One Month Pandemic Journal Self Portrait

May 25, 2020 The New Normal

Normalcy ended on March 11, 2020. COVID-19, or Coronavirus as it was known then, was already a thing, however nebulous and looming closer. The week of St Patrick’s Day, March 17th is always a busy week for us, being married to a bagpiper. There were a number of events scheduled that week, and I had opted to skip some of them, but March 11th, the band was playing with a famous Irish group called the High Kings at the Ocean City Convention Center. I did go and sat apart from others in the last few rows. The crowd was sparse and woman coughing in the row in front of me shook me a bit. I had my hair cut and colored that morning and chatted with my hairdresser about whether or not the big St. Patrick’s Day parade would take place that Saturday. Those were the last normal encounters I have had – the last two places I’ve been ‘inside’ for 74 days, except two brief trips to the local supermarket (we now order our groceries online and do curbside pickup every other week).

Going into isolation or quarantine was not particularly difficult or stressful – I am an introvert and love learning – so I have been able to adapt and do things I love to do more frequently. I do miss my four times a week aerobics class – jumping into the water and moving my “creaky joints” was always a great way to start the day. That’s been supplanted with a 30-minute Tai Chi DVD routine with my husband, and three times a week ZOOM aerobic classes with women in my 55+ community and our usual fitness trainer/coach. Normal social events had included several women’s clubs, book clubs and craft clubs I regularly attend. I quickly adapted to ZOOM and bought the “Pro” package so I could host group meetings for more than 40 minutes at a time, although 60 minutes on ZOOM is usually sufficient.

What things have changed besides where we go, and how we procure food to eat?

My husband and I have taken up playing recorder. I’ve been doing a ZZOM World Music recorder class with Daphna Mohr once a week, which is a delightful reminder of the need to play music with others. She teaches us folk and liturgical music from the Sephardic diaspora, Turkish, Eastern European and Greek traditions. These tunes are timeless and remind me that we are on a long continuum of suffering, joy, music and movement.

I’ve gotten more time to do the handcrafts I love to do. I’ve been quilting on my new (as of my birthday in January) Bernina 770QE sewing machine, picking up and finishing projects I’d purchased and hoped to do as long as 20 years ago!!! I’ve been sewing face masks for family, friends and as part of a group from my quilter’s guild, for local poultry plant workers (that in exchange for 10 pounds of chicken!). I’ve been knitting!!! I have so much yarn in my stash already. I’ve been doing so much of this, that I’ve developed tennis elbow in my right arm which has slowed down my progress somewhat.

I’ve been reading!!! I always read, I’m in 3 book clubs which keeps me on track to reading 3 books a month just for that. But our beloved library closed!!! I was forced to go digital, using the Kindle app on my laptop. I’ve adjusted to that – but if given a choice, nothing beats holding a “real” book in my hands. I’ve read 20 books since March 11th. All the book clubs are now meeting on ZOOM, so we are continuing to gather and talk about books and our lives. Another wonderful benefit of the lockdown has been the ability to join into book talks by authors! I’ve been online with Madeline Albright talking at Georgetown University about her new book, and several authors via the Lewes Delaware Public Library and History Book Festival, as well as another series I found via Facebook.

Facebook has been a lifeline to my universe of interconnected communities. Not everyone is on Facebook, but I get the general pulse of what is going on around me. Prior to March 11th, I did not post much, but now feel the need to reach out and give “atta girls” to people posting lovely things they are working on, their frustrations and triumphs in this crazy situation we are in. A friend created a group “Pent Up Creativity in the Pines” where we post photos of things we are working on. Several friends have taken up watercolors and another friend is now coaching them via ZOOM.

I have developed the philosophy for myself that I will indeed take it one day at a time, not looking back nor forward, just concentrating on what each day brings. Until today and writing this post, I did not know it has been 74 days. Looking forward into the future seems too scary, too much unknown like freefalling into an abyss – softly, gently as I am privileged enough to be retired and financially comfortable so as not to feel any true economic pressure thus far. I don’t want to mark any milestones of what I am going to miss – travel, visits from family and friends, jumping into the pool, regular haircuts by a professional. That being said, I am looking forward and back each day in the new normal. Being a January baby, born under the watchful eye of Janus the god of looking forward and backward, I am facing the past and the future, but in a truly different way.

As I am sewing, listening to classical music – mostly Chopin piano music is working for me right now (and I am practicing Chopin Mazurkas, Nocturnes and Waltzes on the piano), people from my past are popping into my head in a random, heartfelt way – what are they doing now, how are they coping? Some I reach out to and reconnect via email or ZOOM, some I do not, embarrassed that time had slipped away since our last contact. I also think about my family members, ancestors before me – I ache to document their lives, especially the women – I’ve had a phantom project in my head to write down as much as I know about my four great-grandmothers – women whose DNA and drive have shaped me – I don’t want to forget about them. Today is Memorial Day and I am thinking about my grandfather and his two brothers who went to France in WWI, and only my grandfather returned, he broken in many ways by the war experience and losing two brothers. So, I am in reveries about the past.

How am I looking forward? In my always insatiable desire to learn, I am soaking in knowledge like a thirsty sponge. I am taking online sewing, knitting classes, the world music recorder classes. Reading books from authors new to me. I’ve signed up for a Palestinian embroidery course, spurred on by watching a wonderful film, Stitching Palestine. I’m working on new skills in the areas of the arts and music. Even my exercise routine is new – Pilates, barre, tai chi instead of water aerobics and aerobics in the water.

Tuesday May 26th The Healing Power of Music

Yesterday was the Memorial Day holiday. Usually marked by picnics, swimming in pools and on beaches and ceremonies to honor military heroes who died in war. How was this changed? No official ceremonies, no pools open, limited access to beaches and certainly no picnics. Instead of our town’s usual big ceremony at the Veteran’s Monument, a few people who usually run the committee went over and raised the flag, and said a few words. At 3 PM, a CBS newsman Steve Hartman and a retired Air Force Bugler created a program called “Taps Across America” inviting musicians to play Taps at 3 PM on their porches then send in a video. Tonight, on the news, they will play selected clips from the entries. My husband, the bagpiper, marched down to our small “Central Parke” gazebo to play Taps, as well as Amazing Grace and Danny Boy. He attracted quite a few of our neighbors, who came out of their doorways, rode their bicycles and cars to hear him play. At the gazebo he was met by one of our neighbors who is a retired Marine Corps veteran, in his 80’s and his bugle. Each of them played Taps at 3 PM and at the end, Mike saluted Dick with a rendition of the Marine Corps Hymn on the bagpipes. It was an altogether different experience, deeply personal and touching. There wasn’t a dry eye surrounding the Park.

The soothing, healing power of just a bit of music to lift the spirits and break the monotony. Music leaves no fingerprint, just notes on the air, touching us through our senses without direct contact. As a former music teacher, I have been struck by how the musical community has really stepped up during this pandemic to help heal themselves and each other. There have been reports starting in Italy which was badly hit, that people stood on their balconies and sang, and played music instruments. Celebrity musicians created videos of themselves in their homes and posted them for everyone to hear, for free. Groups who usually can play together, created video versions and through some miraculous software some engineering genius put them together in montages and posted them. Symphonies, Operas, and other performing groups have made their archives of performance free to all.

I’ve been taking Recorder lessons via ZOOM with a wonderful young woman named Daphna Mohr, she is teaching “World Music” to about 25 of us from all over the place. We are learning about the music of the Sephardic diaspora, Turkish classical music, fold music of Bulgaria, Romania, Greece. All beautiful and mournful tunes that swirl in my head after each Thursday afternoon session. Her husband Daniel who is a drummer, comes in at the end of the session and plays drums along with us, beating out complex rhythms, as we all play along on “mute”. Technology has not figured out how to allow musicians in different places to play together live YET. I am hopeful that as a result of this pandemic, someone will crack this code. Meanwhile, the Berlin Philharmonic opened their archives for free for a month – I was able to sit in a Baroque Church in Norway listening to Grieg – heavenly! Musica Pacifica sends an email each week with a “Quarantunes” gift of early music on period instruments....so lovely! Musicians are finding a way to play “together apart” as the phrase has become and share recorded works reaching people everywhere. I am so proud of my musical background and discipline to carry me away and carry me through all of this. 

