Tag: wearing masks

Does Every Pandemic Week Feel the Same to You, Too?

COVID, COVID, COVID, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, Biden, Biden, Biden. That’s all we hear anymore. A year ago, it was Trump, Trump, Trump. I understand that news outlets need to cover the most important stories, but aren’t other things still happening? Are we still fighting in Iran and Afghanistan, maybe in other countries, too? What happened to those places that got hit by hurricanes and wildfires last year? When are we going to get some new TV shows? When is American Idol going to come back? You know, important news.

Of course we want to keep informed about COVID and what our new president is up to, but shouldn’t somebody be covering the rest of the world, lest we look up one day and realize, shit, that happened and we totally missed it?

We get more information in our local paper, the News-Times, between the big ads for Thriftway and Power Ford. For example:

  • The cliff area in Newport known as Jump-Off Joe is falling into the sea. Huge landslide movement after last week’s storms (as opposed to this week’s storms) dissolved the sandstone cliffs.
  • We have a couple murder trials pending.
  • There’s the story of the truck that got stolen twice from a Lincoln City woman’s driveway. She got it back after the first theft. The next day, it was gone again.
  • Someone set the Presbyterian church in Newport on fire. Thank God firefighters caught it before there was too much damage.
  • The plans for when to bring students back to school keep changing.
  • Here’s another obituary for someone I knew, making me very sad.
  • And yes, they’re covering COVID and its vaccines, shots not coming to my age group anytime soon.

At least the local paper tries to mix it up.

So do I, but every week, it feels like it was trash day/laundry day/grocery day just a minute ago. I get up, pray, bathe, eat, write, walk the dog, do the Zoom du jour, binge-watch Netflix and Amazon Prime shows, play a little music, and fall asleep.

Things do change, but it’s slooooow. I offer some random news from the 97th Court lockdown:

  • Annie the dog, subject of several posts here lately, is much more stable now, but I don’t think she’ll ever recover completely from her holiday illness and hospital stay. Her head is still tilted to the left, her eye a little squinty. She tires quickly and seems afraid to be alone. But she’s back to dragging me down the street on our walks and refuses to turn around when I say it’s time to go home. I’m trying not to think about her future but to enjoy every moment with her.
  • I long to get out of this house. I want to see my family in California, Arizona and Washington. I still hate masks, which are not only uncomfortable but also make it twice as hard for hearing-impaired folks like me to figure out what people are saying, even with my hearing aids. But I totally understand why we need to wear masks and I’m grateful that most people are doing it these days. Isn’t it amazing how something we never even thought about a year ago is now available in all kinds of colors and designs and you can buy them by the dozen at the grocery store?
  • It’s a weird world where I don’t need makeup to leave the house because the mask covers half my face, but I do need my lipstick for Zoom events where I’m forced to look at myself on the screen. Board meetings, classes and readings, interviews, and open mics keep me on Zoom almost every day. It’s truly a wonderful thing being able to meet, hear, and read with writers from all over the world, people I would never meet in person, but I’m weary of staring at a boxes on a screen.
  • I’m reading at Coffee and Grief #19 on Sunday, Feb. 4, 7 p.m. PST. https://www.facebook.com/events/883771512396349. I have attended previous sessions and heard some amazing writers. Please join us. Bring Kleenex. The link is included in the Facebook post.
  • I will be the guest speaker for the Coast-Corvallis chapter meeting of Willamette Writers on Feb. 22 at 6:30 p.m. PST. Topic: Publishing 101. I will discuss the various ways to get your books published. Register at https://www.Willamettewriters.org. While you’re there, check out all the other workshops and chats you can join via Zoom, no matter where you live.
  • Next month, I will co-host a series of poetry readings on Tuesday nights by the winners of Oregon Poetry Association’s poetry contest. Stay tuned for details.  
  • I am putting together a new email list via Mail Chimp. That chimp and I aren’t totally getting along yet, but you should see a place below this post to click and get on the list. Sign up in February, and I will send you a copy of my book Shoes Full of Sand for free! If you already have it, God bless you. You may choose another book from my catalogue at suelick.com/books. Why? Why not? Thank you for reading this far. Send me an email at sufalick@gmail.com to let me know your choice.

Happy Groundhog’s Day. Pray for an early spring.

I invite your comments on any and all of this. How are you doing? Are you COVID-crazy yet?

