The eight days that her children were born and the 22 birthdays of her grandchildren add up to a whole month of birthdays, to start. She has 51 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren, and she calls every one of them on their birthdays, too.

Add all the friends whose birthdays she has kept written in a tidy little book, and all the spouses of her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and Creavalle has somebody to call and sing “Happy birthday” to almost every day of the year.

On Sunday, the woman of so many birthdays marked her own for the 100th time.

And many of her 83 descendants gathered on Zoom and in cars outside her Maryland home to wish a happy birthday to the woman who never forgets theirs.

“Lots of love and kisses, Mom.” “Happy birthday, Granny!” “Hi, Auntie Vicky! Happy birthday!” “Queen Victorine!” more than 45 participants on the Zoom call said, filling the video frames with all the names that Creavalle has responded to in her life.

Over and over, Creavalle responded: “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” And sometimes: “I love you. I love you.”

She wore a sparkly sash and a tiara that said “100,” and balloons bobbed behind her head. In the video feeds, she saw her family wearing birthday hats and T-shirts they had made with her face on them.

Outside the window of the Springdale home where Creavalle lives with her daughter, Joy Creavalle, even more relatives drove into their balloon-festooned cul-de-sac, honking their horns and pulling down their masks to eat candy bars – 100 Grands.

Thelma Anthony, a friend, lamented on the call that she could not be with Creavalle in person, as she had imagined she would be on the day she became a centenarian. “You are an awesome inspiration to all of us for something we could achieve: to be 100, live a good life and raise an awesome, beautiful family,” she said.

Creavalle raised her eight children in the South American country of Guyana, then watched as they moved one-by-one to the United States. In 1984, according to her daughter June Williams, Creavalle followed and settled in the Washington area, where Williams had moved to attend Howard University and several of her siblings had followed.

Today, Creavalle’s descendants live all over the world: many of them in Maryland and Virginia, but others in Canada, England and Vietnam.

Creavalle was a teacher and then an elementary school principal before retiring and moving to the United States, and she has spent a century emphasizing the importance of education to her descendants. She takes tremendous pride in their accomplishments: the dozens of college degrees and PhDs among her children and grandchildren, and the great-grandchildren currently in college and medical school.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, her family visited often, with five or six cars filling the cul-de-sac every weekend. Joy usually cooked for them, carrying on Creavalle’s tradition of making Guyanese specialties every day until she was 88 and baking bucketloads of pastries to give to friends and neighbors.

“If you ever went to her house, something had to be put in your hand before you left,” Williams recalled. “You don’t leave without a meal.”

Creavalle has enjoyed the closeness of her children in the Washington area, especially since her husband died more than 20 years ago.

She stopped walking at 95 and relies on a wheelchair now. Dementia has robbed her of much of her short-term memory, though not her favorite old stories.

She spends her time, many days, watching Steve Harvey and “Shark Tank” on television while sitting beside two blankets that Joy has inscribed with the names of all 83 descendants. (When a second great-great-granddaughter was born a few months ago, Joy found more room to squeeze in another name.)

A birthday during a pandemic meant the family could not have the huge celebration that it might have otherwise. The party for Creavalle’s 90th birthday drew more than 200 guests.

But when Joy brought out a sunflower cake, the dozens of well-wishers watching from their separate homes sang “Happy Birthday.”

Creavalle was, of course, the first to start singing.

Well, here’s encouraging news for America’s sweethearts. A recent Monmouth University poll found that most people in relationships are satisfied with them, despite the expected stresses that might come from, say, working from home together, losing a job, managing kids at home or preventing your family from getting the virus.

“Relationships aren’t perfect – there are always some underlying issues,” said Gary Lewandowski, a psychology professor at Monmouth University who helped craft the survey questions. “But on average, the relationships we’re in are pretty good.”

Here are five takeaways from the survey, which was conducted April 30 to May 4, among a sample of 556 American adults in relationships.

1. About three-quarters of Americans with a romantic partner say their relationship has not fundamentally changed since the coronavirus outbreak.

When asked if their relationship had gotten better or worse since the pandemic began, 74% said it was about the same. Ten percent said it was a lot better and 7% said it was a little better. Only 4% said a little worse and 1% said a lot worse.

Weathering a pandemic adds stress, but Lewandwoski noted that when we’re stressed, “we turn to our partners,” who are generally ready, willing and able to be our support during difficult times. “A lot of people want more closeness in their relationship,” Lewandwoski added, highlighting a finding in earlier research. “Those people are getting what they wished for.”

2. Argument frequency and sex lives have changed for the better, but only slightly.

Less than 2 in 10 of those in relationships said they get into fewer arguments with their partner, while 1 in 10 said they get into more of them – and 7 in 10 said there has been no difference. And despite chatter that isolation leads to more opportunities for intimacy, only 9% said their sex life has improved. Still, even fewer – 5% – said it’s gotten worse, with 77% saying it is about the same.

