The cafe I frequent was mostly empty Monday morning. Just a few cars drove past on El Camino Real, typically a busy road. Only one car was parked outside.
My friend and his girlfriend were there and one other regular, but no others. Two high schoolers set up at one table; one of them first wiped the table and chairs with sanitizing gel.
By the time I returned home, it was announced: My county recommended “sheltering in place” to reduce contagion risk during the Covid-19 pandemic. This means we’re required to stay home and only venture out to go to grocery stores or medical services.
That night, though, I was writing in the company of Deb, Jennifer, and Jay from my Shut Up and Write meetups, thanks to online livestreaming via Zoom. We checked in for 20 minutes as we used to every Monday night when “Shut Up and Write” (you can guess its mission) met at Crossroads Cafe in San Francisco. We then each set our settings to mute and wrote for 45 minutes. I hadn’t seen two of these three folks in months.
The U.S. public has been invited to practice “social distancing,” but, as a woman on LinkedIn wrote, really what we want to practice is “physical distancing.” We still want to be social. Technology and Internet are allowing us to do that.
Sunday, I tried out Zoom to convene the regular eco-justice class I co-lead for middle-schoolers on Sundays. We usually meet at 9:45 a.m. when kids are dismissed from the main church service, but this day we met after the online service ended at 10:30 a.m. First, my co-teacher Ed and his kids appeared, then another kid, then two brothers. We lit a chalice and recited our opening words. We briefly discussed Corona virus and issues of eco-justice: Homeless folks staying at night at the church have nowhere to go during the day while the libraries are closed. And there’s all that plastic: More hand sanitizer sales mean more plastic in the landfill. With the computer, I toured our composter (we could see the worms!), rain tanks (now full!), and garden (beans haven’t visibly sprouted yet). We watched a short video on how to make an origami face mask. But mostly kids joked around. One kid shared his screen every time he found a Corona virus meme graphic. A chat among students livened up the chat room. As Ed said, it was good to hang out: “We’re all going to be stir crazy soon.”
The next morning, I joined another Zoom-based co-working session led by Jen Heller, a marketing consultant (click here to check out her site). She’s piloting these sessions, which will run Tues. through Thursday. She starts with a check-in, then a meditation, followed by 45 minutes of quiet work (all of us muted). At 10:45, she unmutes us and plays a song to which we’re all invited to dance (“dance party”). Participants danced holding dogs, a child. Then another 45 minutes of muted work.
In my neighborhood, whole families are taking walks in my neighborhood. Joggers and cyclists zip past. I’ve never seen most of them.
The clerk at Barnes & Noble said the store was closing Monday night indefinitely. The staff was told to use sick days. When those run out, they can apply for unemployment, she says.
Wednesday night, I watch a singalong that my friend Clarissa invited her friends to see via a Facebook “Watch Party.”
This morning, I checked in with Jen Heller’s co-work session again. It had grown to six (I invited two of them). Later today, I’ll check out Enso Yoga’s free week of online Zoom classes: www.ensohmb.com
Friends text and call to check in. Things are definitely feeling out of the ordinary, but I don’t feel socially isolated yet.
Could it be that a pandemic could actually see community re-knit in different ways while eroding it in others?
