CQ: Day 1: Big Crash

March 16, 2020 NEWSPAPER HEADLINES & GRAPH: There are 4,300 cases of Coronavirus in the U.S. NOTE: This was the big crash, but it wasn't the last. My "two-week" work-at-home policy instituted was extended to at least 6 weeks (as of this writing). The Penn State closure for "three weeks" mentioned below would later be extended for two months, ending the Spring semester at Spring Break.

Blog: So... The Dow Jones $DJIA just fell almost 3,000 points, or 13 percent, the #2 DAILY percentage crash in history, further than the 1929 crash. Only 1987 was worse. It was surreal to watch on television.

And just after the crash, I did something I never thought I'd do. I gathered up my belongings and left work, without a return date. It was weird. I think I said, "see you on the other side" on my way out.

We were told to work at home starting Monday, but my wife is not feeling well so we're starting tomorrow, Friday. I stopped at Wal-Mart on the way home, to get a couple week's worth of groceries, just in case things got bad. Nobody was really panicking, but I was wary.

I filled the car up with gas and got some cash just in case. The local paper in the checkout told about the closure of Penn State.

*NOTE: This is part of my series "Coronavirus Quarantine" about my family's (and the world's) experience with COVID-19 during the stay-at-home orders and self isolation of Spring 2020. You can read all the blogs in reverse sequence by clicking here. Blogs before April 2020 were written after the fact, but the thoughts and photos are from the publish date indicated. For reference, a graph of cases and news interest in the U.S., and newspaper headlines from each blog publish date are included in each entry.

CQ: 3 Days Before: Second Crash

March 9, 2020 NEWSPAPER HEADLINES & GRAPH: There are 514 cases of Coronavirus in the U.S.

Blog: Today's stock market crash is quite unusual. The plunge of over 2,000 points was the 2nd-biggest percentage drop since *1987* (#1 was the slightly-worse October 2008 crash).

*NOTE: This is part of my series "Coronavirus Quarantine" about my family's (and the world's) experience with COVID-19 during the stay-at-home orders and self isolation of Spring 2020. You can read all the blogs in reverse sequence by clicking here. Blogs before April 2020 were written after the fact, but the thoughts and photos are from the publish date indicated. For reference, a graph of cases and news interest in the U.S., and newspaper headlines from each blog publish date are included in each entry.

CQ: 4 Days Before: Mask Hysteria

MARCH 8, 2020 NEWSPAPER HEADLINES & GRAPH: There are 450 cases of Coronavirus in the U.S.

Blog: I stopped at Wal-Mart on the way home. Confirmed that, as the media has been saying, you can't buy dust masks anymore. They put signs out to remind people they don't protect against Coronavirus, but obviously people didn't listen.

*NOTE: This is part of my series "Coronavirus Quarantine" about my family's (and the world's) experience with COVID-19 during the stay-at-home orders and self isolation of Spring 2020. You can read all the blogs in reverse sequence by clicking here. Blogs before April 2020 were written after the fact, but the thoughts and photos are from the publish date indicated. For reference, a graph of cases and news interest in the U.S., and newspaper headlines from each blog publish date are included in each entry.

CQ: 12 Days Before: Last Supper

February 29, 2020 NEWSPAPER HEADLINES & GRAPH: There are 24 cases of Coronavirus in the U.S. NOTE: This may have been the last "normal" day we would experience in the year 2020, although we didn't know it at the time. We were surrounded by a dozen people in the shop's small room, then went to a restaurant where we sat down to eat with others, not thinking at all about social distancing or the Coronavirus. Although the major papers had headlines about the virus, many papers did not. The U.S. had 68 confirmed cases.

Blog: We had a nice time tonight when we drove into a nearby town to visit a friend's shop's grand opening and dined on (amazing) burgers and fries.

*NOTE: This is part of my series "Coronavirus Quarantine" about my family's (and the world's) experience with COVID-19 during the stay-at-home orders and self isolation of Spring 2020. You can read all the blogs in reverse sequence by clicking here. Blogs before April 2020 were written after the fact, but the thoughts and photos are from the publish date indicated. For reference, a graph of cases and news interest in the U.S., and newspaper headlines from each blog publish date are included in each entry.

