Pandemic Projects

It's December 2020, and I've just completed a full semester of teaching completely online. The pandemic continues and has gotten worse by some measures. The end is only barely in sight with the new vaccines slowly being distributed.

Besides bingeing old TV series and catching up on sleep, one of the stereotype activities that people have been resorting to during this home time has been baking, specifically baking bread. I haven't baked any bread, but I thought I would reflect on some of the other home projects and activities I've dabbled in during my mostly self-imposed home quarantine. (In Texas, the legal lockdowns have been few, and though many things like bars remain closed, almost everything else is open if you're so inclined to leave the house. I just don't think it's wise. I've been working at home, anyway, and I'm pretty good at being a homebody, so I figure there's no good reason to endanger myself or others.) 

As I mentioned, I've been working most of this time, so I haven't had tons of dead time -- just mostly those hours that would have been spent driving, going out to eat, and running other errands that have been put on hold. The day is also irregular, in that I have been working and staying available 8-5 during the regular semester, but I've also been doing other things as well as working at night and early in the morning, hours before the normal office day. So my day is pretty flexible. 

Here's a list of projects that I've done that would not normally be part of my relaxation or housekeeping routine. (I'll add that while I enjoy cooking dinner sometimes, I never bake normally, and I'm also not much of a handyman.)

1. Made apple liqueur/liquor, sort of like Apple Pucker, using fresh Granny Smith apples, Everclear, and some other ingredients. This was all left to ferment and then put in a jar to make upscale appletinis. (This came out of House Party cocktail hours with my friend Bill and was his recipe; I'll write another blog about House Party, perhaps. It feels like drinking while you're in the middle of the Brady Bunch opening credits.)

2. Added dozens of new trivia notes to Internet Movie Database. This is something I've been doing for years, but I don't do it very often, just when something occurs to me. One example of a trivia list I researched and made that was posted was about actors who appeared as different characters on Dallas and its spinoff Knots Landing. (That's a good example of "trivia," for sure.)

3. Made peanut-butter cookies from scratch. I guess this is as close as I got to baking bread. Justine's friends at work loved them. (She returned to work early in the summer.) 

4. Began scanning my dad's slides. I discovered a lot of images I don't remember at all. It's sort of unnerving sometimes, peeking into these very obscure memories. 

5. Completed a doctorate. (OK, this was going to happen anyway.)

6. Baked a chocolate layer cake with two kinds of frosting. This was not from scratch, which is why it's not closer to baking bread than #3.

7. Began sorting through my dad's coins. This has been more interesting than I anticipated, and I've learned quite a bit. I also spent some time early in the lockdown, before the weather turned hot, sorting through my dad's research boxes in the garage, throwing most of it away. This was both cathartic and existentially difficult. 

8. Related to #7, all but finished putting state quarters in a "collector's" book I got from the credit union many years ago. I want to mail these to our nephew when I'm done, but we're still missing Michigan. It was still not a bad bit of progress, in that the book had been sitting in the back room with maybe 7 quarters in for 10 years. (These aren't particularly collectible except as a hobby-type thing, which is why they make series like this anyway.)

9. Made fresh egg salad and fresh chicken salad for the first time. Probably won't make the egg salad again. It's too much trouble for something you would normally just get at the deli once in a while. 

My chicken salad

10. Made chicken spaghetti (in casserole form) using leftover roast chicken. This was definitely a winner. 

11. Started freezing more of our leftover dinners out of a sense of not wanting to waste food, but just lately started throwing most of those out since I didn't like what freezing did to the texture of the food. (I think when people freeze food for later, like when somebody makes and freezes a bunch of meals for grandma, it's usually not yet cooked or only partially cooked?) The chicken enchiladas are the only thing I think I'll keep freezing. 

12. Paid off the house. 

13. Made and folded an omelet perfectly for the first time. 

14. Finally learned how to poach eggs the right way. I still like the eggs at Classic Cafe better.

15. Made a strange recipe called peanut-butter chicken for dinner. I like almost anything with peanut butter, but not so much this. (What, is he going to post every new recipe he made? I dunno ... nobody reads this blog anyway.)

16. Donated my pandemic stimulus check to a non-profit. (This is both a sneak-brag and a political jab.)

17. Installed a bidet in the spare bathroom. A lot of people were doing this because of the toilet-paper shortage. In fact, it took several weeks to receive the bidet from Amazon, and then it sat on the floor for another two months before I got around to installing it. This was my crowning achievement, not because it was particularly difficult, though I'm nervous doing anything that involves unscrewing the parts of a perfectly good toilet. It was just an interesting and unusual thing to have. I can't say it's really helped save us toilet paper, and I'm not quite sure how people do without toilet paper just because they have a bidet, particularly an after-market toilet attachment like this one (see video below). It's nice to have, though. I was surprised by that. 

