Classes at Fermi: I am pretty sure that my return to Italian classes occurred in January or February, but I am less certain about the year. 2014 was the year that we wound down our business at TSI. So that might have given me time to play a little bridge during the week and therefore abandon the Tuesday evening games in favor of Italian classes. However, I could easily be off by a year in either direction. I cannot think of any way to gain certainty.
I am a little more certain that all three levels of classes were still being offered in the semiannual booklet that we received in the mail—beginners, intermediate, and advanced. I am quite sure that the classes were held at Enrico Fermi High School, which was within a mile of our house in Enfield.
On the evening of that first class I turned right at the drive on North Maple St. and parked across from the main entrance. The classroom designated in the booklet was room #220, which was actually on the north side of the building. That first evening I walked through the corridors of the school. Subsequently I parked in the lot on the north side of the building, entered there, and climbed up one flight of stairs..
The booklet that contained the information about the course identified the teacher as “Mrs. Trichilo”. However, I am pretty sure that the person who ran the class that evening was actually her husband, Tony.1
Tony Trichilo.
He began the class by checking attendance. About ten or twelve people were there. Only one of them was familiar to me—the lady who had been taking Lydia Cherlong’s classes2 for several decades. The students all knew one another, and they all knew Tony. I was the only outsider.
When he arrived at my name on the roster he asked me if I had taken the class before. I told him that I had, but it had been a few years earlier. He seemed skeptical that I would be able to keep up with the class, but I assured him that I had studied on my own in the interim.
Tony, who was born in Calabria, had been in the United States for several decades. Over the time of my attendance he substituted for his wife Mary Trichilo (TREE kee lo) on the average about one class per semester. His approach was a good balance to Mary’s because he was more familiar how Italians spoke and wrote, and she was more familiar with the material in the texts.
Calabria is the toe of the boot.
Although I don’t remember all of their names, I can picture most of the students3 in my mind. There was one husband and wife pair; I think that his name was Mike; I don’t recall hers. I had previously met Carol Greenfield,4 who was part-owner of the Powder Mill Barn. One guy was, I think, a minister and a jogger. He actually read some of my journals after I gave him one of my calling cards. Another guy knew Italian pretty well, but he left after that first semester. The three people who lasted the longest were Gary, who visited Calabria regularly, Audrey, a French teacher, and Mary, who was pretty quiet and was startled when she discovered that I played tournament bridge.
I remember a few people who joined the class for a semester or two. Two had been students in the beginners class. Since the intermediate class had by then been eliminated, their only option for continuing their learning was the advanced class. However, despite Mary’s best efforts they were totally intimidated and lasted a semester or less.
Two other new students had lived in Italy. One guy had been stationed there for a couple of years while in the armed forces. He seemed quite interested, but for some reason he stopped attending after five or six weeks. A woman named Gina had worked in Italy for a few years. She was with us for two or three semesters.
The format of the classes was not much different from that used by Lydia. Most of the talking was done in English. Mary sometimes provided a handout that featured a multi-part story with grammatical lessons intermingled. We would take turns reading the Italian aloud and then translate what we had read. Mary would make corrections. Some people confused the sounds of the letter “c” after dozens of corrections
Many of the stories were very bad mysteries, but they were sort of fun to read even if sometimes the solution that was posited in the last chapter was not physically possible.
I liked the ones that were not mysteries better. My favorite one was an extremely off-beat tale by a famous female writer. It probably is in the three-inch tall stack of handouts that I discovered while preparing this entry, but I was too lazy to search for it. This story featured role-reversal in which the wife had a second family in another location. She had children in both of them, and she was the bread-winner for both families.
I liked this story for the irony. I deduced that the author was outlining a situation that she knew was impossible in order to emphasize that the roles men play in society are much less restricted than the ones that women play. To my amazement no one else in the class seemed to think that the arrangement was unusual but not incomprehensible.
Could I have this wrong? A man’s contribution to the growth of a family takes only a few seconds. The woman’s takes nine months. Could any woman leave her children, have a secret conception and birth, and then return? Maybe once, but this woman repeated the process over and over.
As in Lydia’s class we never learned the passato remoto, and we barely mentioned the conditional and subjunctive moods. I guess people who learn Italian in the United States just are not allowed to use these forms. Unfortunately Italian authors and speakers evidently don’t care that their works will be very difficult to understand by statunitensi.
Mary told us that she had been to Italy several times, but she had seen none of the most famous places. That was because she always stayed with relatives—either Tony’s or her own. She had never been to Rome, Florence, or Venice! Her Italy was pretty much limited to Calabria and Genoa. If I were in her position, I would have tacked a week or two onto the end of one of those trips and visited at least a few well-chosen destinations. It was easy to reach any metropolitan area by train in Italy.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that she ever will get to enjoy a real Italian vacation. This was the email that she sent to me on December 11, 2022, after I asked her for more information about Lydia and the class rosters.
Mike, I just found this. So sorry to hear about Sue’s ailments. Getting older can be tough. I’ve been in New Orleans area for the past 6 months living with my eldest daughter, her husband and my infant grandson, Antonio. He’s a beautiful boy and I’m his caregiver until he is admitted to a daycare. His parents work from home and Nonna cares for her “bambino favorito”. I’m afraid I barely have time to read a magazine, although I hope to read your blogs sometime in the future. Nevertheless, I’m sure you could find some material if you Google high school level Italian literature ( simpler). I will try to think of what you can find. Lydia Cherlong was your former teacher. At least that’s the name I knew and she lived in Windsor Locks I think. Good luck and my best to you both.
I don’t thing that we had a class in the fall of 2019 because Mary was on medical leave. The last class that we held was in the March of 2020. Because of COVID-19 we never got to have the tenth class of that semester.
The fall class of 2020 was scheduled to be held online. I was the only person who signed up for the advanced class, and so it was cancelled. The last few issues of the adult education booklet have not included any classes in any foreign language.
Class suppers: Several times the members of the class ate supper together at the Trichilos’ favorite restaurant in Suffield, Tony usually came, too. Sue accompanied me, and some of the other students also brought their spouses.
