Ukuleles unite to fight the coronavirus blues

   POINT RICHMOND, Calif. - Point Richmond has a wildly active ukulele group that had been gathering at Kaleidoscope Coffee (still open by the way). But like other such gatherings, the ukesters shut down those mass get-togethers to help stem the spread of the virus we are all trying to avoid.
     The Point uke group is still getting together via Zoom. I'll let someone else - maybe BYL's Steve Birnbaum, a noted ukulele strummer - add details about that meeting and how to get involved.
     But today I ran across a bit of uplifting ukulele music performed by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. It should get your toes tapping and maybe even spark a little sing-a-long.
     They put the piece together while the fun group members are in self-isolation. So they came together electronically and the result is great.
   This bunch of talented Brits certainly dresses a lot better while sheltering-in-place than most of the folks I know - or with whom I've been on Zoom chats. (Zoom Chat Tip: Comb your hair, bed head is a real thing.)
     Here they are, performing elegantly while in Lockdown:

Who was that masked man?

   POINT RICHMOND, Calif. - Sunday was a day of mask production here in Admiral Fox's workshop office.
     No, not mass production. Mask production. 😎
     And no, no, NO! Not Lone Ranger-style masks, though it would be pretty cool if they could be used to fight infection. Hi-ho, Silver!

If Clayton Moore was still alive,
he could model medical face masks.

    The masks coming out of Admiral Fox's shop are to help people avoid getting infected - or infecting others - with COVID-19.
     Wait! Cloth masks won't stop COVID-19, right? Well, yes, that's correct. That's certainly the prevailing official medical wisdom.
     But a New York City doctor made a good argument last week that by wearing a mask, people are much less likely to touch their faces. The mask is a reminder that the mouth, nose and eyes are the weak spots in any human's defense against viruses and disease.
     The same doctor said compulsive hand washing is a virtue right now.
     Then, a few days ago, a well-respected doctor/medical researcher at UCSF in San Francisco said pretty much the same thing about masks when he was talking in a nationwide teleconference with journalists. Ditto for hand washing. Lots of hand washing.
     A mask can't hurt, he said, it can only help, even if only a little. And if everyone wears a mask, well, the overall risk of infection drops, as has been shown in other countries.
     So at least for the near future, masks will be the latest fashion accessory for all of our outside-the-condo forays.
     But will our Yorkie pooch Biscuit be willing to don a matching mask to what the Admiral or I wear?
     He's not saying.

The face mask manufacture workbench

Face mask Version 1.0

The only weather you control is whether you go out...

   POINT RICHMOND - Maritime bromides are filling my mind as I write about, read and ponder the coronavirus/COVID-19 situation.
     Situation. Now there's a damned vanilla word for this !@#%$#^#%$^$%#& mess.
     I am gradually turning into a coronavirus curmudgeon, a function of writing stories about the impacts of the disease - while also trying to write pieces that squash the swirling morass of misinformation out there about the origin of the disease.
     I won't repeat any of the nonsense now circulating.
   But Friday morning I spent more than an hour on a national media conference with other journalists (via Zoom) getting a briefing from medical experts on COVID-19 . The biggest takeaway is the same one being one hammered relentlessly for the last few weeks:

 Stay home.

     There's tons of messaging out there about this. But these docs were even more persuasive about protecting yourself - and others. It's actually so simple, it's pathetic. Stay home, hide out... Don't go to the store for Mallo Cups.
     (Wait! Aren't Mallo Cup-shopping runs exempt?)

   In our years of cruising our sailboat Sabbatical in the ocean and around San Francisco Bay, we often heard (and repeated) the expression, "The only weather you can control is whether you go out."
     Go out refers to leaving the dock, harbor or anchorage where you are sitting safe and secure.
     Once you hoist sails and embark you are in the weather, no matter how benign or battering it proves to be.
     More than once we discovered going out into sketchy weather was a mistake.
     And COVID-19?
     Provided you are keeping yourself secure inside your domicile, practicing good anti-virus hygiene in the house, and keeping outsiders, well, well outside, you are likely controlling 'whether' you are being exposed to the virus.
     But the best advice I read in the last 24 hours says to think of yourself as infected. Thus, by keeping inside and away from people you are protecting them! Looking at it that way makes it even more persuasive.
     Yesterday I drove Biscuit to a deserted parking lot on the edge of the Bay where he loves to take afternoon sniff tours. We were nearly alone, the only other humans were two bird watchers braving 15-knot cold winds off the water. By the way, the birders were scanning the skies and shoreline for sea gulls.
     Sea gulls, you know, rats of the sky.
     On the way home we drove by a half-acre dog park adjacent to a Point Richmond elementary school where there must have been 50 dogs and 100+ people wandering about.
     The dogs were far better at keeping social distance than the people. Most dog parks are off the list for now.
   Biscuit and I are discussing today whether we should continue to take our one daily outing to the ferry landing parking lot or suck it up and stay home.
     So far, his arguments to go take the drive are persuasive.
     We'll see.
     In the meantime, unless your dog convinces you of his or her need to step outside into the world, stay inside.
     It's the safest.

The Biscuit prefers going outside to sheltering-in-place

Plenty of time to drag out my ukulele

   POINT RICHMOND, Calif. - More than a decade ago, I set out to achieve three goals, not necessarily in the order listed below.

     • I wanted to become comfortable speaking - and understanding others speaking - a foreign language.

    • I wanted to publish a novel. (Publish, not just write)

    • I wanted to learn how to play a musical instrument.

