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Feeling disconnected at the moment, mother's words regarding my description of myself not my own. I informed her that I was having troubles focusing on things, kept jumping from one thing to the next, and couldn't really stay with anything for long.
Mother: You sound disconnected to the world around you?
Me: Yeah, that's it.
1. I wish I could say the situation we're all finding ourselves in is getting better at the moment, but it's really not. Oh there are pockets that appear to be fine, disconnected pockets. Such as NY has a 1% infection rate at the moment, as does most of Britain, and a good portion of Europe and Canada - which has dropped below 1%. But alas, they aren't individual planetary bodies. We can't isolate ourselves completely and still stay afloat as a society.
Also, the selfishness of the human race boggles. Instead of banding together and helping each other - we're bickering like a bunch of inconsiderate teenagers fighting over which seat we get for the family road-trip.
However again there are individual pockets of hope. My own community for instance? Along Ocean Parkway they are gathering a group of folks to police the neighborhood and keep the gutters free of trash in response to various cuts in police and parks department/sanitation. And various neighbors have come out to clean gutters during recent storms so the streets didn't stay flooded. Also the Kesington/Windsor Terrace community has put together a community outreach group that is providing help and aid to those detrimentally affected by the crisis. I've given some money to it already. These little gestures give me hope.
People are trying, here and there.
2. Spoke to Wales this afternoon. She's doing well, and more or less the same as me. Her workplace has them coming into the office every other week. There's a group A and a group B. Week one - group A comes in and works in the office, Week 2 - Group B does. And they are split into time periods, one group arrives at 7:30 and goes home at 3:30, next at 8 and home at 4, next at 9 and home by 5. This will stagger people on subways and trains, and also in the workplace. No more tha 10 people on the floor at any time. She has about 25 people on her floor.
I've got about 80 on my floor, which is why I'll continue working remotely for the foreseeable future. They are giving priority to those who can't work remotely from home, having difficulty doing so, or never did - which is about twenty people right there. The rest of us get to continue to work from home indefinitely.
Everyone's broke - or all the states and businesses are. As Wales put it - we're about to dive into 1970s NY. I told her we were already there.
She also told me what was happening in our old burg - Kansas City. We're both originally from Kansas City, I was on the Kansas side and she lived on the Missouri side. She said that it's really bad at the moment. The peaceful protestors in the Plaza just had the Mayor and Governor of Missouri call in the Federal National Guard (which NY refused to do) to stop the looting and protests. According to Wales all the protestors requested was that the cops were body cameras (they already wear them in NY). Kansas City is highly segregated, in particular the Plaza. Kansas and Missouri are racist states, and segregated ones.
Wales: And you know how segregated Kansas City is.
Me: Yep. Very.
Hence the reason we left it. We got tired of fighting an uphill battle. Uphill my foot - try cliff.
That said, protests are still going on in NYC. Lots of civil unrest. Dyker Heights had fight between the Blue Lives Matter vs. The Black Lives Matter groups, and they were telling people to go out to Bay Ridge, and to be careful, to bring a buddy and a mask for a counter-protest against the Blue Lives Matter folks down there.
They also have an uptick in cases - because they are stupid. And have been put on New York's quarantine list.
3. Meanwhile, Canada is considering putting up a wall to keep out the pesky Americans. The US requested that Canada re-open its borders to US citizens, or at least start phasing in a plan to do so.
Canada to the US: Frack off. We're not opening up anything to you until you figure out how to control the spread of the virus. Keep your pesky germs to yourself.
So no, Canada is not opening it's borders any time soon. I wonder if they'll let New York and the Northeastern States that border them in?
And for the first time in forever - the Doofus wore a mask at a public event. He wore it wrong, but hey at least he wore one. Progress. Not a lot, but hey, beggars can't be choosers.
Meanwhile for reasons that escape me, Disney has gone forward with plans to re-open its amusement parks in Florida. Curious to see how long this lasts - possibly until folks start getting the virus. Florida is one of the states with an uptick in cases - in fact the three states with the highest uptick are Arizona, Florida, and South Carolina. (My parents live in South Carolina - but they are protected in an independent retirement living community on Hilton Head Island, also not the most socially active folks on the planet. I think they will be fine.) Arizona is not doing at all well, I hope my friends in Arizona are okay? The ones on FB who happen to live there, appear to be, but none of them have left their homes in over a month. Except to run necessary errands.
The US appears to be as disconnected at the moment as I am. For the last ten years I was striving to put things in place to ensure I wasn't disconnected when something like this occurred, but alas, thwarted at every turn. It is what it is.
Very sleepy for some reason. I've been having troubles staying awake all day. It's possibly weather related. A hot sunny day...in the 90s. Makes me feel sluggish.
