Please Stop Throwing Rocks

Even a hand-made mask like this one (made for us by Lori Vega and modeled by Kathleen) offers more protection against illness than a naked face.

This post originally appeared on the Hearts, Homes, and Hands blog on 2020-06-00.

Well, they’ll stone you when you walk all alone

They’ll stone you when you are walking home

They’ll stone you and then say you are brave

They’ll stone you when you are set down in your grave

But I would not feel so all alone

Everybody must get stoned

—Bob Dylan

If you were drowning and someone jumped into the water to save you, would you try to pull them down with you? Of course not. Even the two percent of people who qualify as psychopaths would not try to kill someone who was trying to save them.

So, let’s take it out a bit. Imagine you are enjoying a sunny day at the lake. You notice a child having trouble keeping his head above water. A woman jumps into the lake and tries to pull the boy to safety. Would you start throwing rocks at the woman? I don’t think so. That would be Pure Evil.

Now the parent you like the most—it’s okay. Everyone gets along better with one parent that the other(s). Now your That Parent—your favorite—is fishing from a pier. Would you try to make them fall off? And if they did, would you impede anyone who tried to help them? No. You would probably jump in yourself to try to save them.

These are not random, silly questions.

If you are one of the people who believes your right to expose your face is more important than a front line responder’s right to breathe, you are actively trying to drown someone who is trying to help you and yours. You are throwing COVID-shaped rocks at first responders and healthcare workers. You could even be shoving your parent into the water to drown.

I’m not questioning your right to go bare faced. You have that right. Where fines are involved, you can choose not to wear a mask and pay the fine or to wear an additional piece of fabric.

But with the right to choose comes the responsibility for your choice. If you don’t wear a mask, you are choosing to risk the lives of everyone around you, including people you love. You will be responsible for their deaths if they die from an infection you chose to spread.

To paraphrase a church meme: It doesn’t matter whether or not you believe in COVID-19; COVID-19 believes in you.

So, please choose responsibly. Please choose to protect the lives of your family, your neighbors, the caregivers who work for me and other agencies, and even me. More importantly, please choose to protect yourself. Wearing a mask is the single most effective step we can take to contain the spread of the virus and lower the death count. Please wear your mask in public.

A Little Phun with Physics...or is it chemistry?

abcdust It can be hard to visualize something smaller than something too small to see. This graphic lets you see how much smaller a coronavirus particle is than even a single red blood cell.

I’m one of those people who has to see something work before I understand how it works. I mean, I knew hand-washing and social distancing worked to slow the spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. I believed our scientists and healthcare workers. But how do you see something as small as a virus that is hundreds of times smaller than other things [see graphic] you can only see with a microscope?

Luckily, I’m one of those people who also thinks in metaphors. What if the infectious dose of the coronavirus was a like drop of food coloring?

Here is a fun little experiment you can use to show kids why hand-washing is important—and get the visual yourself. You’ll need food coloring, an spoon, a clear pint jar, and a clear quart jar. Oh! And an eyedropper would help.

Before getting started, let’s talk about spreading the disease. You’ve probably heard that the virus can “live” on hard surfaces for days and that it travels in droplets for more than six feet. One study showed that a sneeze can propel the virus for up to sixteen feet. So it’s important to understand that getting exposed to the virus does not mean you’ll die. It doesn’t even mean you’ll get sick or become a carrier. To get sick, you need to acquire enough of the virus to overcome your immune system, what scientists call an “infectious dose.”

Washing your hands and keeping physically distant from others reduces the dose when you are exposed. And that brings us back to my nifty little activity.

We’re going to pretend that one drop of food coloring is an infectious dose of the virus. If you put a drop of food coloring on the back of your hand, you’ll get most of it off. If you drop it on a hard surface, it just sits there waiting to be picked up by a living thing. It doesn’t live there. Viruses aren’t really alive. They are just stray bits of DNA that invade other living cells and hijack them to make more copies of the virus. Here’s where the food color analogy breaks down. Food coloring will probably stain whatever you put it on. Unless it is absorbed into another living organism, the virus will eventually fall apart and disappear.

Both hand-washing and physical distancing work the same way. The further the virus travels from its source, the more spread-out it gets. This process is called diffusion.

Let’s put a drop of the food coloring into the empty pint jar. It just sits there waiting for a victim to come along. But we’re going to interfere with its plans. We’re going to make it more diffuse by filling the pint jar with water, just as if we washed our hands to get the virus off. You don’t even have to stir it. As the physicists say, “Diffusion happens.”

Wait! Doesn’t that just help it spread more? Well, kind of. It spreads out more, but there is less of it in any given place. See how none of the water is clear, but neither is the virus as dark as it was when it was a drop sitting at the bottom of the jar. The virus is in more places, but it is spread thinner in all of those places. Now you’d have to drink that whole pint to get the same amount of virus as if you had put a drop on your tongue. If you stick your finger in the solution, it comes back a lot less stained than if you had touched the drop in the bottom of the jar. It’s spread out more, but it takes a lot more contact to get an infectious dose and contract the disease or become a carrier.

If you pour everything from the pint into the quart, the “virus” gets even more diffuse because some of it gets left in the pint. If you wash your hands again—or fill the quart jar with water—it gets even more spread out and less infectious. Now if you repeat this process with a gallon container or a five gallon bucket…you get the point.

Masks work in a similar manner by creating a barrier that reduces the amount of the virus that gets through.

If we all work together by washing our hands, keeping our distance, and wearing a mask, we can all live happily together. But it only takes one person to screw things up for everyone else. One person without a mask can infect lots of people. Let’s all do our best to keep each other safe.

