Quarantine Diaries, Day 26
(Posted 12 Apr 2020, 23:02)
21:00 We finished watching the 4 episode mini-series Unorthodox on Netflix. It offered us an intimate look into the life of the Satmar Hassidic community in New York City. It’s brilliantly made and features several excellent performances. Though watching this in the time of a pandemic was a little anxiety inducing.
My anxiety levels ranged from low during:
- scenes of busy cafés
- the scene featuring a small classroom at a conservatorium where the students crowded together practiced 2nd movement of Dvořák’s E-major Serenade
to medium during:
- scenes of the wedding and festivals when multiple relatives come together in confined spaces
to high:
- when people kissed their fingers and touched the mezuzah before entering the house
18:00 Stepped out for a walk with the wife. I am realising that you can’t step out these days without overhearing the word ‘Corona’ at least once. A few days ago I had seen these posters from the municipality of Amsterdam imploring people to maintain 1.5m distance for the sake of their mother, father, aunt etc.
Distance saves lives
Posters on the left
- Do it for your aunt
- Keep your mother out of Intensive Care
Posters on the right
- 1.5 meter to save your father’s life
- Do it for yourself and your mother
Today these had been plastered over by posters advertising music festivals1 beginning in July. Given the current stage of the pandemic in the Netherlands and the crowding and relatively loose hygiene at these festivals, the prospects of them going ahead seem overly optimistic. Premature? Immature?
Music festivals
13:30 With schools now closed for close to 3 weeks, these days of homeschooling and a vacation but not quite a vacation must be stressful for children. The children on our floor got together yesterday to color and draw and left their handiwork stuck to the glass partition next to the elevator:
Children’s drawings
Children’s drawings
The lone, blue page on the right is a printout of instructions for using the elevator during a pandemic. It was stuck there by someone a week or so ago.
How to use an elevator during a pandemic
12:50 Seen at grocery stores: A roll of toilet/kitchen paper with a cleaning spray (labeled “this is not a hand sanitizer!”) for people who want to give their shopping basket handles a wipedown before picking them up. Landed a couple of bottles of a locally brewed beer that appears on the shelves around Easter.
Borouwerij ’TIJ Paasij
As of today, both https://www.18hrsfestival.nl and https://www.guiltypleasurefestival.nl claim to start on 11 Jul in Balkenhaven and Gaasperplas respectively.↩︎