 Blueberries are a superfruit that can reduce depression, clarify our consciousness, and (some say) improve our karma. When I was a college freshman, one of my roommates came home from a consciousness-raising seminar and announced that from now on she was eating nothing but purple foods. “They have the highest karmic level,” she explained. Some guru had convinced her beets, blueberries, and raspberry ice cream would keep her karma in tip top condition. Luckily she moved out soon after that, leaving me with dark stains on the kitchen sink and a cynical view of fad diets. Many years later, when I was working as a health editor for a magazine, I often ran across dietary advice that seemed equally loony to me, and I was all set to laugh off the idea stress could be reduced by eating certain foods — including (you’ll love this) beets and blueberries. But then I read the science behind some of the claims, and I realized it wasn’t all hooey. In the past few years I’ve written about how coffee lowers depression and chocolate reanimates our brains. Lately I began wondering what current research showed about other feel-good fare. Because if specific foods can alleviate stress and anxiety, clearly I need to be adding them to my shopping cart right now.  I probably don't need to tell you coffee and chocolate are mood foods. These are my Skinny Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies; I used molasses in place of half the honey, making them extra dense and rich. As you may have noticed, this has been a pretty discouraging week for those tracking the progress of COVID-19 here in America. The chaos and craziness are spiking along with our infection rate, and there’s no end in sight. “This is no longer something to get through,” my brother-in-law Jeff said Monday. “This is our life now.” His tone reminded me of a comedy about a comet on a collision course with Earth, where the protagonist says in amazement, at the start of every episode, “This is it. The actual apocalypse.” OK, maybe our situation isn’t quite that dire. But just about the only thing we can predict with any certainty is that our future will include more bad news and high anxiety. If there are food items that can ease the mental pain, I’m ready to pile them on my plate. So what should we eat to reduce stress and increase our sense of wellbeing? In a spirit of selfless research on behalf of my readers, I spent this week trying out recipes recommended as mood enhancers. I know, it’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it, and Rich kindly volunteered to help. “More comfort food?” he said. “I’m in!” Top on every list of mood enhancers are salmon, sardines, and other fish bursting with Omega-3 fatty acids. Studies have shown that eating more fatty fish is associated with lower rates of depression and an increase in our ability to think clearly. Who doesn’t need that, especially in these challenging times? Rich happily fired up the barbecue for a batch of Grilled Salmon Burgers with Avocado Salsa, sourced from the appropriately named Laughing Spatula. [Don't worry, I've included links to the recipes below.]  Grilled salmon burgers topped with guacamole seemed to call for sweet grilled peaches and some of my friend Phil's famous sourdough bread. Avocados are high on most lists, too, containing not only those feel-good Omega-3 fatty acids but large amounts of a B-vitamin called folate. Scientists believe folate deficiency messes up mood-influencing chemical messengers known as neurotransmitters (serotonin, dopamine, etc.) causing irrational fears and anxiety. I’m not saying more folate will make all our worries — or the coronavirus — fade from consciousness, but hey, let’s keep the guacamole coming and see what happens. Most green vegetables contain plenty of folate plus other brain-beneficial vitamins and antioxidants. Broccoli and artichokes are considered particularly good mood boosters, so with my vegan sister and brother-in-law coming to lunch on Monday, I added a large jar of grilled artichokes to the simple, yummy Vegan Broccoli Rice Casserole. I’ve had long discussions with Kate about social distancing protocols, and this was a practice run for summer entertaining, 2020-style. I wanted a one-dish meal I could serve on the deck, with proper social distancing and full non-contamination procedures. I baked it in two small casserole dishes, so each couple could have one to themselves. When it was ready, I put on my mask and oven mitts to remove their portion from the oven, placing it on the table in front of them, piping hot and absolutely germ free. They seemed to appreciate the gesture and love the casserole. Yogurt is another top mood food. It’s full of probiotics, which, like the more familiar antibiotics, are active microorganisms; yogurt's probiotics are great for digestion and, according to recent research, can be a powerful way to fight depression. I used to buy low-fat brands, but a few years ago in Athens, I fell in love with the rich flavor of full-fat Greek yogurt. Does it have more mood-boosting benefits than the watered-down variety? It does for me. When Rich and I made Persian Grilled Chicken, which is marinated overnight in whole-milk yogurt, saffron, and lemon, the results were little short of nirvana. We served it with Pear Salad with Dried Cherries and Candied Walnuts, because A) green leafy vegetables and nuts are full of Omega-3s and antioxidants, and B) they had me at candied walnuts. OK, about those beets and blueberries. It turns out my college roommate wasn’t entirely bonkers. Well, maybe she was; incredibly, there has never been any proper, in-depth scientific research into the effects of purple food on karma. But blueberries now top the list of superfruits, reducing depression, improving mental and physical equilibrium, enhancing memory, clarifying our thoughts, and much more. This was thrilling news for me, as I happen to love blueberries on my morning oatmeal (a brain-boosting grain that stabilizes blood sugar and reduces mood swings).  I cooked some dried cherries and roasted cashews in with the old-fashioned oatmeal, then topped it with fresh blueberries. As for beets, they contain betain, a vitamin that helps produce serotonin, along with mood-stabilizing magnesium. But that’s irrelevant in our household, because Rich finds beets utterly revolting and wouldn’t eat one to save his life, much less add pep to his step. “I have to draw the line,” he said. “If you want to research beets, you’re on your own.” So I didn’t cook any beets, nor did I follow through on my plan to try making Loaded Anti-Stress Chocolate Chip Cookies. I purchased all the ingredients, then realized the recipe required grinding 2.5 cups of raw oats into flour, which using my mini coffee grinder would take approximately the rest of my life. I began hyperventilating at the very idea. Then it occurred to me that the recipe was totally superfluous. All chocolate chip cookies are sure-fire anti-stress fare; you no doubt have a favorite recipe and don’t need me to tell you how fabulous you feel biting into one warm from your oven (or even just reliving the memory). It’s heartening to know that some of the most delicious foods in the world are good for our bodies and spirits in unexpected ways. They not only give us pleasure but may help us navigate our turbulent times with a bit more energy, grace, and humor. As the Irish saying goes, “Laughter is brightest where food is best.” Bon appetit, amigos. Discovered any great, mood-enhancing recipes? Please tell me about them in the comments below. MORE ABOUT MOOD FOODS TO LIFT YOUR SPIRITS ON DARK DAYS Want me to keep you in the loop and let you know when I post more survival tips, recipes, and other fun stuff? Just send me your email.