Of course, I always have the piano to help me fly away. I took piano lessons for many years from the age of 5. As I sit down at the piano today and play pieces that I had studied in the 1960’s and 1970’s, I amaze myself that my hands know where to go. I am challenging myself to learn Chopin Mazurkas, Waltzes and Nocturnes. Right now, Chopin provides the elegant beauty and simplicity I crave from my practice sessions. I heard Lang Lang play one of the Nocturnes on YouTube and it struck me that during this pandemic he chose such a simple elegant piece to share with the world. I am spending time during each week, with headphones on (we have a Clavinova) learning and playing Chopin for nobody but myself. That is the power of music.

May 27th Pandemic Book Club

Fever
Wicketts Remedy
The Last Year of the War
The Diary of Ann Frank
As Bright As Heaven
Syria’s Secret Library
Year of Wonder Geraldine Brooks

The End of October
Blindness Jose Saramago
Love in the Time of Cholera
Plague Camus
Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Pandemic David Quammen

What do these books have in common? They deal with, fiction and non-fiction, aspects of the current, or past, or fictional, or futuristic pandemics, quarantines. Some I have read in the past, some I have read intentionally or not intentionally during this pandemic.

Reading is important to me. It is how I learn and grow but also how I relax. I belong to three book clubs and each one is continuing to meet via ZOOM on a monthly basis. Each of these groups operates differently, and only occasionally do our books overlap. I’m glad we are still meeting and continuing to share our thoughts on books and life. None of the three book clubs have changed our reading list or meeting style, except for meeting virtually online. My reading habits have changed somewhat, I’ve been forced to do more reading digitally, out of necessity. On of the great unexpected gifts of moving to Maryland from New Jersey is the statewide library system. In NJ the local libraries were a patchwork of town, city, borough, and county libraries, not interconnected. In Maryland, I can request any book from any library throughout the state, and within 3 days if available it will be waiting for me at my local library. I much prefer to hold a book in my hands, smell it, and feel the pages turning to the online digital reading, but the only books I can get now that the libraries have been closed for the pandemic, is through their digital system, so I’ve now started reading through the Kindle app on my laptop computer and getting somewhat used to it.

I have read about quarantine book clubs – the New York Times published an article recently “This is No Time to Read Alone”. I thought it would be about book clubs like mine, but in fact it is about silent reading parties that meet via zoom, and each individual just sits and reads silently but together with others reading (not the same books). I think some even have one participant playing the piano or other soothing music, however for me, trained as a musician, I cannot have music on while I am reading – I am to attentive to actively taking in sounds and analyzing them, which defeats the purpose of actively taking in words and analyzing them!

A good friend of mine, who is a sociologist and another friend who is a scientist have been discussing creating a book list of pandemic books to read – to learn from history about human reactions to pandemics and plagues. One wants to read historical fiction, the other scientific texts. So, my list above is my attempt to catalog books I’ve read, or want to read on the subject. It’s an interesting exercise.

It seems that many of the books I am currently reading deal with topics such as isolation, being a stranger in a new world, whether as an immigrant being dropped into a new culture, or due to illness being put into a new isolated environment. I’m not sure I can read too much of this, but there is some small comfort in seeing how others cope and get through these changes in their lives.

It is said that there is not much literature on the Spanish Flu of 1918. It seems that the world wanted to forget it, following on the heels of the horrific World War and others have suggested that we are collectively ashamed of our reaction to this world crisis. I’m thinking that history will not be kind to the COVID-19 worldwide response. The same sociologist friend suggested that I participate in this journaling for the Women’s History Museum project. I’m hoping that the collective voices of ordinary women like myself will be instructive to future generations.

Two years ago, I read the letters and journals of my grandfather’s two brothers who died in World War I in preparation for a family journey to France to visit their graves and participate in centenary ceremonies to honor their memory. As I began to understand the horror and tragedy of that war through their young, naïve and hopeful eyes turning jaded through their experiences, I think that my experience of lock-down is nothing. I am still well-fed, well-clothed, well-sheltered and as a retiree, my income is steady. I have a husband who is a good partner to be isolated with, we come together, we do things apart and we support one another through this. We are working hard to make sure we stay healthy and away from possible infection. I am able to connect, via ZOOM and phone and email with friends and family on a regular basis. I am fortunate that I don’t experience the pain of any of these aspects missing.

Another book, I had previously read, Syria’s Secret Library, makes me understand as well, the uncertainty of human warfare. My heart broke for these young children living in bombed out homes, risking their lives to preserve their community’s books and to continue to read to learn and grow while their city was under siege for years. Or thinking of the Diary of Ann Frank, living in hideaway in fear of being discovered.

May 28th First World Problems

Acquiring food became more challenging, right away. There were runs on paper products, cleaning products and meats and shortages are still abundant in our area. We had been getting 3 meals a week from a meal kit service called Hello Fresh, and when the shortages became apparent, we increased it to five meals a week. This eliminated the need to go out and get specialty items and fill in the gap items. At first our local supermarket was empty of, in addition to the above, frozen vegetables of any kind. Eventually, in talking with others, using the Walmart Grocery online ordering and scheduled pick up became a decent option. We are able to supplement fresh fruits and vegetables from the many local farms in our area, now that it is practically summer, fresh produce is delicious and plentiful.

Our habits of going out to happy hours, dinners at restaurants with friends, and deciding at the last minute what we wanted to eat for dinner and then getting the items at the food store were disrupted.

As we fell into the 5 nights a week from Hello Fresh, every other week staple item pick-up from Walmart and weekly farm stand produce runs, we have evolved into healthier, portion-controlled eating. I’ve been struggling with weight loss, doing the Weight Watchers online plan, and suddenly am able to lost about a pound a week, which feels good.

In addition, my four times a week water aerobic classes have evaporated, but in its place, my husband and I are doing a half hour of Tai Chi each morning. It is grounding, centering and relaxing way to stretch balance and breath together. I’ve been taking a ZOOM Pilates class three times a week from our community’s fitness instructor, which has been a good supplement. Many people are walking more, but I find that boring and with springtime pollen allergies, not pleasant.

All in all, its difficult to complain about these “first world” changes in our very pleasant retirement lifestyle.

I think it really hit me hard how fortunate I am, when we did our first pickup at Walmart. As we sat in our car at the designated time and waited for someone to roll a large cart out with our bagged groceries, I realized the people who were working at this minimum wage frontline risk job were women my age or older. I broke down in tears, thinking about the risks they were facing, the low wages they were earning as I sat in our plush vehicle being served. I have made sure that the young women who have become my mainstay service providers – hairdresser, fitness instructor have continued to get income from me. Its not much but it’s something.

The second time it hit me hard was in making face masks for the local poultry processing plant workers. Our local quilt guild was one of several asked to fill the need of 5,000 masks for the Mountaire chicken processing workers. In return we would get 10 pounds of chicken. As I cut stitched and pressed the fabric and ties for the masks, sitting at my Ferrari of a sewing machine, I realized that here were people putting their health on the line so that I could eat.

When we went to pick up our 10 pounds of chicken at the home of the woman who organized it, I saw many of my quilting friends, in masks, picking up their chicken bundles. I cried that day too. Its too distressing to see friends I have come to know and love in just 3 short years of retirement in person and not be able to hug them, talk with them, feel the fabric in their current quilting projects.