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One Good Thing About COVID-19

Author Sue William Silverman had waited 3 ½ hours to get into the concert, and now she was seated in the third row, within touching distance of a chatty young man and a snarly older woman in a wheelchair. All around her, people were shouting, screaming, and waving pictures. She sailed away on the sea of love and adoration for rocker Adam Lambert, once of American Idol Fame.

Silverman, who is in her 70s, went to this shindig alone. She tells about it in her new book How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences.

I would never in a million years do this. I go to lots of things alone in our small coastal towns, but the idea of being elbow to elbow with over a thousand out-of-control fans terrifies me. I am Ms. Anxious in social situations. I get nervous mailing a package at the post office. Plus I am such a goody two-shoes I would be sitting in my seat trying to listen and hating all the loud people around me. I’d also be checking for my purse every two seconds.

Thanks to COVID-19, nobody can make me sit in a crowd now. That’s a huge relief. I get nervous, I have restless legs, I always have to go to the bathroom, and I struggle to hear. In some situations, like a loud concert, my hearing aids make the sounds painfully loud but not any easier to understand.

Now, in the midst of the COVID crisis, which hit suddenly but looks like it’s never going to end, the idea of being so close with so many people . . . no way. I know there are folks out there congregating for protests, parties, or summer vacation at the beach, all close up, many without masks. Not me.

Our COVID numbers here in Lincoln County have suddenly gone crazy. For the first couple months, we held steady at eight people who tested positive for the virus. Then 10. Only one person had been hospitalized. Nobody had died. We were doing super well at sheltering in place. Then everything changed. On May 15, we went into Oregon’s Phase One reopening. Hotels, restaurants and beaches reopened—with serious restrictions, but they opened–and tourists poured in. Many of them ignored pleas to stay home, wear a mask when out, and keep six feet apart. We don’t need to wear no stinkin’ masks, and you all are fools for wearing them, seemed to be the attitude of many. Most locals decided to just keep staying home.

The numbers went up a bit, to 30, several from a Memorial Day weekend family party where one of the people was sick.

At the same time, the fish processing plants on Newport’s Bayfront geared up for their big season, bringing in their usual local crews and seasonal workers.

On June 7, authorities announced that 124 out of 376 workers tested at Pacific Seafood, the company that processes, packages and sells our fishermen’s catches, had the virus. Most of them had no symptoms, but they did have COVID-19 and had exposed everyone around them, including their families and friends and people at the stores, restaurants, and other places they visited. Our total went to 154, then 164, then 206 as of this morning. Three more locals went to the hospital.

State and county officials have decided not to take us back to pre-Phase I restrictions, although numerous restaurants and other businesses have closed on their own to be safe. We’re nervous. Phase II is not happening any time soon, and that’s just fine with most of us.

Meanwhile, yesterday, the second Sunday of the month, it was time for our monthly open mic/jam session in South Beach. Would we still do it? We met in May, nervously and without masks. But now . . .

Seven of us met. We opened all the windows and doors at the South Beach community center, sat six feet apart and wore masks. It’s hard to sing with masks on. You can’t understand the words, and the masks move around or plaster themselves to your lips. Your glasses fog up so you can’t read sheet music. But we wore our masks. We sanitized our chairs. And we sang and played our butts off. It felt good. For once, we weren’t looking at our friends in little boxes on a computer screen.

Was I anxious? A little. But on a computer, can I make up harmony with other singers, watch a friend’s fingers to follow the chords on the guitar, or try out a mandolin song I’ve never played for anybody before, make mistakes and laugh behind my mask?

Like all musicians, I’ve been feeling desperate to play my own music for someone, anyone, and this helped. But I have to admit sheltering in place takes a lot of pressure off those of us who get panicky in crowds.

I don’t know why Silverman attended the concert alone. Were her friends all busy? Did she have a partner who wasn’t interested in Adam Lambert? I certainly dragged Fred to a lot of folk and bluegrass concerts that may not have been his favorite. And open mics. And all those choir concerts I sang in. Poor guy. Then again, I had to listen to his jazz and his Keely Smith albums.

In a crowd like the one that went to hear Adam Lambert, I’d need someone to hang on to, someone it was legal to touch, pandemic or not, someone who would understand my uneasiness and maybe hold my hand. We’d form our own little bubble of safety.

Does it seem like forever since life was normal? Why did we not appreciate how much easier everything was before?

It’s your turn. How are you doing? Do you like being in a crowd, or is it a relief not to have to do that these days? Would you go to an Adam Lambert concert? Do you know who he is? If not him, who would you wait for hours to see?