April 12, 2020
The Long Haul
Day 24
Happy Easter!
Later today we will celebrate Easter with family, like always.
By noon a wood-fire will be lit in the sturdy, cast-iron, camp-grill that sits out the back door overlooking the pond. A 20-pound, free-range-turkey, the last of six raised on the farm last summer, waits in the kitchen, butterflied, brined and basted ready to be laid upon an upright grill modified to act as a smoker/cooker. Coals transferred from the camp grill will be used in the smoker to cook the freshly spiced bird.
Homemade breadsticks, pretzle-likes lumps of dough cooked fresh yesterday, Cabot cheddar cheese and a mystery dip will be served as appetizers. Simple, mashed-carrots and the exotic Pommes Anna are today’s sides.
Pommes Anna is actually quite simple, it requires only potatoes, spices, lots of butter, olive oil and salt. The preparation is exotic. Peeled-potatoes, thinly sliced with a Japanese mandolin, are arranged in a skillet or pan in tight, concentric circles and then are baked either on the stovetop or in the oven. Sizzle is key to a successful dish!
The famous Italian Mr. Ghirardelli and his American cousin Mr. Hershey contributed blocks of dark, forbidden chocolate for a cake, also made yesterday, that is now hiding from the grandchildren in the root cellar. It will emerge at days end, the ultimate, powder-sugar peacemaker designed to bring calm to the holiday chaos. Of course the sugar will kick in and create even greater chaos just about the time weary parents are trying to drag them back up the hill for bedtime.
Like I said, in the lede, it will be Easter with family, like always.
Our celebration will not require that we violate Vermont Governor Phil’s Scott's stay-at-home order. Nor will we be ignoring the CDC’s social-distancing guidelines. When I see them later this morning I will hug the kids and ask if the easter bunny, known here simply as the EB, visited their house last night armed with chocolate bunnies, jelly beans and brightly colored eggs. Surely he did. This too will be acceptable in this time of world-wide isolation.
We are fortunate at least for now. We have been hugging each other for weeks. We are all in isolation, staying at home together.
Most of us have not ventured out into the world for three weeks or more. Our eldest son, a healthy 39-year-old, is the official family hunter-gatherer. He has been to the market, the pharmacy and the transfer station. Everything he touches is disinfected before being released into our closed world. The rest of us pretty much have stayed locked-down on this hill. My daughter-in-law reports she has not left home, even to walk on the gravel road, since March 13th.
Our other boys will celebrate the holiday with their families in Brooklyn, Providence and Boston. We plan to Facetime with each of them. This is not unusual; we do not typically have a crowd for Easter. It is, after all, an important religious holiday and we are not ALL that god-fearing. Caps included because some among us are!
So I appreciate deeply that we are much better off here that most families around the world. Our isolation is modified, and for us retired folk, not so different than life before the coronavirus. For many isolation is lonely, dark and dreary and much, much more difficult.
Our good fortune may not last. When at long last the stay-at-home and social distancing orders are relaxed, it will be the young and healthy among us and those that have already recovered from Covid-19 that will be returned to work and school and some sense of pre-pandemic normal. They will be tested, labelled and allowed to reenter the world. The rest of us presumably will still be in isolation.
If we accept that this is our future, we must hide out or risk exposure from the little family up the hill. School children may be low risk to catch and suffer from the virus, but their little bodies are world class germ-delivery systems. My wife was an elementary and middle school teacher and most of our colds and flu over the years came from her classroom. In retirement, our grandkids have become lovable vectors of low-grade disease.
My wife acknowledges this reality and says that it is inevitable that we will get the virus eventually. She may be right but it scares me, despite her assurance that I am naturally healthier than she is. I am also older and want to hide from the virus until a treatment is approved and ready to be widely distributed. This will likely take a year, a vaccine looms even further in the uncertain future. Widely distributed is in bold because it is not often discussed by the talking heads and politicians promising that treatment is on the horizon. Making and distributing hundreds of millions of doses of the pandemic ending drugs is a daunting task and a timetable for widespread delivery is uncertain.
I honestly do not see how this approach to restarting our economy can work. The New York Times today has a fascinating story about those among us who are “superspreaders’ or highly infectious, think the BioGen outbreak. Some 70 of the first 92 cases of Covid-19 in Massachusetts were directly linked to a BioGen conference at Boston’s Longwharf Marriott. A “superspreader”attended that meeting and today Massachusetts is riddled with disease and still on the upside of the pandemic with more than 22,600 cases and 686 deaths reported.
If ”superspreaders” are unknowingly released back into school and the workplace, a deadly, second spike of cases will surely appear and shut everything back down again. We are told, testing and tracing are the key to facing down this certainty. But will there be enough tests worldwide to make this plan work? New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the other day that New York alone would need about 30 million tests to protect its populace. It does not seem possible.
UGH!
So while it is Easter and despite the turkey, it is not Thanksgiving, I am thankful for what I have right now. I am with family, celebrating the holiday. It should be a chaotic and joyous one.
I hope yours is also.
Happy Easter.
