{"id":10550,"date":"2020-03-24T13:21:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-24T20:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=10550"},"modified":"2020-04-05T13:24:40","modified_gmt":"2020-04-05T20:24:40","slug":"telephoning-returning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2020\/03\/24\/telephoning-returning\/","title":{"rendered":"Telephoning Returning"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dnyuz.com\/2020\/03\/22\/i-just-called-to-say-the-phone-call-is-back\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"from DNYUZ (opens in a new tab)\"><em>from DNYUZ<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">I Just Called to Say \u2026 the Phone Call Is Back<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/dnyuz.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/I-Just-Called-to-Say-\u2026-the-Phone-Call-Is-750x375.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The other night my friend Margot called. It\u2019s not unusual for me to hear from Margot \u2014 we\u2019ve been friends for more than 30 years, email frequently, have dinner every month or two, and I stay over at her house whenever I\u2019m in town. But Margot never&nbsp;<em>calls.&nbsp;<\/em>Practically no one does; my few surviving telephonic friendships antedate the internet. But Margot has a cold, and because her husband is immunocompromised, she\u2019d had to quarantine herself in their guest room; she was, in effect, the invalid mother confined to her room upstairs in some Victorian novel. She\u2019d been just about to email me when she thought,&nbsp;<em>why would I email?<\/em>&nbsp;and picked up the phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once I\u2019d ascertained that it wasn\u2019t an emergency, her call was a pleasant surprise. We talked for half an hour or so, and it cheered us both in a dark, uncertain time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Inspired by our conversation, I started surprising other people, in these first few days of quarantine, by calling them up just to chat. They, too, seemed pleasantly surprised. We\u2019d talk for a half-hour, 45 minutes, an hour or more \u2014 about what a weird, unprecedented time it is, how disastrous to have no one competent in charge in the crisis, how much food we have, what the local stores are like, how seriously we\u2019re taking the restrictions on our movements, how it affects our relationships (do you hastily break up rather than be trapped for months with the wrong person? Is a pandemic a good excuse to reconcile with an ex?). We made jokes about it and laughed together from opposite coasts, like kids cracking up at a funeral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[ <a href=\"https:\/\/dnyuz.com\/2020\/03\/22\/i-just-called-to-say-the-phone-call-is-back\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"click to continue reading at DNYUZ (opens in a new tab)\">click to continue reading at DNYUZ<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from DNYUZ I Just Called to Say \u2026 the Phone Call Is Back The other night my friend Margot called. It\u2019s not unusual for me to hear from Margot \u2014 we\u2019ve been friends for more than 30 years, email frequently, have dinner every month or two, and I stay over at her house whenever I\u2019m [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}