We usually sat at the back to the right of the door.
These were the only occasion on which I got to socialize with any of these people, and I really enjoyed them. I noticed that Gary’s wife paid for the two of them, which I found unusual even in the twenty-first century. If I relied on Sue to pay for us at restaurant, I would have often been stuck in uncomfortable situations.
I remember that at the first such event I made the mistake of ordering a calzone with anchovies. It was huge and not very tasty. I took home the leftovers. After that I stuck to the same thing that the Trichilos always ordered
Translation: In July of 2019 I undertook the massive project of translating one of my travel journals into Italian. I asked Mary to correct it for me. Here was my email.
I assigned myself the project of translating into Italian the journal that I wrote about our Village Italy tour in 2005. I have finally finished day 0, which ends on the overnight flight to Rome. If you get a chance, please take a look at it.
P.S. There are sixteen more days, most much longer than this one.
She graciously helped me with this project for a little while. However, it was interrupted when Tony died on July 15.
I took the project up again the next summer when everyone had more time on their hands because of the pandemic.
I have been working on the translation into Italian of my journal from 2005. I have finished through Day 7. If you find some time, you can look at it at http://wavada.org/I_VIMenu.php. I will add more pages as I finish them. The English version is at http://wavada.org/VIMenu.php.
I would appreciate it if you could let me know about any mistakes, malapropisms, or awkward constructs that you come across.
Stay safe.
This time I got all the way through the journal, and she made useful remarks about every page. What a nice thing to do! I think that she got some enjoyment about traveling to Il Bel Paese, if only vicariously.
By chance I discovered two websites that helped me finish the project rather quickly: Reverso.net and LanguageTool.org. The former provided instant translations with lots of examples. The latter would analyze all the spelling and grammatical mistake in a paragraph that was pasted in.
Epilogue: I would dearly love to return to Italy at least one more time and exercise my command of the language. However, I no longer have anyone to study with or for. Furthermore, I doubt that Sue will ever be able to travel again. So, it is now—in 2022—very difficult to become motivated about keeping my Italian sharp or to prevent it from becoming even duller than it is.
For example, I have no desire to read another long Italian novel. I even picked up—at the Hartford Bridge Club of all places—a copy of Dante’s Purgatorio with a translation. It was as if someone offered me a special present, and yet I have scarcely looked at it.
1. Antonio Trichilo died on July 15, 2019. I went to his wake, which gave me the opportunity to meet the couple’s two daughters, Rosie and Isa. His obituary, which contains a vivid description of his life and a long list of his relatives, has been posted here.
2. The classes that I took from Lydia Cherlong are described here.
3. I sent an email to the registrar asking if rosters were available, but I did not receive a reply.
Carol Greenfield.
4. Carol sat in front of me, but she only attended for one or two semesters after I started. She died in September of 2020. Her obituary can be read here.
When I was young I was obsessed with France and French, not Italy and Italian. I was barely in grade school when I nagged my parents into buying phonograph records that were designed to help people learn French. I learned … Continue reading →
I had this exact set of records!
When I was young I was obsessed with France and French, not Italy and Italian. I was barely in grade school when I nagged my parents into buying phonograph records that were designed to help people learn French. I learned to say “Bonjour, Monsieur Lenoir” but nothing else. So far I have never met anyone named Lenoir. So, the effort has not yet generated great benefits.
I think that I must have become interested in Italian because of operas. By the late nineties I had season tickets to the Connecticut Opera, which performed three or four operas per year at the Bushnell Auditorium in Hartford. I had purchased a Sony Walkman on which I listened to tapes while I was running. I bought several sets of tapes from the Teaching Company that helped me to learn about operas and composers. My car also had a tape player that allowed me to listen virtually any time that I was not working or eating. I purchased recordings of Italian operas and selections of operas on tapes and CDs.
The beginners class: In late 2001 we received a booklet1 mailed to us by the Enfield Adult and Continuing Education department. We had received these twice a year for several years, but I had little interest in them because I was so busy with work. On this occasion, however, I noticed that they were offering courses in several languages. In Italian they offered three courses that had prerequisites: beginning (continued), intermediate, and advanced, all taught by Mrs. Cherlong. They also offered an additional first course for beginners. I signed up for that one. It met for a few hours one evening per week for ten weeks starting in late January 2002. The sessions were held in a classroom on the ground floor of Enfield High, the Alma Mater of my wife Sue .
My expectation was that Italian would be similar to Latin. How could it not be? I soon discovered that English actually contains more words of Latin origin than Italian does. Furthermore, the Italian grammar is obviously based on Latin, but it has had many centuries to evolve deviations and exceptions. What I had not taken into account was that Italy had been invaded many times since the heyday of the Romans, and each of those invading groups contributed to what is now called Italian. I soon learned that the Tuscan dialect used by Dante had become the standard Italian used for nationwide communications such as newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. However, many local dialects still prevailed in daily life..
Enfield High before its expansion and remodeling. I entered through the door with the canopy. Lydia’s room was to the left near the end of the hall.
Our class consisted of between fifteen and twenty people. Most of them were empty-nesters, but a pair of girls who attended (or maybe recently graduated from) Enfield High also attended. They both had taken a few years of Spanish, and, it goes without saying, their memories still worked.
Our textbook reminded me of a coloring book. It was replete with line drawings with no shading.
Mostly we learned vocabulary that might be useful in describing things in a home, school, or office. We communicated only in English, which really surprised me. The teacher, whom everyone called Lydia2, tried very hard to make sure that no one was intimidated. This was a stark contrast to the Russian and ancient Greek classes that I had taken at the University of Michigan (described here). The former aimed at rapidly getting the students to the point where they could communicate with native Russian speakers. The goal of the latter was to enable the students to read the classics as soon as possible.
So, it was going to be difficult or impossible to learn to speak or even read Italian from the classes in Enfield. I enjoyed the time in the classroom, but I soon realized that I would almost certainly be dead before I could really speak Italian if I relied on these classes.
