Category Archives: Coronavirus

About The Martian

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So I read another book last week. (Cue the horns.)

There’s actually a lot of book reading going on in my house these COVID-19 days. Gil reads regularly, like me, but Rick has definitely upped his game, probably due in part to hearing Gil and me talking about our books all the time.

Gil and I have been having an ongoing conversation about the merits of the Fantasy genre. He schools me about low fantasy (or “low-nerd”) and high fantasy (“high-nerd”, obviously). I insist I don’t like fantasy literature (remember my book club debacle?) and then he points out all the fantasy books I have read (and loved): Harry Potter, Narnia…ummm…yup, I think that’s it. There are only so many unicorns I can handle.

Those favorites would make me a low nerd.

But every once in a while, I up my nerd game and read some science fiction, like this week’s choice, The Martian. It’s actually pretty rare that I read an novel after I have already seen the movie, but my reading guru, Anne Bogel of Modern Mrs. Darcy, insisted it was a brilliant read whether you were a high nerd, low nerd or none of the above. I had really enjoyed the movie, so I had to wonder, what more could the book offer me?

As it turns out, plenty. Like how to survive single-handedly ON MARS – a good skill for anyone’s toolbox. Well, okay, maybe not applicable to most people. But the cool thing about author Andy Weir is that he makes it seem absolutely plausible that it could be done by an ordinary astronaut like Mark Watney (who looks exactly like Matt Damon, so that does tip the balance a little.) His title character is funny, irreverent, oddly optimistic, forgiving, intelligent and most important for being stranded on Mars, he can fix pretty much anything. And his problem-solving skills are killer.

What draws me to a book like this? Well, for one, the science is actually pretty interesting. Weir makes it read like a Reader’s Digest and not a Chilton’s car repair manual. And while I don’t actually like doing science, I do like knowing about it. Weir had real-live astronauts read his book and give it a thumbs up. If it’s good enough for Canadian Chris Hadfield, it’s good enough for me. I do like books that teach me something.

At times, I actually forgot that I was reading a novel. Hmm, interesting. That underscores another winning factor for me – a book that transports me. In this case, metaphorically to Mars. And, very convincingly, with its descriptions of freezing temperatures and lonely days eating freeze-dried snacks – not unlike COVID-19 until spring decided to show up. And also, whether it’s sci-fi or fantasy or whatever, it has to be believable – not in the “I-believe-in-unicorns” sense but in the “If someone got stranded on Mars, this is exactly how we would spend a couple billion dollars getting him back.” Sometimes, I actually believe Mark Watney lived. In the future. It’s THAT convincing.

A book gets bonus points if it can make me LOL, which this one did, several times. Author Andy is apparently pretty funny because the wisecracks are pretty much what he would say in the same situation, he demurs in the interview at the back of this book. I mean, if I want to not laugh, I can borrow a Chilton manual from my father-in-law.

One caveat: the f-bombs abound right from the first sentence. I find it makes the writing effective. But if it bothers you, you can pretend that Weir is British. Almost everything can be forgiven in the right accent.

About Island 5243

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For some reason, this famous quote from my brother’s high school yearbook is resonating with me right now: “Ho hum. Another boring day on the island of Tiki-Tiki. “

I’m not stranded alone so I haven’t had to personify a basketball in order to keep me company. Not that all those balls, pucks or other head-shaped sports accoutrement are being kept otherwise busy these days. This is a sore spot with a couple of my island mates. Some days I’m not so sure they wouldn’t vote me off the island if they could vote Connor McDavid on.

One strategy when you find yourself in a trying situation is called reframing. As in saying, “I’m not stressed – I’m excited” to explain your escalating heart rate at the thought of one more day on your particular island. So for the purposes of this blog post, let’s try it. Let’s pretend we are returning back to the land of high school and obscure yearbook quotes to see if tips for surviving high school might be helpful for surviving quarantine.

First, unless you’re actually in high school at this time and are bemoaning the fact that your life has been hijacked by a virus that is 120 nanometers in diameter, there should be instant relief when you realize you’re not in high school anymore. You’re welcome.

Next, let’s take a look at what stands out most from my three years that I took Home Economics: the day that we made an entree called “Sweet and Sour Wieners”. This could be an important quarantine skill, replacing a perfectly good protein with hot dogs and using up some of the canned pineapple you discovered in your pantry when you decided to Marie Kondo your way through the house last week. Cheap and “creative” and a hit with the kids, to boot.

