A friend of mine recently crowdsourced a request for good police procedural shows to keep her entertained. This was before most of us had even heard the term “social distancing.” She’s a trailblazer. I’m a follower, and I love myself a good mystery or police procedural. So I’ve aggregated here the list of recommendations she received.
There are many shows on this list that I haven’t seen (hooray, more fun!) . So I’ve separated the ones I know and can recommend myself. You’re welcome. If you have other suggestions, throw them into the comments.
Let’s all stay entertained.
Cop shows and mysteries I’ve enjoyed
Longmire
River
Broadchurch
Shetland
Scott & Bailey
Giri/Haji
Comrade Detective
Endeavor
Foyle’s War
George Gently
Inspector Morse
The Blacklist
Harry Bosch
Miss Fisher Mysteries
Monk
Ones I haven’t seen
I can’t vouch for these personally, but friends of friends recommend them:
Luther
Mindhunter
Killing Eve
The Stranger (offered with the caveat that it takes a couple of episodes to establish itself, but is worth the wait)
Lincoln Rhyme
Hunters
The Killing
Unbelievable
Penny Dreadful
Paranoia
Vera
Brokenwood
My Life is Murder
Queens of Mystery
Podcasts
I haven’t listened to any mystery podcasts yet, but these recommendations made their way onto my friend’s list:
Dirty John
Doctor Death
Criminal
Casefile
The Drop Out
A few non-police recommendations
Again, I don’t know anything about these. They made their way into the crowdsourced recommendations despite not being (or so I understand) police or mystery shows:
Unbelievable
Ash vs. Evil Dead
Bodyguard
The Sinner
Black Mirror
Altered Carbon
Fleabag
You
Book recommendation
If you’re interested in the book recommendation, read more about about Girl Waits With Gun.
I hope it’s not business as usual for anyone at this point, at least not anyone in North America. We need to change our behavior and follow advice on social distancing. I’m disheartened by my Twitter feed, where people say this isn’t happening where they live. Here in the Chicago suburbs—at least in my very left-leaning community—it definitely is.
A couple local signs of change:
A 30-in, 30-out policy at Trader Joe’s, with a line of people outside the door standing 6 feet apart. (Way to go Trader Joe’s!)
Increased quiet, with much less traffic on the busy street a block away
Seen while walking yesterday: Dad out biking with his two kids, all three bundled up against 40-degree temperatures
Shelter-in-place orders
Illinois’ governor issued a shelter-in-place order that takes effect at 5 p.m. today, extending across the entire state the restrictions ordered by my local community a couple days earlier. We join residents of California, New York and Connecticut, where similar (not identical) orders are in place. I expect more states will follow suit.
I hope it works. We’re all in this together, and we need to look out for each other. Those in low-risk groups may survive COVID-19 with only mild symptoms, but their grandparents and neighbors with disabilities face higher odds. My social distancing is less for my benefit than for those I would otherwise come in contact with who have elderly parents living with them or loved ones who are immune-compromised. I don’t know these people, but I care about them. So I stay in.
Today’s goals look like this:
Make the chicken pot pie that was supposed to be dinner last night before I got pulled into an urgent project for work.
Walk the dogs, and walk for exercise. (With my two old dogs, these are not the same thing.)
Do laundry.
Place my seed order.
Read.
Create…something.
That doesn’t feel very ambitious. Perhaps I should be concerned abut that. Is it a sign of social isolation that I don’t have higher goals for my day off?
I wonder how others are spending your increased time at home. Meditation? Yoga? DIY projects? I’d love to hear from you.
Midwestern spring
Meanwhile, the garden grows, on schedule, unworried about any coronavirus. My lilies are mad for spring, and the peonies are sending up shoots. One hyacinth is readying a bloom, and I’m wondering if the others are still hung over from winter or got carried off by squirrels to someone else’s yard. (The crocuses are nowhere to be seen.) My forsythia is covered in buds, holding its bright yellow beauty at bay, but not for long. Today’s high temperature is supposed to be just 1 degree above freezing, but that’s spring in the Midwest. We can take it.