In the last of the ten sessions Lydia delivered the bad news. The class for the continuing beginners—that is, the second half of the beginners class—would not be offered in the fall. If we wanted to continue, we had three choices. 1) We could wait until next January for the next continuation class. 2) We could join the beginners class in September and repeat what we had studied in the last nine weeks. 3) We could work on our own to finish our workbooks and join the intermediate class.
For me this was an easy choice. I was easily able to finish the workbook on my own before the end of the summer. I also went to Barnes & Noble and bought the Ultimate Italian box set that contained a textbook and tapes that moved at a much more rapid pace than the class did. By the end of the summer I was quite confident that I could keep up with the students in the intermediate class.
Subsequent semesters: My first class with the intermediate group was a big disappointment. They were still using the workbook that I called the coloring book as their basic text. I later learned that some of those people—they were almost all women—had been in the intermediate class for years!
After four or five of these classes I approached Lydia and told her that I thought that this class was too slow for me. She said that she definitely agreed. She said that the advanced class had just been translating some text from Dante. She asked me if I would find that more interesting. I said that I definitely would. She told me that the class met on Tuesdays in the same classroom, and she invited me to attend the next week. I was quite excited.
According to the booklet that announced the classes, the participants in the advanced class communicated only in Italian. I had hardly ever composed even one sentence in Italian—written or spoken. It would definitely be a challenge for me to do so in extemporaneously in a group of people that had presumably been doing it for years.
It turned out that the information in the mailing was erroneous. Lydia taught in English (she had been in America for forty years), and people asked questions in English. We spent about half of the time on grammar and half on translating a few paragraphs from a handout that she provided. I never saw anything written by Dante, but it was much more fun and educational than the intermediate class.
This class was smaller—ten or fewer—than either of the other classes. Most of the students had attended for years, but none of them could really speak or even read Italian. From my first evening in the class my knowledge of Italian grammar was as good as or better than any of them.
This is actually my third dictionary. Despite my efforts to protect it, the cover is gone.
The one area in which I was way behind was vocabulary. I went back to B&N and bought a good dictionary and a book of short stories written in Italian. I also purchased hundreds of index cards. I cut them into quarters to use as flash cards—English on one side, Italian on the other. Every time I encountered a new word I looked it up, marked it in the dictionary, and either added it to an existing card or made a new one. I kept the cards in alphabetical order by the English word or phrase. During lunch or leisure time I went through my decks3 of flash cards to burn the words into my memory.
I remember a few students from those classes, but almost no names4. Most of them, but not all, were of Italian descent. One guy’s first name was Arnold. I remember that he said that his goal was to have a conversation in Italian with one of his relatives on a trip to Italy. He was a long way from that goal when I stopped attending Lydia’s classes. I remember that he was shocked that I could read Italian passages aloud with pretty good pronunciation without hesitation or verbal stops. Arnold only came to about half of the classes.
I remember only one other male in the class, and he missed more than half of the classes.
I don’t remember any names of any of the other students, and I know of no way to locate them. One lady was a librarian in Windsor, CT. She spoke to us once about a trip that she had taken to Italy. She stayed in a convent and reported seeing conical stone houses in Puglia5 in southeast Italy. She also said that there were towns nearby in which the people spoke classical Greek in the twenty-first century. Frankly, I doubted that Aristotle or Homer would understand a word that they said,6 but it may well have been that their dialect was closer to classical than to modern..
One lady, who was a few years older than I was, had been taking the class for more than a decade. It is hard to believe, but she was still in the class when I returned after an absence of several years. She had been to Italy several times.
The red balloon is where TSI’s office was. The lady’s apartment was, I think, at the end of Riverview Dr.
One lady lived in an apartment that was within a half mile of TSI’s office in East Windsor. I don’t remember much else about her.
On one occasion I saw one of the ladies at a gas station. We talked for a minute or two. She asked me if I really owned a company. I affirmed that I did, but I assured her that it was a small company, and I had partners. I had met quite a few people who owned companies; I never understood why this surprised her. It does not take much to get a DBA and even less to inherit a business.
I found these photos after I wrote this section. Lydia is handing a piece of paper to someone I don’t recognize in the first photo. In the second photo the woman in red is the lady who had been taking the class for years. The woman opening the book lived in East Windsor near TSI’s office. Sue on the left in the third photo. Across from her is the woman from East Windsor. On her right is the librarian. I recognize no one else.
At the end of the fall semester of 2002 Lydia hosted a Christmas party for all of her students in the cafeteria of Enfield High. I knew almost none of the thirty or forty attendees, and I have always been a guastafeste, especially when most of the partygoers were strangers. Lydia ordered pizzas. Each of us was supposed to bring a gift that cost less than $5. I brought a tape of Italian songs. Some people brought bottles of wine that cost much more than the limit.
Lydia made everyone form a circle. We each had to stand holding our gift. She then read a story that had the words “right” and “left” in it numerous times. When one of the magic words appeared we had to hand the gift we were holding to the person on that side of us. As I recall, the end result was that each gift ended up two people to the right. I don’t remember what I ended up with. It might have been wine.
At one point I tried to interest the other students into taking the train to New York, as I had often done, one Saturday. We could have brunch together, watch the performance at the matinee, and return on an evening train. The idea went over like a lead balloon.
At the end of at least two semesters we all went out to eat supper together. Once we dined at Figaro’s near the Enfield Square Mall. The other time we ate at a much less expensive place called Astro’s near the East Windsor line. Sue joined us on that occasion.
Lydia.
A few things about Lydia’s classes annoyed me. The first was the emphasis on Italian prepositions. I expected this subject to be easy. For the most part the Italian prepositions line up with the Latin ones with which I was familiar. Sometimes the spelling was the same (per, in); sometimes it was a little different (“con” instead of “cum”, “senza” instead of “sine”). However the prepositions that started with a and d did not line up with the Latin ones at all. In fact there did not seem to be any coherent rule as to when to use “a” and when to use “di”. You just had to memorize which preposition went with which verb. We spent a lot of classroom hours on this.
