SELF-ISOLATION, DAY 5

OK, I wasn’t going to complain, but… buying way more than you need, this is what is called

HOARDING.

I am cheating a little. This is the essay for tomorrow, March 21 but I came home from work and need to vent a little. So, please don’t tell anyone I am doing this.

Really, since humans are doing this and it happens frequently I am trying to understand this panic-hoarding people do. I suppose it is in some way understandable. It occurs when a previously unsuspected problem occurs, threatening a large portion of some particular area of the population. In this case, everyone is potentially affected.

But…listen to me, please (and I know probably very few people read my crap), there is enough food to go around. Food production has not stopped. Toilet paper production, I read in an online article, was being increased before the COVID-19 started to affect us, since manufacturers thought this might happen. I explained to a couple of stressed customers that there is enough of everything, that there is still a shortage of paper products because in the morning people come in and grab whatever came in during the night. One customer had a shopping cart overflowing and the bill was nearly $600! Judging by the amounts of various products she purchased, either she will be feeding an infantry company this weekend, or she is stockpiling for 3 months.

Some are bewildered. A gray-haired man, with an accent from maybe Eastern Europe, was trying to purchase the gallon jugs of water. He told me in broken English that his sister told him that the governor of this state said everything will close. He asked me 3 times if our store will stay open. And about gas stations. So, I explained as thoroughly as I could what the situation is and that we will stay open and that there is enough of everything. If everyone could somehow calm down and be willing to share, to let loose of the “death grip” on having more than enough so one does not have fear.

I looked in their faces and saw black, brown, tan, white; faces that smiled, were angry, were tired, were bewildered, were hopeful. I saw my ancestors in their faces. I saw America. Why can we not see this in each other and share the last loaf of bread?

Let us try all to do this together, to stay safe, be well, share.

March 21, 2020

There’s no doubt that coronavirus is deadly. We watch its body count rise daily with no certainty where it will stop. But as dangerous as that virus is to our bodies, doom and gloom is even more dangerous to our souls. And while most of us will avoid the least desirable outcome of coronavirus, our efforts to protect our bodies threaten to make none of us immune to doom and gloom.

It’s easy to get down. Even those of us who haven’t become sick can get mired in all that we’ve lost. Retirement funds. Jobs. Vacations. Baseball. That bar with the self-serve taps.

At some point – if it hasn’t already – the novelty of self-isolation and hours of Netflix will wear off. Humans are social creatures, and despite how we feel on rainy, cold mornings, we do better when we’re out in the world rather than holed up in our homes. We’re not moles.

How long do we have to keep this up? I’m not sure anyone knows, and those who might know are too wise to say.

When facing a worldwide pandemic, necessary isolation of an unknown duration, and loss of so many small things that bring us joy, what are we to do?

There’s only one thing to do: practice gratitude.

The current pandemic is scary. Even as we live through it, I find it hard to believe what we’re being asked to do. Kids can’t go to school? No concerts? Stay inside your house so you don’t catch a deadly disease or spread it to others?

This doesn’t even seem like real life.

But for today, this is real life. And tomorrow. And the day after that. And probably quite a few days after that.

Not all of us will make it through, but most of us will. Those of us who are healthy, relatively young, and have decent insurance have a better chance. One day life will return to normal for us.

And it’s that prospect of returning to normal where gratitude comes in.

What we’re experiencing now is an interlude. It’s that space between the life we were living and the life we’ll live in the future. And during this interlude we can mope, and worry, and fill ourselves with dread, and generally freak out, or we can use this break as a chance to take stock of our lives.

This pandemic is providing a chance for all of us to put things on hold. To do without. In America we’re being forced to do something that Americans hate to do: sacrifice.

But from that sacrifice may grow gratitude.

Life is so daily. It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day challenges, struggles, and monotony of life, and forget the many things for which we should be grateful. But now that so many of those things have been taken from us, perhaps we’ll appreciate them more when they return.

Having dinner at your favorite pizza place. Watching your daughter play soccer. Helping your son with his math homework. Buying toilet paper. A cold beer, a hot dog, and organ music at Wrigley Field. Riding public transportation. Field trips.

Some of those things are fun. Some are a chore. But now that we can’t do any of them, maybe we’ll realize that they’re the real stuff in life, and to simply let them pass by without gratitude is letting our lives pass by. And if we can’t experience gratitude for the small things in our life, then how will we ever know what the large things are?