3. About half expect their relationship will emerge stronger – and hardly any think it’ll be worse.

When looking toward the future, partnered Americans were even more enthusiastic about the strength of their relationships. A 51% majority said their relationships will get stronger by the time the outbreak is over and just 1% said their relationship will be worse. Another 46% said their relationship will not have changed at all.

Lewandowski noted it’s possible poll respondents were being hopelessly optimistic, but he emphasized that if a relationship has at least one partner who’s an optimist, the couple generally has higher relationship satisfaction. “Optimists handle life’s rough patches better, which is certainly helpful given the current situation,” Lewandowski said in a release announcing the poll results.

4. Married partners are more likely than unmarried ones to say their relationship has not changed.

About three-quarters of married couples said their relationship has not changed for better or worse since the coronavirus outbreak began, while just under two-thirds of unmarried couples said the same.

Among unmarried partners, 22% said their relationship has helped decrease their daily stress level, compared with 12% of married couples. Similar shares of each said they have increased levels of stress.

Lewandowski posited that the pandemic hasn’t changed married couples’ relationships drastically because they’re likely to have dealt with trying times – such as a job loss, severe illness or death of a loved one – before this moment. “They’ve traveled a lot of these paths before,” Lewandwoski said, “and have endured other stressors in their lives or relationships and have more refined strategies with how to cope with problems and stress.”

Younger people in relationships, those 18 to 34 years old, were more likely than older people to say the pandemic has affected their relationship. (Couples in that age group are more likely to be unmarried than those who are older.)

5. Most say their relationship isn’t adding to pandemic stress – but women are a little more affected than men.

A 59% majority said their relationship has had no impact on their daily stress level. But 29% of women said their relationship has added to their daily stress, while 23% of men said the same. The key factor for doing well during the pandemic, Lewandwoski said, is the strength of the relationship before the pandemic. “The couples who are already doing well are doing even better now,” he said.

“Overall, these results suggest that the global pandemic may not be as bad for relationships as many have feared,” Lewandowski said in the poll’s release. “Our relationships may become stronger and even more important than they already were.”

Located on the 76th floor of King Power Mahanakhon, Mahanakhon Bangkok SkyBar is offering an all-day set menu, selected signature à la carte dishes and Café Gourmand from 11.30am to 8pm daily, with last orders at 7pm.

In operation is the “King Power Care Power”, an initiative prioritising the safety of customers and staff through practices that ensure a high level of hygiene throughout their experience within all King Power destinations.

At King Power Mahanakhon, new protocols include visitor registration at the building entrance, a temperature scan, and an X-ray scan for security.

Tables at Mahanakhon Bangkok SkyBar are separated to ensure more space between diners while hygienic measures also include sanitising and sealing all dining cutlery and equipment for each individual customer’s use. Visitors will be greeted and serviced by staff wearing a mask, gloves, and face shield at all times.

Dining tables, chairs, handrails, exposed surfaces, and all equipment used during service will be frequently sanitised while common areas, rest room facilities and floor surfaces will be disinfected before and after service. In addition to this, Mahanakhon Bangkok SkyBar is offering cashless payments as an option to avoid the use of cash.

Takeaway options are also available for pick-up at the lobby of King Power Mahanakhon.

The impressive sight is only available at this time of year, as the shiroyanagi willows that grow in clusters at the lakeside are submerged in meltwater from snow, which raises the water level of the lake.

According to the Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry’s Shirakawa Dam management branch office, the willows began to be submerged in the water around late March. The water level is expected to gradually fall in the days ahead as the meltwater decreases.

Usually many people would enjoy rowing out in canoes and kayaks to enjoy the fantastic scenery. But the request by the management branch office to refrain from engaging in leisure activities on the lake to prevent the spread of the coronavirus infection was in place as of Friday.

On Thursday, shiroyanagi leaves were seen fluttering in the wind coursing over the deserted lake.

The medium- and low-security prison in Lompoc has largely been seen as a bright light, offering stable jobs with good benefits. But now residents fear a new stigma they won’t be able to shake: Their town is home to the nation’s largest covid-19 outbreak in a federal prison.

“The prison is in our city limits, the sick inmates are filling our local hospital beds, yet I have no control over any of it because it’s a federal facility,” said Lompoc Mayor Jenelle Osborne. “I’m getting emails and phone calls from people who are afraid, who are asking me to do something, and I have to tell them I am powerless to do anything.”

As the coronavirus bolted through one-third of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ 122 facilities last month, cracks began to appear in the once symbiotic relationship between the prisons and their towns. The bureau’s fumbling of the crisis, which enabled the virus to percolate within the prisons and beyond, is stoking fear and resentment of the prisons – and sometimes of prison staff who live in those communities.

So far, 45 inmates across the country have died. The Bureau of Prisons announced last week that 70 % of tests of inmates for covid-19 have come back positive. As of Friday, 3,701 of the bureau’s roughly 140,000 inmates had tested positive for the disease. No prison staff have died but nationwide, 527 have tested positive, according to federal data.