I later found a program on the Internet that I could use to drill myself until it seemed natural. That was much more efficient than wasting classroom time on it.
The other thing that I found strange was that Lydia avoided that the passato remoto tense, which was equivalent to the perfect tense in Latin, did not exist. She probably took this approach because the conjugations are difficult to remember, and there are many exceptions. However, almost any book of history or fiction will have dozens if not hundreds of uses of that form. So, it is critically important to learn it. Once again, her priority was not to intimidate any of the students.
On the first trip that Sue and I vacationed in Italy in 2003. I kept a journal.7 It had one chapter for each of the twenty-five days of the trip. I translated a few of the chapters into Italian and asked Lydia to check my work. I went over to her house in Windsor Locks a couple of times to go over the many mistakes that I had made. That was a very valuable experience.
Neal Cherlong.
At her house I met Lydia’s husband Neal8. He was also in the Russian language adult ed class that I took for one semester at Windsor Locks High School. I remember that he took at least one train ride all the way across Russia to the Pacific coast.
Lydia told the class one very interesting story. Her father was a diplomat for the Italian government. So, the place of birth on her passport was actually Alexandria, Egypt. One time she had visited some of her relatives in Italy. They had some children who were playing with some tools. For some reason one of them put a very long screwdriver into the carry-on bag that she brought back to the U.S. Fortunately, the screwdriver went undetected at the airport. She did not find it until she unpacked at her house.
Was there a big screwdriver in Mohamed’s carry-on?
This was shortly after the 9/11 panic. Can you imagine the reaction from authorities if they had discovered that a woman born in the same country as Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of the attack on the World Trade Center, was trying to sneak that potentially lethal screwdriver onto an international flight?
Lydia actually tried out for a job with the TSA. She did not last a day. I don’t remember the details, but she hated the job.
Lydia often asked me to wait after class. It was completely dark by the time that the class ended, and the school was in the Thompsonville section of Enfield. There were rough neighborhoods nearby. So, she asked me, the only male member of the class, to walk her to her car.
I remember that on more than one occasion she complained that her feet always hurt. I guess that she had tried several different types of shoes without success.
Meno male! Almost extinct.
I also remember that she said that “ashtray” was the hardest word for her to pronounce in English. The notion of four consecutive consonants is anathema to Italians. The hardest word for me (and any other American) to pronounce in Italian was “ripercorrerebbero”, which has four trilled r’s surrounding one rolled double-r.
Lydia said several times that a good way to learn a language is to learn some songs in that language. One evening she led us in a rendition of “Santa Lucia“. That was the first time that I realized that the title character was a Neapolitan harbor, not a holy person.
I stopped going to Lydia’s classes when I started playing bridge on Tuesday evenings. I think that this was in 2006. During the entire period that I attended Lydia’s advanced class I think that no other new student joined the group, and we lost at least one or two.
I was not too disappointed to be leaving Lydia’s class. The format was a real drag. I would have continued attending if not for the conflict. My resolve to be at least somewhat fluent in Italian did not abate. If anything I studied harder during those years in which I was on my own. They are documented here.
1. The booklets were still being mailed to us twice a year in 2022, but all of the Italian classes have been dropped. In the last semester in which advanced Italian was offered, I was the only person who registered. In 2022 no foreign language classes were offered at all.
2. I was sad to learn that Lydia Cherlong died in October of 2019, one and a half months after her husband, Neal. Her obituary, which noted that she taught Italian for more than twenty years, is posted here.
3. By the time that I abandoned this activity I had amassed over 10,000 flash cards, and I had been through the decks cramming the words into my brain at least a dozen times.
4. In preparation for this entry I sent an email to the registrar of the adult ed program asking if the rosters for these classes still existed, but I did not receive a reply. I also sent an email to Mary Trichilo to see if she had any rosters. She at least responded.
5. I saw some of these houses, known as trulli, in Alborobello in 2011. That experience is recounted here.
6. I once recited the first two lines of the Iliad to Cris Tsiartas, who grew up in Cyprus speaking Greek. He did not understand any of it and did not believe that it was Greek.
7. The English version of the journal is posted here.
8. Neal Cherlong died in September 2019. At that time Lydia was still alive. Neal’s obituary can be read here.
The Worst Year Ever?: The virus seemed to appear in or around Wuhan, China, in late 2019. It appeared to be extremely contagious. It was given the name COVID-191 on February 11, 2020. In the past such scares (SARS and Ebola) had pretty much bypassed the West, but within two weeks Italy had become a global hotspot. China, South Korea, and New Zealand fought the disease relentlessly, and had very good results. If all other countries had done the same, the disease probably would have run its course in a few months. However, because in many cases the disease had mild or even undetectable symptoms, many people did not take it seriously and were scornful of those who did.
Editorial note: I have decided to capitalize Pandemic as a sign of respect. There have been other pandemics in my lifetime, but Covid-19 was the only one that had a significant effect on the U.S.
Cases began appearing in the U.S. in early February. The first death was reported in the state of Washington on the 29th. On March 11 the World Health Organization declared it a pandemic. Two days later the Trump administration declared a national emergency and issued a travel ban from 26 non-European countries. However, the ban only applied to people who were not U.S. citizens. Need I add that this was an election year?
On Sunday March 15 Felix Springer and I played in a STaC game at the Hartford Bridge Club. The talk that day was largely about Colorado Springs, where a woman who had played in a sectional tournament may have been a super-spreader. She competed in the Bridge Center there in six events between February 27 and March 3. She died on March 13.
I later learned that Fred Gagnon had played in the same tournament, but he never was at the same table with her. Before the Pandemic struck Fred played both in Simsbury and Hartford and frequently partnered with my wife Sue. Details about the Colorado Springs incident can be found here.
Too close for comfort.
New York and its suburbs were hit hard very early. While attending a large gathering at a synagogue in Rob and Laura Petrie’s hometown of New Rochelle, a man who had recently been abroad passed the disease on to many people, including the rabbi. At one time 108 of the state’s 173 cases were in Westchester County, which borders on Connecticut.
