1. Coronavirus and COVID-19
I do not normally write about current events on my family blog, but, at this point, I think even this current event of the novel coronavirus and COVID-19 disease merits being recorded for posterity here.As of this writing on Friday morning there have been 138,585 confirmed cases worldwide. Of the current open cases, 91% are mild and 9% are serious or critical. Of the closed cases, 93% recovered and 7% died. In our country of the USA, we have had 1,832 cases, 41 of whom have died. There are 9 confirmed cases in our state of North Carolina and 10 in South Carolina, immediately over the border from where our home is located. As of publication on Friday night, these numbers are surely higher. We also note that the official accounting of "confirmed" cases is highly subjective to the point that it can't really be taken seriously. In order for a person to be counted they have to voluntarily come forward and volunteer to be tested with test kits that are scarce and hard to obtain. The so-called official contagion maps seem to driven by random number generators.
Frankly, I do not know what to think. Articles, calm opinions, hysterical opinions, good information, and misinformation abound on the Internet. Travel from China has been prohibited for weeks and this week the president suspended travel from Europe for 30 days. Entire school districts, entire universities, entire dioceses (all Masses), the National Basketball Association, all major events are being shut down. Friday is when everything truly shut down in Charlotte, NC, and over the course of the day I received emails from every organization we interact with cancelling all our upcoming events. Many more people will go bankrupt, businesses be ruined, and retirement savings will be devastated in the stock market than will people be medically effected by this virus. Being able to execute social distancing and even self-quarantining is a privilege of the elite (of which I admit I am): many people depend on a day-to-day, week-to-week subsistence earning just enough money to buy basic groceries and pay the utilities, many of them live off the tourist industry, and they cannot afford to stockpile food, nor afford to stay home without earning income for even a day or two. All these suggestions to work from home via modern technology are wonderful for white collar professionals, but help nobody else. Meanwhile, not only are shelves bare of hand sanitizer and medication, but they are bare of all goods, like diapers, baby wipes, toilet paper, food, and gas stations are empty of gasoline. This is causing circular rising panic even among those of us who are trying very intentionally not to hoard and perpetuate these negative reverberations. Even in China and Italy, both under the severest quarantines, the regular folk are allowed out to work and allowed out to shop at grocery stores, yet in America we are hoarding so that our fellow Americans truly will not have basics.
I am not advocating that we all go out in large gatherings and sneeze in public. As a mother, I am feeling fearful and anxious and having trouble sleeping. However, I keep reviewing the coronavirus data, knowing that my family is very healthy and young, so we should expect an entirely mild case, and my family can easily self-quarantine. My heart aches for those in my life who I know very well have a medically fragile child or the elderly loved ones among us.
This truly will be an unpopular opinion, but Craig Murray (of whom I know absolutely zero) wrote an interesting piece examining our current reaction to yet another pandemic and that we as humans seem to think we will never die no should we ever die--and note that he is writing as someone with a lung condition who knows he will absolutely die if he catches coronavirus. While we humans currently have massive amount of money and social campaigning promoting "saving the earth" and ensuring we do not populate it (via contraceptives and abortions), we also have scientists working to eradicate all causes of death, all diseases entirely, so nobody would ever have reason to die. If people live longer and longer and nobody dies, where does that leave us? As Christians (something Murray does not even mention), how should we be approaching the thought of death?
It turns out that my reading Preparation for Death by Alphonsus Ligouri over this Lent was very apt considering worldwide events.
Memento mori--every day, even when there is no novel coronavirus.
2. Music: Piano Recital at Steinway
Last Saturday included Mary's orchestral practice and the oldest three performing at a recital at the Steinway gallery--click here to enjoy some very beautiful music!--and Sunday included choir practice and Margaret's orchestral audition. (Mary's orchestral audition has been postponed indefinitely due to coronavirus.)3. Music: Youth Orchestras of Charlotte Concert at CPCC
As always, we enjoyed attending the youth orchestra concert last Monday, the second of three in her season this year. Click here if you'd like to enjoy a free concert from the comfort of your home and computer!
4. A Random Day in the Life: Monday
6:30 a.m.
Mama awake for day--late due to Daylight Savings change!