CQ: 17 Days Before: First Crash

February 24, 2020 NEWSPAPER HEADLINES & GRAPH: There are 15 cases of Coronavirus in the U.S. NOTE: This was the first time that COVID19 really caught my interest -- and it was because of the first stock market crash of the event.  Note that the newspapers' primary headlines were NOT coronavirus-related at this point. What we didn't know was that this would be only the first of several stock market crashes over the next three weeks. The chart below shows that we were on the precipice as the market opened this morning:

Blog: The stock market is crashing due to Coronavirus today. If we close with the current loss on the Dow #djia (-933 / 3.22%) it will be the #3 point loss and #11 %age loss.

*NOTE: This is part of my series "Coronavirus Quarantine" about my family's (and the world's) experience with COVID-19 during the stay-at-home orders and self isolation of Spring 2020. You can read all the blogs in reverse sequence by clicking here. Blogs before April 2020 were written after the fact, but the thoughts and photos are from the publish date indicated. For reference, a graph of cases and news interest in the U.S., and newspaper headlines from each blog publish date are included in each entry.

Tangled Up in Blue

"Tangled up in Blue" is trending on Twitter today.

 My parents grew up on Bob Dylan, who is turning 78.

I went to a Dylan concert at Pfeiffer University in Misenheimer, North Carolina in 1976, when I was 2 years old. It was loud. I cried and my mom had to take me to get ice cream.

 Decades later, I stumbled upon, and fell in love with this brilliant song.

 

Songs are poetry. (They rhyme sometimes), and of course Dylan was a master of words. One of my favorite Bob Dylan stanzas is this one from "Tangled Up In Blue:"

(the lines are actually not in the original handwritten song shown here, but are in most lyrical interpretations of the version on the original album. He wrote & performed several versions).

Here's the story of that song, and here's more about Dylan's complex rhymes.

CQ: 72 Days Before Quarantine: Newseum Visit!

Dec. 31, 2019: 72 Days Before the U.S. Coronavirus Quarantine NOTE: Was this severe flu I had the Coronavirus? USA Today said on March 23, it's plausible, but more research is needed. On April 11, the L.A. times suggested that COVID-19 was likely in California in December, under the guise of "an unusual flu season." We will probably never know. I penned this blog 6 days before the New York Times published their first article about Coronavirus on January 6, 2020 (shown above) and their timeline puts the start of the story in China on Dec. 31, when the government admitted people were coming down from a "mystery disease."  I really felt that what I had was unusual. The cough lasted for about 6 weeks after I caught whatever it was. I went to the doctor, but they couldn't tell me what it was. It wasn't the Flu, and it wasn't Pneumonia, because I had vaccines for both in the Fall.

Blog: We went to Washington, D.C. for New Year's Eve. Well, not really, but it was the last day we could tour the Newseum, the news museum there.

Suffice to say: It was awesome, I have a million pictures and videos to go through, but I'm sick.

Truthfully, I barely made it; I have some sort of flu, the worst I've had in years, but I insisted on going. With another day or two in bed I hope I feel better, but the cough is tremendous. A lot of my coworkers and friends are also sick. AccuWeather says it may be the "other flu" -- Influenza B --- that is causing the season to be so bad.

The worst part is: It killed my Christmas Break. I had all these high hopes of getting a lot of work done around the house, but as soon as I got back from Christmas at my wife's parents-in-law, I got sick. But anyway, Merry New Year, it's a new decade, and the Newseum was awesome. More later, I promise.

In any case, we got home late, in the dark, and drove over Seven Mountains during a snow squall. After I took this picture, it got much worse and snow covered the ground. My wife was terrified to drive.

But, we got home. And now... it's almost 2020.  UPDATE: IT IS 2020.

*NOTE: This is part of my series "Coronavirus Quarantine" about my family's (and the world's) experience with COVID-19 during the stay-at-home orders and self isolation of Spring 2020. You can read all the blogs in reverse sequence by clicking here. Blogs before April 2020 were written after the fact, but the thoughts and photos are from the publish date indicated. For reference, a graph of cases and news interest in the U.S., and newspaper headlines from each blog publish date are included in each entry.