My notes about the bridge game at the HBC on March 15 record that despite some mistakes Felix and I won.2 I remember that one woman who played that day wore a medical mask of some sort. We already knew that the club would be closed indefinitely after the game. Felix and I were the last two to leave the Bridge Center. He was responsible for locking up after we left. At the last minute I dashed over to the shelves that contained non-bridge books and selected Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz3 and Fatherland by Robert Harris. Both books resided in my house for much longer than I had planned, but I did eventually return them.
Sue and I had signed up for a bridge cruise on the Danube River with the famous expert, Larry Cohen. We were scheduled to leave on March 17. That cruise never happened. The details of the story are provided here.
Trump at the CDC.
Responding to the Pandemic: Although President Trump had declared a state of emergency, he, like most Republicans, absolutely refused to take the disease seriously. He made it clear that masks were not mandatory, and he refused to wear one. He then proceeded to make an utter ass of himself whenever he tried to talk about the Pandemic. He even predicted an “Easter miracle” that absolutely did not happen. Despite the fact that it was obviously an irresponsible if not evil idea, he actually encouraged everyone to go to church on that day.
Not only did this laissez-faire approach probably cost him the election; it also cost the country several hundred thousand lives. The Center for Disease Control also fumbled the ball. For some reason they refused to accept the test that had been developed by the World Health Organization, and their own test proved unreliable. So, for months as the virus spread geometrically throughout the country, the U.S. had no test. Soon the situation was much worse in America than anywhere else in the world.
To be fair Trump did direct more than a billion dollars to a virtually unknown company named BioNTech to develop a vaccine using mRNA technology. Others also were funded, but BioNTech received the biggest prize because its leaders claimed that with proper funding they could produce a new vaccine in a few months. Their effort was dubbed Project Lightspeed. Obviously Trump hoped that they would deliver by election day, but they missed by a few weeks. In fact, Pfizer, which did not participate, developed and tested a similar vaccine a little sooner, and the Chinese were already using a somewhat inferior vaccine by then.
Although most people who contracted the initial virus recovered after a week or so, the aged and those with comorbidities did not fare as well. The death rate in 2020 was over 3 percent. Nursing homes throughout the country often experienced horrendous situations. Hundreds of thousands of people died needlessly.
Of course, many people still had to work, but most of us hunkered down and stayed in our houses. We had to learn to order groceries—and anything else that we needed—online. I wrote a little program to allow members of the Simsbury Bridge Club to send me descriptions and/or pictures of their new lifestyle. I then posted them on a webpage that anyone could view. A few people sent responses, and I promptly posted them. You can view them here.
Reading: I also posted quite a few entries about my own life. I took advantage of the extra free time to read more. By June 28 I had read nine novels: The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Magpie Murders, Fatherland, Supermarket by Bobby Hall, Moriarity by Anthony Horowitz, Two for Texas by James Lee Burke, The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz, The Brothers K by David James Duncan, and Wayfaring Stranger by James Lee Burke. Supermarket, which I bought at a rare venture to the Target store, was awful. The others were all pretty good. The Enfield Public Library was closed. I purchased several books from Powell’s in Portland, OR. It took them almost a month for them to send them, but their selection of new and used volumes was outstanding.
What I especially liked about Powell’s was the number of books by Jack Vance that were offered for sale. I found some listed there that I had never seen in a library or bookstore, including the one that won an Edgar award for him, The Man in a Cage.
One of the last books that I later ordered from Powell’s was Jack Vance’s autobiography. Because I like a challenge—especially when I had an enormous amount of time on my hands—I selected the version in Italian, Ciao Sono Jack Vance! (E Questa Storia Sono Io). Vance has always been one of my favorite authors, and his last book was certainly one of his best. What a life he led! He managed to finish the book even though he was in poor health and nearly blind. He had to dictate the entire volume.
I was so inspired by this book that I decided to undertake this set of blog entries, which I later labeled The 1948 Project. The details surrounding its genesis have been recorded here.
Most aspects of life were put on hold in the spring and summer of 2020. The American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) canceled all three of its national tournaments and prohibited its units and districts from holding tournaments for the rest of the year. The National Debate Tournament was also canceled. Hollywood closed shop.
Most schools attempted to reopen in the fall, but the result was a huge spike in the number of cases of COVID-19. The election was held in November, of course, but a very large number of people voted by mail rather than in person.
I walked southwest on North St. until it ended at Hazard Ave. (190). I turned left and walked west to Park St. Then a left on Elm St. I walked past Carris Reels to School St. and then north back to North St.
Exercise: I also exercised more during the lockdown. I was walking 35-40 miles per week, outside if the weather was tolerable, and on the treadmill when it wasn’t. On May 2 and a few other occasions I walked ten miles outside.
Later in the summer, however, I could no longer walk more than a mile or two without a pain gradually developing in the top of my right foot. This condition, which caused me to limp, bothered me throughout the year. I still walked, but I had to stop and stretch my IT band for a couple of minutes. Sometimes I would need to perform this ritual two or three times in a 2.5 mile lap. I often stopped after one lap. However, when I walked on the treadmill it hurt a lot less.
Therefore, I began to walk indoors more frequently. On my convertible laptop computer, a Lenovo model called Yoga, I watched many operas from the Metropolitan Opera’s streaming service that were new to me, including Ghosts of Versailles, La Wally, Orphée et Eurydice and many operas by Massenet and Bellini. I was really impressed by performances by Natalie Dessay, Teresa Stratas, and Marilyn Horn. The most bizarre moment occurred when Renée Fleming appeared in Rossini’s Armida. In a tender moment she rubbed cheeks with tenor Lawrence Brownlee, who happened to be black. When they parted more than a square inch of his brown makeup remained on her cheek.
I also watched operas on YouTube while I was walking on the treadmill. The quality was a little spotty—both the performances and the recordings. However, this introduced me to several of the more neglected operas, some of which were delightful.
