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A penny for your thoughts.

Smiling Again

Amongst the flood of bad news comes a smidgen of good ones, small victories, and it happened today.  I had read last week that a store was implementing a system to keep covid cross contamination to the strictest minimum in the worse case, or to zero for the best scenario. Customers will be checked for temperature before entering the store, masks will be required, shields are placed at the cashier and one way aisles indicated around the store so shoppers do not cross path. I suspect the others stores will have to follow. I would do my shopping there before going in a store not taking the same precautions. That’s good news, although some folks are pushing against rules and recommendations, for fear of been robbed of their personal right, and will be reticent to comply. I am particularly happy today because I am having an intelligent discussion about that dilemma on a social platform. My position is that every citizens have a right, but it does not comes free. To enjoy those rights citizens also have responsibilities. It’s called civic duty. After a bit of back and forth, I used the Blitzkrieg and England in World War Two, when citizens were asked to blacken their windows and dim the lights at night so German bombers would have a hard time finding the towns and targets. Folks did that, they were not saying “the heck with it, it’s my right to not do it, I’ll keep the lights on and screw the rest of the town, let’s the bombs fall”. He liked the analogy but was still concerned about individual rights, thinking they would be eroded and eventually be stripped away once the problem is gone. I said I understood the fear of government overreaching, but with a Supreme Court leaning right, I don’t think anyone should have any worries that the liberties granted by the constitution would be stripped away overnight. I would be more worried about a leader claiming powers he does not legally possess during a national crisis that is still running its course. So yes, our war is different, but now our war is against a new disease, silent, invisible and extremely deadly, a virus that is spreading fast and furious and will continue to spread if mitigating measures are not taken now. With rights come responsibilities, when a law to keep a virus from killing people is enacted, all citizens should follow and work together to defeat it. Responsibilities trumps rights.
I take advantage of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website that as a taxpayer, I also own, to post this paragraph along with my social media answers on civic duty:

“Below you will find several rights and responsibilities that all citizens should exercise and respect. Some of these responsibilities are legally required of every citizen, but all are important to ensuring that America remains a free and prosperous nation. “

Information for New Citizens.

Rights

Responsibilities

  • Freedom to express yourself.
  • Freedom to worship as you wish.
  • Right to a prompt, fair trial by jury.
  • Right to vote in elections for public officials.
  • Right to apply for federal employment requiring U.S. citizenship.
  • Right to run for elected office.
  • Freedom to pursue “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
  • Support and defend the Constitution.
  • Stay informed of the issues affecting your community.
  • Participate in the democratic process.
  • Respect and obey federal, state, and local laws.
  • Respect the rights, beliefs, and opinions of others.
  • Participate in your local community.
  • Pay income and other taxes honestly, and on time, to federal, state, and local authorities.
  • Serve on a jury when called upon.
  • Defend the country if the need should arise.

That’s what candidates for naturalization are given along with booklets telling about laws and other needed informations one would need to pass the exam to become a United States citizen. When I was naturalized (sounds like some medical metamorphosis, I would like Americanized better), the office of naturalizations gave me booklets to read and learn. They were cliff notes of American history, the Constitution, the laws, and your rights and obligation as a citizen. Declaring allegiance to the United States, I was told by the interviewer in charge of accepting me as a citizen, meant that I had to abandon any title of nobility and any allegiance to another country and swear upon it. I do not have much recollection of the exam but I passed. I am now Americanized, and as a citizen of the United States,  I relish my Rights and accept my Responsibilities.

Puccini’s La Rondine is playing, the setting is Paris Art Deco, the flappers era, with all the appropriate costumes and painted sets. Nicely done, reminder of places I visited before, a restaurant above Gare de Lyon, a Paris train station where the trains to South of France leave several times a day. Outside, the tree is very slow to give us a show, the buds are a plenty but taken a long time to bloom fully.

