Phoenix, Arizona during the Global Pandemic, November 2020


It's November of 2020, and like I do every morning I woke up at about sunrise, fed the dogs, and went pedaling around Peoria, which is a suburb of Phoenix. I just love getting out into the fresh air, especially because the weather is so nice right now. OK, enough "Chamber of Commerce" talk from me! Let's talk about what's happening right now all over the world, which I will call the Global Pandemic.

I usually call it COVID-19, which means the strain of coronavirus that was discovered in 2019. But I realize that in the future this will become confusing, because the response to it didn't really start until 2020. At least that was my experience, this past April.

The streets were pretty empty this past year, and have started to pick up a bit recently. Of course, I don't see much, I'm usually back home by 9 or 10 am, and I travel the neighborhood streets mostly, only crossing the major streets when I have to. I see people who take the bus wearing masks, and while I don't wear my mask when I'm out on the road, I mask up when I go into a park, or crossing a major intersection, or wherever I see people. I see kids walking to school wearing their masks.

Of course, I live in the United States, in Arizona, a place that I dearly love, and I know that I have to share it with people who see things differently from me. I've always had a special fascination with trying to see things through other people's eyes, and this has been, and continues to be quite a challenge. And I've found that the best place to start is with what people call things.

Like I said, I tend to call it COVID-19 because I'm kind of a nerdy guy who reads medical papers, and has always been interested in science, and that's what those people tend to call it. Actually, the real serious people call it SARS-CoV-2 (I had to go look that up), but my head isn't quite that pointy.

You can call it coronavirus, but since the current strain is actually a type of coronavirus, that can make you nervous, especially when you see that your can of Lysol that you bought many years ago mentions coronavirus. Still, if people say that, I know what they mean.

For my friends who don't trust the mainstream media, I hear the term 'rona (which is kinda nice and breezy), and also the China Virus. Like everything, there's a wide range of what people believe, and trust. I have friends who imagine that it's all just a conspiracy, and since they don't wear masks, or believe in vaccines, I simply have to avoid them. I wouldn't argue with them any more than I'd try to convince field doctors in the Civil War of a thing called germs. It would just annoy them, and I'm not Dr. Lister!

I've been intellectually curious since I was a little kid, and wanted to know why the sky was blue. My mom pointed to a building called the library, and I started my journey of discovery. I know that it puzzles people that I read all kinds of books, and listen to all kinds of people. I grew up in the '70s, and I don't trust authority. I want to find out for myself.

OK everybody, let's be careful out there!

If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. Your support makes it happen! Thank you!

Click here to become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more