Sunday Sundries, 268

1. HBsOTW [Human Beings of the Week]: Those who are helping others--financially or otherwise--those who are not hoarding, those who are keeping a safe distance, those who behave in a concerned way, not a panicky one.

2. I finished one book this week, Ian McEwan's fifth (fairly short) novel, Black Dogs (1992).

It's written in the form of a memoir by one of the characters, who begins with quite a stunning sentence:

Ever since I lost mine in a road accident when I was eight, I have had my eye on other people's parents (xi).

This is a classic example of what stylists call a "periodic sentence"--saving the explosion for the end. The loss, early in the sentence, could have been anything--and your uncertainty remains until the final word. Way to go, Ian!

The narrator--Jeremy--focuses on his story--and on his marriage to Jenny, whose parents (Bernard and June) become his principal concern as the story goes on.

He is purportedly writing, with June's cooperation, her memoir, a memoir that includes as a most significant experience her encounter with some large, wild dogs when she was hiking, early in her relationship, with Bernard in the aftermath of WW II.

Well, the story moves here and there, but we are moving relentlessly toward an account of her encounter with those two wild dogs. (Oddly, one scene takes place in Lerici, Italy, not far from where Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned in 1822.) And so we arrive in France, where Bernard lingers behind while she hikes down into a gorge, where the two dogs confront her. The scene gets violent (won't give you the details!), and lives go on, the dogs becoming ever more important in June's memory--and story.

A story which Bernard believes she has embellished and exaggerated.

Near the end, the narrator (the son-in-law, recall) says:

But it is the black dogs I return to most often. They trouble me when I consider what happiness I owe them, especially when I allow myself to think of them not as animals but as spirit hounds, incarnations (148).

3. No trips to the movies this week--being prudent. But we have been streaming merrily away for about an hour each night (after our eyes have wearied from reading and writing).

We're especially enjoying a BBC series that our friend Chris told us about--Detectorists--about a couple of odd, middle-aged men who are "into" using metal detectors, looking, of course, for the Big One. Among the glories of the show (along with its odd humor and overall wryness) is the performance of Toby Jones as one of the principals. You possibly remember him as the actor who plays a scummy guy in one season of the Sherlock Holmes series with Benedict Cumberbatch.

His buddy is Mackenzie Crook (recognizable from Pirates of the Caribbean and Finding Neverland), who writes and directs the nineteen episodes.

It's lighthearted in many ways, deeply affecting in others.

Streaming on Amazon Prime. Or Hulu.

4. We made two very quick store trips today for perishables, mostly (fruit, veggies). When we got there about the time Acme opened (7) and Heinen's (8), it was not all that crowded. I saw no one with a cart stuffed with toilet paper. Many had only a hand-basket. People kept their distance.

Lots of bread products were gone, but we had no trouble getting eggs, yogurt, noodles, fruit, nuts, and the few other things we dashed around buying.

The flour I use to mix my starter each week (King Arthur's unbleached bread flour) was not available at either place--nor, I discovered later, on the King A website.

So ... found some on Amazon and pulled the trigger.

Among the flours I've tried for the starter, it yields the best texture.

5. We've not see our son, daughter-in-law, and two grandsons since this started. Just seems too risky--especially since you can feel perfectly all right for a bit after you've been infected. I would not forgive myself if I gave it to them, and I'm sure they feel the same way about bringing it into our house.

Grandson Carson will be eleven on April 5, and I hope things will be calmer then so that we can see him. But if not? We understand.

6. Final Word--A word I liked this week from one of my online word-of-the-day providers:

     - from wordsmith.org (not that wordsmith provides the form of the opposite meaning: breviloquence)

pleniloquence  (ple-NIL-uh-kwens)

noun: Excessive talking.

ETYMOLOGY: From Latin pleni- (full) + -loquence (speaking). Earliest documented use: 1838. The opposite is breviloquence.

USAGE: “Their debate has become increasingly embroiled in pleniloquence over minutiae, as they dispute the actual number of lawyers in Germany, Korea, etc.”

Frank B. Cross; Lawyers, the Economy, and Society; American Business Law Journal (Oxford, Ohio); Summer 1998.