Residents in Lompoc and other prison towns, including Butner, North Carolina, and Oakdale, Louisiana, say having a prison with a high infection rate unnerves them, especially when they encounter unmasked and ungloved prison staff in grocery stores, pharmacies or restaurants.

“We have people who come in with prison uniforms two to three times a week,” said Antonio de Jesus Rodriguez, owner of Floriano’s Mexican restaurant, which provides pickup orders to customers. “Some are wearing a mask, but some are without one. It’s kind of mind-boggling. As I’m taking their order I’m thinking, ‘You are in a hot spot; why aren’t you taking this more seriously?’ ”

The Washington Post reported last month that the Bureau of Prisons allowed the virus to fester in dozens of prisons before taking action to stop its progress.

It did not provide masks to correctional officers or inmates until after dozens of inmates were quarantined, and often after inmates had died. Prisoners with coughs and body aches continued to line up, just a few feet apart, for their meals and medication. And temperature checks, for both inmates and staff, did not become routine until the disease had permeated dormitory-style settings where 100 or more prisoners sleep and live within a few feet of one another.

In a statement, the bureau said it began responding to the coronavirus threat as early as January, and is using “screening, testing, appropriate treatment, prevention, education, and infection control measures.”

It also said that starting April 1, it began to minimize gatherings and that “inmate movement in small numbers” is being allowed for essential activities, such as visits to the commissary, laundry, showers, telephone and health care.

The Bureau of Prisons’ mishandling of the coronavirus threat prompted Rep. Frederick Keller, R-Pa., to introduce legislation last week that would require the bureau’s director to be confirmed by the Senate. Michael Carvajal, the current director, was appointed by the U.S. attorney general, as past directors have been.

At the Lompoc Federal Correctional Complex, two inmates have died of covid, 905 inmates had tested positive and 34 staff members had contracted the disease as of Friday, federal data shows. Nearly one-quarter of the covid-19 cases in federal prisons nationwide are at the Lompoc prison.

The number of inmates who have tested positive at the prison is double the number of positive cases in all of Santa Barbara County – which has reported 450 non-prison cases among its population of nearly 450,000. The prison has 2,700 inmates.

The prison’s coronavirus cases are a burden on the compact town of 40,000, where locals and the prison system share the same fire department and hospital. The mayor believes the spread of coronavirus in the community is largely due to the prison and could have been curbed if prison leaders acted sooner and were more transparent. She estimates that nearly 60 percent of prison employees live in Lompoc.

“We’ve reached out, but either a lack of experience or lack of leadership has caused them to circle the wagons and say, ‘We will deal with it internally,’ Osborne said. “This secrecy does not build trust with the community.”

The Bureau of Prisons responded: “We have an open line of communication with public officials surrounding our facilities.”

The prison, though, has argued that details of how the pandemic are being handled must be kept private.

The bureau has asked local officials not to publicly disclose information regarding internal controls, the number of hospitalized inmates or the location of hospitalized inmates. “The BOP believes that such disclosure creates a security and safety risk,” reads the request obtained by The Post.

It’s a 15-minute drive from one side of Lompoc – past ranch-style homes, the heavily muraled downtown off Ocean Avenue and the railroad that runs through town – to the prison on the city’s other edge. The razor-wired top of the prison rises out of planted fields of kale, artichokes and lettuce that surround it, immediately next door to Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Five miles from the prison in downtown Lompoc, American Host Restaurant owner Dennis Block said “it’s a little scary” for him and his employees to know “that there’s 100 cases down the street.”

In April, when a local doctor donated $1,000 to the breakfast and lunch spot to provide free meals to the community, Block and his crew took steps to protect themselves.

More than 150 burritos were delivered to the local hospital, police department and convalescent home. For the prison workers, Block’s employees set up a table on the patio next to the parking lot, loaded about 50 tinfoil-wrapped burritos onto it, then watched from inside the diner until the prison worker who collected them drove away.

Block said his greatest worry isn’t exposure at his restaurant – it’s down the street from him at Lompoc Valley Medical Center, where coronavirus-infected prisoners are being treated and sometimes dying. “Basically, they are importing the virus into our community,” he said.

Nick Clay, director of the Santa Barbara County Emergency Medical Services Agency, said the prison has converted an old factory on the prison grounds into a medical ward that will treat up to 20 inmates with severe covid-19 symptoms. “They’re really taking active measures that are focused on resolving this issue,” Clay said, defending the prison response.

The Rev. Jane Quandt of the Valley of the Flowers United Church of Christ drives by the prison a few times a week. Construction of the ward did not begin until mid-April, three days before the first inmate’s death, and after many had landed in the local hospital. It opened Wednesday.

Quandt said she hopes the community does not blame the prison for the spread of the virus. “This is a federal institution. So ultimately it’s got to be run by the federal administration” in Washington, she said. “This is one of their babies and they’re not taking very good care of it, at least not here in Lompoc.”

– – –

Just north of the Falls Lake reservoir sits the town of Butner in rural Granville County, North Carolina, about 30 miles north of Raleigh. Tidy brick and siding-wrapped homes line grid-patterned streets dating back to World War II, when it was Camp Butner.

