B List: Bleak House...…………………………………………………619/880
C List: Cloud Atlas...………………………………………………….449/509
Unlike most people, I suppose, I have less time to read under the quarantine because I now have 9 people at home all the time, 7 of them under age 18, and they actually require a lot of work. So for the most part I am reading a little Bleak House first thing in the morning, and again before bed (Dickens is fortunately one of the authors I can still read at night without falling immediately asleep) and I am reading a little of The Once and Future King at work, which I am still going to, for the time being about 35 hours a week. Cloud Atlas I have largely put on the shelf until I finish Bleak House and am working on that report, though I read a little of it on Saturday when I got a few spare moments. It is back in the second Frobisher section, which is my favorite part (it's an Anthony Powell-esque episode set in the 1930s in the Dutch country home of a high end expat British composer, with all of the sexual intrigue, clashing of brilliant intellect, and artistic production that goes with it).
I am not going to pretend that I am enjoying this time of everyone being forced to stay home, for a variety of the usual reasons plus a few specific to myself, but I think my mental health is holding up fairly well to this point. In New Hampshire the situation is not quite as dire as it is elsewhere. Our state parks for example are still open (though not staffed) and the governor last week encouraged people to go to them as long as they didn't bunch up into crowds so I drove out on Saturday to Greenfield with a few of the children. I was surprised at how few people were actually there. There were only about seven or eight cars in the parking lot. A few of the pictures, appropriately melancholy, but in a beautiful way, from that outing will be the illustrations for this month's check-in.
This power line in the woods reminded me of Pennsylvania.
The park office/store was of course closed, but I find this kind of building very cheerful.
The children marveled at the roof that went all the way to the ground.
Hopefully next month will find us in a more positive frame of mind. My oldest son, who is a senior in high school, did not come with us because he was attending the St John's College online "admitted students day". What looked very rosy a month ago will be a great disappointment to the whole family if he isn't able to go.
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