Class of 2020 high school graduation

My high school graduation wasn't much of a celebration. I went to it, I liked wearing a cap and gown, and I was happy to be with my friends, but we had no featured speaker, I was SO ready to move on and be at university (I thought I was going to Purdue and couldn't WAIT to get there), my Dad was drunk (of course) and my Mom was in a hurry to leave and "beat the traffic." It wasn't a milestone event, there are just a few photos of me (in other people's photos - my parents didn't bring a camera) and my friends were all in a hurry to get somewhere else that night. No big deal for me, my family, and it felt like, for anyone else.

By stark contrast is the class of 2020. I am so impressed with how many high school seniors, teachers and parents this year have made such a big deal out of these graduations. I bet some of them wouldn't had it not been for the pandemic. Seeing the video of the senior in the passenger side of his mom's car as she drove him by his school, by his waving teachers, for a drive-by graduation, him waving his diploma and crying - it got me. He was proud. He was reflective. Everyone rose to the importance of the moment. That's what graduation from high school SHOULD be. And his was a far more weighty event, in a long line of cars, people at a distance, than mine was.

Congrats, seniors. Now go fix this mess we've made.

Things to do during home quarantine

I've been on home quarantine for almost 15 years - it's called chronic unemployment.

Here's some of the things I have done with so much time on my hands that you can do now while staying home and saving lives. What's great about doing these is the payoff later and for years to come:

• Scan photos. You probably have albums full of photos of family and friends over the years. The photos of family, in particular, are important to scan, so that you can share them with other family members and preserve them for the future. Preserve the digitized copies of your photos on your hard drive and a site like Flickr as well. 
• Add descriptions to those digitized photos. Otherwise, you won't remember who is in them.  
• Scan some precious letters as well. Have a file full of notes and letters from your grandmother? This is a great time to scan them so that they are preserved for other family members. You could also create transcriptions of them, just in case other family members cannot read someone's handwriting like you can. 
• Set up a remote backup system for your computer if you don't have such already. You've been putting it off for so long - now is a great time to do it. 
• Get all the photos on your phone onto your hard drive and a site like Flickr. I regularly hear people lament losing all of their photos when their phone gets stolen or gets broken. Don't be one of those people. 
• Trace your family tree. Get an account on ancestry.com and get busy with tracing your family tree. A great time to call family members and get accurate information about names and birthdays. 
• Transcribe some historical documents for the Library of Congress. There are even more virtual volunteering activities here.
• Start and maintain a compost pile. Composting is ridiculously easy and helps fight climate change. If you don't have a garden and don't want to start one, still start that compost pile and let one of your neighbors that gardens know they can have compost from it. 
• Walk your neighborhood. Even if you have driven all around your neighborhood many times, you do not know it until you walk it. You will be amazed at what you will discover. If other people will also be out, wear a mask. 
• Pick that guitar back up. Or sit back down at your piano. 
• Write. Seriously, even if it's just a list of what you did today. Buy a cheap notebook and WRITE.
• Read books. Turn off the TV, put down your phone, close the laptop and READ something REAL. 

Of course, you can do all that other stuff other people are recommending: learn to cook, cook more, take an online language course, learn to knit, binge watch something, etc. Speaking of binge-watching, here's what I've watched over the years that has kept me sane in 15 years of downtime:

• The original Twilight Zone series.
• The Buffy the Vampire series (not the movie).
• Firefly. 
• Battlestar Galactica.
• MadMen.
• Breaking Bad (although I admit to like Better Call Saul better0
• Fleabag.
• Killing Eve. 

If you never saw the BBC's Sherlock, that should be at the top of your list to watch in quarantine.