Physical Distancing

National Park Service / D. Kopshever. Are you a herd animal, a pack animal, or a lone wolf? Being a dog person, I like to think I’m part of a pack that works together to protect each other and get things done.

Daniel Case / CC BY-SA Even Wal-mart is trying to keep its customers alive by encouraging physical distancing. If customers each stand on one of these marks, they will all be six feet way from each other. Better six feet away than six feet under!

This post originally appeared in the Cameron Herald and Thorndale Tribune on 2020-07-30 and on the Hearts, Homes, and Hands blog on 2020-07-30.

He sings the songs that remind him of the good times

He sings the songs that remind him of the better times

...

I get knocked down, but I get up again

You are never gonna keep me down

—Chumbawamba

Someone much smarter than me suggested there is much more resistance to the phrase “social distancing” than there would have been had we chosen to call it “physical distancing.” I wish I could remember who said it or where I heard it, but I think that person is right. The distinction operates on the subconscious, emotional level where it seems many people live these days.

First, people are not really wired to be socially distant. We are often described as “social animals.” We can exhibit everything from a “herd mentality” to hunting in packs. Social outcasts are “lone wolves.”

This language underlines how dependent on one another we all are. In earlier societies, exile was often considered a harsher punishment than death, reserved for the most heinous crimes. We really do need to belong to a community. We really do need each other.

Next, we don’t need to be socially distant to prevent the spread of COVID-19; we need to be physically distant. At least six feet apart. Keeping our physical distance doesn’t mean we have to feel socially isolated. We have any number of options for connecting to people we can’t reach out and touch.

In the old days, a letter might take months or years to reach the intended person. We think of texts, email, and applications like Instagram as instant messaging. With FaceTime, Instant Meeting, and Zoom, we can even see the people we are talking to, even if they are in another part of the world.

And let’s not forget the telephone. It still lets us have one-on-one conversations with some degree of privacy.

But even in this age of miracle communications, some people remain isolated because of physical or mental challenges—or simply from a lack of sufficient broadband access. We should remember to reach out to these people…from a safe physical distance.

The Worst Blogger Experience

Contrary to Google’s marketing spin, the New Blogger is only better if you:

• Don’t know anything about HTML and don’t want any real control over your blog's appearance
• Don’t use anything except a phone

I realize I am an anachronism in that I still prefer a monitor and keyboard to a phone.

This may well be the last post I make. We’ll see. I’ve tried to use the New Blogger and find it to be a real piece of shit. The old version worked, which is more than I can say for the new one. For example, the new editor insists on inserting random line breaks throughout the text:

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Fuck that!

The World Has Moved On

While I used to start most days with a full agenda, it seems most days start like this in the post-COVID world. But my planner fills up by the end of the day—sometimes by mid-morning. I still have to make sure all this activity is productive and not just frenzied motion.

This post originally appeared on the Hearts Homes and Hands blog on 2020-07-10.

Well-being is attained by little and little, and nevertheless is no little thing itself.

—Zeno

Our times seem to have turned around. Or as Stephen King’s Gunslinger would say, “The world has moved on.” Many of us have gone from wondering how we can possibly fit everything we need to do today in one day to wondering how we will fill the time. My planner looks remarkably desolate every morning these days. But when I review what I have done at the end of the day, it is full of activities.

Okay, they may not be fun activities. But they are activities—things that needed doing.

They say, “Nature abhors a vacuum.” That appears to be true for my planner as well. It is full of little things that add up to bigger ones. This was the case even in the Before Times, when we used to be able to visit each other whenever we wanted. Then as now, the question becomes, “Do all these little things add up to something meaningful?”

Before:

It was easy to let ourselves become interrupt driven, responding to whatever stimulus demanded our attention in the second.

Now:

It is easy to strive to fill our days with activity, any activity.

Regardless of what it means. This restless flailing, this unbound need to “just do something” is part of what is driving the current surge in COVID-19 sweeping across the country like a tsunami, especially in rural areas like Milam County.

• In Rockland County, New York, a young man wanted to party even though he was already showing symptoms. His party caused at least 18 more people to get sick. According to abc7NY, at least two other parties have been held since then. Some of the young people are facing $2,000-per-day fines for refusing to give contact tracers information to help save lives.
• In Roanoke, Virginia, more than 100 new cases have arisen from a road trip to party at Myrtle Beach. Other outbreaks tied to that house party have cropped up in West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky.

Image and Data source: Centers for Disease Control This map shows where in Texas people have died from COVID-19 as of 2020-07-10. The CDC keeps it updated.

Milam County and Texas in general are seeing more new cases and more hospitalizations than ever before. The rise in deaths will probably follow in the next few weeks, even though this part of the surge seems to be spreading mostly in young people.

In young people, the disease manifests differently. It can lead to heart attacks and strokes, which are often not listed as COVID-related deaths. But those young people are still dead, and their friends are still at risk. Remember, a stroke in a young person can lead to a long life of disability and suffering. All from one small decision. A friend of mine went from being a rising-star CPA to a welfare mom after a stroke when she was 27.

So, I’m asking you to think about the decisions you make today. Are you trying to accomplish something that will help yourself and the community. Or are you just filling time with something because it sounds fun?

“Well-being is attained by little and little, and nevertheless is no little thing itself,” according to Zeno. The opposite is true, too. Every little decision matters.

Please ask yourself why most of the rest of the world is able to move past the COVID-19 outbreak faster than us and choose wisely.

Worm Food

These thoughts were on my mind, and I jotted them down in my journal on Monday. I felt compelled to put them up here on the off chance someone might find them (useful).

I felt compelled to write these thoughts down. They are not empirical, but they do have a certain truthiness.

