You call it maize

I'm sorry people, I'll apologize right up front, because I was trying, I had intended, to keep my mouth shut about the coronavirus panic. And I mean exactly that: this is panic, not pandemic. Or perhaps better, and I do so love alliteration, a panic pandemic of powerful proportions. There: pop all those Ps.

Of the best advice out there I have not heard a thing - not one thing - which is not common sense anyway. I've avoided my elderly mother in recent years when I've had any type of illness. I wash my hands regularly. This is no different.

Or what makes it different (such as it is) is the panic. I would never, ever downplay the effects death has on the person who dies or their family. But as of this morning we are only at 3,200 cases in the US with only 68 deaths. Other things will kill more people this year. This does not merit the panic.

And it is panic. Last week at this time there were few thoughts if any about shutting down sports. Now everything's shut down. That's not sensible. That's not a measured response. It is panic.

I think what's most worrisome in this is that we'll never really know if the shutdowns actually ended the problem. Corona, or Covid-19 or whatever you want to call it, may have died quickly on its own without all the closings. But now that we've had the closings, if they seem to have worked, well, we better expect a major closing of everything once every year or two now, because the precedent has been set.

Calm down. Sit back and take a breath. Do the common sense things. In the meantime, I'm going to work. Ain't no media driven, government enhanced, stock market dragon gonna get my work done but me. Might as well do it.

You call it sensible. I call it fear mongering. Now that's a dragon which feeds itself all too well and easily, and recent events show. It's not getting fat on my time or dime.

How I spent the weekend (so far)

This weekend has been weird. Perhaps it has been for many of us I suppose. I think maybe what's felt oddest is that my weekend has been actually rather normal. It's the other stuff, the coronavirus crap, which makes it feel unusual.

Myself, I have done little differently. I spent close to six hours at my Shop playing catch up yesterday. I washed a load of towels because it seemed there were an overabundance of towels in the laundry basket. I took my morning walk and will take another by 8 or 9 this morning. I ate Chinese.

Whatever the reason for the general panic it didn't hit downtown Detroit. Our local supermarket, indeed all nearby stores, stayed stocked and operating. They even had plenty of toilet paper. Oh, Lysol and hand sanitizer and the like were gone. But nothing else was different at all.

It was very strange not to go to Church. I take my mother to Saturday Mass and of course that didn't happen. Detroit and many Catholic dioceses have closed the Churches to large (or, sadly, large-ish) gatherings such as Church services. I'll watch Mass on TV sometime this morning (I've already checked my options and I have several) yet I know that just won't seem right. I'm not a shut in. At least, not by choice, though I suppose most shut-ins rarely are.

I read, but I've been doing a lot of that anyway the last several years. I watched a quite charming movie yesterday, Yesterday, on On Demand. It was about a man who, after a bizarre event, was the only one to remember The Beatles and their songs. It was one of those movies 'they don't make anymore', charming and engaging and, at the risk of sounding puritan, clean. After watching and liking Gran Torino a few weeks back I am beginning to rethink my attitude on recent cinema.

Though I don't watch sports all that much it was very weird to find no live sports on TV. Very weird. I watched a bit of bowling but it had been taped.

I'm going to stop here because I don't really want to get preachy. I only want to reflect on things. And I've just ended up simply shaking my head.