Features

Mr. & Mrs. James Bryant Jr. recently celebrated their 44th Anniversary of a wonderful and blissful marriage. Their original plan was to attend their grandson Edwin Taylor IV (son of Edwin and Michelle Smith Taylor of Spring, Texas) school track meet. However, it was cancelled due to school closing and track meet canceling because of the coronavirus. 

The coronavirus is definitely changing our lives in an unexpected and undesired way — quicker and more acutely than any of us could probably have imagined.

My journey this week during the midst of the coronavirus pandemic reminds me of other times when scourges brought fear and anxiety to our lives. Examples like the polio epidemic which, before the creation of the 1954 vaccine, brought fear to every mother with small children. In Vietnam, besides fear of being maimed by the enemy, the spread of malaria transmitted by anopheles mosquitos created great anxiety because nobody knew who would be next to become ill. Out of the 200 soldiers I served with, 38 men and five officers contracted malaria — I was the only officer who did not get sick.

San Marcos’ oldest Hispanic church that also happens to be rated one of the best places to get a Lenten meal in town, El Buen Pastor, started their annual Lenten fish fry on the last Friday of February as normal. But with social distancing practices put in place this week in response to COVID-19, the church has opted to keep the tradition going, now with to go.