Self-Isolation

As soon as Trump announced the quar­an­tine, (the school) Basis imme­di­ate­ly sent an email stat­ing that after the hol­i­days, stu­dents would not need to return to school, as online learn­ing would be orga­nized instead. A time was sched­uled dur­ing which chil­dren could come to school to col­lect items from their lock­ers need­ed for learn­ing. Of course, the teach­ers did a great job orga­niz­ing every­thing very quick­ly. The chil­dren did not miss a sin­gle day and start­ed study­ing imme­di­ate­ly after the hol­i­days. Ini­tial­ly, on the school’s web­site, teach­ers post­ed infor­ma­tion to read and assign­ments to com­plete. Lat­er, they switched to the Microsoft Teams plat­form, part of Office 365, which allowed for more effi­cient orga­ni­za­tion of teacher and stu­dent work. The math teacher streamed video expla­na­tions. Some­times there were video con­fer­ences and stu­dent test­ing. Stu­dents had to com­plete assign­ments, scan or pho­to­graph them, and send the results to the teacher.

Mark did every­thing him­self — solv­ing prob­lems, scan­ning, and send­ing them — but we still had to con­stant­ly keep an eye on him because there was a strong temp­ta­tion to watch some­thing on YouTube, lis­ten to music, or play a game dur­ing lessons. As a result, some­times lessons took up the entire day. I real­ly liked the phys­i­cal edu­ca­tion teacher. He sent videos of exer­cis­es that he per­formed him­self, which the child had to do, and par­ents had to sign a sheet con­firm­ing the com­ple­tion of the exer­cis­es. The exer­cis­es were of three lev­els of dif­fi­cul­ty, and the child could choose which lev­el to perform.

We have acquain­tances with a 6‑year-old daugh­ter who had just start­ed kinder­garten. They had a very hard time: they had to explain and help her with assign­ments and send them to the teacher. I can’t imag­ine how par­ents with sev­er­al chil­dren, espe­cial­ly in dif­fer­ent grades, man­aged, each need­ing a com­put­er, need­ing to be fed, and if the par­ents also had to work from home.

The ser­vice sec­tor was heav­i­ly affect­ed. The gov­ern­ment pro­vid­ed finan­cial assis­tance of $1200 per adult and $500 per child. Per­haps it var­ied by state, but in Ari­zona, some busi­ness­es con­tin­ued to oper­ate, home repairs con­tin­ued, tree trim­ming crews came, and pest con­trol ser­vices, includ­ing scor­pi­on exter­mi­na­tion, were available.

Many busi­ness­es sus­pend­ed oper­a­tions, and peo­ple had to apply for unem­ploy­ment benefits.

With the quar­an­tine announce­ment, all auto­mo­tive indus­try busi­ness­es were severe­ly affect­ed, and car sales dropped. First, part of the pop­u­la­tion worked from home, and sec­ond, many people’s incomes decreased. Although Valya had plen­ty of work (tax­es for the com­pa­ny always need to be cal­cu­lat­ed and paid), the num­ber of car orders decreased, which meant work­ing hours were reduced for all depart­ments relat­ed to cus­tomer inter­ac­tions, includ­ing dri­vers deliv­er­ing orders and staffing employ­ees. The com­pa­ny’s man­age­ment did every­thing pos­si­ble to avoid lay­ing off employ­ees. For exam­ple, the Board of Direc­tors and senior man­agers decid­ed not to receive salaries and have not received them for two months.

Bobcat

Recent­ly, we start­ed to think more about grow­ing food in the yard rather than just orna­men­tal plants. Why waste water unnec­es­sar­i­ly? We have been grow­ing egg­plants since 2018. We bought a fig tree in a pot. We are grow­ing oranges and lemons from seeds. Now Valya has the idea to plant a veg­etable gar­den with let­tuce and arti­chokes. We cleared some stones in the mid­dle of the yard, bought a cou­ple of bags of soil, and plant­ed thyme and artichokes.

One morn­ing on April 13, we noticed dis­tinct tracks on our flower bed that were larg­er than cat tracks. It was def­i­nite­ly a bob­cat. A bob­cat is a North Amer­i­can wild­cat, much larg­er than a domes­tic cat but slight­ly small­er than a lynx, and it looks very sim­i­lar. It most like­ly jumped over our two-meter fence.

Before this, I had seen a bob­cat in the desert a few times. Recent­ly, we were rid­ing bikes. The guys went ahead, and I was rid­ing behind Valya. Sud­den­ly, Valya stopped, and about five meters ahead of her, a bob­cat crossed the path leisure­ly. We yield­ed the way to the “own­er of the desert,” and the bob­cat did not even seem scared or has­ten its pace. As it is often said, due to the pan­dem­ic, human activ­i­ty has decreased, and wild ani­mals have start­ed to come clos­er to human dwellings.