The best thing about the YouTube operas was that I was able to make MP3 files of them using a piece of free downloadable software called MP3Studio. I had already made MP3 files out of my opera CD’s and downloaded them to a small MP3 player that I had purchased at Best Buy.4 I added quite a few operas from YouTube. My favorite was Tchaikovsky’s Cherevichki. I liked it so much that I purchased a DVD of its performance at Covent Garden in London.
I also downloaded hundreds of great rock and roll songs of the sixties and seventies. I could scarcely believe that most of the best songs from Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones were now available for free.
When I walked around the neighborhood I listened to music on the tiny MP3 play. In the cold weather I used my Bose headphones. When it was warmer I used ear buds.
My new and improved arch supports. The one on the right is inside-out.
Toward the end of the year I misplaced one of the arch supports that I had purchased from Walmart before the Pandemic. These were springy pieces of metal (I think) that were inserted into bands that wrapped around the foot and were secured by Velcro. I bought new ones at the same store that were spongy balls in elastic bands. They cost $10.
After I had used the new ones for about a month, the pain in my foot ceased, and I could walk five miles without stopping. I understand that post hoc ergo propter hoc is a famous fallacy, but I did not even consider reverting to the original pair when I discovered the hiding place of the lost arch support.
The Montalbano crew stayed together through all thirty-seven episodes.
I don’t remember how I heard about it, but on November 2 I subscribed (for only 8$ per month!) to a streaming service called MHz Choice. It had all thirty-seven of the Commissario Montalbano movies that I had learned about in 2016 in Sicily5 as well as dozens of other European mysteries and other offerings. All of them were captioned in English. I started with Montalbano (and a prequel called Young Montalbano), but I soon found many other shows that I enjoyed tremendously. There were also a few mysteries on YouTube, including the entire set of Inspector Morse shows.
During one of my walks around the neighborhood a bizarre event occurred. Just after I reached my house a car pulled into the driveway. It was driven by a man carrying three large cheese pizzas from Liberty Pizza. Evidently my phone, which was securely in my pocket, had somehow activated the Slice app to order the pizzas while I was walking. I was billed for them, but the charge was eventually removed from my credit card account after I complained about it.
On August 4 there was a tornado watch. A branch fell and damaged our gutter. A very large branch fell from a tree near the house on 10 Park St. It landed on and crushed a pickup truck that had been parked nearby. A week or more was required to clean it up. I don’t know what became of the truck.
Translation: In desperate need of a project to occupy my mind during the day, I decided in June to translate one of my travel journals into Italian. My Italian teacher, Mary Trichilo (TREE key low) agreed to read my efforts and to provide suggestions. I chose our 2005 Rick Steves trip to Italy that was billed as the Village Italy Tour.5 It was the first one on which the Corcorans joined us, and the first one for my first digital camera.
Reliving that experience was great fun; some of the best moments in my life occurred during those sixteen days. It was also a pretty good way to build my Italian vocabulary back up. I could only hope that I would be able to use it one day. I discovered a few websites that helped me a lot—translate.google.com, of course, but also Reverso.net and LanguageTool.org.
Masks: In the last three quarters of 2020 masks were required virtually everywhere. During the summer it was discovered that the disease was spread by aerosols from exhaling, talking, and singing. Moreover, being indoors greatly increased the probability of transmission. So, it was generally considered acceptable to go outside unmasked, but people were warned to stay at least six feet away from strangers. The last practice was called “social distancing”.
My favorite mask, but the straps tended to break.
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) had a problem. Although they knew that the N95 masks that had been approved for use by NIOSH for painters and others who were often exposed to aerosols were by far the most effective, their official announcements said that people did not need them. Instead they recommended that any type of face covering would work just as well. So, a lot of people made their own masks or even wore bandannas across the lower half of their faces like outlaws in westerns. Others, such as I, purchased ten cheap cotton masks made by Hanes that could easily be washed.
There was a good reason for this deliberate misinformation campaign. A shortage of N95 masks was feared, and it was considered critically important that the best protection (and tightly fitting N95 masks offered much better protection) be available to those who dealt with known COVID patients or with large numbers of people in situations that precluded “social distancing”.
For some people masks, especially the ones that worked the best, were very uncomfortable. They did not bother me much at all. I was, however, quite happy when, during the summer, it became apparent that masks were not necessary outdoors. Still, when I took walks I made certain to keep at least six feet away from other walkers whenever possible.
Health: I was never healthier than in 2020. I experienced no significant ailments at all—not even a cold or indigestion. That pain in my foot bothered me a bit, and on one occasion the nail on my left little finger got bent back and eventually fell off. On the other hand, I was exercising so much that I had to make a shopping trip to Kohl’s to buy a smaller belt to hold up my pants.
My mental state was pretty positive as well. I was able to concoct several interesting projects to occupy my mind when I was not exercising or reading. I would have appreciated a diversion now and then, but most of my life had been good preparation for an extended lockdown. I had a lot of experience at keeping myself occupied.
Sue was also pretty healthy physically, but she got winded very easily. Moreover, she has always been a much more social animal than I was. The strain of the isolation on her spirit was quite evident.
We took a couple of short trips just to get out of the house. At some point in June or July we drove down to Gillette Castle and had a little picnic. We found a spot that was shady and isolated. The walk from the parking lot to our site was uphill, and it definitely wore Sue out. After lunch I took a hike up to the castle by myself. Only a few people were there, and I kept my distance from all of them. This was a very simple outing, but it felt like a small taste of freedom. Perhaps prisoners have the same feeling the first time that they are allowed into the exercise yard.
Lunch at the zoo.
On September 24, when it finally appeared that the Pandemic had abated a bit, we made a road trip to Roger Williams Zoo in Providence. The highlight for me was when we went to see the sloths. I got to show the attendant there that I was wearing a tee shirt with a sloth on it. Sue had bought it for me in Costa Rica.8
On the way back to Enfield we made a stop in Willimantic so that Sue could show me the Shaboo Stage, an outdoor venue that she had frequented to watch local musical performers, mostly blues bands. Sue was friendly with several of these people, and she was very worried for them. The lockdown had eliminated their primary source of income.
