Rant

I miss my garden.

I wonder how it is doing. I was startled the other day when I looked down at my fingernails and saw them perfectly clean for the first time in years. I’ve hung around all those gardens near the National Mall for the last three weeks but have not gotten my hands dirty, literally. Yet, I am admonished every time I go to the Men’s Room, every time I read a directive from the White House, Dept of Health & Human Services, the CDC, the Surgeon General, and who knows who else, maybe the CIA and FBI, to wash my hands, wash them now. On one mirror, I was advised to wash them for 45 sec, on another 20 sec. I’ve been told to use the paper towel to turn off the faucet and to use it to open the door as I leave. It seems the fear-mongering of the previous administration that the enemy is out there somewhere has been replaced by fear-mongering that the enemy is here already, on our hands, and maybe we need to develop technologies that replace the hand entirely. And how do we protect ourselves from the open mouthed hackers on the Metro and in buses? Or, in this age of cube farms, from the effluvia from the other side of the padded wall.

I needed to get that out.