Perhaps it would be nice to have this recorded somewhere … a terse history of my life so far.
Continue reading “A Brief History of Jacob Haas”Walk It Back
We’ve all seen them, starting around the middle of 2016 and slowly growing, at least around here in the middle of rural Pennsylvania. Those red hats. The large hand-painted Trump signs on the side of the highway. And those jacked-up coal-rolling trucks with like 8 flags bolted to the tailgate. And you think to yourself, how is this a thing?
Continue reading “Walk It Back”Vote
Everyone’s been saying the same thing. I’ve never seen a year like this. I’ve never seen the country so divided. This is so weird and stressful and I don’t know what’s going to happen.
Continue reading “Vote”Final Command
The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command… and if all others accepted the lie, which the party imposed, if all records told the same tale, then the lie passed into history and became truth.
George Orwell, 1984
Blue
Zoom.
You know, I think people are clinging to the idea that they can simply continue to work and block out all the shit that’s swirling around us daily. I think they want to forget about the pandemic, the systematic racial violence, the people who can’t go to work because they had to close or their job simply doesn’t exist anymore.
I see it on their faces during teleconferences. Tiny, grainy portraits that glitch out every few minutes and are back again, a four-by-three stack of rectangles filled with forced laughter and thinly-veiled fear.
It had been a hunch for years, now, but for the first time in my adult life, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that nobody, nobody, knows that the fuck to do about this, and we are all simply along for the ride.
‘I Wish I Could Do Something For You,’ My Doctor Said
This sounds horrendous. You really don’t want to get it. Wear your masks. Keep each other safe. Don’t be so eager to get back to big crowds…
I am one of the lucky ones. I never needed a ventilator. I survived. But 27 days later, I still have lingering pneumonia. I use two inhalers, twice a day. I can’t walk more than a few blocks without stopping. I want Americans to understand that this virus is making otherwise young, healthy people very, very sick. I want them to know, this is no flu.
Mara Gay, writing for the New York Times
It came out of nowhere
It was only meant to be a short drive. Pop out to Dunkin’ for a quick coffee before my daughter’s weekly Zoom call with her class. The drive out there is maybe 3 miles and should have taken like, 15 minutes, tops.
Continue reading “It came out of nowhere”That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief
“There is a storm coming. There’s something bad out there. With a virus, this kind of grief is so confusing for people. Our primitive mind knows something bad is happening, but you can’t see it. This breaks our sense of safety. We’re feeling that loss of safety. I don’t think we’ve collectively lost our sense of general safety like this. Individually or as smaller groups, people have felt this. But all together, this is new. We are grieving on a micro and a macro level.”
— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief
The First Grown-up Watch
I’ve recently become slightly obsessed with watches. Ever since I gave up on the Apple Watch Series 2 I had been wearing for a year — it just didn’t launch as fast as I wanted it to — I looked into getting a “real” watch, that is, something that looks a little more “grown up.”
That’s when I started doing a little bit of research, and oh man, what an expensive hobby this could turn out to be.
Continue reading “The First Grown-up Watch”1SR: Blue Moon Iced Coffee Blonde
A one-sentence review of Blue Moon Iced Coffee Blonde.
Hits a delicate balance of a deep porter-like finish with the bright, citrusy notes typical of Blue Moon’s regular wheat ale.
Very happy I picked one up with my mix-a-six today. Wish I would have gotten two.