"What will summer be like now?; Socially distant campfires and ice cream cones with DIY sprinkles" by Zoe Greenberg Globe Staff, April 25, 2020
Sarah Geller has already made playlists for her campers, memorized the traditional cheers, and purchased the pink and green clothing she’ll wear on certain days as a counselor at Camp Hi-Rock in the Berkshires.
The only thing left to do is figure out whether the summer of 2020 is still on.
As the sun comes out and the flowers burst open, new questions are arising that few of us are ready to contemplate: What will summer look like in the middle of a pandemic? Is it even really summer when “sitting, sunbathing, and other stationary recreational activities” are prohibited on state beaches, when public pools and harbors are closed, when concerts and ballgames and festivals aren’t happening and basketball courts are off-limits, when ice cream shops are only doing takeout and even visiting Grandma’s house is basically out of the question?
Related: Trump Poisons COVID-19 Cure
No, warm weather will not kill the coronavirus -- at least, that is what the lying pre$$ is telling us.
Also see: Globe reporters offer easy tweaks to improve sports
They say the changes are for the better:
"For all you football fans out there get ready for "virtual football". If they were to allow the stadiums to fill with 60,000 people than all bets for this Corona Project will be off and people will never tolerate this bogus "anti social distancing" decree again. The 2nd wave of Corona is all ready planned just in time before kick-off. You can forget about hockey and basketball too, they are contact sport's as well. They will exist, like football, but only in the virtual dimension....."---- JG (April 26, 2020)
He is right about the relapse, too.
Summer? "I don’t think it’s going to happen,” said Eian Woodman, the general manager of Woodman’s classic clam shack in Essex, which has been serving up fried clams for over 100 years. (Woodman pointed out that although it’s a strange moment, his family’s shop has weathered the flu pandemic of 1918, two world wars, the Great Depression, the Vietnam War, the Great Recession, and a host of other catastrophes, so it will likely survive.)
Oh, it's happening.
We just won't be able to enjoy it, and what makes her think her bu$ine$$ is $o $pecial?
We all seem to be making our own private negotiations with the universe these days, as we move from denial to bargaining. We’ll never complain about the crowds at the beach again! It’s fine for the neighbors to play loud music in the backyard! Just please don’t let us be cooped up in the middle of July. . . .
F**k Zoe Greenberg of the Globe.
What an eliti$t $kank!
At the same time, people across New England are already tweaking the rituals of the season, reckoning with the fact that some of the things that make summer so special are exactly what must be scrapped.
For now, Woodman’s is doing curbside pickup only; minivans line up in the parking lot and people eat lobster rolls inside their cars before driving back home. The harbormasters in Rockport are begging visitors not to bring their boats to the summer haven just yet — check back in July, and with the CDC and the American Camp Association expected to issue national guidance in the coming weeks about whether summer camp should even happen, the YMCA of Greater Boston is considering what socially distant camp might look like: Spread-out campfire circles? Morning and midday temperature checks?
“We’ll also just keep our eye on children. We don’t want any clumping,” said James Morton, the president of the YMCA of Greater Boston.
Ah, summer camp and the foregone joys of clumping.
Oh, yeah, the wonderful memories of summer camp!
Summer is something of a deal breaker here. After nine months of gloom, Boston lights up, and fills with festivals and parades and music. Memories of waiting for the T in the bitter cold and trudging to work in the snow fade. The sun comes out and suddenly, we all live in a glorious place.
The highlight for Stephanie Perez, who is 28, has long been the Puerto Rican Festival of Massachusetts, a three-day extravaganza at City Hall Plaza filled with music, rides, and abundant food. Perez, who is Puerto Rican, grew up going to the festival, and now her five children look forward to it every year. The kids wave Puerto Rican flags and thrill at the cotton candy.
“I just eat everything," said Perez, who was studying to be a nail technician before her classes were put on hold. “They have the rice and beans, the chicken, they have the piƱa coladas I try to get every year," but this year — no surprise — the festival has been canceled. The kids will be limited mostly to the backyard. “Yeah, you can play music in your own house," Perez said, but it won’t be the same. At the annual festival, “there’s so many different people, and everyone you know is there.”
The same goes for Salsa in the Park, a free outdoor dance class and performance series that draws hundreds of people to a courtyard in the South End on Monday nights in the summer. There are two DJs who play each week — salsa music on one half of the mobile dance floor and bachata on the other.
The joy comes from “seeing people go from zero to feeling free to dance in the street,” said Eli Pabon, who produces events like Salsa in the Park with the Latin dance company MetaMovements, but even ice cream sprinkles now seem suspect.
It's one agenda after another with the endle$$ propaganda that spews forth from the Globe.
