It’s been a few days. Herding humans may be a lot like herding cats. Even in mariner’s household of two, the days are drawn out and have empty spots. It used to be before sheltering that in mariner’s retired family they had two or three trips to visit friends, attend meetings and other gatherings, and shop. This busyness has stopped, of course, leaving just a run to get groceries. What else has stopped is sports – all sports! What fills this empty time?
Communication must go on. Every social media site has had a notable increase in usage. So has porn, gaming, email, telephone, smartphone and picture telephone (Skype, Facetime et al). Siri and Alexa have started to complain that the signal is bad and they have to hang up for a while. Interestingly, television programs haven’t shown an uptick. Late shows and afternoon talk shows are suffering in quality even though they are doing their best with a hopeless situation. Scanning the cable guide, one realizes they have seen everything at least twice – including Roy Rogers and Ozzie and Harriet. What has increased is viewers of live streaming and On Demand options.
That leaves TrumpNews. No matter how lonely or how bored the reader may be, don’t be tempted. Check out PBS, NPR, Newsy, Politico, The Atlantic, Protocol, RealClearPolitics, Axios, Propublica and The Economist. All these websites have an ethic about the difference between gossip, news, fake news and uncontrolled political bias.
The psychology types both online and in print suggest that family members deliberately attempt to make the whole family the focus of daily activity. This is a lost motivation because most of the time parents are working, children are at school, and the smartphone has cleaved relationships into small pieces.
Everyone should put on their ‘pass it forward’ hat to find ways to help with the financial hardship that far too many citizens will suffer from job loss, cut hours and the virus itself. These genuinely are historically terrible times.
Finally, although many months late, Congress has passed a decent fiscal package to see citizens through the economic uncertainty. Congratulations.
Regarding the virus, stay in touch daily with trusted news sources.
By the way, Happy Easter . . .
Ancient Mariner