We made a third stop at Oliver’s Dairy Bar where we ordered burgers and listened—in our cars—to Bruce John singing and playing his guitar. A few people got out of their cars and danced. It was all a little weird, but it was something to do. Sue had claimed that the food would be very good, but we were both disappointed in it.
People our age were terrified to be among strangers, and reasonably so. Not everyone survived that first year. I did not hear of anyone who died directly from COVID-19, but all of the following members of the debate community died in 2020:
Max Horton, whom I knew quite well from the Simsbury Bridge Club.
David Waltz, whose wife I knew from Tuesday evenings at the Hartford Bridge Club and at tournaments. The three of us even went out to dinner one evening in Hyannis, MA.
Elaine Jaworowski, who was a regular player at the HBC morning games.
Gladys Feigenbaum, who only played occasionally at the HBC and did not seem to be in great health before the lockdown. I did not know her well.
Victor (blue shirt) with Lew Gamerman, Kate McCallum, and Sheila Gabay after a victory in 2019.
The most shocking news was the murder of Grand Life Master Victor King in his own home in Hartford on July 26. He was a very popular player and, to all appearances, had no enemies. His assailant was also his tenant. I had played against Victor a few times and I had talked with him about a few matters concerning the district’s website. At the time the incident was covered in local and national outlets as well as abroad. I was not able to find any information about the disposition of the case.
On July 23 my occasional bridge partner, boss, and good friend Bob Bertoni was operated on for the second or third time in recent years. He recovered enough to continue working as the District Director for the rest of the year, but I think that everyone knew that the handwriting was on the wall.
Sue’s friend and occasional bridge partner, Ginny Basch, also went into the hospital in July. A few days after she had been released she needed to return and have a heart valve inserted. She seemed to recover well enough after that.
On November 16 we learned that Tyesha Henry, Sue’s long-time protégée, had COVID-19. Sue had been with her in an automobile on November 6, but Sue did not develop any symptoms. She dodged a bullet.
Food:Few restaurants were open, and those that were provided only delivery and pickup orders. Most of the time Sue and I ate at home. I continued going to the grocery store, but I always wore a mask (as did nearly everyone else), and I always used the automated checkouts. I seldom was within ten feet of another human. Sue usually ordered groceries online and drove to the store to pick them up.
The hybrid Yum restaurant in E. Windsor.
We ordered pizza perhaps once a month, and we drove to KFC three times7, once in West Springfield and twice in East Windsor. The first drive to East Windsor, which was probably in May, was very strange. There were almost no cars on any of the roads, but there was a long line at the drive-through window at the KFC/Taco Bell restaurant. I did not get my order until twenty-five minutes after my arrival. When I arrived home we discovered that the bags contained both our $20 fill-up and someone else’s Taco Bell order.
On July 18 Sue and I drove over to the beautiful house of Ken and Lori Leopold in Avon, CT. We were originally planning to go to a restaurant for supper, but the negotiations between Lori and Sue for a suitable place with outdoor seating broke down. We enjoyed a very nice supper and then played a few rubbers of bridge. I played with Sue and then Ken. Lori had never played rubber bridge before! That was the only time in the last nine and a half months of 2020 that we dined indoors with other people.
Sue and I celebrated all of the holidays alone together in our house. That was what one did in The (first) Worst Year Ever.
The Neighborhood: The big news was that in the spring the family that lived diagonally across the street from us (“cattywampus” as my Grandmom Cernech would have said) on the southwest corner of North St. and Allen Pl. unceremoniously moved away. This was the family with several trucks and an ATV that the kids rode around on. The father often flew the “Don’t tread on me” flag and other right-wing banners on their flagpole.
The house (a small ranch house with one garage) and yard were both in bad shape when the family abandoned them. Workers spent weeks getting it back in marketable condition. It was auctioned off; no “For Sale” side ever appeared. It was purchased by a woman who has kept it in immaculate conditioned. She even resuscitated the lawn.
The flagpole has never been used since the other family left.
Three doors to the west of them the “patriotic” cause was taken up by a couple. She grew sunflowers accompanied by Bag-a-Bugs and had a statue of an owl that turned its head occasionally. I scoffed at the former and was enthralled by the latter.
He was another kettle of fish. He also had a flagpole. He flew the “Don’t tread on me” flag, but also other flags including a Trump-Pense banner ones about POW/MIAs or respecting the police. Another Trump sign was proudly displayed above the garage. He also had a “concealed carry” sticker on his car’s window. Most bizarrely, he had a fenced-in back yard with red triangular signs on both gates with the word “MINES” on them, as if the back yard contained mines. I took him seriously; he seemed to be retired from both the military and law enforcement, and he was obviously “gung-ho”.
I generally gave these people a wide berth, but my walking took me past their house quite often.
We really only have one next-door neighbor, the residents of 1 Hamilton Court. A couple with children had been living there for quite a few years. He disappeared from the neighborhood at some point before the Pandemic started. A different man moved in and immediately started making over the house and the back yard. I talked to him for a few minutes once. He seemed friendly enough. Anything would be better than his predecessor, who had said he would kill our cats if they ventured onto his property.
This photo was taken from my chair in the office. Giacomo is the one with the long bushy tail.
The Pets: Our two cats, Giacomo and Bob, really enjoyed the lockdown. Sue and I got in the habit of watching television together from 8 p.m. until I could no longer keep my eyes open, which usually occurred between 9:30 and 10. The cats loved the idea that we were both sitting still. Giacomo often sat peacefully on my lap, as he had done for many years. Now, however, the two of them would also sometimes lie together on a blanket that Sue had laid out on the floor. Giacomo seemed to enjoy having a friend. They assumed every position imaginable, including spooning.
Giacomo showing off his thumbs on the bed on November 1.
In October Giacomo surprised me by catching a moth. When he was younger he was a fearsome hunter, but in 2020 that was the only time that he showed much interest in any wildlife.
