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…
Usually my “Throwback Thursday” posts go at least a few years back.
But this one has me thinking of the past three months – from our last dine-in meal at the Houston Pizza near our house on Friday March 13 after we picked up the kids from what would be their last day of school this year to Wednesday June 17 when Shea and I took advantage of loosening restrictions for restaurants to go to Bar Willow, one of Regina’s best restaurants for a delicious meal!
(Then, social butterfly that I am, I later met a couple people I volunteer with for a local organization for more food and drinks at Crave Kitchen & Wine Bar – definitely releasing some pent-up need for the type of traditional social interactions I took for granted only a few short months ago!)
Anyhow, I’m not sure that a person who reacts with this much anxiety and paranoia to her fast food order being *delayed* slightly (we’ve all been there) and with no other evidence (good word for police, eh?) of foul play, should be in a position to carry a weapon or have influence over the lives of others.
#thoughtsandprayers
This video is the PERFECT depiction of White McMuffin privilege. WATCH.https://t.co/nBJUYJgkvq
— BrooklynDad_Defiant!?? (@mmpadellan) June 17, 2020
This is a good video but guilty of one of my biggest pet peeves of the data analysis of this entire pandemic – not using per capita numbers as a comparator.
Without taking into account per capita numbers and barring some notable outliers (hello Alberta!), of course the most populous provinces are going to be at the top of any graph of Covid-19 numbers.
But using total numbers doesn’t show that, for example, BC which has about five times the population of Saskatchewan, has about the same proportionate number of cases as our much smaller province. On the other hand, Alberta has 80% of the population of BC but more cases overall which would stand out even more if this was comparing numbers using the same scale.
Anyhow, this is neither good nor bad and there are places where using raw numbers is important and times where per capita numbers make sense. But in datasets like this, I think it’s most useful to compare apples to apples.
