Lift Up Your Hearts!

A friend posted this on Facebook. I have my suspicions that it was meant—by him, by the original author, or both—to be snarky, but it nonetheless expresses an important truth: The goal of social distancing and other protective orders is not to eliminate the virus nor the risk, but to slow down the spread so that our medical system can handle those who will need help.

COVID-19 is a virus that most of us will have to face, and it doesn't surprise me at all that cases are up as restrictions are eased. That's part of the process and must eventually happen. But it's important to remember that it's like going back to eating after a bout of the stomach flu. You need hydration and nutrition if you want to get well, but if you move straight away to eating as you normally do, you will start the vomiting cycle all over again. You have to start slowly and carefully and base your next move on how well your body handled the previous one.

There is no way for me to say whether or not our restrictions are being eased too soon. Even with the stomach flu there's a lot of trial and error involved, and we know a lot more about stomach bugs than about COVID-19. That the restrictions must be eased and eventually lifted is clear. I get quite frustrated with those who insist that doing so is sacrificing people's lives to the god Mammon, to "the Economy." Do they not realize that it takes a healthy economy to keep people healthy, and that if the economy dies, people die? People die, and countries die. There were many contributing factors to the downfall of the Soviet Union, but probably the largest was the failed Soviet economy. It must be done, but it must be done as wisely as we can. And that depends more on the people than on the government.

It's scary that so many people don't seem to realize that no one can wave a magic wand and then we can go back to "normal" behavior. That if the government decides to ease up a little on the reins, that doesn't mean you should grab the bit in your teeth and run wild. You take baby steps—suck the ice chips, sip the water, venture out a little more, keep your distance, wear a mask—and wait and see. Do what's important, and let the rest wait a bit. 

I know it's time for Central Florida to open up a bit more. Maybe well past time. In hindsight, for hospitals to have cancelled all non-essential procedures probably did more harm than good. True, those ICU beds and respirators were there and available for the expected overwhelming onslaught of COVID-19 cases, but that hasn't come yet, and in the meantime many people have suffered unnecessarily. It's time we started replacing hips again.

But if we go crazy, if we flout the rules and recommendations, if we get careless, we once again risk bringing on COVID-19 infections at a rate greater than our medical system can handle. So I welcome the news that we've taken a step towards normal, but recognize it as a yellow flag, not a green one.

Therefore, we continue to be cautious, our children having taken pains to make sure we know we are old and therefore in a high-risk group. So there's not much to report from here. Just one short trip to the grocery store last week, where once again everyone was masked and the store was not crowded. My Google Maps Timeline is repetitious and downright boring. But my life is not!

Now there's a title I'll bet no one else has used.

All the disruption caused by the COVID-19 virus turns out to have a positive side for us prosopagnosiacs. Suddenly all meetings are taking place via ZOOM, GoToMeeting, or some similar vehicle.

Think of the boon this is to those who suffer from face blindness! Suddenly everyone in the room is labelled! There's the person's picture, and right below it his name! The system is only as good as the names people choose to associate with their photos—I bless those who give their full names, rather than just "Jim"—but the chaos has been somewhat tamed. I'm particularly enjoying it in our church "happy hours" where I am finally, albeit very slowly, beginning to associate names, faces, and voices.

(As I was writing this, it occurred to me to wonder why I am not in favor of wearing name tags in church. It's actually a very helpful practice for people like me. I guess I still have scars from a church where the pastor used what he called "motivation by embarrassment" to encourage the wearing of nametags. If Martin Luther thought Satan could be driven away through the use of mocking and scorn, let me just say that it is also an effective method of driving shy and sensitive people far away from your church.)

It's interesting to me the different ways people react to this video social interaction. I find it helpful, but my husband finds it frustrating. I experience less chaos than in real life, he—accustomed to strictly-regulated business meetings—feels more. I know my daughter feels more comfortable with Zoom meetings than her husband does; I wonder if there is a difference between introverts and extroverts here as well?