• Markets are more robust, lifting more people, when they are free from monopolies of any kind.
• The government itself is a kind of monopoly that can influence overall economic performance, either for good or bad. Therefore, regulation and stimulation, both of which will always have unforeseen consequences, must be carefully considered before being implemented.
• Unregulated markets tend to evolve into monopolies or oligarchies that maintain their status-quo by suppressing creativity, innovation, and overall economic growth. Everything becomes zero-sum.
• Every market has winners and losers. When the elites perceive themselves as losing, they will use any means necessary to protect their power. They will also convince themselves they are acting for the greater good. Some won’t care about the greater good so long as they benefit.
• “What’s bad for the hive is bad for the bee,” but the bees are not very good at recognizing what is good for them—especially when what is bad for the hive is pitched as being good for it. The inverse of Marcus Aurelius’s truism is patently false. Otherwise, nobody would poison the common well for their own profit.
• Humans are remarkably immune to cognitive dissonance. Double think is a real thing.
• I believe Greenspan was correct when he said the biggest problem with the economy was that nobody took the long term view. When asked why, he said, “because in the long run, we’re all dead.”

We are all “food for worms.” Memento mori.

Strike for Black Lives

I know it doesn’t sound like much given the infrequency and irregularity of posts on this page, but this site will go dark tomorrow to support the social media Strike for Black Lives. I actually did have a post planned, which will now appear later in the week.

How Long Do You Want to Live?

Photo by Unknown One thing centenarians have in common is being active in community and family. Here is Suna being active with her Master Naturalist community in the days before COVID-19.

This post originally appeared in the Cameron Herald and Thorndale Tribune on 2020-06-04 and on the Hearts, Homes, and Hands blog on 2020-06-04

You live and you die

And I’ll probably throw it away

But in the end it’s mine

And nobody has a right to say

“Go down lightly”

“Go down silently”

I’ll go down screaming

“Give it back! It belongs to me”

—Janice Ian

Barring the Zombie Apocalypse or the actual apocalypse, how long do you want to hang around on this planet consuming oxygen? Have you given your lifespan much thought? I have. I’ve thought about it a lot more on the north side of sixty than I did when I was younger—and even more since the onset of COVID-19.

When I ask people about this (I actually do; I’m like that.), their answers generally fall into one of a few buckets.

Young adults tend to look at me like I’ve suddenly sprouted a wasp from my forehead. They haven’t given the question much, if any, thought. And who could blame them? When I was their age, I just assumed I’d live forever. (I’m still on track for that, by the way.) I still believed I was ten feet tall and bullet-proof.

A few people say, “As long as I can,” a comfortably meaningless phrase. It gives the appearance of answering without commitment or much thought.

The most common response is something like, “as long as I can still do what I want” or “as long as I can be independent.” This answer implies good health, something none of us can guarantee. Most of us never want to become a burden on society or our families. Once you’ve been a parent, letting go of taking care of your kids is hard. And the thought of them taking care of you is horrifying. That horror is led my partners and me to form Hearts Homes and Hands, a state-regulated personal assistance service dedicated to helping people maintain their independence through age, injury, and infirmity. I am already a clients.

I think that fear of dependency is why many elders say something like, “I’m ready to go Home.” Dad used to say, “I’m ready to see your mother again.”

But we’re not really in control of all that. Julius Caesar had a slave whose only job was to whisper in his ear, “You could die today.” As could any of us. But we could also outlive our bodies or, more frightening to me, our minds. We need to plan for both possibilities.

Dad used to tell me, “Plan to live forever and know you won’t.”

Dad used to tell me, “Plan to live forever and know you won’t.” That’s really good advice. More Americans are now over 100 years old than ever before. We’ve even had to invent a new word, “supercentenarians,” for people who are more than 110. One study found that centarians and supercentarians have three common traits, all of which we can start working on today, regardless of age.

First, they are involved with their families and communities. We can all keep up with the kids and grandkids through social media and writing letters, even if we can’t get out. Church is another source of community support, especially if we give support to others before we need it ourselves. Pets also help us build deep ties and reasons to keep going. Someone has got to take care of Fluffy.

Second, they all keep busy. One woman still ran her family ranch at 104. Dad planted corn at 92 while he was dying of cancer. The only thing that worried him when he was in the hospital was how well his crop had done. I know several people who still go into the office every day well into their seventies and eighties. One of my first bosses started a new company when he was 84.

The third commonality is that they want to be alive. The first two traits give them reasons to keep going, but the drive to live is something deeper. It is a passion for life. As singer-songwriter Janis Ian put it, “I’ll go out screaming, ‘It’s mine! Give it back to me!’” I really admire the fight in that answer.

Bored? Some Folks Will Always Be Homebound

Photo by Postmaster / Shutterstock I think Marcus Aurelius once said, “We choose to participate in the rave.”

This post originally appeared in the Cameron Herald and Thorndale Tribune on 2020-05-21 and on the Hearts, Homes, and Hands blog on 2020-05-21.

Me and Loretta, we don’t talk much more

She sits and stares through the back-door screen

And all the news just repeats itself

Like some forgotten dream that we’ve both seen

—John Prine

You see them more and more on the evening news: people out en masse, partying in crowded, recently opened (or illegally opened) bars. Some have just come from rallies where they gathered around Patrick Henry’s immortal soundbite, “Give me Liberty, or give me Death!” You can almost hear the excess capitalization as they ignore the fact that Liberty and Death are not mutually exclusive. In a pandemic, they can be correlative, if not causative.

But I understand where they’re coming from. Boredom. At least, that’s what most seem to say on camera. “I’ve just got to get out of the house!” One day blurs into the next, giving us the new word “Blursday.” A meme shows a generic calendar with each column headed by the same word. “Day.”

