Love in the Time of the Corona Virus

So first and foremost, let's check in. How is everyone doing?

(And seriously, if you read this, I really am most definitely talking to you. Please give us all an update in the comments below).

Times are "interesting" here at Casa Thornton. My wife has been working from home for a couple of weeks. In fact her company (she works for a gaming company) has mandated that no one come in. The entire workforce is working from home, except for maintenance, etc.

Last week the governor of our state (Washington) closed down every school district in King, Pierce, and Snohomish-the three most populous counties in the state (he quickly expanded that closure to the entire state). This included the district where I work, and the one where our son attends school (two different districts, same county). Our last day in building was Thursday. After today (March 18th) no one is allowed in any of our buildings aside from security and maintenance until at least April 24th.

So we're all three in the house together and doing the "social distancing" thing and taking every precaution laid out by the CDC here. We're stocked up, safe, and settled in. And so far we've managed to avoid getting on each other's nerves.

There have been some funny moments, though.

For example, just this afternoon Robyn was on a conference call via Slack on her laptop, and our son thought it would be funny to crawl under the table and tickle her feet while she was trying to run her meeting. He apparently made a couple of cameo appearances in early calls during the day.

He knows he's not supposed to interrupt while she's working, and he's a good kid, but he's seven. Even the nicest kid likes to color outside of the lines sometimes.

Mo Willems – a Mr. Rogers For Our Time

And speaking of our son, he's a big fan of the work of writer/illustrator Mo Willems (of Don't Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus! fame). The Kennedy Center is hosting daily video of "Lunch Doodles" with the prolific and vastly creative Willems, who is currently their "Education Artist in Residence." They post new video every day here at 1 PM EST.

Our son loves it, and has spent hours and hours happily drawing both with Mo Willems and on his own, since the series launched Monday afternoon. You can also find them daily on YouTube. Mr. Willems for me calls to mind Mr. Rogers from when I was young. He takes time to explain things to young people who are there to create with him, he's never condescending, and he clearly does what he does out of love for kids.

As for me, I've been checking in with my day gig and working away on a couple of writing projects I've been trying to wrap up for a while. As I've mentioned elsewhere on this blog, 2020 has been my year to finish a whole lot of long-term projects. I've wrapped three, and it's not even the end of March.

I keep reading about how Sir Isaac Newton invented Calculus during a pandemic (and began his ground-breaking work with optics, experimenting with prisms in his bedroom), and Shakespeare produced Venus and Adonis during a plague outbreak which shut down the theatres in 1593, and then King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra, all in a single year during another outbreak in 1606.

I for one cannot wait to see what the current age of COVID-19 produces amongst our creatives across the arts and sciences in the weeks and months to come. Because if ever a society needed a silver lining to the dark cloud hanging over it, it's Planet Earth in the Spring of 2020.

Three timeless works of literature in just one year? Quoth the Bard, "No prob..."

To quote that Great American, Walt Whitman:

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

                                       Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

And to further quote another Great American, Robin Williams, riffing on the above sentiment in the film Dead Poets Society:

"What will your verse be?"

I include myself in the challenge inherent in this question. I'm looking forward to finding out! And I'll be chronicling that creative journey right here. I can say right off the bat that my long-term goals are to show my wife and son every day how much I love them, make sure we're all getting our needs met, and get a lot of writing done. 

Anything past that, and I'll have to let you know in a later post.

And what of you?

What are you working on? What do you want to work on? What challenges are holding you back? What or who inspires you? Let's hear your ideas, and if there's a way we, as a community of creatives can help (from a distance, of course), speak out. Tell us below!

"What will your verse be?"