The days pass and we are getting almost comfortable in our routines, sleeping is another story as the lack of exercise leaves our bodies less fatigued. As usual, I open my eyes around five thirty most morning. I try to convince myself that it’s too early and succeed, from time to time, to go back foe a bit more snoozing. Covid is so much present that it’s also in my dreams. Covid flushes out the real characters of well known and until now well like folks like the host of a tv show, who is said to have a network of half a billions dollars, whose income last year was eighty millions. She employs over thirty people for producing the show, they were left in the dark for at least two weeks without news of their employs since been furloughed, finally told their paychecks will be sixty percent less during the lockdown time. To add insult to injury, the show’s recurring theme is “love” and the motto is “ be kind”. Other tv show stars are paying crews out of pocket, showing a real understanding of what it is to be kind. News about lockdown deniers, influenced by networks loyal to the president and the right wing of the Republican Party, are coming in faster and is taking root in the “freedom fighter” groups, the maga hats wearer, encouraged by some politicians, even by a tea party favorite, who had been infected with covid and recovered. Some other politician, also on the right, posed in the Capitol Rotunda for a public relation photograph wearing a n95 mask, improperly placed upside down on his face, and pushing for the reopening of the country. Cruise ships companies were hit hard in February by covid but it did not stop them from cruising until March and resulting to more than 1,500 positive infections and at least 39 fatalities. One of the large box store club, reticent to apply safety measures for workers, kept a sick employee working with the public, a negligence that resulted in her death two days after her last time at work. She did not die alone, she also infected her sister and her mother, all sharing the same apartment, and alas sharing the same fate. A nursing home in New Jersey, afraid to attract the authorities attention, kept their deceased occupants in a makeshift morgue consisting of a box truck, for days. The facility house five hundred residents of which one hundred are infected with covid and thirty nine have died.

I could go on and on, one horror story after the other, stories of preventable death that should not go unpunished, in the best of worlds. Stories of debased humanity and selfishness. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of untold stories as well, there are folks dying alone in their homes, forgotten until found, stories about wasted lives and lost opportunities to minimize the deathly toll covid is piling up.

Of course, a lot of the deaths could have been prevented if the country had been placed in an active alert mode, but the pushback by the president, egged on by the most conservative politicians and right wing talk shows pundits, and by corporations looking at the bottom line and seeing it getting further down into the red, kept most the country in a business as usual attitude, wasting precious time while covid keeps on spreading.

Today, April 17, over a month after our self imposed lockdown, the CDC informs us that:

  • Total cases: 632,548 (632,220 confirmed; 348 probable)
  • Total deaths: 31,071 (26,930 confirmed 4,141 probable

On the CDC the small red dots on the United States map are getting larger and darker everyday. Texas is now a dark red spot, together Florida and California. When one factors in the early precautions California has taken and still apply after a month of lockdown, I fear for the safety of its citizens, and for the pandemic to spread quickly. To make the situation worse, the leaders of the two states are not only leaning toward the deniers,  with lackadaisical attitudes and lackluster actions, with the Texas DHSH website finally showing proper etiquette and means of protection, after clicking a link to a child page, under the fold. Again, shouldn’t this information be the first thing folks see when they go to the website? The Governors who want the country opened as soon as possible are part of the problem, are the least aggressive on prevention and they are enabling covid to flourish. It defies common sense to risk citizen’s’ lives for political ideology and loyalty to a leader who is waffling, shuffling his feet and babbling at a podium about executives or corporations, loudly naming them for this or that “great thing” they agreed to do to fight the pandemic, only to hear from the same executives and corporations the very next day, that they had no idea what he was talking about, having received a vague memo from the White House, only a couple of hours before the announcement. Most folks are baffled by some happening at the White House, where truckers and a few executives of trucking companies were invited together with big rigs of the country’s major shipping companies, and where the four truck drivers were presented with gold keys. Nobody really knows why the gold keys. When asked, a spokesman for the White House elaborated: “The key was a memento from the president to the drivers to mark the occasion and to thank them for their amazing work on behalf of all Americans.”  Knowing the president’s well documented love for gold, I am not surprise about the gold part, the key part is anyone’s guess. Wouldn’t it be nice if the keys were cast in solid gold, it would be an unexpected perk for the drivers, with spot price for gold over $1500, it would make for a useful stash if the industry suffers so much from covid that they find themselves unemployed. But knowing about previous history about the master of the Art of the Deal, I would not be surprised if they were made of fool’s gold. And news that only the top and middle earners in the industry have received stimulus money before it ran out, leaving thousands of small trucking companies and freelance drivers with their own rigs out of luck, may put truckers jobs in limbo. There were no mention of help for them at that photo opportunity  in the gardens of the White House. The propaganda machine churns its banners, conservative media extolling the virtues, without or barely mentioning the keys, or the lack of funding.

