My friend who lives in Italy just shared this on Facebook. These are her words. Please everyone, pay attention. This will affect us all in some way. Stay Home. These are her words: "STAY HOME no matter what your local officials tell you! this is not a local matter, no matter where you are. it’s a global pandemic. this chilling video of a bergamo newspaper’s obituary column in lombardy, the hardest hit region in italy, shows the reality. on february 9 it was 1.5 pages long. on march 13, 10 pages. and the mother of the mayor in a neighboring municipality just died this morning as well. i’m not trying to scare you or throw you into a panic. the italians are not panicking. i am just urging you to be prepared and to remain proactive. and to STAY HOME."

Liz, happy to hear that you liked it. I read that almost a year ago and loved it. Thank you, Carol. I'll look into it!

Thank you for being so sweet and kind.

For the past several years I used henna (suggestions from these boards). I got tired of how my hair was starting to go red and I just got tired of it all overall. I had always planned on going gray gracefully, but that wasn't happening. There was all this frizz and then the yellow tones. My grey hair will never look like spectacular like some women in magazines, etc. My hair gets extremely frizzy and the greys are even worse. I've also read that grey hair doesn't look nearly as good on overweight women like me. I think that it would just make me look more fat and frumpy than I already am. I don't know at what age I'll start transitioning to grey, but I'm not yet ready to do so. I just started having my hair dyed and am delighted so far. I'm 52.

My dh, who has a master's in epidemiology, noticed the same thing. This article may be on to something. Who knows? One can only hope, but, as Dr. Fauci says, "But, underline 'but', we do not know what this virus is going to do. We would hope that as we get to warmer weather it would go down, but we can't proceed under that assumption." In the 4th paragraph of this article, if you click on the red highlighted word, "study", you'll see some fascinating charts.

I read The Prince of Tides - 5 Stars - Pat Conroy never disappoints! I loved this book. The writing is gorgeous. The story is riveting and had me laughing and crying. Parts of the story are truly painful and raw at times. Those descriptions are not for the faint of heart. Once you get past that, the story is incredibly powerful and moving. Conroy’s rich descriptions of the south make me want to visit there more than ever before. I loved his description of Stone Mountain in Georgia. The characters are superb to the point where I am missing them so very much. For me, that’s a sign of a phenomenal book. I feel bad for the next book I plan to read, because Pat Conroy’s books are a hard act to follow. I have not seen the movie and am not sure if I really want to. Some of my favorite quotes: “No one has the patent on human suffering. People hurt in different ways and for different reasons.” “Love has no weapons; it has no fists. Love does not bruise, nor does it draw blood.” “A psychiatrist oblivious to money is like a sumo wrestler oblivious to body fat.” “Has there ever been anyone who lived in New York City who didn’t see a therapist?” I asked. “I mean, there must have been some poor schnook who changed planes at La Guardia who didn’t have time to make it to the Upper East Side for a fifty-minute session.” “It is an art form to hate New York City properly. So far I have always been a featherweight debunker of New York; it takes too much energy and endurance to record the infinite number of ways the city offends me. Were I to list them all, I would fill up a book the size of the Manhattan yellow pages, and that would merely be the prologue.”

Thank you for caring and for being so sweet. No, not so far. We have sent them a doctor's letter with regards to our son's asthma. We're waiting to hear from them on that. So far, they have said that we can re-book all the way through the end of the year. If we are able to go again, it won't be until the same time period in 2021. If. And even with the change that they were offering, they were about to charge us a fee. How generous of them. Not! Our income will be going down from this month. We'll have to start dipping into our savings. Our family business is tourism-based. We've been getting cancellations galore. We've already had to let two employees go. It's quite unlikely that we'll be able to afford travel anytime in the near future.

I have a lot of catching up to do on this thread. I'm only on Page 4. I don't believe that this will be done by May. I hope and pray that I'm wrong, but it is extremely unlikely. We had booked a trip to Europe for the month of June. We canceled yesterday. We have lost all the money on our flights, but there is no way that we'd be able to go. To each their own, but I don't believe that it's wise to travel at this time. People need to stop traveling until the world can mitigate the spread of this virus. It really is that simple. And this is coming from me. Our family is in the tourism business and we're already getting cancellations galore, but there are some people who are not taking heed and who continue to bring the virus to countries that didn't have them. Every single case in the Caribbean that I have seen so far has been from tourists. Flatten the curve everyone! Social distancing is key until they come out with a vaccine. I know. What a stupid thing to say. Who cares about the Olympics at a time like this?

Laura, thank you so much for doing this.

I fully agree!

I can't stop laughing at this one! I will be sharing this one on Facebook. I want to thank you so much for starting this thread. It's the one that I look forward to the most every day.

This infocomic may be helpful. I think that it's a great reminder.

Thank you. We were thinking the same thing. We tried to contact them a few times already, all to no avail. We'll hold off for now and see what happens. Hopefully, the airlines will offer refunds/free changes.

I'm going to try that approach. We're quite sure that we won't be able to travel in June. Unfortunately, with people being idiots, being careless and selfish, this virus is not going away anytime soon. Yesterday, I read this: "11 new cases in Israel. All people entering Israel now must be quarantined. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: 'After a day of complex discussions, we have made a decision: Whoever arrives in Israel from abroad will enter quarantine for 14 days. This is a difficult decision but it is essential to maintaining public health, which takes precedence over everything. This decision will be in effect for two weeks. At the same time, we will make decisions to safeguard the Israeli economy.'" If only all countries would do this. Public safety should come before personal privacy.

My daughter sent these to me.

I refresh this page every day now. Italy had almost 1500 new cases today.