its a dogs life

I read a powerful piece today about the era of America ending. Covid 19 will be taught in history as the moment, like Ferdinand's assassination or Hitler's rise to power, but of course, we've been moving toward this for a long while now. I hadn't realized that in our entire history we had 16 years when we weren't at war. Now is the time that, whatever admiration/ fear/hatred/respect/hope people around the world have had for us, they also have shock and pity. 

Much of my country is outraged/despondent/devastated, but of course, a sizeable percentage are not. I think there are three primary fallacies:
a) unless it is in your immediate family it doesn't matter
b) the focus is on death
c) they aren't aware of how it could have gone differently/they aren't aware of how much worse we have done than any other developed country. Most people do not know that we being pitied. 

For people with a narrow circle of concern, if no one within that circle has died then this isn't real. If they got it and it wasn't horrible, then the whole thing is overblown because of course their experience represents everyones. 

The focus is all death. You die or you live, they assume anyone who hasn't died recovers. They aren't thinking about what six weeks in a hospital does to a person or their financial well-being, or what permanent damage to one's heart means, or what other disabilities - that may well be permanent -- mean for people/the country/the economy. 

This morning, right after paying off the woodpecker, Samuel and I rushed off to Great Falls Park so he could enjoy it too, before it got too hot for him. We were there early so I was tickled to have a parking space near the interesting things on the right. Samuel was thrilled to be someplace new and immediately smelled everything around the parking lot and raced to explore the entire edge of the parking lot ... to the left. Fortunately, there was another trail at the far end.

A nice thing about the park is that ~70% of the people wear masks. The park rangers are not enforcing mask-wearing, but there are park rangers and it is now, technically, legally required. 

I thought we were finally running out of toys but Karen introduced me to several new ones that I don't recall ever having seen before. 

Good luck with the new week. If you need some joy you can borrow Samuel and vicariously enjoy the world through his excited exploration.