The View from the Hermitage, Day 1

And by "hermitage," I don't mean the palace now museum in Leningrad. I told people last week that, being an over-60 asthmatic who had had pneumonia less than a year ago, I would be hermitting. This week, the practice has been termed "social distancing" and everyone is encouraged to practice it. Welcome to a pandemic!

I try to refrain from thinking of all the post-apocalyptic books I read in a past life or analogous movies I saw. I keep recalling the contemporary take on The Planet of the Apes that ended with the ominous drop of blood falling from the nose of a character about to go fly a plane full of passengers. The seed of a pandemic. It makes me wonder just what was the seed of this one.

There seems to be no news other than the covid-19 pandemic. Even the Democratic presidential primary race is being pushed aside, though part of that may be that the race has really narrowed to just two candidates. Not for the first day, The Washington Post's front page is all pandemic all over. There is one article on last night's primary debate, the first with only two candidates, but even that article led with a mention of the "growing coronavirus pandemic."

Hermitting is coming easily to me, as I suspected it would. Being an introvert does have its very good points. Thanks to social media (is e-mail considered social media?), I can keep in touch with faraway friends. Thanks to the telephone, I can keep in touch with my mother who is in an assisted living facility on lockdown. Interestingly, when I thanked them--two different people, one today and one yesterday--for restricting access to all but staff or essential medical personnel, they thanked me. It seems that not all family members think isolating the most vulnerable is a good idea.

The sports pages are shrinking daily. The NFL draft looms in April and will offer some distraction. There is no March Madness, leading The Washington Post to run the story "Sports' hiatus leaves vasectomy patients deflated." Evidently, vasectomy appointments nearly double in March compared to other months. It seems men who will be snipped look forward to spending the suggested two days of bed rest in a recliner in front of day-long-into-the-night college basketball games.

Were I still working my former job, nothing about work would have changed. I only worked from home. The current situation at the university is that faculty and students can exchange knowledge electronically while staff are expected to be on-site to maintain the normal workings of the U. Is anything normal right now? Especially with public schools closed (most of the private ones are closed as well), parents need the option of being at home. That said, I've seen several posts on a local newsgroup from teenagers ready to take on child care; they might as well earn some cash while they can. At least here, online instruction for K-12 will take a while to get going.

These thoughts have been random, put down now and then as I have been updating the local quilt guild's website (caqg.weebly.com if you're interested) and doing random things around the house. So much for all the thoughts that come to me when I am not at a keyboard. Perhaps I shall be more cogent tomorrow.