In praise of boring presidents – The pleasures of bread-making – Misfortune is relative – Evening statistics
I came across the following sentence in an editorial about Biden’s inauguration: “After surviving the past four years, boring is the new thrilling.”
And it is so. During the past several days, Biden has been signing many new executive orders, some of which I favor and some of which I feel are very much in the wrong direction; but then again, I never expected that I’ll be satisfied with a great deal of what Biden will do during his administration. In all probability he will be too vacillating to stand up to the more outrageous demands of the far left-wing contingent of the Democratic party. He is, as a speaker, not especially inspiring. But of the essential decency of the man there can be no question. Unlike his predecessor, he is not involved in shady financial deals with fellow-robber barons and he is not foisting his immediate family into important positions for which they have not the slightest qualification. He is willing to listen to the advice of scientists and financial experts even when their advice does not suit his convenience and he does not conduct personal vendettas with people who oppose him. He will act in tandem with state governors, Republican as well as Democrat, instead of treating them as his mortal enemies. He will not take refuge in conspiracy theories if something does not turn out the way he expected. It seems overwhelmingly probable that the turnaround in his administration will be less than that of the previous administration by an order of magnitude. Nor will he attempt to bully legislative authorities into subverting the law for his advantage. These qualities, of course, are merely negative and they would seem scarcely worthy of comment under normal circumstances. But after a four-year-long saturnalia in the White House they seem positively revolutionary. No longer do I wake up wondering apprehensively what new antics the administration in the Oval Office will perpetrate during the day. No longer will I be perpetually be tempted to pass myself off as a Canadian whenever I travel out of the country, as has often happened to me ever since 2016. And, most pressingly at this point, no wonder will be I outraged by the cowardly shirking from the facts of the pandemic in the manner to which I and my compatriots have been subjected in the past eleven months.
I can concentrate once more on day-to-day activities – bread-making, for instance. Today I had the leisure to make loaves from kneaded dough, and there is no question but that the texture is superior to loaves made from high-speed methods. There is something very soothing about the aroma of bread at the point when the loaves are removed from the oven. Incidentally, it is a bit curious that so many books on the subject assure us that one should never store bread in the refrigerator but keep it tightly wrapped at room temperature. That has not been my experience. No matter how tightly I wrap bread loaves, they invariably become stale or moldy in a few days if I store them at room temperature, whereas in the refrigerator they remain in good condition for much longer. Sometimes one must rely on empirical evidence and disregard the advice of the so-called “experts.”
I received an Email today from a friend who was lamenting that a birthday has come and gone after a year that was more or less devoid of activity; he has had health issues and excursions such as the ones I have done over the past months, such as hiking over mountainous terrain and climbing over rock scrambles, were not practicable for him. It was a reminder that I have been fortunate in comparison with many others during the pandemic: no health issues, sufficient leisure and strength to remain physically active, no worries about losing my job, regular pension payments, periodic communications with my relatives via Zoom and WhatsApp, and even occasional meetings with friends on the trails and (in some cases) on outdoor terraces to break up what otherwise would have been an unremitting solitude. If anyone comes across this journal in, say, 2050 or thereabouts, he or she must bear in mind that any restrictions I’ve endured as a direct result of the pandemic have been relatively minor. One must go elsewhere for a more detailed first-hand account of the damage inflicted by the pandemic on an individual basis.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 102,000,527; # of deaths worldwide: 2,199,065; # of cases U.S.: 26,334,454; # of deaths; U.S.: 443,720.