What's going to happen to the Macy's Day Parade?

Of all the crummy jobs I had along the way, working retail was my absolute least favorite.

When it was busy it was okay. You could chat with customers and keep on the alert for shoplifters and change scam artists. Once in a while, something exciting happened. When I worked at Filene's, Jackie Onassis came in one day. She was, of course, spotted, and had a string of shoppers chasing after her hollering "Jackie, Jackie." When I saw her, she was making a beeline past by stationery counter, determinedly heading for the nearest exit. (In case you're wondering, she was way, way, way overdressed for Filene's - in a gorgeou$ long camel coat and matching pants. And she was far more beautiful in person than she ever was - to me anyway - in pictures.)

But a lot of the time, working as a store clerk was excruciatingly dull. And let me tell you, when no one's buying, there's only so many times you can straighten up the merchandise.

Since you couldn't sit down on the job, you had to stand there like a glom. I'd always have a piece of paper and a pen on hand - it was the stationery counter, if worse came to worst...to do little made-up word puzzles (how many four letter words can you make out of Maureen Elizabeth Rogers), name the presidents (I always got out of order in the mid 1800's, after Jackson and before Lincoln), or extract the square root of my Social Security Number.)

I did holiday season stints in both Filene's and Jordans, both times in stationery, and I completely despised the work. 

But a job's a job, and for the 100,000 Macy's store employees (and for tens of thousands of home-office workers, as well) who are being furloughed now that so many of the stores are closed, losing yours - however boring - is going to be hard, especially since there aren't many employees hiring. Most brick and mortar retailers are shutting off the lights for the duration, and for some of the stores, the shutdown may be permanent.

Macy’s was already on shaky ground before the coronavirus outbreak. In February, it announced it would close 125 stores — about a fifth of its total — and lay off about 2,000 workers after a disappointing holiday season.

“Companies like Macy’s that didn’t have a lot of momentum in the first place are at the most risk,” [Mark Cohen, director of retail studies at Columbia Business School] said. “Macy’s, which was not on the brink but was heading there, is now standing at the edge of the abyss, and these types of furloughs are only going to become even more widespread.” (Source: Washington Post)

Edge of the abyss, eh? That doesn't sound too good, does it?

I've worked for companies that were on the edge of the abyss. And some that fell into the abyss. But there were never 125,000 employees about to become unemployees.

I'm no big fan of Macy's. New Yorkers may have a fondness for it, but for those of us who saw it replace and debrand the stores we grew up with (in the case of Boston, that would be Jordan Marsh, the premises now occupied by Macy's), it's just become a big old symbol of the homogenization of American life. 

Still, they do cute windows at Christmas. And what would Thanksgiving be without the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. 

With luck, we'll be back in action by next fall, but will Macy's still sponsor the parade? Will the Rockettes still do their kick line in front of the store's main entrance? Will there be enough Macy's employees to man the balloons?

If Macy's in Boston closes permanently, it wouldn't be much of a personal loss for me. I shop there occasionally, mostly for underwear and housewares and stuff like sheets and towels. But I can order my undies from Jockey - which I just did - and I can get housewares and stuff like sheets and towels at Home Goods or Bed, Bath and Beyond. Still, it would put a big hole in Boston's Downtown Crossing, which already has enough big holes. (Barnes & Noble closed their downtown Boston store in 2006, and I don't think anything's gone in there yet. At any rate, pre COVID-19, I walked by there several times a week and I can't picture what went in there if anything did.) 

But all those job losses - not just at Macy's but throughout the retail sector. More and more were gone with the wind of online shopping and self-service automation, anyway, with more of both to come. Coronavirus is just the sour cherry perched on the spoiled whipcream topping the shit sundae. 

"I don’t suspect many people are in the market for spring fashion right now,” said Cohen of Columbia Business School. “There is no telling when this is going to end."

When it comes to my shopping, Cohen is 100% right about not caring about spring fashion. Or spring anything, since I really don't do fashion. But this time of year, I'm usually buying tee-shirts, a couple of sweaters, a new pair of pants.  Maybe a new pair of sandals. Not this year. A) I don't need anything (other than those undies), and B) I don't want anything.  Except for the pandemic to end (and Trump to be gone).

And, with or without the pandemic, Cohen is 100% right about there being no telling about when this is going to end.

The Fed is now predicting that the unemployment rate could hit 32%. Gulp.

So, if and when the economy revives, what, exactly, is it that people at the lower end of the skillset continuum - and what are high school and college kids who need crummy jobs - going to do? We've proven time and again that, as a country, we excel at avoidance, but the question of where the work is may be one we can't dance around for much longer...

Zooming into lay-offs

Having had a long career in high tech, I've been through my share of layoffs. Sometimes I was the layoffer. A couple of times I was the layoffee. Most often, I was just an innocent bystander, the one who comforted friends, helped carry boxes to cars, met now-former colleagues for a drink after work where we all cursed "them." (You know, the a-holes responsible for the whole thing.)

I've come to the concluion that, unless someone is getting laid off voluntarily - and I've been that person: begging for the pink slip  - there is no really good way to get laid off. And there are plenty of bad ways.

Sometimes, it's just plain silly. I know I've written about this before, but years ago my colleagues (and, after all these years, friends) Sean and John, along with me, were laid off via phone call. To say we were expecting it is an understatement. 

There'd been a pitched battle in our company between The Tall Guys and The Short Guys, and the Short Guys had won. Our boss was one of The Tall Guys, and Sean, John and I were visibly aligned with him and the other Tall Guys. We were way too senior to duck and cover, and we knew when The Short Guys started winning we were doomed. Among the others signs that we were doomed: we had a peer (acquired during a merger) that our Tall Guy manager couldn't stand. Among other things, this fellow had thrown in with The Short Guys. Anyway, this particular company had sporadic, onesy-twosie layoffs, and our manager had laid our peer off. But he refused to leave. Instead, he kept walking around, smirking at us and our Tall Guy manager. 

Well, that handwriting was on the wall in perfect penmanship.

Lay-off day was Friday. My work from home day. My colleagues Sean and John both worked in other locations.

I got the call from my Tall Guy manager at about 9 a.m. While he was laying me off, I got an IM off to Sean and John. "Be prepared for incoming." Sure enough, just after I was fired, Sean IM'd me that our Tall Guy manager was on the phone. And he kept going west. Next up was John in Houston. 

The three of us had long entertained ourselves during company all-hands meetings by IM-ing each other. And we kept it up while we were being pink slipped.

(It almost goes without saying that, a couple of weeks later, our Tall Guy manager - and the other Tall Guys - were pretty much all out on their rears.)

Anyway, Sean, John and I all stayed friends, and, separately, each of them sent me a note last week about layoffs conducted via Zoom.

On Tuesday morning, around 100 TripActions customer support and customer success team members dialed into a Zoom call. Many joined the call happily smiling, expecting another team meeting or bonding activity amid the new work from home culture. Instead, according to people on the call Protocol spoke with, their boss launched into a spiel about the economy and coronavirus.

