HinesSight

I'm part of the OHSU COVID-19 research study!

This evening I became part of an exclusive group of Oregonians, if "exclusive" is taken to mean 100,000 adults chosen at random for the Key to Oregon study. Here's how the study is described in a FAQ page.

The study will test, track and map the COVID-19 symptoms, and new infections, of up to 100,000 Oregonians in real time. OHSU is leading the study in partnership with the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health and in collaboration with the Oregon Health Authority.

Data from the study will guide state and local leaders in easing stay-home orders while protecting against new outbreaks. The study will enroll about 100,000 adults, chosen at random, from across Oregon. It will last up to one year.

Researchers want to develop an early-warning system that allows them to see:

• • How many people in Oregon have been infected with the coronavirus.
  • Where infections may be occurring.
  • How the virus may spread statewide.

Leaders expect the study to help them balance Oregon’s economic and social needs with keeping Oregonians healthy and safe.

Since I'm an admirer of science, and can't stand people like Trump who have politicized the COVID-19 crisis, I was thrilled to get a postcard about a week ago telling me to watch my mail for an invitation to join the Key to Oregon study. Which arrived today.

All members of a household who are over 18 can join, so Laurel, my wife, also will be part of the study if she chooses to do so.

Obviously the main motivation is to play a small part in helping Oregon, and the country, deal with the coronavirus crisis. Another FAQ answer says:

The study will:

• • Show the link between lifting physical-distancing restrictions and any rise in infections.
  • Find cases early so people who test positive for the coronavirus can stay home (isolate), and so  those they’ve been in contact with can be identified (contact tracing). These steps keep the disease from spreading.
  • Spot outbreaks early so officials can act to contain the spread before they need to bring back stay-home measures.
  • Find people who are infected but who don’t have symptoms, to control this otherwise invisible source of spread.

But there's a few other benefits to being a study participant. I can request a free Kinsa digital thermometer that will send daily readings directly to OHSU via a Bluetooth app. That's cool! (Hopefully my temperature will also remain cool, non-feverish.)

And...

The consent/authorization forms took a while to review this evening. Here's part of the initial one.

IRB#: 21408

RESEARCH CONSENT AND AUTHORIZATION
SUMMARY OF KEY INFORMATION ABOUT THIS STUDY  

 

TITLE: The Key Study-COVID-19 Symptom Tracking

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Jackilen Shannon, PhD
CONTACT INFORMATION: [deleted]

You are being asked to join a research study. This consent form gives you important information to help you decide if you want to join the study or not.

PURPOSE:
We want to learn more about the COVID-19 virus and how it spreads across Oregon. We are measuring symptoms and the number of people who are infected with this virus. We will share this information with state and local decision makers about whether such things like stay-at-home orders and wearing masks are working to control spread of the infection. We also want to learn about people’s behaviors during this outbreak and how the crisis is affecting their lives.

STUDY ACTIONS:
If you choose to join, you will be asked to:

• • Consent to the study in the website
  • Answer daily questions about your symptoms that will take between 1-10 minutes a day
  • Take your temperature with your own thermometer or a no cost, study-provided, internet-connected thermometer
  • Answer questions (survey) once a week
  • Choose if you want to allow us to contact you for future research
  • Choose if you want to add your study information into a repository (a large database that has many people’s information in it)

If you meet a certain level of symptoms or you are chosen randomly, we may send a COVID-19 testing kit to you. We may offer to send testing kits to all adults in your household. The testing kit(s) will need to be returned for testing.

The study will last about one year but you can choose to leave the study at any time.

RISKS:
You may experience the following risks:

• • Mental distress or possible financial hardship if you are found to be positive for COVID-19.
  • Feeling uncomfortable about questions, but you may choose not to answer any question.
  • Possibility of a breach of confidentiality, but this is a small risk, as we follow all of OHSU’s privacy rules.

BENEFITS:
If you choose to join this study, you may benefit from being tested for COVID-19 and possibly getting earlier treatment for the infection. You may also help cut the risk of spreading the infection to others.  

