Abundance of Caution

It was breathtaking how fast we went from events being cancelled out of "an abundance of caution" to county then state wide shelter in place order.  Really fast. 

The past three months, the end of 2019 and the insanity that has been the beginning of 2020--I lived every day of it, awake and aware mostly except for some nyquil filled nights at the end of December and end of January when I had flu then a bad cold.  But the bad news went whizzing by too fast to make sense of it.  I kept thinking "I'll write when things have settled down, when I can look back and make sense of things."

Well.

I have no explanations, only evidence of the wide range of human behavior ranging from absymal to typical to heartwarming to sublime.  Unfortunately, the actions of the abysmal threaten to overwhelm the typical, the heartwarming, and certainly the sublime.

A virus called COVID-19 that is making its way around the globe has stopped all kinds of everyday life and sent into hyperdrive the necessary actions of healthcare workers.  Mr. Bookcharmer and I are both working from home, and the cat couldn't be happier.  We are profoundly grateful to be home together and have elbow room and bandwidth for work to happen and enjoy online socializing with friends. Our immediate families seem to be safe and secure...and so we wait.

To do nothing, to stay home, to keep to ourselves.  Perfect for homebodies such as ourselves, but we don't have kids to get through school or small businesses to run or other outside responsibilities. 

I have long recalled Stephen Jay Gould's observation about Americans' lack of scientific literacy.  He described it as if you offered someone a chocolate truffle, and the person ate the wrapper instead of the chocolate.  I enjoy his perspective on science--that it is so fascinating, so fantastic, that there is no need to make things up.  The lack of funding for all kinds of education is sadly evident and will become more painfully so in the coming weeks, but the lack of education in science and the gatekeeping of access to higher education is but one chasm we will all face in trying to get over all the hurdles COVID-19 is about to put in front of us.

There have been many sickening scandals brought to light in the past 18 to 24 months, more than one person can reasonably have been expected to keep track of but here is one recently come to light that I feel the need to document.  Remember that thing called insider trading, that congresspeople aren't supposed to do?  That Martha Stewart went to prison for doing?  Well.  I"m just copypasting from the Mother Jones website because I can't think of reasonable language to describe the following:

"Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) denied he had done anything wrong by dumping stocks days before the market crashed due to the coronavirus pandemic. On Thursday, Burr and two other Republican senators were revealed to have sold millions of dollars in stock in late January and early February, around the time members of Congress began receiving in-depth briefings on the potentially cataclysmic effects of the outbreak. Burr, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, sold between $628,000 and $1.7 million in publicly traded stocks—and didn’t buy any new ones—starting on February 13....On Thursday, the Daily Beast also reported that Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) and her husband—Jeffrey C. Sprecher, who is chair of the New York Stock Exchange—may have made improper trades. Starting on January 24, the day the committee she chairs received a briefing on the coronavirus, Loeffler and Sprecher reported they made 24 stock sales, worth millions. The couple also made only two purchases, including buying shares in Citrix, a company that specializes in telework software."  https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/03/richard-burr-denies-insider-trading-and-asks-for-an-investigation/

Oh, another one I can't let pass by without mention:  the 45th president felt it important to spring Former Governor and convicted felon Ron Blagojevitch from prison early.  Yes, of all the people justly imprisoned, 45 wanted Blagojevitch loose. 

Oh, and the House impeached 45 but the Senate did not.  Adam Schiff's speeches on the floor of the House should go down in history, as should the vote of Mitt Romney, but the obsequious forgiveness of the rest of the Senate....

So that's where we are today.  I can't make sense out of any of it. 

However, you and I will have some time to think about things since we aren't going to the movies or dance class or even the car wash. 

Let's fill our brains with some good music in the meanwhile.  I'm over the moon for the Folk on Foot podcast https://www.folkonfoot.com/about and I just discovered the archives of concerts on the Caffe Lena youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH5Iqij-VpBAqUNbuzBIvpw

Stay home, wash your hands, and be well.