Then she announced that everyone on the call was being laid off.

"People were crying and people were panicking," said one employee who was abruptly let go on the videoconference. "It was like 100 different videos of just chaos." (Source: Protocol)

These 100 were just one cohort getting the axe. Overall, Trip Actions canned 300 workers, roughly 1/4 of their headcount. All fired, en masse, on Zoom.

It's not surprising that a company focusing on travel would want to respond pretty quickly to the travel industry's nosedive. And it's not the company's fault that COVID-19 had turned their workforce into work-at-homers. Still, there's something really disturbing about a mass action done via conferencing software where everyone's face is up there on display. 

Yes, they did follow up with each employee individually.  And the package, while not great, was something: pay through March, then 3 weeks severance, and healthcare/COBRA coverage through June. But how very painful and awful:

Employees who joined the calls late were confused about what was happening and whether they'd just lost their jobs. In the customer support chat, administrators had muted all employee videos, silencing any cries or expressions of anger at the layoffs. Workers surreally watched as everyone realized what was happening and began processing in their separate Zoom squares, some soundlessly crying.

(A former colleague was part of a group layoff in the pre-online conferencing days. Everyone in the (small software) company was asked to come into a meeting room and at the door, each employee was handed a colored card.  White cards got to keep their jobs, blue cards were goners. )

Really, it would have been more humane for TripAction to have sent everyone an email and let them know they were being let go, and that their manager (or whoever) would be calling them shortly with the details. 

I can't imagine the horror of looking at the anguished or totally pissed faces of all those folks, with the system on mute to stifle their voices. 

Other companies are doing layoffs in a similar way. A fellow St. Francis House volunteer - whose former company was mentioned in the Protocol article - was also informed via Zoom, but not as a live event. It was a pre-recorded pink slip announcement. 

There is really no good way to conduct a layoff. However much everyone is anticipating a layoff, people will feel blindsided, pissed off, scared. The experience is just plain terrible. Make that Terrible with a Capital T. Especially now. Other than in the most dire of economies, the feeling in tech has pretty much always been "you'll land somewhere". Mostly, in my experience, somewhere better. But in this economy? Who's hiring - other than Amazon looking for warehouse workers and deliverers, and grocery stores and CVS looking to replace workers who'll be dropping like flies. There aren't going to be a lot of fun, "knowledge worker" tech jobs out there for a while. 

Thanks to Sean and John for both shooting this story my way. There's not much I miss about working full time in corporate - except for working with folks like them.

And good luck to those losing their jobs at this time. I feel badly for all of them: restaurant workers, retail clerks, et al. whose jobs are vanishing overnight. But I have a special place in my heart for those who work in technology companies. They may get better packages and have a bit more of a cushion than the bartenders and cleaning people who have lost their work, and they're not gig workers or tip-dependent, so they'll be able to collect decent unemployment. But I know what if feels like. And it's just awful. And getting laid off via Zoom doesn't make it any better.

There's a war on. At least if you're in Guilford, Maine.

There's only so much gloom, so much doom, one human can take. With millions signing up for unemployment - you know, all those goldbrickers that Lindsey Graham is afraid will never go back to work once they realize how cushy being on the dole is - it's good to know that there are some businesses that are faring pretty well.

Guilford, Maine - population 1,500 and small change -  is in the middle of nowhere. I.e., in the middle of Maine. It's a far piece form Portland. A far piece from Augusta. It's even a far-ish piece from Bangor. So, middle of nowhere.

And out there, in the middle of nowhere, Puritan Medical Products Company:

...is one of two companies that make essentially all of the swabs used for coronavirus testing. (The other, Copan Diagnostics Inc., is in Italy, an epicenter of the deadly virus.) If swabs are necessary for testing, and if testing is crucial to slowing the virus’s spread, then it wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that the world’s future depends, at least in part, on Puritan. (Source: Bloomberg)

(Their swabs are also used in home DNA kits, so if you've ever asked Ancestry.com to let you know whether your German ancestors are actually from Belgium, you've probably used a Puritan swab. They also make tongue depressors.)

Business is booming. 

“We are ramping up to produce and wrap a million swabs a week that we need to put into the supply chain across the U.S.,” [sales EVP Timothy] Templet says.

The company is starting to run 6 days a week, 20 hours a day. And is hiring.

...The company has 535 employees total. It’s continually looking for more machine operators and mechanics and is hoping it can get some extra hands from college-age workers returning home early and recently laid-off workers from nearby employers. The medical side will also borrow from the Hardwood side to the extent possible, Templet says.

“The whole labor shortage [exacerbated by clampdowns on immigration] has created difficulties to have enough machines and build equipment,” he says. “I could use 60 people tomorrow.” 

If only there were more people in Guilford. Or even near Guilford.

I'm sure it's not all that exciting (or well-paid) to sit or stand there making swabs all day, but a job's a job. 

As for the Hardwood side of the biz, Hardwood is Puritan's sister company. They make popsicle sticks, but there's a war on, and right now, we're more in need of nasal swabs than we are of popsicles. Not that popsicles aren't good for morale, but still...
So, a shoutout to the swab makers at Puritan. And to the popsicle stick makers across the street. Rosie the Riveter's got nothing on you folks. 

Is toilet paper measured using some sort of new math???

A week or so ago - which, if measured in COVID-19 years, is about 97 years back - MSNBC's Brian Williams and NY Times editor Mara Gay caught some flack for seriously taking a tweet in which the tweeter claimed that Mike Bloomberg could have taken the $500M he spent on ads during his non-starter run for the Democratic nomination, given everyone in the U.S. a million bucks, and still have money left over. Problem is that no one fact-checked the tweet. Or did a simple bit of mental arithmetic and figured out that, if you divvy up that  $500M by 327 million - the population of the U.S. - you don't get anywhere near a million for each of us. All those zeros in the numerator get canceled out by all those zeros in the denominator. Thus, if Bloomberg had chosen to give us all a share of what he was out of pocket on, we'd have all gotten $1.53 a piece.

Not that $1.53 is anything to sneeze into your elbow at. You can buy a Dunkin' donut, and have plenty of change left over. Or you can take a pass on the donut and if you can scrape up another 6 cents, you can get yourself a small coffee.

Still, it's nowhere near a million bucks.

There is, of course, plenty of innumeracy going around. How many people do you see in restaurants busting out their phones to calculate the tip? That is, how many people did you used to see in restaurants, back in the day.

My own encounter with math weirdness occurred the other day when I found a multi-pack of toilet paper at CVS and couldn't resist the urge to buy it. After all, one never knows when one is going to come across toilet paper, and even thought this isn't the kind of t.p. I normally purchase - I'm a Scott classic kind of gal - I figured it would be good to have in reserve. And even though it was an 18-pack, it was compact enough to fit into my tote bag.

What struck me, of course, were those odd little equations. I get that two of these smaller, ribbed rolls of Scott could conceivably be equivalent to one roll of Scott classic. But how does this turn 18 rolls into 36. Is it like the hygiene version of the loaves and fish?

