PareaGrooveBlog

Today we had another art talk. Our regular Dan graciously volunteered to gift us with a researched slide talk about the UK artist L. S. Lowery who is well known in his home country but somehow not in the US. As usual, we waited for about twenty minutes or so for people to join in before beginning the art talk. Everyone reported that they’re vaccinated and we commended our resilience on seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. “Herd is the Word” someone cheered. I mentioned for my hobby as an actor I’d had two Zoom auditions already, one paired with different actors in little boxes, one set up as a panel audition like in real life, an insight to the future hybrid of mixing Zoom, here with the audition, with real life, for which the performance was anticipated. And we talked about our friend’s ankle healing efforts and her challenges with the big boot she’s now wearing.

This art talk was especially fun. We’ve been meeting like this for over a year now and we’ve become comfortable with each other and with the format. So as Dan talked we all jumped in and gave our thoughts and observations and the conversation quickly became especially vibrant and engaged. We discussed the colors and use of light in the paintings, the people in the pictures, and what it might have meant with regard to the time and place of post industrial England. We learned Lowery was offered a knighthood and turned it down, how he never married, and cared for his mother over her long illness. We looked at several pictures, discussed his life, observed the details. And we ended with some erotic drawings and paintings he had done that were discovered after he passed, weird pictures now on line that previously required special permission to view from the museum that held them. We then veered away from Lowery and talked a bit about the impact of the erotic art, and somehow this led to talking about impact of sound and light on healing pain and PTSD and the new gadgets that are evolving to use it.

This was Mother’s Day and that can be loaded for a lot of people. But we all have mothers, hence Mammal Day. I found a cute picture of a mamma meerkat and her cub, as our PareaGroove picture is of a group of meerkat pals. We found that most of us had a day like any other, thought those of us who could called our moms. We talked about walking in local parks and how the flowers this year are especially beautiful. Someone waxed on about how much she enjoyed trips to big suburban supermarkets. I mentioned I saw my first theater production, Blindness, which was held at the Darryl Roth Theater near Union Square. It was my first theater experience since the Pandemic started and it felt like water to a sponge I was so excited to go. There were no actually people live on a stage in this, instead we sat in pairs in the dark, six feet apart and strictly masked, and we wore headphones and listened to a dramatic one person show while we watched lights flash around us. It wasn’t quite the comeback I’d hoped but it was still great to share a theatrical performance with a live audience. It was well done but a tad dystopian and I found I wasn’t too keen about that aspect of it having lived through our recent dystopia. Of course the dramatic dystopia was worse than ours, but still it reminded of it when I was hoping to forget. My favorite part of the experience was when it ended and they opened the theater doors to a beautiful sunny day and a view of Union Square Park lush with spring trees, and optimistic reminder that we were moving forward and onward.

I had been invited to the theater as sort of a thank you by a friend whose recent Zoom wedding I had “MC’ed.” This was a remarkable event and I was grateful and honored to have been part of it but I was also happy of course to have this lovely “thank you.” He had posted on Facebook that he was going to hold the Zoom wedding with his partner of thirty years, and that somehow Zoom made it easier for him to wed, without having to endure the trouble of finding an event space, and more importantly to him, of having to ask guests to endure the trouble of traveling to it to attend the event (although I suspect most would have been happy to do so). I volunteered to help out having garnered this past (more than a) year’s experience of hosting Zoom gatherings. I dressed in “costume” inspired by Cabaret and wore a silver top hat, a red bow tie and boa, and a black sequined top, by Isaac Mizrahi of course. I introduced the classical quartet made up of a classmate and her family and the the several songs they played between the many speeches and the wedding ceremony. We all hailed from different homes, many from different states. We had more than 200 guests, and another friend of ours, involved with the Circus, and who had hosted our PareaGroove juggling class, assembled her circus friends to provide breakout rooms of entertainment, including a tightrope walker, a hat trick doer, a glass lightbulb eater, and of course her juggling. Then we had our own “breakout rooms” of friends, ours being one of college classmates, all of which rooms the grooms stopped by and visited, as if it were a live wedding and they were visiting tables. It was a tremendously successful event, all the guests felt entertained and welcomed and all of us participators and performers felt appreciated and helpful. These gents deserve it, they’ve contributed to their communities at home and at large, and we all were happy to launch them off into their next chapter.

