More Restrictions and Time Out

A new memo appeared on our shelf outside our apartment door.  Updated restrictions based upon the CDC, CMS, state health department and Life Care Services.

No more movies in the auditorium.

No more fitness classes or fitness videos in the auditorium.

Limits on gatherings of every sort in our common areas.

Limit of two on the elevator at a time.

Going out of the building only for essentials like doctor visits, prescriptions that can't be delivered  or food though they'd prefer we order groceries to be delivered.

We try to take time out every day.  Thursday we went to our old stomping grounds to walk along the Patapsco River.  Wouldn't you know we met up with former neighbors we haven't seen since we moved.  We kept our distance especially when they said they'd just returned from a 22 day cruise on the Amazon.  Saturday we went to the Howard County Conservancy to walk.

Here are scenes from our riverside walk.

Across the river the railroad is going passed.  Dan counting the cars did his multiplication and figured that the train was 1.25-1.5 miles long. 

Can you see the tree blossoms?

Spring beauties all over.

A twisted tree.

Evidence that a beaver has been at work.

Skunk cabbage.

The trail was muddy in places.

More beaver work.

Here the beaver has ringed the tree which means it will die.

Dan said of this beaver stump that it was the work of this beaver's grandfather.

This poor tree has this snake like vine growing on it.

Only picture from Conservancy walkway of this barred owl in its cage.

Next time we walk I'll take my camera.  The iPhone pictures seem so dark most of the time.  Is there some setting I should change?

Words for All of Us

Emily Landon, chief infectious disease epidemiologist at University of Chicago Medicine gave these words yesterday.  Here's the article with video clip.  

Her most important words were these:

“It’s really hard to feel like you’re saving the world when you’re watching Netflix from your couch. But if we do this right, nothing happens,” Landon said. “A successful shelter-in-place means you’re going to feel like it was all for nothing, and you’d be right: Because nothing means that nothing happened to your family. And that’s what we’re going for here.”

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In other news, it looks like my brother in law in Charlottesville, VA has weathered the virus.  I don't think he ever had a confirming test but it all seems like that it was Covid-19.  Now we have to see if my sister gets it. They have 8 grandchildren that they cannot see except through video even though they live close by.

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Need something to laugh at?

Tracking Covid-19 Cases

I added a sidebar to track the numbers of new cases in Howard County where I live.  I was initially relying on a local paper but its numbers were inflated compared to The Washington Post so I'm using the Post as my source from now on.

Maryland recorded its first death from the virus today.  It won't be the last.
Update: since I originally posted new numbers came out.  My county doubled overnight and now stands at 16 cases one of whom is a 5 year old child.

So here's a bit of humor unrelated to these times or maybe not.  We all may be getting that tour.

A Poem for the Times

Pandemic

by Lynn Ungar

What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now, 
on trying to make the world
different than it is. 
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.
 
And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.
 
Promise this world your love–
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.
 
Here's a link to her blog: Lynn Ungar 3/11/20

My sister-in-law sent this out.