Our brains thrive on novelty. The first bite of our favorite foods can cause our eyelids to flutter shut and our eyes to roll back in transient ecstasy. A month later, you’ll remember that first bite, but you won’t remember the ninth or tenth by the end of the meal.

Photo by EVZ / Shutterstock Nanci Griffith once sang about being a clock without hands. She was more right than metaphorical. Our brains measure time in very long increments and tiny ones. And those measurements don’t really relate to each other.

Savoring that first bite can seem to take as long as the rest of the meal. That’s because our brains have many clocks to keep track of time. None of these brain clocks have hour hands. They measure time in fractions of a day or fractions of a second. There’s nothing really in between.

We experience that first bite in what neurologists call “prospective time.” While we’re looking forward to it and experiencing it, our brains measure time in fractions of a second. But the rest of the meal doesn’t get as much attention as that first bite. Rather than form new memories of each bite, our brains overwrite the same memory pattern over and over again. We don’t experience eating the rest of the meal so much as remember it later in “retrospective time.”

The same thing happens all the time. We experience new things in prospective time, but repetitive actions blur into retrospective time. We tend to live in prospective time where the length a pause in conversation can have real meaning. We may have only a split second to react when we see a snake while hiking through the fields. Is it a rat snake or a rattlesnake? Boom! We decide. That’s why time drags on forever when we’re bored. Each tick of the clock may take a week. But when we look back at a month of boredom, it seems to have slipped by in a blink as each day blurs into the one before.

Now put yourself in a different place. What if you weren’t “stuck at home” because of a government order? (An order that is being gradually relaxed as I write this.) What if you couldn’t leave home because your body was unable to take you outside? What if you were stuck at home—maybe even confined to your bed—for the foreseeable future? For the rest of your life? Your mind would turn the seconds into minutes and the minutes into hours. But it would also turn the months into days and the years into weeks.

Photo by Photographee.eu / Shutterstock If you’re feeling like you just have to get out of the house right now, please take a minute to think about those who will still be homebound when Shelter in Place fades into memory.

Many people are in this unenviable situation because of injury, disease, or age. Since 1891, these people have been called “shut-ins” or, more kindly, “homebound.” Shelter in Place orders have given all of us the opportunity to experience their reality. The difference is we can escape to protest or to deal with essential tasks. Even when the last Shelter in Place order is lifted, the homebound will remain…well, shut in.

One of the services we provide at Hearts, Homes, and Hands is to help the homebound deal with their persistent reality.

Even though it seems like it wouldn’t work, one of the best things you can do to fight isolation and boredom is to keep to your normal schedule as much as you can. Go to bed and wake up at the same time as before COVID. Prepare your meals and eat them when you normally would. Exercise on your regular schedule even if it means jogging around the living room or lifting your kids instead of weights. If you can’t go to work, set aside some time to learn new things, to write letters, or to play games—anything to create new experiences for your brain to look forward to.

But the most important thing to schedule is downtime. Set aside time to do nothing. That’s right. Make time to do nothing at all. Force your brain to be bored so it looks forward to and enjoys the experiences it can have. Contrast real boredom with routine, and most of us will really appreciate being able to focus on and savor that first bite of activity—whatever it is.

“It was paper when we started...”

Photo by The New York Times I remember thinking at the time, “That’s easy for you to say.”

The best things in life are free

But you can keep them for the birds and bees

Now give me money

(That's what I want)

—Berry Gordy, Janie Bradford

It’s not often you’ll hear me say I learned a valuable lesson from Sam Walton, but today is one of those days.

Thanks to declining production and falling oil prices, I had to take a huge write down in the valuation of one of my properties yesterday. It was frightening and disheartening.

To be clear, this isn’t real money. It didn’t come out of my pocket, but it does affect my net worth. And banks tend to look down on reductions in net worth.

So, I’m grateful for the lesson I learned from Walton way back in 1987. After the stock market crashed on Black Friday, he lost about a half-billion dollars in Wal-mart’s market capitalization the following Monday. Walton shrugged off the loss. He said, “It was paper when we started, and it’s paper afterward.”

I remember thinking at the time, “That’s easy for you to say.” But the truth is, paper losses hurt about as much as paper gains help. That is to say, not much. I still own the land, and my taxes will go down because of the write down.

Caring for Our Pets

Penny loves to cuddle, but I am trying to be more careful about keeping her tongue out of my face. Next, I’ll work on the feet.

Brody always took hand washing and social distancing very seriously…even before they were a thing.

This post originally appeared on the Hearts, Homes, and Hands blog on 2020-05-08.

A big black dog

A little too much gray around the muzzle

A big black dog

Why she ended up at the pound is a puzzle

—Emmylou Harris

We all love our fur babies. Well, most of us. I suppose there are still people around like WC Fields hey, about her screenwriter Leo Rosten once said, “any man who hates dogs and babies can’t be all bad.“ I just don’t know any.

Just about everyone I know falls at the other end of the spectrum. At Hearts Homes and Hands, we love our animals. Most of us have more pets at home than people. in fact, two members of our team are on the Board of Directors for Milam Touch of Love, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization dedicated to the welfare of animals in Milam County. Others have contributed to or done volunteer work for that organization.

If you use the term “fur babies“—it took me a long time to get used to it. But then I realized I call Carlton “Baby Boy“ and Penny “Baby Girl.“ Sigh. Anyway—if you use the term “fur babies,” you probably have experienced their delicate, little (or big, sloppy) kisses…whether you wanted to or not.

And that brings me to Winston, who made national news a couple of days before I wrote this article. Winston is a pug who lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina with his family of four humans. The two adults are both doctors, but all four are COVID survivors.

