Author Topic: Corona - what does help you? Your fears, thoughts, everything  (Read 151915 times)

Offline brianr

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Re: Corona - what does help you? Your fears, thoughts, everything
« Reply #80 on: April 11, 2020, 03:28:22 pm »
Yesterday I planted 50 bulbs, 20 daffodils, 20 Freesia and 10 Tritonia and did some weeding. Then I painted the lattice work on another panel of my front fence. With preparation, it took about an hour. I have now painted 3 large panels and one small. I have two large and one small to go.
Today I will do my walk for the 6th time since the lockdown started, now Day 16. The walk is just under 5km. I installed an altimeter app on my phone and when I did it on Friday, my front gate was 268 metres. After going down the roads and laneways to the park it was 136 metres. I climbed the track by the stream to the top and it was 287 metres then back across streets and through the school to my house. It takes about an hour and a quarter and I sit about half way and have a few mouthfuls of water. I take my stick and do not touch anything except sitting on the bench. I probably pass about a dozen people and half a dozen dogs. Only one man had a scarf over his face. Our government recommendation is not to wear masks as it makes you touch your face and they are fairly useless unless you take them off property then wash them.  I have been to the supermarket twice on Day 5 and Day 14 and will not need to go again until the week after next. The checkout has plastic screens, most of the staff wear masks but less than half the customers. One young guy had a full gas mask. Fortunately I skype with my sister every morning, I have not heard from any friends for 3 days now.

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Corona - what does help you? Your fears, thoughts, everything
« Reply #81 on: April 11, 2020, 10:24:30 pm »
I keep hearing dire predictions that Philadelphia will become, or already is, the next Covid-19 hot spot, so I just did a little research.

According to the city's own website, as of 1 p.m. today (4/11), the city has 5271 cases (positive tests) of Covid-19. There have been 160 deaths.

According to Wikipedia, the city's population in 2018 was 1.58 million.

This is not downplay the seriousness of the situation but my impression still is that Montgomery County, the suburban county immediately to the northwest of the city, has to date been hit harder, though I have not done any research.

The city is preparing in case there is an explosion of cases. The athletic center on the campus of Temple University has been set up as a field hospital, and a Holiday Inn Express hotel two blocks north of my place has been taken over for use as a hospital.
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline serious crayons

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Re: Corona - what does help you? Your fears, thoughts, everything
« Reply #82 on: April 12, 2020, 11:19:32 am »
I haven't been walking with Tina in a while, she's been in quarantine.  Her husband had caught the virus,  and since she had been exposed,  we stopped meeting.  As of now, he has recovered, and she either managed  to not get it, or she got it and was asymptomatic.

Wow, scary! I still have yet to know anyone who said they had coronavirus in their immediate family. I've seen a few of my social-media friends mention their grandmother or a friend. But in many cases, I don't even know the social-media friend that well. Among the people I regularly talk to, nobody has gotten it as far as I know, or at least not mentioned it, nor has anyone in their immediate family.

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That's another reason to avoid the park where Tina and I meet.  I get that it's outdoors, but the park can get pretty busy, and it just doesn't seem to make sense to stay away from everyone during work hours, and then after work go to the park and get exposed.

I wonder how it is for people living in dense areas. Yours sounds pretty dense, Chuck, though perhaps no worse than Jeff's in Philadelphia. I can't imagine Manhattan -- how could anyone possibly keep 6 feet away from everyone on the sidewalk? I get that the sidewalks aren't as busy as usual at the moment, but still!

When I walk my dog around my neighborhood, we walk for about 45 minutes, and I probably pass 6 or 8 people (especially these days) typically. It's very easy to keep a distance away unless they're being inconsiderate and hogging the sidewalk, but most of the time they at least go to the edge of the sidewalk, if not even into the grass.

I've always been a big fan of density. I like the idea of multi-use neighborhoods with great walkability, as it sounds like you and Jeff have. I can walk to parks, bus stops, grocery store, hardware store, liquor store, car repair shop, library, drug store, at least six nice restaurants. Except they're all 7-10 blocks away, so really slightly short of "walkable." I mean, walking that far is not a huge deal if it's nice out, but enough of a hassle that in most cases I just drive there.