Our Mayor likes the suggestion I mentioned, and agreed it would be beneficial to inform the public. The last answer from the Mayor:

”Thank you for the suggestion………..I’ll add the message to the City’s Webpage too. Hoping you are being safe and staying healthy.”

I am glad our Mayor is taking steps that will enable us citizens to be informed on the proper way for each to minimize exposure to a silent killer, I wish other town leaders would follow her initiative. In our new world ruled by covid, we need leaders who are pro-active on precautionary steps to encourage the prevention of spreading the disease.
Unfortunately, good news fade fast to give way to unsettling and saddening news. The smile on my face is quickly erased to the new deaths numbers in Connecticut.

In my beautiful state, covid killed over 1000 people so far.

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A penny for your thoughts.

The Covid Dare

Rossini Le Comte Ory is our entertainment today and it’s French so if I concentrate a bit, I can understand some. But just the sound of singers and the music is enough for me. I noticed a prop that had been used in another production, a tall wooden self standing step ladder. I learned something new, I noticed an actress was playing a male role and pointed it to Carolle. Yes she said, she is “playing the pants” an expression used in theater. Another jeopardy answer to remember. It’s a farcical comic opera, with the usual disguise trick without anyone noticing. The singing is brilliant and it’s a pleasure sitting back and listening. The aria to wine, performed by male actors disguised as nuns is hilarious and the scene goes on to be even funnier.

This morning Carolle went to do laundry and I vacuumed the whole loft carefully. That was a good exercise and a great distraction from covid and the worries. I chastised Carolle when she came back a couple of hours later, for not wearing her mask in the short hallway and the court yard leading to the parking lot. She left with it on the way out but forgot to wear it on the way back. I understand, it’s difficult to self discipline, it’s actually in general, easier for her than for me. I have to remind myself constantly to keep my hands away from my face, something everyone is inclined to do so many times a minute. Health experts think the handshake is on its last leg, the bisou, familiar to European folks greeting each other with a kiss on the cheek, is on the extinction list. Yes covid is a social behavior wrecker.

We woke up with a surprise. April is giving us the snow we barely got all winter, covering the ground with a couple of inches and a whitening of the trees outside our windows. Fortunately, the warm weather melted the snow quickly, a good thing for the bloom already started as they are susceptible to cold temperature. The full bloom we are expecting will happen, just like covid will be defeated, eventually.
But the victory is nowhere in sight. The lockdown protesters have a champion in the White House, and he is vocal. The last message from the president to his base is inciting them to break the states law and revolt. When one sees armed men gathering to the states Capitol of any state, to protest the government’s actions during thus pandemic, the message is clear. Inciting riots is against the law for anyone, and promoting it is a felony, this found on Findlaw :

Rioting and Inciting to Riot: Punishments and Protections

The federal crime of rioting is punishable by fines, imprisonment for up to five years, or both.”

How is the president’s abetting his base helping the country in the fight against covid? It obviously does not and it’s an extremely dangerous turn in our democracy. One has to look hard in our country’s history to find any other instance of such extreme announcement by a president. A search for “president inciting riots” does not have any mention of another president inciting rioting. Three pages down on search engines, only one is mentioned, and not only on this occasion but also in 2018 and other times, and it’s our presiding leader.
Of course, when he says in all caps “LIBERATE” this or that state on social platforms, the message to the far right extremists is clear, “aux armes citoyens”, form your bataillons, use your power to overcome an oppressive government, make your individual rights be respected, ignore your civic duty and take over this oppressive government so you can impose my will. Where are we going to do with a leader inciting revolution?
This morning I went shopping for two electrical outlets that needed to replace old ones. The large diy store near me did not inspire safety but I went in anyway. The scene in the parking lot was a preview of what was happening in the store. In the parking lot, a customer chewing the fat with the employee in charge of gathering carts, none of the two guys wearing masks and definitely not keeping distances. Entering the store, I see a half dozen people gathered by the cashier, in close contact, a mix of shoppers and employees, one with a mask on, the other with her mask below the chin, I didn’t notice masks on the shoppers. All of them grouped way too close for safety. I passed the group taking as much distance as I could manage and made my way to the electrical aisles following the blue tape on the floor. Then I remembered that I did not like the brand this store carried, because the brand name is engraved on the face of the items, an advertisement that I did not need. Beside, the intaglios is a dirt catcher, which is worse than just the esthetic reason. So I turned around and went up hill to the other diy store. I was pleased to see that store’s effort to comply with recommendations. The store has a line to enter with signs asking customers to comply with safe distancing, most of the customers are masked and the line flows rather quickly, there may have been a dozen shoppers on line but within a few minutes I was inside. I was pleased to see that at least some managers are taking care and are aware of the dangers covid presents. Checking out was behind a plexiglass shield, the cashier had a mask on. I saw a majority of employees wearing masks, but some were not and inside the store a few did not, including the couple wandering around the aisles.