Doing one errand can be a day's work in the COVID-19 Era

Being retired, I'm used to having a pretty relaxed schedule. But before the coronavirus arrived to mess up our lives, frequently I'd set off in my car with a bunch of to-do's and manage to get them all done.

Bank. Pharmacy. Grocery store. Hardware store. That sort of thing.

Now, I feel I should get a trophy if I just get one errand accomplished, because these days most things aren't nearly as easy to do. Here's today's example. 

Yesterday I decided to paw through a wicker storage basket that contained quite a few pairs of shoes that I wasn't regularly wearing anymore. Some were too small for me now.

Since I'm 71, not 7, the reason can't be that my feet are growing. I guess they're flattening out. Or fattening out. Regardless, those shoes went into the giveaway pile.

Along with shoes that seemed like a good idea to buy a few years ago, yet now made me wonder, What was I thinking when I got these?

My wife also had been doing some culling of clothes, shoes, and other items.

So she loaded our combined donation stuff into the back of my Subaru Crosstrek, as I was planning to take it to the south Salem Goodwill store on Monday, since my reading of the Goodwill web site indicated that store was reopening today.

However, Monday is my grocery shopping day.

And I figured there would be fewer people taking things to donate at the south Salem Goodwill store today as it would take a while for word to get out about the reopening.

Good idea. It just didn't mesh with reality.

Because when I drove into the parking lot of the Goodwill store on Commercial Street, my first reaction of Great, hardly anybody is here was quickly followed by... Because the store isn't open.

Nevertheless, I noted that a large stack of stuff had been left in the outside donations area.

Getting out of my car, I perused the signs that said it was illegal to take anything, and it would be considered littering (or a word to that effect) if donations were left outside of business hours.

I pondered these two edicts, tempted to join with those who had left their donations, but worried that someone might steal the shoes and other things that I'd leave there as, technically, litter.

Temptation gave way to Heck, i've got the time. I'll drive to the West Salem Goodwill store, since I knew it was open.

First, though, I needed to check out the status of the all-important Starbucks Drive Through Lane. Getting a grande decaf nonfat vanilla latte once or twice a week is a high point of my Stay Home, Save Lives existence these days. 

However, when I turned into the Starbucks on the north side of south Commercial (not to be confused with the Starbucks down the road on the south side of south Commercial), the long line of cars in the drive through was daunting. 

Then I noticed a woman standing at a window, being served by a Starbucks employee. Sweet! I parked, walked up to the window, all ready to order my latte, and was met with a question. 

"Did you make a mobile order?" "Um, no." "Sorry, this window is just for mobile orders." 

Semi-glumly walking back to my car, I had a bright idea: I'll get out my iPhone, fire up the Starbucks app, and make a mobile order for a grande decaf nonfat vanilla latte. After which, I'll walk back to the window and say, NOW, I have a mobile order.

Unfortunately, I'd never used the app for a mobile order.

It was more complicated than I expected to fashion a latte to my specifications. Meanwhile, as the minutes ticked by I couldn't help but notice that the line of cars in the drive through lane was moving along quite briskly.

Definitely more briskly than the slow progress I was making on a mobile order for this Starbucks location, especially since I was sitting less than 50 feet away from it.

So I started my car, got in line, and soon was in possession of a grande decaf nonfat vanilla latte that was handed to me from a window on the opposite side of the building from where my latte search had started.

Now I was ready to head to West Salem.

I'd never been to the Goodwill store there, but it's hard to miss, being new and large. Approaching the donation drop-off, I was thrilled to see that there was only one car there. 

That thrill dissipated when the Goodwill employee at the drop-off started waving his hands in a go-away fashion. Rolling down my window I heard, "You've got to go around and get in line." "Sorry," I said.

There were about eight cars ahead of me. I passed the time sipping my latte and listening to the latest depressing news on MSNBC and CNN. Eventually I reached the promised land of the West Salem Goodwill donation drop-off.