Thousands of people have died, and thousands more will die. Many of us will get sick, and almost all of us will worry. It’s dreadful.

But it’s also a gift. It’s a forced pause button that gives us the opportunity to reflect on ourselves, our loved ones, our world, and our existence. If we’re lucky, we’ll get to spend a lot of time with those people we love the most. And we’ll also gain an appreciation for many other things that we had to lose in order to discover how important they are to us.

I read an article that said the world will never be the same after this. The writer was talking about health policy, and governmental programs. But if we take this time to think about what we’ve loved and what we’ve lost, then we’ll never be the same either.

And for that, we should be forever grateful.

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Everything we do has meaning. To the highest degree it has meaning to ourselves as individuals. To a lesser degree, meaning to our position within our family and social circles, and society. We are each individual cells in the great organism we’ve classified as the human species.

Isolation – a UK pensioner visiting his grandchild.

It is 6:18 am, Sunday morning, March 22nd.  I just woke up. I can hear birds singing outside my window.  It seems, somehow, incongruous to hear them. Like it’s a normal morning.

It’s most decidedly NOT a normal morning.  For the state of Illinois has been on lockdown since 5 pm last evening.  Not quite marshall law – not yet, anyway.

Coronavirus.  It’s getting to where I can’t bear to hear the word.  One tiny organism has completely changed the world in but a few short weeks. Last weekend came the shock of all bars and restaurants in the state having to close down.  This weekend, everyone in the entire state, save the “essential,” are being made to stay home for the next almost- three weeks.

What the hell will next weekend bring?

The U.S. currently counts almost 27,000 cases of COVID-19 (the incurable disease caused by the virus) and 350 dead.  Illinois’ contribution stands at 753 cases and 6 dead.

Entire countries are quarantined, and over 13,600 people have died world-wide as I write this.

This is, of course, to say nothing of the virus’s catastrophic effect on both the U.S. and global economies.

I am not a chickenshit person.  I’ve been through a lot in my life. But this – this thing – has me sore afraid.  I can’t concentrate.  I can’t sleep. Since I have several risk factors, all I can think of is getting the cursed virus and dying.  It has no vaccine and no cure.

Adding to my anxiety, and perhaps yours, is the open-ended-ness of this ordeal.  We simply have no idea when it will abate and we can return to whatever the hell “normal” will be by then.

Possible death, catastrophic job-loss, interruption of life as we knew it – these things aren’t going to go away like magic.  Or anytime soon.  The damage this virus has caused to the world economy alone will take months or even years to recover from.

I simply don’t know how to wrap my mind around this.  I am, basically, scared shitless.

I – we – can only hope and pray that sanity prevails, that all global citizens continue to act peaceably, and that someone, somewhere in this damaged world finds a cure for this scourge, or at least a vaccine.

When I woke up this morning,  I heard the birds and this song popped into my head:

Thank you for reading.  Comments to:  [email protected]

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  Hello, my babies! Here on Planet Michelle (Earth name: Michelle Babicz), you will find satire, song, sexy stuff and other musings from my little monkey brain. And of course, politics, given the Human Comb-Over currently occupying the Oval Office. / I live over by there, have a foreclosure cat named Lou and currently am between husbands. (Hopefully, not yours.) Enjoy your orbit!

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I hope you’re staying calm, cool and collected during these frightening, unconcern times. If you have any good coping skills, please share. We can all use them.

Truth: I’m not coping well at all. My anxiety level was high before the coronavirus pandemic started.

I won’t go into why that is right here, but just know I have insomnia and had an appointment with a sleep expert at Northwestern scheduled for next week. I had waited six months to get in. I canceled the appointment.

Thanks to this pandemic, my anxiety has really amped up. Just the idea of going into a grocery store makes my heart pound.

I won’t even talk about the economy and my personal financial worries. At the risk of sounding like a crazy loon (if the shoe fits, wear it), here are some of the things that run through my monkey mind:

How long is it going to be before the grocery store clerks and pharmacy techs get the virus? These poor souls should have access to masks. How many people will they unknowingly infect while bravely serving the rest of us?

Taking someone’s temperature before allowing them to work or go into certain places is a good idea, but what’s to prevent people who are asystematic from spreading the disease?

Is it safe to touch your mail? The food you pick out in the grocery store? Your credit card once it goes in the machine? The medicines which are handed to you at CVS or Walgreens?

