QUARANTINE BLOG # 15

April 14, 2020

Carnival Cruise Lines announced yesterday, “As we all work together to support the global response to COVID-19, all North American itineraries will be canceled through June 26.  Seasonal itineraries out of New York are canceled to the end of 2020.  The announcement continued, “We are committed to being a strong partner with the government.”

👉 Pacific Princess, our favorite cruise ship, is still at sea with 115 guests and 373 crew on board, heading for Honolulu.  Only the four Oahu residents on board will be getting off. The two couples will be medically screened before and after disembarking.  They will be shuttled directly from the harbor to their homes where they will immediately begin their mandatory 14 day quarantine inside their residences.  When the ship arrives in Honolulu its passengers will have been at sea longer than the 14 day incubation period.  There are no confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19 associated with the vessel.

The ship needs to stop for fuel and provisions. She was last at port in Melbourne, Australia on March 28 but no passengers or crew disembarked.  The ship earlier had not been confirmed that they were going to be able to get fuel and supplies in Hawaii so they slowed down to 12 knots – as opposed to the normal 18 to 20 knots – to conserve fuel so they would have enough to reach Los Angeles.

Personal note: Our last cruise, the Carnival Miracle was to have docked in San Francisco on March 19.  On March 14, one day before our last scheduled port of call, we were informed that San Francisco was refusing our entry.  One of two ports in southern California said they would take us, but it was not until the night before docking that we knew which one.  In order to get home sooner, we skipped Cabo San Lucas and headed directly for California.  Our situation was nothing like what is going on with the Pacific Princess, but it gives me the ability to sympathize with the uncertainty on board her.

One guest on the Pacific Princess reported that they were running short of some supplies – most notably shrimp cocktail sauce.  He said that they are forced to make their own out of ketchup and horseradish, showing that the human sense of humor is still functioning even in a very difficult situation.

👉 Beginning on April 19, 43,000 workers at Walt Disney World in Florida will join more than 16 million Americans who have lost their jobs amid the coronavirus outbreak.  The company also said it would furlough executive, salaried and hourly nonunion employees whose jobs were not considered essential.

The workers, who are expected to be called back to their jobs, will be able to keep their health benefits during the furlough period. Also, they will not lose their seniority or have their pay reduced.  The company has agreed to provide members who have health care benefits with free health care for a year.

👉 As our elected officials – folks we elected to represent us and who continue to represent only themselves – continue to wrangle over help for businesses and the rest of us, I offer the following cartoon by Jeff MacNelly.

👉 A few days ago my phone told me that it was ready for an update.  When you get those announcements, you have no option but to do it, and as I knew they would, they changed things.  It reminds me of Dr. Leonard McCoy’s statement in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, “Engineers love to change things.”

Well, to give me something to grumble about, they changed the text program in my Galaxy S-10.  Its autocorrect feature, bad enough as it was, is now worse.  And they took away the emojis and gifs.  You now have to go to the Google Play Store and download another app to you can get the things you used to have.  Including bloat wear, my phone has more than 450 apps already, fewer than two dozen downloaded by yours truly.  For this upgrade, two thumbs down.

Thus reporteth the curmudgeon.

👉 They were not facing the coronavirus, but the people who were listening to Jesus  had problems – ruled by a government which was totally unsympathetic to them, dominated by a religion which overwhelmed them with rules and regulations, frustrated by economic conditions which kept them on the edge of calamity – problems which were crushing them, just as surely as coronavirus is challenging every one of us.  To them, and to us, Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are tired and have heavy loads, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28 New Century Version).

If we will let Him, God will lighten our loads, but will we let Him?  Consider the most memorized chapter in Scripture, the 23rd Psalm: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; And I will dwell in the house of the Lord Forever.”

Max Lucado tells the daily ritual of Lloyd Douglas, author of The Robe and other novels, while Douglas was attending college.  Each morning on his way out of the boarding house where he lived, he would stop and ask a wheelchair-bound retired music professor the same question, “Well, what’s the good news?”

The old man would pick up his tuning fork, tap it on the side of his wheelchair, and say, “That’s middle C!  It was middle C yesterday; it will be middle C tomorrow; it will be middle C a thousand years from now.  The tenor upstairs sings flat.  The piano across the hall is out of tune.  But that is middle C!”

In these challenging times we need a constant, unchanging certainty.  Directions are given as to how we will respond to the coronavirus, and then changed.  We can go to work, then we can’t.  We can go to church, then we can’t.  A time limit for sheltering in place is given, then extended.  We need a middle C!  For us, when we are tired and burdened down, the Lord, our Shepherd, is that consistency we need.  If the Lord is my Shepherd, then I am His sheep.  I shall not want.  That’s my middle C.

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