Somehow the first day of spring, the vernal equinox, passed right by without me noticing.
These are extraordinary times indeed. Yesterday marked the start of spring, and I didn’t notice. I worked a very long day from home, my eleventh in a row (long explanation, related directly to COVID-19), took two short walks, worried about loved ones, and considered ways to bring friends together virtually to prevent—or, perhaps more realistically, mitigate—isolation. (I tucked “worried about loved ones” into the middle of that sentence, but honestly I did quite a lot of that, for the first time during this emergency.)
I did notice the green foliage of spring bulbs poking up from the earth in my front garden, and I consciously relished the 60-degree temperature in the evening. Coincidentally, I asked my husband to order the supplies he needs to build me a new raised garden bed. But I didn’t actually know spring had arrived. I’m a nature girl, a gardener, a child of rural America, and this is unusual for me. My mind was just…elsewhere. I won’t say I don’t know how this happened; I do. Still it surprises me and reminds me just how much our lives have changed in less than a month.
Here’s what woke me up to the vernal equinox: an article shared by a friend on Facebook highlighting virtual tours of gardens around the world, including Monet’s garden at Giverny. It provided me a lovely diversion this morning and has me thinking once again about that raised bed. I might take my camera out today to capture my nascent spring garden; meanwhile, the pics here are my garden in years past.
What a difference a day makes. As of last night, I’m officially living under a shelter-at-home order. It’s not draconian. In fact, it’s pretty reflective of how my husband and I have been living since the end of last week: staying out of public places except to shop for necessities (food, pet food), not getting together with anyone but each other, walking the dogs but steering clear of others we come across while we’re out.
It feels different, though. My village government issued the shelter-in-place order yesterday evening after receiving notice of the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the community. That was followed shortly (this morning) by news that two emergency room doctors at the hospital nearby also have the disease. None of this is surprising, and I’m not in a panic, but it adds a different perspective to the situation.
My typical day
Today was much like any other day this week: I brewed my morning coffee and then settled in for a day of work upstairs. I found a 20-minute window with no meetings or urgent work tasks before the rain arrived, and took a quick walk just to get a minimal amount of exercise. I already had sent the husband out to walk the dogs, knowing I probably wouldn’t be able to get away long enough to do that before the weather turned bad. I got on a conference call minutes after returning home, then worked straight through until 7 p.m.
This has been my pattern all week, except for the timing of the walk. It’s going to be my pattern through at least next week, and I have a feeling it won’t change for quite some time. I suspect this is the new normal. I’m to sure what to think of that, nor what to expect it to do to my psyche.
Seeking a new kind of social
We’ve canceled travel plans to see family a few hours away at the end of the month, and I’m disappointed by that. It’s a trip I was looking forward to, and I realize I’ve no idea when it will be possible. So what to do instead?
For starters, I’ve asked the husband to research online gaming apps, to see whether we can find tabletop simulations for games we like to play with different groups. The family we would have seen on this canceled road trip plays dominoes and euchre; can we find online versions that will connect us with them in real-time for conversation? What about our friends locally? Can we pull together virtual game parties to continue sharing our lives with each other?
I expect I’ll do more texting and emailing with friends, too, but I want to hear their voices also. At the most local level possible, I’m hoping to coax my next-door neighbors (are you reading this, folks?) out onto our front porches for Friday or Saturday evening socials—but not this weekend, because the temperature is supposed to fall to near freezing.
And yet I’m grateful
I’m not complaining. I’m healthy so far, and so is my husband, though I’m waiting with baited breath for word from others I know who have symptoms of illness. Ultimately, I expect we all will know people who fall ill with COVID-19. I hope against hope that we won’t all know people who don’t survive.
Ultimately, I’m thankful for my community’s response. I’m thankful for the school districts that are canceling classes for the next month or even longer. I’m thankful for closed restaurants, shops, and museums. I’m thankful to my employer for making telecommuting possible, and for every other employer that’s doing the same.
