Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Don’t Cough
We’ve all done it. Accidentally inhaling our own saliva. It seems to happen at the most inopportune times, doesn’t it? I was near the front, center rows at a funeral service when I choked the choke that triggers involuntary spasms of coughing. You know it’s going to be bad, so you give it a couple of quick, full coughs in a vain hope of dealing with it all at once.
It rarely works. Then comes the following cough urges that you assume can be ignored by sheer will, but which subsequently get forced out as groans or squeaks that are probably worse than if you just let the coughs out naturally.
My lungs tend toward asthmatic, so I am prone to a daily period of throat-clearing and am no stranger to a random urge to cough throughout an afternoon. It’s usually an unconscious habit, but not anymore.
In the midst of a global flu pandemic, coughing is met with suspicion. I have no idea if I will sense a difference between my usual handful of coughs in a day and an early symptom of being infected with the COVID-19 coronavirus, but now when I feel an urge to cough, I’m noticing the question comes to mind.
I’m also noticing a little more self-consciousness about my tendency to cough.
“Don’t cough,” I tell myself. You will scare the people around you into worrying you may be spreading THE virus.
You know how well that works. Go ahead and try to suppress the urge. There is an inverse correlation in that the more you try not to cough, the more intense the urge to cough becomes.
Maybe I’ll start practicing the art of announcing my morning body temperature reading with each cough. Kind of like the “Excuse me” courtesy often uttered after burps, hiccups, coughs, and farts.
[cough!] “97.4.”
That’ll reassure them.
I’m not sick.
Yet.
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New Identifier
One of the most common initial checks being made to assess someone’s health during the COVID-19 pandemic is the measuring of their temperature. I rarely take my temperature, partly because I rarely have a fever. When I do develop a fever, I tend to notice it right away, without needed to measure it. Only after it feels a little extreme do I tend to dig out the thermometer for an actual measurement.
A week ago I had no idea what my normal healthy temperature usually ran. I do now, at least my morning temperature, anyway. Since the primary symptom being checked in the current coronavirus outbreak is body temperature, I decided to self-monitor my temp to determine a baseline reference for comparison, in case I do get sick.
Isn’t the normal body temperature always just 98.6°(F)? Not exactly.
I’m finding my normal morning temp is around 97.4 degrees. I think our current daily temperature should become attached to our names as a new identifier. Use it in the same vein as academic suffixes.
John W. Hays, 97.4.
We will all begin to sound like our own FM radio station frequencies.
Think about it, though. You would know right away if someone was coming down with something by the number in their greeting.
“Hi, I’m 101.2.”
Whoa! Back off there, fella.
I think my temperature probably went up a little bit yesterday afternoon on my walk through the woods with Delilah. Apparently, there might be an ostrich loose in the area. If those were turkey footprints in the snow, that beast must be bigger than Ms. D.
Those brown circles are Delilah’s paw print and that giant boot in the bottom corner is mine. The bird that walked along our trail must be half my height.
I should probably take up wild turkey hunting. Get it before it gets me.
97.4, …signing off for now.
Stay a safe distance out there.
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Working Alone
My high hope of building a footbridge in a single weekend fell victim to my need to accomplish all the tasks without a helper and also my being the sole entertainer for Delilah’s high-energy needs.
Add in the less-than-ideal windy and cold spring weather, plus the limitations of the batteries for my cordless circular saw, and my inability to finish by the end of the day yesterday was not all that surprising.
I resorted to two different solutions for supporting the long boards that I cut. That treated lumber is really heavy compared to the remnants of the old cedar deck boards I’m using for bracing.
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The pallets had a tendency to collapse, so I switched up to plan B on the second day: old moldy hay bales. That provided welcome consistency.
Because the bridge will end up being very heavy, I decided to build the frame right next to the washout I’m covering and then drag it into position.
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I was able to haul the boards down by the fence and begin to screw some of the cross-supports into position but quit when the time had passed for Delilah’s dinner. I’ll leave the finishing until next weekend.
