There’s a line in Homage to Catalonia where George Orwell, remembering himself hungry, dusty, and confused on a roof in Barcelona, says, “If this was history it did not feel like it.” It may be because I’ve meditated on this phrase now for several years (and a dissertation), but I’ve gotta say that one thing about 2020 is that it does feel historic.

It’s hard to know where to start: there’s a pandemic on (and a raging debate in some corners about whether that word means what you think it means). Protests and riots have been running rampant across the US (and the world) since May. The summer Olympic Games were cancelled. Baseball was cancelled (but kind of came back). A windstorm just destroyed Iowa. There was a massive explosion in Beirut, cause still unknown. There are locusts. There are murder hornets. In the US, it’s an election year, and it’s even harder to know where to start with that (or where it all will end, except that it promises to be chaotic). Since the spring, the Supreme Court (which is convening virtually, the ever-working RGB continuing in her post despite recurring hospitalization) has issued several monumental Supreme Court decisions. There is a crisis in journalistic credibility which is probably not unprecedented, but noteworthy. A network of disgruntled citizens that has coalesced around a conspiracy theory that started on 4chan is gaining mainstream steam. California has returned to using plastic grocery bags, and McDonald’s has stopped selling salads.

And you can’t go inside the library.

Instead of going inside the library, you reserve your books on the library app, make sure you’ve got your mask, and head to the building itself (lonely building that it is now) for what feels like a post-apocalyptic ritual.

And, there it is for posterity. Going to the library 2020. For the record, we got Ten Apples Up On Top, two books and a CD on writing wills, and The Art of Swedish Death Cleaning. Also, some new episodes (via DVD) of Curious George and Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood.

After more than a month of doing library visits this way, I am starting to get used to it. But I still don’t like it. The worst was the first time, when I got back into the van just as Chicago’s “Saturday in the Park” was starting to play, an unwelcome cameo from an old world now gone (Or gone for now? We just don’t know).