1) This might have been my first weekday trip downtown since March 13 or so. I had to pick up a prescription at the pharmacy back at ye Instytytte, which meant two subway lines. No issues beyond noticing one nerdy dude without a mask in the subway car (not near me), and a dude in a white basketball shirt groovin’ on something on the Downtown Crossing platform and trying to direct traffic through slow-motion interpretative dance. But then, Downtown Crossing is not a neighborhood noted for excessive sanity . . .
1a) This was the first time I ever had to have my temperature taken before entering a building. 97.7 = good to go.
2) Walked from Kendall Square over the Longfellow Bridge, down Chahles Street, and through the Common to get to the supermarket. A good walk on a sunny day, and nice to see people out and about - though not everyone has the same ideas or patience with social distancing, which can be a bit frustrating.
3) BRATTLE BOOKS IS OPEN! My first visit to a bookstore in MONTHS. I picked up a book from the mid-1990s on all the art the Soviets looted after WWII, the so-called “trophy art,” and a 2002 or 2012 book on the history of caviar. The former will make great followup to other books I’ve read about art during the War (The Rape of Europa, The Amber Room, Lost Treasures of the Reich, and some other titles), as well as Stalin’s biography which I read last year, The Court of the Red Tsar, which is brutal and terrifying. The latter is just a whim, but I think National Caviar Day is coming up soon.
3a) Besides, long ago someone gave me an actual caviar dish, monogrammed with my initials (!), with a traditional horn spoon, and I might as well figure out what I ought to do with it.
3b) But then I always remember what Joan Crawford said in Grand Hotel: “Have caviar if y’like, but it tastes like herring to me!”