The view from the Tenderloin
The View from the Tenderloin:
I took my morning walk, and as usual, the empty sidewalks of Market Street had a twilight zone feel. These sidewalks-(as wide as many streets in Cedar Rapids) usually hold hundreds of thousands. Now they belong to the homeless, the dog walkers, those so poor they have to go to the churches that feed them, and bands of roving cops. The apocalypses. It's ghastly.
I can't stop wondering if I'm still vulnerable. As I've posted before, I caught it when it first arrived, brought it home and infected my two housemates. The feeling when it migrated down into my lungs was painful, and still gives me the creeps. I coughed my lungs out for several weeks, it was uncontrollable and exhausting. I'm sixty nine years old, but have an immune system made of iron- I shrugged off polio when I was a toddler. My two housemates came out of it ok as well, but were both surprised by how easily, and quickly,it went from me to them, and acknowledged that they had never had anything like it before.
God save the Republic.