I think I will stop reading them this summer.
The SoCo Creamery Scoop Shop in the Berkshires is usually flooded with summer campers on day trips, visitors from Jacob’s Pillow and the Tanglewood Music Center, and locals looking for a treat. When people picture an ice cream place in the summer, said Erik Bruun, the shop’s owner, they envision a whole experience. They want to stand in line, taste samples, trade licks. All that is out the window now, with the shop only open for takeout, delivery, or curbside pickup. The cultural events that would have brought people to the region are largely canceled, and one of the most classic summer delights, a cone dotted with rainbow sprinkles, now has to be altered because of the fear of spreading infection from an open, communal bowl of sprinkles.
Summer traditions closer to home are on the rocks, too. Wellington Matos, a sophomore at Fenway High, tends to spend long summer days at his grandmother’s house in Roxbury; cousins flow through, windows and doors are propped open for the breeze, and the smell of pastelitos fills the air. On the Fourth of July, the family hosts a cookout in the backyard, with music playing from early afternoon until the fireworks pop in the night sky. Matos hopes it will still happen this summer, but he’s guessing it won’t.
Vacation spots around the region that have become almost too crowded in recent years are also bracing for an empty season. Robin Canha, the owner of the Vineyard Arts Gallery on Martha’s Vineyard, had big plans for this summer. She was planning to cohost a grand party on the Island for prominent photographer Elliott Landy, whose work is showcased in her gallery, and she was already helping to promote a separate three-day music festival on the island featuring Beck and Norah Jones. She imagined visitors crowding the gallery just like last year, in high spirits and on vacation.
“Everything was just headed to be a wonderful year,” she said, but of course, the party’s probably off, Landy likely can’t visit, and the festival has been canceled.
To make matters worse, she’s not sure how she’ll pay rent on the gallery space without any visitors — and she has no idea how long any of this will last.
Like for other businesses that rely on summer tourists, summer is shaping up to be less of a balm and more of a threat. More of the same, in other words, which is exactly what summer is not meant to be.
“I’m scared to death actually," Canha said. “I don’t know if I should be emptying it out and taking my sign down or hanging in.”
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Well, now that school is out for the summer:
"Virtual classes test kindergarten teachers; The first year of school is supposed to be a messy, hands-on affair, but it’s not anymore" by Meghan E. Irons Globe Staff, April 26, 2020
Kindergarten is a unique and messy business, where teachers get on the floor to observe their students and where many children, hands dipped in paint, begin their formal foray into collective learning.
Kindergarten teacher James Jones-O'Brien talked to his students as he conducted a Zoom lesson from his living room, but, in the era of COVID-19, teachers, some juggling their own families, aren’t able to mingle with their students; parents don’t have tools at home to replicate a classroom; and children lose out on critical interactive play that helps with their social and emotional development.
Kindergarten, like preschool, does not require extensive reading or long reports, but it requires a certain togetherness that is gone.
"I miss my friends. I like to play with them. No school for me. No school days anymore,’’ lamented 3-year-old Sydney Zimmermann, as her mother, Jordan, explained the hard adjustment to their new reality since Boston public schools closed March 17.
Jordan Zimmermann and her husband, both architects, work from their East Boston home and take turns caring for Sydney, a prekindergarten student at East Boston Learning Center. Sydney, who is an only child, gets an abundance of learning packets from her teacher, and joins a Zoom class at least once a week, but although Jordan Zimmermann is grateful for those efforts, she said it’s impossible to replicate Sydney’s school experience at home.....
They aren't worried about perverts?
--more--"
Now kindergarten has “a totally new weird dynamic,” with a new chance to close the digital divide and avoid an educational disaster like in Rhode Island.
Good thing you have already graduated:
"The lost year: High school seniors reflect on glory days they’ll never have; School closure through the end of the year snuffed out hope that seniors could save some of their beloved rituals" by Jenna Russell, Malcolm Gay and Meghan E. Irons Globe Staff, April 25, 2020
For young people whose lives have been defined by school since the age of 5 — who were on a path to high school graduation before they knew the word “commencement” — it was a stunning reversal of fortune, their most assured milestones disappearing in an instant.
Like every senior class before them, the Class of 2020 was supposed to enjoy the long goodbye of their final semester in high school. It was a promise made to them as lowly freshmen, a deeply American teenage tradition: They would be, at long last, the kings and queens of their domain, strutting the halls in a final victory lap before setting off into adult life.
This f***ing eliti$t crap is beyond sickening at this point. It is just damn offen$ive.
They can bully all they want, too!! I been there!
