Povey Prattle

Social isolation is not all that it's cracked up to be, especially for those of us who live alone.   I try to mitigate this by making phone calls to friends  in the late afternoon and early evening:  today to Steve in Roswell, GA., and to Joyce in Scottsdale, AZ. OH joy, joy, joy. CALL ME AT ANY TIME! ------------------------------------------------------------------ My other mitigation is in reading. I bought three at a second hand  bookstore  just before the lock down began. They have been hard reading. The first was  a devastating tale of Anglo/Scottish Colonial rule in 19th C Irel and: before, during and after the potato blight. I have also been struggling with Azar Nafisi's READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN   a story of a group of courageous women who gather in Tehran to study western literature under the noses of the Ayatollah Khomeini's worst excesses. Nafisi quotes these pow erful words from...

r A tomato I bought at the Farm Market already had a nose. So I added some eyes and a mouth.   Then I ate it!

On the phone on Tuesday my friend Gordon said that he misses seeing people, and their dogs. On Wednesday, en route home from having my car serviced, I called him and said "go outside your house and stand in the driveway. I am on my way". I stayed beside my car.  Zion loped across the street for a love feast with Gordon and his partner John. I did not have my camera. So today Zion and I did a surprise curbside visit with Bill, another of Zion's fans. Another satisfied customer.

Clerics (i.e. Clergy) are not immune from anxiety dreams. I've had the same dream at least three times, twice in the past week. In the first part of  my dream I am somewhere in Massachusetts. Always on a Saturday. I remember that I have been called to be the Rector of a parish in Atlanta.  Trouble is that I have not been in touch with the parish since they first invited me to join them. Tomorrow is supposed to be my first Sunday there, but I am still in Massachusetts  and I have no idea as to how I can get to Atlanta in time (or indeed if they still want me). Then the dream changes.  It's still the same  Saturday, and I remember that I am supposed to get married the next day.    But I have not seen my bride to be in weeks, and I can't remember the Church at which we are supposed to get wed.   I know that I will be a no-show for the wedding.  I comfort myself by remebering  that the bride's mother n...

My American friends Mary Luti and Ann Minton are in Spain, unable to return to the U.S.A. for the duration. Mary writes wonderful Face   Book entries: here are some of her observations about Covid 19 life in Seville. . She nails it here: The virus has infected people here with terrible illness, killing too many. It’s also imposed on everyone an obligatory fear of physical contact, albeit for our own good. A spontaneous rejection of the other, just in case. There was and is nothing else that could have been done, it’s the right thing, the safe thing in these dangerous circumstances. But what a perversion it is, too. To create the specter of an infected other. To foster untouchability, no matter the reason. There are too many people in the world who already know that feeling, that reality, that perversion. They have borne it forever and didn’t need a virus to teach them wha t a horror it is. Ours is a pale version of what they suffer. We rightly pray that this tempo...

Coincident with, but not because of the need for social distancing, I have been an a healthy eating jag since 25th February 2020. No snacks whatsoever, I've had just one candy bar since that date. Three meals a day: each with a focus on protein, fruit, and vegetables;  and with next to no carbs. It's serving me well.  I feel so well:  having excised binge eating,  (and starving to make up for it); and with some good walking exercise with Mr. Z. But I gave up a bit tonight.   I  bought a "Paul Newman" brand thin crust pizza with mozzarella cheese and spinach. Whilst it was still frozen I cut it in half using kitchen scissors: then wrapping one half in cling voice and putting it into the freezer for "the next time" I ate the other half. Oh so darned good! and maybe not so deeply unhealthy!