May 29th Flow

Ever since I first heard the term “flow”, coined in the 1970’s by a man with a nearly unpronounceable Hungarian name, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and described in a very dense book ironically simply entitled “Flow”, I’ve been interested in understanding the concept of “flow”.

As a musician, craftsperson and avid reader, I immediately and instinctively knew that the “flow” state was one I understand and have experienced often throughout my life. This morning, after reading a blog posting by the National Gallery of Art’s curator of French Paintings, Mary Morton, entitled “House of Cards”, I again began thinking about “flow” in terms of my life specifically in the pandemic “new normal”.

Flow simply is intense and focused concentration on the present moment resulting in an altered sense of time, or really, losing all track of time. I have experienced this throughout my life, especially when engaging in musical practice and performance. I could practice for hours, without being asked, willing my fingers to repeat difficult passages, until those digital gymnastic feats slipped effortlessly into a piece of music, smoothly, undetectable to the listener, that a three-note sequence could cause problems.

When I was employed as a computer programmer, working out logic problems in debugging software code, I also have experienced this state, spending hours intensely concentrating on following the path of errant data through a maze of COBOL language code to discover what made the computer program crash or ABEND (abnormal ending). Switching from musical discipline of practicing the piano or bassoon, or analyzing a Bach fugue through musical theory analysis translated well into the much better paying computer programming field. When friends toss off labeling their flitting from one thing to another or forgetfulness as “ADHD”, I often laugh and say I have the opposite syndrome – try to pry me away from something I’m engaged in and enjoying.

So, I was intrigued this morning by Ms. Morton’s blog, likening adapting to our “lock down” world of isolation and reduced contact to the building of a “house of cards” as depicted in the 1737 Jean Simean Chardin painting of the same name.

During this time period, with no outside appointments to interrupt, I’ve been able to really enjoy getting into a flow state – reading a book from digital cover to cover, spending hours knitting or quilting, not minding the more mundane and annoying tasks of ripping out work with errors and starting over, or pressing fabric carefully, practicing piano and taking up playing the recorder again. Each day I have in my mind a list of the many fun artistic projects I want to pursue and yet barely make headway with one or two of the items on the mental list.

And this is fine, we don’t know how long we will remain in this isolated state. I had dreams of using up all the yarn and fabric in my “stash” in the first two weeks of lockdown and going on an online buying spree to buy new projects, but yet, I’ve been stuck in completing a very complex quilt project I purchased 20 years ago and never finished, and a knitted shawl pattern that has me perplexed over creating a nice border around the edge of it.

I want to finish the quilt and the shawl, and get started on new projects, but am lingering and enjoying the process of working on both!

Without outside stimulation of “others” to remind me of how I am spending my time, or reminding me of where I now need to be, the flow state is a good one. Many of my friends have expressed to me that time seems surreally out of balance – what day is today? Does it matter? Where did the time go?

In fact, my personal mantra to get me through this, riffing on the AA “one day at a time” is to get up each day – decide what to do and not be concerned about how many days we’ve been at home due to the pandemic and not looking out to the future to see what we will be missing – trips, family milestones, holidays, as we don’t know how long we will be protecting ourselves from catching the virus.

Every once in a while, I exhale forcibly and the cards on the table blow over, and instead of the lovely house I have created and stood up to be, they reveal themselves to be just a heap of paper rectangles messily scattered on the table and on the floor.

May 30 Stitching Together Apart

“We are all in this together”, the slogan says, well, maybe...

I identify as a quilter and a knitter rather than as a fiber artist, or some other label to identify what I do to create a new textile from cloth or yarn.

Wikipedia says that the production of textiles is a craft whose speed and scale of production has been altered almost beyond recognition by industrialization and the introduction of modern manufacturing techniques. That is true and why one can purchase a t-shirt for $10.

Quilting and knitting are probably mostly metaphoric for what I do well, which is a skill often labeled “networking”. I like to bring order to chaos; I enjoy bringing disparate things together. Quilting and knitting really do that.

During this pandemic lockdown period, I have had the opportunity to be “together” virtually with fiber artists, quilters and knitters from around the world, and now most recently my fascination with embroidery.

In January, I took a knitting class in New York City with Asa Tricosa, a Swedish knitting designer who lives in Germany with a Danish husband (how she identifies herself). During the pandemic, she was in the process of moving her home across borders and got stuck on one side. Meanwhile she continued to share free patterns and inspiration for knitters around the world. 

Local quilt shops here on the Delmarva Peninsula have allowed customers to shop virtually via their smartphones and have fabric delivered. One shop paired up with a local poultry plant and supplied fabric to our quilting guild so we could make masks for the workers. Another shop posted videos and weekly challenges (with prizes!) for methods of using up fabric from our stash into quilting designs. Participants posted their results on Facebook – a treat for color starved “fabricaholics” and a glimpse into the endless variations of colors and patterns that were previously sitting in closets throughout the peninsula.

I’ve become fascinated with an English embroiderer who posts weekly videoblogs called “Flosstubes” her voice in a soothing British accent showing and describing cross stitch work from the 18th and 19th centuries. 

A friend suggested I watch a ZOOM premier of “Stitching Palestine” a film about tatreez the Palestinian embroidery tradition. The film was a fascinating study of how Palestinian women flung to all parts of the world by their eviction from their homeland in 1948 with the creation of Israel, have worked to preserve their embroidery tradition – bringing it with them, creating roots for them in Palestine, even though they could not visit or live there. I became obsessed with learning the technique. In the chat that followed the film, I learned that a young Palestinian American woman, Wafa Ghnaim, living in NYC was teaching the technique online, and I immediately signed up for several of her classes.

My favorite knitting designer, Maggie Jackson, has retired and moved back to Ireland. She posts regularly and recently shared the good news that her 26-year-old daughter in law is now in the recovery phase of cancer, as well the recent shipment of her latest batch of linen yarns.

I love being part of this worldwide community of quilters and knitters and embroiderers. On the surface, we have nothing in common. While American cities are burning in rage over persistent racism, and a virus is altering and eliminating hundreds of thousands of lives throughout the globe, I can share the love of bringing fibers together to soothe our souls and bring order to chaos.

May 31st – Life in Transition and Resilience

This is one of those times – life will not be the same again “post pandemic” – will there even be a “post – pandemic” time, or will our battles with out-of-control viruses continue?

When my life has been in transition, I have that “at sea” feeling, and not like being on a vacation cruise ship – sipping on a cold drink looking out at crystal clear blue water, but the feeling of not quite having my sea legs yet in a new time. I have traveled this road before and each time come out, the same person, but with a new skin – have I shed my previous skin, or put on a harder tougher skin?

The two most recent events that rocked my world were Super Storm Sandy and 9/11. Both affected those of us living in the New York metropolitan region profoundly, holding us in a state of limbo for weeks, and affecting the way we live physically, mentally and emotionally.

Having survived both of those events, which were less personal than previous crisis/transition times, I suppose I drew on these experiences – my husband’s heart attack and open-heart surgery, the death of a 3-year-old grandchild, the death of my parents and my childhood best friend all of which shook me to the core.

But what is different about this pandemic is that it is global and not personal. There is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide from a virus that doesn’t care about me, my life, and has no apparent timeframe in which to wreak its havoc. Every person on the globe is susceptible, yet this is not a war, or a storm, or a personal life tragedy, at least not yet for me...and there are measures I can take to reduce or even eliminate the possibility of falling victim to the virus. It is the lack of timeline or not seeing an end in sight that plays on my mind.

I write this as many American cities are experiencing violence that we haven’t seen since the 1960’s civil unrest. My heart aches for people of color and the racism in America which seems as persistent as this virus. How do we ever tamp them both out?

Resilience is my usual strength that I draw upon for coping with difficult times. Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties, toughness. For an object it is the ability to spring back into shape.

