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How is the coronavirus pandemic affecting your life right now? Tell us about your experiences, feelings, and thoughts.

I believe that people around here are identifying with the Brood X cicadas. After 17 years, the little insects are finally freed from their solitary confinement underground. Now they can fly free, mingle, and make lots of noise. I think the parallel is obvious: we can now get out and mingle, too. We weren’t out of circulation for nearly as long as the cicadas were, of course; but sometimes the lockdown seems as though it continued for years. A cicada eruption is one of the great spectacles of natural history; a lot of us look forward to it. The cicadas are cute little guys—black with bright red eyes and transparent wings—and very tame. They’re not very strong flyers; sometimes they make unscheduled landings on the sidewalks. From there, you can pick them up and put them back on the nearest tree trunk. And you should; if they stay on the sidewalk, they’ll get stepped on or simply roast on the hot pavement. I realize that this good deed doesn’t make very much difference to the world at large, but it makes a huge difference to that particular cicada. But the cicadas are one more thing: they’re a MEMENTO MORI, a reminder of our mortality. After they die out, in about a month, the cicadas won’t be back for another seventeen years. How many people who are alive and watching them now, will still be alive to see them again, seventeen years from now?