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 San Francisco designer Danielle Baskin models her brainchild, the Facial ID Respirator Mask you'll soon be able to order printed with your very own features. For inspired lunacy, it’s hard to beat the idea of a pandemic mask printed with the lower half of your very own face. We’ve spent months feeling stripped of our visual identity by surgical masks and struggling to express our personalities through face coverings of cheery print fabrics or don’t-mess-with-me dark solids; is now the time to show the world who we really are? Maskalike is hoping to launch their line of personal face masks soon. In the meantime, how about a t-shirt that shows what you looked like back in the days when we all went around barefaced?  During the early months of the pandemic, underemployed creative types kept busy posting memes and song videos we could all enjoy for free. Now they’re designing and marketing products that let them express the same humor and existential angst, only now they’re hoping to make a few dollars by turning them into saleable items like t-shirts and mugs. A quick scroll through Etsy, an online marketplace for cottage industries, reveals a wealth of wit and wisdom. Chuckling over a clever t-shirt is just one small way to lighten these dark times and help us maintain a grip, however tenuous, on our sanity. I recently received an article from my medical provider titled, “Is the coronavirus pandemic affecting your mental health?” (Is it paranoid to wonder if they sent this to everybody or just me?) The story linked to a podcast about the symptoms that could indicate you need psychiatric help, including:
Let’s face it, if you’re not experiencing at least some of those symptoms, you haven’t been paying attention lately.  A demolished building in downtown San Anselmo has become a temporary picnic park. Just this morning I heard on the radio that California’s numbers took an uptick of worrying proportions: 42,000 new COVID-19 cases in the last two weeks, representing 25% of the state’s total cases so far. It’s hard to match up those figures with the “let the good times roll” atmosphere I’m seeing around me. Our little town of San Anselmo has started closing the main thoroughfare on weekends to allow café tables to spill out into the street. Friends gather there in clusters to enjoy the fine weather, great food, famous Napa wines, and the opportunity to exchange droplets without any of those pesky masks getting in the way. The virus, said this morning’s radio announcer, is no longer focused on institutions such as nursing homes and prisons; it’s jumped to households. To me, all this rampant unprotected mingling seems like an open invitation for the coronavirus to spread throughout my community and keep killing us for years. Walking past the crowded picnic benches and café tables in downtown San Anselmo, I began experiencing low mood, loss of appetite, lack of joy, racing heart, shortness of breath, and considerable irritability. In fact, I found myself scowling so fiercely at a barefaced woman walking by that she hurriedly pulled her bandana up over her nose and mouth and increased her speed to get away from me. “Oh my God, Rich,” I said. “I’m turning into the town curmudgeon.”  Is this what I'm becoming? People keep saying, “It’s time to start living normally.” If only! There seems to be a widespread belief that the pandemic is all over but the shouting, and that the government wouldn’t let us reopen businesses and hold public gatherings if it wasn’t safe. Do I really need to provide a list of the things the government lets us do that have proven, time and again, to be extremely bad ideas? For obvious starters, there’s binging on cheap alcohol, having sex with inappropriate strangers, and smoking cigarettes and/or excessive amounts of marijuana. And then there's all the risky business with science and technology. Didn’t we learn anything from Frankenstein? Or Jurassic Park? Or FindFace, the new Russian app that’s apparently designed for stalkers? “If you find yourself in a café with an attractive girl, and you don’t have the guts to approach her, no problem,” says the ad, which was showcased on a program about the dangers of facial recognition software. “All you need is a smartphone and the application FindFace Find New Friends. Take a picture and wait for the result. Now you’re already looking at her profile page.” Could that be any creepier?  An app that lets you access the social media accounts of strangers; what could possibly be wrong with that? As far as I know, FindFace is only available in Russia, which kind of makes you want to scratch Moscow off your travel itinerary, doesn’t it? You won’t be heading there soon in any case; Russia is one of many countries that haven’t yet unsealed their borders. The EU is slowly opening up to international travel, but so far they’re planning to keep Americans out due to concern over our nation’s infection rate. Before considering any trip abroad, see comments above re: things you may be able to do but probably shouldn’t. And then read about the perils and aggravation of My Harrowing Pandemic Journey from Seville to SF. If you’re still determined to go, here’s the latest info on what, when, and how countries, airlines, and hotel chains are reopening around the world. If you’re wisely refraining from international travel, don’t worry, you can still pick up exotic souvenirs to wow your friends. Alabama-based Unclaimed Baggage is the nation’s only retailer selling the contents of suitcases left behind at airports for more than three months. And while most of the contents are just as boring as you’d imagine, and wind up going to charity or the recycling center, there have been many extraordinary finds. Over the years, staff members have unearthed an Egyptian burial mask, a camera from the space shuttle, a Tibetan ceremonial horn, Chinese opium scales, an entire bear pelt packed in salt, and one live and rather bewildered rattlesnake — which was not offered for resale but given away to a good home.  