In 2008, Butner residents opposed efforts to add a federal biodefense research center to a cluster of government-owned facilities that dominate the region. Along with the federal prison, there’s a state prison, psychiatric hospital, addiction-treatment center and a facility caring for disabled people.

At the time, Butner residents said they feared lethal pathogens – with no known treatment or vaccine – could escape the facility.

Now, similar fears have been renewed with covid-19 and the prison. As of Wednesday, seven inmates have died. At least 306 of the 4,500 inmates have tested positive, along with 39 staff members who have been infected.

In early April, Pine Grove Missionary Baptist Church introduced social distancing and protective gear to its twice-monthly food bank. As volunteers in masks and gloves carted boxes of pasta, frozen meat and canned goods to cars and trucks of local families, conversation repeatedly turned to their collective anxiety over the prison.

“They were concerned with the possible spread of the virus within the community, considering that many of the [prison] workers live in the community,” said Michelle Ross, who helps run the food bank, about six miles from the prison.

In March, the outbreak crept closer to the Rev. Marcos León of St. Bernadette Catholic Church in Butner.

Three parishioners – two nurses and a doctor working at the prison complex – told him in confidence that they were exposed on the job and had to self-quarantine at home. They were “truly afraid,” León said. “It was the fear they were going to die. Then it was: ‘I feel so bad because of my children. I’m living in a house where I have to be separated from them.’ ”

The church’s prison ministry regularly offered Mass, confession and one-on-one spiritual guidance to inmates until March, when prisons banned visitors.

Butner and Granville County officials say they don’t expect the covid-19 outbreak will alter appreciation for the prison as a local employer offering good-paying jobs. But correctional officers who live in and around Butner say they know some people fear them, said William Boseman, a retired Butner correctional officer and union representative for the officers.

When people see the prison workers in their dark-gray uniforms walking down the street, they cross to the opposite side. In grocery stores, people scoot to the next aisle.

“They are being ostracized,” Boseman said. “When people know you work at this place where there has been an outbreak, they treat you different. They treat you as if you are automatically contagious.”

– – –

The first covid-19 death of a federal inmate took place six weeks ago – on March 28 – at a prison in Oakdale, Louisiana. As of Friday, six more of the 1,800 inmates had died. There have been 115 cases of covid-19 among the prisoners and 26 among the staff.

On the boot-shaped state of Louisiana, Oakdale sits just above the ankle. About 110 miles west of Baton Rouge, past the flooded rice-field crawfish ponds of the Cajun prairie, a meandering country road lined with towering Southern pines subtly opens into a meticulously planned, four-lane highway that drops you into the town of fewer than 8,000 people.

It only takes five minutes to drive from the center of town to the Oakdale Federal Correctional Complex. Along an access road to the complex, a long row of fluorescent pink and white signs with handwritten biblical psalms and motivational quotes flickers in the spring breeze: “Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision.”

Jane Willis and her husband, Greg Willis, are in their mid-50s and have been the pastors at the Christ Church of Oakdale for 15 years. They broke ground on a new church near the prison to house their growing congregation a few months ago, before the pandemic.

As the news broke of the covid-19 outbreak at the prison, Jane Willis felt called to do something for the shift workers driving in and out of the prison complex, past their property each day. So she made signs.

“I saw the workers going back and forth and it broke my heart for them,” she said. “I was thinking of a way we can encourage them as they go to work to know they’re not alone.”

The couple’s son works at the prison, as do 15 members of their congregation. One of them, Aubrey Melder, 53, a correctional officer, said when he saw the signs on his way to work the first time, his eyes filled with tears. Melder has felt supported by the community, but he has also felt its fear.

“When they look at you, you can tell they are uneasy,” he said, describing the few times he went to the grocery store in his uniform. “It scares them a little bit.”

Corey Trammel, a union president representing the correctional officers, said the community of Oakdale has long supported the prison workers, and he doesn’t blame them for being afraid of contracting the virus.

“I hate it for the community, and I hate it for our employees,” said Trammel. “If our prison would have let people know what was going on and our warden would have protected us and our community, then people would not have to look at us like that.”

In response, the bureau said in a statement: “We do everything we can to maintain open lines of communication with public officials. Our Executive staff are willing to discuss with them everything they are doing to combat this virus.”

Gene Paul, mayor of Oakdale and a lifelong resident, said the outbreak at the prison created chaos and left people in the community panicked. “Everyone is wondering, ‘Am I going to be next?’ ”

Paul said he now is in close contact with the warden, but he wishes the Bureau of Prisons would have handled the crisis better from the beginning. He said buses of newly sentenced inmates were continuing to arrive at the prison until a few weeks ago.

The bureau said that, overall, inmate movement is down 95 percent. However, they are legally obligated to accept new inmates brought by the U.S. Marshals Service. Those inmates are being quarantined for 14 days before entering the general prison population.

Paul estimates that half of the prison staff live in Oakdale and, although many are angry with the bureau, that rage is not directed at the people who work at the Oakdale facility.