And then I "ran the numbers". One roll of Scott classic has 1,000 sheets of t.p. One roll of Scott "Comfort Plus" contains 231 sheets. Hmmm. Rounding up (231 > 250) for ease of rule-of-thumbing, I found that four rolls of "Comfort Plus" are approximately equal in sheet count one roll of Scott 1,000.

This is, admittedly, an unfair comparison, as my regular Scott t.p. - I was going to say "plain vanilla", but who wants to think of t.p. as plain vanilla? - is single ply, far thinner than "Comfort Plus".  So presumably you use a lot less per trip to the loo.

I haven't conducted a field experiment yet, but I seriously doubt that one roll of "Comfort Plus" is going to last me as long as two rolls of my Scott. If this is, in fact, what 18 = 36 is supposed to mean.

And I'm totally thrown off by the picture of the big roll = two of the little rolls. If you map it to the 18 = 36 equation, you come away with one big roll is the equivalent of two "Comfort Plus" rolls. So which is it?

I should have plenty of time over tthe next couple of months spent sheltering in place to conduct an experiment here. And/or cogitating on the meaning of the arithmetic. Maybe I'll write to Scott and ask for an explanation. But what I'm most likely to do is put the 18 pack of "Comfort Plus" in the closet and forget about it entirely. Until I start running low on the real deal. Or in case I need it to barter for a pint of Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia Fro-yo.

And where's that million bucks Mike Bloomberg owes me???

"Doctor's" orders. Or, calling in "sick".

South Carolina may not be an epicenter for COVID-19. (Or an epicenter for much of anything, for that matter.) But it's making a run for becoming the epicenter of those trying to weasel out of work with bogus coronavirus claims.

Jeffrey Travis Long was employed by Sitel, a call center. Not clear if he's someone who was manning the phones or had some other job there, but I'm sure the working in a call center is pretty darned dreadful. Whatever he was doing there, Long, who's 31 and should have a long work life ahead of him, decided to create a fake doctor's note from a VA hospital claiming that he had tested positive for COVID-19. (At least he got the number right.)

He figured that this would entitle him to a couple of weeks vacay. And now he's on a permanent vacation from Sitel, the company having fired him. It wasn't just that he was faking it - people take mental health days all the time - but that his fakery included a forged note. And was for two weeks, not the stray "I want to sleep in" day off. Not to mention that Sitel closed down the site where Long worked for five days while they sanitized the place. Oh, and, taking advantage of his ample free time during his 'sick' out, he dropped in to visit his kids at school, sending the school into a panic. And into costly disinfection mode.

Well, didn't he find himself arrested, charged with breach of the peace and forgery.

It wasn't actually the lying at work that brought Long down. Sitel apparently accepted his doctor's note as the real deal. But his kids' school contacted state authorities after they learned that Long "had" (ahem) coronavirus. Once the state started poking around, they found that the letter was a faker-ino. Not only did it lack the appropriate stamp on it, but it turns out the VA hospital where the letter supposedly came from wasn't even doing COVID-19 tests at the time. 

Not clear whether Long will do any jail time - jail would be a pretty awful place to be sheltering in place if COVID-19 breaks out there, and I wouldn't wish jail time on anyone, even a boneheaded liar-pants like Long  - but I'm guessing that a lot of potential employers will be giving him a pass when he goes looking for his next gig. 

What an a-hole...

Meanwhile, elsewhere in South Carolina, earlier in the week, one Robert William Cullum told his managers and factory workmates that his son had tested positive and, so, he was exposed.

And, of course, now he has been exposed as a fraudster, as his son isn't infected. Cullum has also been arrested, charged with breach of peace. (No doctor's letter with this incident.) When confronted, he confessed. 

I guess it's easy enough for those of us who can work from home to dismiss how much scarier this must all be for those who have to go into work in person. Many of those who can't work from home are also those without paid time off, sick leave, cash reserves. The other day, I was in CVS and had to use a human checkout person rather than self-checkout, as the isopropyl alcohol was behind the counter  and I had to ask for it. (I was able to get a quart bottle, so now I can make myself a batch of spray sanitizer). I chatted with the clerk for a bit about her work. She's in a tough spot -  in her early sixties, living with her parents in their eighties - and wonders how much longer she can come into work, knowing that she may be putting her parents at risk by doing so. How tempting it must be to try to lie your way into a bit of time off. 

Still, there's really no excuse to go to lying extremes. Cullum used his BS excuse to get out of trouble for having skipped work. Long went out of his cagy old way to create a fake doctor's note. 

There'll be plenty more of this to come, and I'm sure that there's been plenty of it happening in other places. Just kind of interesting that the first two that popped up on my screen were from South Carolina. Guess that's what I get for an occasional glance at the Daily Mail.  

Good Housekeeping

I'm not sure exactly how many years I've had my cleaning people come every two weeks, but it's well over 20 years. Before we had cleaning people, we just kept up, mopping up after ourselves as we went along, making sure nothing got out of control, then doing some sort of lick and a promise overall cleaning on Saturday morning. This worked. We were pretty neat. You'd never find a stack of old newspapers on the floor, or a pizza box with decaying crusts on the table. So the place never looked unclean.

Then for some reason - perhaps because my husband and I both found cleaning a colossal drag, perhaps because we begrudged any attention we had to pay to it, perhaps because our cleaning efforts always caused a bit of tension - we got cleaning people. At first, we had Cintia and Susana, who were from Brazil. When they went back home, they passed their business over to Fernanda. At first, she worked with her son; now she works with her husband Luiz.

They are wonderful. Reliable, completely trustworthy, and quite good cleaning people.

My husband used to say that he'd get a job as a clerk in the 7-11 before he'd give up the cleaning people. When I did my reno a few years back, I paid them for the three months I was out of my condo, out of fairness and out of fear of losing them.

And now I'm paying them for the duration of the coronavirus shutdown.

So now I'm back doing my own cleaning.

Having grown up as an older girl in a large-enough family (5 kids) in the 1950's and 1960's, I'm no stranger to cleaning the house.

Throughout our childhood, my sister Kath and I did housework. During the school week, we took laundry off the line (our family had no dryer) and folded it. We ironed. We took out the garbage, burned the trash in the back yard barrel, and hauled out the bottles and cans for the can man to pick up. We changed diapers and fed and walked the squalling baby. We peeled potatoes and cracked walnuts. We set the table. We were responsible for going through the weekly grocery delivery to make sure everything had been delivered, and that there were no overcharges or undercharges. (No small feat, given that grocery store receipts back then just had prices on them, not the name of the item. So we had to take the item out of the carton, check it against my mother's written list, then find something of that price on the mile-long cash register receipt to check off.)

Remarkably, the one chore we didn't have to do was washing the dishes. Oh, every once in a while my mother decided that one of us would wash and the other dry, but mostly she did the dishes (our family had no dishwasher) with my father, and I think they enjoyed their time to catch up.

