A new era
Happy week, everyone. I recently bought a teapot (of the tea press variety) and it is among the things that are making me happy these days. School starts tomorrow, as does a new national era, and it’s all a bit overwhelming. So I’m focusing on the small things.
Here are some things, big and small.
Yesterday I wrote about the clergy who are praying at the Inauguration (not at the church services the days before and after, but at the ceremony itself). It was much more interesting than I expected!
I also talked to the directors of two great new documentaries. One is Sam Pollard, who directed MLK/FBI, which details the (already known) massive surveillance of Martin Luther King by the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, but also Hollywood’s role in enabling that kind of surveillance of a private citizen. The other is wunderkind Lance Oppenheim, who made a film about The Villages, America’s largest retirement community, that blew my socks off.
And if you haven’t yet seen One Night in Miami (now streaming on Amazon Prime), you should get on that.
In the New York Times: How Nothingness Became Everything We Wanted.
I made this mushroom soup this weekend, without the cream because I didn’t want to use cream, and it was both delicious and kind of … meaty? Would recommend.
The other thing I did this weekend was go to one of NYC’s newly-opened vaccination sites to get my first COVID-19 vaccine shot! In New York City, teachers and educational professionals who are working in person are eligible to get the vaccine, which is good, because I return to the classroom next week. They’re giving out the Moderna vaccine. It was very efficiently run by a bunch of New York City Health Department officials, and I was in and out quickly. (They were pulling elderly people out of line to make sure they didn’t have to wait any longer than absolutely necessary.) I had some slight soreness in my arm — less than the flu shot — for about 48 hours, and then it was over. I go for the second shot on February 14, and I definitely hope production and distribution are stepped up as quickly as possible. The sooner we can reach herd immunity, the sooner we can beat this thing together and get back to life.