Trying to screw the pieces together square and true proved challenging on the uneven ground. I want to give that the time and attention necessary to get everything precisely the way I want it. Then I plan to move it into position before screwing down the floorboards.
I’m not sure I’d be able to lift it if I waited until it was completely built. I mean, not without someone with a strong back to help me.
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Look Ahead
Take a break from the growing fear and uncertainty embedded in the crest of this pandemic wave rolling across the globe and look ahead to the day when it will be a block of time in history. Turn off the news. There will be updated reports awaiting you in the morning. Check those and then get on with your day.
There will be a day when you once again get to hug those you love. Look forward to those moments.
My friend, David Keiski wrote a song about it and performs in this video he created for us all to enjoy at a safe distance. Let his words ring across the world!
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Don’t be embarrassed about deciding to set it on “repeat.”
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Pandemic Loneliness
It is hard to predict what the situation will be 10-days from today but based on comparison with geographic locations where the coronavirus outbreak is that far ahead of here, it seems that people who don’t feel sick now may have symptoms by then. That really does make it feel strange to carry on with life as usual.
Sure, the odds go down if you only expose yourself to a handful of people every day, but what good does that limitation do if one of those people have the virus and don’t know it? So, the safest bet is to stay home entirely. All by myself.
It feels a little apocalyptic.
I’m going to build a bridge.
While Cyndie is hunkered down with her parents in Florida, I’m alone to pick eggs and walk the dog. Between tending to animals, I’m going to try solo construction and use leftover deck lumber to make a bridge over the eroding drainage swale. It will take some ingenuity to manipulate 16-foot boards into the chop saw all on my own, but I think I can figure something out.
The muddy effort we put in to re-establish the concerted flow of the drainage swale across our land appears to have paid off.
That provided motivation to get on with this bridge project sooner than later. Actually, I have a little extra time before the primary need arrives. During the growing season, I cut the grass along the strip just beyond the pasture fence to maintain a walking path, and the erosion blocked my ability to drive the lawn tractor beyond that point. The bridge is a solution to that barrier.
I won’t need to mow for a few weeks yet. Look at how little in the way of green growth there is to be found in our current landscape.
That will change real soon.
A lot like the looming intensity of a certain virus outbreak underway.
I wonder what our landscape will look like in 10-days.
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Increasing Production
It’s March 18 and I’m still symptom-free. I’m measuring each day that I’m not sick as a victory over the COVID-19 pandemic. Thank you to everyone who is heeding the call for social distancing. One graph I saw at worldometers.info last night indicated the daily number of cases identified in the US has been doubling every few days. Since that data only includes the number of people actually tested, I imagine the total number of cases increasing every day is probably much larger.
I have not quarantined myself yet, but I’m limiting my activity to commuting to work and then coming straight home. I will need to stop for gas twice a week, but I always pay at the pump so there is no need to go inside.
There are only ten people at work, so if we can all avoid exposure from others, the risks at the day-job should remain low.
It’s too bad the virus doesn’t provide obviously visible indications in a person when they get it. That would make it so much easier to avoid people who are spreading it.
While staff at the day-job are giving their all to keep up with the over-filled production schedule (there’s no indication our customers are slowing down at this point), the hens at home are just approaching their highest production rate.
Yesterday was the highest-grossing day of the new season. From our amazing eight hens, we got 7 eggs for the first time this year. I found the last egg out in the sand covering the floor of the coop, not in the nest boxes that all the others have been using.
It seems to me that the color of the eggs from the three different breeds is becoming more homogeneous. We used to get some that were very dark brown and some that were very light. Yesterday’s seven looked surprisingly similar.
The light ones are a little darker and the dark ones are lighter than usual.
Luckily, they are all filled with a brilliantly deep-colored yoke that makes for amazing breakfast dishes and wonderful baked goods.
With the head cook and principle baker living in Florida for a while, I will be stockpiling eggs for a later date.
If things get desperate during the pandemic quarantine, maybe I could trade some for toilet paper.
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Trail Bulge
For some reason, the heaving path down the middle of our trails fascinates me. Some days the bulge stands out dramatically. Yesterday, I tried to take pictures that would show how high it had risen, but the two-dimensional images just don’t do it justice.