4. Mother told me that she'd watched "Hamilton" today - in one sitting, no less. My father left the room - unable to follow it. She had no problems, she also had read the source material or the biography in which it was adapted from. So she knew most of the plot already. It didn't veer that much from the biography that she read - apparently. It just compressed a lot of things, and emphasized a few things that the book did not, like Jefferson being a bit of a Dandy. Also, King George wasn't featured in the biography at all. Although there were a lot of battles.
5. Did the whole "church" thing via Zoom. And in the chat - they got into a disagreement over whether "church" should be called a "church" or a "Society". I think there are a few frustrated Quakers in our church or frustrated liberal Jews, not to mention cultural humanists, all three hate the word "church", personally? I have issues with the word worship, but I'm clearly in the minority. I mentioned this to Wales and she said it was a North East thing, Northeasterners are weirdly nit-picky about what words you use for things, while Midwesterners don't care.
ME: Not entirely true. Midwesterners get huffy on pronouciation.
Wales: They hate the northeast, anything that smacks of the nortth east.
Me: This is true. But then the Northeast isn't overly fond of the Mid-west so it's kind of mutual.
Many Northeasterners consider the Midwest anything past the Hudson, and the West anything past the Mississippi. While most Mid-westerners, consider anything past the Mississippi the midwest, anything east of it, the East, and anything west of Kanasas, the West.
In short, people have been fighting over dumb things since I can remember.
The disagreement over church and society got resolved, kind of, when a few people piped in that this was not the place for this - and it didn't really matter. Some people needed to call it a church, some a society, let them. Not unlike the whole pronoun thing. I decided to stay out of it. Arguments over words and semantics, as you know by now, make me twitchy.
And right now? I find it really hard to care. People are dying of a virus. People are struggling to make ends meet. Who cares whether it is a church or society?
6. While writing this, I've almost drifted off to sleep twice. Apologies in advance for typos.
Oh, and apparently my intercom isn't fixed after all. Out of 77 units, mine is one of the ten units in which the intercom does not work. Lovely. This means I'm going to have to deal with someone entering the apartment to fix the intercom at some point in the not-so-distant future.
I discovered this after taking a walk to the vegetable/fruit stand around the corner - it's about five blocks away. It was too hot to walk around Greenwood Cemetery - I thought about it and almost did, but after five minutes, I thought, eh no...not doing this today. Too tired. And don't care.
I don't know if this is depression or what, I'm just finding it hard to care about things at the moment. Sluggish Sunday.
I just want to curl up in a ball and sleep. Can I do that? You can all wake me up when this nightmare is over?
On that wearisome note...here's some flowers...
Mother: You sound disconnected to the world around you?
Me: Yeah, that's it.
1. I wish I could say the situation we're all finding ourselves in is getting better at the moment, but it's really not. Oh there are pockets that appear to be fine, disconnected pockets. Such as NY has a 1% infection rate at the moment, as does most of Britain, and a good portion of Europe and Canada - which has dropped below 1%. But alas, they aren't individual planetary bodies. We can't isolate ourselves completely and still stay afloat as a society.
Also, the selfishness of the human race boggles. Instead of banding together and helping each other - we're bickering like a bunch of inconsiderate teenagers fighting over which seat we get for the family road-trip.
However again there are individual pockets of hope. My own community for instance? Along Ocean Parkway they are gathering a group of folks to police the neighborhood and keep the gutters free of trash in response to various cuts in police and parks department/sanitation. And various neighbors have come out to clean gutters during recent storms so the streets didn't stay flooded. Also the Kesington/Windsor Terrace community has put together a community outreach group that is providing help and aid to those detrimentally affected by the crisis. I've given some money to it already. These little gestures give me hope.
People are trying, here and there.
2. Spoke to Wales this afternoon. She's doing well, and more or less the same as me. Her workplace has them coming into the office every other week. There's a group A and a group B. Week one - group A comes in and works in the office, Week 2 - Group B does. And they are split into time periods, one group arrives at 7:30 and goes home at 3:30, next at 8 and home at 4, next at 9 and home by 5. This will stagger people on subways and trains, and also in the workplace. No more tha 10 people on the floor at any time. She has about 25 people on her floor.
I've got about 80 on my floor, which is why I'll continue working remotely for the foreseeable future. They are giving priority to those who can't work remotely from home, having difficulty doing so, or never did - which is about twenty people right there. The rest of us get to continue to work from home indefinitely.
Everyone's broke - or all the states and businesses are. As Wales put it - we're about to dive into 1970s NY. I told her we were already there.
She also told me what was happening in our old burg - Kansas City. We're both originally from Kansas City, I was on the Kansas side and she lived on the Missouri side. She said that it's really bad at the moment. The peaceful protestors in the Plaza just had the Mayor and Governor of Missouri call in the Federal National Guard (which NY refused to do) to stop the looting and protests. According to Wales all the protestors requested was that the cops were body cameras (they already wear them in NY). Kansas City is highly segregated, in particular the Plaza. Kansas and Missouri are racist states, and segregated ones.