Carolle was watching Madame Butterfly, the Opera by Puccini, when I got back. I am pushing back on the social platform against the same people the president is egging on, probably not a smart move if there is an uprising, but they have to be countered otherwise they will become the louder voice. They are mostly insulting the opposite party’s members and smearing them as well, making up stuff. It’s rather amusing to counter their propaganda, sometimes with simple facts that they can’t refute, but it’s also very tiring. The good part is, once in a while, one participant is willing to discuss the topic at hand intelligently, without all caps, and that’s an iota of hope around a sea of negativity.

It’s a sad day when Italy declares “only” 483 deaths today, as if it was a number to be glad about. Spain has buried 20,231 covid dead, New York counts 17,610 people who have succumbed to the virus. One headline today sums the gravity of the epidemic “Reported US coronavirus deaths hit a record one-day total of 4,591 in 24 hours on Thursday”.
The global number of infection has risen to 2,317,759, 738,830 in the USA, globally 159,512 deaths have been recorded, of those 39,014 died in our country. And the president is pushing to terminate lockdowns, encouraging public gatherings, flaunting all recommendations from health experts. It’s hard not to feel depressed when such abandonment of common sense is displayed by the person in charge of making decisions. We went to sleep expecting to rise with more bad news.

Yesterday snow, today a sunny Sunday morning does feel like any other days, and so does the news, unfortunately. The protests against lockdown are growing, and even though the protesters are a minority, their voices are loud, amplified by the presidents calls for “liberation”, whatever he means by that. I am starting to think like some folks on social medias. The idea is, the more this folks mingle elbow to elbow, the more covid will spread among them. It’s hard not to wish it on them. We will know in the next couple of weeks how many of these freedom protesters have become infected. Should they get ventilators, should they get full medical attention, they will. But would they deserve it? There was a woman with her seven years old home schooled daughter at one of the protest, exposing both to a deadly virus. How irresponsible is that, what sort of parenting is it when you place your child in grave danger. A divorced doctor lost custody her child, the judge deciding that her occupation was endangering the safety of the child because of the mother constant exposure to covid. It’s a topsy turvy world when covid is around and when have we hear a president screaming disobedience together with harangue to his followers to protect their rights to bear arms in the same breath?

Our holier than thou vp was on the tv asked about testing among only a few questions because he had the stage and milked the propaganda without really answering the question, instead, the whole exercise was to extol the president’s virtues at combating covid. The whole tirades were just vomits of canned scripts, incessantly trumpeted by a so called “Christian“, all with a straight face and an American flag pin label on the lapel. I know atheists with more Christian blood than the voice has in his veins.

That was not a pleasant way to start a day, and after a that disappointing experience it was time to take some fresh air, literally, and try to get the stank of the vp’s propaganda out of our heads. We took the wood path to the end and went wandering trough the streets, passing an abandoned church and seemingly vacant building detached, a fairly large two story structure possibly used as a small school associated to the church. We have many empty buildings in a town and we also have folks without a roof. There ought to be a way to house them, in the greatest country in the world.

The administration is pushing for reopening the economy, projecting ideas that the worse is over, and lying or twisting figures for convenience. Sunday afternoon, while we watched Adriana Lecouvreur, an opera in four acts by Francesco Cilea, the number of deaths climbed to more than 41,370 American. Worldwide, 165,630 people have died as a result of covid, 100,000 in Europe alone. The figures are climbing, here in the USA, a couple of thousand people died in twenty four hours, and some communities are seeing a surge in infections. The numbers are high in Europe, even though a total shutdown is still in effect, and they are still climbing, the infection line on the graph is still almost perpendicular, showing no sign of plateauing. Reopening our country after a disorderly and partial lockdown is unwise at best and probably suicidal for some folks, considering that testing is still sporadic. The administration knows it’s taking a gamble on people’s life and death. Where is the conscience of the Right to Life and anti abortion politicians? When it concerns laborers, blue and white collars, first responders and the rest of the citizenry, their right to life dies not matter anymore, as long as the dollar machine is greased and running, who cares! Is that what you call Christian spirit mr vp?
Governors are livid at the president lying about having enough tests, and even more furious about his last antics of inciting insurgency with calls an appeals to the most extreme segment of our society.

