his election bid? The rape and pillage of our public lands? The rise of the Nazi Right? Or are none of these as blatantly ugly as the murder, by our own troops, of four American college students?

What will it take? Will it take the murder of more of our own students by our own people?

What will it take? Tell me. I need to know. Because I’m as angry as hell and am totally fed up with this shit. I badly need to see a way forward.

-JFT

Slippery!

What a crazy morning! Laura and I drove into town for a meeting. It was about 9:15. Snowing. Temp on the dashboard indicator was 28 degrees.

The roads were as slippery and icy as I’ve ever seen them. Top speed? Maybe 30 mph, tops. Any faster would have been a mark of certifiable insanity.

We’d gotten only a few miles when we came onto our first wreck, a big old Dodge pickup that had skidded off the highway, hit a juniper tree that was left badly maimed, and crashed onto its left side.

A LEO had stopped to render assistance. We could see as we were waved past that the cab of the truck was empty. So maybe the driver wasn’t too badly injured. We hope.

Just a mile or so down the road, with me trying to keep our car going in a straight line while creeping along, we came upon another wreck. An old Toyota pickup had skidded off the road and hit a juniper tree, breaking it off, completely knocking it down. A Sheriff’s car was there to render assistance. No sign of a driver.

The thing is, both of these wrecks happened on completely straight stretches of road. Go figure.

We continued on our way, driving with tiptoes and fingertips, and arrived at our destination after slithering around only a couple of times. All-wheel drive helps. So do winter tires.

As Mitch Jayne, front man for The Dillards, my favorite bluegrass band ever, used to say, it was as “…slippery as deer guts on a doorknob” out there.

And yes, it was.

-JFT