Tuesday 12/29/2020
Did Veronica’s aerobics class. Then settled in at 9am for the second lecture on the great piano stylists of the 20th century by Stephanie Trick and Paolo Alderighi (see 2.020). It was a wonderful talk, full of great piano samples as Stephanie and Paolo alternated playing in the styles of Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller, and others. They are such good performers and take such joy in their music, I love ’em to death. (See the performance video linked on 2.020.)
Next up was the weekly writer’s group, starting at 11. I hadn’t written anything this week but there were a couple of others that were really good. The topic was “Between” and Nancy produced this poem based on words from a hospice nurse,
BETWEEN
Hospice nurse, in lush Caribbean tones:
“He’s travelin’ now.
Makin’ ready.
A blesséd time.”Travelin’:
Between our shared illusion and
Some other.
Less and less here;
More often there.Makin’ ready:
A fledgling practicing to fly away.A blesséd time.
Nancy Flowers
About 12:30 a volunteer knocked on my door and said it was time to go down to the vaccine clinic. The process was smooth and well-organized — by Channing House staff and resident volunteers, and also from CVS with two clerks, three people administering the shots, and a single nurse observing us for fifteen minutes after. So now I have an official card showing I’ve received my first shot.
During the morning I got an email from the Tech Squad, Mary Ann was having trouble with her Macbook Air, couldn’t type. About 3 I had time to go look at it, and that was right. A mid-2012 Air and when you type on it, the keyboard seems not to work. But I found out if you hold a key down, after a half a second, it types its character. Talking it over with Craig I realized, oh, it’s the normal key-repeat delay. If you hold the key to the point where it would start repeating, then it types one character. This is pretty clearly a software issue but to prove it, Craig reminded me we have a stock of external keyboards in the 10th floor computer room. I got an Apple one, plugged it in, and it behaved exactly the same way! So the issue, whatever it is, is in the Mac, and not in they keyboard hardware as such.
Later I got to thinking and just asked the internet “Macos keyboard slow” and of course — it turns out that MacOS has an “accessibility” feature called Slow Keys which produces exactly the symptoms Mary Ann had. I went down and she brought the Macbook out in the hall and we checked, and that option was On and when I turned it Off — her problems were fixed.
In other news, the last round of testing turned up four more positive staff members. Fortunately only one had been in contact with residents recently. The virus is out there and it is staff who interact with the general community and get infected. Over 300 residents and staff were vaccinated today, so hopefully this nonsense will end soon.
Codgerville 