hello, hearters
How are you doing today?
highlight of the week?
It reminded me of the 1992 (yes, that long ago) Donna Karan campaign featuring Rosemary McGrotha.
but this time it was real - and even more historic due to Vice President Harris' ancestral heritage from both India and Africa - a m a z i n g.
how's the virus where you are?
The numbers here are not good.
CALIFORNIA: COVID CASES = 3.14 M
Deaths = 36,326
USA: COVID CASES = 24.9 M
Deaths = 414 K
GLOBAL: COVID CASES = 96.2M
Deaths = 2.06 M
taking a moment to mourn those we've lost....
the light at the end of the tunnel
Several friends of mine - frontline workers, healthcare personnel (saints) and people-over-a-certain-age - have now had their first shot of the VACCINE!
That feels amazing.....a solution is en route.
I'm not checking the list for when mine is due - it'll be a long while yet. I'm content to stay safe, sane and sanitized, wearing a mask, socially distancing, getting on with my work (virtually), seeing friends (via the laptop) and having lots of long, extended, glorious phone calls to stay in touch with people.
Oh, and I'm eating frozen coconut cake for breakfast.
But apart from the tiny-issue-with-sugar (oh well), life is good.
what are you reading?
oh, most kind, thank you for asking :)
I'm reading Bryher's THE DAYS OF MARS - A Memoir 1940 - 1946
It's an amazing book to read right now because it's an eye witness account, not just of the privations of wartime (isolation, rationing, fear, restrictions on travel - gosh, yes, that does sound familiar). But also the small joys of making-do-with-what-is (friendships, quietude, reading, walks, radio listening and television programmes).
I'm finding it very helpful.
It's also research - I'm planning a sequel to LOTTIE LYONS ROOKIE REPORTER - which will open in LONDON 1945, just after WWII.
Bryher's book is full of those tiny details which history books leave out - the What It Felt Like to Live Through This.
I highly recommend it if you can track down a copy.
There are some truly wonderful lines in her book:
"Paris: ..... that blue, smoky atmosphere where everyone was sipping bitter coffee and arguing about metaphysics."
"Explorers and the Establishment do not mix."
When she's gathered around the wireless with friends, waiting for confirmation that the War is Over, there is trepidation, concern for those they've lost, loved ones wounded, missing in action, still Abroad with no exit visas to travel.
I started to wonder what it will be like here, when the majority of people are vaccinated (when will THAT be? It's almost too overwhelming to guess), and we can hug each other again
and GATHER and go to festivals
and CINEMAS
and sit with friends outside a CAFE and talk late into the afteroon.
and everything else we've been forbidden to do so we don't kill the vulnerable among us.
it's raining here today
But we're not there yet.
So I'll sit in here, for yet another day - 312 and counting....
and enjoy the rare sight of rain.
hang in there
this too shall pass.
