The Year of Living Covidly

When the COVID quarantine first started, I settled into the homebound routine maybe more easier than most. I could keep busy with work and writing projects and in some ways I didn't mind what we hoped would be a brief timeout. I don't have much of a beauty regimen 😂 but one thing I have done for the past two plus decades is color my hair. I started when I began graying in earnest. But over the past couple of years, I hadn't been pleased with this process or outcome. For one thing, I thought the color looked really fake. And for another, I was so gray that I had to touch up my roots every 10 days. I think this added to the unnatural look. Thirdly, I am kind of lazy, especially about things like this. Fourthly, I had a couple of friends who grew out their hair to a stunning white silver and they encouraged me to let my colors fly.  So as the quarantine started, it was easy not to color my hair and the roots quickly took over. See what I mean? So, I decided to go for it and c...

In January, John spent three weeks working at the Northern Navajo Medical Center in Shiprock, New Mexico.  He volunteered at the federally run hospital through Project Hope. John was impressed by how well run the hospital was.  During his time at the hospital, John worked at an outdoor COVID clinic.  He also did telemedicine, checking in on people at home who were on oxygen. The Navajo Nation, which is in New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, is larger than the state of West Virginia. It is a challenging place to live: one third of the people don't have running water and only 60 percent have electricity. Despite the wide open spaces, COVID was rampant on the Nation earlier in the year.  However, since then, rates have declined. Medical workers have done a great job getting the vaccine to people. But COVID took its toll. John talked with many people who had lost multiple family members to the virus.  Besides the difficulties of poverty, many of the Navajo people have co...

Nothing like starting the day with champagne.   The six of us in our birthday club are all turning 60 this year. Christy was the first to go (sounds like I'm describing someone walking the plank). She is such a generous friend and has made sure that we have all celebrated our birthdays this year, in some form, despite the social distancing we are all having to do because of the pandemic.  So we wanted to do something fun to celebrate her birthday. When we were in high school, way back in the late 70's, we used to have Come As You Are parties. These were surprise parties that happened early in the morning. How they worked is that the two or three girls in charge would call the parents of all the girls going to the party and make arrangements for the parents to leave their doors unlocked so that they could come by early the next morning and pick up their daughters, who did not know about the party. Everyone would be wearing their pajamas. The organizers would make the rounds, co...

Way back during the Democratic primary, I asked my dad who he liked for president. He told me Biden. I didn't say anything, but thought to myself, "No way." In the debates, Biden seemed to me unenergetic, like he was just going through the motions. At the time, other candidates, like Buttigieg and Warren, my favorites, had the momentum. Huh. Little did I know. Dad was right.  "You were right, dad." Some people think my dad even looks a little like Joe Biden. And he wasn't only right about his choice of Biden as the winner; he was right that Biden was the right choice for the times. That became clear from the time Joe clinched the nomination, largely because of the support of African-American voters, through the presidential campaign, through the election and its aftermath, through his swearing in this week.  Joe Biden remained cool, addressing the issues, calling on the best in people. He was presidential. He didn't let himself get roped into all of Trum...