A small break in the action due to the need for some technical support. A young person who looked barely 12 or 14 (but was undoubtedly at least 20) helped me, and I am very thankful. There is no question that young people's brains are wired differently than those of us born in the '50s or '60s, and they take naturally to technology. There's a part of me still hoping that some of my odd skills (using a dial phone, reading a clock with hands, and, as a retail clerk, making change the old fashioned way) will continue to serve me and the world...perhaps only as brain exercise, or "what to do in a power outage". Yet we've gotten rid of so many of those lower-tech objects, that even in a power outage we'd be up a creek.
But I digress! As usual!
Way back on January 7 of 2020 (the day after Epiphany), before I had really heard of what would become the pandemic, I made a comment here in my blog that I had a hunch it would be the year when we would see a lot of things more clearly. Yes, this was a riff on "20-20" vision. But in addition to that, the year had been in the back of my mind since the early 2000's, when I happened to write an essay (never published) that took the form of my being interviewed in 2050 by a young person, asking how humanity had gotten through "The Transition" that started in around 2020. Even twenty years ago, I had an intuitive hunch that the 2020 decade would be, well, unusually important and life-changing. It certainly has been so far.
In my new living situation, we spent a few hours the other morning cleaning windows and screens. While it can be a challenging chore, especially if you have to get up and down ladders, there are few things more satisfying than looking out of a really clear, clean window. Literally, it is like looking at life in a new way, with 20-20 vision. And it changed the quality of light (I actually almost wrote "life"!) coming into the house, and lighting its interior.
I learned one metaphorical and two practical lessons. One: I prefer household chores that involve cleaning with water, just as the only sports I really like involve water (sailing, rowing, kayaking, canoeing, swimming). Two: If you take screens out of the windows to hose down outside (it is hardly worth cleaning the windows if the screens remain dirty!), spray "into" the inside side of the screen so the water pushes out the milkweed and other wildflower fluff that has clogged up the outside of the screen. Spraying the outside of the screen first only pushes the fluff further into the screen. Also, don't leave screen B on the grass right next to where you are spraying screen A, because all the fluff from screen A just lands on screen B.
And Three: at the end of the day, a squeeze of dish detergent and a capful of vinegar in a small bucket of warm water work just as well to clean glass as fancy cleaning products, especially if you use a really smooth lint-free cloth instead of paper toweling.
There are many forms of seeing clearly, and I guess we need all of them right now.