Instead, the time of their lives has turned to heartbreak, as everything from spring sports to high school musicals is snuffed out. Their class now has the unfortunate distinction of being the first graduates in modern Massachusetts history to be sent off en masse without a proper, in-person, springtime graduation ceremony.
So Catari Giglio, stuck at home in Dorchester, smooths the shimmering fabric of her floor-length prom dress and wonders when she will ever wear it, and Mairead Baker, valedictorian at Boston Latin Academy and sheltering in the Neponset neighborhood, keeps rewriting her speech for graduation, polishing the prose as she weaves in painful lessons newly learned. The speech now focuses on the need to be fearless in going after your dreams — because you never know what might happen tomorrow.
OMFG!
Poor babies!
Won't get to go to prom, won't be able to give their speech full of propaganda!
Here we allegedly have a COVID crisis that is ferociously contagious and killing thousands along with an intentionally collapsed economy followed by a looting of their futures, and the kids are concerned about prom dresses and graduation speeches.
C'mon, kids, WAKE the F**K UP!
Hardest of all for this year’s seniors, perhaps, is the unceremonious way their time together ended, with the temporary statewide closure of schools in March. Unaware, as they hastily gathered belongings from lockers, that they would never be back, they did not have a chance to say goodbye to teachers, mentors, and friends, those quiet exchanges of gratitude and affection that give closure at a momentous passage.
Gone, too, are traditional rituals at schools across Massachusetts where seniors stand as one, one last time, and reflect on what they’ve been through together.....
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What is most offensive about that piece of eliti$t crap is the very same Globe a$$holes helped shovel all the shit that ruined your senior year and now they are pretending to commiserate with you. It's akin to a murderer attending the funeral of his victim.
So what jobs have they lined up for them this summer?
"Stranded $cholars: ‘My world is shattering’: Foreign students stranded by coronavirus" by Caitlin Dickerson New York Times, April 25, 2020
The Jew York Times cares more about foreign students than you!
When universities abruptly shut down last month because of the coronavirus pandemic, many students returned to their parents’ homes, distraught over having to give up their social lives and vital on-campus networking opportunities. Graduating seniors lost the chance to cross anything but a virtual commencement stage, but the campus closures have created much greater calamity in the lives of the more than a million international students who left their home countries to study in the United States. Many had been living in college dorms and were left to try to find new housing, far from home in a country under lockdown.
A substantial number of international students are also watching their financial lives fall apart: Visa restrictions prevent them from working off campuses, which are now closed.
As their bank accounts dwindle, some international students say they have had to turn to food banks for help. Others are couch surfing in the family homes of their friends but don’t know how long they will be welcome. Those who rushed to fly home before international borders closed are not sure they will be able to come back.
“My world is shattering,” said Elina Mariutsa, a Russian student studying international affairs and political science at Northeastern University whose parents sold an apartment and borrowed money from friends to pay for her previous semesters of college.
She is all but certain that, with the Russian ruble’s recent rapid devaluation amid the ongoing global economic collapse, her family will be unable to pay the $27,000 bill for her final semester of college — let alone help her with living expenses now.
“I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to graduate. Right now we definitely can’t pay for the last semester, and it’s literally just four courses left,” she said.
Well, I'm sorry, I truly am, but that's the price of this fraud and hoax. I'm sorry your benefactors ruined your life.
Universities, which often receive a substantial share of their budgets from foreign students, said they moved quickly to help international students by opening a limited number of dorms when possible, flying students home in some cases and lobbying the federal government for support.
That's the future of higher education.
“It’s hard and it’s constantly evolving,” said Jigisha B. Patel, the chief adviser for international students at Northeastern. “Everybody has really moved toward doing everything they can during this time.”
The federal government has stepped in to help college students who have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic, but in keeping with its “America First” agenda, the Trump administration announced on Wednesday that international and undocumented students would be excluded from the roughly $6 billion in federal aid targeted to help students pay for expenses like food and housing
Many students said the help that was provided by their universities was not nearly enough.
“It was a very hectic moment because I had no idea where to go,” said Anna Scarlato, an Italian student who learned in March that she would be kicked out of her dorm at the University of Chicago within days.
With nowhere else to go, Scarlato moved to her boyfriend’s dorm at a different school, but the next day they learned that campus housing was closing there, too.
Scarlato agreed to sublet a room in a Chicago apartment, but then learned that her parents, who were under lockdown as a result of the pandemic in Italy, would be unable to get to a bank to transfer her any money for rent.
At the last minute, her boyfriend’s mother bought Scarlato a ticket to go home with him to Orange County, Calif. “I have no idea where I’m going to be in the next two weeks or a month or two months,” she said. “It feels like I’m being a parasite in some way.”
She must be Jewi$h then.
