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March 15, 2020: If its Ants we are, we got One Jar

For us, it was a day like most others. We both stayed at home, took the horses for a walk. Pete bicycled to a neighbor’s place and brought home berries that we’d been storing in his/our freezer. I constructed the March agility course and took Tyra through it.

This is what may have been noteworthy: we both cleaned the kitchen cupboards and made a list of things we need to purchase in the next few days. I’m not sure we would have done this if the exigency did not call for it. The exigency is the word from most places is that the Corvid-19 virus is spreading and local organizations/businesses are shutting down.

Will the Fatty Shack survive the big one
Will the Fatty Shack survive the big one?


Pete and I agreed that we should stock up on food items just in case the stores run out. According to Pete, two ships with food are on their way to Alaska. I do not know if trucks are now coming up the highway with staples. Best, we thought, to be prepared. We have enough tea, cocoa, and dried mushrooms on hand to last a long, long time.

Is this what is called The Big One? There have been many localized disasters in the past few years – floods, famine, plagues, pestilence, fires. The media makes note of these things but seldom goes back and sees how people are faring. I can imagine, for example, that those who lost homes in California this past year, now being restricted to homes they don’t have. I’ll bet some are wondering, just how much can the human spirit take?

What is really sad is that the poor are going to be the most affected. Word has it that in Anchorage they are going to open a local ice arena to the homeless. Meanwhile, those of who own homes are being instructed to isolate ourselves. So those who are sick and contagious are going to pass on the virus to others.

My analogy is this – think of ants who have labored hard to make a community, the outward manifestation being an ant hill. When an ant hill is destroyed, the inhabitants scurry about in an attempt to rebuild what they have lost. Chaos prevails. To us humans, this seems like a futile endeavor. I’ve been imagining another life form watching us. Our community has taken several smaller blows, and we are now (presumably) taking a larger blow. Like the ants, we have no clue as to what to do. So what do we do? We race out to the store and purchase toilet paper because we’ve been told that it is in short supply.

I envision the end of the world, what’s going to be left are five cockroaches, Keith Richards, and hopefully, the Dali Lama.

Tomorrow around here will be much like today. I’m going to continue cleaning the kitchen because it is gross. One notices such things when the prospect of being home bound is imminent.

I’m also going to resume working on my recycling book. It seems like one step forward and two steps back – this is the way it should be, damn it.

Next: 75. 3/16/20: The New World Order

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