Diary 27

Tuesday, April 14th

Social distancing doesn’t seem to apply to those White House Press Rallies, I mean briefings, that grace our screens way too often. The reporters sit with their mandatory three seat separation, but the podium members do not observe any sort of healthy protocol. This struck me as emblematic of the entire problem: the ruling classes are not being affected by this lockdown. They are insulated from almost every normal activity, have the very best health care, they have ‘people’ to sanitize everything and so on. No toilet paper shortages there. No wonder the governing party is completely out of touch with what’s needed.

One wonders if they’ve always been that way.

Meanwhile Nature continues to take over. The wild turkeys stalk our streets, the rabbits hop around looking very innocent. This has a down side. I discovered that squirrels, or possibly rats, had decided to take up residence in the engine compartment of my now less-than-often-used Honda. It turns out that Honda, in their infinite wisdom, elected to create their electric cable coverings out of soy products. Rodents like this. I imagine garages like it also, because my local neighborhood one now stands to gain about $800 worth of repair work. Actually, this was one of the few garages available to me, as several others laid off their repair force some time ago, leaving just one person to sell gas (also a diminishing demand).

And once my repaired car comes home, when will I use it next? The squirrels don’t forget a good food source.

Interestingly, my auto insurer just wrote to offer a give-back, since so many people are not using their cars as much as they normally might. I suppose it’ll stop people canceling their insurance all together. Me, I’m going to put some gas stabilizer in the tank. Modern gas tends to go ‘off’ after about six weeks (The ethanol in it absorbs moisture, which engines don’t like), and I don’t want to have to worry about an expensive bit of machinery that I don’t, actually, use right now.