Wales: And you know how segregated Kansas City is.
Me: Yep. Very.
Hence the reason we left it. We got tired of fighting an uphill battle. Uphill my foot - try cliff.
That said, protests are still going on in NYC. Lots of civil unrest. Dyker Heights had fight between the Blue Lives Matter vs. The Black Lives Matter groups, and they were telling people to go out to Bay Ridge, and to be careful, to bring a buddy and a mask for a counter-protest against the Blue Lives Matter folks down there.
They also have an uptick in cases - because they are stupid. And have been put on New York's quarantine list.
3. Meanwhile, Canada is considering putting up a wall to keep out the pesky Americans. The US requested that Canada re-open its borders to US citizens, or at least start phasing in a plan to do so.
Canada to the US: Frack off. We're not opening up anything to you until you figure out how to control the spread of the virus. Keep your pesky germs to yourself.
So no, Canada is not opening it's borders any time soon. I wonder if they'll let New York and the Northeastern States that border them in?
And for the first time in forever - the Doofus wore a mask at a public event. He wore it wrong, but hey at least he wore one. Progress. Not a lot, but hey, beggars can't be choosers.
Meanwhile for reasons that escape me, Disney has gone forward with plans to re-open its amusement parks in Florida. Curious to see how long this lasts - possibly until folks start getting the virus. Florida is one of the states with an uptick in cases - in fact the three states with the highest uptick are Arizona, Florida, and South Carolina. (My parents live in South Carolina - but they are protected in an independent retirement living community on Hilton Head Island, also not the most socially active folks on the planet. I think they will be fine.) Arizona is not doing at all well, I hope my friends in Arizona are okay? The ones on FB who happen to live there, appear to be, but none of them have left their homes in over a month. Except to run necessary errands.
The US appears to be as disconnected at the moment as I am. For the last ten years I was striving to put things in place to ensure I wasn't disconnected when something like this occurred, but alas, thwarted at every turn. It is what it is.
Very sleepy for some reason. I've been having troubles staying awake all day. It's possibly weather related. A hot sunny day...in the 90s. Makes me feel sluggish.
4. Mother told me that she'd watched "Hamilton" today - in one sitting, no less. My father left the room - unable to follow it. She had no problems, she also had read the source material or the biography in which it was adapted from. So she knew most of the plot already. It didn't veer that much from the biography that she read - apparently. It just compressed a lot of things, and emphasized a few things that the book did not, like Jefferson being a bit of a Dandy. Also, King George wasn't featured in the biography at all. Although there were a lot of battles.
5. Did the whole "church" thing via Zoom. And in the chat - they got into a disagreement over whether "church" should be called a "church" or a "Society". I think there are a few frustrated Quakers in our church or frustrated liberal Jews, not to mention cultural humanists, all three hate the word "church", personally? I have issues with the word worship, but I'm clearly in the minority. I mentioned this to Wales and she said it was a North East thing, Northeasterners are weirdly nit-picky about what words you use for things, while Midwesterners don't care.
ME: Not entirely true. Midwesterners get huffy on pronouciation.
Wales: They hate the northeast, anything that smacks of the nortth east.
Me: This is true. But then the Northeast isn't overly fond of the Mid-west so it's kind of mutual.
Many Northeasterners consider the Midwest anything past the Hudson, and the West anything past the Mississippi. While most Mid-westerners, consider anything past the Mississippi the midwest, anything east of it, the East, and anything west of Kanasas, the West.
In short, people have been fighting over dumb things since I can remember.
The disagreement over church and society got resolved, kind of, when a few people piped in that this was not the place for this - and it didn't really matter. Some people needed to call it a church, some a society, let them. Not unlike the whole pronoun thing. I decided to stay out of it. Arguments over words and semantics, as you know by now, make me twitchy.
And right now? I find it really hard to care. People are dying of a virus. People are struggling to make ends meet. Who cares whether it is a church or society?
6. While writing this, I've almost drifted off to sleep twice. Apologies in advance for typos.
Oh, and apparently my intercom isn't fixed after all. Out of 77 units, mine is one of the ten units in which the intercom does not work. Lovely. This means I'm going to have to deal with someone entering the apartment to fix the intercom at some point in the not-so-distant future.
I discovered this after taking a walk to the vegetable/fruit stand around the corner - it's about five blocks away. It was too hot to walk around Greenwood Cemetery - I thought about it and almost did, but after five minutes, I thought, eh no...not doing this today. Too tired. And don't care.
I don't know if this is depression or what, I'm just finding it hard to care about things at the moment. Sluggish Sunday.
I just want to curl up in a ball and sleep. Can I do that? You can all wake me up when this nightmare is over?
On that wearisome note...here's some flowers...