Overtaken By Epidemic

'Way back whenever, a mere six weeks or so ago, this post started as a Sock Madness post. I had CO the SM14 qualifier on a train somewhere between Chicago and New York and had every intention of competing. Things seemed auspicious: by the most synchronous of synchronicities, the qualifying pattern was Wohin? by the ever-creative Caoua Coffee, a delight of clever technique (gentle readers know how I love technique). Wohin?, a lied in the Schubert song cycle "Die schöne Müllerin" (Op. 25, D. 795), translates to something like Where to?



Little did I suspect that the first week of March was to be the last Before Coronavirus (at least that we currently know of in this region) and the Land of Where To so far has been a place of constantly feeling O.B.E..

One sign of the times is the Times itself – here's a week of headlines for March 16-21, 2020, when reality began to sink in. Ordinarily the New York Times doesn't do full, six-column headlines all that often, so a solid week of them is unsettling all by itself. Then there's the subject of those headlines: the public health crisis and the economic crisis touched off by the novel coronavirus and the disease it causes, covid19, and the leadership crisis in response. So much of grave import has happened that it seems frivolous to note, even on a knitting blog, that there hasn't been much knitting going on at casa Jersey Knitter.



Instead there have been many adjustments big and small, some bewildering in their rapidity and increasing severity. BC, I went to the Philadelphia Flower Show and, AC, I was too occupied to blog about it. Branch Brook Park was closed during cherryblossom season, along with schools and nonessential businesses. (Including malls. In New Jersey.) Spring elections were rescheduled or shifted to vote by mail. Restaurants were limited to take-out or delivery only. Supermarkets were required to limit the number of customers in the store; some placed one-way arrows to direct traffic in the aisles and sneeze guards at the registers; customers were required to wear face masks and gloves – some say food stores should move to curbside pickup and home delivery only. Although online ordering is so swamped, shopping at Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods is by invitation only. I learned about social distancing and flattening the curve and how to wash hands (for at least 20 seconds, with plenty of suds).



With all the adjustments come all the feels. So many feels. Gabrielle Treanor's "3 Stages of Pandemic Response" has it about right, except instead of making steady progress through the stages, I tend to pingpong back and forth between levels.



In the pinch, some turn to activism. There's a shortage of PPE for healthcare workers and first responders and others, so I've been sewing DIY facial masks. Other crafters have been turning out parts for face shields using 3D printers and other fabricators. Still others – small groups of apparently well-funded of counter-majority populists – have been protesting stay-at-home orders... some wore hazmat suits and masks, some didn't, some toted guns, some "displayed swastikas ironically," and then there's the Operation Gridlock folks who were blocked by healthcare workers in scrubs. There's a politician who wants "to put on our big boy and big girl pants" and choose to cause people die, there's a candidate for office who looks like a zombie, and it feels like we are living in a failed state.

Whew.



After all that, I cast on another sock, Waterlily Socks by Sivia Harding. It's got a bit o' everything: beads, small cables, lace. The yarn is Sweet Georgia Tough Love Sock, colorway Sapphire. I've stopped worrying about Where To? It's one small consolation in a world turned up to eleven.