Sunday 10/17/2021
Watered the plants, fed the insatiable hummers (I refilled the two feeders 3 times today), did the Sunday crossword. Then as planned I walked to Walgreen’s in Midtown.
This was interesting. Online at Walgreens.com, 90 tabs of Famotidine were $8. At the store it was $10. I asked the nice clerk doing Sunday morning duty about it. She explained that I would have to order the stuff online for pickup at the store. Then she could hand me the two boxes of pills I was waving at her, and I would already have paid. If I just went ahead and bought them from her I would have to pay the shelf price.
So I stood there with my phone and ordered the two boxes from Walgreens.com for store pickup, and as soon as the sale completed, she showed me a text she had gotten saying Mr. Cortesi was coming to pick up these pills, and handed me the boxes, and off I went.
I had a lovely breakfast at the PA Cafe. That’s where we used to get our Sunday morning goodies for so many years, and I still did in the early days of this blog. Then I walked back (total walking for the day, 3.8mi).
Took a nap and it was 2pm and time to start prepping for Sunday At Home, the first Zoom simulcast we’ve ever done. I walk into the auditorium and find: the chairs are still arranged as for an employee event on Friday, in a big circle. So we need to arrange the chairs in rows. I call Stew, the event manager, and he comes down and starts on that.
I set up the podium, the lights, the mics, the tripod with my iphone on it. At 4pm Lennie starts the zoom meeting, I sign the iphone in, and we are off. Connie does a very nice reading of her poetry, some of which is really good. An audience near the Covid room limit of 50 is there, plus another 50 from various places, family and friends across the USA as well as in Channing House, on the Zoom. Which a couple of people told me worked really well.
So dang, we will probably have to do it again.
I eat dinner at a large table Connie reserved for her friends and have nice conversations.
Here’s one of Connie’s poems:
Home After Urgent Care
Suddenly, near sunset,
a shadow hummingbird
on the pale blue wall
beside my desk,
its fluttering form
dipping in, dipping out —
fish-like body
upturned tuft of tail,
blur of wings further blurred
by the sunlight’s cast.
I hold breathless,
not to frighten the shadow bird.
What must whir out there
is silent here.
One sunbeam
carrying a bird-shaped shade:
Nothing touches the wall,
only the bird without the bird.
Codgerville 