Current Events

Pandemic Diary 5: Where’s the Candy?

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Quarantine life has neither improved nor ruined my food life. I seem to consume the same amount each day in calories (not enough on the best of days) and the quality is pretty much identical to what is was pre-quarantine (not that great, because I am single).

The one big difference I have seen came when I discovered that my most recent favorite seasonal candy, Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs—which are a peanut butter cup but in a flattened Easter egg shape that somehow changes the ratio of chocolate to peanut butter from what one expects in a peanut butter cup to perfect—is now everyone’s favorite seasonal candy and not my secret favorite thing. They vanished from the local grocery store shelves at least two weeks before Easter. The eggs are usually to be found available in a bulk discount pile of bags of twenty each near the front of the store the day after Easter; last week these precious gems were available for a dollar per egg at my grocery store and the store did not have ten of them to make a “Ten for $10” purchase.
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Pandemic Diary 4: The Streets Where I Lived

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

A small major detail from my life history has left my brain: the second address in which I lived.

A look at the map of the neighborhood and its suburban collection of descriptive names, which do not correspond to any physical reality—”Meadowview?” If one has sight, everything is a view, but is every front lawn a meadow? “Saddlerock?” Why is every street name in that development composed of three unrelated syllables?—triggers no memory. I remember the home, but I could not find it on the map, so do I remember it? I think I typed its name above, but the great American tradition of picturesque suburban street names concealed it from me in the uniqueness it shares with all the other road names around it. The names are each alike in their uniqueness.
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Pandemic Diary 3: With a Song in Our Heart

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Perhaps in a world in which we need our neighbors more than usual, in which a global drama plays out in our local grocery stores and on the streets where we live, the music and creative expression we turn to for rest, relief, entertainment, and even solace—that deepest of words—ought to be local as well.

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When all this is over, some of the things we used to take for granted will appear to us a novelties or great new ideas. My gosh, even the thought of something ever ending feels something like a novelty at this moment.
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