How little I could have imagined just
how much my life would change since the start of the Covid-19
pandemic and just how little of it would have anything to with the
virus and the attempts to stop its spread.
Yes, the virus completely changed our
much anticipated travel plans in celebration of our 45th
anniversary but it does not change the fact that we have been
together for more than 45 years and have gotten through some pretty
tough times. So what if we could not celebrate the big day with a
big trip or a fancy dinner out or even a relaxing Sunday brunch with
our children. We are together and that whats counts.
The pandemic, however, has nothing to
do with the other surprising changes in my life over the past few months.
A number of years ago, I started taking
watercolor class at the local Art Museum. Over dinner one night,
while talking about a photography class I was taking, my new neighbor
Peg said she always wanted to try watercolor. I said, “Let's do
it!” and we signed up. While it didn't quite grab Peg the way she
had hoped, I was hooked. My teacher, Bill, took a bit of getting used
to. His flowery language was not in the least politically correct but
it did not take me long to learn that his technical understanding of
color and technique, his firm grounding in art history, his ability
to understand that he was teaching hobbyists who just liked spending
time painting made him the perfect teacher for me. I have often said
that I paint for my own amazement. Classes were good for me. I got
out of the house. I talked with people.
In January, Bill, whose health is not
the greatest, had a fall in his apartment and he was unable to teach.
A substitute was found and the class continued but she was not very
good working with gray haired hobbyists after her years of college
students and future possible professionals. Half the class quit and
those of us who stayed basically ignored her; she was just the
babysitter so that we could spend three hours in the studio. She
wasn't very good at watercolor techniques and did not understand
color the way Bill did. She did want to talk to us about “painting
what you see.” She could not get past the fact that some of us were
content to trace our work onto the paper; Bill never cared one way or
another how we prepped for starting a painting. He just wanted us to
get to the painting part.
Over the month or so that the class
actually met, it became obvious that to all of us that we must
prepare for painting without Bill; that we must open ourselves up to
the idea that we would have to get used to a new teachers. Then
Covid-19 became pandemic and the world shut down. Art classes were
canceled and while WAM did start offering classes online, the idea
did not grab me and I have not signed up for classes; maybe if Bill
had been one of the teachers, I would have. I am waiting for studio
classes to resume and then hoping that I can find a new watercolor
guru or maybe taking some drawing classes.
In the meantime, I have tried to paint
on my own but it hasn't worked very well. The classroom gives me
discipline and structure –and it gets me out of the house and among
people. At this point, there is no painting in my life and I don't
know if there will be once studio classes resume. But I will try.
Another big part of my life is reading.
A few years ago I found a website called GoodReads, where I
could catalog my books, write reviews and chat with other members
about books. It was so-so and people could be nasty. My reading
tastes are eclectic and it was hard to find people who were talking
about the authors I enjoyed reading. Then they were sold to Amazon
and the atmosphere changed even more; it was time to find a new home.
I found BookLikes, a start up based in Poland, and it has been my
bookish home for the past 6 or 7 years. I have made bookish friends.
We play bookish games. We read books together. We read each other's
blogs and comment on them. It has been a very kind and supportive
community (something GR was not; perhaps because it was too big).
However, around 2016 the owners of the website stopped managing the
website. One of them became ill and they could not devote the needed
time to the website. In the intervening years, the website has been
falling apart slowly but surely. While the volunteer librarians could
take care of certain functions, they could not fix software problems
and they could not manage membership. The website has now become a
home for spammers. Web-pages don't load properly and they take
forever when they do. Sometimes the spammer activity is so high that
legitimate members cannot even connect to the website.
There has been some attempt among the
members to relocate the community but there is no bookish website
that offers the same features that have allowed us to create the
community in the first place. While I have not shared the comment
with my bookish buddies, I remember my father talking about chaos
theory and entropy and that you can never re-create the exact same
circumstances. You can't make America great again; you can only make
it great in a different way. The same with the BookLikes experience.
It is not portable; chaos theory says it isn't. The new Booklikes, perforce, will be different.