People are tired of this virus, they want the world to snap back into shape, what it was before, “back to normal”. Will that be possible? Those rioting for racial justice do not want the world to snap back into shape, but to take on a new shape – a just, fair, kind new shape. Is that possible? I certainly hope so.

June 1st Taking a Ride

Taking a ride in our Miata sports car is always a pleasant escape. For the three years since we’ve retired and moved to the rural Eastern Shore of Maryland, we have ridden in that car all over the so-called “Delmarva” (Delaware, Maryland and Virginia containing bits of these three states) peninsula, exploring the relative solitude of the open road, deep forests, farm fields and sparsely populated countryside. For us, having moved from the New York City metropolitan area, this was a new and exhilarating experience. We could go for miles without seeing another person let alone another car.

But yesterday, the sun was out, the relative humidity low, and we hopped in and popped the top down. Amidst the pandemic, the goal was not to escape into tranquility – no, we’ve had ample amounts of solitude, but to reconnect again to this region we now call home and see what was happening on this bright Sunday afternoon.

Many of our neighbors in our retirement community are outside, reading a book on their porch, soaking up the sun rays, tending their gardens, walking their dogs, chatting with each other. We wave to everyone, I feel like Miss America in a parade float car, waving and greeting our friends and unknown bystanders alike. We turn up the radio, cranking out rock and roll tunes from the 1960s, our hats and sunglasses on.

The honeysuckles are in full bloom and the air fragrant and clean. After spending so much time in the house, every venture outside reminds me that the air has a scent, I inhale deeply. We ride over the country roads and through two of our small “urban areas”, Berlin and Snow Hill. Berlin is bustling again, with shops open and outdoor dining in abundance. People are strolling the streets, eating ice cream, sipping cold drinks.

We drive to Landing, with a lovely view of the Assawoman Bay and Assateague Island, but away from the crowds of day trippers at Ocean City’s boardwalk and the beaches. A few families are unloading fishing poles and bait buckets from their car, giddy with excitement to sit on the pier and fish in the glorious sunshine. We scope out two of our favorite places for launching kayaks and make a pact that this summer we will attempt to kayak at least once a week.

For an hour yesterday, we are not in the midst of a pandemic, America’s cities are not in flames, people are not unemployed, in racial disharmony or dying by the thousands. The only jarring visual reminders of reality are in front of two rural mobile homes we pass along the way – big ugly angry red “Trump 2020” flags flapping in the breeze.

June 2nd Black Box Tuesday

Today is “Black Out Tuesday” where people are invited to be with the pandemic, massive unemployment and the recent death of a black man in Minneapolis due to a silent on social media, reflect on recent events, and stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. With all that is going on already, police officer kneeling on his neck for 9 minutes, chaotic and now peaceful protests are happening all across the country.

Today in our home, it is Black Box Tuesday. Yesterday a fireproof file box arrived via Amazon. It weighs 28 pounds and sat on our dining room table for more than 24 hours. It is a grim reminder that life is finite, as do the current events swirling all around us. Last Fall, we decided to rewrite our wills and living wills, as we had not done this since moving to Maryland, despite all good intentions. Our last wills were written more than 15 years ago, before grandchildren, retirement and our move to a new state.

We examined our finances worldly possessions and wrote a will that really only dealt with the financial aspects. We were told to keep the original documents in a fireproof box or safe. Going to the local bank, we learned that safety deposit boxes besides expensive to rent are not fireproof. So, we investigated the fireproof safes and boxes, fully intending to have one in our home before we left on our trip to Florida in February. We did not accomplish that, and on our return, the threat of COVID-19 had started taking control of our lives and we became occupied with other matters that had to do with survival – how do we get food, do we feel safe going out, seeing other people, etc. Since we were essentially locked down at home, the need for a safe storage for the documents seemed to be less of a priority.

But as we watched the nightly news and the numbers of cases and deaths rising surrealistically, our own mortality became more clearly in focus. We were actively altering our lives to avoid death. Friends and family members cleaned out their closets and arranged their possessions, out of boredom or nervous energy, grumbling all the while that the thrift stores are all closed and garage sales not an option. The pandemic has clearly shown for many of us Americans of privilege, that “we have more than we need, we need less than we think and the need for human touch has become more important.”

Watching that black box on the dining room table began to unnerve me, like the grim reaper hiding in plain sight. Although my husband is a minimalist in terms of possessions, I do have many things that I cherish and have the unrealistic and idealistic notion that I care about what becomes of them after my death. As we did not enumerate possessions in the will, I need to inventory and document the disposition of things of importance to me.

COVID-19 has stripped many individuals of the dignity of a proper farewell from family and friends – laying in hospital ICU’s without having loved ones able to visit. Dying in great numbers, at least in the first two months, their bodies zipped into body bags and stowed in refrigerator trucks. No gathering of family and friends to remember good times, and no one able to clean out and distribute worldly goods.

Put your affairs in order has taken on new meaning, at once more immediate and less urgent than ever before.

June 3rd The Cherry Tree in our Backyard

We moved into our home in July of 2017. There is a small fruit tree in the backyard, we did not know what kind until the following spring/summer. A brief showy set of cherry blossoms occur, a few weeks after the Washington DC Cherry Blossom Festival. We must have missed the fruit that first year. The second year was saw small green berries appear, and when they turned red, birds swooped in from all directions and picked the fruit clean. Hmm, wonder what these fruits are supposed to be? Being in a new home, and traveling during the spring and summer months, we paid little heed to our fruit tree.

Last year, while waiting for this phenomenon to occur again, we visited our local farmers market and in particular the booth of our favorite farmers from Delaware. They always have the best apples and I’ve turned myself over to their wisdom of which variety was just picked that week – tasting new to me and delicious apples at their peak. I hadn’t realized that apple farms contain many varieties so that apples can be picked and sold throughout the year. But I digress from the cherries.

Having trust in this particular farm for introducing us to new tastes, the farmer beckoned us to a table with green baskets of small hard red cherries. These are sour cherries, he told us, and make great tarts – here’s a recipe to try. Oh, we exclaimed, we’ve never heard of them, must be a local delicacy. We bought them, took the recipe and had delicious sour cherry tarts. A few days later, I put two and two together and seeing small garnet red balls on the tree, I exclaimed – it’s a sour cherry tree! We rushed outside and picked as many as we could before the hordes of birds swooped in to claim the rest of the fruit, and enjoyed our second sour cherry tart of the season, but from our own tree!

This year, as we are home every day, with nowhere pressing to rush off to, we look out our bedroom window each morning, willing the sour cherry tree to delight us. Yes, we had the beautiful showy white flowers for a few days, and the gorgeous white pale pink blossoms blew off the tree way too soon and covered the grass below. The cherry tree doesn’t look too good this year, my husband proclaimed – wonder what’s going on. Just when we thought the tree was going to give up totally – its usually green leaves turning yellowish, small hard green berries began to emerge.

Each day, now we are waiting for those small hard berries to turn to garnet red. Right now they are orange, almost the shade of mango fruit or kumquats. Anxiously awaiting the ripening, so we can run out and pick a bowlful of the beautiful fruit and transform it into our now annual sour cherry tarts.

Being home has heightened our sense of nature’s timetable and the beauty and contentment in forced waiting for things to change and transform.

June 4th Lessons from the Middle East

For some reason, the Middle East is on my mind during this pandemic and particularly this week during the protests going on throughout our nation. Ironically, the two online classes I’ve been taking during the lockdown are reminders of the unresolved painful conflict in this region.

I’ve been taking online recorder lessons from an Israeli-American woman, who teaches us folk, liturgical and classical music from this region, including music from the Sephardic diaspora, Bedouin, Yemeni, Iraqi folk tunes, Jewish liturgical and Turkish Classical music. The scales and rhythms are new to me, a Western classically trained musician, which excite and delight me.

