“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.” — Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe I don’t need to tell you that our world has become as bizarre and inexplicable as anything in the loonier fringes of science fiction. Having just returned to my native California after a very long absence, I feel as if I’ve passed through a time warp to arrive on another planet in a galaxy far, far away, possibly in a parallel universe. Everything's different now, including my name, which is currently being dragged through the mud. I’ve been called Karen since 1951 and always considered it a serviceable moniker, if not particularly romantic or inspiring. Karen is a Danish form of Katherine that’s said to mean “chaste or pure.” (Possibly my parents were trying to send me a message; if so, it didn’t take.) Yesterday I learned that in American pop culture “Karen” has now become synonymous with pushy, sanctimonious, anti-vaccine, down-with-science, quarantine-is-communism, let-me-speak-to-the-manager middle-aged women — like the Tennessee gal photographed holding a sign reading “Sacrifice the weak, reopen TN .” When Las Vegas mayor Carolyn Goodman proposed reopening the city’s casinos early as a “control group” to measure infection rates, she was called “an idiot,” “an actual monster,” and worst of all, “a Karen’s Karen.” Yikes! Obviously I'll have to change my name to something less cringeworthy. What’s trending now in California? For females, it's often nature themes such as Luna, Meadow, and Elm; pop culture faves like Khaleesi, Lennon, and Paisley; hippy classics including Freedom, Nirvana, and Karma; and such non-binary names as River, Bear, and Noor (which means “light”). Do any of those sound like me? I don’t think so either. But these days it isn't easy to define myself, let alone the cultural norms I'm supposed to live by. I miss the simplicity of Spain, which has a single national policy based on medical science. Lawmakers brawl over the details behind closed doors, but eventually they hammer out a plan and speak with a single voice, applying the rules uniformly throughout the country, with clear consequences (substantial fines, even jail time) for those who flout the law. You may not agree with every detail of the plan, but you always know where you stand in Spain. Here in America, it’s like trying find your equilibrium on a Tilt-a-Whirl fairground ride. For instance, the CDC tells everyone returning from abroad to quarantine at home for two weeks, avoiding shared workspaces, classrooms, and public transportation. So far so good. But does that mean I can or cannot go out for walks? Is it OK to put on protective gear and shop for food? When friends drop by, should I ask them to leave? I can’t find a word online about any of this, and believe me, I’ve looked. The only thing the CDC made abundantly clear is that I'm supposed to make notes twice daily on the form they gave me at the airport, recording any symptoms (cough, shortness of breath) and my temperature. Fun fact: even our body temperature has a new normal. The old standard of 98.6, established in 1851, has been recalibrated to a range of 97.5 to 97.9. Unfortunately, my readings kept falling short of those benchmarks, hovering around 95.5, then 94.3 and finally plunging to 93 degrees. I began to worry I’d contracted a sort of reverse COVID-19 (91-DIVOC?). Eventually, I realized the thermometer was broken. Whew! I tossed out the useless thing and had Amazon deliver a new one the next day. And this brings me to one of the other gee-whiz-this-really-is-the-future aspects of my life in California: insanely fast online ordering. Yes, Seville has grocery delivery and Amazon.es, but I rarely use them. Even during the lockdown, Rich and I found it quicker and easier to don protective gear and walk to the market one block over. Now, in perpetual confusion over American self-quarantine protocols, I’m playing it safe for everyone’s sake, staying home and ordering online from the market five blocks away. It’s astonishing. Almost before I hit “send,” I start getting texts: Shopping for you now … Out of that brand of honey, how about this one? ... Our driver is on their way … Minutes later the stuff’s at my back door. I couldn’t get groceries that fast if I sent Rich sprinting out to buy them. Being homebound, I can’t really comment on how the re-opening is going here, beyond noting that my region’s numbers are very low and state officials are proceeding cautiously and systematically, following the recommendations of qualified health professionals. (I know; what a concept!) Mostly the priorities make sense; markets, pharmacies, gas stations, drive-in movies, dog groomers. But I was shocked to learn that, inexplicably, beauty parlors