Saturday mornings, our indenture really kicked in. We dust mopped, dusted, polished, vacuumed, scrubbed toilets, scoured sinks and tubs, polished faucets. etc.

We then pitched in on yard work, mosty raking, although I believe that Kath was my father's trusted adjutant when it came to the lawn. (My outdoor specialty was hosing and bleaching out the garbage can if it had maggots.)

I really should ask, but I don't remember my brothers (who were younger than us) ever doing anything other than raking. Maybe they shoveled?

My father became ill (kidney disease) for the first time when Kath and I were in high school, and if he was hospitalized during the summer, there were plenty of days when we were responsible for running the household while my mother stayed by my father's bedside.

One of my favorite memories - you had to be there - was the day the shelves in the fridge all decided to collapse. There we were, standing in the kitchen amidst all the broken glass and seeping liquids: a gallon of milk, a gallon Tupperware of beef noodle soup, a half gallon of cranberry juice, a pickle jar. Hershey's syrup. For a few seconds we just stood there, taking it all in.

Then we sprung into action. Shutting my sister Trish and her little pal Tucker out of the kitchen, screaming at them not to come in. (All that broken glass. They must have been about 5 years old.) Then cleaning up the kitchen floor, making sure we didn't cut ourselves in the process. (And finding canned goods to prop up the broken fridge shelves - a fix that stayed in place for years.)

We knew, of course, that cleaning the kitchen floor wasn't going to do it for us.

So, off we went to the cellar, where all that liquid had seeped through the floor boards and was puddling next to the washing machine.

Fortunately, my mother always kept an ample supply of rags in boxes under the cellar stairs. (Worn out PJ's, shirts with no more use in them - but only after we'd cut off all the buttons and saved them in the button box, threadbare towels.)

After mopping up and and hosing down the cellar floor, we washed a load of rags. Because heaven forbid you toss out a perfectly good rag. Besides, if we didn't wash them, they'd smell of sour milk.

Anyway, my childhood amply prepared me for house cleaning. It just never got me to like it. (For the record, the favorite household chore for all three of the Rogers sisters is laundry. The Irish Washerwomen 'r Us.)

And here I am doing the cleaning. Or not.

So far, I've kept it to the kitchens and bathrooms, but I've been so focused on degerming everything, I haven't been paying attention to the specific cleaners that are purpose-made for different purposes. Lysol lemon spray may kill 99.99% of germs, but it leaves the induction cooktop streaky. And it leaves the stainless appliances - which would be all the appliances - streaky, too. Sanitized, but streaky.

This all left me so exhausted that I had no energy to devote to washing the kitchen floor. I did sweep up whatever was there, but thank god I took my sister Kath's advice on kitchen floor tiling when I reno'd. My floor used to be what my husband and I called self-dirtying. The new one barely shows the dirt. So once I cleared off the bits of carrot peelings, the stray sunflower seeds, the English muffin crumbs, it looks pretty clean. I'm not so worried about sanitizing. It's not like I'm going to eat off the floor. (I've suspended the five second rule for the duration.)

Things look okay in the living room for now, but there'll come a point in the next week or so when I'll need to get dusting, dust mopping, and vacuuming. I know where my vaccum cleaner is, but it's an oldie. It's a good one - an Oreck - but it's pushing 30. Fernanda and Luiz bring their own vacuum with. I suppose if this drags on, I'll have to get myself a spiffy modern Dyson.

Anyway, cleaning my own house is a small sacrifice, but, man, will I be happy when this is all over and done with.

What would Sargent Shriver do?

The Peace Corps was founded in 1961 when I was 11. The New Frontier. Heartthrob president - and an Irish Catholic from Massachusetts to boot. Do gooding. I was immediately all gung-ho. And for a while there, I had an occasional romantic notion that someday I would join. 

That never happened. Too lazy. Too scared. Not that interested to begin with. I don't do well in the heat. The idea of crapping in a slit trench for a couple of years - no thanks. 

But I've always admired those who did join. 

I've known a few folks who were Peace Corps volunteers. One person - a very sweet fellow from the neighborhood - joined. He was sent to somewhere in Africa, but I don't think he stuck it out. Not sure what happened. As I said, he was a very sweet guy. (I used to babysit for him.)

I have a writer friend who as in the Peace Corps in Romania, which wasn't an option when I was of the age of the typical volunteer - mostly recent college grads. Back in the day, volunteers were stationed largely in Africa and Latin America.  Not that all volunteers were kids. I remember when Jimmy Carter's mother went in at the great old age of 68. I remembered her as being in her 80's when she joined, but I looked it up, and she was just 68. At the time she went in, I thought she was ridiculously (but admirably) old to be jaunting off to India to do nursing. 68, huh?

Not that there's any danger of me joining. A) I've grown more fond not less fond of creature comforts as I've gotten older. B) Because of the pandemic, the Peace Corps is recalling all of the current seven thousand volunteers who've been out there doing good in 61 countries and laying them off. So there's no openings, anyway.

In the grand, macro scheme of things  - with thousands upon thousands - make that millions upon millsions - losing their jobs, and some forecasters predicting that the unemployment rate will hit 20% - those 7,300 Peace Corps volunteers who're now without work is not really all that material. A blip on the radar. A drop in the bucket. 

That's, of course, only if you're not one of those abruptly called-home volunteers. 

And, given that they're not eligible to collect unemployment insurance, they might not even find themselves counted when the numbers are totaled up.

All things considered - and wouldn't that be a nifty name for a radio news show; remind me to run it by the folks at NPR - bringing the volunteers home at this time is probably the right thing to do. I'm sure the Corps was worried about an outbreak in a country with poor healthcare infrastructure. Look what's happening in Italy, which has excellent healthcare. In a dreadfully poor country... Shudder, shudder. And I'm sure that there was concern that eventual border shut downs - theirs or ours - might maroon someone in a place they no longer wanted to be (and, perhaps, where they were no longer wanted).

Still, while it might be prudent to bring them home, it seems kind of heartless to cut them off at the legs. Their stipends were pretty puny to begin with, but now they're nothing. Oh, and it's not like there are many places hiring these days. I guess those with medical training will be able to find work, especially once the doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists currently manning the frontlines of the crisis start dropping. And Amazon, FedEx and UPS are going to need a lot more drivers as those suffering from shopping withdrawal who are still employeed start spending some of those boring at-home office hours buying a ton of stuff online. 

But this is not an environment that anyone will want to be job hunting in. 

It's not going to be completely awful for them, financially. Returning Peace Corps volunteers, while they can't collect unemployment - they were, after all, volunteers - do get a readjustment allowance of $475 for each month they served. If I read the fine print, I think that someone with over a year in will be grossed up to a full two years, while those who are in their first year, will receive an allowance as if they'd served a full year. So not great, but not terrible-terrible - and a lot more severance than a lot of those who've already been pinkslipped are getting. Still, it's not going to go all that far, unless you're able to move back in with mom and dad for the duration. Which won't work for everyone - think of Miss Lillian Carter. And the allowance will be soon exhausted. Unemployment insurance pays for a good long while (at least in enlightened states like Massachusetts). And depending on overall economic conditions, it may be extended for a good while longer. 