After talking about theater a bit one of our regulars shared her travails of having busted her ankle in several places doing something so simple as getting out of a car wrong. She required serious surgery for it, joking it was on par with what rodeo clowns suffer. People advised her to use the hard cast rather than the soft cast and those with some expertise chipped in even more. One let her know the Hospital For Special Surgery, somewhat renowned in NY, was taking patients again, though for several months in the beginning of the Pandemic it had been limited to COVID patients, as all medical facilities were. We talked about how the Pandemic was winding down, how hospitals are now accessible again, and how Dr. Gottlieb was saying people should go back to work and that masks aren’t necessary with the vaccine. We talked about how we thought all this might impact NY commercial real estate as offices opened, and how people might be moving back into the City. We heard France is opening, people are finally getting their shots. Brazil and India however are still having trouble. We talked about the different vaccines, how the Chinese vaccine might be less effective, and how vaccine diplomacy was now a thing and how this was worryingly open to corruption.

Somehow from there we disputed the age old Coke vs. Pepsi argument with most of us leaning Coke-ward. We wondered about the Coke secret recipe, and how it had gotten out but that didn’t really matter, no one else was making it. The “secret” Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe had also been released but people weren’t really making it themselves either, we googled it and shared links for it. We also talked about our favorite recipes for mixed cocktails, and which beer flavors we were favoring as we are hitting the opening bars more frequently. We talked about the all you can eat sushi places and how those are opening again too. Everything is opening. The reports are that more than half the Americans are vaccinated, and in some parts of NYC more than two thirds are. We talked about Florida, how they’re behind, and how people are asked to remove their masks sometimes, which we up north found disturbing. Someone talked about the isolated Isle of Mann outside the UK and how that too is opening after having been especially protective of itself during the Pandemic. We then watched our friend’s dog eat green beans, which is especially cute. And we ended by talking about online games that evolved over this past year like PowerPoint karaoke.

Tax Day got bumped from April 15 to May 17 this year, the IRS threw us a bone for the pandemic. Of course, everyone was still waiting until the last minute to do their taxes, and this allowed us to have a good turnout. We had someone Zooming from a car and someone from a walk out and about. We talked about a Zoom bar mitzvah that someone attended. Some of us had gone to see exhibits at the nearly fully opened Sotheby’s and Christie’s galleries where at one there were artifacts from the physicist Richard Feynman, including his bongo drums as well as his papers and oil painting, and there was an Enigma machine, which helped us interpret the spy talk during WWII. Then we talked about spies, and about martinis and whether we drank them shaken or stirred. We talked about dating during the COVID times and how so much of it involved old school walks in the park, and how this might be changing back to normal dates at restaurants as we opened. There were online “virtual trips” someone was still enjoying, mini documentaries about various locations we still aren’t allowed to visit. We talked about the perils of eating outside, people passing, animals, bugs. I had an experience that week where I had been outside with friends at one of the now ubiquitous sidewalk tables when an egg from an upstairs apartment was thrown out a window at the restaurant below, barely missing us. We talked about the blooming flowering trees, the gorgeous cherry blossoms and magnolias, and how we may be appreciating them more now than we had in the past. Most people were on their second shots, with only a few complaints other than sore arms and how this has opened us to even more experience. Someone talked about having people over to her home for the first time in a long time.

Our French friend helped with the pronunciation of some words which I needed to say on an upcoming Zoom wedding I had volunteered to “MC,” now with my new Zoom monitoring experience. We talked about marriage and found the surprising statistics that the highest divorce rate was among gay women at 30%, and the lowest among gay men at 16%. Heterosexual marriages had a pretty low divorce rate too, in between at 19%. I can’t say where these stats were found, but they were interesting and we discussed why these statistics might be true.