Drink coffee, nurse the toddler, check email, say prayers, do holy reading, update calendar, switch laundry loads, place Land's End clothing order, start straightening kitchen, set out breakfast ingredients. Various kids straggle downstairs, encourage them to do their own prayer and holy reading.
7:00-8:00 a.m.
Seventh grader is outside playing street hockey.
7:30 a.m.
Go upstairs to shower and dress. Leave fifth grader downstairs babysitting toddler and cooking breakfast for family (joy new to me this year!).
8:00 a.m.
Go back downstairs, help fifth grader finish last touches on breakfast. Empty clean dishwasher. Dress two littlest boys.
Serve hot breakfast (biscuits, sausage, yogurt), give orders for the day to the family, read aloud religious reading, run flash cards on music theory.
9:00 a.m.--A late start to school
History, read aloud new chapter for week, older kids take notes, younger kids color Lenten stations of the cross. Toddler throws fits a lot and repeatedly interrupts, gets out about five different puzzles/games with a zillion pieces and spreads them all across the kitchen floor. Nurse toddler while reading aloud. Discipline needed.
9:45 a.m.
Send fifth grader to tutor first grader in piano and music theory. Send seventh grader to play piano. Assign third grader to help me clean the kitchen and pick up all those puzzle pieces. Four- and two-year-olds have disappeared unsupervised upstairs to play. I learned later four-year-old had set up his nursery rhymes and Americana songs CD in the master bedroom: the exuberant singing he does helps him with his speech.
10:15 a.m.
Send third grader to do her math. independently. Discipline needed. Mama drinks second cup of coffee and breathes.
10:20 a.m.
Fifth grader starts piano. Discipline needed. Check on four-year-old. Make master bed. Mama teaches first grader penmanship and math. Nurse toddler while teaching.
10:40 a.m.
Seventh grader is done with piano. Assign him 10 minutes with toddler.
10:45 a.m.
Fifth grader finished piano so I assign her to help third grader finish math, as I've been bouncing between her and first grader. Get a Bandaid for first grader, discover four-year-old quietly and neatly doing water play, leave him alone.
11:00 a.m.
Turn on Bible television show to occupy two- and four-year-olds; two-year-old won't stay and watch, but follows me around. Set up seventh grader to do his math. Send fifth grader to practice violin. Sequester in the laundry room to sing math skip counting songs with first and third graders.
11:10 a.m.
Assign third grader to help first grader with his phonics words, as well as reading him Chapter 1 of a saint book. Sit down with seventh grader to help with math. Cycle between supervising seventh grader, emptying the clean dishwasher, and grading his math as he goes.
11:30 a.m.
Husband consults with me about our personal calendar and upcoming travel. Discussion.
11:45 a.m.
Fifth grader done with violin. She and I make lunch to set out. Seventh grader finishes math, Mama grades.
12:00 noon
Turn off the one-hour of Bible TV.
Lunch served to 5 kids: A melange of frozen taquitos, mac and cheese, PBJs, pretzels and hummus, and dinner leftovers.Kids rush outside to catch lizards, play street hockey, and ride bicycles in the cul-de-sac.
12:30-1:00 p.m.
Mama straps two-year-old in stroller for supervision and walks brisk circles around the cul-de-sac.
1:00 p.m.
Mama assigns four-year-old and first grader to quiet time in master bedroom (listening to CD and playing with plastic army men). Mama assigns third grader to piano and violin, fifth grader to online Socratic Discussion class, and seventh grader to independent subjects (logic, study skills). Mama puts away load of boys' clean laundry and tries to lay down two-year-old but is interrupted by child tattling on sibling. Discipline needed.
Mama starts running Latin flash cards with seventh grader when two-year-old emerges and nap routine must begin anew. Attempted. Failed. No nap for toddler today.
2:00 p.m.
Finish flash cards and do grammar with seventh grader. Re-assign wandering third grader to finish piano. Assign two- and four-year-olds plus first grader to play in the back yard. Assign fifth grader to finish grammar and vocabulary.
2:30 p.m.
