Your right to freeze peach

I have two peach trees (also some pear trees). I don't really do much to maintain them, just mulch and mow around them. I haven't done as much pruning as the official recommendations, but I've come to think those are just superstition. I got an incredible yield this year, the branches bending down to the ground. I had the neighbors come over to pick them, actually two sets of neighbors, and they took all they wanted and I took some for myself and I've still got peaches galore. I'm trying to recruit additional people to give them away to -- maybe it's a way to meet more of the neighbors.

 Anyway, fruit trees are definitely a good investment. Pears need very little attention. I understand it's pretty much impossible to do apples organically, but I've never used any chemicals on my trees and I get some insect-damaged fruit but not enough to really matter. Maybe the bugs just haven't found me yet but so far it's been a pretty free ride.

If you have a yard, you should try it. You can get dwarf varieties that don't take up much space. And they have beautiful blossoms in the spring -- they're just as ornamental as they are edible.

Electricity

 I don't know how much it was national news, but tropical storm Isaias basically wiped out the electrical grid in Connecticut. Many towns were pretty much 100% without power, mine among them. The electric company failed to prepare for the storm, and it took them a solid week to get most customers service restored, and as of this writing, 9 days later, some are still waiting.

I got my power back after almost exactly 7 days. I don't know if I can adequately describe what an ordeal that was. All of us out here get our water from wells, and no electricity means no water. I had stashed a five gallon jerry can with water for toilet flushing etc., and I could refill my potable water bottle at my neighbors' house, who have a generator. But I couldn't bathe, shave, or clean anything. I charged my devices at the neighbors' in the mornings, but only got about an hour use of my computer each day, so I couldn't really work. All I could do at night was read by flashlight. I couldn't irrigate my garden, it's been very dry here, so the garden suffered. (The tropical storm gave us plenty of wind but not much rain.) Yesterday, I had to toss the entire contents of my refrigerator on the compost heap. Some of it, I couldn't even tell what it was.

Now, if you think about it, electricity can't possibly be a necessity, right? I don't know when it first made it out here but probably not until 1920 or so. People managed to cook, eat, defecate, clean and bathe as well as operate their farms and offices. But of course everything was set up to make that possible. They had hand-pumped wells, wood or coal-fired cookstoves, mechanical typewriters, kerosene lamps, outhouses, they ate fresh vegetables from their own or neighbors farms during the harvest season and lived off canned goods, root cellars, and the occasional slaughtered livestock the rest of the year. 

But now it's impossible to live without it. You're forced to adapt eventually -- Puerto Ricans who were without power for the better part of a year after hurricane Maria managed to survive, but  it must have been damn hard. One week was more than enough for me. I'm buying a standby generator, which is expensive, but I can't go through this again. (A small portable generator from Home Depot wouldn't do the job for me because it couldn't operate the well pump, refrigerator and range, let alone give me any additional circuits.) But a lot of people, most actually, can't afford that. So they'll just have to suffer through the next storm.

Testing, 1, 2, 3 . . .

So as part of the plan to ostensibly re-open the university in the fall, the authorities required all faculty who want to show up on campus to get a Covid-19 test. This meant I had to drive in to Providence for that purpose only, and find my way to a location that was nearly isolated from the universe by the pattern of 1-way streets. It was off Thayer St., which is essentially the Main St. of college town with the typical shops and restaurants that cater to students and faculty, so the idea is that ordinarily people would walk there. They had taken over what had been a sandwich shop and the menu board was still visible.

They had four employees there. One was at the front entrance. She checked me in, looked at my official picture ID apparently because of the danger that someone might impersonate me in order to get this test, took my temperature, and handed me a bar coded tag. I then had to take that to a second employee who sat alone at a 15 foot table, whose sole job was to hand me a zip-loc bag containing the swab. I then walked down to the end of the room where a third employee stood to let me know when it was safe to proceed to the test site. Although I was the only person in the entire place, I was made to wait five minutes.

I finally walked down the hall to find a fourth employee who instructed me in how to administer the test myself. It's fairly uncomfortable -- you have to shove this long swab up your nose, much longer than a Q-tip, past the nostrils into the sinus, and twirl it around for 15 second, on both sides. Then she put the swab in a vial, stuck on the bar code, and I left. At that rate, assuming these folks are reasonably well paid, it would cost maybe 50 bucks a test not counting the lab fees and assuming they are paying rent and electricity. On the other hand there's no obvious reason why there were more than two people there.

I actually live in Connecticut, where we are getting 5 stars for our testing effort. However, I would not have been able to get a test in Connecticut because I have no symptoms, and not in a congregate setting such as nursing home or prison, and do not live in a vulnerable urban community. Were I not on the faculty of Brown University, I would need to call my primary care physician, report symptoms, and get a referral. If I did not have a primary care physician I'm not sure what I would be required to do. I got the results in two days, which is considered not bad but were I contagious that would be two days too long. I wasn't actually worried about it because I knew my chances of being infected were infinitesimal.

Still, this gives me a few things to think about regarding privilege (think pro sports also) and the appropriateness and adequacy of our testing regime, even in a state that's been exceptionally successful at squashing the epidemic.