First, I tried shooting from my eye height when standing. Then I crouched down and snapped a shot for comparison.
I’m not sure there is any difference between the two for revealing the surprising upheaval of earth compared to the ground on either side of it.
The hump is frozen solid, but the very top surface of leaves and dirt melt just enough to get slippery. It becomes a challenge of constantly choosing whether to step on the residual ice or the decaying leaves for the better footing, ever wary that either could result in a slip.
Add in the frequent jolts on the leash when Delilah wants to make haste after some critter ahead and it’s a wonder we ever make it back to the house clean and dry.
When the trail offers better all-snow footing, and during the summer when it’s not very wet, I occasionally allow Delilah to race as fast as she wants and run behind her, but that is chaos for planting my feet. It tends to be at a pace that I can’t maintain for very long, after which she willingly settles down to a brisk walk and I spend the rest of the jaunt gasping to recover my breath.
Over the weekend, I noticed that it is the corner fence posts that are all getting pushed up, despite my having released much of the tension from the wires.
It is easy to push the fence posts back down using the loader on the diesel tractor. Almost too easy. The first time I tried it, I was shocked over how little resistance there was to the hydraulic power and weight of the bucket. The complication is that the period of time when the ground is thawed enough to easily accept the posts being pushed down, the tires sink in and put me at risk of getting stuck and/or tearing up the surrounding turf something awful.
It becomes a classic case of timing being everything.
I’m not going to worry about the fence posts for now, but I will be anxiously awaiting the trails getting back to flat again as soon as the frost goes out of the ground.
Bring on the spring mud season!
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Makin’ Mud
When the snow disappeared from the ground in our hayfield, the ruts from the tractor that had picked up the round bails during winter became clearly visible. Those tire tracks weren’t a concern for me until I could see the drainage swale water was following them instead of flowing straight in the direction we want.
Then I had an “aha moment.”
If the water was following tire tracks, I just needed to make some new tracks.
I decided to try using the ATV. Knowing it wasn’t as heavy as a big tractor, I accepted the chance it might not make the impressions I wanted, but it was safer than bringing out the diesel and getting it stuck in the mud. The surface is already too soft to be in the field with the big tractor.
With the plow blade still on the front, I added cement pavers to the basket on the back for added weight and headed into the field. Back and forth I drove, working to re-establish the track we want the water to follow.
The ATV, plow blade, and I got splattered with mud, even though the path was grass-covered, but I think I succeeded in creating a new preferred route to the curving ruts left by the hay bale tractor.
Now we just wait for the next dose of precipitation to see it work.
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Say Something
Have you received a lot of unexpected emails from businesses recently? There is a common format you may begin to recognize. A communication professional, Karen G. Anderson, offers tips for organizations that want to email their primary audience with assurances in the face of the ongoing pandemic.
- Say Something
- Talk About Customers (Not the Organization)
- Send Links
- Make Sure People Can Contact You
- Message Should Come From Individual
This morning I received this very message from a business I made one online purchase from years ago for a replacement bowl to match a long-discontinued tableware pattern. It struck me for it’s classic adherence to the recommended guidelines for prudent good practice in times of a national emergency.
It was the 5th or 6th such message to show up in my inbox in the last few days. Being a natural contrarian, my mind quickly jumps to concern about all the entities that haven’t contacted me yet. Why haven’t I heard from them? Are they not all on the same side when it comes to taking all the precautions to keep everyone safe?
Well, let me just assure you, my dear readers, I am fully aware of the risks and ramifications that have materialized from the worldwide spread of the coronavirus COVID-19 and I am taking specific steps to control the spread. Before I started writing this post, I sanitized my keyboard and made certain to maintain plenty of space between myself and Cyndie, Delilah, and Pequenita.
To be doubly cautious, you might consider wiping the surfaces of your devices before you read my posts.
There is a discussion conference in my online community where members write their life stories. Yesterday, I posted this:
I was alive during the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. At first, it was a news story about an illness that was spreading in China. At that initial phase, the impact on my life was zero. At work, we wisecracked about the possibility of our supply chain experiencing some future delays.
