Seventeen weeks, exactly 119 days, from my last residence in a barber’s chair I had my hair cut Thursday. A few days earlier I visited my dentist to complete a crown restoration begun after a root canal procedure in pre-coronavirus lockdown March.
Am I abandoning Dr. Fauci’s safety first guidelines in favor of Trumpian bravado? Hell no, not on your life. My life, actually.
I won’t be dining at restaurants anytime soon, even those with outdoor seating. I will not engage in any activity attracting large groups. Attendance at synagogue services will have to wait. I’m sure God will understand. He or She does not require adherents to unnecessarily place themselves, and subsequently others, at risk.
I wonder about people who act as if they are immune from not only contracting COVID-19 but also unwittingly spreading it.
I also wonder why people wear masks while driving alone in their cars.
Makes no sense to me. Then again, there are lots of people out there who lack common sense. Take, for example, those who apparently think swigging diluted bleach could kill the coronavirus, rather than perhaps killing them or scarring their insides. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found in an online study that 39% of 502 adults surveyed had misused a cleaning product (https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/05/cdc-misusing-bleach-try-kill-coronavirus/).
Now, there is reason to question the conclusions of such a small study, but it does make one wonder why anyone would subject their bodies to such an out-of-the-box, er, bottle, treatment.
Medical Update: My full face smile is back. The Bell’s palsy is almost all gone, a remarkably rapid recovery, my doctor exclaimed.
Bear Facts: Four times in the last week a black bear has been sighted within a few miles of our home. Over the years wild turkeys, lots of deer and a coyote or two have crossed our paths as we’ve walked in our neighborhood which is down the block from Saxon Woods Park.
One of the walks Gilda and I take meanders for a mile up Saxon Wood Road. Several years ago during an early spring afternoon we stopped about halfway up the trek so Gilda could look through the windows of a house under renovation. As she walked around the home I looked out onto Saxon Wood Golf Course. Some 500 or more yards away I observed either a very large, I mean a very large, dog or what I immediately presumed was a bear sauntering across a fairway.
I called 911. From local to county to state police I was dispatched from one constabulary to the next in a vain attempt to alert authorities.
The recent rash of bear sightings has not elicited any signs of panic from officials. A spokesperson for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has advised, “Never run from a bear; stay calm, speak in a loud and calm voice, and slowly back away from a safe distance. Make loud noises by shouting or banging pots to scare the bear away.”
Aside from our water bottle, I guess Gilda and I will have to start toting pots along on our walks.
NY, NY: I’ve lived in the New York City metropolitan area for 66 of my 71 years. I grew up in Brooklyn. Before COVID-19 I’d go to the theater more than a dozen times a year, usually preceded by dinner in a theater district restaurant. I went to museums. I walked Manhattan and Brooklyn streets. I took the subway. I drove with ease through every borough enjoying the architecture that flew by my windshield.
I consider myself a New Yorker.
But as I read the Thursday New York Times Styles article “Checkout Time Might be Early” (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/style/hotels.html), I lost confidence in that appellation.
Never a hipster (if that is still a moniker used by trendsetters), I at least professed some knowledge of the city that never sleeps. To say I was confounded, astounded, overwhelmed by all that I did not know even existed would be an understatement.
Well, I guess not too many people enjoying their eighth decade of life are attuned to the shifting “New York scene.” I’m quite content with my bite of the Big Apple and long for a post-pandemic time to enjoy it fully once more.
