Week 1
Week 1
Day 1 Bandon Oregon. Monday March 16, 2020
This is my first day of self quarantine due to the coronavirus. My family is all down in Santa Clara, but due to my separation from Michelle, I am up here and they are down there. Thus, I am alone.The virus has overwhelmed us all. The world has not seen a pandemic threat to our species since 1918, 102 years ago. Five generations. Everything is new. Everything is dangerous. Warnings and conditions are changing every day. No one knows anything.
We are all supposed to practice "Social distancing" which means that we all have to stay away from each other. A whole world full of people. 7 billion of us, all supposed to stay away from and not touch each other. Of course that's a farce. Try telling that to hormone raged teenagers.
As far as my own first day of self quarantine, I have already had morning coffee with my friend Eric at the Rolling Pin, then I went for a long walk around Ohio St. street where I ran into my friends Patrick and Sue who live over that way and we stood on the dirt road and talked for an hour. Now I am at the Bandon Coffee Cafe in old town having an afternoon Tea, having also rewarded myself with a breakfast sandwich bagel and a raisin scone, and have just started this blog.
They say the initial 1918 virus outbreak - popularly known as the Spanish Flu, quickly ravaged the world in its initial winter, and traveled via soldiers returning from the War (world war 1). At first it was ignored, but viruses always grow exponentially in populations, and so one day it went from being nothing to exploding in all the major cities, and killed lots of people, more people than in the Great War itself.
This from MedicalNewsToday.com:
In 1918, as one global devastation in the shape of World War I came to an end, people around the world found themselves facing another deadly enemy, pandemic flu. The virus killed more than 50 million people, three times the number that fell in the Great War, and did this so much faster than any other illness in recorded history.
They say that in the first major outbreak, the health services are overwhelmed for 2-3 months, so the trick is to stay healthy during that time, so that is sort of my goal. The best way to health is to stay away from other people. Can't be done, but we'll all give it a try.
But how to do that? Well, one of my ideas is to write this blog, but also do a lot more walking. Other ideas too, but start slowly and surely. Like the infamous turtle. I will be reducing my contact with other human beings, and I live alone, so there is a chance that I will slowly go insane in my efforts, but we shall see.
Welcome to Day 1.
Day 2. March 17 2020. Gearing up for Solitude
But mostly my social life comes from 3 areas of my life. 1. The morning coffee crowd. 2. The friends I have made at the radio station where I have a show. and 3. various disparate parts of my life. I do video and slide stuff at the movie theater. I am on the board at the senior center. I volunteer at the visitor center here. My Bandon Earth Day committee work. My neighbors here on 12th St. All Small stuff and casual acquaintances. Still my days are filled in with running into people all the time. I walk everywhere, so it is not unusual for me to run into 3 or 4 people that I know on one of my walks and then stopping to chat for a bit.
All this is going to change now. Oregon, like a lot of states, just asked all restaurants, cafes and bars to shut down for the next 4-6 weeks. Everyone is being asked to "shelter in place" to stop the spread of the virus. Flatten the Curve, without saying that when you flatten a curve, you are just making it longer, making it a longer shelter in place for people. Tough for people who do not have enough food at home. I worry about my family in Santa Clara on this point, as Michelle has never been one to worry about that kind of thing. I wrote to her 3 weeks ago suggesting to her that the virus was real and coming and it was time to buy food and water and I am sure she felt I was just being crazy. Now our two kids are with her and I worry, but only in the sense that it is now out of my hands. I have done what I can with all of them. Now it is up to time and fate.
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Much like my drive across America last summer, where I felt like I was an astronaut in small spaceship - my mini cooper - travelling in the huge landscape expanse in silence and with my thoughts, I am seeing the next month or so in the same light. Not much contact with other people. A little stark and lonely.
As a consequence I am setting up projects for myself. I have downloaded a stepcounter and will try to do a long walk once a day. Maybe when it warms up I will do long bike rides as well. Started to paint the front door red this morning using spraypaint and completely messed it up. I will go to the hardware store and get proper paint now.
Life goes on. Lots of expected solitude ahead. We shall see how it goes.
Day 3. Wed March 18. A Different Drummer
Well, another day in the neighborhood. Woke up at 4, still dark, but light rain outside. hung around until 5:30 then walked down to the coffee shop. Still open. Bought a coffee and an apple cake and walked down to the docks and found a dry bench underneath an awning, and watched the sky lighten.