are not yet on the list of essential services. In Seville, barber shops and hair salons opened two weeks ago, but in the flurry of activity surrounding our departure, I decided to wait until I was back in the US. Boy, am I regretting that decision. Yesterday I persuaded Rich to trim the seriously shaggy mess at the base of my neck. He did well in this test area and may get the rest of the job soon. True, there aren’t a lot of other candidates right now. Although some of those dog groomers might be able to pep up my style. Looking well-groomed, or at least not hideously unkempt, is my way of prepping for that glorious day when I come out of quarantine and go back into the world, possibly under a new name. Rainbow McCann? Dharma McCann? Nope and nope. I’ve also crossed Harmoni and Wynter off the list, because after a lifetime of proofreading, I couldn't abide going around with a name that looks like a typo. “Our names,” said essayist Logan Pearsall Smith, ”are labels printed plainly on the bottled essence of our past.” He’s right. “Karen” is writ large on the story of my life. Why should I give it up, just because it’s been temporarily appropriated as shorthand for a particularly appalling category of crackpot? Confucius says, “The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.” So hey, everybody, call me Karen. Are you in a place that's relaxing quarantine and re-opening? How's it going? What are you noticing as you venture out into the world? Let me know in the comments below. 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How harrowing was it? I was reminded of a thriller I read when I was nineteen. This young woman is walking home from choir practice, alone, in the dark, knowing there is a vicious killer around preying on people her age. Obviously anyone with any sense would have clung to a pillar of the church — literally or in the person of the priest — and demanded sanctuary, or at least a ride home. But this intrepid idiot walks the whole way, past the graveyard and the old quarry, wondering if each snapping twig is just an animal and whether those are footsteps behind her or simply wind rustling the leaves. My point is, I was a bit jittery. In fact, I leapt out of my skin if anyone coughed, even if it was me. Our journey began Sunday with a walk to the railway station, our luggage stuffed with hand sanitizer, face masks, latex gloves, moist towelettes, three kinds of spray disinfectant, blankets, inflatable pillows, and enough Oatmeal Raisin Spelt Cookies to sustain life for days. I’d made a donation at the shrine of San Pancracio, the patron saint of health. My bases were covered. It was all systems go. Seville's railway station set the tone for the trip; it was as dimly lit as the set from an apocalyptic movie, with a few silent, masked figures skulking in the distance. On the nearly empty train, I sprayed our seats, arm rests, and tray tables with antiseptic before settling in. “Did you see that?” Rich later whispered to me. Actually, he was practically shouting, but his voice was so muffled by the mask and shield I had to lean in and listen hard. “See what?” “That skinny, nervous guy who got on in Cordoba? He just left his seat and went to join another guy. They don’t seem to know each other. And now they’re sharing a bottle of water." Wow, talk about living on the edge. In Madrid our chatty cab driver gestured so much with his hands that I figured he must be steering with his knees, giving me something fresh to worry about for the short ride to the hotel. Rich had requested a room stripped of all pillows, blankets, and duvets, which we’d read are potential germ vectors; our boxy little room was very bare. As the team member in charge of hygiene protocols, I insisted our masks and shields stay on until we’d sanitized the room. “Saturate everything,” I said, handing Rich the extra-powerful disinfectant spray I’d ordered online. I headed into the bathroom with some household disinfectant, grabbed a hand towel, and got to work. I was swabbing the sink when a great cloud of noxious fumes rolled through the door, a hideous, a mix of cockroach spray, tear gas, and brimstone. “What the hell?” Coughing and choking, I dashed into the bedroom. Rich was wrestling with the spray can, which was spewing great geysers of chemical fog in all directions. “I can’t shut this thing off!” he yelled, arms flailing wildly, like the famous “Danger: Vacuum” scene in Airplane II. Gasping, eyes watering, lungs on fire, I croaked,“I have to leave. Now.” I tore open the door and sprinted out into the corridor. The fumes followed. I rounded a corner. Still couldn’t get my breath. Turning again, I finally found breathable air. As I collapsed against a wall, wheezing and coughing, I noticed