I’m an atheist but I acknowledge the massive role the church has played in various major aspects of society for thousands of years – from being host to many people’s personal milestones like weddings and funerals to influencing global geopolitics.
The power of the church has been falling for awhile now but the impacts of this pandemic will be far-reaching and may change society in ways we can’t even begin to imagine including possibly being the final nail in the coffin for many churches.
Not a painting brush but a pile of brush in the green space behind our house that the person cutting grass artfully drove around!
I’ve always loved quotations and used to even “read” quotation books. Now the web has modernized the idea in the form of quote web sites.
There are a few options out there but I recently found out that a library system in Kentucky runs its own “Famous Quotes” web site which is pretty cool!
As June comes to an end, I have to post this meme I recently rediscovered.
It’s funny how dabbing, fidget spinners and bottle flipping were the biggest issues a teacher had to deal with a few years back!
I’m not up to doing a full photoshop job but can only imagine the updated version of this image with an outline of the microscopic image of the Coronavirus tentacled ball…
A disposable mask…
And maybe a silhouette of a Zoom meeting!
Last week, Shea and I had our first sit-down restaurant meal in three months and tonight, we took the whole family for our first meal together in a restaurant (well, on a patio anyhow.)
I did a list like this about a month ago and so I thought I’d do another one as I’m now a few days into my *fourth* month of quarantine to see what’s front of mind these days…
1. Public libraries *finally* have a date for permitted opening which will be Phase Four Stage Two and which comes into effect next Monday (though RPL quickly put out communication on their web site and to internal staff that we would *not* be opening right away but hopefully soon.)
2. As restrictions continue to be lifted, the weather gets nicer, and number of cases in Saskatchewan fall (except for a few isolated outbreaks), my biggest worry is that people will quickly flip to “everything’s normal/covid’s gone” and we’ll lose the progress and sacrifices of the past few months.
3. I can’t remember if I mentioned this before on my blog but one unique aspect of having three uninterrupted months at home was that it was like a weird “retirement preview”. I was one of the lucky ones who could still work from home so it wasn’t like full retirement (like everyone in the photo above except Pace is currently enjoying!) And I’m still a few years away from retirement. But it still gave me a sense of everything from how my spending shifts when I’m not working (not buying gas, not doing as much frivolous shopping, doing more cooking at home instead of eating out) to what it’s like to be able to putz around the house more to even whether I might want to start thinking about retiring earlier than I originally planned.
4. I spend a lot of time thinking how fortunate we’ve been through this overall – everything from Shea and I both being fully employed to having moved to a new, larger house that backs onto a park-like green space just before this came down to having kids who are able to be (mostly) self-contained as I attempted to work from home (and increasingly have to work outside the home again) to us having completed a tropical holiday *just* before things got crazy (and who knows when we might go again?) Honestly, I don’t think there’s much that could’ve been different that could’ve helped us ride this out any better!
5. One of the strange impacts of the pandemic many people might not think of is on the lottery. Normally, the billboards around town promote jackpots of forty, fifty or even sixty million dollars. Since soon after the pandemic began, I don’t know if I’ve seen a jackpot over ten million. That’s logical since people aren’t out in malls and gas stations and other places where they’d normally buy tickets so sales are likely way down. But I think of unintended consequences – at least in Saskatchewan, lottery money helps fund numerous arts, culture and recreation organizations and I worry that there could be big shortfalls for these important organizations in the future.
I’ve been into my branch a handful of times since it shut down three months ago.
But as RPL has begun slowly reopening over the past couple weeks, today was my first day back in branch doing more traditional library work. This is because we’ve started having mid-sized and smaller branches in the RPL system processing hold requests to send to our four largest locations that are providing curbside service (that’s what RPL is calling it but I love our friends at Palliser who are calling it “Library Takeout”.) 🙂
As I looked around the branch with the desk calendar still on the March page, weekly magazines on the racks from that month and various other reminders of how quickly we closed up operations, this song kept running through my head…
“Time Stands Still” – Rush
Nice to enjoy the day with my father and my son (who is modeling the robe I got as a Father’s Day gift)…
The kids are both happy that playgrounds are finally open again but they also enjoy the convenience of the swing I rigged up right in our campsite!
