The news is bad and mad. Some conservatives, unnerved by the shut down, are calling for it to end and for elderly and other vulnerable Americans to be willing to “sacrifice yourselves” for the sake of the stock market. In spite of terrible accounts from Washington State, New York and New Jersey about overwhelmed emergency rooms and desperately overworked and unprotected medical personal, the governor of Mississippi has announced not only that he won’t call for sheltering in place, but that he will override any Mississippi mayor who tries to institute it. The president talks about packing ’em in at church on Easter.

San Francisco is a high risk area, but I have never been so glad to live in California.

Yesterday I walked out into our back garden for a few precious moments in direct sunlight. I descended four flights of back stairs, passed the waste bins (still overflowing) and walked down a short, narrow corridor to a latched door. At Michael’s insistence, I wrapped myself up with a scarf over my mouth and nose. “That corridor is an enclosed space” he pointed out. So in the corridor at least, I walked with my head modestly bowed, pressing the scarf to my face like Rebecca in the old Ivanhoe movie.

One of our downstairs neighbors has fixed the back garden up beautifully, with not only carefully tended plants but little statues of Buddhas and animals, and a couple of small metal tables and seats. I did not sit, but I walked around for bit, looked up at the sky through the lattice of branches overhead. Too small a space for running laps, but the sun felt good.

Another Zoom session last night, this time with our book group, each of the four households seen as windows on the computer screen. We didn’t talk about the book we’re planning to discuss at our next face-to-face, but we exchanged news.

All of us are over sixty. We asked how quarantined they were being, and the consensus was “very.” One of them lives on Potrero Hill, and has a view of a grassy hillside often used for walks. She said too many people were on it these days and they weren’t maintaining the proper distance. Another relayed an account of a friend in the north bay who wanted to take his wife and kid out for air on a trail that’s normally quite remote and isolated. They didn’t even stop the car. The little parking lot fronting the trail was full.