I have always been an early riser, and have spent most of my life waiting for everybody else to wake up, for stores to open. When I got to an age where I was living with girlfriends, it initially frustrated me to no ends, waiting for our day to start. But somewhere in the Jan Buckley days,back when we were living in McMahon's Point, I started to realize that I could start my day without her, and it was a chance for me to get things done in the morning, so I began to go out and get things done, then come back around 9 or so, when Jan would get up and we could start our day together. At night she would stay up later, so our days coincided somewhere in the middle. After Jan, this turned into a lifetime habit for me, where I would have different and earlier days than the people I lived with, on through to Michelle and the kids. My day would start a couple hours earlier and end a couple hours earlier as well. I am still that way.Most all establishments around the country have shut down by now. It seems with the current coronavirus panic, that most governments of the world have realized that in order to keep civilization afloat, and prevent complete societal collapse, that certain things must be kept open. Grocery stores, pharmacies, police and fire departments, the water and electricity have to be kept on. Let's hope that lasts, because if it doesn't, we are all well and truly f-cked.
One of my anxieties is maintaining a supply of the kinds of food I eat every day. Peanut butter, salads, cheese, tomatoes, lots of milk. I have lots of all of them, both fresh and canned, but still worry. Yesterday I looked up if it was possible to freeze milk and to be able to store it longer, and it turns out you can but with the caveat that it will not be quite the same, so I went to the market yesterday and bought four quarts of milk and 2 pints of half and half and put them in the freezer. Today I will take out a quart of frozen milk and unfreeze it and try to use it, sort of as a test of what to expect if it comes to having to rely on the frozen kind.
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Its a hardass approach, but with a virus, everything is about vectors. how it tries to get to you, through your hands, via other people. I trust my own approach in controlling and stopping the virus from getting to me, but I cannot control her. Her sister lives in town and I cannot control her either, nor can I control Fran's boyfriend and whomever he decides to maintain contact with. There is a small chance, however, that Fran has finally found a more permanent place to live anyway is planning on moving out, so I may not need to turn on the hardass. I will find out more today.
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Here is a quote that my mom hung on the wall above my bed, above my head the whole time I was growing up. It is from Walden. Henry David Thoreau.If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away
Whether she did it because she knew me, or just put it on my wall not knowing how it would affect me, I will never know. I kept to myself a lot as a kid. I was a stutterer, and it separated me a bit from others. I would like to think that she put it up on my wall knowing this, and that it was her way of telling me that I would still be ok.
Day 4. Thu March 19 2020. Of playhouses and learning curves
More work done on the new garden today. It will be 5 X 16. I formed it out with four by sixes and then chopped up the grass inside and pulled it out. Tomorrow I will try to get it cleaned out down to the dirt. I also have to trim branches off the neighbors tree just to the south that overhangs so that the garden will be able to get more hours of sun during the day.
I am not a gardener by any means, nor have I ever enjoyed it. My mom always talked about her mom's garden, and Michelle always had a nice garden in our back yard. Before we split I built 3 nice 4 X 8 raised redwood garden beds for her, as well as a smaller one. I then put a nice garden swing bench back in the shade. That sort of thing. There once was a castle like playhouse there that I built for the kids when they were too small for it, but then when they grew up to be the right size we got 5 chickens and the playhouse that I had build for my kids became the chicken coop. The chickens lived inside of there for 6 years or so and then by the time the chickens all died, the kids had outgrown playhouses. Then Michelle wanted me to tear it down. Broke my heart.
With the virus, everyone lives online now, but I met my friends Ken and Christine for coffee this morning at the Bandon Coffee Cafe. No establishment is allowed to have anyone sit inside, but they had a table outside that faced south and the sun was shining. We sat the designated 3 feet apart from each other and talked for an hour about - what else - the coronavirus. Covid 19. They are master gardeners and have said they will try to help me along the way with my new garden. Like any other endeavor and learning curves therein, I expect lots of failure before I start to understand what I am doing.
That's the way it always was with me in my technology career. A new technology comes along and you start off not understanding anything, and nothing makes sense and everything you try to do fails. But then you stare at it long enough (I miss cigarettes. Great for staring and thinking) and you fail enough and slowly and surely you can get the new technology to do one thing. Then after awhile another. then another. You work at it enough then you get good at it and then people are paying you to build things for them. It was a fun career.
