Life Gone Viral

As the viral life rolls along, new challenges evolve and a new normal might be emerging.

The number one question for me is how long will this last.  While there is no shortage of answers, there is no reliable answer.  This uncertainty has created a unique discomfort.  It feels like we're in a disaster movie, bad things are happening, and we can't tell if this is the first fifteen minutes of the movie or the last fifteen or somewhere in between.  Have we still not reached  the "this is really serious" part, or are we already making great strides to the glorious ending where we defeat the virus?

One of the odd happenings involves several new age versions of the Flying Dutchman.  These are the cruise ships that aren't being allowed to land at any port anywhere because they have or may have infected passengers aboard.  There's a boat in Panama that's been at sea for nearly four weeks, has had four passengers die and is not being allowed to land anywhere. Right now there are at least ten ships and over 10,000 passengers who are stranded at sea around the planet.

Back at home, there are stripes on the floor at the grocery stores.  The stripes are six feet apart and so must you be if you are in line in the store.

Families are having virtual get togethers, using tools like Zoom or group texting.

We have been ordering "to-go" from restaurants that we would normally dine in.  It's not as satisfying for us, the diners, and the restaurants aren't getting any alcohol sales revenue, but we both get partly what we need.

Health clubs and gyms are closed.  People are out walking, just for the sake of walking.   They look a little self conscious, like they have found some primitive lost form of movement.  Dad, did people really used to do this before cars?  Yes, Billy, but only in the city.  We never allowed this in the suburbs.  

No one is commuting, so oil consumption has plummeted and oil prices are lower than equal measures of milk. Cows ahead of dead dinosaurs. Pollution levels have also regressed as a result.

Social distancing is the newly adopted term.  Everyone understands it, most  are even paying attention. "Shelter in place" has also been put into frequent use, but that's the one that was borne in a different catastrophe circumstance, so I have rejected it, preferring "just stay home".

Golf courses are closed.  This is a problem of myopic government, where a walk outside is deemed more threatening to health than sitting around eating and drinking three weeks worth of groceries and beer in an afternoon while simultaneously avoiding fresh air and exercise.

Governor Jay Pritzker waddles out on TV every afternoon to piss me off anew as he blames everyone and anyone (never himself) for whatever the problem of the day happens to be, all the while doing his best to seem genuine.

Many things happening that we never imagined.  

We are under siege. 

Stay safe.  We will prevail.

This Is Not a Drill

The missus, who has always been very encouraging of my efforts at writing, has offered me a suggestion.  Keep a log of what we're experiencing, she said.  This won't last forever, and it will be interesting to be able to look back.

While it won't be as endearing as the accounts of some of our family vacations (like when I referred to an airline ticket agent as a travel nazi, that was a pretty good one), I agree that there may be merit to this exercise, keeping notes of how this thing has rearranged our world.  So, let's review.  First, how did this start?

Apparently the virus was born in China in December, or earlier, as it seems that they didn't respond quickly to contain it. We didn't show too much concern in the beginning, as the numbers grew in Asia and then in Europe.  It was their problem, not ours.  Bad reasoning. Ruh-roh.

Our highly mobile, highly interactive, highly interdependent world meant that the virus would come here, and come here it did  The arithmetic of spreading infectious disease has been a tough lesson. It grows like a wildfire.

The biggest jolt? The economy went from racing speed to sputtering in the blink of an eye.  Layoffs, furloughs, reduced hours, salary cuts...all of them, quickly and harshly.

Food shortages, fortunately brief.  Mimsy placed a big grocery order online and the deliveryman showed up with a single chicken breast -- everything else was out of stock.

The toilet paper issue, ugh.

Bars and restaurants closed.  Slam-bam, closed.  Take out and delivery is the new norm. 

Schools closed.  Spring break has been extended until further notice--or fall.

Theaters closed.

Airlines cutting schedules, cutting, cutting...Borders closed, no travel into or out of countries.  Continents  -- continents! -- closed. 

Offices closed.  Work from home, starting immediately.

Roads are empty.  We do family group texting just to chat.  I staged a virtual board meeting.  Everyone is adapting.  

Sports stopped.  No golf, hockey, whatever the new football league was called, that stopped, no NBA, no March Madness, NASCAR stopped and substituted virtual racing that's pretty cool,  what have I missed?  Baseball didn't start, no opening day this past week.