Healthcare will also be an issue, given that the returning volunteers are only being kept on their Peace Corps insurance for a couple of months.

So what might we do with and for the volunteers?

I'm guessing that most of them are hard workers, used to improvising, know how to negotiate harsh conditions and uncertainty, have developed some useful skillsets. And they've got to be plenty brave. Not to mention committed to the common good and not looking for a cushy life. Too bad we can't just use any of the Peace Corps volunteers who want to stay in and deploy them to serve in different capacities for the duration. 

Surely, someone who helped set up a micro business in Namibia, teaching village women to sew tote bags can help out with production of PPE - masks, gowns. Surely, someone who figured out how to get potable water to a town in the hills of Jamaica can help set up a field hospital.

The volunteers could live in now-freed up college dorms, collect whatever their monthly stipend would have been, and keep their insurance coverage.

What would Sargent Shriver - JFK's brother-in-law, the driving force behind and first director of the Peace Corps - do?

I think Sargent Shriver would be all gung-ho!

Let's welcome back these Peace Corps volunteers with open arms - as long as they stay 6 feet away - and tell them that we could use them just about now.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

There's some interesting info in the Peace Corps FAQ for returnees. Given that Trump is touting chloroquine as a potential miracle cure for COVID-19, I found this one particularly relevant:

Can I take Chloroquine to prevent COVID-19?

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), there are no antiviral drugs recommended or licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for COVID-19. Chloroquine has not been approved by the FDA for use in the treatment of COVID-19.

Furthermore, experts at Sanford University and University of Alabama Birmingham have cautioned that “inappropriate/overuse of Chloroquine could rapidly lead to viral mutation and resistance.”are being dismissed.

"Viral mutation and resistance," eh?  But, hey, who you gonna listen to, experts in the field or a really stable genius?

And so it begins...

On Monday, a couple of the St. Francis House regulars came through the lunch line and told me they'd just been laid off. A food service worker, a hotel room-service waiter. Off for the duration. 

On Tuesday - the final volunteer day for now - a fellow volunteer I'm friendly with told me that on Sunday she had been laid off, via email. The lay-off - a twenty-percent RIF at a very small tech company - was supposed to happen in person on Monday, but what with everyone working from home...

This is an awful time to be laid off. 

My volunteer buddy will be fine. She's whip smart, funny, kind...and I'm sure she was great at her job. Plus I'm guessing/hoping/fingers-crossing that the tech sector won't be as destroyed in the coming pan-recession as other industries. But who knows? 

When I got out of business school in 1981, unemployment in Massachusetts was running at about 10%. Things could get bad. Very bad.

But long run, L has the skillset, attitude, and network to do just fine.

But in the short run, she can't do the things you normally do when you lose your job. She can't really do much about finding her next job, and she also can't do the in person networking that's so important when you lose yours. When your job goes away, so does a part of your social circle. Even if you don't get together outside of work, most people do at least some socializing at work: water cooler and coffee pot chat, lunch bunch, pre-meeting checkins, sheetcake for someone's baby shower. Socializing at work: gone. When you're out of work, you really can't be looking for work 100% of your time, so you want those opportunities to break things up by meeting someone at Caffe Nero for a cup, or letting a friend take you out to lunch. And, with the St. Francis House volunteer program curtailed, L can't up her hours there.

Pink-slilpped at this point in time, it's just you and the four walls.

If you think working from home is a drag, try not working from home. All those dreaded conference calls, all those tedious emails. Vanished! (Be careful what you wish for.)

I don't envy my fellow volunteer.

But she's not alone:

This week, Massachusetts got a glimpse of what the virtual shutdown caused by the coronavirus has wrought: In one day, the state received 19,884 new initial unemployment claims. That was more than the number of claims made for all of February.

The economic landscape changed dramatically after Governor Charlie Baker Sunday night restricted restaurants to takeout and delivery only and limited public gatherings to 25, a measure that would in effect force shops, gyms, and theaters to close until April 6. Essential businesses, such as grocery stores and pharmacies, can remain open. (Source: Boston Globe)

If you were a restaurant server. Job: gone. If you worked retail. Job: gone. If you cleaned hotel rooms. Job: gone. If you worked as a game-day vendor at the Boston Garden and Fenway Park. Job: gone. 

Some employers - Apple (stores), Nordstrom, Jordan's Furniture, the casinos - are still paying their furloughed employees. For now. But what about for the duration if the duration goes beyond the 3 or 4 weeks we're hoping for?

Construction projects have been shut down. And if the market keeps tumbling, we're going to see some job loss in financial services.

And who's paying the Uber and Lyft drivers when most of their customers are sheltering in place?

Fingers crossed that the industries - healthcare, sciences, education, tech - that have seen Massachusetts through other tough economic times are able to weather the storm. (At least healthcare isn't going anywhere anytime soon...)

Pre-pandemic, the state's unemployment rate was 2.8%. How high can it go? Last bad time around:

The jobless rate went from 4.5 percent through the summer and fall of 2007 to 8.8 percent in the winter of 2010. It took until November 2014 for the unemployment rate to return to 4.5 percent.

On my rare forays to the grocery store or pharmacy, which I made a few of during the last couple of days, picking up some necessary (sort of) items I'd forgotten to get when I was doing my major doomsday prepper shopping - like a refill for the handsoap dispensers and some Tylenol just in case I come down with "it", and, okay, the package of Oreos that caught my eye - I've been thanking the folks being there and wishing them the best. But I'm getting the impression that some of them are just happy to still have a job. 

My plan is not to see any of them until the all-clear sounds. Or should I keep running out for an occasional something-or-other so that their store will keep people on?

It could get ugly out there. Glad I'm out of the job fray.

The case of the Tennessee Purell profiteer

Now that the Purell crisis seems to have abated - at least if you're an individual rather than an institution (think health care facilities and homeless shelters, which may still be dealing with inventory and supply chain problems), and at least if you live in a place that in a few days went from "why don't you work from home," to "close all the bars and restaurants", to "school's out forever," to "any day now we'll be requiring everyone to shelter in place" - the story about the fellow in Tennessee who was hoping to profit big time by corning the market for hand sanitizers has pretty much dropped from site.

After all, those of us sitting at home have good old soap and water at our tap tips whenever we feel the need to do a surgical scrub. And if we do venture out for a walk - which, blessedly, is still allowed - we can sterilize our hands on our return. (And don't forget to bathe your housekeys in alcohol.) "Real" handwashing is more effective anyway, we're told. Purell? That's so yesterday. (Just in case there's a quasi return to normalcy, I went through all my pocketbooks, traveling kit and bathroom drawers and found that, over the years, I had accumulated 10 tiny bottles of Purell or CVS equivalent. So I'm definitely good to go out!)