He is telling us it’s time to reopen, that the worse has past, we are done with covid, and his base take it as gospel. The last president who told us “Mission accomplished “ made a small miscalculation, dragging us in a war that we are still fighting. Incidentally, the same folks who applauded the war are the same right wing protesters who are supporting the president on his call to reopen the country, with chants of ‘”health” does not supersede my right’, ‘Freedom over fear’, and ‘I would rather risk coronavirus than socialism’’.
Finally, wearing masks is mandatory in public in Connecticut, some people are not going to like that. A libertarian leaning lawyer is suing our governor over it, his rational: “order of wearing a mask pushed him to the edge”. He does not see the edge of the cliff covid is pushing us over, would you choose this attorney to counsel you?

 

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A penny for your thoughts.

Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens Died today April 21, in 1910, over hundred years ago. If he was alive today Mark Twain would be totally immersed in the covid saga. It would not have been his first pandemic, in fact he wrote about his experience in Germany.
According to Wikipedia:
”American author Mark Twain, an avid traveler, visited Hamburg during the cholera outbreak, and he described his experience in a short, uncollected piece dated “1891–1892”. Therein, he notes alarmingly the lack of information in Hamburg newspapers about the cholera event, particularly death totals. He also criticizes the treatment of the poor, as many, Twain says, were getting “snatched from their homes to the pest houses”, where “a good many of them … die unknown and are buried so”. (Blount, Roy K. (2010). A tramp abroad ).
Twain concludes by lamenting the lack of awareness worldwide, especially in America.”

In the The Innocents Abroad, Chapter XXX, he paints a portrait of Napoli and its inhabitants that would be less than politically correct today, but worth reading if one wants to understand why epidemics rage against elbow to elbow gatherings. Mr. Twain did not think twice about breaking a quarantine in Greece, to visit the Parthenon under moonlight  clandestinely, after bribing the guards, almost getting picked up by the police.
The international cholera pandemic Mark Twain experienced lasted fifteen years and killed over a million people. Still, the same resistance to civic duty flourished then as it does in our pandemic.
An article published in the New York Times in 1893, during the cholera pandemic, describes in bloody details the mobs protesting the health measures:

”HAMBURG, Oct. 10.—Another fatal riot occurred last night in St. Pauli, a suburb of this city, growing out of the attempts of the sanitary officers to enforce the regulations for the prevention of the spread of cholera. As in the previous riot, when a policeman was brutally kicked and stamped to death, the scene of last night’s trouble was in one of the districts of the village inhabited entirely by the poor and ignorant classes, who seem to have a horror of being compelled to observe cleanliness and the ordinary sanitary regulations. When the sanitary officers attempted to put extraordinary regulations enforced trouble at once resulted. The sanitary officers were accompanied by a number of policemen, but the presence of the latter had no deterrent effect upon the violence of the mob that quickly gathered when it became known that the officers were about. The mob made a descent in force upon the police, stoning them and using clubs. The policemen were unable to quell the rioting; in fact, they could make no attempt to do so, being compelled to fight desperately to protect themselves from the fury of the rioters. While some of the mob thus engaged the police, others devoted themselves to a furious onslaught upon the sanitary officers. One of the latter was captured by the crowd. His comrades could make no attempt to rescue him, as they had all they could do to defend themselves. The officer in the hands of the mob was struck on the head with a large stone and knocked, to the ground. Then the mob jumped on him and kicked him about the head and body until life was extinct. In the meantime the crowd had succeeded in knocking a policeman down, and he, too, soon met his death, the rioters kicking his face until it was a pulp. Even after he was dead some of the mob danced upon his body. The fight was waged desperately, with the odds in favor of the mob, when a detachment of troops, who had been hastily dispatched to the scene, arrived. The officer in command ordered the mob to disperse, but it paid no attention to the command, and continued its attack upon the policemen and sanitary officers. An order was given for the troops to fix bayonets, and when the gleaming steel blades were fastened to the muzzles of the rifles, the soldiers were ordered to charge the mob.
With bayonets lowered, they moved forward on the double quick, and the rioters, seeing a bristling wall of steel advancing upon them, attempted to disperse in short order. They ran in every direction, save in the direction of the troops, and disappeared in alleyways and the doorways of the tumble-down tenements with which the district is filled. Many of them, however, were not quick enough to escape the police, who began to chase them the moment they saw the crowd beginning to break up. At least a dozen of the mob were arrested. The bodies of the policeman and sanitary office; were taken to the police station. Since Oct. 6 there have been reported at Grimsby, Lincolnshire, five cases of choleraic disorders. Two deaths from the same cause have occurred there since the date mentioned.”

