Susan's Scribblings the Blog

Monthly Archives: March 2020

• Going Home

  Posted at 2:36 am by kayewer, on March 29, 2020

  Workplaces are shuttered, so over the past couple of weeks workers have been sent home to either work from there or count the days until we can return to the daily grind. I am one of the former.

  Our building was supporting some people who were trying to stay in the office until restrictions forced them out. Not everybody could get decent Internet at home, especially when they are out in the far reaches of signal strength.  They’re struggling to catch up, hoping that modern equipment will enable them to connect.

  I will find out on Monday if I can get a better hookup. My broadband is serving, but a permanent solution may come by then. It will involve a heftier monthly bill and a couple of hours of installment time, but it may be worth it in the end to be able to just take my work computer home and relax once in awhile.

  I prefer during blizzards, though, not a life-threatening virus.

  Many people are having to adjust to working from home. They have family and pets who may not fully understand how to give some personal space. Also, being home brings distractions like the laundry you’re used to doing on evenings and weekends but now beckons from the full basket and demands you spend your break time pre-treating spots.

  There has been an increase in shift and top orders online due to working from home. It would be interesting to have a video conference call in which everybody is asked to stand up: they’re probably all in their underwear. It worked for Tom Cruise once, but most of us should still wear pants.

  I don’t have casual bum-at-home clothes, including jeans or leggings, and don’t plan to look at any or stock up right now. That may sound strange, but I was never in the habit of coming home and assuming a new outfit. There will be late spring to go to an actual store and get to see and touch and try on things, and be around people without protective gear. Besides, ordering clothes online is tricky, and when they don’t fit, you can’t just return them at a store.

  Meanwhile, I have gained back some time in my life not spent driving to work anymore. What I did do today was get my car’s maintenance work done. The place was quiet without an open sales floor, but once the building was open for the secretary I was able to sit in the showroom with her while waiting for guys in gloves to work on my car in the back. I guess staying at home will enable some things to get done that won’t involve getting time off from the office, but that bothers me a bit. I think I’ll wait until we’re back to work and use vacation time to summon the repairmen for spring cleaning.

  I want to devote my work time to being on the clock. Just like the one in the office, which I may not see for a few more weeks.

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• From a Distance

  Posted at 1:46 am by kayewer, on March 22, 2020

  Human isolation doesn’t sit well with most people. Even though social connections have often meant the fall of entire civilizations, we want to be close to somebody else. Now that we are in the new age of pandemic contagion with the COVID-19 virus, this is the first widespread disease in which we can exercise isolation as the primary preventative measure. In the days of Spanish flu and plague, sanitary practices were unheard of, and it was the man considered the Father of Hand-washing, Ignaz Semmelweis, who introduced us to hygiene as we know it. He found that midwives and doctors who washed their hands before assisting in delivery lessened deaths from puerperal (childbed) fever to about one percent of cases.

  Of course, since his ideas were well ahead of their time, he was vilified and died in an institution in 1865 at the age of 47, after suffering a nervous breakdown and a hand infection possibly brought on by a beating by guards at the facility. Imagine: people thought it was not necessary to wash their hands after using the restroom back then, they witnessed a person dying from infection, and still didn’t get it. We still see ignorant people leave the bathroom without washing today, but our overall health keeps most infections at bay.

  But back to social distancing. Many people are upset by the idea of not being with others. Sometimes one’s own family is a burden enough when having to spend extended time with each other. Topics are flooding social media about how to alleviate boredom, and I get to laugh at them.

  You see, I have been subject to social distancing for years. I’m part of a population which is subjected to unexplained or ignorant rejection, because it’s always easier to walk away from a problem than it is to tackle and solve it. Meanwhile, the problem grows and doesn’t go away. That may be why solitary confinement doesn’t work well in the prison population; if your only contact with people is with those who want to shut you away, how does that teach anything but how to be alone?

  In this case, being used to hours alone is helpful. As a child the teachers would sometimes sit me out in the hall, where my acute hearing kept me able to listen, but all the annoyance around me from the inside was left there. Sometimes it was a blessing to be separated from the bullies and ignorami.

  Over decades I’ve been in offices where I had no window (14 years in a sub-level office, then a few in a cubicle in which I had to leave it to view the outside), and today I have a space where co-workers are on the other side of a high wall, but I have several windows and sun, and some privacy. Patience in this case pays.

  Ever notice that cubicle setups often have people facing into a corner? All those time-outs as children must’ve prepared us for this scenario.

