{"id":557,"date":"2020-03-28T20:31:50","date_gmt":"2020-03-29T00:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mfna.org\/rfo\/?p=557"},"modified":"2020-03-28T20:31:50","modified_gmt":"2020-03-29T00:31:50","slug":"love-in-the-time-of-coronavirus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mfna.org\/rfo\/2020\/03\/28\/love-in-the-time-of-coronavirus\/","title":{"rendered":"Love In The Time of Coronavirus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It had to happen. Everyone else is talking about COVID-19, as the novel coronavirus has been designated. So I might as well join the crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, I’m writing because this slate has been blank for a while, and it needed updating. Second, because I went on vacation, which meant that I was supposed to self-quarantine upon my return. Which is what I’ve been doing. For the most part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, to rewind a bit…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every first Saturday in March is the annual Salvador Dal\u00ed Museum dinner. I’ve written about it before, so no point in re-hashing that part. Since I was making the trip, I booked a Caribbean cruise to extend my vacation time, and thus, off I sailed. Two of the ports of call I’d visited before, so I had no desire to go on any excursions there. Two others were new to me: Mahogany Bay (Roat\u00e1n) and Belize. I booked a visit to the Mayan ruins in Xunantunich in Belize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Belize is the former British Honduras, and as such the official language is English. Given that all of the neighboring countries are Spanish-speaking, the majority of Belizeans speak Spanish. The signs are all in English, however. The ruins at Xunantunich (the “X” is pronounced “SH”) are spectacular! I was glad I made the trip. Getting there meant driving the full width of the country (about 68 miles!), since the ruins are near the Guatemalan border. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Xunantunich Pyramid<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Two days out from Tampa I learned that due to the spread of the Coronavirus (I still don’t know if it’s supposed to be capitalized or not), the major cruise lines had suspended operations for 30-60 days. I had no doubt I was going to be allowed to disembark, and as I did, it was strange to note there were no passengers waiting to come on board for the next sailing!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The flight home — on a full flight! — gave me no reason to think things had changed, but once I arrived home and went to the grocery store to re-provision, that’s when I noticed the empty shelves! Since I’d been overseas, the CDC recommendation was to self-quarantine for 14 days. I had no problem with that, because I had planned to spend the next two weeks at home conducting online training, so it was a nice synchronicity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here I sit, on the eve of my fourteenth day. I have taken the opportunity of being home to spend more time playing guitar and adding songs to my repertoire. While on the cruise (I took my KL\u014cS travel guitar), I started going back to my “roots” and learning or re-learning songs from one of my favorite bands of the 1960s: Love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Love was kind of a hipster band. They had only one minor Top 40 hit (which I believe made it to #37), they refused to tour, and their leader, Arthur Lee, was quite idiosyncratic. But I loved the music they made, and their third and final album, “Forever Changes” has been ranked as number 40 on Rolling Stone<\/a> magazine’s The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Love – Forever Changes (1966)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Thus, there is rhyme to my reason. Or method to my madness, if you will. The title of this post is a play on “Love in the Time of Cholera<\/a>,” a 1985 book by Nobel Prize-winning author, Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It had to happen. Everyone else is talking about COVID-19, as the novel coronavirus has been designated. So I might as well join the crowd. First, I’m writing because this slate has been blank for a while, and it needed … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,20,4,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guitar","category-health","category-music","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mfna.org\/rfo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mfna.org\/rfo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mfna.org\/rfo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfna.org\/rfo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfna.org\/rfo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mfna.org\/rfo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":559,"href":"https:\/\/mfna.org\/rfo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557\/revisions\/559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mfna.org\/rfo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfna.org\/rfo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfna.org\/rfo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}