So far there are no reported covid 19 cases in Coos County, which is the county I live in in Oregon. With the virus, everyone expects to live, or maybe die. No one knows. We live through our days not knowing if we will be alive next year, next month or next week.
Strange days indeed.
The big problem in America is that our country has not been serious about testing its citizens like other countries have. This means that no one knows how widespread the virus is at the moment. We could all have it or we could not, as there are a lot of "Asymptomatic" carriers. We all are in the dark.
Huge jump in Coronavirus numbers in the US today. What concerns me is that in the rest of the world, people are being cured, but the numbers in the US are not like that. My morbid guess is that they will stop counting eventually, as it might get to a point where they are just too many too count. Sheesh.
Day 5. Friday March 20. On Grace
Well, all the markets have gone haywire. America is shutting down. For awhile now there are some who have said that the America we know is in decline, described as "late stage capitalism" because like most political systems, the powerful do not know when to stop. In communism it was the powerful within the party. In America its the plutocrats. America has always defined itself as a Capitalist society with the begrudging understanding that each of us is out to squeeze every last penny of profit from everyone else, as if this were mostly a good thing. And now the chickens have come home to roost. While the rest of the world goes about trying to save itself. The politicians are arguing over whether poor people really deserve any of their money at all. The communist states fell about 30 years ago, like ducks in a shooting gallery. We are now seeing America not able to change its thinking in order to save its own people, and change will end up coming from the streets. I guess its the way of all things. I worry about Mara and Jana down in Santa Clara, but I can't do much for them now. I have invited them up here on multiple occasions, but they are both adults and have chosen to remain in Santa Clara. California has now mostly shut down. I can only pray that they will both get through it.
Yesterday we sat outside the coffee shop, and I guess the police saw that and now even that is not allowed. The chairs are now gone. No sitting and conversing in public outside an eating establishment. There are still concrete tables and benches around town outside of other eating establishments that cannot be moved, so maybe they will put signs up telling people they can't sit down.
I have always been urban in the sense that I like to do my work in coffee shops. Bring in my laptop, buy some coffee, sit down, and use their wifi, and focus on my work while people are buzzing around me. I can't do that anymore as you can't sit down in coffee shops anymore, but I am on the board of the senior center here in Bandon, and I have a key to get in, and the wifi has not been shut off, so I come down here and work. The added bonus is that the center also has a Baldwin upright piano, so I usually have been coming in here and playing a bit before writing. Mostly minor chord progressions. And so the Senior Center Satisfies two itches that are aimed at relaxing the mind. Piano playing and writing.
I imagine someone will eventually find out that I am doing this and try to stop me, as most people's first instinct is to figure out a reason why you can't do something rather than a reason why you can.
Day 4. Thu March 19 2020. Of playhouses and learning curves
More work done on the new garden today. It will be 5 X 16. I formed it out with four by sixes and then chopped up the grass inside and pulled it out. Tomorrow I will try to get it cleaned out down to the dirt. I also have to trim branches off the neighbors tree just to the south that overhangs so that the garden will be able to get more hours of sun during the day.
I am not a gardener by any means, nor have I ever enjoyed it. My mom always talked about her mom's garden, and Michelle always had a nice garden in our back yard. Before we split I built 3 nice 4 X 8 raised redwood garden beds for her, as well as a smaller one. I then put a nice garden swing bench back in the shade. That sort of thing. There once was a castle like playhouse there that I built for the kids when they were too small for it, but then when they grew up to be the right size we got 5 chickens and the playhouse that I had build for my kids became the chicken coop. The chickens lived inside of there for 6 years or so and then by the time the chickens all died, the kids had outgrown playhouses. Then Michelle wanted me to tear it down. Broke my heart.
With the virus, everyone lives online now, but I met my friends Ken and Christine for coffee this morning at the Bandon Coffee Cafe. No establishment is allowed to have anyone sit inside, but they had a table outside that faced south and the sun was shining. We sat the designated 3 feet apart from each other and talked for an hour about - what else - the coronavirus. Covid 19. They are master gardeners and have said they will try to help me along the way with my new garden. Like any other endeavor and learning curves therein, I expect lots of failure before I start to understand what I am doing.
That's the way it always was with me in my technology career. A new technology comes along and you start off not understanding anything, and nothing makes sense and everything you try to do fails. But then you stare at it long enough (I miss cigarettes. Great for staring and thinking) and you fail enough and slowly and surely you can get the new technology to do one thing. Then after awhile another. then another. You work at it enough then you get good at it and then people are paying you to build things for them. It was a fun career.
