Last Friday morning, I flipped around in my office chair and asked Steve, “I have to write to a newsletter. Do I make it happy or sad?” Steve said, “Make it happy. Nobody wants to read sad stuff.”

So, I wrote a newsletter about nesting in our quarantine homes. It was aimed at the safe, secure places of the still employed and still healthy, whose biggest concern is finding a good use for a can of black beans and half a cabbage.

It wasn’t hard to write a happy post, because things don’t suck in my particular home. Sure, the boys aren’t really being educated at the moment, we’re leaking money, and I haven’t been able to give my mom a hug in a month. But things aren’t THAT bad.

Over the weekend, we had zoom hangouts with extended family. I made a fun Easter dinner for our nuclear family. We tried our hand at making various traditional Italian Easter treats. It was fun and relaxing and I’ll share pictures and info later. (If you click on the Instagram icon on the right, you can see some pictures.)

But outside our middle class bubble, things are pretty sucky. I could keep writing happy little posts about home cooking challenges. Or I could devote my tweets, posts, and newsletter to the problems and force us to confront hard truths outside our igloos. I think it’s going to be “a bit of both.”

So, what’s upsetting me this morning?

New York City schools have closed for the rest of the year. So, schools in all of NY, CT, and NJ will also close through June, too. Kids are learning in some places where they have that magic combination of tech-savvy, child-free teachers, homes with one parent who doesn’t need an income, and high-income communities. Small numbers of kids are getting educated virtually, but more are not. Most are losing skills — academic, social, and behavioral skills — and they’ll never get this time back.

Trump’s going to let the U.S. Postal Service die. For all those who want to drown government in a bathtub, this pandemic is an opportunity. I wonder if the plan for schools is the USPS solution. Let it crash and burn. Let them screw up enough until parents revolt and remove their kids from schools. Let the taxpayers revolt.

If you have college kids, there’s a good chance that there won’t be school in the fall either. Without job opportunities, the only option for our kids is to pile up on online school credits, so they can finish college early and save money.

As millions get handouts from food pantries this week, the farmers are dumping their food supply. (Image above comes from the Boston Globe about surging demand at food pantries.)

Home healthcare workers and nannies are being fired and have no support.

And stupidity abounds. 30 percent of Americans think the virus was cooked up in a lab.

Weirdly enough, tobacco smokers have lower levels of COVID in China than non-smokers. Well, that’s amusing.

I’m terrified that Dr. Fauci will be fired. I’m terrified that they’ll open the economy too soon and more people will die. I’m terrified that if this goes on for another few months, we’re going to have to set up refuge camps for tens of thousands who have no jobs, homes, or food.

So, I’m going to have to do both. I’ll write the fun Easter weekend post tomorrow. And then the day after that I’ll write another unpopular Cassandra post. If you guys can cope with a schizophrenic blogger, that would be cool.