Anyway I've always loved the idea of denser neighborhoods. But recently a right-wing columnist wrote a scathing newspaper column about density and walkability -- she sides with affluent people in single-family neighborhoods who don't want multi-unit housing near them -- and that we're now seeing its disadvantages. I never agree with anything this writer says, but in this case I had to admit she had a point.

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I'm thinking I may go for a ride tomorrow, after I leave mom and dad's place.  Nowhere special, just out for a little spin.

In the '60s, my parents used to do that almost every Sunday afternoon. I would often go with, but now, even though I'm still living not far way, I don't even remember where they went.

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The workout series I'm using is called "Walk Away The Pounds" by Leslie Sansone.  She has 4 basic moves that you follow along with.  Walking in place, kicks, knee lifts, and side steps.  She rotates through those four moves, in tandem with using hand weights, at different tempos.  Between the arm movements and the leg movements, in under 15 minutes, you've burned the calories you would for a 15 minute walk.

Sounds pretty good! I'll look for her.


Offline serious crayons

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Re: Corona - what does help you? Your fears, thoughts, everything
« Reply #83 on: April 12, 2020, 12:42:31 pm »
Someone at The Guardian feels similarly:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/21/emily-bronte-strange-cult-wuthering-heights-romantic-novel

That is one of the weirdest takedowns I've ever read. So the writer hates Wuthering Heights. Fine, I completely get that. It's not everybody's cup of tea and it's not easy reading. But her reasons for insisting that Emily Brontë herself was a terrible person:

-- She insisted that her music students take their lessons after school, cutting into their playtime. And she did it "to suit herself" so she could study earlier in the day. Wow -- practically child abuse! I took my piano lessons after school and did not even realize I should have called child protection.

-- Her clothes were "deeply unfashionable." Whoa -- another major strike against Emily Brontë.

-- She was "testy" with her sisters. OMG. Who can imagine anyone ever being less than pleasant with their siblings!

-- Her real life does not exactly fit the way it has been portrayed elsewhere. I don't know enough about it to judge the truth of that, but how is it a fault of hers that others have misrepresented her life? My impression is that all the Brontë siblings lived a fairly isolated life, but were all unusually bright and imaginative, so as small children they made up their own elaborately detailed country and eventually turned to writing, two of them turning out timeless classics of English literature.

But here's what I thought was the weirdest part of all:

And to offset her lack of income, she became an expert financial investor, studying newspapers to ensure that the family’s modest savings were placed in the best-performing railway stocks. She was cannily alert, too, to the way that the literary market worked. When the Brontës’ first book, a joint collection of poetry, sold only a handful of copies, she was quick to turn to the much more profitable genre of fiction.

...  The family at the parsonage enjoyed no such financial elasticity, which makes Brontë’s insistence on the right to abandon her economic obligations all the more audacious. There is a certain topsy-turvy irony too in the fact that, unlike Nightingale and Barrett, Brontë was actually pretty sick. Yet she refused to use her rackety health as an excuse, instead throwing herself into strenuous physical domestic labour.


She apparently did make money with investments and worked hard to do the same by writing a novel (the exact reason Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women, BTW). Yet she's also a useless deadbeat because she didn't take an unpleasant job as a governess. And the fact that she was very sick is no excuse to live at home, nor does her ignoring health problems to perform strenuous domestic labor count for anything.

She even leaps to the conclusion that Brontë -- a woman living in the early 1800s who taught herself to be an expert investor, wrote a book that was considered shockingly unfeminine, who disliked the limited work opportunities available for women in that time, was strong-willed enough to arrange her life so she could write a masterpiece  -- would definitely hate feminism. Yet this writer, who presumably considers herself a great feminist, I guess, considers it perfectly valid to snark about another woman for dressing unfashionably. Umm ... OK?

That's probably the weirdest collection of reasons for disliking a person I've ever seen.