Following the watch party of “Stitching Palestine” a documentary film about Palestinian embroidery called Tatreez, I learned that young Palestinian-American woman was teaching the technique online. Eagerly, I signed up for several classes. Although I’ve been doing cross stitch embroidery in the English/American tradition for over 50 years, the beauty and simplicity of these geometric designs have captivated me.

As I’m stitching and the patterns emerge from my needle, or I’m humming the hypnotic melodies from the recorder class, I am soothed. I am thinking hard about these people forced from their homes, wandering the world, settling in new areas, facing prejudice and hatred, bringing along with them their musical and artistic traditions. These ancient traditions still resonate and delight.

I also think about the book, the Secret Library of Syria, about the young boys living underground in a town under siege for years, gaining knowledge and delight in risking their lives to preserve their beautiful secret library, while bombs and death shatter their physical world above.

Sitting in my beautiful spacious home, with plenty to eat, connections to the outside world and learning opportunities through the internet and hobbies to keep my mind growing, is hardly the equivalent of the hardships those in the Middle East have suffered throughout the centuries. So, there is peace in honoring and absorbing their arts. The timeless quality of these traditions, the haunting underlying sadness and beauty are a perfect fit for my current state of mind.

June 5 Rituals and Focus

How Rituals and Focus Can Turn Isolation into a Time for Growth
As the author learned caring for his ailing wife, a well-ordered day with close attention to

mundane tasks can let us endure with purpose By Arthur Kleinman

A recent Wall Street Journal article headline caught my attention as a Facebook post. However, because I do not subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, I was blocked from reading the entire article. No matter, I can write the piece myself. I was intrigued, because whether knowingly or not, I’ve been doing the same thing during this pandemic-imposed isolation.

I get up, make breakfast, relax with coffee, reading, doing the NYT crossword puzzle and “Tiles” exercise, catching up on emails.

We start our day with 20 minutes of Tai Chi to a DVD on a beach in Hawaii. The stretching is good for our sedentary bodies, the rhythmic drumming, breathing and waves crashing in the distance are soothing and centering for the soul. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings, I am attending a Pilates class with women from our community via ZOOM. This has been great to work muscle and get our heartrates up. The young woman who leads the class is doing a great job of tailoring the class to our capabilities and what is important for women of our age range.

My husband rides his bicycle, after our workouts we both shower and dress as if we were going to have a normal day. Fixing my hair and doing some minimal makeup makes me feel better rather than staying slovenly in pajamas and unkempt.

After lunch I will sew, knit, read, practice the piano or recorder. I love the solitude of my “craft room”, putting on classical music – it’s been mostly piano – Chopin mainly, or listening to an XM radio station for more variety when I need it. Some afternoons, I’ve signed up for ZOOM lectures or talks – I’ve heard a number of interesting authors talk about their books, and just yesterday “Advancing Women Artists” talking about Healing and Art – restoring the artwork of until recently unknown women artists from Florence. He will go upstairs and work on his airplane models or watch movies or “Law and Order” reruns.

My husband likes a cocktail before dinner and I like to have my “3 o’clock coffee” and a snack, which will take me through the afternoon slump rather than succumbing to a nap, which would make me wake up grumpy.

We agree on dinner, he prepares it and I clean it up. After dinner we settle in to watching TV together, or reading. We each have headphones, so if one or the other does not want to watch the show, the other is free to read without sound interference. We have kept to only one TV in the home, although with streaming now, our various laptops and iPads can serve up video entertainment. We alternate between not watching any news or political commentary, because between the pandemic and the authoritarian disaster president we are suffering under, the news is quite unbearable; and yet some days – like last night – unable to look away as stormtrooper like militia stand on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, or the George Floyd funeral oration calling for social change to inspire.

So, these rituals which keep me steady, and yet allow for intellectual stimulation and growth, have kept me grounded and yet flying at the same time, in the confines of my own home. The focus I can bring to reading, crafting, practicing, learning keep me stimulated. I do feel privileged to be able to say that my life is this comfortable, that I am able to maintain the semblance of order within the chaos of the outside world. As in the lecture yesterday about the Renaissance women artists, some 50% of women of wealth lived in convents during that time, and within the cloistered walls they experienced a freedom to learn and create, imagining a life they could not have outside the convent walls.

How interesting a circle life is! I love the reference to healing – what we need right now in terms of the pandemic as well as the racism and current administration’s frightening police state tactics. I love the reference to the Eastern Shore of Maryland’s own Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. There is a connection (although sometimes disputed) with quilting patterns hung out as Underground Railroad signals.

During this pandemic, through the online recorder classes, I’ve been exposed to and learning from primary sources of folk music from the Scottish, Middle Eastern – Jewish, and Arab traditions, Turkish, Balkan State. Which made me recall the American version by Alan Lomax. Individuals who collected and documented folk tunes. What another wonderful addition to my knowledge base to learn about John Wesley Work and his collection of African American folk tunes. I found a used volume for sale on Amazon and purchased it. I’m looking forward to diving into this musical tradition.

All these threads of groups of people enduring suffering and struggle over long periods of time and the beautiful meaningful art they create out of it still resonate today.

June 7 Ob la di Ob la da – Life Goes On

From the Beatles tune

Ob la di, ob-la-da, life goes on, bra

La-la, how the life goes on

Ob-la di, ob-la-da, life goes on, bra

La-la, how the life goes on

Yesterday, three connections which remind us, in the face of death, in the face of uncertainty, life does indeed go on.

The first, I noticed a post on Facebook by Mike’s daughter Kelly, reminding us that today, 8 years ago, her son Thomas died at the age of 3 from brain cancer.

The second, I received a phone call from my cousin Lydia who lives in California. We do not speak often and she does rarely call, so I sucked in my breath and figuring this was something important. Her mother, my father’s sister, Floss, had passed away just shy of her 94th birthday in St. Louis MO. I hadn’t seen Floss since her 80th birthday celebration on Beaver Island. She had called me during one of the major hurricanes, when we were hunkered down in our friends Joan and Randy’s home. She was in the early stages of dementia then, but wanted to make sure we were all right. Lydia noted that since the COVID-19 lockdown, many individuals in our lives had passed away, not from COVID-19. There will be no service or memorial. They will take her ashes to Beaver Island at some point this summer.

The third, Mike went down to the mail kiosk to bring home the mail. There was a handwritten note card, with handwriting I did not recognize. To my delight, it was a note from a friend I had made during knitting sessions at the Library, who is a delightful woman of Welsh descent. She had been living with her sister in Ocean Pines, and because she did not have a car, we often picked her up for the local symphony concerts. I loved talking with her, learning about her life and about Wales, and when I discovered that I had Welsh ancestry, she and I pored over my genealogy charts. She loved to hear Mike play the bagpipes at the local Celtic Festival (which should have been this week, but was cancelled). She is now living in Pocomoke in HUD housing, her sister having been sent to a nursing home, due to her advancing dementia.

Life is full of these the overlapping threads of connections of death, life and moving on, despite our staying in place right now.

June 8 Memoirs

A friend has been encouraging me to join our community’s memoirs group. I had been reluctant to do so, although writing has always been a part of my life in various forms. Having started this journaling project, I have been propelled back into writing and thinking about my life. So I agreed to come to the next meeting.

Little did I know that the assignment was to tell my life’s story in 450 words! I have put this off, and now the meeting is in two weeks, I need to get started. She suggested I take a Writing Memoirs 101 course online, which did encourage me.

I found an essay of sorts to use as a starting point for the assignment. It was a talk I used to give when my work involved helping people find jobs in the midst of our last crisis, the great recession of 2008, and also, I used this same talk working with college students. It used as a basis, a book that asked 1,000 people to write their memoir in 6 words. I selected about 10 of these mini-haikus throughout the talk which encouraged people to try new things, make changes. I did a word count and found for starters it was over 1,000 words. Also, the style of a talk is different than a written piece.