I miss my library, but I’m thankful for governments and public institutions that are pausing their operations to keep people from gathering when they don’t need to. I’m also enormously thankful for those who are serving essential functions, whether from home or their regular workplace: the election officials who oversaw voting on Tuesday, the guy who answered my email last night when the village servers crashed just after they issued the shelter-at-home order, and the doctors and nurses and other workers who are keeping hospitals operating. And I’m thankful for every person who is actively social distancing or sheltering at home.
Yes, you. If you’re in the same situation I am, if you feel like your world is starting to close in on you because you hardly leave your house, but you’re doing it because you know it’s the right thing to do…thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. I only hope that a month from now it looks like it was an over-reaction. I hope it works.
Today’s photo
Today’s photo is sidewalk art from my neighborhood, with a message from the artist:
I added cardamom to my coffee this morning, three firm shakes in the basket with the beans before grinding. It’s a treat I usually save for weekends, when I have more time to savor the morning brew.
Working from home, I have that little bit of extra time now, to sit with coffee in hand or at my side, listen to the birds outside, read some news, or watch the sky lighten behind the houses to the east.
A poem for today
I started my day reading Billy Collins, one of my favorite poets, because his words are deceptively simple and accessible, and because he’s funny. We all need laughter, and funny poetry can be very funny. Billy’s a really good reader (see how I’ve put us on a first-name basis? It just feels right with Billy!) Here he is, reading one of my many favorites among his poems, “Consolation,” which I think is a timely poem for those among us who are reluctantly canceling travel plans right now.
#AmWriting
I wrote a poem of my own this morning, too, one that I think will need a bit of work to polish but perhaps not too much. It happened because I opened up my computer and discovered that all of my browser tabs were gone and I couldn’t recover them. Sadness ensued, followed by poetry, and all was well with the world.
I voted today—at a proper social distance. My husband and I got up early, walked to the polling place just after it had opened, and cast our ballots quietly and with thanks to the election judges and poll workers who made it possible. Then we scrubbed our hands down with hand sanitizer and headed home.
It was odd, to be sure. Some of the election judges wore rubber gloves; some did not. I kept my (outdoor) gloves on and situated myself at a voting kiosk where the only person next to me was my husband.
I don’t know if turnout was suppressed because I don’t usually get to vote early in the morning. I’m usually at work by then 25 miles away. My typical Election Day involves frantically trying to leave work in time to get to the polling place before it closes. Honestly, it was a treat not to have to do that.
This was day 4 of social distancing for me. We started in earnest this weekend, when I canceled the only appointment on my calendar and we opted to forgo restaurants and bars. It’s a mixed bag, both a blessing and a buggerment as a friend’s son would say. Thankfully, I and mine are healthy so far, and I’m choosing to focus on the blessings.
Little blessings
Here are a few of the the blessings that are helping me stay positive during social confinement:
Walking, including the opportunity to walk to the polling place—I don’t usually have time
Running into a friend of my son (not literally) and walking with him—at safe social distance—to and from the polls
Not driving 25 miles each way to work
Working in a house filled with the smell of cooking corned beef (today: thank you, husband) or pie (Saturday: Pi Day)
Being able to walk my dogs as soon as I finish work for the day
My dogs
Poetry and books
A poetry community
There’s a poetry community coming together virtually during this national emergency—or probably more than one. Just a couple examples that I know of: Headline Poetry & Press is publishing one “pandemic poem” per day. And people all over the world are doing a virtual poetry reading, sharing favorite poems via video with the hashtag #InternationalPoetryCircle.
I wrote a poem myself on the first day of my social distancing: Saturday, which happened to be Pi Day. I worked half the day, but still found time at the end to make pie (yep, there it is!), and I wandered into a little happy fantasy land and wrote a kind of fantasy poem about pie-baking for the pandemic. I sent it off to Headline Poetry and was thrilled to have it chosen as one of their featured pandemic poems. If you read it, I hope it brings a little joy to your world: “Pi Day.”