The would-be Purell profiteer, one Matt Colvin, has been making his living (a pretty good six-figure living) playing Amazon arbitrage with consumer products that no one needs but, at a moment in time, a lot of people seem to want. More power to him if he can scoop up a bunch of Nikes or tons of the toy-of-the-moment and sell them at an exorbitant markup to lunkheads willing to pay. Supply and demand, etc. 

A few years ago, I was adding toys to the Amazon wishlist for a holiday-related kids' charity I volunteer with. Some little finger puppet was the rage at the moment, but a few minutes after I added them to our list, the price had shot up from $10 to more than $50, which is our limit. I had to get back on and take them off the list, and post a note on our website warning donors that if they saw a toy much over $50 out there, please not to buy it. 

But if someone's willing to let themselves get panicked into spending way too much money for a kid's toy or a pair of sneakers, have at it, sucker.

Price gouging for hand sanitizers when everyone's scared that if they touch a doorknob or scratch their nose, they're going to kill their grandmother, that's another story.

When Colvin saw the news breaking about the coronavirus, he and his brother Noah sprung into a silver S.U.V. and began driving around Tennessee and Kentucky cleaning out the shelves of hand sanitizers, Clorox wipes, masks, and anything else that seemed like it soon be in high demand. 

I'll give the Colvin Brothers credit for getting a jump on this market, and understanding that fear would drive demand which would drive prices. And I bet they figured that out without the benefit of having taken Econ 101. 

At first, business was good. 

Mr. Colvin said he had posted 300 bottles of hand sanitizer [on Amazon] and immediately sold them all for between $8 and $70 each, multiples higher than what he had bought them for. (Source: NY Times)

He also made a killing selling "pandemic packs" acquired from a company that had gone out of business. Each pack included "50 face masks, four small bottles of hand sanitizer and a thermometer." He snagged 2,000 of them for $3.50 a pack and was able to sell them at a premium - from $40 to more than $50 a pack. A good enough profit, I'd say. Even after shipping and handling and whatever eBay charges, he had an excellent payday. 

No wonder he thought he'd be able to find someone who'd be willing to pay through the nose - which is okay, as long as you don't actually touch your nose; just saying - for his 17,700 bottles of hand sanitizer.  But then, before he could fully unload: 

Amazon pulled his items and thousands of other listings for sanitizer, wipes and face masks. The company suspended some of the sellers behind the listings and warned many others that if they kept running up prices, they’d lose their accounts. EBay soon followed with even stricter measures, prohibiting any U.S. sales of masks or sanitizer.

These comanies were responding to twitter criticism, backlash from customers (like the distributors that supply hospitals, homeless shelters, and CVS), and fear that regulators would be breathing down their neck, Amazon and EBay stopped the profiteering with a big tsk tsk.

“Price gouging is a clear violation of our policies, unethical, and in some areas, illegal,” Amazon said in a statement. “In addition to terminating these third party accounts, we welcome the opportunity to work directly with states attorneys general to prosecute bad actors.”

That left Covin with nearly 18,000 bottles of hand sanitizer. And all those dreams of putting his "'family in a good place financially'" were out the window.

Colvin is by no means the only one out there who had acquired massive stocks of in-demand goods, but he was one of the few who was willing to use his story and his full name, and the only one to allow himself (and his wife and his baby) to be photograpehd by The New York Times. (Cute baby, by the way.)

He's a tad defensive about his efforts, pointing out that whatever price he charges covers shipping, handling, fees to the middleman (Amazon, eBay) and, of course his labor. 

Current price-gouging laws “are not built for today’s day and age,” Mr. Colvin said. “They’re built for Billy Bob’s gas station doubling the amount he charges for gas during a hurricane.” 

He added, “Just because it cost me $2 in the store doesn’t mean it’s not going to cost me $16 to get it to your door.” 

He also argued that he's just a market corrective, just performing a public service. Ya, well, so was Bill Bob during that hurricane. Sometimes a weasel is just a weasel. 

Anyway, once the online guys took the folks like Colvin offline, he decided that he might just sell locally and "make a slight profit." He added:

"... I’m not looking to be in a situation where I make the front page of the news for being that guy who hoarded 20,000 bottles of sanitizer that I’m selling for 20 times what they cost me.”

Well, Mr. Colvin, if you're not looking to get in the news for being a pandemic profiteer, you might have thought through your decision to talk with The  New York Times.  You might still have gotten some Internet play if the Chattanooga Times Free Press had done this story. But The New York Times? Seriously, bro?

In the end, Colvin ended up donating his cache.

“It was never my intention to keep necessary medical supplies out of the hands of people who needed them,” he said. “That’s not who I am as a person."

I don't know about that. What was it Maya Angelou told us? Oh, yeah, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."

All this doesn't make him a 100% bad guy, of course. Just someone who got greedy and didn't think that this was sort of a shitty thing to do when people are so frightened by the pandemic. Not to mention so keen on his 15 minutes of fame that he was willing to blast his story all over The New York Times. Maybe he thought that would help him move his goods, but it sure looks like dumbfuckery from where I sit (sequestered in my living room, decided when to take myself up for my day's walk).

Maybe next time Matt Colvin will keep it to price gouging with the Nike sneakers. Have at it!

So long, it's been good to know ya, Tom Brady!

Well, the long dark night of the soul for the average New England Patriots fan is over. Or has it just begun? Not quite sure how these long dark nights of the soul actually go, but Tom Brady, Our Time, The GOAT, TB12, has decided that his "football journey will take place elsewhere."

The will-he-or-won't-he narrative has consumed the written and spoken sports world in Boston since, like, forever. Or at least since the Super Bowl had the nerve to take place without the Patriots. And what was that all about?

For those who haven't been following the bouncing (foot)ball, the big question was whether Brady would end his brilliant football career in the same place he began it, as some felt God had ordained, with the Pats (i.e., dance with the one who brung ya). Or whether he would take off for parts unknown for bigger bucks, a longer contract, or whatever it was he was looking for.

Although he may have felt unappreciated by the Patriots - after all, quarterbacks with only a fraction of his talent and ability to win are paid a lot more - I'm with those who believes that Tom Brady wants to prove that he can win on a team that is not coached by Bill Belichick. And he wants to show the world that the TB12 diet and method - no eating white food (pasta, rice) or nightshades (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants) - can keep his aging (43 years) body in peak performance prime shape.

Well, good luck with both of those.

We won't know until later today or tomorrow (as of this writing) just where Tom Brady will end up, but the signs are pointing to the hapless Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who are hoping that with Brady they'll be hapless no more. But can just one guy turn around a completely lackluster team with little history of winning?

The signs are pointing to Tampa Bay because, at least according to the sports gossip mill, no one else would have him.