I also find that meetings are more manageable if I listen more than I talk. I probably could learn something from that.

I could have avoided shopping this week, though we were out of several things in the produce line, so I'm glad I did. Since many businesses reopened yesterday, albeit with restrictions, I'm expecting an uptick in COVID-19 cases soon, so I'd rather shop now than later if I can. Not, I hasten to add, that I disagree with the idea of beginning to reopen businesses, though I think we may be being a bit hasty, and the last thing I want to do is to have to go back and do this all over again.  Switzerland is starting from a strong position as far as virus cases go, plus they tend to be generally more compliant. The U.S. not so much.

Be that as it may, I had a great experience at the grocery store. Although there weren't many cars on the road at 7 a.m. (senior shopping is 7-8), I was not too happy with the number in the Publix parking lot. While I was still in the car, putting on my protective gear, I noticed a rather scruffy individual (but aren't we all scruffy these days?) coming out of the store, not wearing a mask. That made up my mind. I drove to another, smaller Publix not far away. Their parking lot was considerably less dense, and there weren't many shoppers in the store. Everyone I saw, customers and store workers, wore a mask, though I think I was the only one with gloves. True, one woman was wearing her mask around her neck—but the next time I saw her it was in the proper position.

I'm still inclined to believe the doctors who say that nothing less than a properly-fitted N95 mask will protect the wearer from the virus. So, why do I wear one? First of all, my lovely homemade mask (no, I didn't make it) has non-woven fabric between the layers of cotton, which does a much better job of catching virus particles. It still leaks around the edges, but it will help contain an errant cough or sneeze on my part, and I always thought non-hospital masks were more about protecting other people, rather than the wearer, anyway.

But most of all, I wear a mask because of what it says to other people. We have reached the point where masks have become such an issue that not wearing a mask sends an "I don't care about anyone else" message. Possibly that is 100% wrong, but it's what we have to deal with right now, and I consider it a small price to pay to send an encouraging message to a neighbor—and possibly protect him a bit, too.

(On the other hand, the problem with masks is that they hide smiles, and a smile is a pretty encouraging message all by itself.)

So, everyone was wearing masks, everyone was friendly, everyone kept a decent distance (usually well more than six feet), PLUS they finally had my favorite hamburger and hot dog buns in stock, and they were BOGO! What's not to like?

For the record, and the curious, the shelves were well stocked. There were a couple of empty spots, rather odd I thought: I mean, frozen French fries and green beans? I could have bought just about anything else, though not always my favorite brand in the paper goods department. Meat, which I've been told is the next "toilet paper," was plentiful.

My Google Maps Timeline is boring: I haven't been anywhere since my grocery store outing on April 21st. Not that I'm suffering much, except for not being able to forget that we celebrated Porter's birthday quietly, when the pre-COVID-19 plans were for his children, their spouses, and his grandchildren all to be here celebrating with him. Trust me, that would not have been quiet. Other than that, there's always so much going on at home that boredom is out of the question.

But sometimes one must leave the house, and this week was Porter's turn.

His first trip, to Costco during their "senior hours," was very successful. They are now very well organized with their shopping and check-out procedures, so that shopping was not stressful and felt safe. The shelves were stocked, including toilet paper and kleenex.

His second and third trips were successful, but not so comfortable. Our favorite local pool store was not practicing any form of distancing, the employees didn't wear masks, and they still required the credit card slip to be signed, happily providing the same pen to all customers.

I'm not at all convinced that the masks do as much good as many people think. But they contain the larger droplets, and—effective or not—are a statement that the store and the people are at least thinking about safety.

This coming week may be my outing. It's impossible to stock up on fresh fruits and vegetables, so I'll probably make a trip to the grocery store when the senior shopping days come around. Unless we get a big spike in cases due to things beginning to open up around here.

