April 21

I Woke up early today, actually showered and blew dried my hair. I sure need a haircut. I guess I can find another piece of my youth reclaimed. As a teenager and as a young man I had shoulder length hair. My hair hasn’t been this long since those days. I brushed my hair and figured I should try to look my best for our Zoom meeting.

Zoom is a new innovation in online communication and meetings. It is something I wished I would have bought stock in. Now more people are seeing each other on the app than they see each other in person. We have the ability to put a virtual background on our screen, this morning I decided to go to Los Cerritos Mexico and enjoy the beach again. For the next meeting I went back to Watermark Beach resort in Osoyoos. Virtual may be the only way to travel for quite some time to come.

Back to back meetings, and in the middle of it all my daughter texts me she forgot her laptop at my place and needed it for her zoom classroom. My awesome partner came to the rescue and delivered it to her. Zoom classrooms is one way to keep school going; apparently they are looking at opening school in May. I wonder how that will look, how will these kids maintain social distancing? I wonder if they really need too?

As my day meanders along I reflect on my youth again. When I was ten or twelve we upgraded our telephone from rotary to a push button phone, a real cool innovation. I bought my first cassette player and cassette tape; Kenney Rogers Greatest hits. I really related to the song Coward of The County. We just lost Kenney and when I think back things were a lot slower paced back then. We seem to have slowed life down to a pace that would be more comparable to those days. I wonder if coronavirus had emerged in 1984 if they would have done all these same emergency measures? I know that there would be no media sensationalizing or social media conspiracy theories. There was no social media at all. Now we worry if our world is becoming more like the book 1984.

Pinkpop is canceled said my email. This email arrived only moments after my cousin messaged me from Amsterdam to let me know that the restrictions on gatherings in The Netherlands has been extended until August 31. We had tickets to Pinkpop; a festival in the south of Holland June 21. With many great bands playing including The Pretty Reckless and Guns N Roses this was to be the start of an epic trip to Europe to celebrate my fifty years on planet Earth. I knew it would be canceled but somehow I held out hope that things would change in time. Sadly it was not to be and it’s time to cancel our trip. Next year we hope to try again.

Out the window I see the neighbour across the street in his front yard cutting down a tree. I found I needed to get moving again so I went outside. The extrovert in me was clamoring to get out and talk to people so I walked over and said hello. Ron and his wife Selena have lived there for sixteen years and we talked for longer than we have in the fourteen years I have lived across the street. Another connection made in my neighbourhood and we shared a smile, a laugh and agreed the world is strange right now. When this is done the block party will be truly epic, by the time this is over I hope to have met everyone on our street.

Evening shadows extended across the valley as the light of day waned and we went for our thirtieth walk in the last thirty days. Routine is good so we enjoyed a third walk this week with our friend and neighbour Brad. As the last echos of light faded the bird song filled the evening sky. Brad mentioned that it seemed the birds are louder this year, as a cacophony of bird song filled the night air. He stepped up to a fir tree and quails erupted from beneath it, it seemed he had disturbed their nesting area and they burst out in protest. We laughed and agreed that this is the new excitement and nightlife in these strange new days. When we walked back up the street it was with a refreshed feeling of connection with the creatures around us. My cats of course like to find a different form of connection with our neighbourhood birds.

I watched the evening news, and realized I am tired of bad news on TV. This time it is a mass shooting in Nova Scotia. Twenty-two dead. It was really sad to think someone could plan and carry out such an atrocity. He impersonated a RCMP officer right down to the police car. Sad news, bad enough news to bump coronavirus from the headlines. If I wanted to get cheered up the next story doesn’t succeed, This time about seniors homes and the pandemic. I shut off the TV and sat down to write. I’m fortunate that the words came out and I’m able to share may day. My wish for my family, my friends and every one else is to stay safe and stay healthy. Inside myself I wish a speedy recovery for everyone affected by coronavirus. I also wish our society a speedy recovery when our new world emerges from the old.