So far, in our house, the impact has been moderate. We are still working.  We are trying to spend locally to help keep the local economy afloat.

That's the start.  Next posting I'll add more.  If I missed things, let me know and please share your experiences as well.

Amazing times, these.

Cyrus the Virus

There's a lot going on right now in a world in which we must have nothing going on.  I have found it necessary, for my mental health, to limit the inputs from politicians and news outlets. 

For example, the big takeaway by some news outlets from a particularly daunting news conference was that the term "Chinese Virus" is a racial slur.  The stupidity of that reporting is astounding. 

There is a lot to process and report upon without creating issues. The  newsmakers frequently leave me staring in amazement.

Donny keeps veering to superlatives and boundless optimism.  Were I in his position, I would sell optimism, too; perhaps in a bit more reserved fashion. 

NY governor Cuomo is an excellent communicator.  Even as he doles out difficult news, I find it comforting that he is in command of his situation.

Illinois' governor Corpulent Jay the Despot is stunningly insincere and  impresses as frighteningly overmatched by the challenge facing the state.  Even his right decisions are delivered in a manner that makes them feel wrong.

Chicago's mayor, sadly,  has squandered the last bit of hope that I held out for her as good leader, as she and Corpulent Jay daily use only fingers -- and never thumbs-- when explaining why things aren't going well.

John Malkovich was "Cyrus the Virus" in Con Air.
We survived Nicholas Cage's multiple mangled
southern accents in this movie; be proud of your
tenacity and endurance.  

We the people...are handling this situation pretty darn well, in my opinion.  A bit of panic buying and hoarding, but nothing egregious. Congratulations to us!

 Not all of us are making good choices, unfortunately.

A couple of mopes in Arizona heard that chloroquine might be useful in treating the virus and took some to be proactive, to be on the safe side.  Unfortunately...it was a component of aquarium cleaner, so the man croaked and the woman is in dire straits.  They were, undeniably, stupid to the max.  People should not need to be told : Do not ingest aquarium cleaner!   Then again, it wasn't long ago that some of America's future, our best and brightest, were eating Tide pods.

Toilet paper has become headline news and the butt of many bad jokes.  There's another one!

Italy has been devastated by the virus. I'm sorry for that.  Is anyone still upset that we closed our borders so swiftly?

I would like to congratulate the rest of us, once again.  We don't eat strange chemicals or dish soap or do lots of other really dumb stuff and we are all working hard to get through this hardship.   I'll bet most of us didn't stick our fingers in electrical sockets when we were children either. 

Finally, I respectfully suggest you make an effort to do something nice for someone today and every day as this scourge continues.  It will make the beneficiary of your kindness feel better and you will feel better as well.

Better days are ahead.

Lockdown Hobbies

It's a kinda funny word, hobby.

"It's my hobby"

"You need a hobby"

"What hobbies do you have?"

Say it real fast five times in a row and you'll find yourself smiling.  

So while we're all minimizing our physical social intercourse (yeah, I know, some of my intellectual development never progressed past tenth grade), I'm more interested than ever in hobbies.

I don't believe that I have any hobbies.  Having a hobby implies a sustained emotional balance, i.e. doing something for the joy of immersing oneself in the experience (sustained boredom for me).  Collecting stamps would be an example of a hobby.  Sitting there in the evening, wearing a woolen vest, in a musty corner of your creaky old house at your roll top desk with a single light on the desk, holding up a square inch of some semi-rare collectible with a pair of tweezers, peering through your bifocals AND a magnifying glass and grunting in contentment at this particular bit of philatelic minutiae.

No disrespect if this is your happy place, but I decline.  

Back in the day, Cub fans had a Hobbie.

Part of the reason for my emotional rejection of this type of engagement is the obsessive side of my personality.  Should you ask mi esposa, she would likely say that is a side that encompasses about 97% of me.  I gotta mostly do stuff that has winners and losers and boo-yah! moments.  Things that evoke passion and emotion, hitting the adrenalin button.

I can hit total Lite-osity (the marketing guys at Miller Beer created that term a zillion years ago, just for me, I think) by doing the passion zoomy stuff and then backsliding, thereby getting to that level of mindfulness that Stamp Man above reached by staring at his little philatelic ornament, except my route was actually fun. 

BTW, I think numismatics is a cousin of philately.  Just sayin'.