maids poking their heads out of doorways, eyeing me with alarm. Meanwhile, Rich struggled manfully to subdue the spray can. Personally, I’d have been tempted to chuck it out the window, like a live hand grenade, but he was right not to risk the loss of life below. “I managed to get the cap on,” he told me afterwards, “but then it was spouting out the sides in all directions. Finally I turned it upside down, and eventually, it stopped.” Setting the can down very carefully on its cap, Rich flung wide the window and flapped the door until the air quality was such that I could return. “You said ‘saturate everything,’” he said. “I didn’t mean the lining of my lungs.” We laid out our blankets and inflatable pillows and eventually slept. The next morning we had a couple of the cookies for breakfast and donned the shields we’d be wearing continuously for the next 24 hours, masks we’d swap out occasionally, and gloves we’d re-sanitize incessantly. The Madrid-Barajas Airport, which ordinarily serves sixty million passengers a year, was deserted. Nothing was open, not even a coffee stand. Our Boeing 788, designed for 180+ passengers, had perhaps thirty, spaced widely apart. And yet, inexplicably, they’d placed someone directly behind us. Rich and I hurridly switched to a more remote seat. The staff fed us as quickly as possible, then darkened the windows and turned off all the lights. I slept for much of the ten hours to Dallas. Before landing, we were handed a form: Did we have any COVID-19 symptoms? Had we been with anyone who had the virus? CDC personnel met our plane and repeated the questions, but it seemed surprisingly perfunctory. We were through health screening, immigration, and customs in less than 15 minutes. DFW’s main concourse was jumping; the fast food joints were open and there were plenty of passengers, many brushing past us with unmasked faces. When I learned our flight was 80% full, my horrified expression must have been visible even through the mask and shield because the woman at the desk kindly arranged to keep the third seat in our row empty. Arriving in San Francisco, Rich and I zipped through a nearly deserted terminal to meet the Uber driver who transported us to San Anselmo, making record time over empty freeways. We’re in quarantine for fourteen days to make sure we didn’t pick up the virus en route. It’s an honor system, and we intend to honor it fully. My sister Kate and her husband stocked the house with enough groceries for the duration, plus homemade bread, soup, and hummus. They left us two bottles from Sonoma Brothers Distilling: their signature gin and a gallon of hand sanitizer. This public-spirited company has risen to the occasion by retooling their factories to provide both essential products to a grateful nation. Now I know what you’ve been wondering. Whatever happened to that young woman in the thriller? Did she make it home safely? Well, she finally got frightened enough to run the last block; fumbling open her front door, she dashed inside and bolted the door. Had the danger, she wondered, only existed in her imagination? The last line read: “And then someone behind her cleared his throat.” Here’s hoping that COVID-19 isn’t going to provide us with that kind of shocker ending. So far we feel fine, our temperatures (checked twice a day as instructed) are normal, and we're grateful the long, unnerving journey is behind us. Yesterday, clearing out a cupboard to create more storage to accommodate all that food, I ran across this towel inspired by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s good advice, and I plan to keep on taking it. Special thanks to all those who wished us luck on the journey. And bless you, San Pancracio, for doing your bit to watch over us along the way. More Pandemic Perspectives & Humor
International Travel — In a Pandemic? Are We Nuts? Coming Soon: Nostalgia for Quarantine? Scofflaws, Naysayers & Coronavirus Myths In the Pandemic: Desperate Situations, Ingenious Solutions Why We All Feel Hopelessly Unproductive in Quarantine Quarantined? Take Mini-Vacations. For Betty White's Sake Months of Quarantine? OK, If That's What It Takes Yes, You CAN Stay (Relatively) Sane During Lockdown "Stranded" in Seville's Pandemic Lockdown When I was in high school, three guys I knew took off on a cross-country hitchhiking trip in bad weather, and as they walked out the door, Sam’s dad said, “Well, if you ask me, I think you’re crazy.” That instantly became a catchphrase, and whenever anyone we knew was about to do something dubious — which, being teenagers, was fairly often — somebody would shake their head in mock solemnity and say, “Well, if you ask me…” Why am I thinking of Sam’s dad’s words right now? Because on Sunday afternoon, Rich and