There's no telling what will turn up in bags left behind at the airport. People everywhere are adapting to the strange new rules we live by. This week Barcelona’s opera house, the Gran Teatre del Liceu, held a performance, billed as a prelude to its 2020-2021 season, in which a string quartet played to a capacity audience composed of 2,292 plants donated by local nurseries. The leafy crowd seemed to enjoy Puccini's Crisantemi, which was also livestreamed to humans. After the show, the plants were gifted to health care professionals who work at the Hospital Clínic of Barcelona.  A string quartet playing Puccini to an audience of plants in Barcelona's opera house. Yep, now I've seen everything. Despite all the shocks and changes, our world remains a wild and wonderful kaleidoscope of human creativity. There’s plenty of inspired lunacy to keep us thinking and chuckling as we learn to navigate our crazy new normality and find ways to stay safe while living fully and joyfully. On good days, I believe this first round of the pandemic will finally subside, and we’ll somehow avoid a second wave in October. It’s up to all of us to do what we can to make that happen. I’m thinking of buying this t-shirt in case anyone needs a reminder.  Unlike some of my better-organized and more practical blogger friends, I don't accept sponsorships or do promotions; the links shown here are to resources I enjoyed so much I thought you'd get a kick out of seeing them, too. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY Don't miss a single post! Send me your email address and I'll alert you when the next one is out.
"If you're going through hell, keep going." Winston Churchill  The entrance to Organ Cave, where I once had a hellish moment trapped underground. I’m not much of a spelunker, but some years ago, I found myself deep underground on a private “wild tour” of West Virginia’s Organ Cave,. “How long does the tour take?” I’d asked at the outset. “Five hours.” “Sorry, we only have three; we need to get back for a business dinner.” “OK, we’ll do it in three,” said the guide, bounding like a mountain goat down the rocks. Scrambling after him through the winding caverns, our only light the headlamps on our miner’s hats, Rich and I eventually reached a vast cavern with a row of stalactites that could, if you squinted just right, be said to look like a pipe organ. We had about thirty seconds to gawp at its magnificence and then we were racing back.  It looked considerably spookier by the narrow beam of the headlamp on my miner's hat. I was doing all this in old, slippery sneakers and was frankly feeling pretty proud of how well I was managing until halfway back, when I ran into trouble. I’d dropped a little behind while navigating slender footholds on either side of a narrow crevasse. The gap kept getting wider and the space for my feet narrower until I ran out of footholds. I flashed my headlamp wildly around, seeking any way forward; nope, I was well and truly stuck. I called out and the guide sprinted back to help. “Look again,” he said and shone his headlamp over the rim of the crevasse. There, below the edge, were abundant outcroppings of rock and packed earth, offering easy footing all along the way. I’ve thought of that moment a thousand times in the years since, most often when I’m trying not to panic over something — like this week’s Washington Post piece “The coronavirus pandemic isn’t ending, it’s surging.” While some countries, such as New Zealand and Taiwan, have eradicated the virus, the US is still in deep trouble, with death tolls predicted to reach 200,000 by October. The optimism, or economic desperation, that fueled the reopening is giving way to gloom. “As the long, hot summer of 2020 begins,” said an article in The Atlantic, “the facts suggest that the U.S. is not going to beat the coronavirus. Collectively, we slowly seem to be giving up.” I can’t speak for all of America, but around here the attitude isn’t so much despair as discombobulation. Official information is skimpy, advice conflicting, directives vague. “The administration’s guidelines for ‘opening up America again’ are so bereft of operational specifics that they’re like a cake recipe that simply reads, “Make cake,” wrote Ed Yong in The Atlantic. We’re all stumbling in the dark. “As things change the uncertain feelings seem to stay the same,” my friend Kitty wrote in a comment on my post last week. “What should I do or not do?” Kitty, the only thing I can tell you for sure is that we should all start planning for the long haul. Experts predict the pandemic could easily hold us in its grip for two years. Let’s hope they’re not being as overly optimistic as the Spanish officials who told us in March that lockdown would last two weeks. Whatever the timeframe turns out to be, it behooves us all to take a deep breath, stop talking about “when all this is over,” and start figuring out how we’re going to live the best lives we can now, in the shadow of COVID-19. How? According to positive psychology, there are five key elements of a happy life:
 The first batch of sourdough bread made by my friend Phil, using a recipe from Josey Baker Bread. Since then he's reinvented the recipe; see link below. Photo by Phil Ziegler “Bread baking has become an empowering and meditative act,” wrote Katharine Gammon in the Guardian article “Kneeding to relax? How coronavirus prompted a surge in stress baking.” I started baking in earnest a few days after the start of lockdown, when our last loaf was gone and I wanted to dissuade Rich from risking his life venturing out in search of an open panadería. Being lazy and lacking yeast, I sought out an Irish soda bread recipe, finding one with such good texture and flavor it’s become a mainstay. My friend Phil has spent the pandemic perfecting his sourdough bread; I haven’t had the pleasure of tasting it yet, but it’s already legendary. My brother-in-law Jeff’s olive bread, left as a welcome gift on our return to California, was absolute nirvana. (Find links to all three bread recipes below.) On lockdown in Spain, Rich and I spent countless hours researching recipes and now we’re both hooked on experimenting in the kitchen. Last night was one of my best efforts: a Greek version of meatloaf. Is that brilliant or what? You stuff ground turkey with spinach and feta (since I was out of that, I used herbed goat cheese) and drizzle it with tzatziki sauce made from Greek yogurt and the fresh herbs we just bought. The only disappointment? A serious lack of leftovers. Another hot favorite this week was Easy Baked Tilapia topped with lemon-parmesan breadcrumbs.  One of the quickest and easiest recipes I've found, this tilapia dish is great for nights I'm too frazzled and distracted to concentrate on anything fancy. I used to love gathering over meals with friends and family, but now that’s not possible or wise, so we’re connecting online in all-new ways. Last week, Rich invited old Navy buddies to a dive bar Zoom party, where each of us created the atmosphere of a funky tavern, donning various suitably goofy accoutrements such as Dave’s Bud Light Stetson and Jill’s hot pink wig. This week we have the Marble Olympics; with bets (benefitting charity) placed with my brother and his wife, the excitement is really mounting. Such entertainments may seem trivial, but they’re what explorer Earnest Shackleton used to keep his men alive and sane when their ship was crushed by ice and the crew was trapped on Antarctica for 2 years and 22 days. He organized weekly concerts, soccer and hockey matches, sled dog races, singing competitions, and skits. On one occasion he danced for them; on another, they all shaved their heads for a lark. As one book on Shackleton’s leadership put it, “All of these rituals and celebrations gave the crew a comforting sense of normalcy in a situation that was anything but normal.” Sound familiar? Establishing a sense of normalcy doesn’t mean casting precautions — or face masks — to the wind and acting like the pandemic is over. In fact, we need to be extra alert now. Seventy-five percent of all mountaineering accidents happen on the way down, when the initial resolve and first giddy thrill of survival have passed, and climbers are tired enough to slack off on their vigilance. People have survived far worse than this pandemic. Every one of Shackleton’s crew made it safely back to England, and chances are you’ll get through this challenge, too. As I learned in Organ Cave, sometimes all it takes is fresh perspective to realize you’re already on solid footing. “Get yourself grounded,” said outdoors writer Steve Goodier, “and you can navigate even the stormiest roads in peace.”  Earnest Shackleton loaned the men books from his private library on Endurance. A recent restoration made it possible to read the titles for the first time; you can see the complete list here. It made me wonder: What books would I have picked? Which ones would you pack? YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY  "It's official; kangaroos are a metric," wrote Reddit when they posted this picture from Australia. In sci-fi movies, it usually takes an hour and fifteen minutes for the loony but brilliant scientist to look up from the microscope, shout “Aha!,” and announce the breakthrough that will save the human race. In real life, after six months of feverish activity by practically every PhD on the planet, the mystery just keeps deepening. We have managed to figure out a few things, among them that our best lines of defense are (stop me if you’ve heard this already) hand washing, face covering, and social distancing. The first two are simple enough. Social distancing, however, gets more complicated every day. “As the pandemic presses on and restrictions ease, I’ve been conflicted about what social events to attend, if any,” Jenna Jonaitis wrote in the Washington Post this week. “Denying my parents opportunities to see my son, let alone hug and kiss him, weighs on my heart, and there’s an emptiness in not seeing my sister and her kids. But because so many questions about the virus persist, my family, like many other Americans, is trying to figure out how to socialize going forward.”  In Domino Park, Brooklyn, NY circles were painted on the grass in an effort to encourage social distancing. Photo: Kathy Wellens/AP I hear you, Jenna. Now that I’m in California and out of quarantine, I’m getting invited out by my nearest and dearest, and while my heart rejoices, my nerve endings are fraying with anxiety. Am I ready to share a table with pals at a restaurant, even outdoors with tables six feet from other diners? Frankly, I break out in a cold sweat just thinking of removing my face shield and sitting bare faced, nose to nose, over a leisurely meal. Maybe it’s just me. My protection parameters were forged in Spain, which had the strictest lockdown in Europe. Are my standards unrealistic? Prudent? The bare minimum to ensure survival? Who knows? And that’s my whole point. I understand why others feel it’s safe to socialize more intimately. Here in Marin County, cases have plummeted to nearly nothing. My friends probably are virus-free; a few even have test results to prove it. And I’m feeling pretty good myself. But there’s no guarantee one or another of us won’t pick up the coronavirus five minutes from now, due to someone sneezing all over Starbucks or chatting at a neighborhood barbecue, especially with the influx of summer visitors from all over.  