     On the foreign language front, I am relatively comfortable with Spanish, though the longer I am away from living in Mexico, the weaker it gets. Still, two weeks ago I had a lively conversation - all in Spanish - with a mechanic who was fixing a dent in my Toyota Tundra.
     My novels (The Fracking War, Fracking Justice and The Devil's Pipeline) are all out there circulating.
     And the musical instrument?
   Well, after giving myself a frozen shoulder learning to play a full-size guitar, I was advised by a music pro to take up the ukulele. He said the best thing about a uke is that if you aren't that skilled on the strings, you can always just sing louder and cover up your ineptness. He was soooo right.
     The ineptness is more pronounced now, largely because I have barely tuned my eight-string in the last few years.
     But today I was encouraged by the video below featuring Neil Diamond. He performs a Covid-19-inspired remake of his classic "Sweet Caroline." It's great.
    And given that I (and probably you) have at least several weeks more of "sheltering in place" it got me to pull my uke down off the wall. Perhaps I can come up with a few parody numbers myself.
    Don't look for me on Youtube anytime soon, however.
Or for a reunion tour of The Four Headlamps.

Is your boat still floating?

   POINT RICHMOND, Calif. - Two decades ago we were getting ready to sail our 48-foot sailboat Sabbatical under the Golden Gate Bridge into the Pacific Ocean and - as Mexico-bound sailors still say - turn left.
     It would be the start of a trip I had been dreaming of for years.

Sabbatical in Zihuatenejo, Mexico

     Even so, for many of us heading south to Mexico as part of a race/rally called the Baja-HaHa, sponsored by San Francisco Bay's Latitude 38 sailing magazine, there was more than a touch of anxiety.
     Ocean sailing, even within 10-20 miles of the coast, has plenty of potential perils.
     But a year or so before we turned left, Latitude 38 published a guide for people getting ready to head to Mexico. It contained a reassuring checklist for captains and their crews about how to deal with the manifold problems - large and small - they might encounter.
     It advised that the first question to ask yourself in an emergency was simple:

Is your boat still floating?

     It was the best - and perhaps most obvious - thing to know, miles from shore or anywhere.
     From there the list branched out to things like, "Can you still steer? Can you make the boat move via sails or engine? Is the crew all healthy? Does your two-way radio still work? And so and so and so on down the list that I am sure had "do you still have beer?" somewhere towards the end.
     That article full of nautical (and life) wisdom has been on my mind ever since the coronavirus pandemic started buffeting people's lives like huge waves and winds on the ocean. I tried to adapt it to the complicated situation we face. But somehow saying, "Is your house still standing?" didn't have the same cachet as "Is your boat still floating?"
     But then this morning, a friend from Penn Yan, New York forwarded a very to-the-point helpful piece with advice about how to reset panicky thinking as we deal with COVID-19.
     You may have already seen it on Facebook or Twitter:

     Good advice all around, I think.

     What am I planning for today? Admiral Fox and will take a long walk with the family and Biscuit, our dog.

    And we will keep the above "mindset shift" advice in mind.

    We know the boat is still floating.

Waiting for Mr. Coronavirus

   POINT RICHMOND, Calif. - Everyone reading this is likely in the same boat, so to speak.
The coronavirus has us all hiding out inside our homes. Or if outside, we are wary of anyone getting within 10 feet of us.
     Yes, I know the recommendation is 6 feet. But when you are about to pass someone walking on a sidewalk it's hard to gauge. Ditto for having a small dog on a leash when you pass someone with young children who just have to pet your pooch.
    This is prelude to restating a bit of the bad news you have already received from screeching media sirens of disaster about how quickly this virus is infecting people - and spreading.
    For days I have been fascinated by a virus-case online graphic published by Johns Hopkins.
     Fascinated and horrified.
     The only good news - such as it is - is that it updates every hour of two and doesn't have a running tally in real time where you could watch the number of cases in 167 nations as they pile up.
     It is still startling to log on every couple of hours and see the upticks.

     The screenshot above shows that the total number of confirmed cases worldwide has hit 297,000-plus as of 10:43 a.m. Saturday, March 21.

     A couple of hours before, that number was about 279,000.

     A couple of hours. Jaysus.

     Of course, there's a lot of argument to be had about the world's population being 7.8 billion and that the infection rate of confirmed cases so far represents an infinitesimally tiny fraction of the globe.

     But if you start watching the numbers the way I have, and see how the totals are jumping (for the U.S., especially) you get a mathematical understanding of why health authorities are soooooo freaking insistent on people sheltering-in-place.

     Until we get reliable testing of everyone, any one of us could be carrying the disease, period.

     The cute little kid that wants to pet the dog. The grocery store clerk. The gas station attendant at Costco. Your neighbors who you normally enjoy a glass of wine with. 

     For the moment, we all have to be paranoid to the point of being, well, paranoid.

     The hardest part for me is sitting still while this unseen enemy steadily advances. Like most people, I can barely contain my anger at the federal government and the narcissist-knothead masquerading as president of the United States.

     How many people opined when he was elected that "Trump is going to get us all killed"?

     But at that point the fear was mostly about a nuclear Armageddon, not a microscopic enemy threatening life as we know it.

    There. I feel better having vented. Sorry if it rattled you even more than you might be rattled. But if you got this far, you might take a peek yourself at the Johns Hopkins coronavirus website by following this link:

Johns Hopkins Virus Tracker

     Or maybe not looking is a better strategy.

    Stay safe, amigos, wherever you are.