In early April, Paul pulled a brown SUV into the Christ Church of Oakdale parking lot for a “Park and Praise” event to boost prison staff morale.

As prison employees zipped by on the access road, Paul and dozens of other Oakdale residents waved and honked their horns. Christian music blared and several people stretched their hands to the sky. A woman waved a sign that read: “Not all Heroes Wear Capes.” The prison workers smiled and waved back.

This time, as job losses linked to the coronavirus pandemic dwarf what the country experienced in the 2007-2009 crisis, the heaviest toll is falling on women.

Waitresses, day-care workers, hairstylists, hotel maids and dental hygienists are among the 20.5 million people who watched their jobs vanish in April – the most devastating spike in unemployment since the Great Depression.

“I had a good rhythm going. I wasn’t rich, I couldn’t complain saying I was poor,” said Ilanne Dubois, a 36-year-old single mother in Long Island who worked as a waitress at a Manhattan hotel. “Now, all of that stability is gone. We’re falling into a hole.”

Women have never experienced an unemployment rate in the double digits since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began reporting data by gender in 1948 – until now. At 16.2%, women’s unemployment in April was nearly three points higher than men’s, according to Labor Department rates released Friday. But a closer look at the numbers shows deeper disparities.

Not only are women overrepresented in some of the hardest-hit industries, such as leisure and hospitality, health care and education, but women – especially black and Hispanic women – lost jobs in those sectors at disproportionate rates.

Before the pandemic, women held 77% of the jobs in education and health services, but they account for 83% of the jobs lost in those sectors, according to an analysis by the National Women’s Law Center. Women made up less than half of the retail trade workforce, but they experienced 61% of the retail job losses. Many of these women held some of the lowest-paying jobs – the cashiers, hotel clerks, office receptionists, hospital technicians, teachers’ aides.

The pandemic has wiped out the job gains women made over the past decade, just months after women reached the majority of the paid U.S. workforce for only the second time in American history.

“How are we supposed to ever come back?” said Jasmine Tucker, director of research at the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC). “I think it’s going to take a really long time to even reach that point again. A lot of people are going to be stuck.”

Labor experts worry that even as states reopen, many workers, especially in leisure and hospitality, will continue to suffer cuts to hours, wages and tips. Low-wage workers, who are disproportionately female, will be the least likely to be rehired, economists say.

Even when men experienced the greatest initial job losses during the Great Recession, women took much longer to recover. Between June 2009 and June 2011, women lost 281,000 jobs while men gained 805,000. Those losses were driven by public-sector job cuts.

As local and state governments slash their budgets in the coming months, government workers will face painful job losses, and those will affect more women, who hold nearly 58% of public-sector posts, said Betsey Stevenson, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan. Many of these jobs are in public schools.

“That’s only going to make things worse for women,” Stevenson said.

Working mothers face an especially daunting recovery because they rely on schools and day-care centers that remain closed. Even if hotels and restaurants and stores reopen, some women might not be able to find the child care necessary to return to work.

“If summer camps don’t open up, if schools don’t open in the fall, who goes back to work?” Stevenson said.

That’s the question facing Dubois, the single mother on Long Island. For the past decade, she has built a career working at different high-end hotels in Manhattan, often working overnight and 16-hour shifts as a waitress to support her 6-year-old son. But she’s been out of work since March, when the Dominick hotel, formerly the Trump SoHo hotel, closed temporarily.

Now she’s relying on unemployment assistance to feed her son. She’s fallen behind on her mortgage, cut her car insurance and has dug into the little savings she has to pay the bills.

She’s heard the hotel may not reopen until July. And even if she could find a different job before then, maybe as a delivery driver, she doesn’t know how she’d be able to leave her son, with schools and child-care centers closed.

“I can’t afford to pay the babysitter anymore,” she said. “I haven’t thought of what I could possibly do next.”

At the start of this year, for only the second time, women reached a significant milestone: They outnumbered men in the U.S. paid workforce, bolstered by surges in health care and education.

Women have made inroads in traditionally male industries, but their job gains have primarily been in traditionally female-oriented sectors – working with people in jobs that are often lower paying. Cornell University economists Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn found that differences in the occupations chosen by men and women was the single largest factor accounting for the gender pay gap.

A recent report from the NWLC found that nearly two-thirds of the 22.2 million workers in the country’s 40 lowest-paying jobs are women. It also found that more than two-thirds of mothers in the low-paid workforce are the sole or primary breadwinners for their families.

Not only do women make about 82% of what men make, but they also have less savings. And time away from work tends to depress women’s wages, potentially exacerbating the country’s persistent gender pay gap, said Emily Martin, vice president for education and workplace justice at the NWLC.

Many women were already barely bringing in enough money to cover child-care costs.

“Now let’s just add in the fact that your job just got a lot more dangerous,” Stevenson said. “You’re sending your kid to child care, where you’re also risking you might get sick. You start doing all that math, and it just doesn’t make sense anymore.”

