I’ve not written in the blog in a while, because I typically write when we are on the road. We’ve not been out there for some time now due to illness and the other vagaries of getting old. When I do write I am usually in a contemplative frame of mind, pondering the adventures and sights we’ve just experienced.

I’ve been in that frame of mind lately, and it occurred to me only this morning, that we are faced with a new experience and that, for the first time, we are all of us faced with the same experience at the same time. I’m talking about the damn virus. So, I’ve decided to post our experiences as a kind of journal. I truly wish that I had access to journals from my parents of their lives during the depression and WWII. I am not pre-supposing that my children will have interest in our lives during this epidemic, other than wishing us well and happy. I am however transferring my own curiosity about my parents’ younger lives during the difficult periods in their youth to my own. (When, by the way, I say my parents, I include Lydia’s as well. They certainly were as close to me as my own, if not more so.)

Here’s the setting: We’ve been in social isolation for about 12 days. The first hints of the coming plan to isolate everyone in their homes caused panic buying, first of toilet paper and bread, then of nearly everything else. The store shelves have been stripped of anything made of paper that might conceivably be used for personal cleanliness. Flour, yeast, beans, and rice were quick to follow. Bars, restaurants, churches, and any other king of gathering place have been closed. Libraries were the first of the public closures. Meetings of more than two people have been banned.

So, here we are, hunkered down and waiting.