I am working these days in a closet off my kitchen. Judging by the floor-to-ceiling shelves, it served as a pantry in an earlier century. Now the shelves are laden with sustenance for the soul — books.

From my tiny study, I daily receive recorded messages of the Albany County briefings where the advances of the coronavirus are reported — this week, not just the count of confirmed cases but the first two deaths from COVID-19.

I make phone calls; I write stories to try to be of use to those who, like myself, are heeding the instructions to stay at home. I believe, as the county health commissioner has urged, that this is the way to save lives.

I work with reporters — Sean Mulkerrin, Noah Zweifel, and Elizabeth Floyd Mair — from afar, each in their own homes. The hum of the newsroom is replaced with the near-silent click of my fingers on a keyboard. Time seems inconsequential as my work days stretch into night and further still into the wee hours of the morning.

I even lay out the newspaper, with my co-publisher, Marcello Iaia, remotely. He puts our stories and pictures — our heroic photographer, Michael Koff is still out and about — in a daily newsletter, sent for free.

And once a week, we put in print the most important news for our readers who do not have internet access. Mike, Marcello, and Holly Busch distribute the papers despite the virus as Ellen Schreibstein works from home to keep our business records in order and Carol Coogan, also from home, enlivens our editorial page with her art.

I try to filter the news that comes my way for the parts that are essential to our readers, so as not to increase anxiety.

I have noticed, in the midst of the hundreds of releases emailed to me each day, a recurring phrase: silver lining. John Milton first used those worlds in his 1634 poem, “Comus: A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle.”

In it, he asks, “Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud/ Turn forth her silver lining on the night?”

He answers himself, repeating the phrase, “I did not err; there does a sable cloud/ Turn forth her silver lining on the night,/ And casts a gleam over this tufted grove.”

Certainly, there is now a sable cloud enveloping all the world — a disease that is wreaking havoc without prejudice on countries great and small. The virus is indiscriminately killing people, particularly the old and vulnerable.

And yet, isolated as we now must be, people are sharing and helping others. One of our columnists, Luanne Nicholson, writing for the Guilderland Public Library, reports: These digital resources, which are continually refreshed and augmented, become even more important at a time like this. Many people are just discovering them, or rediscovering them — a silver lining during our current predicament.

She goes on to list digital ways people can learn and connect without leaving their homes. Many of our libraries are doing the same.

Sandra Kisselback, columnist for the Berne Library, reports that the Word of the Month is “adapt” — and so we must. She writes about the seeds the library offers and urges, “A big plus, besides having fresh food harvested and grown by you, is the relaxing and de-stressing caveats of time spent with your garden.” Yes, indeed, a silver lining.

Guilderland’s town supervisor, Peter Barber, writes a daily letter to his constituents that appropriately starts with the county’s current number of COVID-19 cases but goes on to explore, sometimes light-heartedly, other news about the town.

In his March 26 letter, Barber wrote: “The EMS medics have also started practicing community paramedicine which was allowed by a Governor’s Executive Order. It allows medics to 'treat and release' patients who may need some medical attention but not a transport to the hospital … leaders in the EMS community believe that it could play an important role in providing cost-efficient health care. A silver lining in this health care crisis would be an appreciation that measures which are deemed necessary for public health during a ‘disaster emergency’ would find use in future normal times.”

And there it is again — a silver lining — a way to learn from a crisis skills or techniques that may benefit us later.

For last week’s podcast, I talked to three Berne-Knox-Westerlo students who missed their friends and teachers but were finding they had more time to spend with family and to learn things that interested them, like playing the guitar. One had sage advice for parents: Be patient.

That, too, can be a silver lining. Without the usual day-to-day commitments to be hither and yon, we can be patient with one another and focus on the joys of just being alive.

Some of the silver linings in the last few weeks have come from people reaching out — albeit electronically — who otherwise might not have. Is it because a cloud of death hangs over us that people are checking up on one another, expressing kindness in email exchanges that were formerly all business?

I’ve gotten emails from long-ago Enterprise reporters and other people whom I’ve covered over the years. One came from Gudrun Bellerjeau whose shop in the Hilltowns is filled with exquisite treasures from around the world, but now lacks customers. I remembered how kind she was when a young Enterprise reporter wanted to buy a unique engagement ring from her shop for his beloved, but didn’t have the cash on hand. She let him pay for it, bit by bit, each week when he got his paycheck.

Gudrun wrote to me this week, “Every minute and second of our life is a gift … That said, I believe, that God has given us a brain, that we should use to do the right thing.”

In a later email she wrote, “We are so lucky, to have another beautiful, sunny day!” and sent me an anonymous piece that a friend of hers in Germany had sent to her. It started with dolphins returning to Italy’s waterways.

Such reports were rampant on social media. “If there’s a silver lining of the pandemic, people said, this was it — animals were bouncing back, running free in a humanless world,” reported National Geographic. “But it wasn’t real.”

We all need hope in a time like this. And we have, in our midst, plenty of true silver linings — kindnesses like that extended by Gudrun Bellerujeau.

And there is sharing, too, in the universal language of music that transcends national boundaries. My sister last week shared with me a video of members of the Rotterdam Philharmonic in Holland, each of the 19 musicians in his or her own home, playing their parts by video to perform the finale of Beethoven’s 9th.

A piece composed two centuries ago, performed by individuals confined, yet playing together, made “Ode to Joy” soar — the brightest of silver linings. Tears streamed down my face as I listened. I no longer felt alone or isolated but rather a part of the great, throbbing heart of humanity.

— Melissa Hale-Spencer, editor