April 4, 2020
The Long Haul
Day 16
Quarantine is over; lockdown has begun?
What is the difference? Here’s my explanation.
Quarantine is supposed to protect the world from us. Lock down is supposed to protect us from the world!
If you think this distinction means little, think again!
Yesterday I hugged my grandchildren for the first time since we left for California on March 4. I saw my infant granddaughter up close for the first time in a month. She was four and a half months old, a squirming swaddle still tethered to her mother’s shoulder when we headed west. Now she sits up unsupported, neck rotating on her shoulders, wide, excited eyes following her three brothers’ frenetic, predictable-only-to them-movements through the kitchen and the TV room, past the piano and wood stove before exploding back to the kitchen.
We were separated from the “little family up the hill” as we call them when we were in quarantine. We are all locked down together. This is a huge difference.
It means the three boys and I can race around on the golf cart, and play “crazy driving” a game where I careen recklessly toward a parked car, a tree or a precipice along the side of the farm road that connects our houses, swerving only at the last moment to screams, shrieks and giggles. It never fails to entertain these boys, now ages eight, six and three. They will certainly be maniacs when they can legally get behind the wheel themselves!
Lock down means we can help their parents with home schooling, or at least give them some much needed down time during the day. Our son is working from home in his basement music studio, our daughter-in-law, a teacher by training, is educator-in-chief. Their other grandmother in Boston has been using Zoom to read the boys boys books each day. She can see them but not touch them.
Hillary Clinton famously once said said “it takes a village to raise a child.” In these dark times it takes an entire, extended family to educate a child.
Amazingly there are still U.S. states like Iowa and the Dakotas that do not have stay-home or lock-down restrictions in place. Memphis,Tennessee is locked down. West Memphis, Arkansas is not. The Mississippi River separates the two but it does not divide them. They are essentially the same place. The is true for Texarkana, another community straddling two states with different approaches to the pandemic. There is not even a river there, just an imaginary line on a map. Arkansas is wide open, Texas in closed.
Wake up Oklahoma! You are smack dab in the middle of our country. I-40 is a major east-west highway. It runs right through Oklahoma City! You are exporting the virus in all directions. Shut down!
Political leaders in the open states must be held accountable as the death toll grows and bodies stack up in refrigerated trucks pressed into service as morgues on wheels. The pandemic has been described as a war; these open-state politicians should be charged with war crimes.
Most all of Europe is sheltering in place. Not all though, Swedes still roam freely as this is written. Parts of Asia were shut down hard. South Korea was locked down early in the outbreak. China essentially locked everybody up in their homes, very early.
Georgia, the country, is shut down. Georgia, the state, shut down yesterday.
Today one-third of the globes population has been ordered to stay at home. Our extended family is scattered around the country and the world. We are in touch now, more than ever. They are beginning to share their lockdown stories.
My cousin Carmel in County Galway wrote that like most US states, Ireland has ordered its residents to stay home except for trips to the pharmacy, grocery et al. But the Irish have been told they can not venture more than two kilometers from their home to secure these essential items without risking being stopped, fined and or detained by the Gardai, the local constabulary. Trains rumble by empty, the roads are deserted, she reports, it is eerie and sad but also peaceful. On the upside, it has stopped raining. “The weather has been good to us,” she writes, maybe it is the atmosphere cleansing itself.
My cousin is not pollyanna: “No doubt, the rain is not far away,” she writes.
As this is written some 4,273 Covid-19 cases have been reported in Ireland and 120 have died.
The long-term future is unclear. I am calling the next phase of this blog: “The Long Haul” because we have no real idea how long we will have to live like this. So life continues, better now in lock-down than when we were in quarantine.
Tonight we hope to play “Oh Hell” online with our kids.
Be safe!
The Long Haul
Day 16
Quarantine is over; lockdown has begun?
What is the difference? Here’s my explanation.
Quarantine is supposed to protect the world from us. Lock down is supposed to protect us from the world!
If you think this distinction means little, think again!
Yesterday I hugged my grandchildren for the first time since we left for California on March 4. I saw my infant granddaughter up close for the first time in a month. She was four and a half months old, a squirming swaddle still tethered to her mother’s shoulder when we headed west. Now she sits up unsupported, neck rotating on her shoulders, wide, excited eyes following her three brothers’ frenetic, predictable-only-to them-movements through the kitchen and the TV room, past the piano and wood stove before exploding back to the kitchen.
We were separated from the “little family up the hill” as we call them when we were in quarantine. We are all locked down together. This is a huge difference.
It means the three boys and I can race around on the golf cart, and play “crazy driving” a game where I careen recklessly toward a parked car, a tree or a precipice along the side of the farm road that connects our houses, swerving only at the last moment to screams, shrieks and giggles. It never fails to entertain these boys, now ages eight, six and three. They will certainly be maniacs when they can legally get behind the wheel themselves!
Lock down means we can help their parents with home schooling, or at least give them some much needed down time during the day. Our son is working from home in his basement music studio, our daughter-in-law, a teacher by training, is educator-in-chief. Their other grandmother in Boston has been using Zoom to read the boys boys books each day. She can see them but not touch them.
Hillary Clinton famously once said said “it takes a village to raise a child.” In these dark times it takes an entire, extended family to educate a child.
Amazingly there are still U.S. states like Iowa and the Dakotas that do not have stay-home or lock-down restrictions in place. Memphis,Tennessee is locked down. West Memphis, Arkansas is not. The Mississippi River separates the two but it does not divide them. They are essentially the same place. The is true for Texarkana, another community straddling two states with different approaches to the pandemic. There is not even a river there, just an imaginary line on a map. Arkansas is wide open, Texas in closed.
Wake up Oklahoma! You are smack dab in the middle of our country. I-40 is a major east-west highway. It runs right through Oklahoma City! You are exporting the virus in all directions. Shut down!
Political leaders in the open states must be held accountable as the death toll grows and bodies stack up in refrigerated trucks pressed into service as morgues on wheels. The pandemic has been described as a war; these open-state politicians should be charged with war crimes.
Most all of Europe is sheltering in place. Not all though, Swedes still roam freely as this is written. Parts of Asia were shut down hard. South Korea was locked down early in the outbreak. China essentially locked everybody up in their homes, very early.
Georgia, the country, is shut down. Georgia, the state, shut down yesterday.
Today one-third of the globes population has been ordered to stay at home. Our extended family is scattered around the country and the world. We are in touch now, more than ever. They are beginning to share their lockdown stories.
My cousin Carmel in County Galway wrote that like most US states, Ireland has ordered its residents to stay home except for trips to the pharmacy, grocery et al. But the Irish have been told they can not venture more than two kilometers from their home to secure these essential items without risking being stopped, fined and or detained by the Gardai, the local constabulary. Trains rumble by empty, the roads are deserted, she reports, it is eerie and sad but also peaceful. On the upside, it has stopped raining. “The weather has been good to us,” she writes, maybe it is the atmosphere cleansing itself.
My cousin is not pollyanna: “No doubt, the rain is not far away,” she writes.
As this is written some 4,273 Covid-19 cases have been reported in Ireland and 120 have died.
The long-term future is unclear. I am calling the next phase of this blog: “The Long Haul” because we have no real idea how long we will have to live like this. So life continues, better now in lock-down than when we were in quarantine.
Tonight we hope to play “Oh Hell” online with our kids.
Be safe!
Gives new, deep meaning to "home" and makes me nauseous to think of those who are homeless right now. We can get through, but how can they?
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