Back at hobbies, upon further review, I may have several, I guess, though they've had to pass through the obsession phase and then settle back...I need to ponder this some more.  This part of the discussion is the gateway to the payoff topic, watching TV during lockdown.

My imagination tends to take control of reality on a pretty regular basis.  I think that skews me toward being eclectic.  Mi esposa suggests that it makes me a nut.

Cruel woman...

These worlds converge when my long standing hobby -- being a hypochondriac -- gets supercharged by the onslaught of TV presentations.  I learned the hard way, some years ago, just how traumatic the journey (everyone has "a journey" these days) can be when we would watch "House", the TV series about the Sherlock Holmes of infectious diseases starring Hugh Laurie.  We'd turn that on and by the end of the show I would be suffering from the symptoms of that week's guest disease, including genetic disorders, chemically induced side effects, all kinds of crazy stuff.  Cruel woman would usually ride to the rescue with a less-than-gentle interlude to her head shaking and derisive laughter, interjecting "you're nuts, I'm going to bed" as her unique and tender way of bringing me back on course.

In light of that ersatz medical history, I have been limiting my COVID-19 updates.  Maybe 'll catch up when they issue a commemorative stamp.

Ethical Journalism is Not a Contemporary Concept

When I was young, I was privileged -- and thrilled -- to have access to great news writers and reporters.  I started reading the Chicago newspapers every day, sometimes two or three different newspapers, when I was six years old!   It was a wonderful experience, a formative experience.

People like Jack Mabley and Mike Royko displayed their talents daily, evaluating and opining on local, national and world events.  I became a devoted reader of sports writers like the great David Condon, Warren Brown and Robert Markus and many others.  Their respective styles illuminated and heightened the reporting and the events that were their focus.

Magazines, omg what a grand treat!  Time, Newsweek, Life, Sports Illustrated...I was in awe of the reporting, the writing, the photography and the editorial presentations.

Journalists shared knowledge, shared opinions, and introduced the people and the circumstances that made the news.  Often, they blew up the facades that had been erected to shape or even conceal the truth.

The people who reported on television were frequently veterans of radio news and the print news world, and they became fixtures in ours lives, in our homes.  The power of their messages was magnified by the immediacy of their medium.  Their reports could arrive within minutes of events.  It was an amazing evolution.

One element that they all seem to have shared was a sense of the responsibility to report in an evenhanded fashion, an awareness that the event or events were the focus, and they were the conduit to the public.  They seemed to me to prize their respective and collective integrity.  That integrity was the backbone, the foundation, of their ability to be trusted as reporters to the world.

I have outlined this because I have just finished watching, at noon on this day, the President's news conference.  Our nation and the world is under siege as it has not been before in my lifetime.  The situation is fluid and evolving at great speed.  There is no template to follow to know how to react.  The President and the people who have been called upon to respond and protect us are challenged in a unique and enormous manner.

These news conferences are live on TV and radio and the internet.  The questions posed by the reporters are the keys to our learning about the developments and the actions -- and the thought processes -- of the people in charge of our national well being.

So I watched in amazement as one reporter became shrill and strident in asking why someone in the administration, and by association, the President, used the term "Chinese virus".  The reporter went on to suggest --stopping short, barely, of accusing-- that this was a racial slur. 

Another reporter picked up the same questioning minutes later, wanting answers to the perceived racism inherent in addressing the issue.

Yet another reporter demanded to know if we should expect virus cases to increase 10% every 12 hours -- because the count, somewhere, went from 100 to 110 cases overnight.  The obvious arithmetic of compounding, based on a tiny data sample, seeking to extrapolate it into an even worse scenario than we are all experiencing.

The economy of USA and the world is in a meltdown as COVID-19 explodes.  Every resource available everywhere is being deployed by governments and industry across the globe to fight the disease, protect the populace and try to preserve our economic well being.

If ever there was a time for insightful questioning, if ever there was a time to demand answers, this is it.

That does not, in my view, include self-serving "look at me", off topic, nonsense questions that must be given due thought and response, lest that be inferred as yet another offense.  These questions aren't being posed by reporters of the talent and integrity that the task and the profession demands, and the "sanctity of journalism" argument that is used as a justification for this asinine behavior is a further mockery of the dedication and greatness of those men and women who set the standards for ethical and responsible journalism.

We must be vigilant in the pursuit of the truth. 

Sadly, that has come to include appraising the intentions of those who represent to us that they are seekers of truth.