By mid-March of this year, the tone of the news began to change; for the first time since 2015 some “news-ish” organizations took a breather from hating on the president and began reporting on a serious and scary development engulfing the world. As regions across the country went into lockdown, I was one of the fortunate ones; I have an “essential” job that has been unaffected by the shutdowns (in fact my office is busier than ever) and a house with a yard big enough to stay in for days at a time without going stir-crazy. My new hobby that I’m blogging about here has been very helpful in making it through this.
With ebay, the USPS, and the savings on fuel and car maintenance brought on by being forced to work from home, I found myself quite content to spend my free time in the large room in my basement I have designated as my “toy room”, in which my collection of die-cast and, now, slot cars and tracks resides. Precisely because of the social isolation enforced by the lockdowns, I accelerated my journey into “Thunderjetting” and ramped up my purchases, not only building a car almost every day but also designing and building new tracks and beginning work on what became a sprawling and quite detailed diorama.
I am not making light of the situation: as I sit here and write this, my 75 year old mother is suffering through the severity of the Wuhan Flu; she has already been in the hospital twice, and my brother has just tested positive for it; I have an 82 year old aunt who only barely made it through her bout. I have friends and co-workers who have fought this thing, and while I am fortunate enough not to know anyone personally who has been killed by it, I do know people who know people who have. There is no question that the virus is very real and, irrespective of all the “interesting” theories about how it came into existence, it is clearly something we are now going to have to live with for the rest of our lives.
This requires a great deal of forbearance from all of us, and I’ve been lucky in my way: thus I have made myself a solemn promise to stay away from politics on this blog; there is entirely too much “politics” in our society today and I have no desire to contribute to the white hot hatred that has replaced political discourse in the age of anti-social media. However, it is probably impossible to discuss anything that happened in 2020 without mentioning the elephant in the room: that state and local governments have decimated our economy and upended millions of lives without any idea whether their edicts would be beneficial. As a result, we have all been subjected to vastly less free living, shocking those of us who thought that, here in the USA, the government doesn’t have the right to tell us who’s businesses-and whose jobs-are “essential” and whose are not. I guess I’m showing my age, aren’t I?
So, let me express again my gratitude to the hard working men and women of the postal service, to my employers and co-workers (we help keep your water running), and for all those folks out there who aren’t letting this get them down; who are contributing to this hobby by buying and selling, building and sharing their results with others. This is what makes it fun…and we need a little fun right now!