So, I’ve been polishing and refining the piece, cutting out great swaths of what I at least thought were clever pieces of advice, but had no place in the telling of my life. I still have trepidation about reading it aloud to others, but at least for now am happy with the form of it.

June 9 Weary

Today I am weary. My eyes, in need of an eye exam and new prescription balk at my efforts to read. I’m too tired to quilt, to knit, I’m restless and feel a bit trapped. Its been 3 months of semi-captivity and I guess I should expect some days like today. I need a haircut. I can’t focus on the news – it alternates between depressing, horrifying and providing a glimmer of hope. I take out my paints and set them up on the back deck and begin painting some flowers.

June 10 Risks

The COVID-19 news and advice these days is about lowering risk. I watched an interview with a biologist who calmly gave examples of managing risk and balancing taking some risks of becoming infected as states open up activities. I’ve made an appointment for an eye exam on Friday with a new eye doctor, as I don’t know when the eye doctor I love will return. I’ve called her office twice and gotten different answers – one that she is in New York with her father who is ill, and this week, that she is waiting for the Walmart (where her practice is located) to reopen. Confusing, as the other eye doctor there is taking appointments. I can’t keep on with all my reading and craft projects, playing music straining my eyes, so I will take the risk.

On Sunday we went to a friend’s home and sat in the backyard with 5 other friends. We were distant, but all of this still produces anxiety, which should not happen for activities which normally cause me no distress.

June 11 – Venturing Out (with masks)

Today was the first day we ventured out with masks on and were among people. Maybe too much? It will take two weeks to find out. Mike had an eye doctor appointment in Salisbury, new routine – you ride up in the car, they take your temperature and you wait in the car, they call you when it’s your turn. Actually, more pleasant than sitting in the waiting room. I waited in the car and read books, with the car windows down, it was a hot and very humid day.

It wanted to rain all day, the sky like a wet rag ready to be squeezed dry.

After the eye appointment, we went to Home Depot in Salisbury with a long list of items we haven’t been able to get for several months. It was fun to see other humans in the flesh, but maybe too much? Went to the Garden Center again for some more outdoor blooms. Managed to get them planted and deadheaded the roses between downpours.

June 12 Stretching

Today’s ZOOM Pilates class was all stretching and mat work. It felt great to gently twist and turn my various limbs to the extent that I am able to. Going out with masks on is also a form of stretching, stretching the boundaries of being with people and trying to do it safely.

It boggles my mind how many people ignore wearing masks, are belligerent when being asked to do so, all the while the cases of the virus are still going up. Seeing on TV that local health officials are being fired for providing data and recommendations and that the true numbers of cases and hospitalizations are being suppressed at the federal level. Its maddening that the current administration is modeling disbelief and ignoring that thousands of people are dying every day of this disease and that some people are willingly following this and shaming others for being prudent.

“Isolation fatigue” is now a thing. Really? For most Americans, you are not in a war zone, you are not without food and shelter and your life is not at risk by practicing safe distancing and mask wearing. Can’t people stretch a bit and try to save their own and others’ lives?

What is hopeful is the stretching taking place in terms of understanding racist policing practices and white supremacy. Hopeful that the young people will lead us out of this hatefulness and into a new more just society.

June 13th How are you feeling?

Ron Susskind, in the New York Times reflects on the fact that front line doctors are the COVID-19 first historians. He set up “Bongo” for 40 doctors in pairs to have their online conversations recorded for posterity. These are heartbreaking confessions of inadequacy – something doctors are not trained to feel, confusion, disorientation, and discomfort with having to make difficult decisions. They are seeing A LOT.

Capturing journals, these types of conversations will provide “truths ranging from the widely known and broadly experienced to the personally felt”. I am happy to be part of the Women’s History Museums project to collect the journals of ordinary women, as well. All perspectives will be synthesized, like a crazy quilt of subtly shifting kaleidoscopic feelings, knowledge as we go through this pandemic.

How are you feeling? What do you fear? What are your hopes?

These are the prompts for the doctors talking to each other – venting and sharing what only they know. I try to stay on an even keel, and not let unpleasant feelings bubble up to the surface too often, and keep my fears at bay. I fear being in the hospital alone the most. My hopes are for this virus to just die out, but selfishly so that Trump cannot take credit for it. I hope for Biden and the Democrats to win hugely in November to crush all this negative, divisive and corrupt action. I have hope for the future, with the young people leading the charge to end systemic racism.

June 14th Chaos at the Beach

Driving through Ocean City last night, we witnessed that most people were not wearing masks or social distancing. It was as though it were a scene from last summer or prior summers. Most of the vacationers seemed to be high school or college age, but we saw young families as well. Do people think that the fact that they are on vacation, that the virus has also taken a vacation?

I do feel for people, especially young people who want to go out and have fun. At the same age, although I was a pretty good kid, I did engage in some risky behaviors, so I’m trying to think about what it feels like to be guided by hormones, peer pressure and the feeling of invincibility.

I have the perspective of age, ok, if this lasts for a year, I can do it – what is a year out of the 65 years I’ve already been able to enjoy. At age 20, one year or one summer is a lifetime, too long to miss out on fun. I get it, but it makes me sad.

We have good guidance from scientists and medical professionals about the risks and how to reduce them. However, without the current administration’s political support and modeling good behavior, I guess its natural for those who don’t read much or listen to limited and biased news sources, to be skeptical. But I’m not willing to take those types of risks, and a year or several months out of my life is nothing. This is relatively easy for me to say, I’ve lived a good life and have few, if no regrets, I’ve not been deprived during these past few months in any significant way. I enjoy a good home, a good marriage, virtual access to stimulating virtual content, crafts and hobby interests to keep me going. I have all my creature comforts.

June 15 Confusing Connections

As states are opening up more businesses and relaxing restrictions, friends and family members are also stretching out to connect with one another. Several people have reached out to us to get together in person socially. I still feel uncomfortable about doing these sorts of things and the potential exposures. It seems that everyone has their own justifications for the people they are hanging out with and what activities they are willing to do. It’s confusing to me, and I hope will not alter relationships ongoing.

Some people are getting together with their children and grandchildren. Some are choosing a small group of friends that they trust to get together with. I know for many of the people here who live alone, it is a very lonely time.

This is confusing to me, as I do like to see people, be with people but I don’t want to take any risks. Its enough that we are taking risks going to selected doctor appointments, hopefully in well-controlled environments. Balancing maintaining our overall health is important.

June 16th Making New Connections

The Women’s History Museum sent us all an email to let us know how to submit our journals. I’m sad that the 30 days are coming to an end. Anticipating this, we are being encouraged to continue journaling beyond our commitment.

The email also contained some great links to encourage our creativity, especially around writing. One of the links that intrigued me was from Emily Hope Dobkin who is having an online session around building community with strangers during the pandemic. She posits that we have new ways to connect with our existing communities of family and friends but no way to meet “fresh faces”. She is having a virtual session that involves play and creativity to spur new interactions.

I’ve found during the pandemic, so many ways to connect with new people online. As a child, I enjoyed several pen pals simultaneously and found that I was often the more faithful writing partner. When I was about eight years old, our family moved to the next town over, in the 1960’s that could have been a million miles away. However, my very best friend, Fern Smith and I corresponded for years via what we would call now “snail mail”, at first in our emerging handwriting styles and then later both of us, sophisticated pre-teens and then teens on our respective typewriters. We had our own secret words that were made up of our typewriting mistakes. “Hahahah” became “hajahajahaja”. In junior high school, a friend, Lexie Meyers and I exchanged letters between our alter egos (we were British Royalty at some ill-defined past era) and created a fantasy world of soap opera-like narratives.