University of Chicago student Anna Scarlato, who is Italian, has been staying with her boyfriend’s family in California (Courtesy of Anna Scarlato/New York Times).
She should have flew home, for the medical system is considered one of Europe’s best.
Some students have been reluctant to share the extent of their troubles with their families who were already struggling to pay for their schooling.
Stephany da Silva Triska said her mother in Brazil stopped eating out in restaurants, didn’t replace her old car, and cut back on vacations so her daughter could study politics at California State University, Long Beach.
In turn, Triska worked hard to justify her mother’s sacrifice. She was chosen by professors as an outstanding senior in her major and won a prestigious international policy fellowship.
A ceremony to recognize her achievements has been canceled and her fellowship is on hold, but she has bigger problems, including whether she will be able to finish college at all. Her mother’s interior design business, which funded the portion of her education that was not covered by scholarships, has dried up.
Triska, who lives in an apartment she pays for with her student job, still owes $600 toward the tuition fee for her final semester of college.
“Every time I log into my student account, I see the $600 balance. I don’t even know who I should go to, if they would be open to negotiating the remaining balance,” Triska said.
Students who rushed to airports to beat looming border closures and wait out the pandemic at home fear they will face legal hurdles when they try to return to the United States to complete their schooling.
Mercy Idindili, a sophomore at Yale studying statistics, said she returned to Tanzania after feeling pressured to do so in a series of e-mails from college administrators that made clear the institution was going to make “very few exceptions” for international students who wanted to stay in the United States.
“Honestly, that whole week was very hard,” she said, “I did cry a lot because I was so confused and so disappointed by everything.”
At first, she had been waking up at 3 a.m. to attend virtual lectures in a linear algebra class that was giving her trouble. Her professor has since begun recording the lectures for her, which is helping her keep up, but Idindili’s visa to reenter the United States expires in July, and American consulates abroad are all closed indefinitely. The State Department has also suspended visa processing until further notice.
I used to do that and start blogging. Now I make sure to get my rest.
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Maybe they could all join the Peace Corps:
"For Peace Corps evacuees, there wasn’t even time for goodbye" by Jacquelyn Martin Associated Press, April 25, 2020
DUMFRIES, Va. — After two weeks alone in a hotel room in the Virginia suburbs, 40 minutes outside Washington, Kelsea Mensh was ready to go home.
A few weeks earlier, the 22-year-old Peace Corps volunteer had completed a year of service in the Dominican Republic. She loved being in her “pueblo” surrounded by families and lively children. She was working on a school improvement project and applying for funding to install hand-washing stations to help provide running water in her community. She was filled with purpose and excited to fulfill her two remaining years of service.
Then an e-mail came, followed by a phone call. The Peace Corps was pulling all its volunteers from projects around the world because of concerns about the coronavirus. There would be no hand-washing station. There would not even be time to say goodbye.
In a message posted on the Peace Corps website last month, director Jody Olsen said the decision to temporarily suspend operations was difficult. “Fortunately, we were able to safely evacuate each of our posts, avoiding a situation where Volunteers would have been stranded overseas as borders and air space were shutting down to prevent the spread of COVID-19,” she said.
How many that were brought back had it?
In response to questions, the agency said about 7,000 volunteers were evacuated from 60 countries. Upon returning to the United States, they were asked to self-quarantine for two weeks. The Peace Corps declined to comment on whether any evacuees tested positive for the coronavirus.
Although she is grateful to have been evacuated, Mensh said she is very worried about the community she had to leave behind in the Dominican Republic. “I told my mother in tears that I didn’t get to say goodbye, and we both started to cry,’’ Mensh said. Mensh’s mother, Holly Balcom, a fourth-grade teacher, said, ‘I didn’t get to say goodbye to the children here, either,’’ Mensh recalled.
As a cancer survivor with viral-induced asthma, the 54-year-old Balcom could be particularly vulnerable to coronavirus infection. Once evacuated, Mensh had nowhere else to stay. What could she do? How could she come home and keep her family safe? Though she hadn’t been exposed to any known infections, her evacuation had forced her to travel through three international airports.
The Peace Corps put Mensh up in a hotel in her hometown to self-isolate so she wouldn’t risk her mother’s health. She chose a Holiday Inn Express that was a five-minute drive from her mother’s home.
“The Peace Corps were very supportive,” Mensh said. “They sent out an e-mail and said they would refund a hotel for 14 days in your hometowns with a stipend for food. You’re leaving your job that you love. It was hard, but I’m extremely grateful to Peace Corps for helping me have a place to stay so that my mom could be safe.”
