Sweetwaters Swirl

Sweetwaters Ypsilanti Cross Street Saturday morning check-in will the wifi system remember login and password, yes, will WordPress remember login and password, yes, nostalgia for across the street I can see the water tower, other shoulder is campus where I worked, MLK Jr. bust where rallies held even as enrollments *whistle-sound* plummeted to the coconut clonk of meetings and more meetings and high shoulder shrugs but I’m not feeling anything in particular, heck, I barely even remember a lot of it.

COVID-19 Coronavirus crown translates and boom just like that again human backing and forthing about the right measure of response, fear and preparation, chill and clench, how will we die any of us? Living elders are told to stay put, don’t circulate (dead elders, do what you want, carry on, disperse, fan out, float float float). CDC says. Disease control teams let to let go no work for you two years ago positions vacated and unfilled until whoa WHOA! holy shit we need masks and respirators and tests and the numbers, are they even meaningful? Sort of. Quantitative scrambles for data stories; slow data journalism hurry up; how much is the suffering? Death is a bummer. But does the living with it and battling through–does it hurt? It’s scary not to get air. Terrifying to a body human or otherwise. Read writ that it started with a bat, a bat with sniffles who bit (or kissed toothily, even blood-suckled) a pig, whose butchered parts were passed around likely feasted upon by humans and in that supply chain offshed bloomed this virus. People love masked meat and bacon too too much sometimes. Not that the bat intended for this to blast the gen pop of humans. Neither should we blame the pig. Or the first person jumped upon by skydiving (surface-skiing COVID-19). Float float float.

It’s spring break now. And that means taking the feral to-do list to the groomer-trainer for a nail trim and domestication lessons, sit-stay and do not bite sort of stuff. Six chapters to sift re-orientingly like a cheese block through one of those shredder devices that’s hard to wash properly, to read for Monday the 16th, first day back on the Shanks Hall block. Unless people for sneezing and not washing their hands give yet greater proliferation–unwitting, nobody’s fault, no bat’s fault nor pig’s!–to this virus. And then we’ll meet online. But will CCCC be cancelled? Indicators suggest yes, it will. But it’s a damnable pickle for big orgs whose solvency depends overmuch on conventions. And there is so much hugging at conferences, so much close sitting, so much to catch up about and old friends. Where are you presenting? Den of contagion 31, Milwaukee Center, on Saturday’s last session, which means the offshed accumulations may well be at peakmost apex. Hand sanitizer will be in the audience smiling wryly at the COVID-19’s lurking invisibly low profile no name tags about the place.

More pesky than that are the closer and closer approaching deadlines for a title to send to U Virginia folks for upcoming invited talk–springtime reverdie theme and hopes I can work in opening vignette about mysterious disappearances and bread bag of pennies bursted into a middle Michigan snow bank in 1978. Gone. Then came back. Mysterious–momentarily devastating–disappearance. That plus a CCC review. Gonna get to that now, next. That plus getting into revised shape the textbook for next year. That plus reading other textbook manuscript for next week’s conference call about samesaid. That plus revisions on a chapter harnessed to snails but still moving, still, moving, stillmoving. Did you see that? It moved! Playing too much. Emoji for declaring effs bankruptcy; new effbank accounts with effdebit cards already at zero and overdrawn for annual charges. What the!? Plus a batch of writing from PhD students to read and comment. Plus social callings with old colleagues and friends, a beer Monday, evening food Wednesday, what day is it ever anyway, and the strum of parenting and grandparenting at a distance, back for a twinkle a smile a scoop. Before driving again to SW Virginia.