COVID-19 is front and center again today as the number of cases worldwide is now in excess of twenty million with one quarter of the cases in the United States. That is really unbelievable as the United States in all my living memory has been at the forefront of protecting its citizens through all my nearly seventy five years. It does make one weep for one's neighbours.
Yesterday I accomplished the vacuuming of the basement and its rearrangement so that it is always ready for our exercise routines. Now that we watch TV upstairs in the living room we no longer use that area on a regular daily basis for TV watching but do use it for several hours of different exercise routines. The first is a set of daily exercises with varied exercises and varying lengths plus you can build your own exercise routine from the individual items. The second is the WII - Walk it out except we eliminate the slow songs and just run the entire 8000 steps. That along with all the walking that I do through the day generally brings me to 20,000 to 26,000 steps per day. I like to be on my feet and do miss my long walks that I used to take. When we first moved here there was really just the one big block from Jeanne D'Arc to Fortune and then over to Orleans Boulevard and back to Jeanne d'Arc and we walked it daily from the time we arrived in April of 1978 until I went back to work in the mid 1990s. I worked at home for about fifteen years copyediting and proofreading throughout that time period sometimes free lance with emphasis on the free as I built up my little business and then working on the National Research Council Journals for most of that time. If you sit and proofread or copyedit for hours then an hour walk is a necessity just to clear the cobwebs from the brain and the feet!
Today I want to do some outside work, cultivating and trimming. The garden is moving into the last phase these days in terms of growth and picking. Never sorry to see that happen as I am not a gardener; I can do the work but there isn't that real joy that some people get from gardening. I can remember both of my grandparents who lived for their garden in the summer months. They had a thrill of gardening. I do like the feet of the earth running through my fingers but I think that is just all part of my devotion to Mother Earth. I love to see the products of Mother Earth even that Black Walnut is such a beautiful tree specimen. In the woods they are considerably less beautiful as they crowd together with their huge straight trunks reaching up into the sky and depriving everything around them of sunlight and water. But in a garden setting they are a beautiful tree although they do rob everything of water and sun even there. The squirrels love that tree and spend most of the day harvesting the walnuts although now that the tree is so big it is starting to drop its nuts on the ground.
I see New Zealand has an outbreak of COVID-19 after 102 days without any cases. There is no immunity from this disease except having it. It is like John Donne's work Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII:
Each man's death diminishes me, For I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee.
John Donne lived from 1572 to 1631 and he was exploring the interconnectivity of humanity.
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