Living in the Time of Corona Virus



Where were you when you realized this was serious?

I was having a 1942 Case Tractor delivered to my house as a lawn ornament/landmark.

Through my life there have been a series of questions which are landmarks or turning points. Questions that still pop up in conversations with people who have lived through the same times.

Where were you when President Kennedy was shot.

At the student union building at University of New Mexico having lunch with friends from high school. One had brought a bag of Frito's. I have not eaten them since.

There are a who bunch of when you heard someone was assassinated in the following years, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Stand out.

Then there was Kent State. I was in Senator Charles Goodall's offices when the news broke with fellow staffers all stunned as we watched the news. The same staffers I worked with during Watergate. I was back in New Mexico when Nixon resigned. I was skiing in Red River when we attacked Iraq the first time. Home alone watching the morning news live when the second plane hit the World Trade Towers. I called my best friend and we talked and cried on the phone.

This one snuck up on us. It did not hit with a bang because the Trump administration lied to us. National news had pushed all world news out of the viewing window even though news has gone 24/7. Remember when it was just a half hour? World news, local news, sports, and weather. Was the world simpler then? Or were we just less interested. Were the consequences of not knowing as dire as they are now?

A friend recently declared on a social media outlet that she did not watch the news. I found myself shocked. Maybe because I grew up during the Korean and Vietnam Wars news has always been part of my day. And Mother sat me down and made me watch the McCarthy hearings so it was just natural to watch the Watergate hearings, and the Iran Contra hearings, the latest impeachment hearings.

During the Vietnam War they scrolled through the list of dead and where they came from at the end of each news broadcast. We didn't do that in the first Iraq war or the second or Afghanistan. And we are not doing this for Covid-19. It is all reduced to numbers.

I confess while I had a morbid interest in the Plague and Ebola (almost as many books about pandemics as serial killers on my shelves) this Corona virus didn't seem like it would make it across the Atlantic. Ebola here was contained. And SARS. Certainly this one would be. Besides I was involved with my life. Important issues in my life. Sure, I still watched my mandatory favorite news shows but I also was hunting for a used vehicle I could depend upon. I was in mourning for Big Blue who betrayed me with a bum transmission.

That seemed to go on forever beside my disappointment that the Senate had let Trump walk and he was doing a victory lap. Then there was the Ford Explorer in my driveway. And the antique tractor being delivered. I had longed for it a long time. Always noticed it as I drove past my mechanic's garage. It was there still when I took the soon to be mine Explorer for a test drive. It was tucked behind a rusting old truck I had photographed before.

The world was going upside down but I had my new to me vehicle, Big Blue was going to be repaired and sold on to someone new, and the 1942 Case Tractor was in my front yard. You can be happy in the times of great difficulty for the world. It is the relative duration of both which I think is critical.



Comments

  1. Ien in the KootenaysMarch 17, 2020 at 3:24 PM

    Such a strange time we live in. I am experiencing a sense of unreality, of being suspended. There is all this stuff I am supposed to be doing to make the move to the village possible and I am doing tiny baby crawls daily. Cannot even call them steps. The land has always given me a sense of security. I worry about getting stuck in between having sold it and having the town place in order. On the other hand I really do not want to spend another winter here.

    ReplyDelete

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