Also, remember all those Social Studies or Physics lessons delivered in monotone by well-meaning teachers? And how you developed the skill of the artful nap? Eyes open, mind shut, total bliss. Don’t tell my island-mates but sometimes I use this trick when they’re talking about all the sports that aren’t happening. Just sayin’.

Of course, when you were in high school, you would never be caught dead wearing the same outfit two days in a row. Maybe it’s time to dress up the sweat pants with some legwarmers which were also found in the Marie Kondo debacle that has left you co-sleeping with the entire contents of your closet. Perhaps wearing all those items could slowly shift the pile to the laundry hamper instead. A little bit each day is all it takes to get a big job done.

Remember the smell of an adolescent gym class? Try “goin’ natural” for a day. This technique is particularly helpful if you find that you just can’t get any “alone time” anymore. Of course, the hazard is that you can’t stand the smell of yourself either. Thankfully, bathroom doors have locks and you can maybe sneak away for a ridiculously long shower, another tried-and-true highschooler habit.

Maybe you could try making a COVID-19-book. (I won’t hazard using the term YEARbook. Oh, please, no.) Write bios of everyone in the house along with their quarantine ambitions. Take pictures of your activities: snacking, Netflix, crying, closet-cleaning, couch trampoline-ing. Have a family vote: most likely to clean the kitchen, most likely to leave half empty water glasses everywhere, best new series chooser, longest shower-er. You get the drift.

Finally, plan your graduation and beyond. Thankfully, high school didn’t last forever (it only felt like it) and neither will this quarantine (it only feels like it.) Plan to have a banquet (at a restaurant), get dressed up (in non-sweat pant attire) and stay out all night partying at the gravel pit. Well, maybe not that last part, but you get the idea!

In the immortal words of Dr. Suess: “Oh, the places you’ll go!”

About the Art of a Pandemic

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The strangest things happen in a pandemic. People start busting out their dusty guitars and forgotten flutes. They step out onto balconies and perform their best Pavarotti imitation. All of a sudden, we’re noticing all these little free concerts going on everywhere in the world.

Part of the noticing is that we have the time to notice right now. Scrolling through our feeds, reading the articles that we get linked to, maybe even stepping out onto our front steps and balconies, we see people engaged in art like never before.

But is it so strange? So unusual? Maybe art is the thing that goes unnoticed during our regularly scheduled lives but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. However, I do propose that art IS happening more during these times of enforced leisure, downtime and boredom. This week I read about the connection between the Bubonic Plague and William Shakespeare. His most prolific periods? When the Plague was acting up and his acting troop had to go into quarantine.

Boredom can be a good thing if the by-product is impromptu balcony concerts. But that’s not the only thing that’s happening. Parents who are schooling at home find they are relying on those keep-em-busy-tricks they used when their kids were preschoolers: art supplies, play dough, coloring pages downloaded off the internet, dress-up clothes, blankets over tables and living rooms transformed into stages. And maybe some parents are joining in right now and finding they are able to forget themselves – and the pandemic – for a little while as the coloring page or the living room karaoke engages them.

Okay, maybe coloring pictures of superheroes and singing along to the soundtrack of Frozen 2 for the umpteeth time is not your jam. But how about that jam? There’s a lot of cooking going on right now – making homemade jam is probably one of them as freezers are being plumbed of their last summer’s stores. And the reason there’s no flour and no yeast on the shelves? It’s not just their daily bread people are making, they’re making art.

No, it’s not, you say. That’s just food. But why can’t it be food and art? Creativity begins with the head and the heart but it is executed by the hands. And even if it’s just the soothingly rhythmic chore of chopping up vegetables for soup or spicing up your mac-n-cheese with some dill and fancy mustard and putting in a pretty bowl, you are, in your own way, making your Pandemic world a more tolerable and maybe even a more beautiful place. And like comfort food, art soothes as anxiety works its way out through the hands and relief pours back into the head and heart.

The cool thing I have found about art and creativity in general, is that it begets other art. And not just in the same form. I am not musical. I play no instruments – save for drumming pencils on the backs of couches. And although I am fond of singing loudly in my car – alone – I care not to step on any balcony and sing for the public. (Think: cat concert.) But I have found that there is a funny thing that goes on when I am able to listen and watch live music being performed, especially if it is my own children playing and singing. It makes me want to write.

Huh, weird.

