One View of the Pandemic, One Year Later: Part 3
For me, it doesn't get any busier than it was the first 10 days of March one year ago. On top of prepping and hosting the morning drive radio show on KVON, I anchored our election night coverage, sat in as a "guest teacher" on a friend's acting class in Santa Rosa, had a couple of fund development meetings for the Lucky Penny, rehearsed Sweeney Todd, and prepped the theatre for "Local Bands Night" on Friday (always a money maker at the bar). Plus two teaching sessions for the elementary school theatre project that would culminate on Tuesday, March 10th. There wasn't enough time to worry about having too many things on my plate because I had too many things on my plate. Navigated that week, gave the best I had to each chunk of it, and steeled myself for the week ahead which would lead into tech week for Sweeney.
One year later I am home before dark every night and sleep a glorious number of hours each night, sleeping so indulgently that I don't need naps. Now I sometimes wake up before the alarm instead of maxing out on snoozes. Who am I?
The novel coronavirus had been floating around in the Bay Area for a month. Or maybe three months, do we know? New York, which would burn hot with the virus soon, reported its first known case March 1st. That week started with around 60 cases in the US and ended with 487. After another week the number was 2,618. The CDC and other agencies pushed out a string of misguided information about masks that would make everything worse. The direction of the next year was being mapped out but mostly we went on about our business.
On March 9th the stock market fulfilled its role as a leading indicator and hit the skids with a drop of 7.8%. That morning on the radio show Napa County's public health officer made her first appearance, and we agreed to make it a weekly segment until the whole virus thing blew over. That night we had a ragged designer run of Sweeney, imagining the first preview audience just nine days away.
The first 10 days of March was almost complete. But there was one more event in store at the theatre - the performance concluding the elementary school theatre unit. And so it was that just a few hours before the official announcement of a pandemic in progress, we hosted one of the largest crowds ever in our little black box theatre, as seen in the accompanying photo. There were no restrictions on gatherings, or on anything else. Yet. All the seats were taken, added folding chairs taken, standing room filled up, people listened from the lobby. Cheek to jowl. Sardines would have felt uncomfortably crowded. There was much hugging and shaking of hands and we breathed all over each other in blissful ignorance. No way to know how much would come crashing down in the 48 hours to come.
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