Sue and I never knew Giacomo’s real birth date, but we celebrated it annually on November 1. 11/1/20 was his seventeenth birthday. When I returned to bed for my first nap of the day I was shocked to find Giacomo had climbed up on the bed. We enjoyed a nap together for the first time in at least a year.
On Christmas Giacomo found a comfortable resting spot. He was left-pawed. Here he is using his business paw to ask for petting.
On August 4th, the day of a tornado watch, I discovered that at least one of the cats (I suspected Giacomo) had stopped using the ramp in the basement that led to the cat door and had instead designated an area of the newer side of the basement as an open latrine. After I cleaned up the smelly mess I drove to Target and purchased a large litter box and some cheap litter.
The cats quickly adjusted to using the litter box, but they tracked litter all over everywhere. I solved the problem by switching to Clean Paws, which was much more expensive but did not stick the their feet as much.
Friends: Sue had many, but I really only had one friend, Tom Corcoran. He left the Land of Steady Habits shortly after the Pandemic struck and rented an apartment in Burlington, VT, which is where his children lived.
In 2020 we only saw him once in person. On August 1 he was back in his house in Wethersfield to take care of some business, and Sue and I drove to meet him there. Sue brought with her and antique ice box that Tom pledged to fix it up somehow.
We celebrated Tom’s birthday with a Zoom call on October 27. You should be able to calculate his age if you have read these blogs carefully.
Bridge: There was no face-to-face duplicate bridge in 2020 after the middle of March.
Many people played online. The ACBL even set up an arrangement for “virtual clubs” that held online sanctioned games of eighteen boards. I did not participate.
On November 18 District 25’s Executive Committee held a meeting on Zoom. It was depressing. The ACBL was probably going to cancel the NABC in the spring in St. Louis and the one scheduled for Providence, RI, in the July of 2021. Most of the members of the Executive Committee, including me, were also on the committee for the latter event. It was crushing news.
The North American Pairs and Grand National Teams would be contested online. I did not like this news at all, but I asked Ken Leopold, Felix Springer, and Trevor Reeves to play with me, and they all agreed. I told Ken that I would practice as much as I could online. We played online on Christmas Day, but that was the only time in 2020. I hated the experience, but this might be my last chance to play in Flight B of the GNT.
Sports: The National Basketball Association, like all other forms of indoor entertainment, suspended play when the Pandemic hit. In order to salvage part of the 2019-2020 season the league spent $190 to build a “bubble” at Disney World in Orlando, FL. Twenty-two of the league’s thirty teams were invited to the city to play the remaining eight regular season games and the playoffs behind closed doors. Of course, the games were televised.
Yes, they actually played all of the games in Disney World surrounded by pictures of imaginary fans.
This approach worked very well. Everyone involved in the games stayed in the bubble and was tested regularly. No cases at all were reported. The season ended on October 11, with the Los Angeles Lakers crowned as champions. The league generated about $1.5 billion is revenue.
Other sports did not follow the league’s example. The only one that I was interested in was college football. The Big Ten was pressured by Trump into playing the season, sort off. All non-conference games were canceled, and the beginning of play was postponed until October 24. Games were played in empty or nearly empty stadiums.
Michigan was ranked #18 in the preseason and beat #21 Minnesota 49-24 in the opening game. This was followed by three embarrassing losses. In week 5 the Wolverines used a new quarterback, Cade McNamara, to beat Rutgers in three overtimes. In week 6 they lost to Penn State at home. Since all of its remaining games were canceled due to COVID-19 outbreaks, the team ended the season 2-4, the worst record in living memory.
The whole idea of playing during a pandemic was idiotic. The NCAA ended up granting extra eligibility to all of the players.
I guess that sports addicts enjoyed watching the competitions in empty stadiums and arenas. I did not watch any sports at all during the entire year.
Miscellaneous: I filed my income taxes in February. I did not receive my refund until August 1. There were two reasons for this: Most IRS employees were working remotely, and a large number were busy distributing the $1400 stimulus checks that Donald Trump made sure had his name on them. I am not complaining.
The class that I took in Advanced Italian held only nine of its ten classes. The last one was canceled (without a refund) because of COVID-19. I signed up for the fall class, but it was canceled on September 9.
On August 8 we received a check from AIG for the trip insurance for our cruise in March that had been canceled. AIG, the largest company in the trip insurance market, must have taken a real bath in 2020.
I purchased and tried to read a couple of Montalbano novels by Andrea Camilleri. They were difficult for me. The narrative was in standard Italian, but most of the dialogue was in the Sicilian dialect, which is much different.
On August 11 Bank of America refused the automatic payment of the bill for our homeowners’ insurance policy. I had received a new credit card and had not yet changed the number on Travelers’ website. It was resolved in a few days.
Beginning on November 10 we enjoyed almost a week of really beautiful weather. Sue and I drove up to her property in Monson, MA. She wanted to walk up to the top, but she got less than a hundred yards before she was out of breath and exhausted. We rested a few minutes and then walked back to the car.
Desperate for something to do, on November 11 I began polishing up my novel Ben 9, which I have posted here. I just had to do this. It had been inside of me, and I had to let it out. I doubt that anyone will ever read it. Who is interested in reading about the clergy in the eleventh century?
What else? I feel as if I have left out something important that happened in 2020. What was it? Oh, yeah, the election. You can read about it here.
1. I don’t know why all the letters are capitalized. It is not an acronym. The five letters stand for Coronavirus Disease. “Corona” is the Latin word for crown. The -19 was added to indicate that it began in 2019.
3. I tweeted that I thought that Magpie Murders was the best mystery that I had ever read. Anthony Horowitz thanked me in the comments and wished well to the HBC.
4. The Best Buy in Enfield was a casualty of the Pandemic. The building was still empty two years later.
5. The journal for the Sicily trip is posted here.
6. The English version of that trip can be read here.
7. The excursion to the sloth sanctuary is described here.
8. There once was a KFC in Enfield on Route 5, but the owner retired, and the store closed. Enfield contains almost every other kind of fast food place, but for years no one sold fried chicken until a Popeye’s opened in August of 2022.
