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How is the coronavirus pandemic affecting your life right now? Tell us about your experiences, feelings, and thoughts.
Coming home from errands around town yesterday (hardware store, grocery) : I say to myself "We are never going to get this pandemic under control because of ignorance or malice. We are a failed state--with repercussions of that failure killing us." Scenes: at the hardware store --an obviously ill sales clerk--underweight perhaps from chronic malnutrition, feverish, coughing, mask failing off his nose gives me directions to aisle 10. He is probably part-time (to save store from sick leave), making a low wage, and at work because he cant afford not to be. A friend refers to "Plantation America." I think of Dickens, Bleak House, death of Jo, the lowly crossing sweeper, by smallpox that also infects his "betters". Then there are always one or two enraged customers barreling into the store mask-less, daring anyone to cross them, and the sales clerks making too little money to enforce store policy or state ruling. So I head home, masked, slathered in hand sanitizer and wonder will I now end up intubated in 14 days because I needed a carton of milk and a bag of potting soil?
January 1, 2021
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During the pandemic, has anything changed in how you get food, prepare it, or eat it?
Last year I swung by acme @ 5th and Pine to purchase a roast to cook on Christmas after learning that my daughter and her boyfriend planned to be with me so I was not alone . I shopped in and out of the Italian Market and the Reading Terminal Market. I usually did some variation of the Italian traditional 7 fishes for Christmas Eve dinner. We now have food delivered to us, having someone shop in stores for us. Using Mercato we get foods from the Italian Market and Reading Terminal Market. Christmas Eve dinner. was an Italian “Sunday gravy” of meatballs and sausage frim the ReadingTerminal vendors and acme. None of it was shipped for or purchased @ a store by us. My daughter moved Nextdoor with her boyfriend in mid-March to help me shop like this, to keep me safe. It was his desire to have a pot of meat and sauce to access over the holiday weekend.?we did the preparation and the crockpot did the rest. While people lament what is lost to them in breaking traditions, I’d say this freed us. We have been playing with his Christmas present, a card game : The Puns of Anarchy -what fun! It takes 3 to play. We are looking forward to playing frequently now that we have the hang of it. We laughed until we cried as we devised tricky responses. This has been such a fun Christmas. We have enjoyed each other and out time spent together.
December 29, 2020