Morning statistics – The starter is not starting well – Hiking along the Northwest Branch – Childhood memories – Brookside Gardens – Encouraging news from a friend – Invitation to a virtual memorial service – Virtual meeting with hiking board members – PF’s experience with the virus – Schedule of re-openings for Virginia – An example of heroism – Ominous prognostics for Social Security – Evening statistics
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 AM — # of cases worldwide: 3,585,711; # of deaths worldwide: 248,771; # of cases U.S.: 1,188,870; # of deaths U.S.: 68,606. The incidence rate in Ireland is now second only to Spain. However, its mortality rate is far lower. It is about only a third of that of the U.K. Sweden’s mortality rate seems to be accelerating. Both Australia and New Zealand appear to have the virus under control. In New Zealand none of the active cases are rated as critical. The two countries are planning to allow travel from one to the other.
The sourdough starter has risen a little but not as much as I had hoped. I will give it more time but it doesn’t rise any more I will stir in baking powder and salt into the batter and use it to make biscuits. When I was shopping this morning I was on the lookout for yeast but none was available. It has been off of the shelves for weeks now.
Today was splendid: sunny, in the low 70s, without humidity, clear, and dry. Since I had to shop in the morning I did not wish to drive any great distance, so I went to hike on the Rachel Carson and Northwest Branch Trails, with a side visit to Brookside Gardens.
Hiking along the Northwest Branch of the Anacostia River . . . that does not, when written down baldly, seem like a particularly enticing description. Yet it is a sample of the piedmont scenery at its best: a gently plashing brook meandering through dense woods, with leafy tree limbs arching in a vault over the trail and shafts of sunlight streaming though the foliage, at times illuminating it with a peculiar golden-green tinge. The two trails are fairly flat, with mild ups and downs; walking along them is not a “workout” but it can provide some very agreeable exertion nonetheless, particularly in the rockier areas of the gorge near Colesville Road. It is an area that has many memories for me, for I grew in a neighborhood that adjoins one of the trails.
The Northwest Trail is well-maintained now; it was rougher during the days of my childhood and adolescence. There were no blazes, no signposts, and the Rachel Carson Trail was not even complete; one had to bushwhack a bit on the east side of the river to go all the way from the dam to Kemp Mill Road. Three rills cross the Northwest Branch Trail as it approaches the dam, and these had no bridges when I was growing up. Instead we went on top of the cylindrical sewer pipes that projected above the flowing water, which test of balance my brother and I thoroughly enjoyed. I suppose anxious parents have objected to this arrangement, for there are barriers on top of the pipes now. There is parking at either end of the trail, but I deliberately parked in my old neighborhood, not far from the house in which I grew up and in which my parents lived for 37 years. Its exterior, at any rate, has changed curiously little since 1960, the year that we first moved in. Thus in my formative years I always had a fixed point of reference, and perhaps that fact might subtly alter my perceptions from those of men and women who have moved from one place to another during their childhood.
I look upon my childhood as being rather sheltered for the most part; and yet in some ways it was curiously unsupervised. I and my brother and nearly every child in the neighborhood would wander in the neighboring woods on his own, and no one then thought that the least odd. Matters shifted a great deal within the course of a generation. When I was in my thirties I had a colleague with a step-daughter to whom she was devoted, and it was her custom to take time off work each school day to pick up this girl to transport her home. When I mentioned how I would walk home from the school or bus stop during my own childhood, she looked at me in horror. “Oh, I’d never allow her to do that!” she said, in heartfelt tones. “It’s much too dangerous for anyone that age to be walking alone.” In the same way, when my brother and I lived in Copenhagen and London during my father’s sabbatical in 1966/67, we used the public transportation on our own as a matter of course. I was twelve at the time and he was nine. My British friends assure me that none of them would ever allow a child of theirs to do so now.
A few surprises awaited me when I arrived. The parking areas at each end had not been closed up, as I had expected them to be. And there were not many people on the trail. There were a few, to be sure, but I expected to see a much greater number, considering what a fine day it was and also considering that the two trails are in a network with numerous short spur trails that connect them to various neighborhoods and that provide residents with easy access.
The loop between the dam and Brookside Gardens using the Northwest Branch Trail on one side of the stream and the Rachel Carson Trail on the other is about 8½ miles. I extended the hike a bit, however, by going past Colesville Road to the bottom of the gorge before heading back, and then at the other end I spent a good deal of time in Brookside Gardens itself. That also is very familiar to me; indeed, I was one of its first visitors. I knew that this time of year was one of the best times to go, since the Azalea Garden would be flowering in full splendor. The approach to the Gude Garden as one ascends, very slightly, from the Azalea Gardens is one of the most artistic I’ve seen in any public garden. Even at Brookside, though more people were walking there than on the trails, it was not at all crowded.