While she was staying at the hotel, Mensh and her mother realized they could be within 6 feet of each other if outdoors. “So we had a picnic lunch outdoors. You couldn’t hug each other, but it didn’t matter,’’ Balcom said. “We were just grateful to have her home and safe.”
Really?
Holly Balcom kissed daughter Kelsea Mensh in Dumfries, Va., after Mensh returned from her Peace Corps service (Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press/Associated Press).
Then WTF?!!!!!!!??
Jakob Leichtman, 23, and Jack Cashmere, 22, were serving together in the Peace Corps in Ecuador for two months and were awaiting their first placements when they were evacuated. Rather than put his 72-year-old father at risk, Leichtman decided to stay with his fellow evacuee at Cashmere’s family home in Bethesda, Md.
“It’s less lonely than staying in a hotel,” Leichtman said, “and I wasn’t sure when the Peace Corps would be able to reimburse, if at all. I have to find a job now. The plan for the next three years is gone.” Leichtman later decided not to pursue employment in order to keep infection risks lower for his father.
Olsen, the Peace Corps director, said the agency already is planning for the time when operations can resume.
After the drill is over, or after you have your certificate of immunity?
“Volunteers who seek to return to their host countries or seek a new assignment will be given expedited consideration over the next year,” her message said.
--more--"
I think France will be their next posting:
"Isolation stories: Special-needs families navigating lockdown without usual supports" by Sylvie Corbet Associated Press, April 25, 2020
PARIS — After weeks of France’s strict lockdown, Mohammed, a 14-year-old with autism, took a pickax and started hitting the wall of his house, hoping that he could finally go out.
His explanation: “Too long at home, too hard to wait.’’
Too many vaccines!
Coronavirus lockdown is proving a particularly trying ordeal for children with disabilities and their families who are struggling to care for them at home now that special schools and support programs have been shut down.
Mohammed hasn’t picked up the ax again since the incident last month, his father Salah says, but his son still gets exasperated, and says, “I want to break the house down.”
The family, like others who spoke to the Associated Press about what they’re going through, spoke on condition they be identified by first name only, out of privacy concerns for their children.
Making matters worse, Mohammed’s mother, who works in a nursing home, has been on sick leave after testing positive for COVID-19. She had to live for weeks isolated on the top floor of their house in the Paris suburb of Mantes-la-Jolie, and was forced to keep distance from her family. Her health has since improved.
That was particularly hard for Mohammed, who has a close relationship with his mother.
Violent outbursts, incomprehension, disputes, panic attacks: Lockdown is a shock to many children with special needs, cut off from their friends and teachers, deprived of their reassuring routine, and France’s virus lockdown measures — now in their second month and not set to end until at least May 11 — are among Europe’s strictest.
Related:
"French health authorities said France aims at being able to test 700,000 people for the virus each week when the country will start easing confinement restrictions on May 11. The head of France’s national health agency, Jerome Salomon, told French lawmakers Thursday that France is now able to do about 200,000 tests a week. He said the lockdown exit strategy will include testing all people presenting COVID-19 symptoms. Mobile teams will trace those people with whom they may have recently been in contact. People infected with the virus will be put into quarantine at home or in specific facilities like hotels. Measures such as social distancing and working at home when possible will be maintained “for several months,” he said. Finance minister Bruno Le Maire said he hopes that most businesses will be able to reopen on May 11, except for restaurants and cafes. France, one of the world’s hardest-hit countries, has been under lockdown since March 17."
"The itch to dance, to break out of coronavirus lockdown and bust a few moves in the fresh air, out on the street, has proved too strong for some to resist in Paris after weeks of staying home. Video of Parisians dancing in the street this weekend, some wearing face masks, triggered buzz and criticism on social networks and an apology Sunday from the out-of-work theater technician who blasted the music from his balcony. Nathan Sebbagh has been thanking medics and trying to keep people’s spirits up with half-hour hip-shaking musical selections on Saturday evenings, but his goodwill gesture, which he dubs @discobalcons in his Instagram postings, this weekend became a victim of its own success. Police knocked at his door and gave him a talking to after a frisky crowd gathered and danced under the balcony of his apartment in Montmartre."
French fa$ci$ts!
Aurelie Collet, a manager at the Bel-Air, which provides specialized educational and therapeutic services for dozens of children with different types of disabilities, said some teenagers just didn’t understand the lockdown rules at first, and kept going out. Others who used to be well-integrated in their class turned inward, isolating themselves in their bedrooms.
So the staff developed creative tools to keep communicating and working with the children, including through social networks, she said.
Thomas, 17, and Pierre, 14, brothers with intellectual disabilities who also go to the Bel-Air, are similarly destabilized by lockdown.
“I feel worried about how long the lockdown will last, what’s going to happen next,” Thomas said. The teenager has lots of questions about “how many people will get the virus, when the epidemic will stop.”
