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Think about something really important that happened to you this week, and tell us about it.
Something important that happened to me this week was a safety reminder. We had a beautiful gentle snow fall, lots of it. I went out at night and took some pictures...first time for photography at night. It wasn’t too cold, and all was quiet. I was so pleased about the shots I was getting and felt like a real photographer, for once in the right place at the right time. Next day we shoveled, nice light snow so effort required was consistent but not strenuous. By the next day the snow started to melt and the magic of the midnight photo shoot was also beginning to diminish. My “reminder” occurred the next day when I went for my daily “walk and talk”. That is my pandemic routine combining exercise and socialization where I call a socially isolated friend and chat on the phone while I walk. It was a glorious sunny day and I was completely immersed in the conversation and missed (well, I didn’t miss it, I hit it) a big clod of grass a snow plow had thrown up on the street. I was concentrating on the call looking at the phone one second and down on the ground watching my phone skitter across the ground the next. It was one of those slow motion falls ....oooohhhhh nnnooooo...... completely my fault...but ultimately so much gratitude... I did not hit my head, did not lose the phone down the rain drain, and being winter in New England was dressed in lots of layers. I was lucky, suffering a few minor bruises along with a bruised ego and some very very sore ribs. The ego is fine, but the ribs will take much more time and remind me every day that “keep your eyes on the road”, is an apt phrase to remember not just when driving!
January 13, 2021
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Talk about what is most upsetting or scaring you right now about the coronavirus pandemic.
Right now, I think I'm most frustrated by inefficient vaccine distribution in the U.S. It's not even that I disagree with who is prioritized. I have my thoughts, of course, but I think there's no truly fair way to decide who should get it first and the CDC's recommendations are at least reasonable. But doses of the vaccines are going to waste, and that's infuriating because there's no justifiable reason for wasting a prophylactic that can save so many lives. It's not the fault of any single person. It's an institutional failure, and so much more could have been done to plan for this issue. We've been in the pandemic for almost a year. There has been more than enough time to put together a functional program for distributing the vaccine. Some individuals that I do consider to be at fault, though, are the people who are cutting the line. Wealthy individuals who are traveling out of state or out-of-country in order to secure doses for themselves. These are people who already have every advantage - jobs that allow them to work from home instead of putting themselves at risk, savings enough to cover no-contact delivery of anything they could possibly want, and working health insurance in the event that they are infected. I understand the desire to protect yourself and your family. But it's absolutely despicable to cheat the system in order to gain an advantage. This pandemic has shown, more than anything, that human depravity has no bounds.
January 28, 2021