Getting Back Into The Swing Of Things

Turns out drinking Old Fashioneds and getting fired up about starting blogging again doesn't necessarily lead to actually blogging again.  I'm not really enthused about anything right now.  I think maybe writing about what's going may be interesting.  I'm not sure people want to hear about the Coronavirus but I've always looked at this blog like Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House On The Prairie books (at the risk of sounding pretentious).  I would like to think a historian would look at this in a hundred years and extract something useful about life in 2020.

I would say that the social distancing and self-quarantining hasn't been going on for a full month yet and already everywhere you look you can see the veneer of social self-discipline breaking down.  The governor of Colorado issued a statewide shelter in place order that just started yesterday morning.  I saw more people outside at the apartment complex than I've seen, well since I moved in.  I would attribute that to people who have already been cramped up for a month realizing that it could be another month or longer and finally needed some fresh air.  The one's that really annoy me are the people on Facebook and Twitter that start going on about the Constitution.  There are enough articles about what the Federal and state governments can and can't constitutionally do during national emergencies that I'll just let you Google it.  And God knows probably four or five years ago it's possible I would have been yammering like one of those self-appointed Constitutional lawyers myself.  The thing is, the other side of this take is the very annoying "Stay the F**k Home!" crowd.  They are just as omnipresent and in my mind just as scary.  As this goes on I feel like these people will take the policing of quarantine "breakers" into their own hands.  There was a video Michael Rapaport posted on Twitter that I wanted to share.  It was him slowly driving past a farmer's market in L.A. cussing out the people there for being outside.  It was creepy in a stalker fashion and this was before the mayor of L.A. put in the shelter in place order.  I'm not sure where farmer markets come down on the list of essential businesses but I'll guarantee super markets are more packed than that place was just judging by his video.  Anyway, I was going to share it but going back through his scuzzy timeline left me feeling like I needed a shower so I stopped looking.

I think the two extremes or just fringe groups though.  It seems like society is pulling together pretty well all things considered.  The results are varied, the CEO of Texas Roadhouse is suspending his own salary, Ford and other auto manufacturers are building parts for ventilators and private citizens are sewing masks.  That's good.  Celebrities with their hearts in the right place singing Imagine.  Not great.

I remain optimistic that the world will come out of this stronger than we went in.  Time will tell I guess.