Tell him the truth. Never.
At first, their parents recalled, the boys acted as if they were on vacation, playing all day and calling their friends. Then the family, which lives near Versailles, west of Paris, organized activities to keep their lives more structured.
Another big concern for Thomas is his future, as the internship he was planning to do this summer is likely to be postponed.
His younger brother Pierre says he’s having more nightmares than usual, adding that the lockdown is also prompting more family quarrels.
Pierre especially misses the gardening he used to do at the Bel-Air, so he has planted seeds in pots to grow radishes.
Under nationwide restrictions, the French can only leave home for essential services, like buying food or going to the doctor, and must stay close to home. Physical activity in public is strictly limited to one hour, and within a nearby radius. Police routinely fine violators.
The French ARE ALREADY in PRISON!
One hour outdoors time, huh?
C'mon, France, wake up!
Could be one hell of a summer!
Recognizing the burden this places on people with autism, French President Emmanuel Macron announced in early April an exception that allows them to go out in places where they are accustomed to go, taking the necessary health precautions but with no limit of time and distance.
The challenges are familiar to millions of families around the world. Across the United States, teachers are exploring new ways to deliver customized lessons from afar, and parents of children with disabilities are not only home-schooling but also adding therapy, hands-on lessons, and behavioral management to their responsibilities.....
The schools and colleges will never be reopening, for they are being repurposed as concentration camps for COVID-19 unbelievers and political dissidents as well as being needed for the GRAND CULL!
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What about the wedding?
"Tux, gown, masks: Arab couples scramble to marry during a pandemic" by Declan Walsh and Vivian Yee New York Times, April 25, 2020
CAIRO — With virus infections in Egypt still at the low end of the curve, about 3,900 cases for 100 million people, some wedding-goers seemed to believe they were invincible.
“This pandemic can’t touch us,” said a reveler named Islam, who gave just his first name as his wedding party scrambled to take photos on the bridge at a moment when the police were absent. The groom, in a tuxedo and sneakers, posed with the bride, in a white dress. Then everyone bundled into three cars and took off.
Such scenes of determination, in the middle of a health crisis, stem from a simple truth: Marriage may be important everywhere, but in the Middle East, it often cannot wait.
In most Arab countries, marriage confers independence, the right to live together, cash gifts, a culturally approved sex life, and, for women, heightened status in societies still heavily tilted in favor of men.
“Marriage is the beginning of real life,” said Hania Sholkamy, an anthropologist at the American University in Cairo. “It’s the legitimation of a real sexual life. There’s a transfer of wealth, and it’s the start of procreation. In our culture, there’s a genuine relish of babies.”
That is why there are so many Wars for the Jews.
The Muslims must be exterminated using the fig leaf of terror because they don't practice safe sex or usury and they apparently eat babies if they have relish on them.
As the pandemic hurtled toward Saudi Arabia, Moath Mohammad, 23, and Manar Dhafer, 26, were forced to downsize their gender-segregated wedding in Riyadh until they were left with a hasty 10-person lunch for immediate family at home. Mohammad’s mother could not make it in time, so they looped her in on Snapchat.
They had a little food, a little daytime dancing. Less than 90 minutes later, everyone scattered to get home before the 3 p.m. curfew.
The moment had been almost a decade in the making. There were years of getting to know each other online after meeting on MSN Messenger, the days of him persuading his family to approach hers and the week she decorously pretended to weigh his offer.
Though they had legalized the marriage in February, Saudi social custom presented one more hurdle: They were not allowed to live together or act as husband and wife until they gave a party.
Postponement was not an option.
They had already “waited too long.”
Like many other Arab couples who chose to wed mid-pandemic, they went, in a few moments, from barely being able to see each other to a 24/7 two-person lockdown.
Instead of honeymooning in Europe, as planned, they are spending their first weeks as newlyweds watching reruns of “Friends” and “How I Met Your Mother” in their new apartment and negotiating shared chores like dishwashing.
“It’s been only three weeks,” Dhafer said, “but it feels like it’s been two months of us knowing each other,” yet tiny lockdown weddings go against every instinct in cultures where family is all.
“In the Western world, marriage is about the couple coming together and being one,” said Roula Theodory, a co-owner of Cherry on Top, a Dubai event consultancy. “The culture here is you have two families coming together.”
That was when the printed paper left the reception.
The trend also has practical implications, said Rania Salem, a sociologist at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Forgoing a celebration could mean losing cash gifts that newlyweds need to set up house. For their families, it is a lost opportunity to solidify their social standing.