I was told which bins held certain donated items, and to not put in the  boxes and bags containing the stuff we were donating. I proudly said, "No problem. I tied together the shoelaces of my shoes." The employee said, "Good. Sometimes it's difficult to find a missing shoe."

Pleasingly, because my wife is almost always right, and I'm almost always wrong (normal state of affairs in a 30-year marriage), in one of the bags I came across a pair of shoes that Laurel had left loose.

I made a point of saying loudly enough for the Goodwill employee to hear, "Oh, look, my wife didn't tie the shoelaces together. Guess I'll have to do it."

Thus ended my sole errand for a Friday. I felt a lot like Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic (before it sank). I'm the king of the world. I succeeded in making a Goodwill donation. Time to go home and relax for the rest of the day. 

My Facebook ad isn't spam. Stop calling me a spammer.

Oh, the horror, the shock, the outrageous nature of what my first Facebook ad has unleashed upon some Facebook users who have called me nasty names because their news feed included...

I'd never paid for a Facebook ad, or boost, for one of my books until last Saturday. That was when I decided to fashion a Brian Hines, Author Facebook page.

Once the page was live, I made posts for three of my books that featured links to the Amazon listing. Then I forked out $100 to Facebook to boost the post for Break Free of Dogma, with the intended audience being atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers in the United States.

Since, I've gotten some really nasty comments on that post. They weren't substantive, devoted religious people arguing against my anti-dogma book. 

No, these people were outraged that my supposed "spam" had infected their news feed. Which is beyond ridiculous. 

Facebook revenues were $70.7 billion in 2019, mostly from digital advertising. Those ads aren't spam. They're how Facebook makes money. Lots of it.

My $100 ad doesn't deserve the title, "drop in the bucket." It's more like a tiny molecule in a drop of the Olympic sized swimming pool filled with $70.7 billion worth of Facebook ads. 

In my own news feed I scroll past lots of ads, sponsored posts, every day. A few interest me. Most don't. This is exactly the same as the ads in the daily newspaper I read each day, and the ads in the magazines I subscribe to.

Well, except for the fact that I don't pay Facebook for being able to use it, while I do have to pay for our newspaper and magazines. So that's more justification, not less, for Facebook ads.

Yet the outraged people who are calling me a spammer don't seem to realize that ads, for better or worse, are what keep Facebook free.

I've been deleting the nasty comments, but here's an example that just came in. 

Dave Benoit, I get it. You don't like ads. But they're a fact of life. And I readily admit that sometimes I click on Facebook ads to learn more about the product being advertised, because it looks interesting to me. Sometimes I even end up buying the product.

An ad isn't spam.

Nor is it a scam, unless what's being advertised doesn't actually exist, or doesn't do what is claimed. Dave, you can click on my ad and be led to the Amazon listing for my book, Break Free of Dogma. It's a real book, all 307 pages of it. You can use the Look Inside feature to read some sample pages.

Not a scam. 

Lastly, Dave, and others like you who call my ad spam or a scam, you should know that I'm just a guy in Oregon who has made very little money from the four books I've written. Those books are a labor of love, a love of writing.

Yes, I enjoy it when people read my books. But I don't expect to make much from them. I paid $100 for the Facebook ad because I'd like more people to learn about Break Free of Dogma. Most won't want to buy the book. A few will. And that will please me. 

Toilet paper leads to a realtor. I love blogging!

There's a lot to like about predictability. But life would be boring if everything happened as we expect it to happen. Also, that wouldn't be life. It would be something else, something boringly mechanical.

So I enjoy a mixture of order and chance, consistency and surprises. 

Virtually every day I write a post for one of my three blogs. That's orderly. But I never can predict what will result from my writing. That's the chance'y aspect.

Back on March 21, I wrote "Grocery shopping in Salem in the Coronavirus Era," noting that my wife and I had both struck out on finding toilet paper on our shopping expeditions. 

