#newsamehope / 4.2.20

What is new in the last 24 hours?

• U.S. death tolls passes 5000. U.S. is home to 22% of the confirmed cases worldwide.

• A new study, appearing in the journal Nature, suggests that shedding of the new coronavirus in the upper respiratory tract is most efficient in the early stages of the disease, when symptoms are still mild. 

• Yesterday was Census Day.

What is the same?

• I still don’t want to jog. 

• Smarty Pants gummy vitamins taste a little too good to be vitamins.

What is the hope?

• There’s a giant old tree along the Chicago River. A while back, it was split in two, and each half collapsed onto the riverbank. I don’t know what caused the split - lightning strike? Rot in the roots? Competition with the river? Each half is now an unplanned community of new branches and nests and tiny forts and architecture. I wouldn’t have known this if I hadn’t seen the tree from the other side of the river, pausing in place at a fork in the trail in an effort to maintain ample physical distance while I waited for a pair to pass me. 

Photo: Southeast Utah. May 2018.