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Strange days indeed.
The big problem in America is that our country has not been serious about testing its citizens like other countries have. This means that no one knows how widespread the virus is at the moment. We could all have it or we could not, as there are a lot of "Asymptomatic" carriers. We all are in the dark.
Huge jump in Coronavirus numbers in the US today. What concerns me is that in the rest of the world, people are being cured, but the numbers in the US are not like that. My morbid guess is that they will stop counting eventually, as it might get to a point where they are just too many too count. Sheesh.
Day 5. Friday March 20. On Grace
Well, all the markets have gone haywire. America is shutting down. For awhile now there are some who have said that the America we know is in decline, described as "late stage capitalism" because like most political systems, the powerful do not know when to stop. In communism it was the powerful within the party. In America its the plutocrats. America has always defined itself as a Capitalist society with the begrudging understanding that each of us is out to squeeze every last penny of profit from everyone else, as if this were mostly a good thing. And now the chickens have come home to roost. While the rest of the world goes about trying to save itself. The politicians are arguing over whether poor people really deserve any of their money at all. The communist states fell about 30 years ago, like ducks in a shooting gallery. We are now seeing America not able to change its thinking in order to save its own people, and change will end up coming from the streets. I guess its the way of all things. I worry about Mara and Jana down in Santa Clara, but I can't do much for them now. I have invited them up here on multiple occasions, but they are both adults and have chosen to remain in Santa Clara. California has now mostly shut down. I can only pray that they will both get through it.
Yesterday we sat outside the coffee shop, and I guess the police saw that and now even that is not allowed. The chairs are now gone. No sitting and conversing in public outside an eating establishment. There are still concrete tables and benches around town outside of other eating establishments that cannot be moved, so maybe they will put signs up telling people they can't sit down.
I have always been urban in the sense that I like to do my work in coffee shops. Bring in my laptop, buy some coffee, sit down, and use their wifi, and focus on my work while people are buzzing around me. I can't do that anymore as you can't sit down in coffee shops anymore, but I am on the board of the senior center here in Bandon, and I have a key to get in, and the wifi has not been shut off, so I come down here and work. The added bonus is that the center also has a Baldwin upright piano, so I usually have been coming in here and playing a bit before writing. Mostly minor chord progressions. And so the Senior Center Satisfies two itches that are aimed at relaxing the mind. Piano playing and writing.
I imagine someone will eventually find out that I am doing this and try to stop me, as most people's first instinct is to figure out a reason why you can't do something rather than a reason why you can.
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I have been a fan of Stoicism of late, and mostly centered around its main message of Grace, ie rather than being resentful of the things that have been lost, being thankful for the things that have been given. For example, I lost my marriage when Michelle walked up to me 3 years ago and said to me "I'm Done!", and bringing on all of the ensuing pain, but on the other hand I was able to enjoy 20 good years with her and raising my kids in a family scenario, and I am more thankful for that. Having been given 20 years of family, there is no greater gift, and so I am thankful. That is my perspective on Grace.
And so I call out to the great void, and say Thank You for giving me a family and letting me know what it is like to be a Dad.
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People are really good about being disciplined to new habits for about 2-3 weeks, and then they fall back into their old way of doing things. It will be interesting to see what people are doing a month from now when the "shelter in place" orders stop being new and interesting, and with the warmer summer weather, everyone wants to be outside and to start seeing their friends again.
Day 6. Saturday March 21 2020. of Lollipop boxes and early entry forms.
Well its starting to happen already, and we are only six days in. Los Angeles county is now advising doctors to stop testing patients for positive coronavirus and now just focus on treatment instead. Across the country it is being described as "entering a new phase of the pandemic", wherein there is no longer any hope of containing the virus, but only to slow its spread so that the hospitals can keep up. There is a viral (sic) talk of a woman doctor from Chicago that is going around now where she says staying home and watching Netflix is the most successful thing that anyone can do. That if we "do nothing" and "nothing happens" we have the best chance of not killing others.
It's all about hospital beds, and keeping the vulnerable alive at this point. A million hospital beds in America. Only a quarter of them with ventilators. Flattening the curve means not overwhelming the health care system so that it is not YOUR mother who gets turned away and is facing death at home without health care.