The Cafe Rothe in Schwerin, Germany fitted hats with pool noodles to make sure patrons respect social distancing requirements. Photo: Jaqueline Rothe I’ve been asking around, and almost nobody here knows anyone with coronavirus, so I suspect the danger may not seem quite real. For me, it’s only too vivid. One friend in her forties has been battling a particularly vicious case for nearly three months, getting briefly better only to suffer yet another, even more hideous relapse. It’s the stuff of nightmares — and a powerful incentive to be very, very careful not to risk getting it. Unfortunately, it’s not always clear just how to avoid that risk. Information about COVID-19 remains so sketchy that we all have to devise homemade defense plans. I have friends who have been housebound in near-total isolation since mid-March. Others are constantly out and about, sporadically wearing masks. They invite me over, assuring me their bodies and homes are germ free, even as they mention that the grandkids are visiting from another state, and no, they didn’t quarantine before arrival; for heaven’s sake, they’re family. Staying completely apart is obviously safest but carries a tremendous emotional burden. People I know living in residential care are totally isolated and starved for human contact. A friend visiting her 97-year-old mother last week discovered there was now a “hugging machine,” a plastic barrier equipped with two pairs of shoulder-length gloves, allowing them to reach through the barrier and wrap their arms around one another. As they kissed through the plastic, her mother began to cry for joy.  People all over the world are creating their own "hugging machines" and "hug gloves." In Guelph, Canada, Carolyn Ellis (right) and her mother, Susan Watts, embrace through the one Carolyn and her husband, Andrew, built as a Mother's Day gift. So what is the right balance of socializing and safety? My anecdotal, unscientific research led me to The California Happy Hour. “Each person brings their own wine and snacks,” my sister Kate explained, “and we all sit far apart and talk for an hour or so. At first it felt weird not to offer guests a meal or even drinks, but it’s not about food, it’s about fellowship.”  In nearby Mill Valley, California, residents gather for a backyard happy hour. The California Happy Hour
After due deliberation, Rich and I have adopted this plan. If people think I’m silly for insisting on it, they've been too kind to say anything. So that’s family and friends sorted. Getting the larger world to honor my boundaries is trickier. Especially now, when I’m participating in peaceful protests over the killing of George Floyd and others. Last Thursday I joined 1000 neighbors at a busy intersection during rush hour; protesters waved signs, cars honked in solidarity. The crowd, mostly young people, wore masks and often stood close together. Rich and I wore both face shields and masks, letting folks know we were A) a bit odd, and B) serious about distancing; people gave us a wide berth, and we had no trouble maintaining our distance. We all knelt for eight minutes and forty-six seconds, the amount of time Officer Chauvin kept his knee on Floyd’s neck. It felt like a very long time indeed.  We knelt for eight minutes and forty-six seconds, the same amount of time George Floyd's neck was pinned between the earth and a cop's knee. On Sunday Rich and I joined a protest in which cars, decorated with posters, drove through our town and several others. Approaching the starting point, the long lineup of cars looked like the final scene in Field of Dreams. Once underway, we were cheered on by bystanders waving their own Black Lives Matter posters. Passing a young family out for a bike ride, I heard the dad saying, “You see, there was this man named George Floyd…” And I remembered my parents saying to me when I was a kid, “You see, there was this woman named Rosa Parks…” And I thought: some of these young people will remember this moment their whole lives. There’s no perfect formula for keeping safe while staying engaged. We cherish our sense of belonging but don’t want to sacrifice our health, possibly our lives, by getting careless now. Speaking to another generation in challenging times, Churchill said, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” That’s about where we are today. The first wave of the pandemic has changed our world forever. And it’s far from over. Coronavirus cases have jumped sharply since Memorial Day in many states, including California. And we've all heard the warnings of a possible resurgence in the fall. Obviously I’m hoping one day soon some loony, brilliant scientist will shout “Eureka!” and start victory-dancing around the lab in celebration of finding a cure. But for now, defining the future is up to us. So we have to ask ourselves: What kind of people — what kind of a country — do we want to be?  Protesters lay down in a street near the White House on June 7. Photo: Joshua Roberts/Reuters YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY Stay tuned and sign up to get an alert when new posts appear.
