Before the time of COVID, my wife and I had built a quiet life on a Virginia horse farm.

Both of our homeschooled sons were healthy and happy, had graduated from college, were married, and we had one grandchild.  The farm and tractor were mostly paid off.  We homesteaded the place, starting with unimproved rolling hay fields purchased directly from the prior owner – no bank loans necessary. Beginning with an old office trailer, we had built up fences, power, well, septic, barn and both a main and a guest house over five years.  Run-down historic outbuildings were being renovated. Years of experience in rebuilding and landscaping small farms had allowed us to create a working operation that was also a park and a garden.  Our own private Galt's gulch.

Our refuge is located in a sleepy Virginia county with about as many residents as before World War II, an hour and a half south of the bustle of the nations' capital. Using American political slang, a red county in a purple state, stretching along the northwestern side of the Shenandoah National Park.  Internet access is a problem, and television requires a satellite dish. The historic farms of USA founding fathers Thomas Jefferson (Monticello) and James Madison (Montpelier) are only a short drive away. The first Lutheran church in North America is two miles over the hill as the crow flies.  Old established farming families control local politics.  Trees pop up when no-one mows the grass. Amish and Mennonite communities work the land. Our Portuguese senior stallion was coming along nicely in his dressage training, we had a great string of brood mares, and home-bred Australian Shepherd dogs were our daily companions. Travel planning consisted of trying to figure out how to budget a trip to the Golega Lusitano horse fair in Portugal or attend a horse competition in Texas. Price and availability of hay was a constant topic. Far from the maddening crowd.

Together with Dr. Jill Glasspool, my wife and partner in all things for over 40 years, I was maintaining a small boutique medical research consulting practice that paid the bills.  We had started our lives together when I was working as a short order cook, farmer and carpenter; she as a waitress, and we have managed to work and pay our way through years and years of University training. This was our fifth small farm re-build.  Our primary challenges at the time consisted of business development, writing, reviewing, and executing contracts, and juggling the very different demands of the consulting business, the farm and gardens, and the horse breeding operation.  Occasionally I had to lead an NIH contract study section or review a manuscript for some journal, but that was just about all the contact I still had with the world of Academia that I had chosen to leave decades before, after the twin towers came down. I had recently picked up a promising new Rockville, Maryland-based client that supported clinical research and regulatory affairs for Chinese pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies seeking to bring their products to the US market. We were trying to build a more international consulting practice and reduce our dependence on what often seemed like arbitrary and capricious US Government contracts, and this seemed like a great step in that direction. A quiet, fulfilling, intellectually and physically rewarding peaceful life.