Still, even modest celebrations carry deadly risks. One Cairo neighborhood was placed under quarantine for two weeks after the virus spread during a pre-marriage ritual in which a bride’s relatives gather to fill a trousseau with belongings for the marital home.
Two guests later died, as did three others at an engagement party at a village in Beheira, in the Nile Delta, in early April. The rising death toll is prompting tougher police action: On Wednesday the authorities in Cairo broke up a wedding party at a hall in Giza while the bride and groom were having their photos taken.
The pandemic is also rattling longstanding social strictures. For Hala, a jewelry designer in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, it was unthinkable to move in with her husband, Ahmed, an engineer, until their legal marriage had been ratified with the three-day party they had planned in Dubai.
After a strict 24-hour lockdown forced them to cancel, Ahmed persuaded Hala to start sleeping over at his family’s house. Now the couple, who gave only their first names to protect their privacy, is quarantining together with Ahmed’s parents.
“For us, it’s strange to get married and move in, and then do a wedding,” Hala said. “But when I talked to my dad, he was like, ‘Who sets these rules?’ ”
Some rules, though, are sacred.
A few weeks ago, a pair of Jordanian-American newlyweds forced into quarantine at a Dead Sea resort became minor celebrities after a video showed them celebrating on their own as resort workers clapped at a safe distance. Jordan’s king and queen even sent a gift.
Two weeks later, they made it to the groom’s family home, where, as another video showed, the groom, Aws al-Awneh, hugged and kissed his parents as relatives applauded in the street. The couple had been ordered to avoid contact with others.
The Jordanian police promptly arrested al-Awneh for violating the order by hugging his parents. Newly married, newly released from quarantine, he landed in jail.....
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Also see:
"More than six weeks after Saudi Arabia reported its first case, the coronavirus is striking terror into the heart of the kingdom’s royal family. As many as 150 royals in the kingdom are now believed to have contracted the virus, including members of its lesser branches, according to a person close to the family. King Salman, 84, has secluded himself for his safety in an island palace near the city of Jiddah on the Red Sea, while Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, his son and the 34-year-old de facto ruler, has retreated with many of his ministers to the remote site on the same coast where he has promised to build a futuristic city known as Neom. The sickness in the family may also shed new light on the motivation behind the speed and scale of the kingdom’s response to the pandemic. Its rulers began restricting travel to Saudi Arabia and shut down pilgrimages to the Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina even before the kingdom had reported its first case, on March 2. Authorities have now cut off all air and land travel into or out of its borders and between internal provinces. They have placed all of its biggest cities under a 24-hour lockdown, and they have indicated they are likely to cancel the annual hajj pilgrimage this summer that draws 2.5 million Muslims to Mecca and has taken place every year since 1798, when Napoleon invaded Egypt. State media reported Wednesday that the king suspended final rulings and judicial orders on visitation rights of children of separated parents, and ordered a number of prisoners released. Saudi officials also announced the kingdom and its allies would observe a unilateral cease-fire in the war in Yemen starting at noon Thursday, a move motivated by fears of the virus spreading and that could pave the way for ending the brutal five-year-old conflict (New York Times)."
How ironic!
God surely works in mysterious ways!
First, he condemns to sickness the most odious regime on the face of the planet (the King is already demented and sick and I bet he will die of COVID), and by doing so, a WAR may END!
I suppose there are silver linings to viruses after all!
"Yemen’s southern separatists on Sunday broke a peace deal with the country’s internationally recognized government and claimed sole control of the regional capital of Aden, threatening to resume fighting between the two ostensible allies. In a statement, the separatists’ Southern Transitional Council, which is backed by the United Arab Emirates, declared a state of emergency and said it would “self-govern” the key southern port city and other southern provinces. The separatists accused Yemen’s government, which is supported by Saudi Arabia, of corruption and mismanagement. The government dismissed the separatists’ move. Foreign Minister Mohammed Abdullah al-Hadrami called for Saudi Arabia to have a “clear position’’ and take “decisive measures against the continuing rebellion of the so-called Transitional Council.” The division between the two supposed allies is another facet of the country’s complicated civil war. On one side are the separatists, and on the other are forces loyal to former President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. Both have fought together in the Saudi-led coalition’s war against Yemen’s Shiite Houthi rebels."
Looks like everybody is grabbing for their share of land as the Saudi war effort falls apart due to the collapse in oil prices!
"Saudi Arabia’s King Salman has ordered an end to the death penalty for crimes committed by minors, according to a statement Sunday by a top official. The decision comes on the heels of another ordering judges to end the practice of flogging, replacing it with jail time, fines, or community service and bringing one of the kingdom’s most controversial forms of public punishment to a close. The crown prince has sought to modernize the country, attract foreign investment, and revamp Saudi Arabia’s reputation globally. He’s also overseen a parallel crackdown on liberals, women’s rights activists, writers, moderate clerics and reformers....."