I guess because I worked in Information Technology for so many years, and working globally, I spent a lot of my workday in virtual communications via email, telephone, video- and audio- conferencing, so that the new world of Zooming doesn’t really bother me. Rather, I am finding so many wonderful and interesting online classes and lectures that ordinarily I wouldn’t be able to or didn’t make the time to access – Madeine Albright speaking at Georgetown University, an Italian Embassy cultural program on forgotten women artists in Florence Italy, “Textile Talks” by quilters in the Society of Art Quilters, Bluprint classes on knitting, writing memoirs, quilting...taking recorder lessons from Daphna Mohrs and Alison Melville, learning Palestinian embroidery from Wafa Ghaim, Mrs. Wilson’s Knitting Circle at the World War I Museum in Kansas City, the Lewes History Book Festival online with authors both familiar and new to me.

What wonderful creative experiences these have been! These new virtual communities have been lovely to be part of, even though most of the learning is coming at me, rather than going out. But I love seeing the faces of new “friends” or at least acquaintances from around the world who love the same nerdy things I do. I’ve taken the chance to participate in events and classes I might have been too shy to attend under normal in person circumstances. I hope that these stimulating experiences will continue after the pandemic subsides (if it does subside).

June 17 Peaceful Easy Feeling

For some reason, overall, I do not feel anxious about waiting out this pandemic. I do worry over friends who are relaxing their own restrictions on social distancing and making (light) demands on us, and I worry over the November election. I worry about others who are falling sick, suffering and dying from COVID-19, but not worrying about my own ability to stay in isolation. I am terrified of getting this virus and being hospitalized and unable to breathe.

Many others are feeling trapped, bored, anxious to get out but I actually feel an inner resolve to wait it all out, minimizing risk and continuing to explore my creative side. This has been a period of time when I’ve been able to “knit with abandon” as Asa Tricoter, a knitting designer and instructor penned in the book I bought from her last year, quilt my heart out (literally yesterday quilting a heart design that everyone in our guild is doing together, apart), reading, playing the recorder, embroidering, painting. My only constraints are my tired eyes, my “tennis elbow” that flares up occasionally, and the number of hours in a day.

My husband jokes that I will run out of projects, but I’m not sure that is even possible. I am enjoying working down my “stash” of fabrics and yarns collected over the years “my eyes bigger than my stomach” as my mother would say as I would wantonly collect desserts from a local restaurant’s buffet table and sometimes, although rarely, not finish them. I want to try several forms of felting, I want to continue to embroider in new ways, learn more about my new sewing machine and quilt away, I want to make clothing from fabrics I’ve bought from the “Marcy Tilton” collection of gorgeous curated yardage from around the world. I want to perfect the knitting “brioche” stitch. I want to learn to crochet and do Tunisian crochet.

As for music, I have a whole cabinet (built by my grandfather) of music to explore, reconnect with and perfect. I’m enjoying my recorder lessons learning more about middle eastern scales and rhythm patterns I never learned in school. Let’s not even talk about reading! Between the physical books on my book shelves, the digital books available to me, and well, my ability to have them delivered in an instant...As long as I am learning and exploring, I am living....

June 18 Nature out my window

Being home now for several months, I have been able to observe nature all around our house in more detail. The birds are a delight – we have hummingbirds regularly visiting our feeder, and now that we are using the back porch for Zooming, we have the opportunity of sitting out there and observing nature as we chat with friends and family. The many birds on our feeders are a constant joy- we as well as others are seeing more pileated woodpeckers with their big red heads, blue jays, cardinals, finches and wrens.

We have a little wren friend who loves to sit on one of the patio chairs and chirp his little head off, I look forward to his complaints – is he showing off to find female companionship? Does he dislike us staring at him? He puffs himself up and sings his head off.

We’ve had two sets of nests in our birdhouse. Unfortunately, I have not witnessed the fledging of the hatchling. There is also a nest in one of our bushes, when I come near in the garden, they start complaining loudly!

Our plants and flowers are growing like crazy! It rained yesterday and it is supposed to rain every day for the next 10 days or so, so everything will continue to get more verdant and larger. The hydrangea is blooming for the first time in three years! Cream colored blossoms turn a lovely shade of pink, more and more each day! The daisies have blooms galore! I am going to pick a bunch today and bring them inside to enjoy.

The plantings in the front are doing well. The St John’s Wort is blooming, a lovely yellow. I had to deadhead the red knockout roses this week, and looking forward to the next round of blooms. Sweeping up the fragrant rose petals was a lovely experience despite the scratches and bug bites the exercise bought me!

Little bunnies, fauns, pregnant squirrels populate our backyard. In the front garden are a number of vole holes, and an owl who hoots every evening and apparently thins out that crowd handily. We occasionally see a heron or egret elegantly fly overhead, as well as circling hawks looking for prey.

In our preserved forestland, new trees and bushes are emerging and it will be fun to see how this swampy forest regenerates itself, as old growth fall and die and new growth pop up.

June 19th Self Portrait Emerging

One of the quilting projects I am working on is a self-portrait of sorts. As I try to select fabrics and motifs to go into the self-portrait, I pause to consider – what is important to me? What is the air that I breathe?

For the local writing group, I complete an assignment of writing my story in 450 words. That is barely long enough to fit in key events. But what is my essence? What key events have shaped me?

Being in a forced isolation since March 11th, I’ve had time to think, to reflect on these answers. And removing outside events and timetables, have allowed me to reshape my life, and this in fact, has helped me to see what is really important to me.

The oxygen I need the most is learning and growing. I’m returning to music, reading, sewing, hand crafts, organizing, and writing to stretch my mind. I’ve made time to stretch my muscles too, with exercise classes three times a week and Tai Chi every day. I’ve been conscious of healthy eating – portion control, limiting snacking and trying to lose weight with some success, although this is one area that I have plateaued. But at least I am not gaining weight, as many who have been binge eating and snacking out of boredom and frustration have.

I’ve worked to keep some social networks going. By learning and purchasing the app ZOOM, I have been keeping several clubs I belong to together. With another friend, we set up weekly creativity sharing sessions, but with the summer, we’ve suspended these, as people don’t feel as stifled because they can get out more.

I’ve been able to focus on helping the small non-profit for which I am Board Chair, by meeting with the Executive Director on a weekly or biweekly basis and helping move her forward and adjust her plans amidst this pandemic.

I don’t feel confined by not leaving the house. Well, every few weeks I do have a moment of the feeling of suffocation and a simple bike or car ride, breathing the air outside chases that feeling away.

Focusing on what is really necessary – which appointments are most necessary to keep? What foods do we really need in the pantry? What material goods are really necessary for my life? The self-portrait continues to emerge.

June 20 Being Thrown Off Balance

I am reading so much these days, so much so that my eyes get tired, dry and then tear up so that the words blur and I can’t go on. I wake up early in the morning and try to get at least an hour of reading in, sitting alone, with the birds chirping outside, the neighborhood beginning to awaken. With my tall mug of coffee beside me and waiting for my bowl of oatmeal to cool, I dive into a book, read emails, do the crossword puzzle, go back to the book.

Yesterday I began to read Apeirogon and am about one third of the way through it. It is a novel based on the true story of two fathers, one Israeli, one Palestinian whose daughters were each killed by the other side. The narrative is choppy, weaving back and forth in time, short paragraphs, riffing on many types of birds – protagon – small finches eaten whole, frigates who don’t touch down to earth, falcons for whom elaborate hoods are created.

Throughout the book, there are a number of devastating scenes of life in prison, in war zones, in hospitals, in the Middle East. There are equally devastating, in a beautiful way, sentences which contain thoughts which require the reader to slow down and contemplate. The concept of Apeirogon – a shape with countable infinite number of sides, the concept of countable infinity, the story of 1,001 nights tales by many anonymous people over centuries woven together into an architecture more beautiful than a cathedral. If you divide death by life, you get a circle.

