James decided he would go to his club lunch and meeting today. He promised to take precautions. So I let him go off, power chair in tow, and I decided I'd better go out before something else happened and everything got shut down like in Italy. I decided to go to Barnes & Noble. I was very careful, splashed alcohol on my hands before I went in, opened the door with a wet wipe, didn't get in close contact to anyone. The crowd was smaller than usual, but everyone there didn't act any differently. Checked out a book about female flyers during WWII, and opened the book in the middle to find the narrator referring to Jackie Cochran as "Ms. Cochran." Okay, I hadn't checked out the rest of the book. Perhaps this was an older woman narrating the story from the future. Nope POV through the entire book takes place in 1941. Characters refer to Jackie Cochran throughout as "Ms." Sorry, won't be reading that book. If you set it in 1941, I expect it to be historically accurate. What's next? The characters refer to burning their bras? Anyway, I had a 20 percent off coupon which I spent on a Tristan Gooley nature book, and then I picked out a book for me and a book for James: me the new book about the Carolina watermen and him about the Doolittle raid. I opened the door out with my shoulder and used wipes when I got in the car.

I had an extra protein at Tin Drum, so I went over there for a take-out lunch, discussing with the cashier the utter absurdity of having to emphasize to adults the necessity of washing your hands! Used a wipe after this as well, and stopped at Nam Dae Mun on the way home. They actually had some disinfecting sprays left! (I got one.) And food left, although it was rather scant. I got huge turkey legs (which I had to leave in the fridge because there was no room in the freezer), a nice round steak, and some pork chops, oh, and some low-sodium teriyaki sauce.

This didn't take up much time, so I went rooting around on Disney+ (did I mention we got Disney+ for free? Verizon ponied up because we have an unlimited data account now) and found the first five episodes of The Mickey Mouse Club, not the half-hour syndicated version they showed in the 1960s and 1970s when I was at college, but the originals, mostly uncut (two episodes had the "Mousekartoon" missing). The originals were an hour long and featured a thrice-weekly newsreel and the serials ran every day. The first episode was fascinating, with the newreel (visiting the Seminole tribe in the Everglades, kids in Rome riding a carousel, filming of the new Davy Crockett story, etc.) and the famous "What I Want to Be" serial narrated by Alvy Moore (yes, later the dimwit Hank Kimball on Green Acres). This was supposed to be a regular feature, but was cancelled by Walt Disney after the first installment, which had a little boy who wanted to be an airline pilot and a little girl who wanted to be an airline hostess. Alvy Moore (playing himself) takes the two kids to TWA and lets them go through the training. It's a neat trip to the past, and for a girl stuck into a gender-specific role, Pat was a much better character than Duncan. She's spunky and sticks to her guns, where Duncan gives up easily and has to be persuaded.

I was totally surprised to discover that the girl protagonist in this serial was played by Patricia Morrow, who later went on to play Rita in Peyton Place! I had no idea she was a child actress. The second episode featured "Sooty," a yellow and black bear hand puppet brought over from Great Britain, who had a little skit with his "handler" Harry Corbett. Sooty was a big hit in his native land (he was still on TV a few years ago), but he wasn't much of a hit with American children and was soon off the series.

Labels: books, events, food, shopping, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:06:00 PM

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