Still no church, though. It's frustrating to see how different my own values are from what is revealed by the phased-in "return to normal" schedule. And it's not just crazy American priorities: in Switzerland, hair salons were in the first phase! True, I could use a haircut, but I'd hardly give that high priority, and no one is going to give me a haircut from six feet away. They're also sending kids back to school, which really makes no sense at all, and I'm glad our district is staying closed for the rest of the school year. It's still illegal for people to gather in groups greater than five in Switzerland, even with social distancing—yet they're sending children to classrooms of several times that, and you know they cannot—and will not, even if they could—stay six feet apart. Here, restaurants are among the first businesses to open; again, something I consider dangerous and so far from a necessity I'd keep them closed a lot longer.

If we really can afford to open things back up, I'm grateful. I just don't want to move so fast that we have to clamp down again for a second (or third, or fourth) wave. You know, like going back to normal eating too soon after a bout of stomach flu. Besides, I don't really want to return to "normal." If we don't find ourselves in a "new normal" that is better than the old one—as individuals, families, communities, businesses, and governments—we will have wasted the suffering of the last few months. Let's learn something!  Let's learn a lot.

At least my closets are getting cleaned—and that's no small thing to be thankful for.

Last Tuesday morning I ventured out of the house to take advantage of the "senior shopping hours" from 7 to 8 at Publix. Our need was far from dire, but I had accumulated a fairly long list of items I'd like to have. Shopping these days is a matter of guessing risks. With our COVID-19 incidence still very low here, and with talk about loosening restrictions, I decided the risk had nowhere to go but up for a while.

This was my first time in the store since all the new policies were put in place, and it only took me half the trip to realize that the aisles are now one-way. That's annoying—I'm the kind of person who will go down an aisle, then decide I want something I'd just passed, and backtrack to pick it up. Now I have to go "around the block." But it does help shoppers keep their distance.

If you include the time from walking out the door to finally having everything put away, it was a three-hour expedition. At least half of it was the cleaning ritual at home. Everything that has an inner package gets its external packaging removed; items with packaging that can be washed get washed or disinfected. That's the easy part. Produce is a little harder, but still a piece of cake compared to what my father's sister had to do to her produce when she and her family lived in Ethiopia. I think of Aunt Mary Jane a lot these days.

Milk is no longer rationed at Publix, and even though eggs are (I bought one dozen but could have had two), there were plenty available. A few items were still missing: my favorite hamburger and hot dog buns, and a particular kind of ice cream that I needed for Porter's birthday cake. Fortunately, bread works fine for buns, and there was an acceptable substitute for the ice cream.

You'd think with doing less shopping I'd be spending less money, but it's just the opposite. I'm a pretty careful shopper and pay a lot of attention to sales. (That's why we're okay on toilet paper—I'd bought two good-sized packages on sale shortly before the shortage began.) Now if I see something we might need, I buy it, both because I want to shop less frequently and because it might not be available next time. I don't even do my usual checking of expiration dates, prices, and ingredients, because I don't want to touch a package and return it to the shelves. So I grab and go. That's one part of the new normal I'd love to see go away.

Being at home is still great, however. I miss church and choir dreadfully, but there are good things to come out of even that, such as our daily online noontime services that I know I wouldn't attend if I had to drive to them. But staying home itself? There is so much to do, so many projects crying for attention, so many books to read, so many ideas for writing, that I could stay on lockdown for 100 years and not run out of things to do. I know people who are being driven crazy by being home, but for me that is unfathomable.

I'm not immune to the mental stress induced by the sudden changes, however. For a while I was all at sixes and sevens and couldn't focus on anything, not even my favorite pet projects. I'm doing better, though. An important breakthrough came when I allowed myself to take on some new projects despite other ones being more pressing. It turns out that physical work with clear endings and notable milestones along the way—such as a major overhaul of our bedroom closet, a massive cleanup and reorganization of my sewing area, which has been a disaster for decades, getting to the bottom of the mending pile, crafting a birthday present for Porter, significant work on our guest room (which had become a catch-all, a very large junk drawer), and even cooking/baking have been much more therapeutic than projects that keep me tied to the computer. Even more so than writing, which is my usual go-to therapy-and-comfort-food. Perhaps because so many things are now being done online, my mind and body are rebelling and require something more tangible.

