Books read in November 2020

New:

1. Queen of the World by Robert Hardman

Reread:

1. Remember When

Toronto needs to remove snow not just from sidewalks, but from the areas around sidewalks

I was particularly disappointed to see that the City of Toronto isn't extending sidewalk snow clearing to areas of the city that don't yet receive this service, because that's a giant step in exactly the wrong direction. In a pandemic year we need even more than sidewalk snow clearing. To maintain physical distancing, we need areas around the sidewalk, like curb lanes and boulevards and the edges of lawns, to be cleared as well.

Pedestrian physical distancing isn't just a question of two "lanes" that need to be six feet apart. Faster walkers also need to pass slower walkers. Some people are walking dogs or herding children. Some people insist on walking two or three abreast. Some people are carrying bulky grocery bags. People with wheelchairs or walkers or fragile ankles need to be able to avoid walking on the curb cut.

To physically distance through all these variables - especially on older residential streets with narrow sidewalks - we need to use not just the sidewalk, but also lawns and curb lanes. The sidewalk on my own street is just barely six feet wide, so I'm always stepping off the sidewalk onto the street, or onto a lawn or driveway, so I can stay six feet away from other people. I probably step off into a curb lane or onto a lawn about three to five times in a typical block of walking.

And in snowy weather, curb lanes and lawns aren't available because they're covered in snow. The curb lanes are full of snow plow windrows, and lawns are, at a minimum, unshovelled, and, more often, covered in snow banks from sidewalk snow clearing.

What the City of Toronto needs to do is clear not just sidewalks, but also curb lanes and at least 3 feet of lawns that are adjacent to narrow sidewalks. (Q: Won't that damage the lawns? A: The City can replant the lawns in the spring. Lives are more important than lawns.) They need to truck away windrows that end up in the curb lane, and go around making sure sewer grates are clear so gutters don't fill up with water.

In the Old City of Toronto - the portion of the amalgamated city where sidewalks aren't cleared - all these sidewalk-related needs and pandemic-related needs are exacerbated. There is higher population density, more people walking as a primary form of transportation, and more people who don't have cars. Older sidewalks tend to be narrower, buildings tend to be closer to the sidewalk, and the curb lane tends to be right next to the sidewalk (rather than there being a boulevard between the sidewalk and the curb lane). Grocery stores and other necessities are more likely to be within walking distance, so more people are carrying bulky packages and rolling bundle buggies. More streets have businesses with patios and lineups and those signs that they put out on the sidewalk. 

In short, there are more people trying to physically distance in less space as the second wave of COVID balloons around us. The City needs to help its residents stay safe by extending snow clearing not just to all sidewalks, but to the areas around the sidewalks.

Things They Should Invent: search and sort grocery websites by nutritional information

In the course of ordinary, in-store, non-pandemic grocery shopping, we often pick up items off the shelf and read the labels. 

During the pandemic, we aren't supposed to be handling items we don't buy. Also during the pandemic, many people are shopping online (either for delivery or for in-store pickup), and (at least according to the marketing emails I'm being bombarded with) grocery store chains seem to be encouraging this.

One thing grocery chains could do to make online shopping easier and to discourage people from handling things in store is for store websites to have extremely robust searching and sorting by ingredients and/or nutritional information.

They often have ingredients and nutritional information that you can click on for individual products, but searchable and sortable would be far more convenient and user-friendly.

Examples:

- Show me all products from the "salad dressing" category sorted in ascending order of sugar content, so I can choose the lowest sugar salad dressing that meets my tastes.

- Let me use the Boolean NOT function to exclude all products that contain my allergens.

This information is already in grocery stores' computers - you can see it when you look up specific products on their website. People already know how to program computers to do things like sorting and boolean search. 

If they could let us do this on store website, it would improve uptake of online shopping and reducing handling of items in-store, and may also introduce consumers to new products that meet their needs better than what they were buying before. A win for everyone!

Gold Bond Ultimate Healing: a hand cream that meets my pandemic needs

 As I've blogged about before, I've needed to up my hand lotion game because of all the additional pandemic handwashing.

Lately I've been using Gold Bond Ultimate Healing Hand Cream, and it seems to do the job. I'm moisturizing my hands exactly the way I was before the pandemic, and they feel comparable to their pre-pandemic state, with no cracking or pain.

My dyshidrotic eczema is still present, but under control, but which I mean it's in the calmest and least itchy state it can be in while still existing.  

I haven't tried every hand cream out there so I don't know if this is the best one, but my hands feel like there's no pandemic, and that's not nothing.

What if the difference in first wave and second wave pandemic response is due to racism?

Sitting here watching the second wave of the pandemic spiral with those in power doing little to nothing, I find myself increasingly surprised that the lockdown actually happened back in March. Given the apparent lack of political will to return to the now-familiar lockdown when numbers are skyrocketing and the seriousness of COVID is clear, I'm amazed that they initiated the then-unprecedented lockdown back when it still seemed possible that the threat of COVID might be overblown.

It makes no sense whatsoever!

Which makes me wonder: might racism be at play?

As I've blogged about before, I'm not nearly as good as I should be at spotting racism. I've been trying to learn, but it's slow going (especially since I don't want to, like, actively seek out racists to see what they're saying). However one thing I have learned is that when I feel a specific shade of "This makes no sense whatsoever!", it usually means that what I'm missing is recognizing how racism is at play in the situation. And this is the specific shade of "It makes no sense whatosever!" that I'm feeling here.

So, if it is a question of racism, how might that be playing out?

I see two possibilities, which are not mutually exclusive:

1. As far as we know, the pandemic began in China. Maybe back in March there was a sense that COVID was foreign, and the lockdown was motivated by keeping that Bad Foreign Disease away. Now that community transmission is by far more common, they don't see it as as much of a threat.

2. Here in Toronto/Ontario/Canada, COVID-19 is disproportionately affecting marginalized people, including racialized people. Black and brown people have disproportionately high COVID numbers here in Toronto, and white people have disproportionately low numbers. So maybe those in positions of power and authority are thinking "It won't affect us", or even "The people it will affect don't matter."

As I said, I'm not as good as I should be at spotting racism, so there are almost certainly going to be nuances here that I've missed.

But, conversely, if someone as clueless as me thinks this situation makes so little sense that I'm arriving at the idea of racism, it's probably a sign that those in power should, at a minimum, make the situation make more sense.