COVID-19 pandemic Archives - View from the Front Porch

31 07, 2020

East Wall Down

By judythemorgan|2020-07-23T10:37:18-05:00July 31st, 2020|Friday on the Miller Farm, Miller Farm Friday|4 Comments

A Blog by Chicken Wrangler Sara

The East wall of our chicken coop fell down last week. It is not surprising. It has been slowly deteriorating over the past year. In fact, I was quite amazed when the recent hail storm did not knock it down.

In fact when it fell, there was no wind at all to blow it down. There was no chicken running into it to knock it over. It simply fell.

The chickens ran and squawked in fear. Rachel said they probably thought the sky was falling. She is so clever!

As I looked at the rotting wood on the ground I thought it to be symbolic of our society right now. We have weathered the storm of a pandemic, the darkness of isolation, the fear of uncertainty, the anger of civil unrest yet we remain standing – at least for now.

I believe there are some who are ready to just fall over at any moment. The sheer exhaustion of existing in such uncertainty has worn them down. They have withstood the storm and now they are tired and ready to rest.

So what does this mean to me? It means I must treat everyone very gently because I can’t tell by looking which person is done standing.

I should encourage everyone I see, offer help when I can, write notes and mail them, bake cookies and take them. Anything I can think of that might make people smile even if I can’t see it under their mask. Hopefully I can see it in their eyes.

We will rebuild the chicken coop. When the time is right, people will rebuild their lives, also. I will be standing by with a hammer and nails, and chocolate chip cookies.

What to do while in Coronavirus Chaos

By judythemorgan|2020-06-07T09:26:51-05:00June 8th, 2020|Make Me Think Monday|2 Comments

We’ve been cooped up now for weeks and, while restrictions are loosening, we’re still stuck with time on our hands.

But, on the plus side, confinement has given us opportunities. These are things I’ve done:

Learned technologies like Zoom, Skype, Facebook video, Facetime, and so many others.
Attended online tours, lectures, and conferences from the comfort of home in my pj bottoms.
Read new authors and re-read favorites.
Watched documentaries, movies, and series and revisit favorites.
Discovered new hobbies and lots of new recipes.
Toured familiar and faraway places online.
Organized and sorted junk drawers, pantries, garages, closets, bookshelves, photos, etc.
Work in my yards weeding and trimming. Planted flowers and mini-gardens.

COVID-19 continues to lurk about. New cases are on the rise again. We need to do what we can to curb the continued spread.

Practicing social distancing and wearing masks is a major part. Staying home is still the safest.

Still, finding energy and focus during the coronavirus chaos can be hard. Staying positive and keeping yourself occupied is a key to getting through.

Maybe you haven’t been able to do some of the things on my list above yet. Why not try your hand at a few?

Quarantine Isn’t Something New

By judythemorgan|2020-06-01T07:58:55-05:00June 1st, 2020|Make Me Think Monday|1 Comment

These COVID-19 pandemic days of self-isolation have made quarantine a common part of our vocabulary.

But did you know the word’s been around since the 9^th century?

Its quad root dates to the Proto-Indo-European or PIE language kwetwer, and linguists trace the PIE language to between 4500 BC to 2500 BC. We hear quad in words like quadruple and quadrilateral.

Quadraginta is the Latin word for forty. Quarantena referred to the desert where Jesus fasted for 40 days. In both Italian and French, the word also applied to Lent.

Today we we use the word to mean a period of isolation to prevent the spread of contagious disease.

The use of isolation traces to Middle Ages and Renaissance and the plague-ridden 14^th century when Venice required the crews of ships from afflicted countries to remain at anchor offshore for forty days before docking.

According to The Visual Thesaurus, being quarantined isn’t all bad. There are famous cases of creativity that have risen from periods of quarantine.

Shakespeare wrote King Lear
Isaac Newton worked on his theories of optics and gravitation
Giovanni Boccaccio wrote The Decameron, a book about people telling each other stories during quarantine

And stay-at-home authors create word origin searches like this to blog about. Which, if you were honest, is probably more than you wanted to know about quarantine.

What have you done while you stayed at home or quarantined during this COVID-19 pandemic?