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When a person such as me who is not especially people friendly (for which, incidentally, I feel I am owed some thanks) grows weary of social distancing (isolation) I can only begin to imagine what the family minded, gregarious or socially active feel to the point of emotional pain and suffering.

It can only be a matter of time before the bands of restraint weaken and snap or are thrown off like hated shackles. Even when seemingly necessary and in our interests restraints on freedom of association and action is hardly desirable except, perhaps, by those seeking shelter in restraint and desirous of paternalistic protection from outside.

The womb was a cozy place, I’d suppose, but we had to be pushed out, didn’t we? Once out it is sometimes a challenge for a few of us to not favor a return to immersion in protection. A few months of being protected is enough to nurture a second thought or two.

Watchers of Highway 61 began seeing an early return of Canadian motor homes returning north. Why risk the pox in the states when the advantages of lower density transmission awaits back home?

I wonder if anyone’s ever done a count. How many leave Northern Ontario for Florida each year? It was more than a few, but I’ve never seen a number.

Anyway, seems disaster drew numbers of snowbirds north ahead of season. Lake ice is easing up, but will Canada open its border in time for the fishing season?

Lots of hinterland Canadians rely on U.S. fishermen to start off their season. On whom will the blackflies feast if we are not there to provide prime U.S. flesh? It will be an ill season to be a hungry bug, though on the brighter side if you’re a leech you may get a reprieve or even a full pardon.

Speaking of leeches (an out of use term for medical practitioners), some percentage of patients to Duluth/Superior, Twin Cities, and Mayo (etc.) were Canadian. No one counted the number of Canadians who came to the U.S. for speedier treatment than found under Canadian Universal Health Care.

Because I lived near the border I used the Canadian system as a full-pay patient. It was affordable. I was in an eight-patient ward, not so bad until one of us started dying at 2 AM. It wasn’t me, but almost wished it was until they took the afflicted to a death room down the hall. Even so his passing was noisy.

To the good I carried on a lively Bo-Jou relationship with Bill Mawakesik from much further north. My few words of Oji-Cree made him smile before a helicopter returned him home.

Not a bad experience, my time in Canadian health care, but I did have to wait nine months for the arthroscopic procedure deemed non-urgent. Indeed, a knee blown up in size was not going to kill me right off. Months of vivid pain, disability and muscle loss weren’t scheduling factors. Well, it wasn’t the scheduler’s pain, was it? Did leave me with a notion why Canadians come here (or used to) and will pay for prompter treatment.

Think of it. In the space of four months hospitals and clinics have become among the most ill-omened places on the planet. Reminds me of another out-of-use term: croaker, referring to doctors. When things got bad (often too bad as in too late) a person would go to the croaker. Going to the croaker meant you were in extremis, a Latinate expression that’s possibly too western or over-accurate.

Last spring an eager robin took roost on my porch and was well into brooding before I realized the situation. I let her get the chicks out but was not speedy enough removing the nest because the horny robin did it again. The shameless bird was obviously unaware of Planned Robinhood and the threat species expansion poses.

This spring with little to distract me I plan to be a plague on robin reproduction. There is no room in this inn, or at least on this porch. I suspect providing male robins with tiny condoms would be ineffective, so my ban on nesting will have to do. It’s the best I have isn’t it?

Seeing masked desperados in 40 degree weather pumping gas makes me wonder at what temp and humidity will masks be given up. Imagine the same scene at 82 with similar humidity. Time to promote masks with sweat absorbing upper rims, isn’t it? Think of the killing to be made selling that needful innovation. Or maybe save your money or maybe wait and see.

I wonder if the schools are building socially distanced bleachers for spectators. But that’s for next year, isn’t it?

Almost overnight public schools became not only unnecessary but potentially lethal. How does an institution recover from that? Likely the same way the makers of AYDS diet candy survived the AIDS pandemic; by going out of business.

Remember how at first AIDS was a curse visited on a few who deserved it? The public health response was somewhat lethargic as I recall it. And there wasn’t as much political meat at play for working agendas into higher frenzy. In effect we are in an Impeach a Virus mode of banishment and removal by any means thought necessary. The trouble seems to be, however, the absence or weakness of thought put into the supposed cures.

Seems advocates of political cure-alls conveniently forget the health impact of job loss and economic stress. If you recall (and fairly well known) loss of job and income is up there with relationship failure or death in a family.

Not only that, as any teacher might agree, if you leave a classroom of normal kids alone with nothing to do it won’t end prettily. People are messy and get more so when idle.

Being alive is a risk that ends in only one way. We could wonder if living risk-free was life at all. With that view in mind maybe too much call to keep us safe offers us something less worthy packaged as good.