A few days later a woman emailed me with suggestions about where to find toilet paper in Salem, adding that she'd begun to explore an old school "family cloth" approach where flannel is fashioned into a toilet paper substitute if all else fails.  

As happens with me disturbingly often, I failed to reply to her message right away. Then the message sank deeper into my inbox, eventually becoming out of sight and out of mind.

Until yesterday, when I finally resurrected the toilet paper message in my newest attempt to eliminate unanswered emails.

My reply started with my usual "belated thanks for...", observing that eventually we'd been able to find toilet paper. The woman responded with her own thoughts, which included a mention that she and her husband had bought a historic house last year. That led me to ask some questions about the house.

And so it went, a pleasant exchange of emails with someone I had never met in person, but who'd reached out to me with her toilet paper suggestions.

I enjoyed looking at some photos of their home, which led me to send a message about how my wife and I periodically window-shop houses for sale in Salem, realizing that likely one day our home on ten acres in rural south Salem will become unsuitable for our steadily aging bodies to maintain.

That stimulated the woman to share the name of a realtor that they liked a lot who worked with them on selling their old home and buying the historic home. Which led me to call the realtor today, Bridget Welborn of HomeSmart Realty Group.

I know nothing about HomeSmart. I just liked the idea of talking with a realtor who came recommended by someone i'd just had a pleasant email exchange with. My wife and I have spoken with several realtors over the years who other people had liked, so I figured, why not give Welborn a call?

I'm glad I did. 

She was nicely low-key. I explained that we were simply wanting to start an exploration of homes in the Salem city limits, preparing for the possibility that one day we'll be serious about buying one. Welborn listened to my description of what sort of house we were looking for, and what parts of town appealed to us (south Salem, basically).

Who knows what will come of this? No one. Certainly not me. 

I simply enjoyed the seemingly random nature of how I was put in touch with realtor Welborn. I'd been vaguely thinking that my wife and I should get back to doing some planning about where we'd go if, for one reason or another, our current house stopped being right for us.

Maybe that day will never come. Maybe it will. Life is uncertain. All we can do is be open to possibilities, keeping our options as flexible as possible. Getting to know a realtor and getting pre-approved for house financing makes sense to me.

So that's my tale of how toilet paper led to a realtor. Where things go from here is unknown. However, my wife and I have enjoyed looking at a bunch of listings Welborn has already sent us. We'll refine the desired-house criteria that I told Welborn about doing our conversation today.

Then... who knows? 

Here's why the U.S. has to be cautious about relaxing stay-at-home orders

Yesterday Andy Slavitt, a high-ranking health official in the Obama administration, presented a brilliant thread on Twitter about the danger of relaxing social distancing rules in May. Below I've copied in screenshots of what Slavitt said.

It's a well-reasoned, and also disturbing, counterpoint to the small number of strident demonstrators against stay-at-home orders in Oregon and elsewhere who are getting way more attention from the media than they deserve.

l'll also take this opportunity to mention something that deserves more attention from public health authorities here in Oregon. Why the heck does the county where I live, Marion County, have such a high number of coronavirus cases? Click on the Demographics section of this web page to see the data. 

Lane County (pop. 382,000) and Marion County (pop. 348,000)  are Willamette Valley counties that are about the same size. But to date Lane County has 54 confirmed COVID-19 cases and Marion County has 544, ten times more. Wow. 

Anyway, check out Slavitt's series of tweets about May being 30 days of (ignorant) bliss nationally.

NOTE: The text in the chart below is difficult to read. It shows cumulative COVID-19 deaths from April 1 to April 30, 2020 for New York (blue at bottom), New Jersey (green in middle), and rest of the United States minus New York and New Jersey (yellow at top). 

Here's how easy it is to vote by mail in Oregon

TO: People in states that don't already have 100% vote by mail
FROM: An Oregonian (me!) who loves vote by mail
SUBJECT: How easy it was for me to vote today

First, I want to emphasize that you shouldn't believe anyone, such as Donald Trump, who claims that vote by mail is beset with problems. It isn't. For quite a few years Oregon has had vote by mail for every election. Screw-ups are very rare. Fraud is virtually nonexistent. 