  My face shield It’s not often I get to set a new fashion in trendy California. But having emerged from quarantine (yay!) completely symptom-free (double yay!!), Rich and I are now out and about and constantly stopped by neighbors who want to ask about our face shields. I explain they offer good protection, greater comfort than masks, full facial visibility, no fogging of your glasses, and a look that doesn’t say, “I’m on my to perform surgery and/or a bank heist.” The downsides? Alarming moments when insects fly in for a quick look around. “Shield hair” from the rubber bands serving as straps. Forgetting I have it on and whacking the transparent plastic in a disconcerting manner. As for Rich, when his nose itched yesterday, he slowly, painstakingly snaked his sanitized hand up inside the shield — only to realize he was no longer wearing it.  Masks? Face shields? Social distancing? Party animals in Missouri ignored public health directives while celebrating Memorial Day at Lake of the Ozarks. "We expect residents and visitors alike to exhibit personal responsibility at the lake," said Sheriff Tony Helms. Photo by Twitter/Lawler50, via Reuters We’re all having trouble staying on track in the midst of so much turmoil. Official health advice is confusingly piecemeal, sometimes contradictory, and often ignored. (Yes, I’m talking about you, Lake of the Ozarks.) Food distribution is no longer a well-oiled machine; shortages are common. And (please don’t panic!) Hollywood is delaying production of movies and TV shows. Many of us can easily live without The Spongebob Movie: Sponge on the Run and Mission Impossible 7, but it’s a shame we’ll have to wait until 2022 to see Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness; that one sounded tailor-made for this summer. But not to worry; creative geniuses around the world are stepping up to fill the void. Check out American Hedgehog Warrior and tell me if you agree Pepper deserves an Oscar for her performance. I know, right? How did the rest of us get through so many months of quarantine without an athletic pet hedgehog? If thrilling to Pepper’s exploits whets your appetite for the adrenaline rush of other rip-roaring sporting challenges, stop mourning the loss of baseball, football, soccer, and basketball, and start embracing this year’s hottest competitive event: online marble racing. Like most people, I was totally unaware this sport existed, although to be fair, my interest in most spectator sports is on a par with my desire to sit around watching hand sanitizer dry. But Jelle’s Marble League appeals even to me, with lots of action, practically no rules, colorful visuals, and extremely short games. Incredibly, the marble league was struggling to find sponsors in these economically challenged times. All that changed when late night comedy newscaster John Oliver decided to step up and bankroll this summer’s races, just in time for the qualifying rounds which start on June 18. Mark your calendar! Rich and I have placed bets with relatives, all winnings going to charities. I’m backing the team Mellow Yellow, which grew a ripe reputation in the Fruit Circuit. Rich is rooting for Balls of Chaos, confident that team leader Anarchy can motivate players Tumult, Clutter, and Snarl to earn more gold medals in the team’s trademark brawling style. Many of us are turning to homemade fun. My sister Kate, inspired by my post Bar Hopping, Quarantine Style, set up a Zoom Dive Bar Party. Each participant created a funky setting, choosing a theme such as Irish pub, European bistro, or tropical lounge, and going all out with decorations, costumes, and novelty drinks. Brilliant!  While quarantined in Seville, Rich transformed our living room into a dive bar with simple props like holiday lights, a rubber chicken, and duct tape on the barstool. Entertainment, once squeezed into the outer margins of our lives, has now taken center stage, recognized as an essential tool for boosting our spirits during these difficult days. Having survived months of anxious confinement, we’re still overwhelmed with grim news, and never more so than this week. America keeps passing monstrous milestones: nearly two million people diagnosed with COVID-19, more than 100,000 fatalities. You won’t be surprised to learn the hardest hit are communities of color. African Americans have suffered twice the fatalities of white people — 92.3 deaths per 100,000 compared to 45.2 — largely because of economic inequity, says the CDC. With unemployment topping 40 million, almost twice as many black Americans (20%) as whites (11%) have been laid off recently. On top of all that are revelations about the madness of Amy Cooper, aka Central Park “Karen,” and the unprovoked, horrifying murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery. Small wonder that people are in the streets shouting “I can’t breathe.”  A protester in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on June 1 wears a mask with the last words that George Floyd spoke as he was publicly suffocated by police officers in Minneapolis. Photo by Mark Makela/Getty Images Most of the protesters are peacefully exercising their constitutional right to speak truth to power. But not everyone is showing restraint, and shocking images of this week's looting and burning are seared in our memories forever, calling to mind disturbing memories of other upheavals and conflagrations. I remember what it was like waking up on April 29, 1992 and hearing the radio announce the acquittal of the four cops who’d been videotaped savagely beating Rodney King. I was stunned, then incandescent with rage. A family story flashed through my mind, the one in which my grandmother, having been profoundly disrespected by her husband, picked up every plate on the dinner table and threw it at his head. A social contract had been broken, and it was the only way she knew how to express the height of her wrath and depth of her pain. That's not the way I express my feelings, but I understood it on April 29, 1992. And I understand it now. I’m not saying that smashing, burning, and looting are appropriate responses, just that I have some small inkling of why they happen. “Eventually, doctors will find a coronavirus vaccine,” wrote Roxane Gay in the NY Times, “but black people will continue to wait, despite the futility of hope, for a cure for racism. We will live with the knowledge that a hashtag is not a vaccine for white supremacy. We live with the knowledge that, still, no one is coming to save us. The rest of the world yearns to get back to normal. For black people, normal is the very thing from which we yearn to be free.”  Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen joins demonstrators in his city as they peacefully protest the death of George Floyd. Photo by Hart Van Denburg/CPR News These are heartbreaking times. The number of lives lost and blighted is more than we can bear. The comfort we took from thinking we were all in this together has been shattered. And the only predictable thing about the future is that it’s bound to include yet more shocks and horrors. So how do we keep from losing our marbles? For me, it starts with finding ways to be useful. Engaging in a get-out-the-vote project. Writing articles on climate change. Holding Zoom conversations with insightful friends and relatives. Taking long walks and talking with neighbors about face shields. I wish I could add “adopting a hedgehog” to that list, but that hasn’t happened (yet). I did buy Rich, as an early gift for his birthday this Saturday, a marble racing kit that he's spent many happy hours assembling and fine-tuning. Playing with marbles may not help resolve life's big issues, but taking time to share joy and laughter with the people we love is one way to keep our equilibrium as we try figure out how to work for the common good in these turbulent times.  Rich begins another test run on the marble racing contraption that has taken over our dining room table. How are you managing not to lose your marbles these days? Let me know in the comments below. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY Stay tuned for more! Sign up to be alerted when new stories appear here.
“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  Author Douglas Adams, photo by Brian Griffin, 1986, National Portrait Gallery 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.”  Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman suggested opening all casinos, then shutting down only those with the very highest infection rates. "That makes no sense," said an aghast Anderson Cooper. 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.  This is what the CDC handed me at the airport. If I'm supposed to "Stay home," on what occasion will I need to "Wear a cloth face covering when in public"? Anyone have a clue? 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.  I've even managed to purchase whole wheat flour, which has been unavailable for months in Seville (and much of the US, from what I hear). 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. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY SO WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? WHO KNOWS?
SIGN UP BELOW TO MAKE SURE YOU DON'T MISS ANY OF THE JOKES, MEMES, OR COMMENTARIES  The journey started smoothly enough, with a nearly empty train from Seville to Madrid. 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.  As you might imagine, San Pancracio, the patron saint of health, has been extra popular lately. 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.  A sanitation worker disinfects Seville's Santa Justa railway station. Photo: Niccolo Guasti/Getty Images “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.  Just some of the protective measures we brought to the hotel near Madrid's airport. The upside down can at the back is the one that went berserk on us. “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.  Thanks to California's stay-at-home order, the Golden Gate Bridge is no longer jammed with traffic. Photo: Kevin N. Hume/S.F. Examiner 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.  Just some of the groceries Kate and Jeff dropped off to make sure we won't starve in the next two weeks. 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  I'm stuffing my suitcase with personal protection gear in preparation for my first international journey in the time of coronavirus. 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.  I'm not sure this police officer in India read the "coronavirus mask required" memo correctly. 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.  No doubt my friends wish they had opted for this kind of exotic travel adventure instead. 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.  A train station in Madrid, Spain 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!  The airline we're using has new protocols including fogging with an EPA-registered hospital-grade disinfectant in all public areas on aircraft. I used to think chemical cleaners were bad for us ... now I can't seem to get enough. 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.)  This Madrid hotel and the entire hospitality industry struggle to convey a warm welcome while social distancing. Photo: Room Mate Group 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 
For the record, those aren't space aliens' gamma rays going up Rich's nose and into my brain, they're just windowpanes reflected on our face shields.
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. 
Who says home hair color has to be done with chemicals?
