20-04-30 Water color on paper 12 x 24 inches

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Corona Journal Entry: Last day in April. Don’t understand how this could have happened. I am certain that just yesterday it was the middle of March. Busy day yesterday – whatever month it was. Ran out of time and never got out with paints. Not so much as a pencil to paper. First headline I read this morning was about research showing a clear correlation between long-term exposure to air pollution and Covid mortality rates. What is new? After work I ran out the door. Just another detail of my comfortable life that I can pop over to a gorgeous orchard on a ridge line with a long view and big sky. Grabbed the bag of water colors. Oils too complicated. There is a LOT going on in an orchard. Needed my oils (so much better for massing) and more time. Made two messy attempts at a big view and then a 5 minute ink drawing of an apple tree. Severely pruned. Light was gone. It was visible only because it was silhouetted against the sky. On my way over, there was a news piece about Wall Street being happy today with the hopeful signs of the economy restarting. So as I wrestled with the big orchard view and then really focused on the heavily pruned tree, I was connecting the dots. Air pollution, poor communities, economic pressures, pruning. Pruning. All those cuts result in more fruit, more productivity. It works on a large scale and is very beautiful (this evening’s mess not representative). The closer you get, the more uncomfortable the tree appears to be. When the U.S. first started taking Corona seriously & began shutting down, I thought maybe humanity was evolving, valuing life over wealth. But it was really just the same old story. Which life? Corona threatened everyone regardless of their station. Now it seems we are deciding it’s OK to go back to normal because really, it’s mostly the poor & minorities and the elderly who are bearing the brunt of this. The rest of us are in our orchards.