The March Madness of King Donald, My Journal of the Plague Quarter, Spring at Metropolitan Community College, Day 4

This is getting serious folks, folks, as Joe Biden might say. It is no longer about China, or Italy, or nursing homes in Washington State. Or colleges closing. Or shortages of toilet paper, aloe vera, and hand sanitizer. Sports are now involved and people are pissed. The NBA has suspended its season. The NCAA March Madness tournament is canceled. The College World Series is canceled. High schools are cancelling sports events. Professional golf tournaments will be played without spectators. Broadway productions have closed. The number of states which have closed all schools continues to grow. Omaha Public Schools are closed next week. The University of Nebraska Lincoln and Omaha campuses are closing and moving to online formats for the foreseeable future. Same for Creighton. I attended an emergency training session on how to transition my two Metro writing classes from the classroom to online format in the event Metro closes. I fully expect that to happen, perhaps tomorrow. I think I can make it work.

Whenever a person sneezes or coughs, I fight the urge to hit the floor and duck and cover. I was in the same room as a fellow who was carrying around a large container of sanitizer cleaner had a sneeze. My life passed before my eyes.


The man who is our “president” read from a teleprompter to try and calm the financial world last night and appeared as though he was a prisoner of war giving a false videotaped confession, and the White House followed his speech by hours and hours of clarification as to what he really meant. England can’t figure out why it was excepted from a 30-day travel ban. “We’ve got the illness here, too,” it said. The rest of Europe is not happy. I’m sure it is a coincidence that the man who is our president owns golf courses in the UK. Wall Street and the financial markets were not impressed. Whenever the prez speaks about the coronavirus, the Dow Jones goes down. And today it was down more than 2,000 points. He started about a month late on even thinking about the coronavirus and has fallen further and further behind as the juggernaut juggers. For a guy who has apparently come into close contact with a growing number of people known to have contracted the virus, he should get tested right away.......

But I am ready to shift my classes to online. As an introvert, social isolation will not be that big an adjustment for me. I have plenty of toilet paper, soap, coffee, a few frozen dinners, half a dozen cans of soup, and bourbon. I will endeavor to persevere, to quote a favorite line from The Outlaw Josie Wales.