With that out of the way, here's a brief description of what I had to do to cast my ballot today in the May 19 primary election. In short, not much.

(1) Yesterday I got an email from Marion County Elections that told me my ballot was about to arrive in the mail.

(2) Today my ballot did arrive. This is the return envelope.

(3) I sat on a stool at our kitchen counter and completed the May primary ballot in about five minutes. I could have done it sooner, but I needed to check the Voters Pamphlet about the candidates in a few races I wasn't familiar with.

Also, I had to spend some time gazing at the name of my wife, Laurel Hines, on the ballot -- first time she's appeared! I also wrote in a few names of neighbors who, I'm sure, would love to serve as a Democratic Party Precinct Committee Person. Or, maybe not.

(4) This year I didn't even need to stick on a stamp to mail my ballot. The Oregon legislature passed a law that requires prepaid postage on every return envelope. This afternoon we went to Minto Brown Island Park for a dog walk along the Willamette River, so along the way I mailed my ballot on the same day I received it.

Bottom line: I have no idea why every state doesn't use 100% vote by mail for every election.

It makes perfect sense at any time, but extra perfect sense in this COVID-19 time. We Oregonians can cast our ballot without coming close to another person. In my case, I did, but it was just my wife -- who soon will have the title of Most Exalted Precinct 788 Democratic Committee Person. 

My top 10 bright spots during Oregon's stay-at-home period

Like everybody else, I'm hugely looking forward to the relaxing of stay-at-home and physical distancing orders that are succeeding in slowing the spread of the coronavirus. 

But amid the distress of so much human misery caused by COVID-19 infections, I've been experiencing some bright spots during the month Oregon's Stay Home, Save Lives policy has been in effect. Here's my Top Ten.

(1) This afternoon I came home from a dog walk to find my wife taking part in a Zoom dance party celebrating her grand-niece's birthday. Naturally I had to grab my iPhone and upload a short video to You Tube.

(2) Before, I never knew that finding toilet paper on the shelf of a grocery store could be such a peak experience. Now I can relax about climbing Mt. Everest or visiting Machu Picchu. 

(3) I'm not a highly social person. But when I encounter neighbors on a daily two-mile dog walk out here in rural south Salem, my enforced soliitude leads me to get all chatty, as if I'd been shipwrecked on a deserted island and finally some fellow humans show up on the beach.

(4) With more available time, my wife has been busy getting rid of stuff that sits around the house with no discernible reason to keep it. So far I've avoided being taken to the dump. (Maybe because I empty the dishwasher once in a while.)

(5) Watching TV in the afternoon has never appealed to me. Now, though, every day I record MSNBC from 2 pm to 6 pm, so I can be sure I won't miss Trump's White House coronavirus briefing performances. Super entertaining! Especially his back and forth with reporters. And his B.S. gets my heart rate up without exercising.

(6) Rather strangely, I'm enjoying The Late Show With Stephen Colbert more than I did when it emanated from the Ed Sullivan Theatre. I like the informality of Colbert broadcasting from his home. Also, seeing his super adorable dog. 

(7) I've always enjoyed going grocery shopping. In these coronavirus times, that Monday afternoon experience is the highlight of my week. I see people! I drive my car! I stand in line at Trader Joe's! Life is good.

(8) Because we let packages get sterilized in the sun for a few hours after they're delivered by UPS, the mail person, or FedEx, getting something from Amazon is a bit like my childhood Christmas mornings. I have to wait to open my presents, and I'm not sure what exactly is in the box. I'm young again.

(9) Our crappy DSL out here in the far reaches of the broadband desert, albeit just five miles from the city limits of Oregon's capital, is even slower than usual. Streaming movies is problematic, so I'm happy that Netflix still sends DVDs through the mail. 