I stopped at this sentence: “He liked the notion of being thrown off balance”. That is what this pandemic is – throwing the whole world off balance collectively – taking a big pause in the action – pollution ceasing, global travel ceasing, work ceasing. In the US, this also includes the collective pause to examine poverty and income inequality, white supremacy, racism, thoughtful people now having time to try to acknowledge and understand it. Those resistant to it, working hard to deny it.

“Yesterday I was clever and wanted to change the world. Today I am wise and have begun to change myself”. Rumi, Persian poet. This pandemic pause will allow thoughtful people to work on changing themselves, in order to change the world. It gives me hope.

Yesterday I was clever and wanted to change the world. Today I am wise and have begun to change myself....

Rumi, Persian poet

June 21st Home

Home is where the heart is There’s no place like home

Jane Austen – When I have a home of my own, I will be miserable if I do not have an excellent library

So many trite quotes about home, and so many interesting ones as well. I share just three here. Having a safe secure lovely home is certainly a fortunate circumstance, and especially now during the pandemic. People are starting to come out from their homes, some feeling the need more than others. I’m in the latter category. Although I’ve traveled extensively in my career and for vacations, and worked daily outside the home, right now I’m feeling that I can get all I need right at home, without compromising my health.

Having the library, as Jane Austen writes above, really does improve the situation. And being able to access other people, communicate with other people, find information through the internet, really makes leaving home virtually unnecessary. Maybe this is a bad rut to get into, or maybe it’s a good thing, when in the final chapters of your life that you can be content to stay put...we’ll see....

Dawn breaks, sometime after I’ve savored my first cup of coffee

Word puzzles, journaling, reading, sewing rituals set me

Tai chi, Pilates, quilting, embroidering, music, knitting take me through to sundown

I know now that I’m happiest learning and creating. Mary Ellen Clark

June 22 Aleatoric Music

In the midst of reading the wonderful book, Apeirogon by Colum McCann, one of the vignette’s is about John Cage, the composer and his composition entitled 4’ 33’’. As a music major in college, this is a fascinating piece of music, the pianist is instructed to sit for four minutes and 33 seconds in silence. We thought this was so funny, a piece we would not have to practice in order to perform it perfectly. I had the opportunity to meet John Cage in the late 1970’s, he was a bold and revolutionary composer, but an extremely humble and quiet, soft-spoken man. He was also interested in aleatoric music, performance left to chance. The definition is “the course is determined in general, but the details left to chance”. I was fascinated by this concept.

It seems to me that this pandemic experience is aleatoric in a way. By staying home and slowing life down to a standstill, worldwide, we are able to listen to the ambient music all around us. My days are filled with chance encounters, although intentionally created, with authors, quilters, musicians, friends and relatives. Because much of this communication is via reading, or typing emails, it is intentionally silent.

Each morning I take down one of the books from my collection of craft books and read it for ten minutes or so. I think, will I ever do the projects in this book or not? If so, I will keep it, if not, when our clubhouse reopens, I will donate it to our recently renovated Art Room craft book library. Its been a wonderful discovery of books and techniques that had interested me in the past, maybe still do, maybe not.

My internet roaming is loosely guided by curated emails I get from various book, quilt, knitting, and other sources. I’ve discovered all sorts of wonderful things, somewhat randomly. My reading is guided by the three book clubs I belong to as well as recommendations from others and these random wandering and suggestions. Our Maryland state library system is wonderful, I can get on the waitlist for (now during the pandemic only) digital books. They fall into my lap in random patterns as I inch up the waiting list.

I’m randomly going through projects in my two respective stashes – knitting and quilting and trying to finish up or start projects that have been languishing. By going through all of the fabric one night, I realized what I had. I donated some to others making masks, and made close to 100 masks myself with my existing fabrics. I need to go through the yarn in the same way. I was able to donate all the acrylic yarn I had left over to a friend who was making baby blankets for a neonatal unit.

I’ve been exposed to middle eastern musical forms and traditions through the World Music recorder class I participate in each Thursday – dazzling rhythms and haunting melodies very new to my European Classically trained ears.

I’m more in tune with the birds in our yard, the seasonal cycles of the plants and flowers growing in the gardens as well. In eating at home every meal, I can concentrate on limiting portions and continue on my weight loss journey.

In the slowing down, I am more aware than ever. Thank you, John Cage.

June 23 What I have learned – Thank you Clara Baer

I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to contribute, even in a small way to future generation’s understanding of the current times and pandemic. What have I learned in the past 30 days of journaling?

As a young girl, I was given a pink 5-year diary embossed with gold fleur-de-lys. It had a locking clasp and held the promise for me to document five years of my life. At that time, I did not have a good grasp on my own feelings or inner life, although I had one, I did not know how to get it out through words. I was beginning to form the ability to communicate emotions through musical studies but I struggled there as well. I conscientiously entered into the diary on a daily basis. The entries were not very profound, and I recall feeling embarrassed as my mother laughed reading the entries – week after week, about our gym class activities “the Newcomb nets are up” so we played Newcomb, a watered-down version of volleyball. Now I just looked up Newcomb, to make sure I got the spelling right, and lo and behold, the game is significant because it was the first sport invented by a woman – Clara Baer in 1895at Sophie Newcomb College (sister school of Tulane University)!! Woo hoo!

Second memory of journaling, is in the late 1970’s taking courses for a Master’s Degree in Creative Arts Education at Rutgers University in the evenings after I had finished teaching for the day. In one of the courses, we did journal a la Ira Progoff and the “At a Journal Workshop” technique. I faithfully did the exercises – this was during another painful growth period for me, my first career out of college, teaching music, and during that time my father passed away at age 52 quite unexpectedly. I think that the journaling helped me cope in many ways. I don’t know if I still have the journal or not, I’ll have to check my one box of memorabilia I brought with me into retirement.

I did a journal – more a pictorial journal during taking a “Senior Leadership Program” at Rutgers Institute for Women’s Leadership. This was a phenomenal experience, and helped me grow yet again. This was when I was in my late forties or early 50’s. Two years ago, I took a course with several friends at the Ocean City Art League called “The Artist’s Way” and this method encouraged you to do daily “morning pages” which were unfiltered dumping. I didn’t love this technique at the time.

So here is my most recent (I won’t say last) journaling experience and I am loving it. It serves in a way like the morning pages, cleanses my palate for the day, I feel some relief in writing, really talking to myself each morning on various topics. It has grounded me and reminded me how much I enjoy writing.

But what have I learned in 104 days, the last 30 of which I’ve been journaling each day? Answers to questions like – what am I willing to do to stay healthy and avoid getting this virus? What are the essentials in life? Food, shelter, love, learning. I’ve always sensed that being given constraints; more creativity can flow out. Forced to stay home, I’ve been able to mingle with and learn from a whole new set of creative communities. I am playing the recorder regularly – learning about Middle Eastern music, learning more about quilting and my new sewing machine, connecting with and learning about embroidery from around the world. I’ve read forty books during these 104 days. My husband and I have learned about the limits of our interdependence and the strength of our love and commitment to one another.

I think I will keep journaling even after this 30-day period. I had committed to doing a quilt block for this project to accompany each day. I’m not sure I’ll continue with that aspect of the journal, but forcing myself to create a visual journal, a quilt every day is also a type of palate cleanser to help face the day.

Post Script – although I did a lot of quilting, I never did come back to the quilt block a day and instead have illustrated this journal with photos, quotes and poetry. I did not continue with this journaling but switched to doing a music-focused journal, following Clemency Burton-Hill’s Year of Wonder – a piece of classical music a day to ponder. I’ve enjoyed this change of pace and exploring my musical past and learning about some new composers as well as pieces from familiar composers which are new to me!

As a post-script I’ve included several pieces I wrote for our community’s writers group called the Parke Storytellers, written almost a year later than this journal. We were able to continue our meetings throughout the pandemic via Zoom.