If you’re a caregiver and get the virus, how are you supposed to care for that person and self-isolate?

Will people ever stop hoarding food, cleaning supplies and toilet paper? Will I ever see friends and family again? How long will touching them be a no-no?

How long does the virus live on surfaces? I’ve heard conflicting information. They say the virus might live in the air. Is that true and for how long?

Even if they come up with a vaccine–which we know is a long way off, what’s to prevent the next one and the next one?

I’ll stop here. But it doesn’t help my anxiety level knowing that our president thinks it’s a personal insult if a reporter asks a question about our fears. Did you see how Trump bashed a reporter for doing so?

I know you can read other opinion pieces with positive ideas about how to cope with this crisis. Please read them all.

My wish is that by publicly sharing my fears it will help you open up about yours and not beat yourself up if you are also having difficulty coping. Please comment. Think of this as a coronavirus support group. Maybe we can help each other.

Don’t want to miss the next Opinionated Woman blog post? Just type your email address in the box and click the “create subscription” button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.

THE PLATFORM

Genre: International

Rating: R

Running Time: 94 mins.

Where Can You See It?: Netflix

Premise: Goreng (Ivan Massague) wakes up in a vertical prison that puts two people per level with an unknown number of levels. Each day, a single platform of food for all of them is lowered down to each level for two minutes. The lower your level, the less food you get. Let the games of survival of the fittest begin.

Behind-the-Scenes: Netflix acquired the rights to this Spanish film, originally titled El hoyo. This is director Galder Gastelu-Urrutia’s first feature-length directing credit.

The Good: The Platform has a killer concept that is expertly executed. It does a fantastic job of world-building with minimal effort and no wasted time. I was immediately hooked – from the first minute to the last frame. The production design of the vertical prison and falling platform is ingeniously realized, and really shows what talented filmmakers can achieve even on a limited budget. The actors – all unknown to me – are believable and give committed performances. The story lends itself to a mix of genres, including thriller, horror, and sci-fi, so it offers a bit of everything to genre fans. The social allegory is timely and clever, offering an entertaining indictment of capitalism and the resulting economic injustice.

The Bad: It’s not exactly a subtle film in terms of that social allegory. It has a lot of visual levels, but not so many thematic ones. The third act promises big action, but goes out with more of a whimper than a bang and doesn’t quite nail the landing. Could be due to some of its budget constraints.

Should You See It?: Yes. This is the perfect Friday night flick for more adventurous moviegoers. It won’t play to everyone’s tastes, but genre fans should definitely check it out. And, if they ever do an American remake (not that one is needed), Jordan Peele would be perfect for it.

Star Rating: **** out of 5 stars

Better Than: High Rise

Worse Than: The Raid

* * *

For more movie/TV commentary and other mischief, follow me on Twitter: @Hammervision and on Letterboxd: @Hammervision

A drug to treat malaria, chloroquine

May help in treating Covid-19.

Trump says, “Let’s ingest it!”

Dr. Fauci says, “Test it!”

Which proves that sheer ignorance has no vaccine.

OK, the venues are all closed, and you’re housebound like a kid with the measles. But, you have a computer, or radio? You’re good.

Tuesday, March 24.

Preview of the now-canceled Naperville Bluegrass Festival on Folk Festival with Lilli Kuzma. 90.9 FM, or www.wdcb.org. 8 PM.

Wednesday, March 25. 

While the Naomi Ashley Band’s performance at the Wire has been cancelled, you can see them live via her Facebook page at the regular time, 8:30 PM.

All live Folkstage concerts have been postponed until further notice.

As you can imagine, all these cancellations, while inconvenient for us concert-goers, are a disaster for full-time professional musicians. If you would like to help out, many have established Patreon pages where you can sponsor a performer. For example: www.patreon.com/benbedfordmusic, and www.patreon.com/debracowanmusic.  I know there are many other performers who have patreon pages.

You can also make a donation to the emergency fund of local 1000 of the travedling musicians’ union. www.local1000.org.

You can also go to the web page of your favorite musician, and buy something. Do you have all of their CD’s?

To all of the performers and venues: if you have a concert that is switched to an online, get me the information so I can spread the word. [email protected].

To everybody else: stay home, be healthy, and hopefully this nonsense will be over soon. And share this article on Facebook. You’ve got the time to do it.