Reaching  the end of March 2020, Kathie Manthorne and I had been living in isolation for more than three weeks. Having foreseen what was coming, we laid in large stores of rice, beans, desiccated vegetables and fruit, canned goods, paper towels, bathroom tissue, coffee, bottled water, wine, and beer. Going into lockdown on March 8, our apartment resembled the base camp of a large expedition, or perhaps a Cold War fallout shelter. Forays to the local supermarket were accomplished by doubling up face-masks, wearing  sunglasses and nitrile gloves. Returning to our digs, everything was unpacked into the kitchen sink, then thoroughly washed in hot water. Childhood memories bubbled up of my mother wiping can-tops with a moist sponge, or my playmates’ basement larders stocked to survive World War Three. Renowned Virginia photographer Willie Anne Wright, one of my parents’ generation, was reminded of Polio outbreaks from her childhood. “I was forbidden to go outdoors, or to speak with anyone but the postman”, she recalled. “We constantly washed our hands . . .  for as long as it took to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star or Row Row Row Your Boat.” Hearing this offered some comfort in knowing that what we all were enduring was in fact nothing new. Since the beginning of time, plagues had swept through human societies like scythes, reaping their harvest of death. As sirens wailed, and EMS crews retrieved the dead from their high-rise dwellings, the living fell to their prayers. More it seemed turned to their television and mobile devices, tracking the pandemic’s spread, and keeping updated on the oddball antics of celebrity politicians.  Every night at seven o’clock, neighbors threw open their windows to raise a grateful din, honoring health-care professionals working on the front lines of the pandemic. I purchased an old army bugle on eBay, and almost learned to play it. Apart from acting as a commissary dump, our apartment was repurposed to also serve as a backdrop for virtual lectures. Pressing on to get her Greatorex book to the publisher, Kathie met her classes and doctoral advisees online. We all became ZOOM jockeys. Some of my projects screeched to a halt. Unable to get to my Rockland County studio, I shifted my focus to finishing the manuscript for Sketchbook Traveler: Hudson Valley. The book pairs images of my journal-paintings with short narrative texts. It occurred to me that some of these visual-verbal couplets might serve as amusing and informative blogposts, offering comfort to others struggling to cope. Below is the first, published on April 1, 2020.

Some may not notice what is happening. Fearful for their own lives and property from the growing pandemic, something has escaped their attention. We find ourselves in the midst of one of the most important events in our life as a species. For the first time in history, every nation, every living person is at the same moment focused on a singular natural disaster in real time. One might go so far as to say that nature itself has taken arms against human meddling. Science has found more genetic diversity between two bands of chimps living at opposite sides of a river than in all of the humans on earth. In this way, faith and science agree.
Be it under God or not, we are one, a singularity; the family of mankind. Every day, I speak to friends and family. All are hopeful. Many are busy advancing projects that simmered on back-burners for years. Apart from individual pursuits, let’s devote some thought to moving forward together, once the alarms fall silent. Returning to normal, to business as usual, will be a failure to grasp the lesson.
Now that everyone is paying attention, we have a golden opportunity to reinvent ourselves, beginning with renegotiating our relationship to all living things, by which I mean Creation, also known as The Environment. Let’s look ahead. There will be no returning to normal. Let’s prepare instead to move forward, toward something better. Covid-19 has just handed us a bumper crop of sour fruit. It’s time to start making lemonade.

Now available to own: Sketchbook Traveler: Hudson Valley

Coming Soon: November 2022: Sketchbook Traveler: Southwest

Explore my Quaranteam Dispatches, from April 1-June 8, 2020