I first recognized this phenomenon a couple of years ago when I watched my then 5-year-old niece Penny sing a solo at her year end music concert. Although at times very shy, Penny did not shy of the microphone. She confidently sang her selection and – here’s what I really loved – tapped her toe the whole time in perfect syncopation to her accompaniment. I felt a restlessness inside of me, but not a longing to get up on stage and sing. It was the need to express my own art, even if it was just recording for posterity in my journal how watching Penny sing made me feel.

Feelings. Expressions. Outbursts. They’re probably pretty common right now as we are finding our corners in the house too cramped right now. Or we’re feeling hemmed in by our limits: no work to go to, no classes, no “fun” shopping, no playgrounds. There has to be a constructive way to express our energy, our frustrations, our personalities. Maybe: art?

I don’t want to look back at this time and think I wasted it – because time in all its iterations is a gift. But art does not have to be productive to do its work. It doesn’t even have to be permanent – think sidewalk chalk drawings or all the balcony concerts that aren’t being recorded – for it to BE ART. Art can even look unsuccessful in the eyes of the world but it can be transformative and transcending to its practitioner.

One of the origins of the word art? To be. Maybe it’s more important than we even realize. We need to do art in order to be.

Maybe it’s time to dust off the violin, the Skilsaw, the pasta machine, the 1970s macrame kit, the sewing machine, the paint, the great Canadian novel, the seed packages, the microphone, the website, the podcast idea, the Photoshop program, and because it’s almost Easter – the paska and hot cross bun recipes.

Go do art. Go be. Go!

About the Austins

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And now back to our regular un-Pandemic programming. Sort of.

I’m reading a lot lately. I mean, I always have one or two or three books on the go but Pandemic reading has taken on a new slant: my library and favorite thrift shop are closed, I hate e-Readers and I can’t spend all our money on Amazon orders. Because: Pandemic snacks are more important.

So I’ve been re-reading, shopping my own shelves. Actually, pre-COVID-19, I had a plan for My Reading Year (yes, I’m one of those people) that I would do a great deal of re-reading. It all comes from the moving thing: packing up all my books, shedding the ones that are no longer anything more than dead weight (that I didn’t want to move to a new house) and musing over the favorites that I really should re-visit. And this year I wanted to focus on writers I love that write/wrote both fiction and non-fiction.

Madeleine L’Engle falls into that category. Most everyone who recognizes her name would associate it with her Newbery Medal book A Wrinkle in Time – or the recent Oprah Winfrey/Reese Witherspoon/Mindy Kaling movie offering of the same name. A Wrinkle in Time is a seminal book that is often lauded by writers of children’s books. Or sometimes, as in another Newbery Medal book, When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead, it is the backdrop of another story. (A very good story.)

It wasn’t until I was in my thirties before I even heard of Madeleine L’Engle. (I know, right?) A teacher friend lent A Wrinkle in Time to me, plus all the ensuing Murray family books, aghast that I had never read them. And so a L’Engle groupie I became.

Whatever story L’Engle told, her framework was always a moderately conventional family and I think that was a big part of her appeal. The families were like none I knew – ones that discussed physics and tesseracts while their mother cooked stew for supper over a Bunsen burner in their attached-barn-converted-into-a-laboratory. Or where another mother – an ex-opera singer – played classical music records while she cooked supper. Or where the family sat around and discussed theology with everyone from the 5-year old to Grandfather contributing to the conversation. Really, Madeleine?

I haven’t got to a lot of her published journals or non-fiction offerings yet, but any biographical information I’ve read about her suggests that it was exactly the kind of family she was in herself. Minus maybe the space travel and alien abductions. I assume. And Ms. L’Engle always asserted the importance of every person in her fictional families, no matter what their age or how much they misbehaved.

Grandfather, is in fact, one of my favorite characters in Meet the Austins. A retired minister who exudes wisdom, he lives by the ocean in a converted horse stable: the individual stalls are especially conducive to bookshelves that hold Grandfather’s copious book collection. His granddaughter Vicky describes him as a bibliomaniac. (And then parenthetically, tells the reader to ‘Look it up!’ Such cheek!)

Grandfather doesn’t just keep his favorite words in his books or in his head: the most meaningful to him he has transcribed onto the very walls around him. In his bedroom, a quote from Hildevert of Lavardin circa 1125, reads:

“God is over all things, under all things; outside all; within, but not enclosed; without, but not excluded; above, but not raised up; below, but not depressed; wholly above, presiding; wholly without, embracing; wholly within, filling.”

This quote is so obscure that I couldn’t even Google it. But L’Engle brings attention to a medieval mystic’s words as effortlessly as Hermione Granger waves her wand and pronounces ‘Alohomora!’ to a locked door. (Look it up!)