I are walking to Seville's railway station, boarding a train to Madrid, spending the night in a hotel, and flying out the next morning to Dallas then on to San Francisco. After two months in quarantine, rarely leaving my apartment, having minimal contact with fellow humans or any objects I haven’t disinfected myself, and eating nothing that I didn’t wash and cook with my own hands, I’m heading out into a very uncertain world. Like many expats, I have important friendships, business interests, doctors, and family ties in the old country. Matters required our attention in California last summer, but when our Mediterranean Comfort Food Tour extended into fall, we decided to postpone everything until January. Then we discovered our closest Seville friends would be leaving for a year starting in April, so we delayed our departure until March. At which point, as you know, pestilence rose up and stalked the planet, so we hunkered down in our Seville apartment waiting for better times. Are those times here? Spain is cautiously emerging from quarantine. This week Seville entered Phase One, with outdoor bars re-opening and people flocking to them, hypothetically social distancing, in reality thrilling to the familiar-yet-strange sensation of rubbing elbows with a congenial crowd. The numbers could easily spike again. After many hours of discussion and countless glasses of wine (in the safety of our apartment), Rich and I concluded this was the best window of travel opportunity we might have all year. Am I worried about our safety on the journey? Are you kidding? Of course! My packing list includes masks, gloves, hand sanitizer, spray disinfectant, extra plastic inserts for our face shields, and sufficient homemade raisin nut oatmeal cookies to sustain life for forty-eight hours. A few clothes? Possibly. Garlic and a crucifix? Still under debate. I remind myself that five people we know flew home safely from Seville to the US the day before the pandemic lockdown, on crowded planes, without masks or gloves, armed with nothing but hand sanitizer. I also recall the harrowing story of a couple we know who were vacationing with their two young adult kids in Asia when the pandemic hit. The police raided the house one night, accusing them of playing loud music. Our friends and their kids were thrown in jail for three days until they pled guilty to resisting arrest and violating curfew. After posting an enormous bond, they were taken to a bigger town, tried, and sentenced to nine months in jail. Now I know what you’re thinking; do they have hand sanitizer and social distancing in Asian prisons? I'm guessing not. Anyway, our friends' story goes on to include fines and bribes of epic proportions until they got word to a relative who knew guy who knew a guy who found them a “fixer” who sent a “shadow” who got them released. Last we heard the family was on a nine-hour ferry ride to the mainland, to be followed by six hours in a taxi to the airport and a seventeen-hour flight home. I am betting our journey won’t be quite that exciting. To hedge that bet, I’ve been reading everything I can find about travel safety in the time of coronavirus. Train Safety Ideally, experts advise, avoid or sanitize high-touch surfaces such as handrails; when that’s not practical, stay as far from others as possible. “If you see someone cough or sneeze near you on the bus or train, and you’re more than six feet away from them, your risk is probably low,” says David Freedman, M.D., a professor of infectious diseases. Good to know! Airplane Safety “The risk of the disease being spread through an aircraft’s airflow system is relatively low,” says Consumer Reports. “That’s because the air is continually filtered through a HEPA filter, which can trap viruses.” The real concern is the people nearby. A study showed that if a fellow passenger has a respiratory illness, there’s an 80% chance people in the eleven adjacent seats will catch it; if you’re not in that zone, your chance of contracting it drops to 3%. Of course, that study was done in the old, pre-pandemic days when you flew without hazmat gear. Still, if anybody near us coughs even once, I’ll be asking for them to be removed to the cargo area. (Just kidding. I’ll volunteer to go down to the cargo area myself.) Hotel Safety Everyone advises wiping down all hotel room surfaces with disinfectant wipes — which unfortunately haven’t been available in Seville for months. However, I did find a disinfectant spray and plan to saturate every surface in the room, possibly including my husband. “Hand washing remains your best defense for infection prevention,” says environmental microbiologist Kelly Reynolds. “Remember to pack your own disinfecting wipes.” (If only!) “I often bring my own