Social life and standards of purity

Over the weekend I was gently chastising Niklaus for his poor blog-reading habits when Lucy piped in, in response to my touting of the sheer volume of my posting that it was "very poor marketing." Which is true, but in the end the blog is not so much for the readers (sorry folks) as it is for me, a record of where I've been and what I've seen, read, and thought, and also just engaging in the ongoing practice of writing. 

After his recent social despair, Graham had what he characterized as "the most social weekend of my life." One night he and some friends went out to see the new Marvel movie at the mall, he worked several shifts at the lake, including the blow-out cardboard box boat races, and yesterday he went to a poker game at Ben's. I almost feel like I'm forgetting something. Oh yeah, there was a Magic the Gathering game he went to with some buds. He was very happy with all this.

The irony, of course, is that it comes in the midst of the continued ramp up of the Delta flare up. The poker game was open air, in a garage, but the movie was decidedly not and was on an opening weekend. Sure all the kids were masked, and everybody is vaccinated. Even so. Most interestingly, the instigator of the Marvel movie event was Tyler from down the hill, whose parents have been in a very conservative crouch vis-a-vis COVID. I was a little nervous about letting him go, but I figured if Tyler's parents had signed off...

The point here is that we are is letting our standards slip, each in her own way. Maybe because it's the end of summer and we sense that it's a good time to take risks. Or maybe we're all exhausted by it all. So when one of the many, eloquent and moving speakers at Alan's wedding up in Virginia used the term "Covidiot" to disparage others I couldn't help but to wince. We are all making our own gambles on this virus, none of us is pure as the driven snow. We are all worn down, each in our own way. So it serves none of us well to set ourselves up as arbiters of sanity and sneer from on high. Hard as it is to see the logic of not getting vaxxed, our best bet is to keep our distance and keep moving.