Happy Easter! With Shelter in Place heading into Week 3, Easter 2020 may be a more significant and memorable holiday than in the past.

Cameron Carpenter

In case you are looking for a little sparkle for your Easter, try this: https://youtu.be/d5O8cHI-vPY

If opera is not your thing, maybe organ music is?!? Cameron Carpenter is one of my favorite musicians. We saw him in Bamberg a few years ago to many accolades and a standing ovation from a stiff German crowd, then here at the San Francisco Symphony playing the score to the movie Battleship Potenko. He is a brilliant, creative dancer as well as classical and contemporary organist.

Cameron is good inspiration for us. Since all the talk is about what not to do with your hands, watching this clip of his performance might give you ideas what you CAN do with them. And your feet too!

Shelter in Place–Week 3 and Gavin Newsom

Three weeks ago, we were happily prepared to shelter in place when Governor Newsom mandated the requirement on March 18. The San Francisco Bay Area was one of the first to implement this restriction outside of Asia to contain the spread of the deadly corona virus. It was a novelty for the first two weeks.

Depending on when you start counting and entering into the lockdown, many Bay Area residents are beginning to feel more apprehensive. How long will this last? Is it really effective? Are we going to be living like this the rest of our lives?

Thankfully, in California with Gavin Newsome as our governor, we finally have some true leadership and direction. You can see the latest interview with Anderson Cooper here:

Meanwhile, what’s it like here at home in San Francisco? The days drift by for me with sketching, gardening, meditating and reading. In lieu of 6 hours on an IPhone, cooking is a productive time-killer. I finally tapped into those greasy cookbooks on the shelf near the kitchen and roasted pork belly with a Peruvian recipe last night. I also retrieved an easy, comforting flourless chocolate cookie recipe that I made at the beginning of lockdown. I even shared it on a recipe chain letter and sent it to a friend who ran out of flour and wanted to make a chocolate birthday cake.

A plethora of opera livestreams continue. All the major houses sponsor their own versions. I have followed Metopera loyally. During Wagner Week 2, I combined sketching with the music. Here are a few of the die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdammerung characters:

Meanwhile, idle time passes quickly by looking out the window:

• 

• 

• 

The San Francisco Chronicle

We started following the San Francisco Chronicle, our local newspaper, again so we could get updated statistics on local media about the corona virus. But I still follow Deutsche Welle for reliable world news. Willie Brown, our former San Francisco mayor, wrote about a couple of jokes in his column:

I still haven’t decided where to go for Easter — the living room or the bedroom.

Classified ad: Single man with toilet paper seeks woman with hand sanitizer for good clean fun.

And from the man: it’s better 6 feet apart than 6 feet under.

• 

• 

Easter Flashback

Addendum: Here’s a link to my posting from Easter Island in 2017: https://travelswithmyselfandothers.com/2017/10/15/day-9-10-easter-island-moai/