While women overall were more likely than men to be unemployed, black and Hispanic women were hit the hardest, at 16.4 and 20.2% unemployment respectively.

Among them are women like Racaél Guzmán, a 46-year-old mother of three who was temporarily laid off from her custodial job at office buildings in Alexandria, Virginia, but cannot apply for unemployment because she is an undocumented immigrant.

She has worked for the company since she came to the United States from El Salvador in 2004. Guzmán, who has high blood pressure, is worried that her health care will run out at the end of 60 days. Volunteers from a local church brought her bags of cereal, cooking oil and other food for her and her family. But she’s worried about how she will pay for groceries if she can’t return to work in the coming weeks.

She barely managed to pay the rent last month.

“Purely thanks to the holy Mary, we were able to make it,” she said. “But I don’t know about the next month.”

Sabrina Baptiste, a single mother of 15-month-old twins in Washington D.C., was down to about three days’ worth of diapers last week before a church group stopped by her apartment with more. Since mid-March, she has not been able to return to her work as a bartender.

“I had a good thing going,” she said. “I was able to do everything I wanted to do.” She had found an affordable day care for the twins and was able to make a steady income with generous tips. “Now it just took a drastic turn.”

She’s barely been able to make partial payments on her rent and utilities. She’s not been able to access unemployment assistance or a stimulus check. Even if she can go back to her job, will the child-care center reopen for her children?

“I really don’t want to go ahead and think about that,” she said. “If it gets any worse, it’s like, ‘Come on,’ I don’t know how I’ll be able to manage.”

Michelle Utterback has been a hairdresser for more than 35 years. She never made a lot of money, she said, but she always had enough to support herself.

“My dad always said it was more important to get a trade because you know you can always have a job,” said Utterback, 59. “If you’re doing hair, you know you can always get a job.”

With her salon closed because of the pandemic, she worries she’ll lose the clientele she worked hard to build up. She fears she might be laid off permanently and will struggle to find another job.

Dubois also has wondered whether she will have to change careers. For more than a decade, she has loved the hotel industry. “I am a hospitality person,” she said. “I’ve always been a friendly, talkative person.”

After years of working three different hotel jobs, and many overnight shifts, she saved up enough money to buy a condominium in a quiet neighborhood. She was able to give her son his own room and a small yard. She was even able to take him on a vacation to Mexico recently.

“I started making something for myself, building a life for my son,” she said. “Now it’s like I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s next.”

I tell myself I should be more positive. I should be grateful. Sometimes I can make that last for an hour or two.

A day can drag on forever when you’re isolated all by yourself. I sleep as late as I can. I try not to look at the clock. I go on Facebook and read about all the ways this country is going to hell in a handbasket. I turn on the TV to hear a bit of talking. It’s been almost seven weeks since I’ve spent time with a real, live person. I haven’t touched or really even looked at anyone, and it’s making me start to think recklessly. The other day I went to Walgreens to pick up my medications, and I sat in the parking lot and thought about going inside. I was wearing my mask and I had my inhaler. I wanted run a normal errand, look at the chocolates, maybe find my way into a conversation. But I stayed in the car and went to the drive-through. I put on my gloves and handed my card to the clerk through a hole in the glass window. I took the medicines and gave a little wave.

If I get this virus, I’m afraid it would be the end of me. I’m 75. I’ve got all I can handle already with my asthma, fibromyalgia and an autoimmune disorder. The best way for me to survive is by sitting in my house for however many weeks or months it’s going to take. But how many computer games can you play before you start to lose it? How many mysteries can you read? I realize time is supposed to be precious, especially since mine is short, but right now I’m trying every trick I know to waste time away.

Negative thoughts creep up like that. I start getting crabby. It’s waves of anger and depression, and I beat myself up for it. People have it a whole lot worse. Obviously.

I’ve got two daughters out of town who call me and check in, but I don’t want to guilt them. I’ve got a high school friend who dropped off groceries. I’ve got a dog and two cats that need to be cared for, which gives me something to do. I’ve got my own manufactured home with flowers blooming all over the house. A lot of people don’t realize there’s a big difference between a trailer park and a mobile home community. I’ve spent hours lately driving up and down every block of this neighborhood, looking at people’s yards, checking out whatever might be poking through the dirt. One morning I drove my dog to the river. People were walking on the path, and I was worried about the droplets and all that. We sat in the car and cracked the windows and listened to the water.

It feels like everybody here is trying so hard to be cheerful, but boy does it take an effort. The other day was supposed to be the beginning of baseball season, and I love baseball, and the anchor came onto the local news and said: “Let’s all try to look on the bright side! Let’s find a way to celebrate opening day even though nobody is playing.” He showed pictures of fans wearing their Minnesota Twins T-shirts, or rubbing hand sanitizer onto a baseball to play catch, and I thought: You know what I’d really like to do right now if I’m being honest? I’d like to find a bat and a ball and go break a few windows.

I apologize to God for feeling this way, but he made me how I am. I’m over this whole thing. I used to be an optimist, but I’m not anymore.

