Like many other households, Covid has reared its ugly head in ours again. With one among us home-testing positive and two exhibiting possible symptoms, all six of us are in lockdown for the first time in a long time.
We are aged 8-74, and although I won’t disclose where I fall on that spectrum it is definitely true that I am not the youngest.
I also tested negative yesterday for the seventh or so time I’ve been tested during the pandemic, so Covid remains an elusive enemy, always out there somewhere but never within, so far as our testing methodologies can tell.
The coronavirus is of course as much a mental illness at this point as a physical one. It strikes fear in the hearts of millions who increasingly cannot clearly remember life before Covid.
So as we huddled inside, I worked with my ten-year-old granddaughter on math, in this case long-form division. It was like we had reverted to the earliest days of the pandemic, back in March 2020, when this was a novelty. Nobody can come and nobody can go.
By now it’s all worn thin, except the homework part. I actually love working with kids on math and have done so over many many decades with many many kids.
The logical beauty of numbers fitting together into patterns is like poetry to me. Without consciously trying to, I often multiply and divide numbers reflexively. It’a like whistling a tune, which my father used to do, but I can’t.
I can whistle numbers silently, however — or out loud if you ask me what I am thinking about at the right moment.
For example, soon it will be baseball season here in the U.S. and I love baseball. The regular season is made up of 162 games, which to me means nine equal segments of 18 games each.
The synchronicity of this appeals to me, as there are nine innings to a game, or 18 separate times a batting order gets the chance to hit. There are nine players in each lineup, meaning 18 actively in the game at any one time.
See? 9-18-162.
That, of course, will also be today’s date sometime far in the future — on September 18, 2162 to be precise, some one hundred and forty years hence. I will no longer be around, but perhaps someone somewhere will read these words then — and poof!
By the magic of numbers we will have been connected.
***
From time to time I mention movies I like. One is “Carrie Pilby” (2017), in which English actress Bel Powley plays a young prodigy who graduated from Harvard as a teenager with no friends. Her therapist advises her to change that.
She does.
I like the movie for many reasons, but particularly because if one thinks of oneself as smarter than others, one might just end up with no friends at all. Wouldn’t that imply that one was not in fact quite so smart after all? There’s nothing smart, as it were, about loneliness.
TODAY’s HEADLINES:
Consumer prices popped again in December, casting a shadow over the economy. (NYT)
Long lines snake around entire city blocks as Americans scramble to get tested for COVID-19. At-home testing kits fly off the shelves at pharmacies and drug stores. Demand that surged before the holidays has yet to subside in the new year. As the Omicron variant pushes infections to record levels people across the country have voiced frustration with the paucity of tests. (Reuters)
VIDEO: White House Pledges Millions of Free Virus Tests to Schools (NYT)
Colleges enrolled 465,000 fewer students in the fall, a trend that is raising alarms (WP)
More than 1 million fewer students are in college, the lowest enrollment numbers in 50 years (NPR)
Bill Gates says COVID will soon be 'like seasonal flu.' (USA Today)
A coronavirus pandemic which lasts five years, another pandemic in a decade, and ever more transmissible variants are among the scenarios life insurers are predicting after COVID-19 claims jumped more than expected in 2021. (Reuters)
How Does Covid Spread? Virus' Infection Capacity Weakens After 20 Minutes in Air (Bloomberg)
Supreme Court blocks vaccine requirements at workplaces (WP)
A new report documents at least six high-profile misogyny-driven mass shootings in the U.S. since 2014, and the ways that guns and hatred of women have served as a unifying tie for many far-right groups online. The report also says that supporters of far-right movements "have both adopted misogynist attitudes and used hatred of women to recruit new supporters." [HuffPost]
Cannabis compounds might prevent COVID-19 infection, study shows (NJ.com)
Omicron Appears to Have Peaked in U.K., Offering Hope the Wave Is Receding (Wall Street Journal)
Many schools will likely have to close because of omicron (WP)
There’s nothing ‘mild’ about the disruptions caused by omicron (Edit Bd/WP)
Afghanistan: 'Terrified' British Council teachers still in hiding (BBC)
Trading Threats, the U.S. and Iran Inch Closer to a Nuclear Pact (NYT)
Europe is nearer war than it has been in 30 years, Poland's foreign minister warned during the third round of diplomacy this week aimed at defusing tensions over Russia's demand that Ukraine never be allowed to join NATO. Russia said that talks had so far failed to bridge fundamental differences over the Ukraine crisis and Moscow's demands that NATO pull back from central and eastern Europe. (Reuters)
The Midterms Are Closing In on the Democrats (Atlantic)
Trump is eyeing the White House and wants a more compliant Senate for when he gets there (Politico)
Voting rights bill likely doomed as Sinema rejects eliminating filibuster (WP)
Why Nasa is exploring the deepest oceans on Earth (BBC)
Giant object could be an 'exomoon' more than twice the size of Earth (CNN)
Biologists Shocked to Find Millions of Icefish Nesting Near Antarctica (Gizmodo)
Emma Watson admits she was ‘taken aback’ by Rupert Grint comment during Harry Potter reunion (Independent)
Surveillance will follow us into ‘the metaverse,’ and our bodies could be its new data source (WP)
Newly Uncovered Manuscript Reveals China Invented English Language 700 Years Before Western World (The Onion)
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