(10) Having medical appointments by phone isn't as bad as I thought it might be. I don't have to watch my doctor spending most of their time staring into a computer screen while they're talking to me -- though likely they're still doing that; I just can't tell that they are.

Nature soothes in COVID-19 pandemic

Working in our rural south Salem property yesterday, I realized that nature is a wonderfully soothing antidote to anxiety about the coronavirus crisis. So I took some photos of our spring-blooming yard and shared them in an Adobe Spark web page, along with some commentary.

Click on the second large image below to open the web page. (The first smaller image is for Facebook sharing purposes.)

 

Oh, the thoughts I have while grocery shopping during the COVID-19 pandemic

In case someone out there is interested in what goes through my mind during my weekly grocery shopping expedition here in Salem, Oregon during the coronavirus crisis, and why wouldn't there be, here's a pretty accurate glimpse of my thoughts last Monday.

[Note: my wife and I already had some N95 masks that we got during the Fukushima nuclear plant scare following the tsunami some years back when radiation was crossing the Pacific.]

Getting into my car: OK, check my protective gear. N95 mask. Three pairs of lightweight garden gloves. Hand sanitizer. Disinfecting wipes. Plastic bag to put used gloves in. Yup, all there. Time to fire up the Subaru and head out.

Approaching Trader Joes: Sure hope there isn't a huge line to get into the store. Leg has been hurting from damn sciatica. Don't want to stand for long time.

Entering Trader Joes parking lot: Oh, boy. Just six people in line. Sweet!... No, wait. Shit. Line goes around the side of the store. Just have to tough out the standing. Now, mask on. Gloves on. Ready to rumble. 

Trader Joe's social distancing line: Check time. 1:50. See how long it takes to get in the door. Geez, forgot my cap. Sun is warmer than I thought. Just April. Must be global warming. Not many people with masks. Oh, there's some. Old folks like me. Good to see Trader Joes employees in masks. Ah, made it in. Just took ten minutes. Not bad.

Returning to car after Trader Joes shopping: Damn, touched door unlock button with my gloves on! Where's a disinfectant wipe? Got to take gloves off without touching outside of them. Tricky. Ah, did it. Now put them in plastic bag. Clean door with wipe. Got to remember to take gloves off before touching door.

Fred Meyer parking lot: Need fresh pair of gloves. Pull mask up. Still got grocery list in pocket? Yes. Time for second grocery shopping trip.

Inside Fred Meyer: First, need salad mix and bananas... Wait, what's in that guy's shopping cart? Big package of toilet paper? OMG! OMG! Could it be?... Oh, no, it isn't. Brawny paper towels. Still, go for it. Paper towels hard to find also... Yes, wow, so many packages of Brawny. One to customer...fine with me. Maybe now we can stop tearing paper towels in small pieces whenever we need one.

Returning to car after Fred Meyer shopping: Focus, focus, remember -- gloves off before touching door handle. Dude, you remembered! Senility hasn't arrived just yet. Still, dab on some hand sanitizer just in case before pressing start button.

Entering Starbucks parking lot: Must reward myself. Went to three stores, Trader Joes, Fred Meyer, LifeSource. Hard day grocery shopping. Not really enjoyable anymore. But paper towels! Hope not long line in drive-up lane... OK, kind of long. Who cares. Craving grande decaf nonfat vanilla latte... Fire up iPhone Starbucks app. Hold up so barista can scan it. Ah, good to hear "hope you're having a good day." Actually, I am. Paper towels!

The poetry of field mowing in our coronavirus era

I'm no poet. Far from it. But I guess I have some poetic inclinations. Just look at the title of this blog post. It's got "poetry" right there in the damn title!

Anyway, what poetry really means to me is feeling something subtly indistinct, yet decidedly real, in an everyday activity. Today that activity was doing some mowing of open areas on our ten acres in rural south Salem, Oregon. 

l use a walk-behind DR Field Mower with the lawn mower attachment. I used to put on the field mower attachment once a year to cut grass after it had gotten really tall by early July. But that was a lot of work, and now that I'm 71, for several years I've been leaving the lawnmower attachment on, raising the blade height as far as possible, and cutting tall grass that way.

