In 1606, the bubonic plague returned to London. Two years earlier, it had killed 30,000 of its inhabitants. The plague hit like a hammer that winter. This time the city took no chances. It shut down on a massive scale. All the theaters closed. This was a bitter blow for playwrights and actors. Out of work and under house arrest, they had little to do but twiddle their thumbs and play the waiting game.
Living In Fear
While all phobias are irrational fears, some are stranger than fiction. Most of us are afraid of dying, but people with Apeirophobia are cut from a different cloth. They are afraid of living forever. When Bobby Azarian was four years old, his grandfather died from cancer. Bobby was told the old man had gone to a happy place where he would enjoy eternal life with his loved ones.
Nature Returns As Humans Retreat Indoors
After 13 years of playing hard to get, two giant pandas in Hong Kong’s Ocean Park Zoo have finally mated. Zookeepers were over the moon. Pandas have a mating season of just 24 to 72 hours per year. Normally the zoo is flooded with throngs of daily visitors. But since the zoo has been closed because of the coronavirus, these two pandas finally got the privacy they needed.
Connecting Through the Coronavirus Lockdown
As of early April 2020, over one-third of the world is facing some type of lockdown because of Coronavirus. People in different countries are facing various levels of quarantine and social restriction. But what we are all experiencing is a steady stream of bad news. We are drowning in stories of sickness and death. But there are also rays of hope and human kindness penetrating the separation and isolation.
Coronavirus Social Distancing
The first reported case of the Coronavirus in the US was on Jan 19th, 2020. For months, Americans had denied how serious the situation was. Many said that it was no different than a common cold or flu. They thought all the warnings and hype were overblown. Some even said it was a hoax designed to bring down the president. By mid-March, as the severity of the Coronavirus pandemic became impossible to ignore, many of the naysayers had come around.