We worried about the opening, how some of us are still hesitant to return to our gyms, and how we learned over the pandemic that “all the world’s a gym.” We talked about our anxiety about going back to the office, and how we’re worried about whether it might be more dangerous in the streets. A new threat was happening “the knock out game” where hoodlums randomly punch people, maybe because there were fewer people in the street still. And we remembered the Guardian Angels fondly. We discussed New York real estate and how some people had some luck renegotiating their leases. We talked about how commercial leases may be terminated, lowered, but maybe not right away, maybe after they ran out and companies veered to hybrid situations. We talked about the hassle of moving and how hard it is to get rid of stuff, and where we could do that. Do you give it away? Look to sell it? We heard about how there is a whole industry of people who take advantage of people after their parents die, offering to cart off their stuff for a low amount of money while it’s worth a lot. We talked about objects of value, one person regretted losing track of a meteor that had fallen in his yard, and I bemoaned an Adam Ant t-shirt my mother threw out, from the first rock show I ever saw.

We hit May, and this felt mildly momentous. For the picture for this “Groove I used a colorful Maypole around which people were meant to dance, an ancient symbol with pagan roots to encourage fertility and of course mating. We are emerging from the Pandemic and people were predicting a Roaring 20s and sexual free for all, but which doesn’t seem to be happening. We talked a bit about dating, how actually people are now predicting that serious relationships might be more in the mode now. We talked about NY real estate, and how the rents have changed, how some people have had some luck renegotiating theirs and how many people have moved to Florida. We talked about Zoom dating, about virtual background and what’s best, and how Broadway is opening and that this will be significant especially for NY. We discussed how movie theaters are open and having audiences and whether we really want to go back to watching them. Somehow this led to discussing ancient television series now reappearing on the streaming channels, including Hogan’s Heroes and also the movie the Producers and how these would likely not get made now because of how blithely they handled WWII atrocities. Somehow we started sharing 9/11 memories and who of us witnessed the falling towers and what we remembered of the day, including an office mate who was somehow miraculously saved, how people ran from it with wet cloths to their mouths, and how we’re soon hitting the 20th anniversary of the event. Someone mentioned the 1993 bombing, and we recalled other tragedies. That led back to COVID and how Australia is having a hard time with it, as well as with weird plague-like problems with mice and snakes. We ended with more cheery conversations about eating Italian food on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, a perfect ending to a day spent in the now open Bronx Zoo or Botanical Gardens.

I held this “Groove on a Monday because I thought most people would want to watch the Oscars. As it turned out, most didn’t. Still being predominantly ‘Zoomed people weren’t all that interested in watching. We started out talking about an Explorer’s Club video that was running on Facebook while people were filing in. That Explorers Club used to have regular live events at their NYC center and likely at their places across the world, but for the Pandemic it moved onto Zoom through their Facebook page, which is pretty great because the seating at the events is limited and you actually have to get to the place and book a space, something that seems so far away and long ago at this point. The gentleman speaking was Bill Haseltine and one of our regulars knew his work with human genome sequencing, so we started out talking about that. We then talked about Dr. Scott Gottlieb, vaccinations, and whether the kids would get them, and how we in the US are leading the world in vaccines.

We then talked about the God Gene, the gene that inclines most human beings to believe in a religion, and how this perpetuates because believing in a god makes one more likely to make the scary leap to procreate and raise kids. We talked about how people are moving from blue states to red states and how this might make our country more purple politically. We went from political colors to talking about the upcoming pink moon, the Blossom Moon, and then about a trip to a tulip farm some people took and all the tulips they picked and brought back. Someone mentioned Audrey Hepburn ate tulips to fend off starvation when she was very young, and that tulips are in the onion family. Someone pointed out if you are not given proper nutrition at the right age you can’t put on fat, which might account for her pixie slenderness. Someone talked about a friend who grew up during a tough time in Vietnam and how that person couldn’t put on weight. Of course this led to talking about dieting and the Pandemic pounds some of us acquired, while others lost weight and got on track to exercise more. Somehow body morphology led to arguing Apple vs. PC. And finally we talked about the Oscars and the highlights, the little dance Glenn Close did, the flirtation an older Korean woman had with Brad Pitt as she received her Oscar, and ultimately, the virtues of the Rock and Jason Momoa, whose red carpet interview from years back was memorable for his gracious handling of a tacky request to do a dance from his native island, and who of us preferred whom (the women of the group leaned to the latter, the gents preferred the Rock).