One day Doctor Mom noticed Winston’s behavior was a little off. He even skipped breakfast. No pug I have ever known willingly skips a meal unless something is very wrong. So, Doctor Mom has Winston tested. Sure enough, he was positive for COVID.

Winston is the first American dog to test positive and the first confirmed case of human-canine transmission. We already knew that cats, including lions and tigers and—well, not bears—at the NY Zoo could get COVID. But Dr. Anthony Fauchi, the face of the Administration’s COVID Response Team, said there is “no evidence” of pets giving the virus to their people. That’s good. Just try putting a mask on a cat. Neither one of you will have a good result.

But Fauchi didn’t rule out the possibility of pet-human transmission. All “no evidence” means is that we haven’t proven that it happens, not that it doesn’t happen.

All this is to say our pets need to practice social distancing as much as we do. Right now, it’s a good idea to keep your indoor pets inside and your outdoor pets away from others. And avoiding those fur baby kisses can help protect both of you.

Feeling Isolated?

Photo by Suna Sue Ann says hi from Zoom with her under-the-sea background.

Photo from Lee’s Fakebook page Suna say, “Lee’s Facebook page is so old it still has his graduation picture on it.” Yeah, right! My sixth grade graduation, maybe. That was back when books were on paper, a non-volatile storage media (unless you had a match).

This post originally appeared in the Cameron Herald and Thorndale Tribune on 2020-04-30 and on the Hearts, Homes, and Hands blog on 2020-04-07.

Yes, I'm lonely

Want to die

If I ain't dead already, hoo

Girl, you know the reason why

—John Lennon, Paul McCartney

It’s no big secret: social distancing can cause its own set of problems. One of these is isolation. When we lock ourselves in our homes away from everybody else, we can get lonely.

Fortunately, technology provides us a workaround. Since we’ve been distancing, I don’t think a day has gone by when Sue Ann has not been on her phone or her computer Fakebooking, FaceTiming, Zooming, or using some other social media to stay in touch with her friends and coworkers.

I’ll admit I’m not the best at all of that. I kind of enjoy the isolation. But, in many people, isolation can lead to other problems like depression, or just to loss of motivation. For some of these people, technology is not an option for the simple reason that they’ve never needed or wanted to use it before (or can’t afford internet access).

I have a Facebook account that I think I logged into two years ago. I’ve never used Zoom. And I’ve never used video chat or FaceTime. However, I’ll admit that these are good ways to keep in touch with people when you can’t just go see them.

What do you do if you don’t have access to technology or don’t know how to use them? Well, here again, Hearts Homes and Hands can help. Some of our caregivers are very fluent with these technologies. They can help you set up a smart phone for the first time. They can help you Zoom or FaceTime so you can talk to your grandchildren, nieces and nephews, or children who live far away.

Just give Kathleen a call at 254-627-1200 and she can talk to you about all the different ways we can help you safely stay in contact.

Oh, and one bit of good news! A recent study showed that COVID-19 can’t be spread through flatulence. Everyone in my family is very relieved.

What Are Your Six Things?

Photo by jokerbethyname / Shutterstock Only a fool would not be scared if a rattlesnake suddenly raised its head. That’s a healthy and potentially life-saving reaction. But when I was a child, I was so terrified of snakes around our house in the country that I was often afraid to go outside for days at a time. That is not a healthy reaction.

Photo by NASAThis picture is a NASA photo of Flight Engineer Tim Kopra in 2015, not Chris Hadfield. But it illustrates just how alone you are in space, even if there is another person around to take the picture. Can you imagine suddenly and unexpectedly going blind in this situation?

Photo by Monkey Business Images / Shutterstock Washing your hands in warm, soapy water is the single most effective thing you can do to stay healthier.

This post originally appeared in the Cameron Herald and Thorndale Tribune and on the Hearts, Homes, and Hands blog on 2020-04-17.

Be scared. You can’t help that. But don’t be afraid. Ain’t nothing in the woods going to hurt you unless you corner it, or it smells that you are afraid. A bear or a deer, too, has got to be scared of a coward the same as a brave man has got to be.

—William Faulkner

These are scary times. I’m reminded of a quote from William Faulkner. “Be scared,” he wrote “You can't help that. But don’t be afraid.”

Being scared is a natural reaction to a startling stimulus. It gets your heart beating and your body ready to fight or flee. Being afraid is ongoing. It can lead to complete inaction or worse—self-destructive behaviors.

How can we not be afraid when times are so scary?

Astronaut Chris Hadfield went blind while walking in space. What could be scarier or more frightening than knowing you are alone in the vastness of space and not being able to see how to get back inside the relative safety of your space capsule? Hadfield survived by focusing on the six things he could do to make things better.

I’ll bet we can each find six things we can do to make things better. Here’s my list.

1. My family and I are practicing social distancing and eliminating unnecessary trips to town and stores.

Even at home, we maintain our private spaces and keep our distance. This private distancing can be challenging with seven adults under roof.

2. While hand washing has always been important, my family and I are becoming almost obsessive about it. 

3. I work every day to keep Hearts, Homes, and Hands able to provide essential the services—like grocery shopping or help with housecleaning—that keep our clients safe and healthy.

We also work very hard to protect our employees. Kathleen and I reached out to every outlet we could find to get adequate protective gear for our employees when that gear became unavailable through our usual suppliers.

4. Every morning and every evening just before bed, I journal about things I am grateful for.

This practice keeps me focused on what is going right in my life and away from the spiraling cesspool of negativity that seems determined to drag us all down. We don’t control what happens, but we can control how we react to it.

