Today just a snapshot from my day, the day Italy was awarded the record for most deaths in one day - we surpassed even China.

We live in a different world. Already.

When something’s amiss with your health, you presumably go to someone who knows more than you do about the body and they give you their opinion, a diagnosis, a cure, or at least something to relieve the symptoms, maybe talk about how to avoid contracting this whatever in the future. They give you a piece of paper that lists what you need to take, what you need to do, how to go about it.  Presumably you then go back out into the world and follow those instructions. So you’ll get better. So you’ll stay better. Sometimes the suggestions don’t work.

My neighbor two buildings away put a sign up on his gate announcing a concert at 4:30pm today. When I found out about it I knew I wouldn’t be “going” other that hearing it from the balcony.  Even so, when he started testing the speakers, just before 4:30, my knee-jerk reaction was to get my shoes on to go over to his yard.  That’s what happens in this neighborhood when Riccardo and Niccolò play. People show up. By the time the music started I’d remembered that I couldn’t go over there. I had to Stay Home. That’s what we’re doing. The lapse in my cognitive process showed me, though, what others are going through. 

A week ago - only 7 days ago - I was out with a big group of friends for an 11 mile walk through the Mugello valley north of Florence. Half way in, we stopped at a local trattoria for one of those Italian lunches the whole world swoons over. It was a sunny day of camaraderie, all of us feeling grateful we could be out and about, lots of talk of the poor people in the north under lockdown. We thought we were being careful. We knew about washing hands. One of us took extra precautions and ate outside. We were good…

Today, a week later, I realize, we were not good. We just didn’t know.

I grew up where most people lived in houses they called homes. These were single family residences. They were far enough away from each other that you really weren’t ever hearing what the neighbors were up to. If you did… that was a problem. And you made it known, so that the problem would go away. Everyone liked being in their own space, hearing only their own voices.

Then I moved to Italy, where “casa” means “home,”

I’m jumping up and down, waving a sign: DO THIS

“Can you see? Can you hear? You can learn from this! Really! Don’t make our same mistakes ! Hey you… over here ! Look…

An American woman was disappointed about having to cancel her family’s spring trip to Italy, especially upset about losing all the money they’d paid in advance and won’t be refunded. She was supposed to visit a friend here in Italy whose family is having to stay at home, facing the lock down of the whole country, a country where so many work in tourism, where so many will go without work or income in the coming months. Her Italian friend told her she was sorry