The flowers in the parks are especially bloom-y this year. The tulips are fantastic. So I dubbed the ‘Groove in honor of the flowers and the beautiful relief they bring. I started out by toasting my friend Olan Montgomery who died of COVID about a year before, and marveled at the year it has been. Then we talked about how our vaccines are going, more about Moderna and Pfizer differences, about vitamins, our preferences for gummies as an excuse to feel righteous about eating candy, when to take them, how we make our coffee, with our moka pots, pour overs and French presses and we shared our favorites with links on Amazon, and the price of a latte. We talked about Jamie Dimon and how he doesn’t think we’ll go hybrid at work but actually return to our offices, and how we think they will return. We discussed how someone on the Zoom had a book club and because of Zoom they were able to entertain the author during their session. We talked about corporate cultures and how so many start-ups had bring-your-dog cultures and we asked ourselves whether that would continue, and how it was likely it would as those with dogs had become accustomed to being close to their dogs as their dogs have become accustomed to being close to them.

We talked about the awkwardness of Zoom singing, and someone recommended the show Zoe’s Extraordinary Playlist where people sing their thoughts. We asked whether the pandemic is over or close to over and we agreed it might be 46% over. We talked about dressing for Zoom and about working from home, and how working from home protects us from abusive bosses to some extent, at least a bit from their yelling. We then talked about Scott Rudin and how it has come up in several recent articles that he is very abusive to his employees, mostly young people starting out, but also that he has been very valuable to the industry and so he was protected though everyone knew the stories about his abuse. We talked about junk bonds from the 1980s and Boesky and Millikan and commercial real estate. We noted this year that the wealthy got wealthier and the less wealthy not so much and we worried about the national debt.

Then one of us shared how he has been experimenting with the “hyperloop” means of transport, sort of like Disney’s old monorail but better. He said that to keep himself busy he has been working on the drawing and engineering of it all, and sharing it on open source. , and how fusion energy and quantum mechanics would be used to power it. It was all a bit above my understanding but some people on the call followed along. Then we talked about the legalization of marijuana and asked whether it would cut into the sale and use of alcohol. I posited that it would not, however, someone on the call who lives in Seattle said that it sure would. She mentioned how in Seattle where pot is closer to legal the sale of alcohol dropped and issues like driving while high have arisen, especially designating and measuring the level of high-ness that might prove a problem. We talked about how home growers of the stuff use so much energy to shine lights on it when grown inside, sort of like mining blockchain codes burn through electricity. And we ended there for the night.

Today we hit 100! Since starting more than a year ago we now have had 100 meetings, all well attended and enjoyed. In a lot of ways this mark matters more to me, and to most of us on the Zoom it seemed, than hitting our one year anniversary. We reminisced a little bit, kind of marveled at what we’ve done, how many interesting guests we’ve had, with many of our regulars attending most of them, and how we’ve created something of a community in which we’ve gotten to know each other, supported each other, and entertained each other. We also discussed whether this would be a “centenary” or a “centennial” and resolved “100th” was just easier. It was funny that after 100 Zooms we still were having some tech issues. Zoom seemed to have increased their security protocols, though “Zoom bombing” seems to be a thing of the past already, and we needed to figure out how to manage the onboarding from the waiting room which previously we could disable. It became yet another team effort to figure out the tech.

We’ve hit the Spring again and we marveled at how different it was from last year. Many of us went out into Central Park that day to see the newly budding cherry blossoms. Now only the small flowered ones are open and not the big pink and white fluffy pom poms which should be opening in another week or so. Someone commented that she noticed that the park was filled with outdoor weddings, people are making up for the lost year and are catching up on their nuptials.

One of our regulars has found a boom in her business of selling online photographs of New York City. They’re beautiful, and award winning, and she suspects that people were buying more not only because they’re home to browse the internet and are finding her art but because they’re nostalgic for pre-pandemic New York, maybe many have moved out and are missing New York.

We talked quite a bit about what reopening will mean. Many expressed a “FOGO” – fear of going out – and a lot of articles are being written about his. Some of us have been socializing regularly out and about but within our bubble. I actually stepped out of it for one of the fist times to go downtown to a gathering of less in-bubble friends indoors at a bar. I thought I’d be okay with it, I’m fully vaccinated and most people there had at least one shot or the antibodies, yet I was very nervous and found myself staying only a short time, and after all the friendly hugs, making a batch of the “immunity tea” I was drinking every day in the beginning, a year ago as soon as I got home. In lots of ways it feels like yesterday that all this happened. Time has moved really slowly and really fast at the same time. Several people expressed concerns about opening. A couple are still worried about emerging with the variants causing sickness. We also talked again about New York’s Excelsior pass that would allow people to go to theater and events if they prove they’re vaccinated. Some people admitted this might be the inspiration they needed to get the vaccine.

