Poetic Impressions:

• “Chicken and Waffles Wednesday” is now “Closed”

• A sheet of styrofoam casually blows out of a dumpster.

• Unpowered neon signs behind plate glass windows and locked doors.

• Smell of spring and uneasiness.

• Green grass fails hope.

• Evenly spaced parade of small groups of evening constitutional walkers.

• New joggers..

• The steel rolling door rattles closed it’s last at 4:00 p.m.

• Concerned blue collars. Jovial white collars. They think it’s a “vacation”.

• Homes being repaired and cleaned. Lovely for foreclosure.

• Sans communications is the happiest time of the day.

Play-by-play

We started the week still calling it the Corona virus. As the week went on it got different names. COVID-19 and Covid “novel” seemed to be the popular scientifically produced names. By the end of the week, Trump coined “Chinese Virus”, which got everyone crazy and xenophobia nonsense became the ugliness of the day.

At the beginning of the week, there were still lots of jokes and memes about the beer. Most of that was gone by the end of the week. By the end of the week, most joking seems to be grouped around being imprisoned with your family and loved ones. It’s good that people are still finding humor.

At the beginning of the week, things were weird, but most everything was still open. Midweek, the Governor Wolf called for the closing of all businesses by Thursday at end of business. Most complied, some did not, or did so more slowly than requested. This was a very sad conclusion to the week, as most blue collar folks I know had hoped to be able to keep their jobs. Many sad faces.

During the entire week, there seems to be a division between blue collar folks and white collar folks. The more educated seem to be playing this off as more of a “vacation” than anything. Many of them can make the jump to work from home on their computer. I think what they are miscalculating is that when all the “doers” are sitting at home, the work for the paper pushers will also grind to a halt. This will be true, but with rare exception (like my wife) who does online schooling, and who is more busy than ever as enrollment skyrocket.

Liz and Jake seem to be working their respective “programs”. Jake got laid off from work and is in Philly. He seems to be content for now to simply hunker down with his girlfriend (Sarah) and ride it out for a while. He’s looking forward to working on his music and maybe some unemployment checks. Liz is simply doing her online classes as she wraps up the semester at home, like all the rest of the student of America.

Driving down the road is depressing. My “poetic impressions” above kind of sum up my experiences. More to come.

Weeks like this week make me glad to be the oldest Decoteau. I don’t think I would want to have the added burden of taking care of the elderly family members as this progresses. Silver lining, I suppose.

As a dark, but necessary note: talks of having enough food and ammo are happening a lot in many of my circles. All hope it doesn’t get to that. Tribes are forming (or at least the logistics of tribe-forming). No one wants to think that this will become a necessity, but….

More later.