I can't keep this up—the rest of the work must not be neglected for too long—and will eventually have places to go and people to see. But for now, I'm quite enjoying the solitude.

And every once in a while I peek in our closet and breathe a happy sigh.

The following is another guest post from my "youthful correspondent," who now has a name: Wyatt. His previous contribution was "The Coronavirus Crisis: A Youthful Perspective." If Porter doesn't use too much of Wyatt's computer time allowance playing games, and his parents don't assign too much of his other time to school and chores, I expect to hear more from him in the future. That's why "Guest Posts" is a new blog category.

The Coronavirus has had the effect of frightening us all, and there have been many disparate measures taken to fight it. In some places the danger is all too real, as in New York City. In other places, like the Dakotas, it is hardly a presence. There are 47 states in between, and they all have different levels of severity. Stress brings out the best and the worst in people; we have seen that in every state, and at the highest levels of government. People are afraid and they want to vest more power in the government to deal with their fears and to feel safe again. The unfortunate issue is that, once the government gets power, it rarely lets it go. 

Perhaps the scariest thing that has come about from this is that the government wants to track people who get Coronavirus by their phones. I don’t think that if the government got this power, they would give it up. I was not alive at 9/11, so I can’t claim to know what it was like. However, I imagine that people were scared, perhaps in a way comparable to now. When people were scared the Patriot Act came into effect, and this infringed greatly on people’s right to privacy. It passed unanimously without much thought being put into it, because people were scared. The same thing happened with the stimulus bill that just got passed. Everyone getting money across the board is hardly efficient. There were people like my family, who received a decent chunk of cash, even though we have yet to lose any work. My dad teaches kids in China, so he actually saw a boost in his amount of work when the Coronavirus hit China, because kids were stuck inside. My mom manages condominium associations, so she won’t stop being paid unless they go bankrupt. I would say that we hardly need the money, though we won’t refuse it on principle. So, although President Trump said that he would bring down the deficit, it continues to skyrocket.

This is not to say that the president had a whole lot of better options. To give people money with a bunch of red tape would be significantly worse than giving it to nobody, since the money wouldn’t arrive until the time period it was crafted for was long since over. The only other option was to simply let people deal with it themselves. Indeed, who would have thought that the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave would be under house arrest and be living on checks sent to them by the Federal Government? I doubt that things will ever go back to normal, not after people have experienced this shutdown. Either people will be disgusted with what governments do with their power, or they will be impressed by how well the government handled it. This will determine whether the level of government involvement goes up or down.

Of course, our rights are not under attack everywhere. In my home in New Hampshire, everything has been done by suggestion for the common people. Non-essential stores have still been forcibly shut down, but the average Joe can still do what he wants. My family has been in self-imposed isolation since late March, but our neighbors had three or four cars come over for Easter dinner, with people sitting next to each other talking outside. This is an admirable practice in normal times, but rather irresponsible now. But their right to freely associate with people is left uninfringed.

In New York City, Mayor Bill DeBlasio wants to permanently shut down religious groups who refuse to shut down public worship. Whatever one’s personal views, this is an abominable violation of the First Amendment. President Trump himself had a moment where he said that he had absolute power over the states. These political figures are under a lot of stress. Both have not followed through with their statements, as DeBlasio has yet to shut down a religious institution, and Trump has just turned the decision basically over to the states with his “guidelines” on when to reopen. However, this forebodes a darker time when these threats could become realities. If we get a second wave, for example, I am sure that restrictions will only be heavier, and the abuse of power only more widespread. The best that we can do is to keep calm, and do our best to keep ourselves safe.

