Historical Record

17 May 2021

 

Soon.  Very soon. In the near future I will be closing this blog down.  The plague year is drawing to a close.  What I wrote will simply become another historical record of the past 15 months.  With the CDC dropping mask requirements, and with state governments rapidly abandoning their own Covid rules, things will arrive at a new balance point. The term balance point makes sense because what comes next will not be the old normal and it may a bit of time before we come to know what is the new normal.  We will however come to a point of acceptable living and working norms.

 

What will be gleaned from this particular “historical record”?  Not much, just one old retired male’s take on what he experienced with a world largely shut down. Hopefully the kindnesses I experienced with various neighbors and friends will show up clearly.  There were people who called and contacted my wife when they were going to stores we liked just to see if we needed anything. There were couples we managed to work into our life with social distanced movie nights out on the deck.  For the cost of three trips to a regular theatre we were able to create a projection theatre on warm nights. There were the long e-mails, texts and messages that talked about the pandemic, politics, life and everything. I found myself back in touch with people I respected and loved.

 

I hope the connections forged in this year don’t disappear.  I hope the banal small talk cloud doesn’t reappear. You know what I mean, all the filler conversations we used to have at the office. I hope we all realize how fragile our respective holds on these moments of life are. Flowers are a little brighter right now and bird songs are a little bit cheerier.

 

One thing I know I will remember is the value of a good back yard.  When a year passes where you cannot socialize in communal settings like parks, libraries, bars, restaurants and concerts, having a nice table, comfortable outdoor chairs, a good canvas umbrella and pleasant surrounding flora matter. Without my backyard I would have gone bat sh*t crazy over the last year.  

 

With the New Plague Journal gone where will I direct my creative juices. In the best of all possible worlds, I would drop back to my old blog. But no. Facebook has determined those writings to be against their standards. Despite my repeated attempts to get Facebook to revisit the ban, they still won’t let me post links to what is written there. I guess I will be creating a new blog.  I am not quite sure what it will be about.  Best guess?  How about my upcoming three-month trip to Europe?