I’ve never been this angry, and it’s an ugly way to feel. Maybe when you don’t get to see anybody for weeks, emotions get bottled up and have nowhere to go. I get sucked into Facebook, and I keep scrolling down from one thing to the next, yelling at my computer as the posts get more and more insane. Mike Pence was just here in Minnesota, visiting patients at the Mayo Clinic, and he went against their policy and refused to wear a mask. It’s like: “Really? How arrogant can you be?” Next it’s someone posting pictures of people crowded together like sardines at a beach in California. “You idiots. Do you care about anyone but yourself?” Then it’s the president’s saying it might be a good idea to inject some kind of bleach or disinfectant. “No thank you, but you go right ahead if you want to poison yourself.” Then it’s a militia group taking over a state capitol. It’s doctors who have to wear garbage bags instead of gowns. It’s that we still don’t have enough tests. It’s how at least most of the deaths are people over 70 with preexisting conditions. “Oh, what a relief! Who cares about them?” It’s some stockbroker or whatever saying the elderly are holding this country back from reopening, and maybe it’s their patriotic duty to be sacrificed for the sake of the economy. “Sorry to be an inconvenience to your financial portfolio. Sorry I’m still breathing.”

It enrages me. I spent my career working for the federal government at Veterans Affairs. I raised my kids by myself. I basically had to raise my ex-husbands. I marched and fought for women’s rights. I volunteered for political campaigns. I pay taxes and fly a flag outside my house because I’m a patriot, no matter how far America falls. But now in the eyes of some people, all I am to this country is a liability? I’m expendable? I’m holding us back?

Sometimes, before I know it, I’ve been writing comments on Facebook posts for hours: “To hell with you then.” “You idiot.” “How dumb can you be?” “Moron.” “Racist.” “Selfish pig.” “Idiot.” “Idiot.”

Everyone knows me as a kind person. I used to wear a peace necklace. I’ve gotten old enough that I just say whatever I think with no filter, but I don’t always like what comes out. This isn’t how I used to be.

There’s a lot I don’t recognize about what’s happening now. This country is so completely different from the one I came into. My uncle was at the Battle of the Bulge the day I was born. I arrived right near the end of the war, and most of my life was American boom times. We were the leading country in everything when I was young. My dad left for a while to work as a chef on the Alaskan Highway, and he traveled through Canada so we could carve a road 2,000 miles over the Rockies in the dead of winter. We did whatever we wanted just to show that we could. That’s how it felt. I graduated from high school and started working when I turned 18, and within about a year I was earning more than my parents. That’s how it went. It was up, up, up.

And what are we now? We’re mean. We’re selfish. We’re stubborn and sometimes even incompetent. That’s the face we’re showing to the world. It seems like some of these other countries almost feel sorry for us. New Zealand and South Korea beat this virus back in a few weeks. We’ve gone from ten thousand deaths to thirty thousand to sixty-some, so I guess we’re still leading the world in that.

We can’t get out of our own way. Are we shutting down or opening up? It’s the states against the feds. It’s conservatives against liberals. There’s no leadership and no solidarity, so everybody’s doing whatever they want and fighting only for themselves, which means everyone who’s vulnerable is losing big. Minorities. Poor people. Sick people. Immigrants. Elderly. We’re the ones who will die from this virus and the ones who will never recover. That’s the truth I’m learning about this country, even if I should have known it earlier.

I don’t like feeling this way. Maybe somewhere in this we’ll see a great lightning strike of American ingenuity. I doubt it, but maybe. There’s no choice but to be hopeful. I’m staying alive and sitting in my house and waiting. Where else am I going to go? I’ll be here.

Philosopher of the Heart

By Clare Carlisle

Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 339 pp. $30

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In his trial before the citizens of Athens, Socrates famously compared himself to a gadfly – a pest, sent by god, perhaps, to “awaken and persuade and reproach” his fellow Athenians so that they did not “spend the rest of [their] lives asleep.” If he was a gadfly, then piety, justice and intellectual orthodoxy were his nectar. Into these moral and ethical issues he would bite, until he sucked dry their illogic and laid bare the uncertainty at their base.

More than 21 centuries later, Socrates – or, at least, the Socratic method of laying bare – would come alive again, this time in the form of a brooding Dane, the self-described Socrates of Christendom, Soren Kierkegaard. Clare Carlisle, in her sparkling, penetrative new biography, “Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Soren Kierkegaard,” explains how Kierkegaard ran against the philosophical grain of his time.

She does this in a novel way. In abiding by Kierkegaard’s oft-quoted observation – that life must be lived forward, but can only be understood backward – Carlisle abandons standard chronology in favor of a three-part study. Part one begins in 1843, when Kierkegaard had just turned 30; we then move to “Life Understood Backwards,” a backward consideration of the years 1848 to 1813, Kierkegaard’s birth year. The final section, “Life Lived Forwards,” brings us from 1849 to Kierkegaard’s death in 1855. With this unconventional structure – a fittingly oblique approach for a famously dialectical man – Carlisle is better able to crack open the philosopher’s life: What we get is a panorama of sorts, in which Kierkegaard’s obsession with ex-fiancee Regine Olsen (a relationship whose breakdown inspired much of his writing), his preference for coffee (lots, and sugary), his maniacal work ethic, his variously warm and shrewd letters, his thoughts on God and the individual – these parts are rendered as a woven whole.

