I decide to drive into the city on Tuesday around 5pm — almost on a whim. I head over the Manhattan bridge, take a right on Grand after passing the playground on Chrystie. All up and down Chrystie Street and Forsyth - and even along Grand - there are parking spots all over the place. Plastic bags and scraps of paper dart through the air, held up by wind that is unencumbered. On a normal Tuesday, those bags would be trampled down, kicked aside, swept away, somehow kept in check by one of several possible factors: delivery trucks, fire engines, cop cars, people exiting or entering cars, cabbies pulling into the cab stand, bus drivers, pedestrians, little old ladies with laundry baskets, bikers, men on trikes loaded up with tools, well dressed women pushing a $1,500 heavy duty stroller. Today, all such factors are gone.

Since 2006, I have jotted down interesting things in Evernote that I felt might one day be useful to know or interesting to discuss with my daughters. Things such as book lists, odd jobs I have had, places to visit, beautiful college libraries, etc.

One such list I find very instructive is a recurring one titled: Things I am preoccupied with. This list, much like the Dow Jones Industrial Average, behaves as a basic barometer — a timestamped indicator of the degree to which my own head is shoved up my own ass. Below is a comparison of two lists: one collected today; the other from a time that is pre-covid 19.

School has been out for a full week - since Monday, March 16. To be honest, I decided on Friday afternoon to keep my kids home regardless of any official announcement. As many New Yorkers may remember, Friday the 13th was the pivotal turning point for the mayor and for the DOE because that was when Healthcare Workers union 1199 SEIU joined forces with parents and the United Federation of Teachers, and officially endorsed the view that closing all NYC public schools was a responsible public health move. It wasn’t until Sunday night that the mayor made it official.