It is a tough situation. It is rights vs. life. If Governor X orders storekeeper A to close his store, then the hypothetical person B is not going to get sick and die because he goes to storekeeper A’s store. All it takes is the suspension of person A’s rights. But if rights can be suspended whenever peoples’ lives are in danger, are rights worth anything? Let’s perform a reductio ad absurdum on the issue. If person A insults person B, it could drive person B to suicide. Person B’s life is thus in danger. Therefore, no one should be allowed to insult anyone. This would of course be in gross violation of the right to free speech, although almost everyone thinks the world would be better if there were no insults. Where is the line drawn?

Consider a real life example of where the government’s power to restrain anyone’s rights would be used to deadly effect. There are many people who suggest that fossil fuels will bring Armageddon to society. Such people do exist; several of them ran for president this year. They assume that, not only will millions die, but the whole human race will become extinct, if global warming continues. Thus, the rights of the fossil fuel companies would not be respected. Nor would the rights of anyone who tried to speak out against it. What price are some people’s rights compared to the saving of the human species? Now, perhaps if the human race was in danger of extinction, it would be worth it to remove rights. But the issue is that the choice comes down to a select few people, and human judgement has a terrible track record. It is a decision that the country needs to come to terms with, and soon. The current administration’s task is similar. They must decide how dangerous the Coronavirus is, and act accordingly. So, the next time the president snaps at a reporter, we can remember that he is under more stress than any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II, or perhaps Nixon during Watergate.

The ultimate conclusion is that the government has been given a lot of power, and it has done some good and some bad with it. However, if the government does not subsequently relinquish this power, which I doubt it will, worse things will happen. The national debt is rising like the tide, and I don’t think that this tide is going to recede anytime soon. Eventually it is going to reach our beach hut, if we don’t push it back. No one, no matter who wins the election, is going to get us through these waters easily. 

I will end with a bright note, however. The American people don’t like having their rights taken away. There have been greater protests in Michigan over confinement then there have been in Italy, and I think that Americans are not quite ready to lose their rights yet. And—for now—the American people can bring their government to heel at election time.

Nearly 50 years ago, in a small room at the University of Rochester, a group of Christians gathered every Tuesday night for worship and fellowship. I was a new Christian at the time, and innocent in my taste for the music we sang; I liked it all. Now, with more knowledge of both music and poetry under my belt, the memory is a bit embarrassing, as is much of the early 1970's. But even then I recognized the value of our "homegrown" music, played and composed by a fellow student by the name of Will Soll.

Those were not the days of Internet, smart phones, and social media, and we lost track of Will soon after graduation. But now is the day of all that, and I discovered that Will has a YouTube channel for his music. Here's a sample.

Would I have recognized him had I come across this music without a label? I don't think so. Of course, I'm faceblind, so that part doesn't surprise me, but I'm usually good with voices. But it's been half a century, and he, too, has grown and changed in his music.

Still, I have no doubt this is the same Will Soll who wrote Snow Fell on Easter Sunday, the song which brought him back to my mind as we faced an Easter Sunday so different from our plans and expectations. Here's the first verse, though sadly without the melody and Will's guitar accompaniment:

Snow fell on Easter Sunday
Why, dear Lord? Why, dear Lord?
You could've kept it green this one day
Why, dear Lord? Why, dear Lord?
But though our potted plants did fade
and all our potted plans had to be remade
You rose anyway, you rose anyway
On Easter Sunday.

(Here in Central Florida a snowy Easter is actually less probable than having church services and Easter egg hunts cancelled by a pandemic. But in Rochester, New York it was a different story. Our youngest daughter was born in a blizzard just four days before Easter that year. So no one should have been surprised by snow.)

Thanks, Will Soll, for the memories.

He rose anyway.

Is anyone else old enough to be haunted by Simon & Garfunkel's I Am a Rock, written in the mid-1960's?

I have my books
And my poetry to protect me.
I am shielded in my armor.
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb,
I touch no one and no one touches me.

