The Corona Diaries 1: The Best Laid Plans

Back in August I started my Corona Diaries - a series of missives sent to family & friends who live out of state. I am adapting and expanding them for the blog.

Late August 2020

2020 started off well enough.

I have been hoping to visit Germany for a while so I enrolled in a non-credit adult enrichment German language course thinking the time was nigh. The Frau and I were looking forward to drinking Rauchbier in Bamberg and seeing what else Germany had to offer a couple of American tourists. Perhaps the Altstadt in Heidelberg as well. Or Berlin. How can you go wrong with Berlin? I could see the sights I've only read about in the Gereon Rath novels. Ever since learning that my German ancestry goes back to my great-great-great grandfather Heinrich who hailed from Hannover, I've had a desire to drink a Breyhan (a beer style native to Hannover and very popular from the 16th-19th century) and to visit the city from which I get my German blood. The first ur-drops, anyway.

I took German in college and actually became fairly proficient for a short time. One of my roommates had taken German in high school and was majoring in German literature so I was able to come home and practice with him. It got to the point that I started to dream in German. The next year my friend went to study in Germany for a year and so there went my tutor and conversation partner. (Accompanying him was Scott Manning of Vintage Brewing. I believe that Scottie's Schwarzbier, Schwarzfahren, was named in honor of one of their adventures.)

It wasn't long before I found that I recalled much more than I thought I would. Over the years I've always used a bit of German here and there, e.g. – yelling "Achtung!" at the kids when they were little.

Speaking of my stepsons, they are doing well overall. The oldest turns 25(?!) in the autumn. He lives very close to where we lived before buying our house – on the isthmus not too far from downtown. His girlfriend moved in with him when the stay at home orders came down in March. He was doing some acting as well as teaching when the pandemic struck. I am very proud of him as he has gotten his stuff together and become quite responsible. It's as if he's an adult or something.

The youngest turned 21 this summer. Instead of volunteering to buy beer for his stepfather so he doesn't have to venture out to the Covid-laced liquor store, he is moving to Eau Claire at the end of this month or early September. As young men often do, he is following a woman - his girlfriend is returning to school there.

Having an interest in medieval history, I took another class last winter called "The Art of the Medieval Book." I learned the difference between parchment and vellum and how they're made, about medieval inks, and so on. Plus, I was excited to handle a codex for the very first time!

Being a big fan of The Name of the Rose – the novel, film, and TV series – it was thrilling to actually touch and leaf through some codices. To be able to feel the parchment, look at the detail in the illuminations with my own eyes, and whatnot was really neat. Luckily my fingers and tongue did not turn black.

2020 was also supposed to have included other travel plans beyond a potential trip to the Fatherland. I had carried a week of vacation time over from last year and had plans aplenty. The spring was to have involved a trip to New Orleans to visit The National WWII Museum with friends, a couple of whom I got to know through my brother and were, like him, big World War II history buffs.

My father was a huge WWII history buff and passed this down to my brother. I couldn't help but develop some interest in the subject and recall writing a paper on the day that will live in infamy at Pearl Harbor when I was in 4th or 5th grade. But I never came close to the devotion to the subject that they had. For instance, they'd be able to watch a WWII movie and point out that the Panzer Mk III onscreen was not yet in service at the time of the events the movie is portraying. I can still picture my father sitting before our TV in back of the house with mentholated smoke streaming from his nose and curling around his head as he gleefully watched Kelly's Heroes or Tora! Tora! Tora! for the 40th time.

After my brother died, I felt strangely obligated to keep the family interest in WWII alive so I started reading about it. I inherited some of their books but I've also been buying my own. Rather than retreading the well-worn, I've been trying to avoid the battles and aspects of the war that the likes of Steven Spielberg have made into blockbuster movies so that means no D-Day, no Pearl Harbor, no Holocaust, and no Battle of the Bulge. Instead I've read about the Rape of Nanking, the Battle of Stalingrad, the North African theater, and about Europe in the immediate aftermath of the war's end. 

Here are my latest purchases:

I've not yet read the book on the invasion of Poland but reading about The Battle of Okinawa sure makes life during the pandemic look like a cakewalk, I can tell you.

I had hoped to visit The National WWII Museum with my brother at some point – perhaps also head over to the National Museum of the Pacific War outside of San Antonio with him since we'd be down south. We'd check out the exhibits, he could lecture me about the war, and we'd reminisce about the old man. Much to my dismay, that never happened. So, I had a crew of friends lined up to board an Amtrak train for a spring trek to New Orleans…

Those plans fell through when The Frau announced she needed surgery. I moved the New Orleans trip to the autumn so I could be around for her recovery. (All went well and she has recovered fully.) In addition, she wanted to go to London for her X0th birthday in the summer. I had applied for my passport in December and it arrived in February.

And then came COVID-19. All these plans were shelved along with my annual trek to Indianapolis for the Gencon gaming convention; the gaming convention here in Madison, Gamehole Con, was soon canceled too and, most recently, so was the Doctor Who convention held out in Lombard, IL on Thanksgiving weekend, Chicago TARDIS. It's depressing to see my virgin passport and be reminded of all the plans I had. I really need to stow that somewhere out of sight.

Instead of venturing far and wide, I have spent the past five months working on short trips. Yesterday the Frau and I visited our favorite dairy, Sassy Cow. The farm and creamery are only about 20 miles north of Madison. We were there several years ago when the creamery opened but haven't been back since. That trip is notable in our minds for the cow who was in labor.

I had recently read an article about the plight of dairy farmers here in Wisconsin and thought visiting a farm would be a fun, if short, getaway.

Sassy Cow is not an industrial farm – more like a large family farm. The tour is only about 30 minutes but it's always nice to get out to the country. The smell of a cow barn never fails to take me back to living up north by Eau Claire while in high school. We left after having spent more money than I had hoped and are now very well stocked with ice cream, half & half, cheese, and yoghurt.