Just as an exercise, try going through the last day’s worth of this thread and marking up professions of “we’re very careful and doing everything we should” that include "here’s the gaping holes in how we’ve arranged that, and how we’ll be contributing to viral spread and further opportunity for viral mutation should we catch the virus along the way. "
Airplane tickets
Going around unmasked
Vacationing in tourist spots
Going out to eat
etc.
The reason I posted that thing about how good it would be if around 70 million more people in this country learned to amuse themselves well at home is the reaction that the post got. The idea that doing so is not “living”, and that “living” requires doing all the above. I assure you, I’ve been alive and well all this time. If I live in a cave, it’s a pretty premium cave disguised as a suburban 3-bed 1.5-ba house with the usual overstuffed garage.
The reason I didn’t say “300 million more” is because so many people cannot. But I think 70 million more can.
My yard measures about 40’ x 60’; it’s not big, and apart from my veg garden it’s also got my clothesline, a composter, two apple trees, roses (which make rose hips) and raspberries. A park and side areas nearby provide wild grapes, elderberries, rose hips, autumn olive berries, and black raspberries. I understand that many people in the US don’t have that much space, and also don’t have access to community gardens and parks that are allowed to ramble a bit. But an awful lot of us do. I had an aerial tour of my city not long ago via a fence company’s software: I was looking for solar panels, but I also noticed that very few backyards are used for food production. Maybe one in 50. This is a part of the country famous for growing food. But most non-farmers don’t do it. Granted, if you want tree crops, you have to think well ahead, but even now it’s astonishing how many suburban fruit trees’ produce goes to waste. Last summer I was on my way to the park when I saw a little sour-cherry tree absolutely dripping with fruit on the edge of turning, and I went to the house and asked the woman – if she wasn’t planning to pick it – if she minded if I did. Have it all, she said, so I did. Fifteen pounds of beautiful cherries. (I brought her back some canned cherry sauce.) I used to get apples the same way, before I had a yard and planted my own trees. Trees require almost no labor, incidentally, apart from their harvest span. Every year, right around the same time, there’s three intense weeks of weekend and night-shift work. Picking, peeling, cooking, canning. And then there’s applesauce all year. Somehow I managed to do this year after year as a custodial single mother nearly entirely responsible for my kid’s upbringing and support; I suspect many more people could carry it off. I did not, incidentally, grow up gardening and preserving food, but frankly the plants do most of the work. Some arithmetic is required, also a calendar, a pressure canner, and mason jars, which are reusable. (You generate a lot less landfill waste and recycling this way, too.)
As for working at home – you know, I did it for years when the kid was little because I didn’t have any choice; there was no backup childcare, and the court wouldn’t have allowed me to move. Nobody was outraged on my behalf back then, even though it was a lot tougher to make a living that way at the time, because employers took full advantage of swapping “flexibility” for money – and I was much more isolated then, because there wasn’t good teleconferencing, few worked at home, and when I wasn’t working I was taking care of a young child and our household, something others declined to help with, though I was frequently invited to spend time and money I didn’t have on entertainment. What goes on now is actually much nicer, if you discount the dangers to life and health around. I now do four distinctly different kinds of online work. Some of it’s highly skilled and requires an advanced degree, some could be done by anyone with a reasonable high school education.
But: the first thing would be having people not freak at the prospect of living this way till we actually do learn to live with the virus, meaning not die in droves from it as we currently do. That’s what I was getting at in that post.
If you’ll excuse me, I have to go paint the cave’s main bathroom and bake some bread. It’s been almost 20 years (!) and while Martha made good paint back in the day, it’s time for a bit of new.