At least they let them get married.
This guy was married to his work:
"BU’s renowned bat researcher Thomas Kunz dies at 81 of COVID-19" by Kathleen McKenna Globe Correspondent, April 26, 2020
Tom Kunz believed that bats are misunderstood and as an internationally recognized professor and researcher at Boston University, he worked tirelessly to change the public’s perception.
“It’s easy to fall in love with them,” he told the Globe in 1981. “They’re beautiful little creatures.”
A biologist who studied the winged mammals for more than four decades, Dr. Kunz wrote or cowrote numerous books and articles across many disciplines, including physiology, ecology, conservation, and technology. He was also known for his devotion to his students.
Dr. Kunz, who perhaps inevitably earned the nickname “Batman” from generations of students, and who was famous for his bat-inspired Halloween costumes, was 81 when he died from complications of COVID-19 on April 13 in NewBridge on the Charles in Dedham.
How conveniently ironic given that official story blames bat soup for the outbreak.
I guess this expert will now be unavailable for questions.
What is forgotten now that coronavirus is here is the holocaust regarding bats.
Btw, did you know there are no birds in Wuhan?
An early fan of technology, Dr. Kunz had traveled to Texas to put multiple thermal-imaging cameras inside caves and under bridges where tens of thousands of bats lived and emerged in the evening. He then worked with computer scientists, who created algorithms that made it possible to track the bats’ behavior and determine their number.
In 2011, he was named a William Fairfield Warren professor, an honor that recognizes BU’s most distinguished faculty.
Later that year, he was hit by a car while attending a conference in Toronto. The accident left him with a head injury that effectively ended his career, and he spent the rest of his life in a rehabilitation facility, where he was visited often by former students and colleagues, and daily by his wife, Margaret, of Needham.
“He was absolutely at the top of his game,” said Mike Sorenson, who had chaired the BU department of biology when the accident happened and who recalled that Dr. Kunz had been in the midst of a number of research projects. “He was probably the most productive member of the BU faculty at the time, working as hard as he could as he always did.”
During nearly 40 years at BU, Dr. Kunz chaired the biology department, established the Center for Ecology and Conservation Biology, and won numerous awards. A permanent endowment in his name supports BU graduate students in ecology.
“Tom was way ahead of the curve when it came to interdisciplinary learning,” said Sorenson, adding that Dr. Kunz had a gift for bringing together scientists from different fields.
Dr. Kunz was naturally adventurous, Sorenson said. After helping to establish a research station in a rainforest in Ecuador on the Tiputini River in 1985, he traveled there regularly with BU students.
Around the time of his accident, Dr. Kunz was focused on aeroecology, the relationship of winged creatures to the air through which they fly. He was deeply interested in the effects of wind turbines on bats and birds, colleagues said.
Never mind buildings and flu, and at least someone picked up his work.
A species of bats found in Malaysia was named the H. Kunzi in honor of Dr. Kunz, who told the Globe in 1988 that “people fear them out of ignorance. They’ve been exposed over the years to all kinds of wives’ tales and folklore about bats.”
Pete August, a former student and recently retired professor at the University of Rhode Island, called his mentor a “wonderful, classic natural historian,” and a “very, very good teacher.”
“Everyone in his lab was an equal, whether you were an undergrad or a PhD student,” August said. “He exuded a love for whatever he was teaching — ecology, mammalogy, invertebrate biology — and always conveyed his absolute sincerity.”
In the classroom, Dr. Kunz was known for carefully grading papers.
“He was an excellent writer and had very high standards,” August said. “He impressed upon his students the importance of a coherent sentence,” but it was field trips that Dr. Kunz treasured most. “He loved getting his hands dirty,” August said.
Is that what killed him?
Not washing enough?
Dr. Kunz was an inveterate handyman who built treehouses, created jigsaw puzzles, and taught his children to use power tools and drive cars with stick shifts. He loved canoeing, bicycling, traveling with his wife, and spending time with family.
“He was handy and he was hands-on,” said his son David, who works in finance in New York City. “I might have seen him fall asleep at his computer, but he never missed a single one of my games.”
Now there will never be games again.
A service for Dr. Kunz, who in addition to his wife and children, leaves five grandchildren, will be held after the COVID-19 pandemic’s limitations on the size of gatherings are lifted.
Of all the lessons Dr. Kunz taught, August recalled, the most important was work-family balance.
“He was such a good father and a good husband and a good person,” he said. “He taught all his students that life is a complex equation. You have to live it in a balanced way.”
And with that, the summer faded into fall.
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