I once had a copy of Wuthering Heights -- and may still, though I'm not sure where I put it -- that included Charlotte's piece defending it, which seemed at the time i read it (I was 10 or 11) unnecessary but I guess, as I said, the book was seen as shocking in some almost immoral way. There's no sex, very little violence, but her characters are rough around the edges and emotional, I guess. By today's standards, needless to say, it's nothing.

Also, the professors were both men and women, contrary to the writer's insistence that the only people who like WH are women (a curious criticism from somebody who implies she's a feminist, but whatever). Many male professors do have incredibly male-skewed literary tastes, but WH often makes the cut even in those. Maybe for the reasons readers in the 1830s were shocked by it?

I will agree with the takedown writer that it's weird so many characters have the same names. I think maybe Emily had some subtle metaphorical reason for that -- I've probably seen one explained at some point -- but I agree that it unnecessarily complicates things without adding much.

« Last Edit: April 12, 2020, 05:06:06 pm by serious crayons »

Offline serious crayons

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Re: Corona - what does help you? Your fears, thoughts, everything
« Reply #84 on: April 12, 2020, 05:07:14 pm »
We can now return to our previous discussion of coronavirus.  :laugh:

Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: Corona - what does help you? Your fears, thoughts, everything
« Reply #85 on: April 12, 2020, 06:28:23 pm »
Wait a minute! I thought your reasons for thinking the critique weird were very valid...and hilarious to boot! There's a column in there somewhere, don't you agree?
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Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Corona - what does help you? Your fears, thoughts, everything
« Reply #86 on: April 12, 2020, 09:33:59 pm »
Every day at 1 p.m. the City of Philadelphia published its latest coronavirus statistics. As of 1 p.m. yesterday (4/11), the city reported 5271 cases, with 160 deaths. That's sad and terrible--and things can conceivably get worse--but I think it's also worth noting that in 2018 the city's population was 1.58 million.

As for density, Center City Philadelphia is a ghost town, with all the businesses, bars, and restaurants closed, and there are very few people out on the streets. I'm going out as little as possible, and covering my nose and mouth with a bandanna when I do--but I will confess that right now I feel vaguely silly doing it since there is so little opportunity for close contact--except in the supermarket.
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline serious crayons

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Re: Corona - what does help you? Your fears, thoughts, everything
« Reply #87 on: April 12, 2020, 10:58:50 pm »
Wait a minute! I thought your reasons for thinking the critique weird were very valid...and hilarious to boot! There's a column in there somewhere, don't you agree?

Thanks, maybe! I'll give that some thought! It was fun to critique.  :D
 
Plenty of classic writers were/are unlikable, and that's not usually considered a reason to dismiss their work if their work is good (assuming their unlikable qualities fall short of, you know, heinous). But in this case, Emily's unlikable attributes are pretty average human traits. Based on her novel, she doesn't seem like an average human, so she may very well have been odd in some ways -- this piece just doesn't make a good case for what those ways were or that they were bad enough to damage her reputation.

It's interesting; this isn't the first time I've read a lame takedown in which I came away having more respect for the person than I had before.


Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: Corona - what does help you? Your fears, thoughts, everything
« Reply #88 on: April 14, 2020, 11:58:12 pm »
Cases in Colorado seem to be plateauing, now standing at 8K cases and 330 deaths. New cases seem to be located in the most densely populated areas and places like nursing homes. I'm glad my mother is not still alive.  :'(

The small town in AZ where I'm staying is really pretty and tranquil but I must admit I'm getting bored. I'm thinking more and more often about when I'll be able to head home.
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Offline serious crayons

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Re: Corona - what does help you? Your fears, thoughts, everything
« Reply #89 on: April 15, 2020, 09:08:42 am »
We've had about 1,700 cases and 80 deaths. They aren't plateauing, but they're growing at a slower rate. The paper has a map with a line showing numbers of new cases that goes straight up at first then starts to curve.

On a national map, looks like Wyoming has had only about 20 cases and one death.