On Thursday morning I was at an operations meeting at work, walking through a couple of weeks of programs with my colleagues—all the performances, films, community meetings, lectures, rentals, youth projects, exhibition load-ins and everything else that makes the museum vital and necessary.
By Friday night, all of that was cancelled.
The museums are shut down, the opera house and orchestra are shut down, the famous theaters and the storefront theaters are shut down. Our fundraisers and ASL tours and film screenings: cancelled.
The schools, restaurants and bars are shut down. Churches cancelled their services.
I am allowed to go outside, but my fellow human beings are potential vehicles of contagion. I must avoid crowds and getting withing six feet of another person.
I am also a potential killer-virus carrier. If I have dinner with my family, hug a friend, kiss my husband, cuddle my nieces while reading them a story—I could contaminate them.
I am a the biggest contamination threat to myself: my own hands are disease laden and if I touch my own face I’ll wake up gasping for air in an emergency room.
Two weeks ago, I was planning to travel someplace safe. Now no place is safe.
I went for a walk around my neighborhood with HOB today. We didn’t hold hands.
Everything, almost everything, was cancelled today but the fresh air felt good and I then saw an—open!—fish shop with a painted snowman wearing a shamrock.
Picnic at the Cathedral 
Sickening,, isn’t it! So much hard work and anticipation, all gone down the tubes.
A friend visiting us was lucky to get away back to London…where, to her disgust, she is supposed to be quarantined in her home for a few months.
I reckon she will shed her chains and head to Marks and Spencer to stock up on food…
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Oh it is quite horrible. All that work—the art of course—but also arts administration. Ticket selling, fundraising, marketing, rights and images. Arts organizations run on tight margins and the budget implications are devastating too.
A few months!?!?!? I thought that UK was lagging behind on this quarantine business….
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I gather the idea had been to leave most of the population exposed to the bug, but keeping the elderly and vulnerable in isolation at home until the thing had started to burn itself out. Then they panicked and started telling everyone to stay at home if they felt ill…but still left the oldies etc on a four month stint. I can imagine gangs of old biddies sneaking out to the 24 hour supermarket for supplies of gin under cover of darkness.
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I’d be sneaking out for chocolate…
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I hope that a few years later we will be able to look back at all this as a slowly fading memory. Right now it is busy and dreadful at the same time, trying to move all work online.
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I hope this is true as well.
The online meetings are funny—a guy I work with left his camera to put ice in his cup and it sounded like his apartment was getting hit by a hail storm.
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Yes, mikes pick up sounds that ears usually edit out. Typically when I’m in a meeting and not intending to speak, I switch off the sound.
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I’m not sure if I’ll do a cv-19 blog post. It is um…historic. Or maybe it’s a sign of more pandemics in the future. Very possible after the few we’ve had in past 20 yrs. 😦
Stay healthy and grateful.
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I hope you grateful and untouched by historic pandemics too, Jean.
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It’s amazing how fast it’s all gone isn’t it. We were at school teaching last Friday and now we’re not allowed to leave the house (though my husband can still be called in for work at his hardly-essential job—some things could be stricter…). I’m reassured by the confinement measures here though—I’d rather they hit hard now than have hospitals hit even harder later. Crossing my fingers we make it through this without too much lasting damage.
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Goodness, your son must be quite antsy!
Agreed, we have to do it to keep the medical system from getting overwhelmed but I can’t say I look forward to it.
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I think ultimately all of us will have the virus. Difficult times!
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I read somewhere 81% will get it, though perhaps that’s not all countries.
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It is difficult to say seeing the way things are evolving. Be well.
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Thanks, you too Sidran.
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