BLOG: Michigan Avenue is empty
This COVID-19 pandemic has brought relentless sadness, despair and frustration. But as I have written in prior posts, this pandemic has also brought feelings of pride in humanity. We have seen numerous examples of humans sacrificing and showing empathy and selflessness.
Last week, after rounding in our affiliated teaching hospital in the afternoon, I walked to the laboratory across the street for my annual blood tests. I was walking in the skyway that connects hospital buildings across Michigan Avenue.
This famous skyway — a landmark in Lansing, the capital city of Michigan — overlies Michigan Avenue and connects the main hospital building north of the street to the cancer center and professional building on the south.
As I was walking in the skyway, I was so saddened as I looked at Michigan Avenue, the heart of our town. As I saw the beautiful capitol building, at the far end of the street to the west, it disheartened me to see no cars passing through under the skyway, going west or east on this great street. For the first time since I settled in Lansing 15 years ago, I have seen Michigan Avenue totally empty, in the afternoon in the middle of the week, and not on a holiday.
This scene was heartbreaking. I stopped in the middle of the skyway and pulled out my cell phone and took this picture (Figure).
The “rest of the story” about my annual blood tests is another story for another day. I will tell this story in a future post when the normal writing mood returns after we conquer this virus. But I wish to mention that I put the “rest of the story” in quotation marks to refer to the famous statement from the late Paul Harvey, used in his daily radio show.
I will stop here. I guess the picture tells this story.
This merciless virus, called COVID-19, that has no heart, and not even a nucleus, has paralyzed our beloved town, Lansing, the capital city of our beloved state of Michigan.
Collapse