In the loft, where the children sleep, a poem by Thomas Browne is painted:

If thou could’st empty all thyself of self,
Like to a shell dishabited,
Then might He find thee on the ocean shelf,
And say, ‘This is not dead’,
And fill thee with Himself instead.

But thou art all replete with very thou
And hast such shrewd activity,
That when He comes, He says, ‘This is enow
Unto itself – ’twere better let it be,
It is so small and full, there is no room for me.’

Have I – pre-slow-and-crawling-days-of-Pandemic – been too full of ‘shrewd activity’? Or even now, with my books and my phone and my TV am I ‘replete with very thou’?

There’s something about the writing on the walls that strikes me, the constant reminders of things that Grandfather believed and wanted to remember. In the bedroom, where the first quote is, he has no other pictures except the picture window, because no picture could complete with the ocean view. But the simple juxtaposition of words reminded him of Whose view it was and Who made it.

What do I write on my walls? What do I want to be reminded of?

Besides hanging pictures or words on my walls, I have a way of remembering some of the lovely things I find in books: I put them into another book. My siblings can attest to how I used to cut and paste and make scrapbooks when I was young, sometimes much to their chagrin as ‘the making of many books’ consumed me – and all the homemade flour paste that Mom could make.

I still cut and paste and draw:

It helps me to remember the things that are important:

And not to mistake the wonderful things:

Good writing and good writers can teach us so much, remind us of what’s important and show us what is possible before it happens. The wonderful things can’t last forever but we can remember them and look forward to different, wonderful things.

About the Pandemic Life

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What day is it? Is it still 2020? Is that spring out there or a thermonuclear thaw? Did Elon Musk go to outer space and bring home a virus souvenir? Did Sarah Palin really show up on The Masked Singer? Am I dreaming or did somebody just tell the whole world to #stayhome?

This thing is actually pretty weird for me and not for the reasons you may think. I love being at home, I love being able to work from home. When this first went down, I did a fist-bump with myself and thought, “I got this.” I mean, if I got a day to #stayhome #allday pre-March 2020, I was thrilled. I am, do not forget, an introvert.

But I find myself strangely moody that I’m suddenly without the freedom to just go.

What is that thing inside human beings that says don’t tell me what to do even if I want exactly what you are suggesting? And also, there’s that spooky admonition: Be careful what you wish for…

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to be so figure-out-able. Like when I take some quiz from a magazine and think my answers are so avant-garde, so against the tide of the rest of humanity? And then I flip to the answer page, tally up my score and find that I am incredibly average, one of the herd, just a human being after all.

And so I find myself analyzing myself: what is it I’m really missing?

Well, contrary to my introvert-self, I miss people. Sure, I have Rick and Gil and Simon in the house with me. And bonus: I actually like all of them. And I text and I talk and I read a lot, which to me is like someone usually way smarter talking to me. But I am missing the impromptu chats around town and at work or even the usual kind of shopping at Co-op here in town where you have to budget twice as much time as you think because People Gonna Talk To You.

Not no more. Earlier this week, as I shopped for a few things, everyone was leaning away as we passed by one another in the aisles. It wasn’t nice. It was sad.

And I find myself asking the question: How long is this gonna last?

Cue the crickets. Because nobody really knows. Smart people on the news say annoying things like: It’s going to get worse before it gets better. Well, that helps. Not. Because Newsflash: Smart people sometimes don’t have answers. And in this case, if they do have answers, they’re probably not that smart.

*Sigh.*

There’s a part of me that knows it’s gonna be (sort of) okay, that it will be over eventually and we’ll all look back and say: whoa, that was something. But I don’t want to just look ahead to when it’s over because that could be wishing a lot of time away. And it’s never a good thing to do that.

So I will remember that I’m human and I will just do the next thing and be thankful for the time, no matter how hard it is to watch it go by.

About Right Now

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Sometimes I like to take a page or two in my journal and use the phrase “right now” as a prompt to note everything that is happening in my life…right now. Real, ordinary life passes us by so quickly and we rarely take note of it. I have found it so interesting when I look back on these entries that document what was going on at a specific time in my life – for me, for Rick, for my kids, in our town, in our country, in our world. Because we often don’t remember how things were unless we wrote them down, took pictures or posted it on social media.

Throwback 2020 is gonna be interesting in a year or twenty from now.