We are told that Tom wanted to end up with the San Francisco 49ers, which was his team as a kid and which plays not too far from where he grew up and where his parents still live. But the 49ers decided to stay with Jimmy Garoppolo. If this rumor were actually true, it would be poetic justice for Tommy Boy not to get the chance to play out his golden years in San Francisco, as Jimmy G was the Pats' backup quarterback, the one who was going to be mentored by Brady until he got good enough to replace him. That was the plan, Stan, but Brady wasn't interested in mentoring, or even giving up one minute of playing time to his understudy. Sort of a reverse All About Eve.

Brady, or so it is told, forced the Pats to get rid of Jimmy G. 

If it's true that Brady wanted to swan into San Francisco and replace Jimmy G, well, excellent story line, but FU, buddy. 

We were also told that Brady would go to the Tennessee Titans, which has a very good team and which was coached by ex-Patriot and Brady bro Mike Vrabel. Then the Titans up and resigned last year's not great but adequate QB for more money than Brady ever made. That must have hurt.

Gee, why wouldn't any team do whatever they could to get Tom Brady? Might it have something to do with his age?

Look, I've never really liked Tom Brady. I find him rather boring, his pronouncements completely banal. But I've always admired what Tom Brady can do on the field. And that's win. He is arguably the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) at his position. And, while I know that few if any athletes make it to the pros if they are lacking in mental toughness, Brady sets a new standard. The Super Bowl where he led the Pats to a come from behind - come from way behind - win over the Falcons was pretty much the greatest athletic performance I've ever seen. (Okay, other than the Red Sox beating the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS series after being down three games to zip. That was a thrill. Admittedly, I watched more of that great Super Bowl game than I did of the games in that ALCS series - other than Game 7, which I knew the Sox were going to win. I took to my bed during most of those games, and had my husband come in to update me periodically. Still, the Red Sox win was more thrilling, given that I'm a true and utter Red Sox fan, and only a meh fan of the Patriots.)

Anyway, I give Tom Brady his props. 

And he's certainly given New England football fnas plenty to be happy about over the years. 

But, hey, he's a grown-ass man, and if he wants his football journey to take place elsewhere, have at it. 

It must be very disappointing for his many fans, especially the kiddos. I'm guessing there'll be plenty of ritual burnings of the TB12 jersey for the next couple of days. And what terrible timing, while we're all sheltering in place without the distraction of sports. 

Plus, I always like to see an athlete spend his entire career with one team. It doesn't happen that often in these days of free agency, but when it does it is a thing of beauty. So we're now deprived of that.


And, let's face it, all the nightshade-avoidance in the world is not going to keep you from getting old. At 43, which is hod old Brady will be when the next season starts (if it starts), you just don't have as much speed on your fastball (to switch sports metaphors).When the aging great quarterback does this, it tends to end poorly - c.f., Joe Montana, Brett Favre. 

Meanwhile, I will not be rooting for him to have a boffo year with his new team. I'm actually sort of rooting for him to age, however ungracefully, like the rest of us. But it would be kind of/sort of interesting if he did keep playing at GOAT level and dragged a mediocre team across the goal line.

But if by some fluke, the Brady-less Patriots end up playing the Brady-full Buccaneers in the Super Bowl, I'm all in for the Pats.

So long, it's been good to know ya, Tom Brady! I'm glad our long night of the soul waiting for this news is over with. 

St. Paddy's Day No More We'll Keep, at least for this year.

Not much St. Paddy's Daying around here this year.

Not that I would have gone, but the parade was canceled.

Not that I would have gone out, but the pubs are all closed. 

Not that I feel much in the mood to do much of anything.

I will go out to St. Francis House for my last volunteer shift before the volunteer program is shut down for the duration. And I'll wear my shamrock earrings. After that, I have two phone meetings - my work has been mostly virtual for years - and then I'll make some boxty (mashed potatoes with cabbage). If the spirit moves me, I might make myself a Baby Guiness (Kahlua topped off with Bailey's: it really does look like a pint of Guinness. Or would if I had a shot glass that looked like a pint glass). 

I might put on some Irish music. Then again, I just got a few new CD's: Four Tops, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye. So I might listen to Motown instead.

Since I'm not really in the St. Patrick's Day mood, I thought I'd just lightly annotate the list of earlier posts in honor of the day. Anything highlighted in green is worth a look, IMHO. 

2019 - It's the Ides of March. Other than at Pink Slip contains a recipe for barmbrack (a.k.a. in our family, "Daddy's Favorite")

2018 - Alittle bit of heaven... with apologies, this is mostly just a list of prior St. Patrick's Day posts.

2017 -Faith & Begorrah provides a mini-reivew of an Emmet Cahill concert, plus a picture of a special lemon meringue pie.

2016 - Kiss Me, I’m Half Irish - not much to see here, other than a toss off of the fact that the only white European ethnic group absent from the Worcester of my girlhood was German, which was kind of too bad for my German mother. 

2015: The Wearing o’ the Green - not much to see here, either, other than a bit of a crank on how the world turns into a vomitorium on St. Patrick's Day.

2014: St. Patricks’ Day 2014 - this was a sad one. It was the first month anniversary of my husband's death, and a week or so before his memorial service, where a very nice young Unitarian seminarian sang The Parting Glass. This post includes a video of an old Liam Clancy version, which is lovely. And you know what they - or at least G.K. Chesterton, say about Irish music: “The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.”

2013: The Ides of St. Patrick’s Day - where I ruminate of what it might have taken to make me identify more with being German than being Irish. Here's a good piece by my Irish-German cousin Ellen, a fellow blogger, which also touches on her "mixed" heritage. Ellen grew up in Chicago, where all of our German relatives were, plus a lot of other Germans to boot. But she felt more Irish, too. I wonder if it had something to do with this being in the 1950's when WWII was not that far in the rear-view mirror, and German pretty much equaled Nazi?

2012: Answering Ireland’s Call - more of less on the Irish economy.

2011: St. Patrick’s Day 2011 - thoughts on an upcoming trip to Ireland, our first since the crash and burn of the Irish economy in 2008.

2010: St. Paddy’s Day No More We’ll Keep - my observations of the drunken revelry in downtown Boston on the weekend before St. Patrick's Day.

2009: Irish Eyes Not So Smiling These Days. - reflections on the Irish economy - did this used to be something of a business-related blog? - the year after the big meltdown.

2008: You Say Po-tay-to, I say Po-tah-to. Who’s Irish and Who’s Not. One of my favorite Paddy's Day posts, in which I desribe a moment of fifth grade bravery when, during an ethnic-identifcation exercise, when we were supposed to say what our roots were, and god forbid you said anything other than Irish, I dared say I was German. This post also contains the recipe (that of my beloved Aunt Margaret) for the world's best Irish soda bread. And, yes, I did bake a bunch of loaves last weekend.

2007: Kiss Me, I’m Irish. My very first St. Patrick's Day post. Sigh. 

Happy St. Patrick's Day to you. Hope you don't go stir crazy, staring at your four walls while we're all waiting for the angel of death to pass over. 

