Charlie

While I was still able to play tennis, we had eliminated the high fives and fist bumps at the end of a match; everyone was touching the ends of our racquet heads against the other (also enables social distancing across the net).

Zion is quiet but still wonderful off-season. We spent three days there one early December, because we could get a room at the lodge in the park itself.

I went back to get my bike yesterday, and discovered that the shop was closing that afternoon for the duration of the lockdown. There was a long line waiting outside--6 ft apart--to pick up like I was. So I got it back just in time, and now I hope I can remember how to ride it.

I went to three different chain drug stores yesterday looking for a thermometer--all of them were sold out--but at each one there was a sign at the entrance that they would not serve anyone who tried to enter without a mask.

International travelers to destinations that require visas will probably find them much harder to get for the coming year. Many more Americans will be taking domestic vacations. Look for the national parks to be overloaded with visitors when (if?) they re-open later this year.

To my surprise, I have lost 2 lbs since I stated eating all meals at home.

OMG. This is the first procedure you have discussed that I actually understand and could tell someone what to do! (My spouse occasionally suffers from serious nosebleeds.)

Not long ago I couldn't find eggs anywhere; this morning there were plenty of them.

I dropped my subscription to AD because it had turned into mostly an interior decorating mag, but if they started including photos like these...........

The rules in my local supermarkets seem to change every few days. This morning my Albertson's had one-way aisles, and an employee at checkout whose job was to enforce the six foot separation between customers. There was also a SaranWrap-type cover on the charge card keypad, that could be changed for each customer who used it.

We all die alone. We just want to have someone say farewell as we leave.

I mentioned in another thread that back in February I had started reading The Mosquito by Timothy Winegard, a long history of the diseases caused by mosquitoes that had altered the course of human history. I was reading it slowly, so by the time we were in lockdown I was still dealing with things like the yellow fever epidemics in the US in the late 18th century, and I finally finished only a week ago with the prospects for West Nile Virus and Zika. Although Winegard's prose style is somewhat overblown, there was an enormous amount of interesting information, not only about the diseases but also about the ways people and nations responded to them, that still seems relevant even though COVID-19 is not an epidemic spread by mosquitoes. Now I need something different, so I am reading Thomas Cahill's How the Irish Saved Civilization. When I finish that soon, I think I'l start on a recent biography of William McKinley.

No. (Firefox)

Palm Springs is much larger than Key West, Saugatuck or P-town (where I met my spouse 52 years ago!), and of course it is more accessible from a major urban area than those three; there are even residents of Palm Springs who commute to work in the L.A. area daily. I have never been tempted to try out Eureka Springs. If you make it to PS next year, I'm sure you will be welcomed.

The whole Coachella Valley has a smaller population than Paradise and Spring Valley, NV (never heard of either of them, didja?), a pair of suburbs of Las Vegas. The Coachella Valley, including Palm Springs, feels like a big suburb without an urban center. The Agua Caliente Casino is the tallest building in the valley by far, and is only about 15 stories. There is only one shopping mall, which contains the only big department store (Macy's) and the only bookstore. The only "international" service at the airport is to a few cities in Canada. There are three hospitals. What the valley does have in common with a city is lots of good restaurants and bars.

The comparison between NYC and Austria is not logical: the fact that they have about the same population ignores the more important fact that the population density in Austria is 276 per square mile, while the population density in NYC is 28,700 per square mile. In other words, New Yorkers are packed together one hundred times tighter than Austrians! If social distancing has any validity, the time at which each location began imposing restrictions could not be the only important determinant of the difference in number of deaths at the peak. Austrians are naturally more physically separated from one another than New Yorkers than any decree could make them. The average New Yorker comes in danger zone contact every day with many more persons than the average Austrian possibly could.

And don't forget the self-employed service providers who suddenly find themselves being told they are not needed right now, like your cleaning lady, dog walker, barber, etc.

Antonio, one thing I would remember is to not beat yourself up with guilt feelings because you can't take care of everything and do everything exactly right. Just do whatever you can and accept what you can't control, which in this case may be a lot.

My nephew's wife is a mobile physical therapist, and I know that the service she works for is not sending her out for house calls now, but I don't know if that is due to some public health policy or simply the policy of that company.

Aha! Finally someone who looks more like a client than an escort.

Maybe the more important question is how the English will feel about Charles as monarch. They have never felt the kind of respect and affection for him that they have for his mother. With the Windsor genes, it is possible he could spend a couple of decades on the throne.

One of the knocks against the Adamses in the early 19th century was that they seemed to think of themselves as a kind of royal family. Part of both the attraction to and instinctive reaction against the Kennedys and the Bushes is that they seemed to fall into the same pattern. Some people are comforted by the notion of royalty, others are disturbed by it.

Phoenix and Las Vegas are big cities, Palm Springs is not (longtime residents still refer to it as a "village"); Tucson is somewhere in between, an urban area in the desert, but without the huge suburbs. A late friend of mine grew up in Scottsdale, lived much of her adulthood in Orange county, and spent her retirement in Palm Springs. She went back to Scottsdale once every year for a nostalgic visit, but said she wouldn't want to go back there to live because it had become too much like Orange county.

That is one of the reasons why I hate buying things online instead of going to a store.

Since you are from the Garden State, as am I, you probably suffer from the same kind of seasonal allergies there that I did. I moved to the southwest expecting to escape those allergies, only to discover that I am equally allergic to many other things that bloom in the desert suburbs. How was I to know that my allergic reaction to olive trees is off the chart? You might want to make a temporary move to AZ in the spring to test it.