Ripple in Still Water

          My sister lives in New York with her husband and their ten-year-old daughter on the Upper West Side near Central Park. Normally, we speak maybe once a week. Yesterday was my sister and brother- in-law's anniversary.  After I wished her a "Happy Anniversary", I joked asking her if she and her husband went to some fancy kosher restaurant. Obviously, the answer was "no". She cooked dinner. I asked her if it is as really bad in New York as it appears on the news. She said it is probably worse. She knows many people who have the Covid-19 virus. She mentioned that a hospital was recently put up in Central Park. They work hard to keep things as normal as possible for their daughter amid what my sister describes as like living in a Third World country. Then she started telling me about the various moments of kindness that she has seen and experienced.  The moments she told me about were not necessarily moments that she had experienced personally, the...

          In our home,  I usually am the one who wakes up first.  Typically, I try to be incredibly quiet so as not to wake my wife.  For approximately 30-45 minutes, the house is normally, quiet. I can turn on the news show that I enjoy. For a few minutes, no one needs me to do "this, that or the other thing." So this morning, I quietly get out of bed, I descend the stairs and there is a light on in our family room already. There's my wife, on the sofa, with her computer, trying to master various computer programs that are designed to facilitate her conducting and "on line" kindergarten class.  She couldn't sleep. She had been up for hours. "I guess I am a bit anxious" she smiled through her worried eyes. I know that the anxiety will lead to her being tired later today. I thought about all those upon who we rely, who we cannot afford to become tired. I thought about health care workers, lab clinicians, farmworkers, those who are going manufa...