Jason Frye

Ramblings of a web developer and sometimes writer

Jason Frye

Living through a Pandemic

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I rarely thought much about viruses prior to COVID 19. SARS and Ebola were always flittering on the fringes, stories in my periphery, but never a focus. Then COVID happened. A worldwide pandemic that swept away all sense of normalcy, compounded by a president and administration in the US that spread misinformation in the virus’ early days, appeasing Wall Street and anti-maskers, rather than tackling the virus.

I haven’t caught the virus. I know some who have, locally and abroad. In the early days, I thought about keeping a journal regarding the virus, lockdown, and complications of the pandemic, but that quickly grew tiresome. Instead I’d like to share what lockdown was like for me. If it’s ten years from now, will I remember weeks spent at home? And I’m not complaining, just recalling for the future.

Sometimes I wouldn’t go outside all day except to get the mail.

My truck that often emptied it’s tank at around the two week mark often takes six to eight weeks before I need to refill.

My daughter graduated from fifth grade, into sixth, a completely different school, and never once touched feet to linoleum in that new school, at least so far during her first year.

My work, where I started in September 2019, went remote in March 2020 and I’ve now spent more time working remote than I ever did in the office.

I received a promotion in December, where I lead a team of developers and other staff members. All our correspondence happens via slack chat or in zoom calls.

I haven’t sat in a restaurant since April of 2020, when I visited a restaurant with my brother and parents in Indiana — restaurants were shutdown in Champaign during that time.

I learned to work with wood the summer of 2020, building many shop projects, and a few small pieces of furniture.

While I had been somewhat learning to cook prior to COVID, I’ve taken a keen interest since.

Books provide a great adventure. I even went back to hardcover, with the occasional Kindle digital book.

Board and card games give us hours of fun.

Video games preserved what little social life I have left.

Masks worn everywhere. The blue surgical were my later go to. I’ve bought a box of 50 every couple months. My wife gets hers at work.

Sports have all been played in empty stadiums, including at the college level. Those first few months of the lockdown saw little realtime TV, as all sports were stopped. News was one of the only options.

Awaiting the vaccine like it’s some sort of mystical cure-all.

We currently lose thousands of people each day to this virus. There are still videos and stories of obtuse shoppers refusing to wear masks. Some cities have implemented fines for not wearing them. Illinois currently has the state on zoned lockdowns, we’re in a lockdown phase that only allows takeout from restaurants and essential shopping.

The vaccines developed in record time give us all hope that this part of our lives will be behind us. I know my family will welcome that with a huge sense of relief. If you lost someone to this virus, I hope the future holds you in it’s embrace and you find comfort from that pain.

Black Lives Matter

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They do. I’m posting this to document my experience learning about the movement and to help me understand the plight of the black community in America.

I have personal experiences that I could share, but in deference to the way the movement would rather whites step aside and allow black voices to be heard, I thought a better approach would be to update this page when I come across an insightful resource, be it a video, article, tweet, or some other media online.

Likely the best source, the website of the movement.
https://blacklivesmatter.com/resources/

Twitter accounts to follow (found in the Trayvon toolkit on the BLM website):

@TTMFoundation
@Blklivesmatter
@SybrinaFulton

Remembrance

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Smoke filters through the open window, leaving
the scent of the past, of a fire once trapped within
that stone surround, so warm and giving
that it seemed like it would last long past the night. 

There There book review

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Tommy Orange’s There There was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer. It’s a story about Native Americans, many of whom live in Oakland, California, and how their lives entwine at a powwow.

I found the writing to be compelling and the characters were like old friends. The author toyed with perspective, using even the second person voice for some of the character’s stories.

For instance, one of the character’s description of a warning from his mother comes direct at us, and brings us closer to the telling simply by using the second person narrative.

“Later you remember your mom saying to take drugs was like sneaking into the kingdom of heaven under the gates. It seemed to you more like the kingdom of hell, but maybe the kingdom is bigger and more terrifying than we could ever know. Maybe we’ve all been speaking the broken tongue of angels and demons too long to know that that’s what we are, who we are, what we’re speaking. Maybe we don’t ever die but change, always in the State without hardly ever even knowing we’re in it.”

My biggest problem with the book was keeping up with the sheer number of characters, most of which make a new appearance throughout the book, but their whole stories might be told throughout a few decades time. This jumping around made it difficult to keep track, to the point I was jotting down little blurbs about the characters (my x-ray feature) to keep their stories inline.

Spoilers ahead

At the big ending, when all these characters came together, it was the powerful evocative scene that mirrored a lot of what we see portrayed as Native American encounters of old through media. The murderous scene at the powwow was evocative of the battles described in the opening of the book. Of course, we’re often in the third person inside the individuals head, feeling the bullets hit them, the waves crashing over them, one boy who was shot described the blades of green grass on his face as the only feeling he had. The bullets were described as pulling the men into the ground, towards the core of the earth. It was a callback to the slaughters that happened to Natives throughout history. The betrayals, often times carried out by neighboring tribes.

The ending did leave me a bit wanting. I grew attached to the three boys who had ordinary names, but spelled ridiculously, Lony, Orvil, and Loother. Orvil was shot as he was one of the native dancers. But we never find out if he survived. We get a clue by the grandmother reading the door swiveling eight times as a good omen, and then she pays attention to the doctor. But why is the doctor coming to them such a short time after he was brought into the hospital. It seems to me like Orvil didn’t make it, and the Red Feather family is going to have to learn to cope with this loss. One that will forever shape their family, even as lost members are finding their way back to the fold.

I can understand why There There did not win in 2019, as I believe Overstory was a better novel. But this was an impeccable tale, told with real skill and should be one that writer’s look to for inspiration.

Things of Interest – January 27th – February 2nd

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The Things of Interest (TI) series looks at the previous week and some interesting things I’d like to log and share. No theme, other than I found them interesting.

Basketball Fans Uniting

How a tragedy brought the sports world together

All week the basketball world, and many outside of it, have struggled with the tragedy of Kobe, his daughter, and the teammates, coach, and their friends deaths in the helicopter crash in California. Pushing aside the feelings involved, there’s really something about the human spirit shown in the response of fans and really all around the world. I heard a talking head describe it as, “As fans we come to sports to get away from the realities of the world, and then this happens.” We’re falling into sports for an escape, and when the real world intercedes and takes a legend way too soon, there’s not much left but to wonder why.

Quitting Video Games

At least for the time being.

I’ve all but given up on video games, at least for now. I’m sure I’ll still play, but I’ve got to find better things to do with my time. I listened to the Penn Jillette interview on Tim Ferris’ podcast a few weeks ago. In it, he described losing over a hundred pounds of weight. He started the diet with a well known nutritionalist, who had him only eat potatoes for two weeks. The experience wasn’t some newfound starch diet, but one that was to teach him more about food, preparation, what he was putting into his body, and going without variety.

The past few weeks, I’ve done something similar and left video games behind for now. I don’t doubt I’ll still play, but I have read, wrote, rode the bike, played with my daughter, and done so much other more fulfilling things with my time. It’s remarkable how much I can get done without video games taking up so much of my time.

Nytimes Crossword

And even the mini

I’ve found a new piece of entertainment for at least a few minutes each night. I’ve been doing the NYTimes Crossword for at least a week now and I’ve found it to be a good substitute for some engagement on my phone.

I’m also a subscriber to the Times now. I wanted to continue supporting newspapers even though I don’t work at one anymore. This seemed like a good choice, albeit only the digital edition, which so far has been great.

I know this was late this week, but I still wanted to get it out there for the three people frequenting this blog