Archive - July 2020

Two twenty-something men strut in to the grocery store, making a beeline for the deli. I can’t blame them, that fried chicken aroma is the Cinnabon of the savory world. And it was lunchtime. But it doesn’t matter how young and strident and in-a-hurry you are. Wear the dang mask. Or at least if you don’t, refrain from wearing your work logo on a blindingly florescent yellow T-shirt. Two women are selecting sushi. Then they make their way down several more aisles of the grocery store. We have a mask order in our town. Somehow, they didn’t get the memo….

Who knew we’d have to become experts in mask-wearing? Funny/not funny. No one who wears a mask considers COVID a laughing matter. Given a renewed exponential rise in novel coronavirus cases, we can expect to be in a mask-wearing long-haul. So here are some helpful hints, some from healthcare workers who have their own exponential experience, for wearing a mask: When they go low, we go high. (Quote shamelessly stolen from yet gratefully credited to Michelle Obama) Mask-wearers have been called many names, given many disdainful leers, and even been compared to Nazis. We can’t give anti-maskers the satisfaction of…

Funny how something millions love to wear at Halloween is an incredibly divisive adornment now. And it’s not even made of rubber. Nor does it cover our eyes (necessarily). And it doesn’t suffer from the exorbitant markup cost seen at Halloween City. Wearing facial coverings as a method of slowing the spread of COVID-19 has been meet with much scrutiny and criticism: Masks don’t work. A mask ordinance is a violation of my rights. You’re a sheep if you wear a mask!!! No, wearing facial coverings were not recommended during the initial surge of COVID. This is in part because…

A change of scenery was needed. Limited in what we felt were safe options given the frightening uptick in COVID-19 cases, we decided to head up to see our “cousin” (wink-wink-nudge-nudge) Ralph Lauren at his massive, breathtakingly-beautiful ranch just off the San Juan Skyway. But darn it all, he wasn’t home and being strangers (long, lost cousins?) I doubt we would have been allowed past the carefully maintained main entrance anyway. So we chose instead a lovely VRBO just a few miles down the road, outside of Ridgway, Colorado. It was quiet, with gorgeous views, and we saw absolutely no…