I am a rock.
I am an island.

Staying home is generally not a problem for me. I have 'way too much on my plate to be bored, and in fact appreciate the extra time. (I just wish I were in better shape to take advantage of it, but introverts are not immune to the mental shock of these sudden changes and restrictions. I'm making progress, but not the way I think I ought to be able.)

I miss church a lot, especially singing in the choir. And the comfortable routine of eating lunch with friends after the service. But as I said, there's so much to do at home the days are still flying past.

Nonetheless, going out these days feels like coming up for air.

Porter's printer ran out of ink, and the best and most timely deal was to pick it up from Staples. So he ordered and paid for it online—after adding some banker's boxes to help with my home projects.

In the meantime, remembering that our Gordon Food Service store was between home and Staples, I signed up with them and was also able to place and pay for online an order for pickup. GFS is our favorite source for large bags of frozen fruit—the only source I know of for frozen sour cherries.

When we arrived at each of the stores, we parked and let them know we had arrived. When they came out, we popped the trunk and they placed our items inside. GFS did hand us a receipt through the window, which Porter accepted with gloved hand and masked face; next time we'll just refuse it as we did at Staples.

Then home again, home again. The ink box was thrown away and the ink installed; the banker's boxes stored in the garage for a few days of disinfection, and the fruit bags duly washed.

Whenever I feel annoyed at having to treat groceries as if they were deadly, I remember my father's sister. With her husband and three young children she managed their household for two years in Ethiopia, back in the 1960's. Their produce came from fields where human manure was used as fertilizer, and everything had to be washed with a bleach solution to prevent diseases much worse than COVID-19. Perspective is good.

Well, that was fun. Now it's time to hole up again and see what progress I can make. Hang in there, my friends!

Perhaps my favorite service of the church year is the Easter Vigil, usually held on Saturday night.  Here's my description of our service from 2015:

For us, Easter started last night with an Easter Vigil service that was over two hours long, but wonderful.  Lighting of the New Fire, procession, candles, singing, and a large number of baptisms (adult and child), confirmations, and first communions.  The latter is why it was so long, but who would want fewer?  I love that our church has a means of doing infant baptism by immersion (parents' choice).  I also love that moment when the lights come on and we shout the first Alleluia of Easter—alleluias are banished from the service during Lent—with the whole congregation sounding bells and other happy noisemakers.  (There were a few unhappy noisemakers as well, as it was a long and late night for the above-mentioned children.)  I brought my tambourine, and Porter the ship's bell that Dad had given us so long ago.  The latter makes quite an impressive sound.

Naturally, things were different this year.  But as someone said, if the churches are empty, at least the grave is also!  Our church will have our online Easter service later this morning, but I couldn't resist a private snippet of the Easter Vigil.

In a phrase taken from C. S. Lewis' Reflections on the Psalms,

"Chocolate eggs and Jesus risen!"

Except there are no chocolate eggs for us, as our Easter candy purchases were interrupted by the news that our Swiss grandchildren had been shut out from our Easter celebrations.  We will, however, be eating their jelly beans.

Happy Easter, everyone!

Hey, Boomer! Would you process my unemployment claim, please?

At first I thought the headline was a joke: Wanted urgently: People who know a half century-old computer language so states can process unemployment claims.

On top of ventilators, face masks and health care workers, you can now add COBOL programmers to the list of what several states urgently need as they battle the coronavirus pandemic.

In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy has put out a call for volunteers who know how to code the decades-old computer programming language called COBOL because many of the state's systems still run on older mainframes.

My programming languages from back in the day inluded FORTRAN, PL/1, ALGOL, LISP, BASIC, and assembly language for Linc-8, PDP-12 (machine language for these two as well), and PDP-11. I didn't learn COBOL because that was considered a business language (COmmon Business-Oriented Language) and I worked on the scientific side of things. But it appears to have had remarkable staying power, and Porter knew it well. Not that I see him going to New Jersey anytime soon.

