Elbow patches

I caught a virus on the Isle of Harris last summer. This virus causes an obsession with collecting tweed. It starts with one’s first Harris tweed jacket. But it doesn’t end there. Oh, no. Before you know it you’re scouring eBay for more, discovering in disappointment that there are only so many colors of Harris tweed. (If you ever see a burgundy Harris tweed jacket in men’s size 40, or a deep forest green, or a deep midnight blue, please let me know. But I don’t think you’re likely to see one.)

And though it starts with Harris tweed, soon all tweeds become interesting. There are many fine tweeds. My last acquisition — a cream colored tweed made in the U.S.A. — has elbow patches. This is my first jacket with elbow patches. Now I’m afraid I’ll start collecting jackets just for the elbow patches.

I learned from Googling that elbow patches have an interesting history. The elbows of jackets wore out first, so worn-out elbows were often patched with leather. Then the patched-elbow look became popular — even a status symbol — and new jackets came with patches. Elbow patches are sometimes called “professor patches.” Gardening, you see, or shooting, didn’t wear out the elbows. But sitting at a desk did. Hence: professor patches.

It would take some hardcore desk-sitting to wear out tweed elbows, because tweed is very hard to wear out. I feel sure, though, that J.R.R. Tolkien wore out many tweed jackets against the desks and armchairs of Oxford. But the most common type of damage to vintage tweed jackets, from what I’ve seen, are rips and tears in the lining where the sleeve attaches to the shoulder of the jacket. That’s from putting on jackets carelessly and straining the seams. That’s one reason, of course, that the linings of jackets are always smooth and silky: the jacket slips on easily over whatever else you’re wearing. The method that I like to use for putting on a jacket is to reach straight up with both arms after my arms are in the sleeves. Then the jacket falls down onto the shoulders nice and neat.

In Googling for the history of elbow patches, I saw that some guys are worried about whether elbow patches are out of style. Good grief. Who cares whether elbow patches are out of style? How could anything that is good and practical ever go out of style? This is why I collect 7-ounce cups and saucers in heavy porcelain, and that’s why guests are always befuddled when they ask me for a large mug, and I say that, oh dear, I just don’t seem to have any. After making a show of thinking for a second, I heroically reach into a top shelf and just happen to discover one large mug. They are grateful. But those guests who are here at least for a weekend soon abandon the big mug and instead start using 7-ounce cups and saucers in heavy porcelain. It doesn’t take long for them to come around.

These days, for outdoor recreation, “tech” clothing is the thing — quilted coats, and synthetic fabrics that stretch a little and dry quickly. Tweed, which is always wool, is said to smell like wet dog when it gets wet. But I don’t care.

These days, we are encouraged to buy “thrifted” clothing rather than new things, for environmental reasons. Most clothing, though, is not the sort of thing that will last for decades and that retains value. But apparently people can’t bring themselves to throw away old tweed, because after twenty years it may still look new. Much of it ends up on eBay.

One of these days I’m going to find one in burgundy, forest green, or midnight blue.

April 20


The photo is from 7:50 p.m. Supper is over, and the kitchen has been tidied up after the wreckage of a wok supper.

I am so lucky not to be cooking for one — or gardening or orcharding for one — during this quarantine. There is a certain reluctance, as suppertime approaches, for those who are not in the kitchen to wander into the kitchen and ask, “What’s for supper?” A better practice, I think, is to pretend you’re a bistro and put out a sign.

Spring continues to slowly unfold in the cool weather. And what a spring it is.


The spiderwort just started blooming.


First rosebud!

Spring mustard

 


Mustard greens, just washed through three waters

The neighbors’ garden is a couple of weeks ahead of the abbey’s garden. They’ve got a big mustard crop, and they invited us to come pick some. That meant that last night’s supper was pinto beans, mustard greens, corn bread, and deviled eggs.

This sharing from the garden is the old-fashioned way, and the old-fashioned way is making a comeback here on our little dirt road. There’s a saying, “A third for the neighbors, a third for the critters, and a third for you.” We’d be lucky here to hold the critters to their allocated third, especially in the orchard.

What a spring!


A very young pear

One of the best parts of my day is the daily walkaround in the yard, orchard, and garden. I don’t always like what I see. A few nights ago, we had a late frost. We may have more frost tonight. But mostly what I’m seeing is a beautiful spring. Because of the pandemic, what we can grow here matters more than ever. The orchard is a particular challenge, because we have to fight insects, winds, blights, squirrels, and raccoons to get any of the fruit. This year the fight will be intense, and it’s a fight I’m determined to win.

