It behooves me to acknowledge the seriousness of our current moment...and I do.
But...Today as I repeated to someone, "Wash Your Hands," I couldn't help recalling another fraught time here in NYC. It was summer following a winter and spring that had little snow or rain. The city's reservoirs were running dangerously low. Lawn-watering (for those who had lawns) was verboten; glasses of water had to be requested in restaurants; there was no turning on fire hydrants for children, etc..... That brought on a directive often repeated in this house from time to time... "Don't flush for everything." What with a national emergency!!! it may come to that.
If it comes to that, it will be because everybody went out and bought up all the toilet paper for a lung disease.
ReplyDeleteIn a few places people are buying up all the bottled water. Even though there is no water shortage that I know of.
DeleteThe thing is ... because everyone else is panic buying, we (or at least I) feel pressure to make sure we have the staples laid by, too, lest we run out of something critical (let's pretend that anything I buy at the grocery store each week actually rises to the level of "critical") and there is nothing left when we need it. So in that spirit I stopped by the grocery store yesterday evening. Not only was all the toilet paper sold out - the shelving units that normally would be stuffed with the 24-roll packs of toilet paper were completely gone. There was a single carton of store-brand paper towels sitting in the middle of the aisle, and a few lonely packages of flushable wipes. I confess I bought one of the latter (even though we already have enough toilet paper at home to last a couple of weeks at least), but resisted the urge to buy all 3-4 of them.
DeleteJim, Maybe a supply of peanut butter.
DeleteI don't get the bottled water panic, especially in NYC, which has good water from the faucet and not just in my opinion, and lots of water in upstate reservoirs.
There were tons of wipes last week; today none. Amazingly low supply of chicken parts but pork slices for stir-frying were plentiful. Potatoes and onions looked a bit scrappy.
Today noticed a lot of aimless shopping, people who don't usually shop? Lots of men and people who don't know how to wheel grocery carts. The manager of this store is amazingly cheerful. I do worry about the checkers who are probably exposed to every known germ in the world. But they too are cheerful and friendly.
Yes, yesterday at Kroger was awful. Many frail, elderly people who looked shell-shocked at the empty shelves. It was just pitiful.
DeleteBtw, Kevin Williamson, curmudgeonly (if a youngish person can be a curmudgeon) libertarian conservative opinionator and persnickety wordsmith at National Review among other places, noted in his Tuesday newsletter (known as "The Tuesday") that the second syllable of "long-lived" really should be pronounced with a long "i", as it is a variation of the phrase "long life". I've noticed that most people do pronounce that syllable as though it is the world "lived" with a short "i". The word has always bugged me, so I looked it up in a dictionary many years ago and read that either pronunciation is acceptable (or at least they were both listed in the dictionary entry), but I happen to agree with Williamson; the long "i" pronunciation makes more sense.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both of you, but who are we among so many? If KW succeeds in getting people to sound "long-lived" correctly, I wish he would take a shot at the correct meaning of "begs the question," which does not mean the situation is just asking for it. But, again, sometimes all one can do is shrug.
DeleteTom - he also recently made a distinction between "jealousy" and "envy"; the latter pertains to something that someone else has which we desire, whereas the former pertains to something (or someone) which we already possess.
DeleteHe sounds like the kind of guy for whom explaining the difference between "convince" and "persuade" is catnip.
DeletePeople used to make a living writing about such things. Bill Safire, for one. No sense getting it wrong when it doesn't cost any more to get it right. At least that's what I'm implying here. What you infer is your business.
DeleteJean I'll bite, is there a difference?
DeleteYes, you try to PERSUADE me of something because you are CONVINCED that it is true. To persuade involves applying arguments/evidence to convince.
DeleteI don't really care much about that distinction, I confess. And I don't really care about the misuse of "literally" (as in "I literally exploded with anger"), although I live with someone who does.
I suppose we let these things go in the face of worse examples. I heard the director of a statewide organization say the other day on the radio: "This has went way beyond what I ever expected."
Here's my grocery shopping report from this morning: the store, which is owned by Kroger but isn't called Kroger, had a single pan, half-gone, of ground beef at its butcher counter. Naturally, it was the $7/lb. Angus stuff. All other ground beef, including the pre-packaged ground beef, were gone, and there was no more in the back room. I bought a pound at the butcher counter, thus halving their stock. The butcher counter also had boneless chicken breasts; they told me that when those were gone, there was no more to be offered. Also completely out of strawberries except for organics, which were $6/lb. A produce stocker told me that strawberries weren't delivered this morning; that's unheard-of for this store on a Saturday.
ReplyDeleteThe eggs and yogurts were nearly cleaned out. The milk supply wasn't precisely cleaned out but it had a mighty divot in it. The bread aisle was nearly empty, too, although as I exited it a stock clerk came out of the back room with a stock cart piled high with bread, albeit it was white bread and a cheap brand to boot.
I had reported in a prior comment that this store's toilet paper aisle looked like a plague of locusts had had its way with it. Today, the shelves (which had re-appeared in this aisle - they were missing on Thursday; maybe they were being disinfected that evening) were every bit as empty as before - except that there was a stock clerk who had a cart with a miscellaneous pile of toilet paper brands and packages on it. He was putting each package on a shelf, and shoppers were plucking each package away and putting in their carts as quickly as he put them on. So I joined the small throng and came away with a 12 pack (not my usual brand, but times being what they are ...). I guarded it, jealously, in my shopping cart for the rest of my excursion through the aisles, as I wouldn't put it past our usually-well-behaved suburban neighbors to let their inner beast come out; there already was some jostling going on in the yogurt section.
Later, the checkout clerk told me that, when the store opened at 6 am, there was a line of people waiting. Again, unheard-of.
Sounds like we're all doing some hamsterkaufing today. I tried to get regular rice last time, they were out. So today I resolved to score some expensive basmati rice from the organic section. Too late. I settled for instant, which they still had. The store really wasn't too badly picked over except of course for sanitizer, acetaminophen, and toilet paper. It was interesting the things that were gone, and what was left behind. They were getting low on flour and baker's yeast. Apparently people were planning a little scratch baking. Left behind was brown rice. I don't like it either. Canned beans and canned tomatoes were running low. Except for the "no salt added" kind. No one will touch that unless their doctor laid down the law to them. Guess there's a limit to how much healthy eating we will do. No parti shortages in produce. I got some more apples. Normally I just rinse them off and dry them with a dish towel. Going to apply a vodka rinse to these for good measure. Got to do something with that awful vodka.
DeleteHad brown rice last night with my spectacular salmon, I had planned it that way. Stores here Friday morning seemed almost back to normal. Wednesday was the day of spectacular stupidity for shoppers.
DeleteMy California son reports there was no milk anywhere (except at Starbuck's) this morning. He wondered where people were going to store 20-24 gallons of milk, which seems to have been a not unusual grab. We talked about freezing milk. His mother and I can remember the milk left by the milkman in cold weather lifting its lid right off the bottle. They can mop up the mess with their toilet paper.
Out here on the Left Coast when we were suffering through the drought, we said this:
ReplyDeleteIf it's yellow, let it mellow.
If it's brown, flush it down.
To this day I show with one leg and foot in a 5 gallon bucket. I use that water to flush. Good practice and easy to do.
I still insist that the word "date" is plural of "datum." Data is not a singular noun even though apparently everyone else thinks it is.
ReplyDelete