I wrote the title and then proceeded to stare at the blank screen for the next ten minutes as I really didn’t have a clue what it was I was trying to say or even what the subject matter may be.

With a title like that, it could be the opening for just about anything worth writing about like the fish, ponds, turtles, dogs, people, photography, hiking and all of the usual things that I tend to cover. Or of my neighbors and the fight that we are involved in regarding the road work scheduled to widen Thomas Springs Road taking with it large chunks of some of the neighbors property. All to install bike lanes. Or I could write about the everyday events that are tearing this country apart or of the President who has gone missing in this time of need. You would think that with such an availability of subjects, it would be easy to find something to fill a page or two and take up a few minutes of my time.

But the reality is that as important as these subjects are in the grand scheme of things, none of them are stirring the old grey matter enough to stimulate it into getting out any form of an interesting story. I write about the ponds and such all of the time and are well documented on the hikes that I take although none of that documentation is very recent as I haven’t been on a hike for several weeks. I wonder why that is because in many of the places that I choose to take a walk, rarely do I see any other people out on the trail and even then, with all of that fresh air and space, one would think that any chance of coming into contact with Corun-19 would be very, very remote. Even so, the past few weeks have made me so aware that we are indeed in the grip of a pandemic that with less care, could flare back up even worse than the first time around. Supposedly, I am in the high risk category at the ripe old age of 84 although I like to think that I am pretty fit and healthy and would certainly put up a fight if I was unfortunate enough to fall ill. Then again, what the hell do I know.

I feel that what this virus has done, among other things, has made us so aware of our own vulnerability and even now things are slowly opening back up, has left some of us with a certain amount of distrust regarding close proximity of other humans. Consequently, I for one am very reluctant to go back to the way things were before it came on the scene viewing everyone else as a potential carrier. Many of the younger generation do not have the same compunction to self distant and feel the need to intermix and socialize with others just like before and are willing to take the risk. In my mind, they are either very brave or very stupid depending on your point of view. I know by nature, we are are very gregarious group and have the need to mix with others and it seems so short lived to only be able to maintain social distancing for just a few very short weeks. We could all be a long time dead.

The bottom line is that life is anything but normal in these troubled times. None of us have ever seen or been a part of any type of pandemic in our lifetimes and quite honestly we are not doing a very good job of how we approach this one. We just don’t have the discipline to react the way we should especially in a country where freedom of just about everything is a given. So, we will either come out of this sustaining a few losses, comparatively speaking for the number of people in this country, or we may feel the full weight of the pandemic in the second and third round, enough to wipe out a large number of our population.

I hope that it isn’t so.

Written 6/5/2020