The drowned trees might be from 800 years ago (according to some) or from thousand of years ago. This is the one furthest from shore that appears only rarely. Well, to be precise, all of the drowned trees are generally buried under sand and rock. This one is buried again this week.

Last Wednesday I began winding a warp and today I am a few inches from completing the second shawl. I will work past dark to get this one done because I have already laid out the weft for the third shawl. This morning I wound off a skein of sock yarn. I will knit socks before beginning the next warp in a couple of weeks.

The last person I hugged other than my husband was Paul at the Twist sale on the 6th of March. That was a couple of weeks ago. By last Tuesday, I was not hugging anyone. I cancelled my Scrabble game. We took stock of supplies and are self-isolating. Gary was listening, just now, to Irish music of the sort that makes me cry even before I listen to the words.

I still have four used but unread Temeraire novels (Patrick O’Brian + dragons) in a stack. If I actually read down my to-read novel and nonfiction and poetry stack, I will reread some old favorites, but I think there might even be one of my mother’s Alice Hoffman novels I have not read. We’re good for a couple of weeks.

We will stay home for a long as we can manage, and because I like having a full pantry and freezer and enjoy cooking, we’re good for food.

I am deeply resentful of news that people of my generation are failing to avoid crowds. There are people who refuse to see the potential disaster happening.

The 1918 influenza pandemic (January 1918 – December 1920; also known as the Spanish flu) was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic, the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus, with the second being the swine flu in 2009. The Spanish flu infected 500 million people around the world, or about 27% of the world population of between 1.8 and 1.9 billion. The death toll is estimated to have been anywhere from 17 million to 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million, making it one of the deadliest epidemics in human history.

There were no flu vaccines in 1918, no protocol for treating the disease, no cure. “Spanish flu” did not begin in Spain. It may have begun in Kansas. It moved around the world because of troop movements during the war. People carried it everywhere.

It isn’t conscripted warriors carrying disease these days. We can probably blame wealthy people on cruise ships and airplanes for bringing disease to our shores. No one caught covid-19 from a package or immigrant. This novel coronavirus arrived in the lungs of individuals and couples traveling for entertainment or business.

Because I live in a relatively isolated area, I buy groceries at farmers market when I can and most everything else online. Every commercial site I have ever visited has been sending me notice that they are closed. The wide shoe store will take mail orders. Stores and businesses are shutting down and working from home. Yarn stores all over the country have cancelled classes and closed their doors to in-person shopping. McMenamins has closed its pubs, hotels, and restaurants, keeping only online sales and one storefront open.

It is likely that most people are getting sick from breathing in droplets from a sneeze or cough or “spit” talking. Some people have filthy habits. (I know a local man who likes to blow his nose on the beach—press one nostril closed and literally blow his nose out on the sand, then the other. It’s a disgusting habit, but maybe he’s stopped. I don’t go near him. I don’t go near anyone.) It’s not likely that people are catching this virus from surfaces, but it’s possible. It’s not likely that I will catch it from mail because paper does not harbor the virus for long. But I’m not picking up my mail from the post office until I have to go out for some other reason.

We went for our walk and talked to a neighbor from a safe distance. He’s in his 70s and so are many of our neighbors, two have had recent heart attacks. A friend is only going out twice a day to care for her horses. (No danger of catching covid-19 from a horse.) Another friend just completed cancer treatment and is not even seeing her family.

This morning we did not collect trash from the shore. We are done with that for the duration, and it’s amazing how pleasant it is not to be bending over every half minute for a scrap of plastic while we walk our three miles. I figure the chances of picking up the virus from bits of plastic that have been in the ocean long enough to grow a mane is exactly zero. But the corner of a candy wrapper? The wet wipe fresh and well above the tide line?

This is not a holiday, this is a national emergency.

There are children all over the beach just now, but The New Yorker has closed its offices.

Is there a cure for stupid?