Carlisle does not sacrifice intellectual rigor for the sake of this larger picture. Her work is demanding in its comprehensiveness. From the beginning, for instance, she sets the broader intellectual scene well: Kierkegaard’s 19th-century Copenhagen was steeped deep, like the rest of intellectual Europe, in the thought of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Under Hegel’s philosophy, concepts that were largely considered frozen in basic binary forms (master/slave, masculinity/femininity, even living/dying) were freed from their Aristotelian, binary bonds; they were shown to be in a state of dynamic movement. And once these concepts became mobile, it became possible, Hegel thought, to see all of human history as engaged in a massive, if glacial, dialectical progression, whose ultimate end was “freedom.” Lofty and forward-looking, Hegel’s progressive theories were a perfect match for rapidly industrializing European cities, and they held Kierkegaard’s contemporaries in thrall.

But not Kierkegaard, who rebelled against them. Like Socrates exposing the sophists of Athens, Kierkegaard “sought to expose” false teachers of grand schemes, the “pseudo-philosophers.” Carlisle reminds us that in “Either/Or,” Kierkegaard’s first published work, he presents Hegel’s thought as “nihilistic” and used the book, in part, to “depose Hegelian philosophy.” The main issue was that Hegel’s generalizations essentially erased what Kierkegaard considered supreme: the idea of the single individual. Hegelianism holds no space for the individual soul (or for the heart), he felt. The Kierkegaardian “single individual” is not to be confused with the (or seen as the proto-) “me” of “me culture.” Rather, Kierkegaard’s “single individual” has as its focus the individual’s relationship to God and the individual’s sense of spiritual fulfillment. This emphasis was emphatic, and unique. As Carlisle notes, it was this focus that would “inspire an entire generation of ‘existentialists’ to argue that human nature is not a fixed, timeless essence, nor a biological necessity, but a creative task for each individual life.”

But how is it that the “Christian writer” Kierkegaard came also to be cited as the “father of existentialism” – a philosophy whose other famous progenitor is Friedrich “God is dead” Nietzsche, and whose intellectual spawn (Sartre, De Beauvoir, Camus) run the theistic gamut? The answer requires us perhaps God-weary modern readers (or at least this God-disinterested Jew) to broaden our vision: Kierkegaard must not be thought of as a pious Christian in the way we think of one today. He was no Bible-thumper and no pompous proselytizer. Just the opposite. In fact, toward the end of his life, Carlisle tells us, Kierkegaard “called on his readers to stop going to church; he no longer went himself, and was often seen in the Athenaeum, a private library, on Sunday mornings.” Like Socrates – who proved his own ignorance along with that of his conversational victim – Kierkegaard did not consider it his duty to show fellow citizens the “right way” but rather to disabuse them of their illusion of knowing the right way at all. As he put it, his Socratic task was not to get the masses “to comprehend Christianity, but to comprehend that they cannot comprehend it.”

This disabusing required gentle treatment. We see this in Kierkegaard’s lifelong use of pseudonyms and a wide variety of writing styles, which, he felt, lent him various portals into his readers’ souls. His style is so diverse, in fact, that in characterizing Kierkegaard as a writer it is hard to choose between philosopher, theologian, dramatist, psychoanalyst or something else entirely. Carlisle samples these approaches in her biography, which has the additional effect of showing how Kierkegaard’s thought is centered, like that of Socrates, around not-knowing: You cannot know God as a fact, so you must repeatedly readdress your faith in a God whose existence is always uncertain. This continual confronting of the self and God amounts, ultimately, to an existential task.

Carlisle’s book is an essential guide to those beginning or reembarking on their Kierkegaard journey. It is perhaps best paired with W.H. Auden’s brilliantly selected collection of Kierkegaard’s work, “The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard,” which also includes certain gems, such as Kierkegaard’s eerie prevision of the Internet era: “There no longer exist human beings: there are no lovers, no thinkers, etc. By means of the press the human race has enveloped itself in an atmospheric what-not of thoughts, feelings, moods; even of resolutions and purposes, all of which are no one’s property, since they belong to all and none.”

We might replace Kierkegaard’s “the press” for the Internet as a whole: One logs on and envelops oneself in a what-not of tweets, memes, Insta-feeds, a mishmash of love/goal/resolution-oriented articles (“Make Her Fall in Love With This Move After You Lose 10 Pounds in 3 Days!”). Today, the sense of living in abstraction is felt keenly. Anyone looking in any real way to become a lover, a thinker or a human being, take heed of Kierkegaard: He will tear you from your illusions, pull you down from your abstractions and then let you find your way.

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Dess is a writer and critic living in New York.