A few days ago I found a cardboard box in my dad's garage with the words "2x2 Slide Projector, sold exclusively by Montgomery Ward" printed on the side in big, block letters. There's nothing special about a slide projector, but what if there were slides, too?

In September of last year Rachael and I began preparing to move back overseas. This is how we ended up choosing a small country sandwiched between the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea.

I've told the story of Oren's birth before and I expect to be telling it for the rest of my life. How could I make sense of it otherwise? The hope that this time things would go as we'd planned, and then the realization that they would not, like a rubber band pulled back slowly and then released without notice.

Last weekend I showed our car to Les, a man who was interested in buying it. While he looked it over we were careful to keep our distance. We wore masks, didn’t shake hands, and when Les took it for a test drive I sat in the back seat and rolled down the windows. Once he was sold on the car, we signed the documents, passing a pen back and forth, and he gave me the cash. He then dropped me off at the house and just like that, the car which had been the collective legs of our small family for the past three years was gone.

I tried to put the thought of saying goodbye to the car out of my mind, and thanks to the demands of a new job, an odd working and sleeping schedule, a global pandemic, and a presidential election, I was largely successful. And then on Thursday, five days after meeting up with Les to sell the car, he sent me a text.

Yesterday morning the rain was coming down in sheets and I'd spent a long time staring at the screen of my laptop. I decided to rope Idara into an adventure.

My first job out of college was yanking vegetables out of the ground on a little organic farm on the northern edge of Yamhill Valley. We grew a lot of beets, which are a regal vegetable in their own right, but even better when mixed with other things. Beet burgers, for example, combine shredded beets with cheese, nuts, and parsley, and as far as I'm concerned, are much tastier than regular burgers.

Dragging himself across the floor and pulling himself up to stand. This is Oren at nine months.

When I last wrote about Idara we were only ten days into lockdown. As a family, we'd already started to say goodbye: Goodbye to her school, goodbye to my teaching in person, goodbye to Rachael driving into work. Except without any actual goodbyes. One day these things were a part of our life and the next day they weren't.

One of my favorite movie scenes comes from “Up in The Air.” George Clooney plays a man who’s hired out by other companies “who don’t have the courage to sack their own employees.” When Clooney lays these people off, he tells them, “This is a rebirth.” And how could it not be? Something new will grow from being laid off, he tells them, whether they’re ready for it or not. I think that this mindset is especially valuable right now.

There is no shortage of excellent data journalism related to Covid-19, but I couldn't find the graphs I was looking for. Using a few JavaScript libraries and a few hours of free time, I built them myself.