Duluth, as you know, could be rather cold in the wintertime and this so far really didn't hit until March. It was when we were first told, you better stay in. It started to warm a little in April.
One of my hobbies is to bicycle, and so I'm able to do my normal routine. I'm going out on my bicycle every other day. I do have a hobby antique car, I can take that out on my own and that's no problem. So physically my exercise is the same, my outdoors is the same. It will hurt in the wintertime because in the wintertime I had other things that I would do, and obviously I can't do those. But for the summertime, my physical ability has been fine.
Mentally, I missed some things. I'm a member of a chess club, and of course, we can't meet for chess anymore. There's my one night away when I make my wife a chess widow, I go away.
Our synagogue has not been able to meet for our normal services because we unfortunately had our synagogue burned down last September. Since that time, while we were looking for a new building, we were meeting actually in my home, and I had 12 or 15 people in a home, just can't do it with COVID virus. Since last March, we've only had one service and that was in my backyard on a nice day. I miss religious services. Had we had our old synagogue, it was large, it sat 300 people and to get 15 people spread out but we don't have that. And it's also curtailed our ability to go and search for something new because people are afraid to go out, others are afraid to show you. You need a committee to look it over. It's been very trying. I'm missing a good part of my religious life. I'm missing my recreational, my chess. I'm not really want to go to movies very often, but my wife is missing that horribly.
[Covid] also has curtailed my wife's and my ability to travel. We had planned to travel for our 15th anniversary that's coming up very soon. Of course, you really can't get on a plane and even if you do nobody's going to allow you to come in. So, we've missed some things like that.
So far, my attitude, my mental health, my physical health are all about the same and pretty good. What happens when the snow starts [to] fly I'm not quite sure.
— Phil Sher
Stories of Wisdom from Bodies in Separation (SWaBS): Archiving the Coronavirus Pandemic Through the Lens of Humanities has been made possible by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
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