Diary 11

Sunday March 29th

Posting pictures of one’s favorite home-prepared dinner on social media, which is what I found myself doing today, is not truly frivolous. It was my way of saying, take care of yourselves, people. It was a gentle exhortation to get creative in the kitchen, to make something that gives pleasure, to raise the spirits. For those who live alone I’m sure that’s challenge, which is why we arranged to do a virtual dinner with our friends and ‘share’ said meal. It wasn’t as good as all being round the same table, of course, but one does what one can and it was good.

The conversation, of course, could not stay away from the corona virus. The president has said that 100,000 deaths would be a really good outcome, and I’m reminded that the Vietnam war claimed about half that number of US lives, spread out over a span of years. I wonder what planet this president thinks he’s living on. He has now removed restrictions on industrial pollution. I’m not sure how that helps, either.

A friend of mine from way back says he wishes, now, he’d been more reckless in his life. All that careful attending to laws and making sure one had a job and a salary and a pension – it all seems rather pointless now, he says. I certainly have sympathy with that feeling.  My efforts to do my taxes yesterday feel like an attempt to do decorous flower arrangements while a forest fire roars towards us.

The thing to remember above all is that most of those who are sick will live, many will not get sick at all, and the world will not be gutted of inhabitants.  This is not 1350 and this is not the Black Death. There will be substantial suffering, however, and we will know, once again, that we cannot rely on our governments to act appropriately or promptly to help us. 

It’s up to us to help us.  But then, it always has been.