5. I cut my own hair the other day.

Even if hair salons were open, I would not have risked my own health, nor the health of my clients and those I love, for simple vanity. And it didn’t turn out badly. Not like it could have. Not like it did when I was six.

6. Finally, I keep in mind that there is no problem so bad I can’t make it worse.

There are four items on my list that can move directly to yours. But really think about that last one. Social distancing works. It has kept the spread of the disease way down in Milam County, and it has helped keep the outbreak manageable in other parts of the country. Let’s not make the problem worse by taking unnecessary risks or getting out and about too soon.

We will all be happier and healthier if we focus on what we can do to make things better.

Focus on What We Can Do

Kathleen wears one of Lori’s mask Creations.

This post was republished on the Hearts, Homes, and Hands blog on 2020-04-13.

Flesh and blood it turns to dust

Scatters in the wind

Love is all that matters in the end

—Robert Earl Keen

Each day brings us new opportunities and challenges—often cross-dressing as one another. Challenges can appear like opportunity to the unwary. That’s why many business people say their best deals are the ones they walk away from. Opportunities usually appear as challenges. That lead Thomas Edison to say, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

The truth is almost any situation can be an opportunity or a challenge, depending on how you choose to perceive it. I wanted to write today about how people are turning shelter in place—it sounds friendlier if we turn it into an acronym: SIP—into opportunities.

I’ll start with my partner at Hearts, Homes, and Hands, Kathleen Caso. For most of her career, Kathleen has worked to overcome isolation in our clients. Under SIP, isolation has become a benefit that helps our clients stay alive and healthy. “We’re doing more shopping for them, and I’m even teaching some of them how to order what they need online.” She said it’s been a real change in mindset.

Almost any challenge can be turned into an opportunity. Let’s keep looking for the opportunities and moving out of the darkness. Wendy rendering courtesy of Bob the Builder

Lori Vega saw an opportunity in the shortage of masks. Many of you know Lori from her sewing and alterations business, Vega Creations. Lori now makes masks to help slow the spread of COVID-19 in our community. Hearts, Homes, and Hands has taken delivery of two shipments to help protect both our clients and our caregivers.

Local attorney Kayla Chandler has been doing video chats because they add more face-to-face contact than just talking on the phone and still help with social distancing. “Video chats are always fun because when one dog starts barking, they all go nuts and we have a good laugh.” She and Matt also planted a garden with veggies and fruit tress. I would say it reminds me of the old Victory Gardens, but then I’d have to admit I’m old enough to remember them.

I heard one podcaster with a good idea. He said, “I don’t have to teach anyone to use Zoom when I interview them.” Everyone has already learned it in the last couple of months. Like Kayla said, Zoom and other video chat software are a good way to feel more connected while maintaining a safe social distance.

Let’s keep looking for the opportunities and moving out of the darkness. We can keep moving forward regardless economic challenges and social distancing. The question to ask is, “What can I do?” Not, “What can I do?” If we focus on what we can do, we’ll see opportunities abound.

Meaningful Work

Even if it feels like we are all flying alone, we are all interconnected. No one is an island. Rendering by Dr. Norbert Lange
Shutterstock

This post originally appeared on the Hearts, Homes, and Hands blog on 2020-04-02 (with different art).

No man is an island entire of itself; every man

is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;

if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe

is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as

well as any manner of thy friends or of thine

own were; any man's death diminishes me,

because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom

the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

—John Donne

One of the things that adds meaning to our lives is doing work that we think is important in some way. Work that helps others, that saves lives, that somehow makes our communities better. That’s one reason I started Hearts, Homes, and Hands instead of just retiring to my ranch. I wanted to continue to make a difference in people’s lives.

But many of us are in jobs that we don’t think of as meaningful. They feel enclosing like we are drowning in drudgery. They give us a pay check but little else.

The Shelter in Place order and the COVID-19 outbreak gives us a chance to rethink how we feel about our jobs and find the meaning that was really hiding there all along.

When I worked as a fast-food cook in high school, I never thought it was an important community service. Compared to being a nurse or a lawyer or a cop, it was almost embarrassing. Sure, flipping burgers put a few bucks in my pocket, but it did nothing else to make me feel good about myself.

Truckers lead mostly solitary lives, but modern society would not function without them. Photo by MNBB Studio
Shutterstock

But look at that job today. The government has literally defined it as essential to the community. Fry cooks and servers turn out to be more important to the world than we—even those of us who have worked as such—ever thought. They feed hungry people. They help keep the cops on the street and the healthcare workers tending the sick.

There are other examples of invisible, under appreciated jobs that are essential to society. Without stockers, grocery store shelves would be barren. Without truck drivers risking their lives to drive through and even into hot spots, there would be nothing for those stockers to put on the shelves. Without warehousers, consolidators, and packagers, those drivers would not be able to deliver our necessities to the stores or directly to our houses. And without factory workers and farmers, there would be nothing to deliver.

But even those without “essential” jobs may be doing important, meaningful work. So, take a minute and look at what you do. I’ll bet in some way, it improves someone’s life somehow.

We have a moment now to think about our lives. Let’s figure out how we make the world a better place. And if it turns out we don’t, let’s figure out how we can.

We are all connected. If we can each improve the life of one person—make one person laugh, make one person smile, or just ease one person’s pain—we are all better for it.

A Word About Masks and Gloves

A mask protects other people from you. A respirator protects you from other people. Let’s save the respirators for the people who risk their lives to keep us alive. For more information see 3M. Photo source: 3M

This post originally appeared and on the Hearts, Homes, and Hands blog on 2020-03-30.

Breath I’ll take and breath I’ll give

Pray the day ain’t poison

Stand among the ones that live

In lonely indecision.