"The general population of COBOL programmers is generally much older than the average age of a coder... Many American universities have not taught COBOL in their computer science programs since the 1980s."

So, Boomers to the rescue. It pays to keep people with arcane knowledge around.

I predict that someday we will regret letting our amateur radio network fall apart.

I haven't actually put this sign on our front door—yet. At the best of times I don't like solicitors coming to our house, and this is not the best of times for strangers to come breathe on us and touch our doorknobs. Not to mention the risk to themselves, going door to door.  Yet still they come.

For many years I kept a journal. I quit for a several reasons, one of which was this blog. It is unquestionably true that I must write, but the pressure is not sufficient to keep all streams active. Sometimes I regret not having that intimate documentation of our lives, though some of it does end up here. Even in my journaling heyday, however, I often missed documenting significant parts of our lives. It seems that at the most important times it's hard to find time and energy to write about them.

Nonetheless, I think it may be interesting in the future to have some documentation of our day-to-day lives in the Era of COVID-19. That's why you're seeing more, and sometimes shorter, blog posts. They're under the "Hurricanes and Such" category; I started that category in 2004—the Year of Four Hurricanes—when I posted, primarily for distant family, our everyday news while "in the midst."

Sadly, I've missed already many important days and events of this extraordinary season of our lives, which is why you'll occasionally see posts popping up for past days, as I try to remember what led up to this moment.

'Twas Porter who went out today, as one of the earpieces on his glasses broke. It was a bit more of an adventure than we expected.

First, the street where the office is was blocked off because of an accident on the other end. There was no reason he couldn't have driven to the office, which is practically right on the corner, but the police were adamant. He had to park in the bank parking lot across the street and walk over. Which means he wasn't quite following protocol, which was to remain in the car when he got to the office—instead he just stood in the parking lot.

Porter was wearing a mask, as per CDC guidelines, which insist that even a poor mask is better than none for this purpose. At least it helps contain large particles—like the dust it was made to exclude. And it looks impressive. He had put both his glasses and a piece of paper with the credit card number in a plastic bag, and the hostage hand-off was executed safely in the parking lot. When he returned later for his repaired glasses, the transaction was reversed. This means there was no fitting done of the glasses to his head, but it turned out all right. We are grateful the office is remaining open for emergencies, and I think they are handling it well.

On the negative side, he observed that there seemed to be more cars on the streets than a few days ago, and the grocery store parking lots were packed. I hope people aren't tiring of this social distancing already ... we have a long way to go.

How different today is from what we expected just a month ago. Our house should be bursting with family: all six of Janet's family from Switzerland, and another eight extended family come to see them. The Palm Sunday service this morning should have been bursting with joy: lots of people, a procession with palms, glorious music, Janet and Stephan singing with us in the choir. A day filled with people and love.

Instead, we exchanged greetings with far-away family via WhatsApp. Choir members shared photos of palm decorations at home. 

At 10:30 we settled down for our church service—live-streamed on Facebook. I put on a red shirt in honor of the occasion, and gave a wave of my tambourine. But there's something too weird about church online. I suppose that in a church where the sermon is the focus and there's not much congregational participation, watching the service makes more sense. And don't get me wrong: I'm massively grateful that our service is online for us! But it will take some getting used to, with Fr. Trey doing everyone else's part as well as his own. Everyone's part but the music director's, that is. :)  Thank you, Tim.  And our COVID-19 Concert Series trumpet player.

Actually, we didn't see the whole service until later, as Facebook could not handle the great number of churches livestreaming their services at the same time. We gave up and watched the recording a little later.

Unfortunately, that means the Swiss part of today's congregation had to give up, too. Here's a shot of what we had in common, while it lasted. As Janet said, "It was great worshipping together, if only for a short time."

Next time it will be better! And it's still Palm Sunday, and the beginning of Holy Week. The first Holy Week wasn't exactly a picnic, either.