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  Meanwhile, inside the fridge... I don’t actually believe in jinxes, but watching WWII movies as a kid, I soon figured out that any soldier who said “When this is all over, I’m going to buy a farm…” soon became the next casualty. This made such an indelible impression on my young psyche that since then I've never tempted fate during a crisis by talking about “when all this is over.” But then, during a recent Zoom gathering, a friend said, “Boy, you must really be missing your dive bars.” And just for a moment, I let myself recall all the fun Rich and I’d had visiting the world’s loonier taverns; maybe someday… Then another friend sent me the Quarantine Diary I published last week, with the entry “Day 9 – I put liquor bottles in every room. Tonight, I’m getting all dressed up and going bar hopping.” “Bingo,” I said to Rich. “We are doing that one.” So Tuesday night, we got all dressed up and went bar hopping around our apartment.  Rich tending bar at the cozy dive formerly known as our living room Rich transformed the living room into a dive bar (an American expression describing a funky, downscale bar with local character and tacky charm). I was grateful he refrained from pouring beer on the carpet to create the usual stickiness and fragrance; otherwise the setting was classic, colored lights, rubber chicken, and all. After sharing a beer there, we each had a glass of wine in my office, which I’d remade into San Francisco’s famous Tonga Room, where he’d once taken me on a date. Their theme is tropical kitsch, with a pool in the middle where musicians play on a barge while “rain” falls from the ceiling. Sadly my shower nozzle didn’t reach far enough to recreate the downpour, but I found a YouTube video of the bar and played “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” to set the mood. Our final stop was The Cave, which Rich set up much like the forts we’d constructed as kids, from table cloths draped over furniture, except now he included a video fireplace and rum.  The Cave “One thing about the quarantine,” said Rich, sipping his rum thoughtfully. “I really appreciate stuff I used to take for granted. Maybe I needed a bit of shaking up. It’s like that time all those years ago — you remember? — when I went out for a haircut and got all the way across town to the barber shop and realized couldn’t remember a thing about that walk.” He’d been so shocked to find himself on automatic pilot that soon thereafter he proposed the first of our three-month train trips. It certainly did the trick; when we got back, we saw the city with fresh eyes. “I’ll never again take for granted the pleasure of walking in Seville,” he said now. “Or getting a haircut,” I added. My last salon appointment had been cancelled due to the lockdown, and the last forty-odd days hasn’t improved matters.  One of the great things about getting older is that I am a bit better at managing my own hair and considerably less worried about how it defines me in the eyes of the world. In fact, I find people in my age bracket, while we’re obviously not pleased at being on the front lines of medical risk, often cope with quarantine better than younger folks. It helps that we’re not juggling remote jobs and homeschooling kids. Beyond that, as the New York Times reported, many older Americans thrive in lockdown, modelling strength and resilience, “skilled at being alone, not fearful about their career prospects, emotionally more experienced at managing the great disruption of everyday life that is affecting everyone.” “It’s easier for you,” a young friend said during a Zoom call. “You’ve been through this sort of thing before.” Afterwards I said to Rich, “We have? I wonder how old she thinks we are. Old enough to have lived through the 1918 pandemic? The Black Death? Asteroids killing off the dinosaurs?” While I missed out on those exciting times, I remember plenty of other shockers, such as the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, the assassinations of two Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr., and the attacks of 9/11. In the weeks after the Twin Towers fell, I happened to catch a radio program in which young reporters interviewed people in their eighties and nineties, seeking perspective about how to handle the unimaginable. One woman cut directly to the real issue on the reporter’s mind. “Don’t worry,” she told him kindly. “You’ll do just fine.” Now, nearly two decades later, I find myself saying much the same thing.  Rich is taking the quarantine in stride, especially on sunny days when we can picnic on the roof of our apartment building with Seville's iconic Giralda tower in the distance. Time teaches us we are capable of surviving more than we ever imagined. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” Speaking of horrors, last month, Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick (and others) said that the elderly should be willing to die to help the economy. Really? Because even from a mercenary perspective that’s a non-starter; an enormous number of movers and shakers are over sixty, including 90% of the world’s billionaires and 63% of Americas millionaires. Eliminating a host of powerful people over a short timeframe would send companies and global economies into freefall. And let’s face it, putting any government in charge of making judgements about which categories of human beings deserve to live is a very slippery slope. Especially when it’s a category everyone's going to find themselves in one day — possibly in twenty or thirty years, when the world is being run by kids who were homeschooled during quarantine by day-drinking parents. Beyond all that, society needs older people around, if only to say, “Don’t worry, you’ll do just fine” with the authority of experience.   Nobody knows what life will be like in the future, lending a strange, zen-like, live-in-the-present-moment quality to our days. But we’re catching a glimpse of things to come in the Spanish government’s just-released “Plan to Transition to a New Normality.” Spain’s kids are already allowed to play outside, this weekend adults can walk for exercise, and starting Monday — thanks, St. Martin of Porres, patron saint of hairdressers — beauty salons will open. (Did I hear cheering?) Outdoor bars aren’t far behind. (Yes, I definitely hear cheering!) The plan’s four phases include restrictions, mandatory protections, and warnings that if our curve pops up, all bets are off. But with luck and social distancing, the “new normality” is expected to be a way of life by the end of June. How will it all work out? Who knows? As the joke says, nobody ever expected 2020 to go viral. And I suspect the year still has a few whopping surprises up its sleeve; personally I’m braced for anything from aliens to zombies. We’ll just have to wait for events to unfold, remembering that, in the words of Yogi Berra, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” What does the new normal look like from your quarantine location? How's your hair holding up? Your wine supply? What have your stopped taking for granted these days? Let me know in the comments 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 |
 Karen McCann
Welcome!
I'm an American travel writer based in Spain and currently living in California. As we journey through the pandemic together, my blog provides a regular supply of survival tips, comfort food recipes, and the wry humor we all need to lighten our hearts on dark days. I think of my blog as an ongoing conversation, so please join in and leave comments at the end of my posts. Sign up below to get updates when I publish anything new. 
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