Skip to main content
Home

Blogs

Friday April 10, 2020

Postcards from the pandemic

(This short piece ran in the Boston Globe's online blog, "Postcards from the Pandemic," on April 9, 2020.)

When my tooth became abscessed and my face swollen, I called my dentist's office and left a message. Although the office was closed, I got a return call asking me to come in the following day at 10 a.m. I arrived to find my dentist masked, wearing jeans and a paint-spattered jacket. Instead of Lucy the receptionist, his son sat at the front desk at the computer, in class, online.

While I reclined in the chair, the dentist's young daughter, also home from school, assisted him. The whole scene felt dystopian, yet at the same time, the tooth was saved.

- Sharon L. Cook

Sharon L. Cook is the author and illustrator of the Granite Cove Mysteries series.

Share
Previous Post

Zooming with second graders

I used to scoff at the women who promoted Crepe Erase, so beholden were they to seeking the elusive fountain of youth. As it turns out, theirs may be the last laugh. You know that piece of Saran Wrap you painstakingly peel from your steaming bowl of microwaved, leftover tortellini, the one whose greasy, shriveled remnants you delight in casting aside without further thought? That's exactly what the loose skin on my neck looks like while I Zoom with my second graders. I sent a group photo ...
Read More
Next Post

What's the good word?

As a man of many words, not all of them repeatable in a quarantine, I will say that "quarantine" would be a great word to use if you were playing Scrabble. That's because it would be worth 19 points, most of them coming from the letter Q, which by itself is worth 10. And if you got a triple word score, it would be worth 57 points. Unfortunately, I didn't get enough of the right letters to spell "quarantine" during a game of Scrabble that my wife, Sue, and I played when it became sadly app ...
Read More