I’ve been thinking about doing this blog for probably 2 years now, but only in the back of my mind and have never consciously done anything about it. Until yesterday afternoon.

To place you at a point in time: Today is Sunday, March 15, 2020, 11:17am as I type. I’m at home during this bizarre time on our planet where isolating actually feels responsible due to the coronavirus. And yesterday afternoon I found myself in a moment where starting this blog seemed perfect.

This blog will be put together differently than any other I’ve done. I’ve lived in Sacramento since September of 1988. Starting with my house hunting trip that July, one of the things I appreciate about this particular section of the planet is the access it gives you to so many other places. On my 2nd day in California I spent the day in San Francisco with friends from work who had already explored it and knew what they were doing. Later that week I did a day trip to Lake Tahoe. I was 25 years old and had never really left Texas before. During that week I also tried to figure out how to get all of my stuff here without going back to Texas because I knew I was home. The 65 degree morning temperatures in July convinced me of that if nothing else did.

As of this morning I have 78 people subscribed to my blog. A small but dedicated number. What the vast majority of them have in common is they don’t live in Northern California, and many of them are from Ohio and Texas and have never visited here. And I realized one day about 2 years ago that I do stuff all the time which is worthy of writing about, it just doesn’t occur to me to do so because I live here and it’s “normal.” Except it wouldn’t be normal to most of my readers and I would love to share it. So the concept was born.

Yesterday a friend who lives in San Francisco came to visit. He’d never been to Sacramento before. In anticipation of us spending the day together, I checked on things that morning to see what would still be open. Alas, The Crocker Museum was still open, committed to that until a public health agency said otherwise. So I had that thought in my head. As it turned out, my friend ended up coming just for lunch and a short visit then headed back home.

By that time I’d shifted to the idea of being very cozy at home alone for however long this period lasts, but decided one last afternoon out and about wouldn’t be so bad, assuming most people were staying in. So I went to the Crocker anyway. And to say it wasn’t crowded was an understatement. But as I was approaching it, it dawned on me: I should write about it! It’s one of my favorite museums of the many I’ve been to and yet I’ve never blogged about it.

The blog about that visit to the Crocker will be the first one I write, and will be how I spend a portion of my day today. That said, I don’t know when I’ll release that, or this Introduction for that matter. I want to get at least a week’s worth of entries compiled, and then release them on a one-a-day basis as I would when I’m traveling. I have no idea how long it will take to do all of that. It could be 3 months; it could be 2 years. So it’s all a bit of an experiment and we’ll see how it plays out.

Yesterday morning I was on the phone with a friend of mine who lives in Harlem. We met at the Gay & Sober Men’s conference in NYC last summer and have been keeping up since. During the conversation, he mentioned that he forgets that Sacramento is the Capitol of Sacramento when I’d said something about living 5 blocks from it. (Technically it’s more like 10 blocks if you factor in Capitol Park which is 5 blocks long!) I’d found this photo on the internet and sent to him as proof of me saying it’s a beautiful building and worth seeing. Since every post has to have a photo (my little rule), I figure this is as good as any to start with.

It’s now about 5:30pm on March 15. Since what I wrote earlier, the governor of California has asked all citizens aged 65 and older and all who have chronic health conditions to stay at home, closed all bars, etc., and halved the capacity of all restaurants. That was at 2pm. Around 5pm, the CDC announced a national ban of all gatherings of 50 people or more.

That’s all about that for now.

Update: It’s now Monday, July 13, 2020. The coronavirus is still in full force. After we have essentially failed as a country to re-open, Florida yesterday posted a record number of new cases for the state at something like 15,000; and the governor of California today announced the re-closing of a bunch of things because of the surge. Sigh.

I did finish the blog about the Crocker and posted it in late May, outside of my original plan, because I wanted to put something out there as a respite to the political and social unrest; and people expressed their appreciation of that gesture for sure. I’m about to post my second entry under this Northern California concept so I figured I’d better get the intro out there, although I have no idea where or when the next one will be…