—Townes vanZandt

You’ve probably heard we face a shortage of masks and gloves, needed supplies to help fight the spread of the Coronavirus or COVID-19 (C-19). The best we can do as individuals is to make sure we are using these supplies correctly.

Masks

Let’s start with masks. Wearing a mask won’t keep you from getting sick, but it can keep you from spreading the disease if you are already sick.

The understanding as I write this post is that C-19 is transmitted through heavy droplets when you cough or sneeze. A mask can keep you from spreading these droplets. But because they tend to fall to the ground—they don’t stay suspended in the air—you don’t have to worry too much about inhaling them unless you are around someone who has the disease for more than 15 minutes.

You can get sick if you touch something that these droplets have fallen on and then touch your face. So that brings us to gloves.

Gloves

It doesn’t do you any good to wear gloves if you don’t take them off correctly. Here’s the right way in pictures. Photo by Room’s Studio

Gloves cut both ways. They can protect you from some forms of direct contact, but they can also encourage a false sense of security that reduces hand washing. Your gloves can also contact the infected droplets. If you touch your face while still wearing the gloves, you might as well not be wearing the gloves at all.

Then there’s the types of gloves. I saw someone walking their pet while wearing winter gloves. Cloth gloves can trap more of the infected droplets near your skin so you take them home with you. If you don’t immediately throw cloth gloves in the washer, you probably shouldn’t wear them at all.

Finally, there is an art to taking your gloves off. Be careful not to touch the outside of the glove to your skin. And wash your hands immediately, just in case.

These are scary times, but we can get through them if we think about what we’re doing, take care of each other, and work together.

Say “Yes” to the Move

Marilyn renovated an historic house to open the Central Avenue Bistro. Renovating the old hospital for the county government makes just as much sense. Photo by Steve Young

We all support the renovation and move. Photo by Steve Young

No medical provider is interested in using the old hospital. In fact, given its legal history, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to get the campus relicensed as a hospital. Redeveloping the buildings for the county government is the best use of this property.

This post originally appeared on the Hermit Haus Redevelopment blog on 2020-03-20.

You’re gonna ease my mind, put me there on time

And keep rollin’ on

— Hank Snow

The other day, a group of business leaders and government officials gathered at the Central Avenue Bistro to support Judge Steve Young’s project to move the county government out of several buildings in downtown Cameron and into the old hospital after it’s renovated.

This move will be good for Cameron and Milam County for a number of reasons.

It saves the old hospital, giving it new life. Since there are currently no other redevelopment plans for the old hospital in place, the banks that own the property were going to tear it down. There are no other plans on the table. The county can renovate and move into the facility, or the banks will tear it down. I tried to find investors to repurpose the building for other purposes. Nobody was interested.

Renovating the old hospital gives the county a fresh new set of offices at a fraction of the price of new construction. It also gives us the opportunity to redevelop the downtown buildings the county currently occupies. Finding investors and capital to redevelop individual buildings is much easier than finding investors who are willing to watch millions of dollars sit idly for at least a year or two—or more—while we redevelop and repurpose the old hospital for other use. The risk to each investor is lower because the individual projects are more manageable, both financially and logistically.

Finally, getting the county out of downtown gives the city the opportunity to plan how to redevelop the area. We’ve all seen the results of unplanned growth. It’s usually ugly and often unsustainable. The county’s dominance of downtown real estate has actually stifled Cameron’s development. By removing that impediment and enabling the city to decide how we want Cameron to grow, we can gently nudge investment in the way that provides the most benefit to the community.

I urge everyone to support Judge Young in moving Milam County and Cameron forward with this project. It will be good for everyone.

See, I was there with my Moving Milam Forward pin on my hat, even if I didn’t get the plaid memo. Photo by Steve Young

To that point, I want to address a misconception I have heard raised to this project. Some people in other parts of the county have asked why they should pay to improve Cameron. Although tax money will be used to renovate the old hospital for the county’s use and Cameron will benefit from that renovation, so will all parts of the county. From the numbers I’ve seen, the hospital renovation is much less expensive that the cost of bringing all the buildings the county currently occupies into compliance with state codes. Part of that saving arises from the fact that it is always less expensive to renovate an empty building than an occupied one.

And the funds to renovate the buildings downtown will come from individual investors, not from tax funds. That means county money is only going to county use, just as it would if the county offices stayed where they are. We are just spending less money for better, healthier facilities. Please say yes to helping Judge Young move Milam County forward.

Life Is Better with Clean Hands

This graphic provides a more detailed handwashing procedure. Infographic by Shutterstock

The CDC is rolling out a new program: “Life is Better with Clean Hands.” Photo source CDC

This post originally appeared on the Hearts, Homes, and Hands blog on 2020-03-14.

We have all been washing our hands for a long time, but we may not have always washed them effectively. I’ve seen guys barely splash water on their hands, wipe their hands lightly on their shirt, and grab the door handle. That may actually be worse than not washing your hands at all because the damp hands may help germs grow and definitely helps them spread.

So, I wanted to see what the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends. It turns out CDC has specific guidance for both how and when we should wash up.

Proper Hand Washing

The CDC recommends five simple steps to wash your hands:

1. Wet your hands under clean, running water. It can be warm or cold. For me, the hotter it is, the better. 
2. Apply soap and lather. Get all of your hands—between the fingers, under the nails, the backs of your hands, around your thumbs, and all around your wrists. 
3. Scrub thoroughly. The CDC suggests humming “Happy Birthday” twice to make sure you scrub for at least 20 seconds. 
4. Rinse your hands well, again with clean, running water. 
5. Dry your hands completely with a clean towel or air dryer.

