Windy days – Hiking to Kennedy Peak – Homage to an artist – Our unreliable memories – Why the journal was written – Differences in the aftermath of the riot between the participants and the main perpetrator – Evening statistics
“Rough winds do shake the buds of May.” And the buds of March as well, as it turns out. It has been blustery, off and on, for the last several days, but the winds increased in power Tuesday, gusting to 50 miles per hour in some places, and Wednesday was even worse. I had arranged with RS to hike together that day, but we had to postpone it; it was so windy in his area that it was too dangerous for him to drive any significant distance. Later in the afternoon the wind died down and it became quiescent on the following days.
I scouted the Kennedy Peak hike with FH today, since we are to lead it on the 26th. It is curious how the trails shape up in memory. I had had the impression that the Stephens Trail, which comprises the main part of the ascent, as being quite challenging, but it is fairly level for about three-quarters of its length and the remaining portion is moderate. Again I remembered the descent from Kennedy Peak as being rocky in the extreme, but it is not: it is rocky in some places, to be sure, and one must take care about footing during these areas, but these are neither long or numerous. I daresay some of my recent experiences, such as the boulder fields of the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania, made such a trail seem like a trifle in comparison. The hike is slightly over 9 miles and we completed it in just over 3 hours, including a break for lunch, which is very good time. On the way back we noticed daffodils along the grassplots that run beside I-66, in greater profusion this season than I have seen in previous years.
FH told me of an episode that reflects well upon the art scene of Washington. Yesterday evening on the Spanish Steps, a soprano and a tenor performed a five-minute opera especially commissioned on behalf of Robert Darling, who has had a long and distinguished career as a director and a set designer for theaters. I myself have seen some of his sets (including an especially imaginative one of The Winter’s Tale at the Folger). He is, regrettably, losing his health and has recently become blind in addition. FH told me that he and his wife have put up their house for sale and are planning to live in a farm in rural Pennsylvania; which reminded me of the discussion I and my fellow-hikers of the Vigorous Hikers earlier this week about the solitary house espied from Raven Rocks – such retreats certainly are beautiful in fair weather, but are inconvenient at best and are downright dangerous under the current circumstances, for his wife as well as he is in declining health. His wife confided to FH that she now was entertaining doubts about this decision, but that they had committed themselves to this course and had no choice but to adhere to it.
In connection with this hiking experience that demonstrated the unreliability of memory – DC sent me a link to a recent article in the Washington Post that discussed how the populace as a whole has already lost memories of what life was like during the pandemic at its height. At all times some loss of memory of events immediately after they happen is inevitable, but in the case of COVID, the sheer amount of information to be processed (mandates, social distancing guidelines, the seemingly endless number of variants and sub-variants, etc.) made it impossible for most people to remember all that we as a nation have undergone. “Even for such salient emotional events and salient life-threatening events,” said Suparna Rajaram, psychology professor who researches the social transmission of memory at Stony Brook University, “that the more you have of it, the more you will have trouble capturing all of them.” This is not, of course, an especially novel discovery. Marcel Proust says much the same thing in Remembrance of Things Past. Then, too, many simply do not wish to remember such troubling times. The influenza epidemic in the early years of the 20th century infected a third of the world’s population and killed 50 million people, statistics that make those of COVID seem almost benign in comparison. Yet it faded from consciousness fairly rapidly. “Will the COVID-19 pandemic have the same fate and memory?” Rajaram said. “I think to the extent that the past is a predictor of the future, the answer is yes.”
At all events, that has been my main reason for initiating and maintaining the journal. I knew in advance that my powers of memory were not be relied upon. Sooner or later my personal impressions of the pandemic must and will fade. But they can be recalled now whenever I consult my notes from the past; and I believe this ability to recall them to be of importance. Perhaps that is merely egotism on my part.
Of course the journal of any single person can provide only a small sampling of the events and of people’s reactions to them. As I have repeatedly stressed in my entries, my experiences during this time were significantly less stressful than those of the majority of others: no substantive health issues, no loss of close relatives or friends to the disease, secure financial conditions, a social network that provided support even during the days when isolation was at its most intense. I hope other people have been keeping notes in some odd corners of our nation, people who have been affected more directly by the disease. But it may well be that such an effort is proportionately too painful for those people best qualified by their experiences to tell us just how devastating the pandemic proved to be.
From Through the Looking Glass, when Alice asks the Knight whether the song he is preparing to sing for her is long:
“‘It’s long,’ said the Knight, ‘but it’s very beautiful. Everybody that hears me sing it – either it brings tears into their eyes, or else –‘
“‘Or else what?’ said Alice, for the Knight had made a sudden pause.
“‘Or else it doesn’t, you know.’”
And so it is with the participants of the January 6th riots. Either the remorse they undergo for their treason brings tears into their eyes,
– as in the case of one Robert Palmer, who wept repeatedly when he pleaded guilty today to attacking Capitol Police with a fire extinguisher at the Capitol riot while dressed in a red, white, and blue Trump jacket, with his lawyer naturally citing these tears as evidence of the regret he feels in hopes of inducing the judge to mitigate the upcoming sentence –
or else it doesn’t, you know:
“Patriotic Americans are being prosecuted for peacefully protesting a stolen election. Let them go! They were convicted, or are awaiting trial, based on a giant lie, a radical left con job.” Need I say that the speaker is none other than Donald Trump?
But although the tinsel-winged butterflies who allowed Trump to use them as his instruments have been have been repeatedly broken on the wheel by our courts, he himself remains unscathed.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 682,345,663; # of deaths worldwide: 6,818,554; # of cases U.S.: 105,810,271; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,151,166.