Imprisoned at home

So I am joining the ranks of the imprisoned at home.

I like to think I take care of business. So I went a little early to get my annual Pennsylvania state-required vehicle inspection. I was in for a shock. The car needs $1,900 in repairs. And the mechanic will have the car at least until Thursday.
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Fig. 1. The latest addition to the gratuitous guns collection, found in—apparently—Verona. This one, it must be admitted, is somewhat less ostentatious than the others. I would have missed it entirely except that because so many of the guns I’ve found have been at Veterans of Foreign Wars posts, I look more carefully at them as I drive by. Photograph by author, April 6, 2020. Other photographs here.
[googlemaps https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/embed?mid=1K1CjgWPOH71L1UsUSHs00ubbu-jYnWux&w=640&h=480]
Fig. 2. Map of gratuitous guns, compiled by author.

These would be days when I’d be exploring what Pittsburgh has to offer besides the Confederate flags and gratuitous displays of weaponry (figure 1) I see so often (figure 2). But Pennsylvania’s “stay at home” order is in effect.[1]

I’m not good at this. Even when I was working on my dissertation, I was out and about. But I have been diligent about getting groceries. After an additional trip today (gee, Lyft is awfully expensive relative to what I, as a driver, would have been paid for the very same trips), I should be okay at least for a couple days. I’m seeing what an unwalkable area I’ve moved into. Even getting to my mailbox place will require Lyft or Uber rides. For trips that, distance-wise, I would ordinarily just walk.

So I guess I’ll be seeing how much of that enormous—seriously, this is a point of shame—backlog of reading I can plow through.

I’m not seeing much that really hits my radar screen. But the morality of polarization seems especially relevant now.

  1. [1]Megan Guza, “Gov. Wolf closes Pa. schools and businesses indefinitely, extends stay-at-home order,” TribLive, March 30, 2020, https://triblive.com/news/pennsylvania/gov-wolf-closes-pa-schools-and-businesses-indefinitely-extends-stay-at-home-order/;
    Megan Guza, “Gov. Wolf orders all of Pennsylvania to stay at home,” TribLive, April 1, 2020, https://triblive.com/news/pennsylvania/gov-wolf-orders-all-of-pennsylvania-to-stay-at-home/; Kara Seymour, “PA Coronavirus: Stay-At-Home Extended, Schools Shut Indefinitely,” Patch, March 30, 2020, https://patch.com/pennsylvania/baldwin-whitehall/s/h2eya/pa-stay-at-home-extended-schools-closed-indefinitely; WTAE, “Stay-at-home order to begin tonight for several Pa. counties, including Allegheny,” March 23, 2020, https://www.wtae.com/article/stay-at-home-order-to-begin-tonight-for-several-pa-counties-including-allegheny/31900786

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