After the spread of the illness reached other countries of the world and increased at alarming rates in some of them, the reality set in that eventually we would be impacted more directly.
When the financial industry started to fall at a record pace, the idea set in that we were at risk of suffering from not just our health but from economic pressure, too.
Then, billion-dollar professional sports leagues canceled their seasons and shit got real. Just as quick, concerts and plays were canceled, schools closed and life fell apart before anyone I knew had been positively identified as having the virus.
By the middle of March that year, I was in a waiting game for the moment when I might feel the first sensation of having a fever. Each morning when I woke up, one of the first thoughts I had was to assess how I felt.
Since the belief at the time was that the incubation period was between 5-days and some undefined larger span of time, I never knew if I might have it and be contagious, or not, let alone whether those around me were.
Cyndie’s brother wasn’t able to take advantage of the tickets his brother finally scored for them to go to a major golf tournament for his 60th birthday celebration. Our friends had to cancel their long-awaited family trip to one of the Disney resorts in the last year before their daughters grew out of their prime childhood fascination with the idea.
At that point in March, it wasn’t the fear of illness that burdened our minds, it was the disruption of life as we knew it and the complete uncertainty over how much worse it could possibly get and whether or not there was any hope of it all being just a temporary disruption.
I remember the time as feeling like a moment of historic milestone, but without any ability to measure it adequately against some comparable reference.
I didn’t think about it while originally writing those words, but just now it gave me the impression I might have been composing that now in case I wouldn’t have a chance to do it later. That was not my intention. I just thought it would be interesting to mess with the time frame and write about the present moment as it might be perceived in a distant future.
Maybe that came from my recent writing about what my parents’ lives were like 75 years ago.
I’m not just social distancing myself, apparently, I’m time-distancing, too.
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Weak Claim
with 2 comments
Just my opinion…
Claiming innocence when overtly behaving in a spiteful, mean-spirited manner that is so blatantly transparent to the entire world of intelligent people is sad enough for any individual, but downright criminal and deplorable for a head of state.
Who would do such a thing in today’s world? Can you think of any world leader who would boldly and unabashedly stoop to such boorish behavior?
“… [the virus] comes from China.“
He’s just stating the fact. Over and over again.
It’s a fact. Whaaat? What’s wrong with that?
If you don’t see what’s wrong and are able to allow yourself to ride on that greasy train and cling to that embarrassingly weak claim of innocence, then you are fooling yourself. You are not fooling the rest of the world.
Such behavior adds importance to my yearning to send love to everyone in the world. I don’t want to limit my love to only those receiving or sympathetically witnessing this kind of abuse, but also those who find justification in supporting said abuse. I love the people, if not the behaviors and beliefs.
There you go. You have a perfect justification for the heavy use of the term in official press briefings and written government communications.
Except you don’t. It’s called “diplomacy,” wherein you respectfully respond to international and domestic public feedback by changing your behavior. To forge ahead and even double-down on the usage is a total callous disregard for the responsibilities and aura of importance for the highest office in the country.
When the world is no longer in the midst of the financial calamity extraordinaire that is reverberating from the embarrassingly delayed, under-prepared governmental response to this scientifically-predicted pandemic situation, feel free to embrace that descriptor with all your mean-spirited resolve.
Maybe by that time, people will no longer recognize the subversive message oozing out with each repeated usage. That tilt of the head. That subtle emphasis on the word, “China.”
“Chinese.“
In a hundred years, go ahead and call it the Chinese Flu.
While untold thousands are currently suffering and loved ones are dying all over the world, maybe have a little respect and use the identifier the rest of the leaders of the world see fit to use.
Your sanctimonious innocence over the factual correctness of the geographic origin is weak, at best.
<end rant>
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Written by johnwhays
March 20, 2020 at 6:00 am
Posted in Chronicle
Tagged with boorish behavior, coronavirus, COVID-19, editorial comment, fact manipulation, leadership, opinion, rant, spin, un-presidential, unbecoming behavior, virus names