I’m standing at the sink in the kitchen in my Baltimore apartment. It’s the smallest kitchen I’ve ever had, but I’m unpacking Wedgewood plates, cups, and saucers. There’s a creamer and a sugar bowl. What on earth am I going to do with these? We will eat from them, but how ridiculous is it to stand at the sink, some 30 years after receiving the wedding present, washing a service for eight? There are no longer 8 of everything– some have chipped badly, some broke in use– and I wonder how hard it is to get replacements. They’re available, if I want to spend $70 to $90.

This is crazy! No one will care if the plates are chipped. We’re in the collapse right now, and things are not going to improve unless there is drastic (unlikely) change. We will be lucky to have food to eat, who cares about plates?! But still I ordered three replacement plates, because I hate chipped plates, and well, why not? Why not have nice dishes as the world we know changes forever, irrevocably?

A nice table won’t stop the fascism (that takes other work).  Does a nice table affirm our humanity and our dignity? Am I mimicking the disaffected and the royalists who clung to sensibility as the American Revolution swirled around them? Maybe. For now, our dishes will be pretty and clean, and the cat will get her special meals, and we will be as normal as we can be, knowing all the while that nothing is normal and nothing ever will be.