We talked a bit about the Easter holiday which was also today, about how some enjoyed meals with friends. We talked with our Florida friend again about how open it is, and how we do want him to come back to NY! We also talked a bit about how different Easter last year was from this year. I learned about the Redondo bike race in Belgium through the Flanders area which happens every Easter and which much of Western Europe watches. Last year it was canceled and someone had the bright idea to run it virtually, where each of the racers raced the course at home on their stationary bikes while video taping themselves. This year, with the availability of the vaccine, they could run it live and a Danish guy won.

From the Euro bike race we started talking about a Euro film on Netflix now, Madame Claude, about an infamous brothel owner who ran a high end escort service in the 1960s and 1970s. I found it amazing and very racy, and that led to a kind of fun conversation about such things. Then a woman we hadn’t seen in a while popped in. We stopped and asked how she was doing, and she responded unfortunately not so well since as an Asian she’d suffered a street insult sadly part of the disturbing uptick in Anti Asian violence. This led to an extended conversation about protecting ourselves in the streets from attacks, whether racially motivated or otherwise. Someone who grew up in the City when it was rough recalled the street smarts he acquired as a kid traveling through bad neighborhoods. We talked about mace and other weapons we might carry, about walking with purpose and quickly through threatening areas, and again about the need for the Guardian Angels. Our French friend dropped in so I returned the conversation to Madame Claude, but he was less impressed by that whole brothel thing, so we finished with the more somber but important topic about Anti Asian and street violence we had been on before he arrived. It’s disturbing we need to address it, but we all acknowledged it was valuable that we do. If violence increases against one group the streets become less safe for everyone.

We had our “Groove this week on Monday because Passover started on Saturday night and it’s celebrated with evening dinners called seders on the first two nights. And this coming Sunday will be Easter, hence “inter-holiday.” We on the ‘Groove who celebrate talked about our seders. After a year of pandemic the enthusiasm to generate and join Zooms wasn’t as fervent as it was last year. A couple people had fully Zoom’ed seders, making dinner for themselves at home in front of the screen, a couple did hybrids with a small celebration in “real life” with family and friends and a laptop on the table for people to join on Zoom from different homes, states and countries, and several decided to forego the celebration all together. People are a little burned out. We talked about what the holiday was about with those who don’t observe it, that it’s the celebration of the biblical Exodus from Egypt and we discussed the ritualized dinner to memorialize it, but really the whole enthusiasm for it wasn’t there. This past pandemic year is taking a toll on us.

We comfortably moved on to our new “normal” of talking about whatever comes up as we rolled along. We talked about how people may flirt with their eyes above the masks as people did in the past, above fans. We asked whether posting pictures of ourselves wearing masks on dating profiles made sense and decided that not only it didn’t but that it was sort of a turn-off because it was a reminder of this difficult time we’re in, and who needs that when you’re looking for love?

We talked about the big ship blocking the Suez canal and speculated what it would do to our economy, and to our toilet paper supply which is apparently threatened by this since the ship was transporting it. Somehow Jewish mayors of big cities came up, like of Dublin and of Mexico. We talked about who our first crushes were, at ages under 10, and as early as 5 someone remembered the full name of his first crush. Then we talked about the foreign languages we’ve tried learning and the foreign people we’ve tried dating. We went from talking about the cause of the Irish potato blight to celebrating the release of a commercial jingle one of our regulars helped create. Then we reminisced about other jingles from over the years and which were the worst earworms, then about the pharmaceutical product the new jingle advertised and the side effects of drugs and why people don’t like taking them even when they should, especially for mental illnesses. Then we talked about famous people who suffered mental illness, like Ernest Hemingway, and how our new understanding of some of these maladies they suffered can inform how we revisit history. Then we talked about religious figures and how many of them may have been schizophrenic, like many people regarded as prophets and saints, and perhaps the founders of Scientologists and even the Mormons. Then we talked about famous successful Mormons, and “The Book of Mormon” musical, and also “Fiddler on the Roof.” This led to talking about Broadway shows and how those of us who live in New York really miss them, and how Cuomo has suggested a “passport” one could get once we are vaccinated to prove we are safe to go inside and this would allow entry into shows and encourage opening of the arts facilities. We discussed whether this was safe or violative of privacy but most of us want the arts back so much we’d probably go for it, especially since we’ve forfeited so much of our privacy over the years with the internet and social media. We talked about how Miami opened too soon and we’re worried, how Florida Governor DeSantis is called DeathSantis because under his early opening of Florida, and of Miami in particular, the State COVID death toll has increased. Then we discussed Dr. Berk’s recent interview where she said the first 100,000 deaths from COVID couldn’t be prevented, but the next 450,000 could have. Someone commented that the NYC residential uptown neighborhoods see people consistently wearing masks and having lower COVID cases, while in midtown and other NY neighborhoods people aren’t wearing masks, which explains the unfortunate rise in sickness and death in the tristate area despite so many people getting the vaccines.