pillow too, since hotel pillows could be full of allergens and residual saliva… I recommend travelers remove the comforter to avoid potential contact with lingering bodily fluids that can harbor germs.” Yuck! We’re asking the hotel to remove all pillows, comforters, and blankets before we arrive; I'm packing inflatable pillows and small, lightweight travel blankets. California Safety The virus curve has flattened to almost nothing in our area north of San Francisco, but of course, it may come roaring back in the fall, bringing with it a renewed need for quarantine and more protests, fueled by the anti-vaccine folks and the gun lobby, demanding the right to spread the coronavirus more widely. In other news, wildfires are predicted to be higher than normal (if the word “normal” means anything anymore). Murder hornets have arrived on the West Coast and will no doubt want to take in San Francisco while they are there. Seismologists say the Golden State is seriously overdue for a major earthquake. And don’t get me started on the ballyhoo and shenanigans surrounding the US election. Come to think of it, Sam’s dad may be right; we’re probably crazy to be heading back there. But as I often say, America is something you have to stay in practice for, and I don’t want to lose my touch. We plan to return to Seville in the fall, world events permitting. For now, on the verge of plunging into America's chaos and uncertainty, at least I can count on one thing: it will never be boring. Wish us luck as we set out on our journey this weekend! And if you're not already on the email list, sign up here so you don't miss a single looney story. More Pandemic Perspectives & Humor
Coming Soon: Nostalgia for Quarantine? Scofflaws, Naysayers & Coronavirus Myths In the Pandemic: Desperate Situations, Ingenious Solutions Why We All Feel Hopelessly Unproductive in Quarantine Quarantined? Take Mini-Vacations. For Betty White's Sake Months of Quarantine? OK, If That's What It Takes Yes, You CAN Stay (Relatively) Sane During Lockdown "Stranded" in Seville's Pandemic Lockdown Right now our front hall looks like a field hospital, cluttered with masks, gloves, hand sanitizer, and our new, most prized possessions: face shields. When we wear them, Rich and I feel like astronauts in a very, very low-budget horror movie, suiting up to leave the mothership. But the fact we can go out for walks together, for the first time in nearly two months, is worth all the effort it takes to ignore how ridiculous we appear. Here in Spain, we’re cautiously “de-escalating the State of Alarm,” as the government likes to put it. We haven’t even entered Phase One yet, but so far Phase Zero has been pretty thrilling, with new freedoms and many stores and services (including hairdressers!) open at last. A friend returning from an appointment at my favorite salon described the atmosphere as “weird,” with staff and clients swathed in plastic, wearing masks and gloves, and trying not to breathe any more than strictly necessary. Frankly, it sounds hideous and I’m not rushing down there any time soon. I flatter (or delude) myself that for now, I’m doing a decent enough job of home hair maintenance. As we inch our way out of quarantine, I find myself looking back on the extraordinary experiences of the past two months as a sort of bizarro world, parallel universe version of adventure travel. Looking up definitions online, I saw adventure travel involves “stepping outside your comfort zone,” “experiencing culture shock,” and “some degree of risk or physical danger.” Yep, we can check off those boxes. It’s also about the narrative that shapes our experience, and the stories, jokes, photos, and videos that define the journey and show us what it’s taught us about the world, our times, and ourselves. Like heading off to, say, the Albanian mountains or rural Greece, being overtaken by the pandemic has thrown us all into culture shock as the world we know disappears in the rear view mirror. We’re cut off from friends, colleagues, habitual haunts, and daily activities, while spending an unprecedented amount of time with our closest companion(s). Every day we absorb new language (contact tracing, index case, herd immunity) and new customs (20-second hand washing, elbow sneezing, evening clapping). Every headline and meme boosts our hyperawareness of the physical risks of our situation (including occasional impulses to hurl ourselves or our companion(s) into the trash compactor). Some of my fellow travel writers are still producing jaunty little articles about the six best tiki bars on Maui, but I don’t see much point in praising the delights of going abroad when international borders are closed, those tiki bars are locked up tight, and anyone with any sense is