Notes From A Bear's Journey

    Some of you may or may not have read about the stimulus bills making their way through countries such as Australia, parts of the EU and the U.S.  Here (in the U.S.) it took a bit of wrangling for government officials to realize that work stoppages were happening faster than the spread of the virus.  Quarantines were closing down restaurants and schools, gyms and gathering places, and people were suddenly home and without work.  Checks and payments were grinding to a halt and cash-in-hand was needed since (among other bills) state and federal taxes were coming due (the Internal Revenue Service or IRS recently extended the deadline to July...so far, the states have not budged).  So Congress, in a bit of back and forth (bail out the corporations or the workers?) finally agreed to vote on a stimulus bill to aid those without work and that's where the problems really began.  As it turned out, despite a few Senators and Representatives testing positive f...

  My friend mentioned to me that what with all that is happening in today's world, it may be a good time to re-boot.  Social distancing is forcing the issue.  One older member of a congregation told his preacher, "I've been social distancing for over a decade;" something which the preacher said was done with humor on the outside but reflected a deep hurt within.  To step back from our daily routines of heading out the door whether for work or school or the gym or shopping, we now have to wonder just how much have we paid attention to those people right in front of us?  Our children or parents or friends or partner.  "I see you," sounds great in a movie's tagline but as with that elderly man attending service, does that other person "feel" seen?   The respected author and oncologist, Dr. Siddartha Mukherjee * wrote a piece in The New Yorker about the corona virus, who's getting infected and how it may be time to not only look at what's ...

Electron microscope image of Covid-19 (round blue objects)  emerging from the surface of cells cultured in the lab on  March 12th from a U.S. patient.  SARS-CoV-2 is the virus  that causes COVID-19.  Photo: NIH/AFP/Getty Images    The Covid-19 virus is now beginning its second circling of our planet as travelers return home (if and when they can) and some countries begin to bracing for the possibility of another round of not knowing what to expect.  And in the midst of all of their (and your) worries comes news from every form of media...radio and television specials, internet posts and podcasts devoted entirely to the "latest," and even companies updating their policies and pratices.   And even as the number of people infected grows the number of people in the U.S. who consider Covid-19 a real threat continues to drop (said a poll taken last week by NPR :  Just about 56% of Americans consider the coronavirus a "real threat,"...

   We appear to be entering a new world, a world difficult to imagine even just a few weeks ago, one in which the world is wondering just what the heck happened, a world in which we are seeing our compassionate and caring side, but also our fear, greed and feelings of what we think we need (toilet paper???).  But what of the countless people now locked out of work or locked down in their apartments?  The servers and staffs, the fast food cooks and the counter folk, the hotel and vacation people who realize that nobody is coming and that soon their paychecks will also not arrive, and the elderly in rest homes now stuck in their minds and their rooms.  To pay the rent or to feed the child?; to keep the power on or to scramble for that roll of toilet paper?; to eek out that last bit of savings or to worry about what to do tomorrow?  As libraries and gyms, restaurants and corner shops, everyday stores and schools close down. children are now staying home so how...

   Not long ago, the movie Yesterday appeared depicting an imaginary time when most of the world had never heard of the Beatles.  And for some reason I can remember the band's use of numbers..."just seventeen" (I Saw Her Standing There), "twenty years ago today" (Sgt. Pepper's), and the iconic "when I'm 64."  And lest one forget, there's also the Paul Simon song about Old Friends saying, "how terribly strange to be 70."  While reflective of aging (and no, I'm not quite there yet but the gap is definitely narrowing) all those references became that much more evident when the doorbell rang.  We all have those moments as we grow older, that impatient waiting just to turn 18 or 21, and then you're suddenly 30 which is soon followed by 40 and (for those of you not there yet) 50 zooms into the picture even more quickly (what????).  But I never expected to say to someone, "I haven't seen that person in 50 years." ...

   Yes, the myths and rumors are swirling like an approaching hurricane as if to accentuate the uncertainty that this new virus is bringing to the world.  Already I've gotten advice from some well-wishers, forwarding to me their social media cures and preventions, almost all of which are false.  And if you've gotten such advice as well, don't feel alone.  Concern and panic (that worrisome buying of pallets of toilet paper and portable water, not to mention the food, matches and signs you'll need to tell delivery people and friends that you are absolutely not coming out of your house no matter what!!!) is exacerbated by our rapid communication which make it difficult to know what is and isn't true.  Will warmer weather kill off the virus? (so far it appears the answer is no as shown by Singapore's warming temps and yet still showing new cases of infection said STAT ).  Will taking antibiotics help? (probably not since this is a virus and not a bacterial...

Saturn as viewed with the eclipse; photo: NASA     Our friend recently left after regaling us with his love of astronomy, him telling us that Saturn's rings are far from flat, their icy pieces circling like fallen pieces from a glacier (indeed, the mass of those icy rings has been estimated to be equivalent to half of our entire Antarctic shelf).  This all came about because we were driving him to the airport and we couldn't help but be mesmerized by the brightness of the planet Venus hovering so close to the moon in the sky, that and my mistakenly saying that Saturn was somewhere in the picture as well (both Saturn, Mars, and Jupiter were in the night sky some 10 days ago but have left us for the newcomers, Venus and Mercury; we do have a mini-moon now circling us, however, but it too will soon be gone).  Saturn, itself lined with both ringlets and moonlets, turns out to be quite fascinating as noted by these few tidbits from Wikipedia :  Data from the C...