That works.

I just need to mow the fields, or open areas, two or three times a year rather than just once. With two blades, rather than the one on the field mower attachment, the mowing goes quicker. And the wheels on the front of the lawn mower attachment mean much less wrestling of the DR Field Mower.

Everybody else in our rural neighborhood uses lawn tractors, or actual tractors, to mow their fields. However, I like the increased intimacy of my walk-behind mower. When we moved here in 1990, for a few years I used a John Deere lawn tractor. It would get stuck in muddy areas, though. And I worried about it tipping over on steep slopes.

This is the just-cut Bamboo Field past the rear deck of our house. The clump of non-spreading bamboo on the right of the photo was planted by me from bamboo that i brought from the house in Salem that I lived in before Laurel and got married in our current house back in 1990.

When I maneuver the mower past it, walking by at a slow mowing speed, I enjoy how the bamboo got transplanted at about the same time as Laurel and I pulled up our connection with where we'd been living before and made the commitment to a fresh life together -- me after getting divorced, Laurel after being single until our marriage.

There'a a lot of fear and anxiety going around these days. Entirely justified. COVID-19 often kills. Or causes people great suffering. Watching the news on television is something I can't stop doing, because I want to know what's going on. Mowing helps keep me sane.

The grass is growing this year just as it does every year. Green and fast.

That's the way it is in April. Next month the grass will grow more slowly. In June, slower still. Then it stops growing at all in the fields during Oregon's dry and warm summer. There's something reassuring about the steady cycle of nature. It's dependable. The coronavirus makes me anxious. Mowing grass makes me feel like I'm doing something real, even precious.

Life comes with no guarantees. I don't know how long how I'll be alive, or how long I'll be healthy enough to keep on doing the field mowing. Sometimes Laurel asks, "Don't you want to pay somebody to do this?" I reply, "No. I enjoy the mowing." This is the next open area down from the Bamboo Field. 

When we moved here, it was completely covered with blackberries. Basically, impassable. We hired someone with a tractor to cut down the blackberries and till up the roots. Then we planted grass and trees. A lot of work, but we were much younger then. 


After mowing this area, which I think of as the Oak Arch Field (a large branch of a massive oak fell off in a windstorm; we left the arch of the branch where it was), I went back to the house to get my iPhone to take these photos. A deer seemed curious about the recent mowing. 

Around here, the deer are almost tame. They're used to people and don't run away. I felt like I'd encountered a friend. Who didn't have to worry about social distancing, pleasingly.

By the way, at the right end of the Oak Arch is where the ashes of Tasha, the German Shepherd Laurel had when we got married, were put. I think of Tasha when I mow around the fallen branch. It was nice of the branch to fall just in the right position -- not over Tasha's ashes, just close to that spot.


Actually there were several deer friends in the field. I believe this is a mother and her two deer children. They were browsing in the tall grass that's on my mowing to-do list for tomorrow. 


This is what awaits me. It's the most difficult field that I mow, because the ground is so uneven. The heavy rains in 1996 caused torrents to flow through this part of our property, leaving a gully that is impossible for me to forget, because the mower bucks like a bronco if I don't guide the mower at just the right angle.


These are two redwood trees that Laurel planted a few years after we moved here and had done away with the blackberries. It seemed a bit crazy to be planting itty-bitty trees some 28 years ago. Now look at them. They remind me that nature knows what it is doing, even if we humans often don't.

We probably watered the redwoods at first. I can't remember for sure. But we definitely have paid them little attention over the years. They simply do what trees do: grow on their own. 

Times are rough for people now in this Coronavirus Era. "Now" though soon will become "Then," leaving a fresh present moment that will be an outgrowth of what we're doing now. There's no guarantee that things will be better, but I believe they will be. 

Mowing today refreshed my spirit. That's the power of being out in nature, doing simple things.