Here’s a few ways to cope with the Coronoavirus:
Seek Out Comic Relief
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/13/opinions/boomers-boronavirus-millennials-pariser/index.html
Get Educated and Cultured
https://www.travelandleisure.com/attractions/museums-galleries/museums-with-virtual-tours
Entertain Yourself
Binge watch some or all of the following:
Bombshell (Amazon)
Hillary (Hulu)
Self Made (Netflix premiers today)
Little Fires Everywhere (Amazon)
My Brilliant Friend (HBO, new season out
Ozark (Season 3 – Netflix, March 27)
Retail Therapy: Consume/Purchase
Patronize local restaurants that are open for take-out and/or delivery
Buy from a local artist or craftsman or commission that piece you’ve always wanted them to make for you.
(Thank you Stacy Morgan)
Vegging in place/Chilling out
Do something arty you’ve never done. I painted a frame.
Organize your house – here’s a great book to help: The Home Edit by Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin
Tackle your home-based to-do list and zip through chores you never have time to do. (I can’t remember the last time I polished my wood furniture – not that I’m anxious to do so but certainly an ideal time to tackle it!)
Walk outside in a public park close to your home – just stay six feet away from others
Remind your kids who have Bar and Bat Mitzvah cancellations that this experience will make a great college essay
Read
Apeirogon by Collum McCann (thank you Margie Kessel)
Love and Ruin by Paula McLain
A Book That Takes Its Time by Irene Smit and Astrid van der Hulst
“If” by Rudyard Kipling
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb
Subscribe to a magazine – “Where Women Create” is very cool
Reach out:
Call people in nursing homes and assisted living institutions
Have a virtual cocktail party at 5pm or earlier! (thanks Gerry Korkin)
Reframe your thinking
What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.
And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.
Promise this world your love–
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.
Lynn Ungar 3/11/20
Keep Preserving Your Bloom,
Iris Ruth Pastor