Isolated

I was born and raised in this town, geographically remote from large metropolitan centres.  As a child it was a 13 to 15 hour drive to Vancouver, there was no direct highway to Edmonton, and Calgary was even longer away.  I didn't actually make it to either city until I was in my 20s and only because we took a road trip to Saskatchwan.

(Side note - I had already been to Montreal - twice - by railroad, and to Europe.)

Being isolated meant I had to figure out ways to feel connected with the rest of the world.  My mother was raised in Montreal and all of her family for most of my life continued to live there.  Plus I never did learn to speak French, so was largely cut off from my cousins in two ways - distance and language.

But I read.  I loved to read.  I read pretty much everything I could get my hands on.  I fed on other people's experiences and stories.  I felt connected with the rest of humanity because of being able to vicariously connect with them through the written word.

The internet gave me a more immediate sense of connectivity.  I no longer put an envelope in the mail, then waited, sometimes weeks, for a response.

Now we are facing a pandemic and people are being told to self isolate if they are ill.  Which seems common sense to me - sick?  Stay home.  But it isn't that easy for people who work and may not have paid sick days.  They miss a day of work, they might not be able to pay the rent.

Conferences are being cancelled because people are staying home.  This is going to seriously impact the economy.  People are fear stocking and wiping out the inventory on shelves at the stores.  The problem with this is that people on low incomes cannot stock up so when their disability or minimum wage pay comes, there isn't anything left for them.  So people who are marginalized become further vulnerable.

A report this morning commented that a significant reduction in air travel is actually helping slow the release of carbon into the atmosphere, much like what happened after 9/11 when the US banned all air travel for several days.

Someone flippantly commented that COV-19 is being more effective than anything else to slow climate change.  Perhaps climate change needs to be called the carbon virus.  Maybe then politicians will pay attention and begin to seriously work to deal with it.

One of the benefits of living in a geographically remote area is that my risk of exposure to COV-19 is less.  Retirement and staying home more also reduces my risk.  But I am in the high risk population - turning 70 this year, dealing with both big Cs (cancer and cardiac).  I won't go around wearing a mask but will leave them for people who are sick (and I do wish people with colds would wear masks to keep their germs to themselves!).  I won't strip the supermarket shelves of inventory, although we did buy a little extra of our staples.  I'm going to continue to use regular soap to wash my hands because anti-bacterial soap isn't any more effective than regular regarding a virus.

I will attempt to support others remotely as best I can because the internet is here and it allows people like me to work from home and isolate ourselves from other peoples germs.  And hopefully by the time I am scheduled to travel things will have settled down as regards the pandemic (which only means it is everywhere around the globe).

I will not hoard things so that others cannot also have them.  If there is a purpose in life, my life, it is to help others.  If I can't help them, at least don't harm them.