18. Things I didn't do that I thought I would do during lockdown: write a lot, practice the guitar a lot, clean out all the closets (where can you take stuff right now?), and read all the unread books. I did read a lot and finished some books that had been lying around.

All of this while still remaining gainfully employed and supervising others. Not too bad for a pandemic.   

Little House in the Pandemic

During the pandemic lock-down crisis of 2020 in the United States, the 1970s TV show "Little House on the Prairie" has become one of the shows that people are streaming online as they seek ways to feel better and spend idle time. A New York Times TV critic called "Little House" a kind of "comfort viewing" and cited several reasons for renewed interest in the show, including a couple of episodes that deal directly with contagious disease and social distancing.

My wife and I have been "bingeing" the show as well, before we were aware it was a mini-trend during the pandemic, and I believe that while the show does represent the simplicity and admirable values that the Times critic reflects on, it is also simply a great artifact of a time when TV itself was simpler. The 1970s weren't a simpler time, after all, and though the frontier age might seem simpler in terms of family values and small-town pluckiness, it was a dangerous and difficult time to be alive. Though death is rare on "Little House," they don't ignore these realities -- though there is of course some glossing over in the form of well-pressed costumes, blow-dried 70s hair, and flattering lighting, to say nothing of the show's humor and neatly packaged plots.

My sister and her significant other have also been bingeing the show from their home in Nevada, and so it has become a cross-country family affair for us. We watch episodes and text jokes and observations, as well as trivia (mostly this is my doing) on guest actors and other connections. ("The actor playing the big kid in school is the son of the guy who played Hoss on Bonanza," I text her. "Really?" she says, because what else would you say to that?)

My sister is a bit younger than I am, and this show began when I was a very young child and she was not yet born, but it reminds me of a time when TV was something that was "on" in the living room. Either you watched it or you didn't, and often, a family would gather to watch certain shows. I remember watching "Little House" with my family, gathering around on the shag carpet and bean-bag chairs, and I remember my older sister continuing to watch the show on Monday nights in its later years during the 1980s. The show was around almost my entire childhood.

They speak of the recent cable-TV-series boom as representing TV's "golden age," with shows like "The Sopranos" and "Mad Men," but TV as a true medium really peaked in the 1970s with shows like "Little House." The show is incredibly well made, well-lighted and filmed (instead of shot on video tape, a difference in quality that can be easily seen when watching old sitcoms or soap operas). Melissa Gilbert was an astonishingly talented child actress, such that she often makes the other capable child actors on this show seem out of their depth, and Michael Landon was a luminary presence. His quick death in the early 1990s was such a shock in part because he'd always been on TV, starring on an unbroken chain of three successful TV series and countless commercial spots for Kodak.

In spite of the relatively high production values, it's interesting to see how TV production in general was simpler with a show like "Little House," when they really weren't expecting people to watch the show in reruns (sitcoms were more typical rerun fare), and nobody was watching via streaming or videorecordings. Sets and houses are reused in different episodes (there is one house that serves as the dwelling for four or five guest stars before it becomes a school for the blind). Guest actors later become regulars in different roles. Michael Landon, besides being a TV icon and something of a sex symbol, was also an efficient and talented TV director who kept this show running like a machine. The show never seems "cheap," but it was TV made to be TV. Michael Landon himself used to apparently say, "We're not changing the world here."

In spite of this demurring characterization, TV did become more daring and strived to be more relevant in the 1970s, after a couple of decades of shows like "Ozzie and Harriett" and "The Brady Bunch." "Little House" focuses on so-called "family values," but it also deals with touchy issues like child abuse, drug abuse, and alcoholism, and while many TV series had similar storylines, the producers of "Little House" seemed to understand that it's the details that make the difference. No story is really new, as they say.

It's fun to see the parade of character actors in guest spots, as well. As was the common practice in those days, characters appear for episodic storylines and then are never heard from again. It must have been a good time to be a character actor. Some of these very familiar-looking but nameless actors were in 200 or more shows during their careers. Westerns and nighttime dramas helped these working actors stay afloat, in ways that it's hard to imagine the scattered and narrow-casted speciality series doing these days, what with their short seasons (10-12 episodes), long story arcs, and small cast of characters. 

TV may have gotten better over the decades, but in some ways, it's not TV at all anymore.