This is how COVID-19 has impacted my life. I live in Abingdon, a small town in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in rural Virginia. I’ve been quarantined and sick since March 11. I’ve had a harrowing trip to the ER in an ambulance, been shut in a glass cubicle at the hospital and faced with a tech who looked like he was dressed in a haz-mat suit as he swabbed me for my COVID-19 test. My wonderful ER doc had to fight to get me tested and it took a FULL WEEK-7 days- to get the results (negative, what a relief) . My current diagnosis: acute respiratory viral infection, unspecified. All the OTHER tests came back negative, too. But I remained very ill for several weeks, though I’m slowly getting better.  In the meantime, because I’m medically fragile, I cannot go out. Friends have been kind enough to bring me groceries as needed, and I had stocked my pantry just before I became ill. The independent pharmacies have performed wonderfully, as have my doctors. I can’t say the same about the massive healthcare CORPORATION that oversees everything here. I inadvertently got involved in some of their medical drama and think they behaved very badly indeed, aside from taking an appallingly long time to process COVID-19 test results. And I have heard a few individuals give the extreme right “save the economy” talk that has revealed more than I cared to know their true character.  But for the most part my community is functioning and surviving.   People who can are delivering food to friends. William King Museum is doing virtual art talks and events, as is the Arts Depot. The library has ALWAYS offered online options and and continues to do so-awesomely! Barter Theater is live-streaming a play. Local restaurants are still offering takeout. We are hanging on….for now.

I’ve read a few articles about the rise of meth as the drug of choice now. While meth might be gaining popularity here in SWVA, don’t say that the opioid epidemic has passed. Here’s what I see on the ground:

Classes on how to administer Nalaxone, and a corresponding backlash against those classes. People seeking drugs while riding public transit and riding while high (on all sorts of drugs). A friend dead of an overdose. Another currently in the process of crash and burn.

And I wonder: Where is help? Where are the M.A. T. programs? ANY rehab? This is southwest Virginia, opioid central, part of ground-zero for the opioid epidemic and big pharma’s experiment with getting doctors to push pain pills, pharmacies to sell them, patients to get hooked on them.  AND IT CONTINUES. We are still awash in pills, legal pills. People trade them, deal them, swallow them, crush them, snort them, inject them, and finally die for and from them.

When will it stop it? When most of us are dead? (Perhaps this is the plan…..)

I know, I’m really late this week! What can I say? I have the plague-AGAIN! This is what activism will get you, for I caught this week’s version at a training session at E & H, only place I’ve been, right? Besides to Griffith’s office…..Republican cooties, whaddaya think? And none of my gun-owning neighbors will agree to shoot me and put me out of my snotting misery! So what’s the use of living in a 2nd Amendment Sanctuary, I ask you? Lol….

As usual, I’m excited about the music list! I hope you will be, too! Starting off to remind us  that WE ARE ALL ONE in these days of hyper-division is the super-cool Japanese group World Order. Started by former martial artist Genki Sudo, the 7 member group looks like robotic salarymen as they perform their highly stylized videos. Staying in the region, this is followed by Quqin performing on traditional instruments in traditional dress but Western rock style. (Hope this encourages you to check out their trad Chinese sound!) Then hopping to the West to France and letting you light your Gauloise and sip your cognac while you listen to Francoise Hardy sing her wonderful cover of Cohen’s SUZANNE. Moving to Africa (hey, it’s always a world tour here) for the group Les Amazones D’Afrique, who recently dropped a new album, Amazones Power. Yes, they are indeed QUEENS! Back to Japan for one of the hottest female punk bands Stereopony (yes!) and HITOHIRA NO HANABIRA! Next, I have NO REGRETS including this selection from Eminem’s latest album, Music to be Murdered By.  For my Xian friends, I’ve included a scathing piece by singer-songwriter Daniel Dietrich that, well, calls you out: Hymn For 81%. Since we have two warring factions right now fighting about the proposed Bristol Casino, I found this song CASINO QUEEN by the awesome Jackie Lynn. Let’s take a break, breathe, and appreciate the beauty of Lina_Raul Refree’s genre-bending flamenco (really, you should listen to entire album, eponymously titled)-GAVIOTA. And to send you off dancing (unless you just hate it and tell me so, next time you see me or in an email), I found a DJ’S club mix of Tracy Chapman’s song: GIVE ME ONE REASON. Whew!

Articles: I’ve got a few! So happy reading!

Everyone’s worried about the coronovirus.Will it be the NBO? But hey, don’t forget about the often deadly virus that’s been making people very sick for months and doesn’t show signs of letting up: INFLUENZA!

https://time.com/5758953/flu-season-2019-2020/

I know I said I wouldn’t post from sites with a paywall. But this article from the WaPo is so USEFUL that I’m breaking that rule. It concerns FACEBOOK and how the company tracks you even when you AREN’T ON FB. The article tells you how to disable this setting, clear your history, plus some other useful stuff. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. (Has me considering even more strongly quitting FB altogether…..)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/28/off-facebook-activity-page/

You might have been hearing about the effort to combat the climate emergency by reforestation and the planting of trees by different countries and organizations. You might be thinking, WHAT A COOL IDEA! HOW CAN I HELP? Well, here’s a way, if you don’t own  land where you can plant your very own tree (or more)!

If You Buy a Sapling For This Rainforest, Money Also Helps Turn Illegal Loggers into Forest Guardians

Okay, on to books!

You might (or maybe not, Idk) have heard about the furor surrounding American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins. Book first got praised then panned; book tour got cancelled, as the author was accused basically of telling a story that wasn’t hers to tell. (Cultural misappropriation, yeah?  She calls it “being a bridge”.)  She told the tale of a Mexican woman and her son running from a narco drug lord. So, a thriller. It’s NOT on here. You wanna read a book that tells a genuine story by an actual Puerto Rican woman, read THIS memoir: Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Diaz (Warning: deals with mental illness; sexuality; other potential triggers)

If you like your mysteries creepy but unnervingly realistic, intense, and relatively short, then read this novel by the always masterful Joyce Carol Oates: Pursuit. A reflective book on the vulnerabilities of childhood and just how to navigate trust.

Finally, if you are a Neil DeGrasse Tyson fan, then he’s come out with Letters From An Astrophysicist. Eminently readable, he addresses everything from comets to terminal illness. Nice to see he’s not become embittered…..

Now for the musing portion. I’ve found a site to recommend. It’s a site devoted to nothing but positive, inspiring, hopeful news and stories. And who among us in this day and time can’t use a peek at that? It’s divided into sections, so you can choose your anodyne to the dreck you get in the morning/evening newsfeed.

Good News, Inspiring, Positive Stories

And the OTHER thing I found this week that gave me hope was a game on Steam (yes, I’m on Steam, are you surprised?). It’s called Kind Words. it’s pretty much just what it sounds like, only you are writing these to someone you don’t know. Now, not one of the free games. But to help someone who is having a bad day, even if it’s just once or twice a week, I don’t think 4.99 is too high a price….(you buy the game for that once, so it’s a one-time fee.)

In the always apropos word from Hill Street Blues, lets be careful out there! See ya next week!