St. Pat’s was Tuesday March 17 and again it was more subdued than most would have preferred it. The Irish pubs in my NYC neighborhood were packed, but this meant every heat lamped outdoor table and every distanced table permitted inside were full, as opposed to the green bedecked drunken fest we all know and love. I suspect this was similar across the country except in the few places which are fully open, maybe Florida, maybe Texas. So in order to compensate for our missed party opportunity I invited one of our regulasr, an expert herself in whiskey and spirits, to speak for us. Responsible for our NASA scientist surprise guest treat, she once again outdid herself and offered up an expert who hailed from Ireland, in the moment. We met at 8:00 pm EST and Susan Boyle Zoomed in with us as we started, which was midnight for her, and she graciously stayed with us for more than two wonderful hours.

Susan not only is an expert in Irish spirits and food, but a dramatist, an actor and a PhD candidate. Her joy and her enthusiasm was infectious. and her deep knowledge impressive She paired the storytelling of theater with that of booze, which most of us may not have otherwise connected. As I popped open a can of the stuff to get everyone in the mood of it all, she told us the story of Guinness, of the Irish harp drawing based on an ancient harp housed in a museum that Guinness patented requiring the country to find another harp to put on their money, she related the story of whiskey in Ireland and everywhere else, how the spirit was made and where, and what went into it. She digressed into theater and story and all things fun, and she suggested why the God of Wine Bacchus in Rome, called Dionysus in Greece, is also the God of Sex and the God of Theater, as all can change our perception and stir our emotions and override our reason. She shared that Ireland was responsible for creating the corkscrew and the glass wine bottle, and this love of enjoying wine well gave way to the beautiful glassmaking tradition of Waterford. She told us how the Irish monks, with time on their hands and fields in which to grow things, figured out how to make whiskey and spread the word, and also emigrated to France to become winemakers and export it back home since grapes wouldn’t grow in Ireland and wine was very popular in Ireland. She also told us about a newly popular spirit poitine that is the Irish everclear, their moonshine, which is super high in alcohol. Everyone, myself included, peppered her with questions and she had an answer for everything. We ended by talking about a fascinating academic project she did recently in London in which she replicated how the Egyptians made beer during the pyramid building times. She worked with a brewer she knew as well as a potter friend to make a pot similarly porous to that used by the Egyptians. She said evidence showed the ancient Egyptians used coriander, cumin and even pistachio to flavor their beer, and she did this as well. We asked how it was, and she said, “unsurprisingly it was delicious,” and the pot kept the beer remarkably cold. She said her colleagues were surprised by how good the beer was, but she wasn’t because “humans are same throughout time” and everyone likes good cold beer. We asked if it were lower in alcohol like some historic beers were in the UK, and she said no, the beer was about as strong as a Guinness. Someone posited that perhaps all the beer drinking while pyramid building explained the mystery of why the Bent Pyramid was bent, which was pretty funny. It was a great talk, festive and fun, and made up a little bit for our missed St. Pat’s Day.