sheltering in place. Old-school travel articles feel tone deaf, irrelevant, and downright cruel to anyone frustrated over being trapped at home, especially those with fussy toddlers, angst-ridden teens, or a fed-up spouse. Everybody’s speculating about what the post-pandemic world will look like, with timelines ranging from next month to never, but the truth is no one can guess how this thing is going to play out. “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present,” Abraham Lincoln once said. “The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.” With the past increasingly less pertinent and the future a mystery, we have little choice but to live — as the Buddhists have been advising for years — in the present moment. For me, the present moment is all about emerging from seclusion into the larger world. And that’s a journey as challenging and exhilarating as hiking in the Himalayas or canoeing on the Amazon river. I’m doing my best to comply with Spain’s four-phase plan, a classic piece of government bureaucracy that’s enormously complex yet surprisingly vague, subject to constant revisions, and hedged about with warnings that we’d better not run amok and cause the numbers to spike. Which apparently is government-speak for “Yes, we will arrest you for infractions of the rules, as soon as we figure out what we say they are.” As this chart shows, we’re now allowed out for walks and exercise by age group. Being 68, I can take a paseo (stroll) during the blue period (anyone over 14), to accompany my husband during the purple period (those over 70), or for exercise during the orange period (individual sports). No doubt if I put my mind to it I could also come up with a reason to be out during the only other time slot, the green period designated for kids under 14, but at this stage I’d just as soon avoid the darling little disease vectors as much as possible, so the question doesn’t really arise. The amount of time (one hour or two) and the distance we can travel (one kilometer from our home or anywhere in the municipality) are equally confusing, but luckily nobody’s paying much attention to those restrictions anyway. I’m grateful for the chance to go out, but already I’m faintly nostalgic for the cocoon of safety represented by weeks of being comfortably ensconced in my apartment. It’s a scary world out there. The virus curve may have flattened, but we still don’t have a vaccine to protect us if/when this thing comes roaring back in the fall. Other 2020 catastrophes-in-the-making include the world economy, US election, and our new friends, the gigantic carnivorous insects known affectionately as “murder hornets.” What’s next? Flesh-eating zombies? Oh right, something worse: climate change. With all that to look forward to, I suspect that in the months ahead, many of us will come to view the quarantine era as the calm before the hurricane. Life may echo Lincoln's words: “I pass my life in preventing the storm from blowing down the tent, and I drive in the pegs as fast as they are pulled up.” But this is where a lifetime of reading about travel adventures pays off. One of my favorites is Andrew Forstheofel’s 4000-mile walk from Philadelphia to New Orleans and then California. At 23, jobless, homeless, and single, he set off on foot with the vague idea of talking to people along the way and asking what advice they would give their 23-year-old selves if they could go back in time. The stories he recorded are marvelous, and in the end, most of the advice people would give their younger selves boiled down to this comment from a Maryland woman: “I wouldn't worry so much. I used to worry myself to death. And then now I realize the things you worry about, how many of them come true? Very seldom.” She’s right; even in these unnerving times, we don’t have to live in a permanent State of Alarm. As I ease into the neo-normal, I am trying to stay present to the moment, bake more bread, worry less, avoid binging on the news, and spend more time dancing with my husband. That’s my survival strategy and I’m sticking with it. I’ll let you know how it works out. What advice would you give your 23-year-old self, if you could go back in time? What do you think some of these people might have said to their younger selves? Let me know in the comments section below. More Pandemic Perspectives & Humor Scofflaws, Naysayers & Coronavirus Myths In the Pandemic: Desperate Situations, Ingenious Solutions Why We All Feel Hopelessly Unproductive in Quarantine Quarantined? Take Mini-Vacations. For Betty White's Sake Months of Quarantine? OK, If That's What It Takes Yes, You CAN Stay (Relatively) Sane During Lockdown Stranded" in Seville's Pandemic Lockdown |
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