Shutdown advice

      It may be I have not noticed it, but it seems to me the media, electronic and print, is brimming with stories about how people are coping with the Covid 19 shutdown, or advice on how we should be doing it.
      One story in the NYT quotes a survivor of the 4 year siege of Sarajevo who compares the corona virus to Slobodan Milosovec, I guess.   He goes on to tell us we will change in gross and subtle ways the way we interact with others.  He may be right, although a majority of the population is still counting on everything getting back to normal as soon as possible.
     Another columnist has been taken hostage by his 7 and 9 year old children.   As anyone who has or had children of that age knows, they are terrorists at heart and will have no mercy.   Sympathy is in order for this hapless prisoner, but again, his story only makes me pine for a post shutdown return to normalcy.    Yet another, more political scribbler warns against the coming advertising blitz which aims to keep our materialistic worship of conspicuous consumption humming when our enforced isolation ends. 
    A dear friend and business partner related on Facebook how she had to use her backyard for her daughter's wedding due to the ban on large gatherings. Many family members attended via Zoom and tears were shed, both happy and sad over the breakdown of such an intimate tradition of gathering together to celebrate.
      Finally, the local paper has a tear jerking front page photo of cute little tikes communing with their great grandparents through a glass door.   It could be the poster child for all of the above.  We all want to return to the way it was, but we also know deep in our guts it will never be that way again.  No amount of "happy talk" by Cheetolini or advertising by Walmart will persuade us to go back.  It is a different world than the one we woke up to on New Year's Day.