Be safe!
The Long Haul
Day 24
Happy Easter!
Later today we will celebrate Easter with family, like always.
By noon a wood-fire will be lit in the sturdy, cast-iron, camp-grill that sits out the back door overlooking the pond. A 20-pound, free-range-turkey, the last of six raised on the farm last summer, waits in the kitchen, butterflied, brined and basted ready to be laid upon an upright grill modified to act as a smoker/cooker. Coals transferred from the camp grill will be used in the smoker to cook the freshly spiced bird.
Homemade breadsticks, pretzle-likes lumps of dough cooked fresh yesterday, Cabot cheddar cheese and a mystery dip will be served as appetizers. Simple, mashed-carrots and the exotic Pommes Anna are today’s sides.
Pommes Anna is actually quite simple, it requires only potatoes, spices, lots of butter, olive oil and salt. The preparation is exotic. Peeled-potatoes, thinly sliced with a Japanese mandolin, are arranged in a skillet or pan in tight, concentric circles and then are baked either on the stovetop or in the oven. Sizzle is key to a successful dish!
The famous Italian Mr. Ghirardelli and his American cousin Mr. Hershey contributed blocks of dark, forbidden chocolate for a cake, also made yesterday, that is now hiding from the grandchildren in the root cellar. It will emerge at days end, the ultimate, powder-sugar peacemaker designed to bring calm to the holiday chaos. Of course the sugar will kick in and create even greater chaos just about the time weary parents are trying to drag them back up the hill for bedtime.
Like I said, in the lede, it will be Easter with family, like always.
Our celebration will not require that we violate Vermont Governor Phil’s Scott's stay-at-home order. Nor will we be ignoring the CDC’s social-distancing guidelines. When I see them later this morning I will hug the kids and ask if the easter bunny, known here simply as the EB, visited their house last night armed with chocolate bunnies, jelly beans and brightly colored eggs. Surely he did. This too will be acceptable in this time of world-wide isolation.
We are fortunate at least for now. We have been hugging each other for weeks. We are all in isolation, staying at home together.
Most of us have not ventured out into the world for three weeks or more. Our eldest son, a healthy 39-year-old, is the official family hunter-gatherer. He has been to the market, the pharmacy and the transfer station. Everything he touches is disinfected before being released into our closed world. The rest of us pretty much have stayed locked-down on this hill. My daughter-in-law reports she has not left home, even to walk on the gravel road, since March 13th.
Our other boys will celebrate the holiday with their families in Brooklyn, Providence and Boston. We plan to Facetime with each of them. This is not unusual; we do not typically have a crowd for Easter. It is, after all, an important religious holiday and we are not ALL that god-fearing. Caps included because some among us are!
So I appreciate deeply that we are much better off here that most families around the world. Our isolation is modified, and for us retired folk, not so different than life before the coronavirus. For many isolation is lonely, dark and dreary and much, much more difficult.
Our good fortune may not last. When at long last the stay-at-home and social distancing orders are relaxed, it will be the young and healthy among us and those that have already recovered from Covid-19 that will be returned to work and school and some sense of pre-pandemic normal. They will be tested, labelled and allowed to reenter the world. The rest of us presumably will still be in isolation.
If we accept that this is our future, we must hide out or risk exposure from the little family up the hill. School children may be low risk to catch and suffer from the virus, but their little bodies are world class germ-delivery systems. My wife was an elementary and middle school teacher and most of our colds and flu over the years came from her classroom. In retirement, our grandkids have become lovable vectors of low-grade disease.
My wife acknowledges this reality and says that it is inevitable that we will get the virus eventually. She may be right but it scares me, despite her assurance that I am naturally healthier than she is. I am also older and want to hide from the virus until a treatment is approved and ready to be widely distributed. This will likely take a year, a vaccine looms even further in the uncertain future. Widely distributed is in bold because it is not often discussed by the talking heads and politicians promising that treatment is on the horizon. Making and distributing hundreds of millions of doses of the pandemic ending drugs is a daunting task and a timetable for widespread delivery is uncertain.
I honestly do not see how this approach to restarting our economy can work. The New York Times today has a fascinating story about those among us who are “superspreaders’ or highly infectious, think the BioGen outbreak. Some 70 of the first 92 cases of Covid-19 in Massachusetts were directly linked to a BioGen conference at Boston’s Longwharf Marriott. A “superspreader”attended that meeting and today Massachusetts is riddled with disease and still on the upside of the pandemic with more than 22,600 cases and 686 deaths reported.
If ”superspreaders” are unknowingly released back into school and the workplace, a deadly, second spike of cases will surely appear and shut everything back down again. We are told, testing and tracing are the key to facing down this certainty. But will there be enough tests worldwide to make this plan work? New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the other day that New York alone would need about 30 million tests to protect its populace. It does not seem possible.
UGH!
So while it is Easter and despite the turkey, it is not Thanksgiving, I am thankful for what I have right now. I am with family, celebrating the holiday. It should be a chaotic and joyous one.
I hope yours is also.
Happy Easter.
Be safe!
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