  I can work independently for long stretches, and in the car or at home I can relax with no sound at all, almost as if I am in a living version of the movie A Quiet Place, but without the overly sensitive-eared killer aliens.

  This period of isolation will pass, in weeks or so. I’m sure people will bust out with joy when it’s over, the bars will overflow and the malls may even see some shoppers again.

  I’ll sit in my chair and be grateful to take my time getting back out there. After all, I have been prepared for this all my life.

   

   

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• Contagion

  Posted at 12:39 am by kayewer, on March 16, 2020

  On Friday the Thirteenth of March, of all days, the president announced that the United States was in a state of national emergency. A virus originating in China had spread by international travel contact throughout the world, causing multiplying cases and many deaths. At its origin point, China built makeshift hospitals to handle the influx of infected individuals. Right now their cases have plummeted to the point at which the “tempspitals” have been dismantled now.

  Italy has been hardest hit, but their people are resilient and grateful for the medical staff and cleaning crews working around the clock to contain the spread. In Australia, actor Tom Hanks and his wife contracted the virus and are recuperating in place.

  My office work involves 24 hour phone centers, so unless the contagion reaches our space, I and my co-workers will either come into work, go to another branch or work remotely from home. Such options were not available before. But then, a national shutdown of this kind was not considered before.

  Our grocery stores are out of toilet paper, because when there is a disease going around, everybody overuses toilet paper beyond normal expectations. I also read about supply hoarders who have stocked up on hand sanitizers or bleach infused single use wipes, hoping to buy their next Cadillac with their overinflated profits. Never heard about anybody enjoying the fruits of that adventure, though.

  Oh, and the meat counters are all out of fresh beef and poultry, because when people have to stay home, they want to grill. That was fine for me, because I bought the pre-cooked chicken and popped them in the freezer. Those were not out of stock. The demand for water went up also, because whenever a threat comes along, the first thing people think about, after toilet paper, is water. Since we’re polluting the oceans and rivers, bottled is a must.

  So it looks like a couple of weeks of restrictions and closures of a kind we normally see only during major snowstorms or other extreme weather events. But we will get over this as with anything else.

  And then the shelves can be restocked with toilet paper.

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• After You

  Posted at 3:51 am by kayewer, on March 8, 2020

  Capital punishment is an eternally debatable topic and polarizing for most people. Either one feels that a person who takes life should forfeit his own, or that such “eye for an eye” justice is wrong.

  The most recent case was that of Nathaniel Woods, an Alabama man executed on March 5 for being an accomplice to the shooting deaths of police officers. He and his roommate, Kerry Spencer, encountered three officers who came to break up a cocaine dealing ring fronted by Woods, Spencer and a third man who claimed to have avoided the location after it become difficult to keep police from conducting searches to bust the operation (he claims he paid protection money but the price had increased out of his range).

  In testimony, Spencer admitted to being the sole shooter, but he remains on death row. Alabama law allows for accomplices to be executed, but it is unclear if any order of atonement is in place. So Woods went to his death first, having done nothing to cause the deaths of the officers (in that he performed no harmful act such as shooting them as Spencer did), and Spencer is still serving time.

  My initial comments on this issue started quite a lengthy thread on Facebook, most because people began standing on soapboxes about the law rather than addressing the question I posed, which was why the accomplice was executed first.

  We can’t seem to agree on what to do about people with no regard for human life, but we also seem to get many aspects of human reformation wrong. So what to do about accomplices versus those who actually commit acts against humanity?

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• Dozing

  Posted at 2:26 am by kayewer, on March 1, 2020

  In the past year, two Lutheran churches have shut down in my area, and both of them were within miles of each other on the same street. That may hint that there are fewer Lutherans in the world, or fewer church-goers (except at Easter and Christmas). When faith is tested, some people just bail.

  What really got to me was a small business which was torn down recently, because I used to work there. That was over 30 years ago.

  On a lot next to a boxy brick apartment building, two businesses were once thriving. One was a computer repair facility, and the other was a house which belonged to a doctor and his wife, who did clerical services. I worked for her briefly before finding my dream job.

  The computer repair place had been vacant for years, but when I saw the signage for a well-known demolition firm covering the shingle for the doctor/typist building, I felt a pang. With the small repurposed house reduced to salvage fodder under a wrecking ball, a piece of my past was broken down as well.

  Nobody seems to like old buildings, unless they can serve as tourist attractions or historical bastions. Many don’t fall easily to implosion, which says a lot when so many new construction buildings seem to crumble at the slightest gust of wind.

  The plot of ground is level now, and ready for something new. I just hope whatever they build can withstand time, however it passes.

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