These are iPhone photos.


Young peaches


Young apples


Young fig


Frostbitten fig leaves


Snowball bush (Hydrangea, I believe)


New rose shoots, regenerating after old growth was cut back


There’s not much to see it the garden yet, but it’s only April 15

It’s not winter


A tiny peach

I don’t often think of so-called scripture. I identify as a creature of the Enlightenment, not as a “person of faith.” Nevertheless, I know an embarrassing amount of scripture, because it was beaten into me as a child and because Old and New Testament were required courses when I was a student. But lately I have been thinking of the 24th chapter of Matthew. In this chapter, Jesus is talking to his disciples about the End Times. It’s the chapter upon which much of evangelical eschatological theology is based. Verse 20 contains the words, “But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter.”

How much scarier would this pandemic be if it had descended upon us at the beginning of winter, rather than at the beginning of one of the prettiest springs I can remember? Things hit the fan right at the beginning of gardening season.

Six years ago, we had made a valiant attempt here to build an irrigation system for the garden that drew water from one of the streams below the abbey. There is plenty of water just 500 yards down the road. That didn’t work, though, partly because we couldn’t find a pump with enough power to get the water up the hill. The water tank sat unused, overgrown with honeysuckle. It was possible to use well water for irrigation, but I’ve avoided that. Well water is pure and precious, and that water pump 305 feet down in the well won’t last forever. I don’t want to rush the day when the pump has to be replaced.

Then, two years ago, a new neighbor with lots of skills and energy worked out a means of getting water up the hill for his garden and for those neighbors who need it, including a neighbor who has a field of blueberries. It’s a heavy four-wheel trailer with tanks and pumps, pulled by his elderly Jeep. We moved our water tank to the side of the road so that the neighbor’s rig can stop in the road and deliver water. Problem solved! We also replaced the old drip lines. I’d swear that the cabbage plants grew an inch overnight after their first watering.

I’m determined to fight the insects, blights, squirrels, and raccoons to get as much out of the orchard as possible this year.

So I have one good thing to say about this pandemic. Its timing was perfect.


Week-old mustard


The water tank. The stream is down the hill at the bottom of the ridge.


The hydrant for irrigation water, gravity fed from the tank


Apple blossom


Lilacs


Carolina jasmine


The day lily bank

Contagion

If you don’t want to watch the 2011 film “Contagion” right now, that’s certainly understandable. However, I watched it last night, and I found it to be more educational and encouraging than scary. Clearly a lot of research went into this film. I’m guessing that the screenwriters worked with experts in communicable diseases to work out the most probable ways in which a pandemic would develop and spread. Based on what we’ve all learned during the current pandemic, the film is eerily accurate.

“Contagion” reminds us just how predictable, and, eventually, inevitable this pandemic was. There really is no excuse for not having been prepared for it.

You can stream “Contagion” from several sources, typically at a rental cost of $3.99.

Update: New York Times: He wrote ‘Contagion.’ Here’s what he had to say about the response to the coronavirus.

Cinnamon rolls

I wish I could say that I made these cinnamon rolls, but I didn’t. I had my share of them, though. It is my good fortune that, by pure accident, I’m not sheltering in place as a household of one, plus one cat. There are travelers sheltering here, too, and do they ever have skills.

Rock Castle Gorge

Yesterday was a get-out-of-the-house day. The hike was to Rock Castle Gorge near Floyd, Virginia. The trail is near the Blue Ridge Parkway and is on land owned by the National Park Service. The trail follows a fast-flowing creek through the gorge. Many years ago, the area was sparsely settled. Now the pastures are mostly overgrown, but one abandoned house remains, with a well-preserved barn and outhouse. There are trout in the stream. We saw at least three fishermen.

These are iPhone photos. I didn’t want to carry the heavy Nikon camera on a six-mile half-uphill hike.

A real-world test for the authoritarian mind

There are three conditions of the human psyche that are puzzling and frightening to those of us who don’t have those conditions. Those conditions are authoritarianism, religious fanaticism, and not being very smart. All three of these conditions are commonly found in the same person. To have even one of them can be debilitating. To have two is doubly debilitating. Donald Trump, for example, is not a religious fanatic. But he is an authoritarian, and he is not very smart. For convenience in this post, let’s call the people who have these conditions Trump-Susceptibles, or Reds. Let’s call those who don’t have these conditions Not-Trump-Susceptibles, or Blues.

