August 31, Sunny Sunday Zoom

Sunday we had a chat with the regulars, many of whom turned up. We opened with the leaving do I attended downtown, my first foray into the East Village since March. The Pandemic, the City crime, the economic weakening in his sector, and the frightening progression of the campaign season and where healthcare is heading, has driven a friend back across the Pond to the UK. It took his leaving to motivate me to navigate the subways that far out of the neighborhood, so I had that adventure to report. A regular on the call followed up with his day’s journey, he had attended a cemetery that day. He had his mother’s headstone unveiling, something that had been somewhat delayed because headstone carving was never an essential service. He shared his feelings and the visits with family this motivated. It was nice he could be there with us for his difficult day. Then we went from funerals to bar mitzvahs, and a couple people shared-screen with pictures they had from theirs from decades ago. We talked about high school classmates we reconnected with on Facebook and how many of them really don’t share our views on things, especially politics. We talked about the current administration, our anxiety over the election and over taxes and how those were being used as campaign promises, and threats. We talked about spies, in the news and not. Then someone with experience at the United Nations talked about what she had experienced while she was there. We talked about the fun UN parties the young ambassadors would sometimes have, and then about far less tame parties we knew about in NY or “accidentally” attended. Then we discussed flu shots and whether they might be a good idea at this point, and perhaps how now might be a better time to visit the dentist. We talked about Ben Carson. And then about the quality and comfort of medical scrubs as pajamas. We remembered dating in our 20s, the banker culture of the 1990s, and then discussed the benefits of air fryers and our favorite bars we hoped hadn’t closed. We ended more darkly, and talked about the continuing Black Lives Matter protests, our concern over whether herd immunity was possible, and again, about the uptick in crime in our neighborhoods.