I encountered MH, a member of the Wanderbirds club with whom I have enjoyed many hiking trips together. She gave me news of her husband CB, another club member (indeed I have co-led hikes with him on several occasions). He had been compelled to undergo chemotherapy recently to contain some cells that might otherwise have formed into tumors, but the treatments are complete now, the cancerous cells have been contained, and he has suffered no bad after-effects. He is now getting out and covering ten or twelve miles a day on foot.
Upon return, I received a notice about a virtual memorial service for CC’s husband FP. It uses the Zoom application, which I am not familiar with, so I hope I will be able to use it properly to be able to sign in.
This evening I participated in a virtual meeting with members of the CHC Board. We were forced to agree that setting up a hike that involves a busload of people is not likely to happen for several months, possibly even beyond the end of the year. Nonetheless we will keep monitoring the situation to see when it is possible to charter a bus for a group of 40-50 people. Any activity involving a group of people this large may have to be postponed for some time. Shenandoah National Park, where many of the club’s hikes take place, still remains completely closed. No access is permitted even coming from the outside (there are many trails that cross over the park boundary but at this point they are all off-limits within the confines of the park property).
Also, PF disclosed some more details about his recent illness. He initially had a fever, which then subsided, and at one point he felt well enough to resume working. Then it flared up again with renewed force, making him much weaker. This symptom is apparently not uncommon. Another point of interest is that he was not tested. Both he and his physician believe his illness to have been due to the virus, but since his state was never serious enough to require hospitalization it was easier simply to wait it out. That means that his case and cases like it are not included in the number of virus incidences. In one way it is encouraging news: if the number of cases is under-reported, it means that the mortality rate is proportionately much less. On the other hand, it means that one is more likely to be infected by it. Even a so-called “mild” case is a troublesome experience; PF, for example was bed-ridden for three weeks.
There is also the question of where he could have picked it up. He has been telecommuting and, like everyone else, has been living in a state of isolation. The most likely explanation is that he contracted it when shopping for groceries. So it seems advisable to keep shopping excursions to a minimum. This echoes the advice of my Facebook acquaintance who works in a grocery store: make a list in advance, buy sufficient food for several days at a time, don’t dawdle in the aisles, don’t chat with other customers, and keep the length of the visit to the store as brief as possible.
Governor Northam is hoping to re-open non-essential businesses on May 15th for Virginia. However, he has given a warning that the virus will remain a threat after that date. (Shenandoah National Park is on a different schedule, since it is a national park, not a state park. It may remain closed long after the state resumes activity.)
Amid so many stories of incompetence and even sordidness among our leaders, there emerge examples of quiet heroism by people in less high positions. Paul Cary, a paramedic from Colorado, traveled 1800 miles to aid the embattled EMS services of New York City. He drove for 27 hours without stopping, alternating driving shifts with another volunteer, and reached New York on March 29th. There he tended patients in the back of his ambulance continually until he fell ill himself with the virus. He died on April 30th. Ambulance workers in dozens of EMS vehicles attended the funeral procession, both in New York, where the procession started, up to the point where the coffin was placed on a plane from Newark to Denver, and in Colorado. He had retired ten years earlier but was continually working and risking his life on a volunteer basis.
Some experts are worried about the amount of money available for Social Security and say that it is possible that payments may have to be cut by 24% within 15 years or so. The problem is wide-reaching. Over 60% of retirees rely on these payments for at least half of their income. At least a third of them rely on it for 90%-100% of their expenses. I can understand why younger people might get impatient at the idea of funding so many elderly people who are no longer working, but it has to be remembered that every one of them was compelled to put money they earned into the program. They had no choice in the matter. It is only fair that they get their money back in their old age.
It is true, however, that people are living longer and that the ratio of working people to retirees is shrinking. It’s not easy to see how the situation can be remedied. If I, for instance, deferred Social Security payments longer than my planned start date in November and re-entered the work force, I would in a very small way be helping to keep the ratio of working people to retirees larger. But I would also be taking away a job from someone else in the process, someone who might conceivably need that job much more than I do. The work shortage, which I alluded to earlier, is not going to go away.
From a purely socio-economic point of view, I suppose that the best thing I could do in order to place as little a burden on my fellow-countrymen would be to expire quietly in my sleep when I reach the Biblical threescore-and-ten, which is less than five years from now. It is, however, a course of action that does not commend itself to me. I cannot account for it, but so it is.
Today’s statistics as of 8:30 PM — # of cases worldwide: 3,642,068; # of deaths worldwide: 252,024; # of cases U.S.: 1,212,345; # of deaths U.S.: 69,725. Just under 80% of the cases in the U.S. are still active. Of these, “only” about 1.5% are rated critical, but that still amounts to over 16,000 people.