There is a certain symmetry here. Just as Blues are puzzled and frightened by Reds, so Reds are puzzled and frightened by Blues. Each group sees the other as dangerous. There is a certain way, though, in which the symmetry breaks down. Blues can understand Reds. Blues just look down on Reds as mean, addled, and stupid. But Reds cannot understand Blues. Understanding Blues is beyond the capacity of Reds. I would argue that Reds cannot understand Blues because of what I call Webster’s First Law: People cannot perceive above their own level. So Reds, lacking the capacity to understand Blues, say that Blues are under the influence of Satan, or that Blues are the agents of evil conspiracies such as Pizzagate. Smarter people can easily understand the thought processes of the not-so-smart. But the not-so-smart cannot easily understand the thought processes of smarter people. Religious fanatics who have no doubt that they know the mind of God and even the mind of Satan think that there is something wrong, and wicked, in those who don’t have their innate knowledge of the mind of God. God speaks to Reds; Blues wickedly refuse to listen.

Let’s consider the Satan angle, for example. A must-read this morning is the Washington Post piece ‘I would rather die than kill the country’: The conservative chorus pushing Trump to end social distancing. The article quotes R.R. Reno, editor of the religious journal First Things, as saying that “sentimental humanists” are behind the closing of public accommodations because of the corona virus. “Satan prefers sentimental humanists” to do his handiwork, Reno said. There you have it. Reno believes that he knows the mind of Satan. And Reno believes that Blues are doing Satan’s work. According to Wikipedia, Reno holds a Ph.D. from Yale. Presumably he is smart, so he has two of the three debilitating conditions — authoritarianism and religious fanaticism.

They claim that their concern is about the economy, or about the world that their children will inherit. I don’t buy that. Either they’re trying to deceive us on their true motivations, or they’re deceiving themselves. Their true concern is that they might lose their power.

Reds are a minority. Yet somehow we Blues find ourselves in a nightmare in which Reds hold the White House and the U.S. Senate, and the Reds all around us are gloating. Trump’s fear, obviously, is that a collapse of the economy will take away his only hope of holding on to Red power. Because Trump, and other Reds, see nefarious conspiracies and Satan behind anything that frustrates what they see as God’s work, they see the corona virus as a wicked plot — a hoax — invented by Blues. Reds all over the country have gotten the message, and now Reds out in the hinterlands are all abuzz about it. (See the Facebook meme below, which came from the Republican Party group in my county. Note the message of the meme, that this is all just an evil conspiracy by Blues.)

I would not be at all surprised now to see Reds organizing gatherings (not to mention defiantly going to church) to teach us Blues a lesson.

No one knows what course this pandemic will take. But certainly one possibility is that people who are authoritarians, religious fanatics, and not very smart are going to get sick and die in larger numbers. Their defiance of the devil’s work done by us Blues could cost many lives, though, and not just Red lives. If thousands of students return to Liberty University as the corona virus is spreading rapidly, what might happen? Jerry Falwell Jr., like Donald Trump, is so sure of what’s inside of his Red mind that he’s willing to bet a great many of other people’s lives on it. Red power is at stake, so to them it’s God versus Satan, and they expect God to protect them.

No one knows what’s going to happen, so I am not going to make any predictions. But the probabilities don’t seem to be on Trump’s and Falwell’s and Glenn Beck’s side. How many Reds will follow them, and for how long? If thousands of Reds go along with them and expose themselves to the virus, then that would be, at the very least, a fascinating test of the real-world consequences of the Red world view. It also could diminish the number of Reds in the American population.

As for me, I’ll be watching their experiment closely. And I’ll be doing my damnedest to stay as far away from them as I can.

Update 1: During the Trump era, Russian propaganda as carried by RT.com has shown a peculiar alignment with Republican propaganda in the United States. As with all propaganda, we need to do our best to figure out whose interest it serves.

From RT.com:

Decadent like the late Roman Empire, the West is committing suicide through its irrational response to Covid-19

West can’t cope with Covid-19 because of DOCILIANS, the pampered herd whose demand for ZERO RISK actually risks killing thousands

Compare this with Fox News:

Fox News’ Brit Hume: It’s ‘Entirely Reasonable’ the Elderly Would Want to Die to Save Economy

Update 2: New York Times: The Road to Coronavirus Hell Was Paved by Evangelicals.

Update 3: Politico: A far-right rallying cry: Older Americans should volunteer to work.