What About Sanitizers?

If you don’t have access to clean, running water, soap, and towels, hand sanitizers are better than nothing, but they are not as effective as simply cleaning your hands. Sanitizers don’t kill all kinds of germs. They are much less effective when your hands are really dirty or greasy, and they don’t remove harmful chemicals that can get on your hands as part of daily life.

When to Wash

We all know you should wash up before you start preparing food. But the CDC also recommends washing up several times while you’re cooking, like after touching raw meat or when changing the types of food you’re working with.

You should also wash up:

• After using the bathroom (and before if you’re a mechanic) 
• Before meals 
• After caring for someone who is sick 
• Before and after treating a cut, wound, or burn 
• After blowing your nose, sneezing, or coughing 
• After touching an animal, its food, or its waste 
• After touching garbage

Changing Hands and Habits

Of course, none of this matters if you still hold the menu in both hands. Photo by Suna

This post originally appeared on the Hearts, Homes, and Hands blog on 2020-03-10.

Dance, dance the shaking of the sheets

Dance, dance when you hear the piper

Playing, everyone must dance

The shaking of the sheets with me

— Traditional

As our President proved by touching his face almost immediately after claiming he hadn’t done so in months, not touching your face is almost impossible. But since that is one of the main ways we get several viruses, the CDC recommends we don’t do it.

I tried to not touch my face. I couldn’t do it. As one comedian put it, “How else do you know it’s still there?”

So, I’m working on a new habit to help protect myself from viruses like COVID-19. I try to open doors, shake hands, and similar tasks only with my right hand. I try to use only my left hand to wipe my eyes, scratch my nose, or clean my beard. Since our culture always shakes right hands, no matter which is your dominant hand, I suggest using this division of labor even if you are left-handed.

A habit is a set of behaviors we do so often we don’t have to think about them. It consists of a stimulus, a response, and a reward. In the case of an itchy nose, the itch is the stimulus, the response is to scratch, and the reward is relief. To change this habit, we just have to narrow the response to using our left hand to scratch and reinforce the reward by telling ourselves that we’ve done well when we make the switch.

It takes time to change habits. I’ll be working on this change for a while.

Let’s All Stay Healthy

Washing your hands in warm, soapy water is the single most effective thing you can do to stay healthier. Photo source: Shutterstock

This post originally appeared on the Hearts, Homes, and Hands blog on 2020-03-03.

Don’t let us get sick

Don’t let us get old

Don’t let us get stupid, all right?

—Warren Zevon

On Monday, 24 February, the CDC made a startling if not unexpected announcement. The global efforts to contain the N. Corona Virus - now officially called COVID-19 (C-19) are doomed to failure. So are the CDC’s efforts to keep C-19 out of the U.S. It is not a question of if C-19 will spread, “it’s more a question of when this will happen and a question of how many people will have severe illness.”

In October 2019, Johns Hopkins gamed out a global pandemic. Ironically, they chose a corona virus, not C-19 since this was a simulation and C-19 had not even been identified yet. Unfortunately, it showed 77% of countries were not able to collect real-time data on the spread of the disease, which means the reported number of cases is probably much lower than the number of actual cases. The good news is that the US ranked the most prepared. Not well prepared but better than anyone else.

C-19 is in the same family of viruses as the common cold. So, we already have some pretty effective ways of dealing with it. 

Older people, the very young, and those with immune systems compromised by other factors are the most at risk. But as with cold and flu, you might get C-19 and your symptoms could be so mild you don’t even know you’re sick.

Photo source: Amazon

Don’t Panic

While C-19 spreads around the world and could play havoc with the global economy, it is not a monster virus like the one in Stephen King’s epic The Stand. Its more lethal than a typical flu outbreak, but it does not seem to spread as easily. In fact, given recent cases of “community spread,” many otherwise healthy people may not even know they have contracted C-19. Many others may think they have the flu and either wait it out or ignore it.

• The leaders in our community already have plans. Robert Kirkpatrick, the Milam County Director of Public Health Preparedness is already working with state health officials and the CDC to monitor and coordinate efforts.
• Suna covered what our Health Department is doing in the Hearts, Homes, and Hands blog post of 20 February. School officials in Milam County and around the country are developing plans to deal with students testing positive for C-19.
• I have a long-standing policy of sending sick people home. Both Hearts, Homes, and Hands and Hermits’ Rest Enterprises follow this policy. We don’t want people having to make the choice of going to work sick or putting food on the table. We all know where that decision will fall. 

You don’t have to go to this extreme to protect yourself from getting sick. Besides, the guy’s beard total breaks the respirator seal. Photo by Monkey Business Images
Shutterstock

What Should We Do?

While we shouldn’t panic, we need to approach this disease with open eyes. It might be comforting to hear that C-19 will be controlled by warmer weather in the Spring, as is the case with the flu and other corona viruses, but we don’t know that for sure. People still get colds and the flu in the summer, just not so frequently.

Here are a few things you can do to stay healthier:

• Avoid contact with sick people. Most of us can’t isolate ourselves and avoid any potential contact with potentially infected individuals, much as we might wish to. But we can try to avoid people who are obviously sick
• Wash your hands with soap and warm water for 25 seconds at least twice a day and always before eating. The CDC says this is the most effective thing you can do to avoid getting sick from just about any cause. 
• Avoid touching your mouth, nose, and eyes. These viruses spread thrive in the fluids produced in your mouth, nose, and eyes. They have evolved to irritate these parts of your body, making them water and facilitating virus transmission. 
• If you run a business, have a plan to limit the spread C-19 (or the flu) through your workforce. Can your employees work from home? Will you pay them? Where will you get replacement workers?