Everyone says that staying at home will seem endless but that there will be another side to it, that the virus will eventually subside and we can all get on with our lives. Let's hope that they are correct in this estimation.
Day 6. Saturday March 21 2020. of Lollipop boxes and early entry forms.
It's all about hospital beds, and keeping the vulnerable alive at this point. A million hospital beds in America. Only a quarter of them with ventilators. Flattening the curve means not overwhelming the health care system so that it is not YOUR mother who gets turned away and is facing death at home without health care.
Everyone says that staying at home will seem endless but that there will be another side to it, that the virus will eventually subside and we can all get on with our lives. Let's hope that they are correct in this estimation.
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Two things happened when I was growing up that my mother always claimed never happened.
- The first was the wooden lollipop box that always hung on the wall by the kitchen table. I was usually the first one up in the morning in my family, and one day I got up early and walked down to the kitchen and there is a knife run through the lollipop box. And forever after that the lollipop box was gone.
- I was not like my siblings, and was considered a problem kid. The second was sometime around when I was 15, I was looking for a pen and went to the desk in the living room to find one and in a middle drawer found an early entry form into the US Navy with my name on it. I guess at age 15, you would need your parent signature to get into the Navy. I guess at some point my parents were serious enough about it that they got a form for me filled out.
Two mysteries of my childhood that will never be answered, now that both my mom and dad are dead. I guess even if they were alive I would still not get the answers to them. I guess we are all entitled to our secrets, and to our mistakes.
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As mentioned above, eventually they will just stop counting the active cases, and just start counting the dead.
Day 7. Sunday March 22 2020. For Lisa
I keep the gas tank full at all times and have a five gallon spare plastic gas can filled as well, just in case I need to get down to Santa Clara and my kids. The mini cooper has about a 500 mile range on a full tank, and Santa Clara is just a tad more than that, so I should be able to make it. The guy at the gas station this morning said that California had closed all of its borders, which would be bad, but then I looked it up and it turns out to be only a rumor and that neither California or Oregon is planning on closing their borders at the moment.
The sentiment of just this past week has shifted radically from one of virus containment to one of resignation that there is now nothing we can do and that the virus will sweep across the world and kill many people in the coming months. The talk is of numbers in the millions. The US federal response compared to other countries has been an embarrassment in leadership, so individual states and private enterprises are doing all they can to fill the gap. Gas station, Grocery and Pharmacy employees are now considered emergency front line workers, same as nurses and doctors, and are being given raises to keep showing up at work.
All Americans are now being asked to stay away from each other for the next couple of months. Do not congregate. Smells of old Soviet tactics. Who would have thought, just a couple of weeks ago we would be where we are now. In the past 10 days everything has changed.
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When I was in high school, I ran with a pretty rough crowd. I remember my guidance counselor hanging his head down when I told him who my friends were.
One day in my senior year I get called into his office and walk in and my mom is there. The two of them immediately sit me down and put a form in front of me and make me sign off on applying to five different state colleges in New York. Then, later in the school year, by a miracle, one of them accepts me. SUNY Oswego.
Much later I realized that my mom just wanted me to get away from my friends, and the risky life I was living, and she was right. Getting me away from that life was the best thing she ever did for me. I am not sure I ever properly thanked her for that, although quite possibly I did. I did spend a couple of decades in my 30s and 40s apologizing to her for my teenage years.
Somewhere in my late 20s, after travelling and living in London for awhie, I went back to Massapequa to see my old friends, and found myself for just one night back in my old life. Going to the same bars, sitting on the same couches in the same houses smoking pot. Wasting away. There I was, deep in the moment sitting there and suddenly feeling kind of freaked out inside my head that it was like I was back in high school, wherein I quickly stood up, told them all I was going to the bathroom, then walked out the back door and out of their lives for the next few decades. It was me that scared me. Not them.
Then, 35 years or so after that night I find them all on facebook again, and we all started catching up with each other, and despite the rough nature of our teenage lives, almost all of us ended up being fairly normal people. A career, kids, a house, dogs, cats, cars, grand kids. The lot. An american life. It was strange for me knowing them all so well at 17 and then running into them all again at age 60, missing everything in between. The funny thing of it is, I think of them all as still 17 years old, and still can't quite work it out in my head that all these people are on the other side of life like me.
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Health officials are all saying it is going to get much worse before it starts slowing down. I think we are seeing that now. Cases increasing by over 30 pct each day of late.
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