PareaGroove was founded on March 15, 2020. So on this Sunday we celebrated our One Year Anniversary. This has been one of the strangest, longest, most difficult years, and yet time flew for many of us. I had thought to make this a Special ‘Groove, perhaps going around the boxes and having people share what they felt about what happened, how things have changed, what they learned, and other moody deep-type things. However, people weren’t interested in that. Everyone wanted to focus on the future and in a very positive sense. This ‘Groove, as more than one person noted both on the call and privately afterward, was the most positive, uplifting happy Zoom we have had. It is indeed significant that one year ago we were showing up with apprehension and fear and now a year later we have access to vaccines and an optimism for an end to COVID and its rampage on our lives.

President Biden promised in his first public address to the country that by July 4 everyone who wants to be vaccinated will have access to a vaccine, but most of us on the ‘Groove are well on our way to getting fully vaccinated. We shared information with each other how to do that. We talked about an alumni Zoom talent show we had seen and how more than a quarter of the several hundred people on it, most in their mid 50s, too young to get it according to the rules, had somehow gotten a vaccine. We also noted this has become a new platform for entertainment and one of the alum agreed to perform for us in a few weeks. We also decided to continue with Sunday PareaGrooves. These Zooms are going to be part of our lives, and it can become a nice cozy combat to the Sunday Night Blues going forward, even as we open and things return to normalcy.

The mood on this Zoom lightened, if we’re all vaccinated then we can start heading out into the world. Someone mentioned the word “sex” came up more times on this ‘Groove than on any before. The media reported that births actually decreased this year, people weren’t home having lots of sex, they were too stressed, and also maybe too insecure to plan for a child even if they were enjoying themselves otherwise, which was very different from the post 9/11 baby boom. However, now that we’re the country is opening, State by State, and we’re getting vaccinated, person by person, things might get a bit sexier. And as we are all too used to talking about disease, STDs was brought up and why AIDS was different than COVID, people feared it more easily because it was uniformly fatal. In any case, people definitely feel more confident to get out and date with the jabs in their arms.

We wandered to talking about Trump, and new dark things he’s doing from the sidelines, how he got the vaccine in January and didn’t tell anyone, and how he sent cease and desist letters to Republican fundraising groups to stop using his name so he can monopolize its use to gather money for himself. We found articles about how his children are socially ostracized in New York, and how Florida might change with them there, or not. Somehow talking about him felt out of place now, we really want to move on.

We have a couple foreign born on the call and others in touch with friends and family in Europe. We talked about how we are all excited to have in-person events, in-person Easter and Passover celebrations, while in Europe, especially the UK, France and Italy, they are shutting down again this week for a month. France has a 6:00 pm curfew and weekend lockdowns now. Italy is shutting in a few days, and the UK is still very strict. The UK and maybe others are increasing the time between shots to 12 weeks rather than 3 or 4 to better distribute the vaccine. It seems in Europe people can’t get it around the edges at clinics with leftover vials like we can. We talked about how people there like to eat dinner late and these early shut downs and curfews are devastating to the populace. We wondered why they’re doing this while we are opening. But then one pointed out our death rate has been far higher than theirs. Our French friend told us that France had shut down to returning citizens except if there was an official reason or family emergency, but that over 23,000 French citizens abroad had signed a petition and gotten the government to change this policy just two days ago and now French citizens can return, if they’d like.

Someone suggested our country’s inability to be so strict as in Europe was due to American selfishness. I prefer to see it as rugged individualism, and the lockdowns abroad are dreadful and it is good we haven’t gone that route, though Florida and Texas may be swinging too far in the other direction. She talked about Duke University and how it shut down because several people got COVID from a fraternity rush week, and how selfish it was for these students to insist on this even while COVID still existed.

We then talked about the European impression of Americans and cited several Monty Python skits to that effect. We talked about the origin of seemingly British foods, corned beef and cabbage and fish & chips, and how these actually came from Jewish immigrants, Portuguese Jewish refugees in the 1500s brought fish & chips to the UK and the Irish immigrants borrowed corned beef from their Jewish neighbors for their celebrations. We then talked about imported curse words and how some words, like the “c” word, was anathema here but just fine in the UK, “you silly c—” being something of an endearment. We talked about how relaxed we were, how we were just laughing more easily. With Biden in office and the worse thing being his dog bit someone, with the stimulus package giving a shot in the arm to the economy, and our own shots in our arms stimulating us to get out into the real world and meet new people, even through the new Zoom dating parties that have started showing up. We ended by talking about Clubhouse, booze, and how we’d like to try Pat Benatar’s husbands boutique bourbon.