Now What?

I was early in sounding the Coronavirus alarm, in social distancing, in wearing a mask outside, etc. So perhaps it’s fitting that I also feel ahead of the curve in worrying about what comes next. Alongside more productive work, I’ve been reading a ton on that front over the past few weeks. And while the deep dive has been fascinating, you can save hours of your life by just skimming this Ezra Klein article summarizing the best paths forward for booting back up our country.

Concerningly, we don’t seem to be moving towards any of those solutions. Indeed, we don’t really seem to be doing anything at all, aside from hunkering down, flattening the proverbial curve, and waiting.

But while social distancing is a crucial preparatory step for any decent solution, it’s not a solution in and of itself. It buys time, but that only helps if we use that time to make progress towards some subsequent steps, whether hugely ramped up testing, technology-assisted contact tracing, or whatever else. In the absence of any of those, we can stay home for months, but the pandemic is likely to come roaring back whenever we finally emerge.

In the absence of Federal leadership, private companies are stepping up, and various localities seem to be trying to piece together solutions of their own. But it’s hard to imagine any of those working without the reach, resources, and scale of a national, government-led push. At this point, I see zero sign of that happening, and I don’t have much hope that’s about to change anytime soon.

So, while I’m not sure how long this is all going to last, nor do I have any clear sense of what’s coming next, I’m not feeling optimistic, even if case numbers seem to be plausibly plateauing. I’m making life plans around the assumption that we’ll be in some degree of Coronavirus disaster for at least the next year. Buckle up.

April 10, 2020

(Pass)Over It

Last night, Jess and I made the best of things, setting up a seder for just the two of us on our living room floor:

seder

Though we had longer haggadot, and even some shorter ones, yesterday morning my mother sent along a Coronavirus-updated version of Shoshana Silberman’s A Family Haggadah, which we had used in my childhood.  And, somehow, that seemed like the right choice.

So, occasionally bolstering with prayers (like birkat hamazon) and songs (whether chad gadya, or ‘Take Us Out of Egypt” [to the tune of “Take Me Out To The Ball Game”]) and readings pulled from other books, we made our way through at a moderate pace, stopping to round up the ceremonial items I’d forgotten to bring out initially, or to pull various items out of the oven, or to go off on weird conversational tangents that had nothing to do with Passover at all until we remembered what we were doing and circled back to the seder.

We opted against opening our hall door for Elijah, singing out the open window instead.  And, though uniformly delicious, our menu was a bit less than traditional, working with the abridged ingredients we’d actually been able to round up.  Still, all in, I’d call it a great success.

We’re repeating tonight, this time with my parents (and possibly other family members?) on Zoom. And, yes, l’shana haba’ah and everything.  But, honestly, even in the midst of Coronavirus and lockdown and whatever else, I’d say this year, right here, is already pretty excellent, too.

April 9, 2020

Undelivered

I suppose it was fortuitous that I was having moral angst about the Shipt grocery order I managed to put in two days ago.  Because, after it was delayed one hour at a time for more than twelve hours running, Shipt eventually just canceled entirely.  So, yesterday, Jess and I strapped on our PPE, and headed to Whole Foods for a gigantic grocery stock-up.  Fortunately, the shelves were surprisingly fully stocked, and we had brought along a rolling grocery cart, my large backpack, and several giant IKEA bags.  The half-mile walk home was a bit of an ordeal, but I’m now at least feeling better about the state of our pantry, and my ability to pull together ‘real’ Passover seders tonight and tomorrow.  The remaining issue, however, is produce: while, each week, we’ve carefully plotted out our menus to waste as little as possible, and to stagger dishes by the shelf-life of ingredients, after five or six days, we’re inevitably down to just potatoes and onions.

So, I was very happy to discover this list on Eater.com, of restaurant suppliers now delivering directly to consumers.  Unlike pre-existing grocery delivery services, all these still seem to have plenty of excess capacity.  And, also unlike pre-existing grocery delivery services, I can actually feel good about ordering from them; doing so would be a great way to support the New York restaurant infrastructure.  Will post with a review / walk-through of my experience if I manage to wedge in an order at the start of next week as hoped.

April 8, 2020

Pass(over)able

While I continue to have all kinds of moral angst about online grocery shopping during this pandemic (I’m not in a high-risk group myself, and am therefore just taking advantage of the fact that I can afford to offload my risk to a less privileged low bidder), I nonetheless bowed to COVID worries this week, and ordered a big load of stuff from Fairway using Shipt, the only service I’ve found that currently has even intermittent delivery availability in NYC at the moment.  (Given their business model, it’s worth returning repeatedly throughout the day if there are no current slots, as new ones regularly open up.)

While it’s slated to arrive in a couple of hours (though the delivery window has already been twice pushed back), given the picked-clean shelves of grocery stores, I can’t imagine more than a small fraction of what we ordered will actually show up.  Still, with some creativity, and our already-stocked pantry, I think we’ll be mostly fine.

The biggest questions are around Passover, which kicks off this Wednesday evening.  A month and a half back, when I stocked up to weather this all, I didn’t really take into account the flour content of shelf-stable options, and I definitely didn’t grab any jars of gefilte fish.  So, though my parents have floated the idea of a Zoom seder, it’s unclear whether we’ll actually have any of the ingredients needed for even just the seder plate, much less traditional dinner dishes like brisket or matzo-ball soup.

At the same time, if the point of the holiday is to remember when our ancestors were slaves in Egypt – which, in Hebrew, translates literally to ‘a narrow place’ – then perhaps a quarantined version of the holiday will be as good of a reminder of that feeling as possible, and a success regardless of the culinary details.

Next year, if not in Jerusalem, then at least outside my apartment.

April 6, 2020