To market, to market to buy a 5 lb. bag of King Arthur

This past weekend was my baking time for Irish soda bread, which I always make for St. Patrick's Day. So on Friday, I hit the grocery store for caraway seeds and buttermilk. I checked my flour cannister before I left on my shopping spree. I had enough to make my bread, but I would probably be scraping bottom. So I added flour to my shopping list.

When I got to the store, I was surprised to find that they were sold out of 5 lb. bags of King Arthur Flour. And of Gold Medal Flour.

Are people planning on doing a lot of baking while they're social distancing? I've never seen no flour other than mingy 1 lb. bags - 1 lb? why even bother - even before Christmas.

Friday afternoon, I was talking to my sister Kath. Almost the first words out of her mouth: "Star Market was out of flour!" Which is really too bad, as Kath had been planning on baking a double batch of her fantastic biscotti. She did order some flour directly from King Arthur in Vermont, so hopefully by Easter there'll be biscotti in our "Easter baskets."

It wasn't just flour that Roche Bros. wa out of.

While I was buzzing down the soup aisle, I noticed that they were pretty much out of Progresso soups. Plenty of Campbell's, by the way. Hmmm, hmmm good. Progresso soups are, in my humble soup-loving opinion, superior to Campbell's. And you can absolutely convince yourselves that a can of Progresso is a meal. Anyway, it was a good thing I wasn't looking for Progresso. I already have some Chickarina, Macaroni & Bean, and Italian Wedding in my larder, having prudently stocked up a week ago.

Although I was selfishly fine with the fact that there'd been a run on Progresso - I already had me mine - I was hoping that I'd be able to grab a bag or two of frozen peas. While I have plenty enough food to last a month, I'm used to having fresh veggies and fruits around, and those I might run out of. So I thought I'd grab some frozen peas, as peas are a veggie that freezes pretty well, and I figured I could throw them on pasta. Alas, there were no frozen peas, and nothing that was left appealed to me. (Ap - "pea" - led: get it?)

I'll look in again today or tomorrow. Hopefully the stocks will be replenished by then.

On the Friday evening news, they showed a lot of shelter-in-place shopping out in the 'burbs. Some stores were almost completely denuded. Wild!

What was interesting was when they showed what people were buying. One women's cart was loaded with toilet paper and Cheerio's.

Many people were stocking up on water. New England's water is actually pretty good. I drink a lot of water, but it's good old Boston tap that I store in the fridge in these cool wine bottles my sister Kath gave me. (Future guests be warned: the bottle with the yellow cap is the one I've been nown to guzzle out of when I come in from a summer-weather walk. I always wonder whether a neighbor glancing in through the windows of my green-house kitchen thinks that they're catching me drinking wine.)

So why are people stocking up on water? Do they think that COVID-19 is going to destroy the water supply? The taps won't turn on? The flow won't flow?

Back to my local grocer, one fellow near me in the checkout line was loading up on green jello. I'm guessing something to do with a St. Patrick's Day par-tay. Lime jello shots? Party on!

City shoppers don't tend to buy all that much. I limit my purchases to whatever fits in a backpack and two tote bags. Shoppers are walking home or getting on the subway. So you don't see anyone buying 10-packs of toilet papers, 6-rolls of Bounty. Just as much flour, Progresso soup, and frozen peas as they can carry.

One thing I know: I may go stir crazy, but I won't starve to death.

Finito for the duration

In yesterday's post, I was going back and forth about whether it was time for me to step away, temporarily, from my volunteer work at St. Francis House, a day shelter in downtown Boston for those experiencing homelessness or just plain old poverty. 

Yes, I love my work there and value the time I spend signing guests up for showers, serving them oatmeal, finding them a shirt that looks good on them... I don't even mind the more tedious tasks, like addressing envelopes to donors. (People are more likely to open an envelope if it's hand-addressed. At least that's the theory.)

No, I don't want to put myself at risk of catching coronavirus and turning into a Typhoid Mary for my friends and families. I may well catch it anyway, if the "nearly half the population" worst-case scenario plays out over the next year. But the guests at St. Francis House are an especially vulnerable population. When coronavirus starts hitting folks at the lower echelon of society - most of the cases in Boston are Biogen execs who caught it at a conference - it will sweep through those who are homeless. If you're spending the night in a massive dorm room at the Pine Street Inn (Boston's largest night shelter) and the guy on the cot next to you has COVID-19, well... And our guests are often in precarious health to begin with, and while most of them somehow manage to keep it together, they don't always have the opportunity to practice 20-second handwashing techniques or do social distancing. 

Once coronavirus hits the shelters, BOOM!

Yesterday, in the real, non-blog world, I worked my usual Thursday shifts, and ended up talking about the situation with a couple of my fellow volunteers. The folks I spoke with are "older" - in those pesky at-risk demographic slots - and we were voicing our concerns about whether to stay with it or take a temporary leave of absence.

We heard rumors: Health Care fo the Homeless had shut down it's volunteer program. The Greater Boston Foodbank was temporarily closing.

Should we stay or should we go.

Mike, my closest colleague there, came down on the side of "go". His spouse is has some health issues, and he felt it was prudent to stay away for a while.  Heather, another volunteer I'm friendly with, was on the fence. We noted the absence of some of the regular volunteers from the retiree-brigade. Were they on vacation, or had they made their decisions?

I had pretty much decided that I would work the shifts I was committed to through next Tuesday, and then step away for the duration - whatever that means. 

Then the decision was made for us: the volunteer program - and St. Francis House has hundreds of volunteers - has been suspended until further notice.

I know what this means for the staff - additional duties to take on in the absence of volunteers - and for the guests - some possible diminishment in the services (will we be able to keep serving 2 hot meals a day, prepped and served by volunteers?) and some definite diminishment in human contact. No one volunteers in a homeless shelter for the prestige or the gloray. What motivates you is working with the guests. Not being there to chat with folks will be a loss on both sides of the equation.

I worry about our guests. Who among them will no longer be there when they call the volunteers back in? J is young, but he's got some bronchial issues and has had a couple of hospitalizations this year. R is paranoid - he once told another volunteer that he suspected I was from the CIA and spying on him - will he be too paranoid to seek medical help? What will happen to B, to C, to K, to A? M? I love kidding around with M. WILL THEY ALL SURVIVE?

I worry about our alumni, those who've found housing and stop coming in. (Some who do find housing continue to come in for food, clothing, and company.) L got housing last fall. I used to love talking sports with him. He is a true character who earns his living working concessions at Fenway Park and the Boston Garden. The hockey and basketball seasons have been suspended, the baseball season postponed. How will things work out for L? Before he got housing, on baseball nights when it was too late to get back into Pine Street for a bed, L slept on a cot in the warehouse where his boss's sausage carts are stored. What's going to happen to L? Will he be able to keep his housing?

I was relieved when I got the email letting us know about the suspension of the volunteer program. But I also cried. This is a real loss, and I hope it's one of short duration. My colleague Mike and I have been going back and forth on email, talking about how sad we both are, how bereft we feel. "This, as you know, is my religion," Mike wrote. Same.

God - if here is a God - please make this all go away...