Corona Confinement – The Big Q: #31

The Big Quarantine – Thursday, April 16, 2020

The Day in Walking: I went on a new (actually revised) walk route today. Working my way to the river I jumped on the Ohio River Trail at the Theodore Berry International Friendship Park. I usually walk the trail from Sawyer Point to Merhing Way, so my new walk was just a 1/2 mile shift east. Spring flooding should block this walk soon. The water is already high and close to the path in some spots.

All of my Pandemic walk routes are designed to avoid people. But, man, when I leave my house for my hour or so of public exposure I do want at least the approximation of human contact. The river trail does have light foot traffic (People! Dogs!), so that works well.  I do have to walk through or around downtown to get to the river and at first I thought that would mean running into too many people. I didn’t try walking through the Central Business District during the week during regular business hours for weeks. I tried it today. Ghost town. Also, pandemic walking is a jay-walkers dream.

Friendship Park

Friendship Pole

Random elephant

The Day in Yoga and Me: I do a full yoga session every now and then, but here in Confinement sometimes I just throw myself randomly into a yoga pose both to have something to do and to move my body. Plus, I keep my shades up almost all the time and I want people to see me standing in my living room doing Warrior 1 or Reverse Warrior. If they are looking in, they should see strength.

Or my butt.

The main pose I like is Downward Dog and in the last 30 days or so, I’ve done that pose nearly every day.

Downward Dog feels awesome and makes me look at my apartment upside down. That’s a cool thing to do when there’s nothing else to do.

When I say I “do” this pose, I’m actually just a poser (in the ‘faking it’ sense of posing). I would have thought by now I would be able to put my heels flat on the floor as shown. I’m still only able to downward dog on my toes. I can’t flatten the foot curve. I have to settle with knowing I’m not terribly limber, but can still hoist my butt in the air. And isn’t that the point of Yoga?

The Day in Women Singers: I’ve been listening to Joni Mitchell albums all morning. I love her. Her lyrics are empowering and inspired. I also know her singing voice can take some getting used to. My neighbors are probably wondering how I lured a hippie with a guitar to my apartment and trapped her here to sing folk music…for hours! 😎 

I posted the above paragraph on Facebook earlier today and it set off a wave of nostalgia for women singers of the early 1970’s. Comments mentioned Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Carole King. Their brand of folky, jazzy, lyrical music is still around, but the artists don’t have the same kind of mainstream audience.

Actually, I hadn’t listened to Joni Mitchell for a while but got back to her recently via an 18 year old Jaco Pastorius fan. One day this young man started going on about Joni Mitchell. If you’re not familiar with Mitchell, she is known for very intense meaningful lyrics that really get to the heart of mature relationships. In short, her music is not something I would expect and 18 year old dude to be into (I know, stereotyping). I was like, “Wait, you listen to Joni Mitchell?” And he emphatically said no, he listened to Jaco Pastorius.

Pastorius is known as one of the greatest bass guitar players of all time. He was Mitchell’s bass player and collaborator on many projects beginning with the album Hejira. To get to Pastorius, my bass guitar fan had to listen to folksy lyricist Mitchell. A strange combo, but Joni and Jaco did some incredible work. Listen to Coyote for a taste.

The Day in Miniatures: Dogs!