Evanston: sheltering; 290; a Chinese poem

Our second day under a shelter in place order and as you can see snow.  Neither has made much difference to our lives so far, though the city outside is quieter.

On Saturday before the order went into place Carol and I took a walk through the cemetery just across the street.  It is a big cemetery.  We covered 1.75 miles almost all inside its bounds and could have made an ever bigger loop.  The cemetery is a very good place to walk.  No one else was there.  I dislike walking on sidewalks where I have to avoid others, most of whom are looking at their phones.

Yesterday afternoon we drove to the supermarket to pick up an order placed online.  While there was less traffic than usual, there was more than I expected.  Nothing like the photos I have seen of completely deserted streets.  We passed a Home Depot along the way.  It was open and its parking lot perhaps a quarter full, as was the supermarket’s.

Our supermarket had pick-up service before the virus.  You take one of several designated parking spots, telephone the number on a sign in front of the spot, and in a few minutes your order is carried out to you.  Ours was by a thin smiling girl who seemed surprised when I thanked her, as I did a flight attendant a week earlier, for doing her job in these difficult times.  These people should be thanked.  We returned to the condo with a minimum of human contact, put the supplies away, which included bizarrely precious toilet paper.  I then carried the paper bags in which the groceries had been packed down to the recycle bin and wiped down everything they and we had touched.

Snow began to fall late in the afternoon and into the night.  Less than an inch, but some was still on the ground this morning.

Leaf buds began to appear last week on the trees outside our windows.

There is less traffic on the streets.  One is supposed to go out only for essential activities.  Walking for exercise is permitted so long as people keep a distance apart which Is not a problem in the cemetery where I expect to confine my walking for the foreseeable future.

Supermarkets, pharmacies, laundromats, dry cleaners, Home Depot, banks are still open, as I am advised by an email is our liquor store, which someone has wisely decided is an essential business, though they have reduced their hours.  They are among the many businesses which are limiting their first hour to senior citizens.  Geezer power.




A friend sent me a link to a video of a young man sailing a 23’ boat solo from California to Hawaii.  I skimmed it.  He seems a pleasant enough young man.  I noticed that the video has had 1,450,000 views.  Now we all know that success is measured by numbers of views and followers and Facebook friends.  The most views any of my videos has had is 5,000.  Most have had less.   Therefore it is obvious that by current standards this young man is 290 times the sailor that I am.  Perhaps the standards are suspect.



I am reading a good novel, TIME AND TIDE, about life on a Navy heavy cruiser in the Pacific during WWII.   In it I came across lines from an ancient Chinese poem ‘Visiting the Hsi-Lin Temple’ by Po Chu-i:

This year there is war in An-Hui,
In every place soldiers are rushing to arms.
Men of learning have been summoned to the Council Board;
Men of action are marching to the battle-line.
Only I, who have no talents at all,
Am left in the mountains to play with the pebbles in the stream.