Fifth grader finishes everything except literature and is released to play outside. Mama is cycling between email, cleaning the lunch dishes, and grading third grader's grammar and vocabulary as she goes. She finishes everything except music theory and literature and is released to play outside.
3:00 p.m.
Seventh grader goes on to his Socratic Discussion online class. Mama gets third cup of coffee--very unusual but she will be out late tonight--and reads a few articles.
3:30 p.m.
Mama picks up binders of sheet music and wooden toy blocks downstairs, plus plastic soldiers in master bedroom, and boys' bedroom in anticipation of babysitter arriving. Yes, the little kids should have done all that but this was easier than calling them inside from their blissful outdoor play.
4:00 p.m.
Babysitter arrives and takes over three little boys. Mama and three oldest get dressed up to leave.
4:45 Finally depart!
5:20 p.m.
Mary dropped off for orchestra
5:30-6:15 p.m.
Mama volunteers to serve dinner to musicians
7:30-9:00 p.m.
Big concert! Drive home, pay babysitter, collapse in bed at 10:00.
5. Cinema Screening with Producer
On Thursday night--before our whole calendar was basically cancelled--we actually hosted producer-director Daniel Rabourdin for a family dinner before a small group of five men came over to watch clips of Daniel's movie The Hidden Rebellion (2016) and discuss movie-making with him. I suspect that will be the last thing we are hosting for a while!Speaking of the cinema, I share a family movie we watched this week:
“The Small Miracle”-- reviews available at my list of movie reviews
Our children ages 4, 7, 8, 11, and 13-year-old loved this humorous, old film, which is appropriate for everyone: “A beautiful, touching story based on the book by Paul Gallico about a young Italian boy in Assisi who travels to Rome to ask the Pope's permission to let him take his dying donkey to the tomb of St. Francis to pray for a miraculous cure. Shot on site in Assisi and Rome.”Available: https://www.amazon.com/Small-Miracle-Vittorio-Sica/dp/B000MV8K36
6. Scholastic Scenes
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| Mary teaching catechism to four-year-old |
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| Coloring Lenten calendars |
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| Seven-year-old desiring to get right up close to the CD player while listening to TAN's Story of Civilization |
John's National Latin Exam was bright and early at 8:00 a.m. on Friday. Now we await the results for a couple of months!
7. Miscellaneous Moments
The children have been catching lizards daily and, while they are gentle with the reptilian friends, each day I put a stop to it because the lizards must be tired. Thomas (4) was extremely, jumping-up-and-down excited to have built this Lizard Playground for them.
Later the kids informed me that they had built their own fire pit! This led to Mom and Dad immediately freaking out and reminding them that they had better not ever use matches or light a fire, etc. (Remember when our four-year-old sneakily stuck a match in an electrical outlet in his bedroom, ignited it, and then blew it out? Thank you guardian angels from protecting us from losing our entire home!)
I'm a much more boring maker of lunch than my 11-year-old daughter, who made a requested Jelly Pig for the boys.
Thomas (4-1/2) has been so angry lately that I still make him drink out of a "kid cup" (Contigo cup with sealed lid and a straw) but all we have in the house are huge acrylic cups which cause floods of spills in the hands of wee children. This week, Daddy made a deal with him that if Thomas would just go potty in the middle of the night silently and by himself instead of waking us up every time to escort him all the way down the dark hallway to the bathroom, then we would buy him Big Boy Cups just his size. This kid made the change immediately! And he was beaming with pride and delight when the little 6-ounce acrylic cups arrived on our doorstep.
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| Big Boy cups just his size |
And after a big and busy week, we are all very tired!
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| David asleep |
For more 7 Quick Takes Friday, check out This Ain't the Lyceum--where she knows how to write about coronavirus in a humorous way!
Dear Katherine,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your thoughts and some additional information about the Coronavirus situation that we’re all trying to make sense of. It prompted some deep thinking.
We feel humbled in the face of a situation that could not only kill the most vulnerable, the aged but may also result in an economic disaster not only for the poor but anyone whose livelihoods depend on a job working for a company or business that can no longer function or support them.