Besides the oft-told stories of people hoarding toilet paper and antiseptic-wipe scalpers making a killing, we are seeing unprecedented full-stops to travel, to working, to shopping, even going to church, to funerals or weddings. As each day we watch the news and hear the latest stats and mandated shutdowns, it all feels like everything is sloooowly coming to a halt.

I was rifling through my mind to identify what this whole experience reminded me of and I landed on a scene from the movie Apollo 13. In order to save power, the astronauts had to shut everything down. The lights went low, the heat went off, the constant whirring of machines quit, not unlike the eeriness of a power outage when you realize all the regular noise is absent.

In some ways, we are heading into the dark side of the moon. We don’t know exactly when we are going emerge from pandemic status, but the optimistic view is: we will. Yes, Houston, we have a problem but there are amazing people everywhere doing everything they can to land this spaceship called COVID-19.

For some of us, it may feel like we’ve lost the moon, as Jim Lovell stated as soon as he realized they had malfunctioned. Epic trips have been cancelled, stocks have plummeted, savings are being depleted. But it might be too soon to tell. Ken Mattingly, the astronaut who was banned from Apollo 13, lost the moon first, but was instrumental in getting that ship back to earth. And later, on Apollo 16, he did get to walk on the moon.

I don’t want to come off glib or cheezy. I don’t want to make light of this global event that is life- threatening (for some), stress-inducing, schedule-challenging and even, boring for those who are finding social-distancing and just staying at home difficult. Plus, no sports, no graduations, no festivals, no parties, not even any green beer in the pub.

As we emerge in a month or two from the shadow, remember to look for the bright side. I have faith that it’s there. It will always be there.

About Toilet Paper and Disappointment

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Until further notice, hockey has been cancelled. And basketball. And probably other stuff, but I’m trying not to listen/look at the news anymore than is reasonable. And with those beeping devices at our fingertips 24/7, that is not easy. It’s all so, well…disappointing. And sobering.

And let’s face it: things change mighty fast. Two months ago, we heard about an escalating health crisis in Asia, two weeks ago Italy – Italy! – got shut down, two days ago we were joking in my exercise class about all the panick-ers emptying the store shelves of toilet paper. And two hours ago, I began to take stock of my pantry shelves – including toilet paper. And thinking maybe we should stop recycling our newspapers for awhile. Just, you know, in case.

And then this morning I heard that Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson have become Hollywood’s first couple of COVID-19. How very Forrest Gump of him, getting in on it. Don’t get me wrong, I love Tom. And I love his Twitter-ing reassurance that protocol is being followed and all will be well.

Although we haven’t come in contact personally with anyone who has contracted the coronavirus, it’s starting to get closer to home, both geographically and other ways, too. Rick and I had a trip planned for early April. Cancelled. The conference I was going to go to? Cancelled. Hockey game tomorrow night? Cancelled.

Sooooo, none of those things are life-changing for us. But when everything starts to get cancelled, it starts to look grim. Just think about all the other people affected by those cancellations: not just hockey players and other professional athletes, but everybody who works for those organizations. Everyone who works in hotels and restaurants. And then there are the schools facing closures. Hospitals responding to this pandemic.

It’s pretty obvious that there’s soon not going to be any six degrees of separation.

Maybe if we just knew how long it was all going to last, it would be easier to take. Oh, but, yeah...nobody knows that. That’s why everyone is trying to corner the toilet paper market. And, full disclosure: I bought some yesterday. Just, you know, in case.

But if we really think about it, we don’t EVER really know what is going to happen or how long something is going to last. Our family has had our lives turn on a dime many times with events that were life-changing for us, times when you drop everything to attend to what really matters.

When my conference got cancelled a couple a days ago, I had a moment of despair: what if we never get to travel again? Chalk it up to a healthy imagination and a recent reading of Emily St. John Mandel’s pandemic-themed book Station Eleven. (Trust me: this is not a good time to take note of one of my book recommendations.) If we couldn’t travel again, if we had to rearrange our lives, if we had to bunker down – we would survive. Well, hopefully, since most people who contract the virus recover just fine, if it just takes a little time.

And outside my window today, the sun is shining. It will probably come up again tomorrow. The couple who bought our last house had a baby yesterday and I was sent the news on my iPhone this morning, complete with a picture of the miracle. Another friend sent a message that her dad who is on life support, has taken a turn for the better. And my kids are sending Homer Simpson gifs to our family conversation because a sense of humor really helps. And because: Homer Simpson.

So, my phone can be the bearer of good news as well as bad. Life is not all disappointing and sobering. And let’s hope that if it really does get crazy, we can all spare a square if someone needs it.