Who can best cope with the impending danger? Certainly the poor and uneducated are the most vulnerable. However the wise know no class. Recently I overheard an exasperated man, dressed like a laborer ask a clerk at CVS, “what’s all this about toilet paper?“. My Princeton educated husband asked me the same thing, “why toilet paper?”. So I started thinking yeah, why. Could it be because we need to make sure we are clean to prevent the spread of more germs? Perhaps. But then I decided to google it. According to a supermarket consumer expert at MIT the need to hoard as the Germans call it “Hamsterkauf” buy like a hamster, is a result of a desire to control an uncertain and confusing situation. But why toilet paper? He went on to explain that it is an easy to grab large item to stockpile. Large equals a lot! But why fill up the car or buy up all the hand sanitizer and water till there’s none left? Yes, we can lose our rational minds when driven by fear and then begin to do what others do without thinking about. It would be prudent to prepare but not to panic. We’re all vulnerable. Let us be humble, faithful and pray.
Hail Mary of the most Holy Rosary Our Mother Mary hail, pray for us, pray for our protection.
Ann
PS Find your post thoughtful and inspiring.
Those are meditative thoughts and I love learning the word "Hamsterkauf." After I wrote my post, I had a late-night conversation with my brother-in-law who is general manager of a grocery store and his description of the last week and his reports of what his suppliers are telling him left me panicked and definitely wanting to "Hamsterkauf."
Delete“Hamsterkauf” is the order of the day! As one of your other readers commented, let us remember our neighbors. God bless us all.
DeleteThe 138,585 cases are worldwide, not in the USA. :) (I'm saying this as I sit in a state with 568 cases, 37 deaths, and 3 cases in my rural county. It's very real here.)
ReplyDeleteHummus, by the way, is a really good dip for raw veggies. It's one of the ways I'm getting through being vegetarian for Lent.
Typo corrected! Yes, I'm a big fan of hummus.
DeleteI thought the toilet paper issue was because if you are quarantined so you can't shop or if there is an interruption in the supply chain or what have you, the last thing you want to run out of is toilet paper.🤔
ReplyDeleteI wish I knew what to think as well. It's certainly painful to think about not only the health impact but also the financial. I want to believe that it will all work out, certainly some people are making a fortune right now. But I don't know if it's as many as those who are losing. Hopefully the panic will subside soon and things will rebound.
The linked article is an articulate way of saying what a lot of people are probably thinking. We're all going to die someday. Then again, it seems the extreme measures that are being taken in cancelations, etc., are not to prevent the inevitable of death overall, but to "flatten the curve," keep from overwhelming the health system and force healthcare workers to make impossible choices. Especially right now when there have been delays in properly testing everyone who should be and no one really knows how many cases there are or how severe the situation will be in a few weeks without doing anything to curb new infections.
Prayers for all, especially the Healthcare workers.
Definitely, I am in support of these behavior changes to flatten the curve. We have a superior medical system here in the USA and, as long as we have enough beds because we have flattened the curve, I have great hope for our having a lower death rate here.
DeleteI'm glad you mentioned the cost of quarantine on the poor. I've already heard of a few layoffs happening at hotels, event centers, etc.
ReplyDeletePeople need to talk about that aspect too, and to keep an eye on their neighbors.
I'm so disgusted by the management of this disease, worldwide. The more I read, the more alarmed I get about catching it, but I still believe, like you, that more people will die from the worldwide economic disaster than the disease itself. As with an ever changing climate, there are natural ways to diminish the population---disease and warfare being the biggest. Yet we are convinced that we know best *who* should die (unborn babies and old, depressed, or sick people). Those that are allowed live should have an antiseptic life with plenty of tp, vaccines to prevent illness of any kind, and anything else they want when they want it! I hope that the British model of Covid management is successful and that the rest of the world can recover simply because every.single.one. of us is in the same boat. Today is Monday and I thought my husband's job as a lawyer would be relatively secure through this, but with the legal system in GA on a 1-month standstill, it's going to hurt more than I thought. And even if he still has work and clients, he still depends on them making their payments. Lots of prayers and sacrifices are needed this Lent!
ReplyDeleteSara,
DeleteI also thought attorneys would be immune from economic harm, but your description shows me how wrong I was! We are all feeling very insecure right now. I also am distressed by how all this is playing out.
Katherine