I’m sure Queen Victoria did not encourage the Grimsby, Lincolnshire populace to revolt against the town elders’s measures to fight cholera. If a real Queen would not do it, why should a wanna be king do it?

Carolle is watching Der Rosenkavalier. The comic opera by Richard Strauss has the familiar disguise trick with a twist, the young lover part is a pant role (in the later interview backstage “trousers” was used instead of “pants”), who disguise “himself” as a maid to confuse a rival. Opera never ceases to amaze me, it really brings one to alternate reality, something dearly needed these days. Before she settled I changed the two old outlets by the kitchen counter. I was surprised to see that they were two different lines, each with its own breaker. Not that it changed anything, but with only twelve inches between the two, it seemed redundant. The first part of the job was the hardest and most frustrating, with the top retaining screw of each cover stuck in the outlets. The bottom screw were fine and a couple of screwdriver turns did the trick, but the top ones took ten minutes of my time. Mind you, I have adequate tools, so the problem was not the tools. After two or three turns of the screw driver, the screw froze and refuse to move further until I applied pliers to it, it took a couple of minutes each screw. When I finally extracted the nuisance it came clear that the screw did not come from the manufacturer, longer and with a different thread, it had been forced in and jammed tight for the next guy to deal with. As it turns out, I was the chump.

The markets are open today and US oil prices plunged falling below $0 a barrel. I assume that people are not driving as much because of the covid restrictions. I can only imaging the phone calls from the oil industry’s big wigs to the White House, crying that they are too big to fail. In the meantime folks are still trying to secure loans to save their businesses. In a good and inspiring gesture towards fairness, one of the large New York restaurant chain with more than 500 employees is giving back the 10 millions stimulus check they had received. Their numbers of employees technically above the quota. Another company in the same bracket has not returned the 20 millions they received. A bit of hope amongst all the discouraging news assaulting us daily, hope that there will be enough of these loop holes loans returned to the proper beneficiaries. Only a president can do that, if not congress should. We will see were greed leads us. I searched online for “Mark Twain & greed”, curious about what our famous Dead of the Day thought about “greed”. This one sums it up for me:

“A little more kindness, A little less speed, A little more giving, A little less greed, A little more smile, A little less frown, A little less kicking, A man while he’s down, A little more “We”, A little less “I”, A little more laugh, A little less cry, A little more flowers, On the pathway of life, And fewer on graves, At the end of the strife.”
Mark Twain

Double checking on the veracity of that quote and the tie to Twain, I found the same quote, verbatim, in a 1924 issue of the The Conductor and Brakeman, Volume 41, page 464, credited to E. J. Stiles, Southern Labor Review, and under the banner “What the Brotherhood Members Should Practice”. A pardonable plagiarism, when a bit of research shed light on the possible culprit. There is a E. J. Stiles found in Civil War records, enlisted in 1865 in the Missouri Confederate Army, Third Battalion, Infantry, P-Y, Third and Fifth (Consolidated) Infantry. If he enlisted at twenty in 1865, or perhaps even younger as the military was always looking for warm bodies to feed the carnage, he would have been no older than seventy-nine in 1924, the years of publication of the trade union magazine. The old man must have been moved by it. It would not be surprising for someone, who may have witnessed brothers in arms slaughtering other brothers arms in the killing fields, to have adopted that Mark Twain quote. Even if he was never at the front, a possibility in view of the late enlisting date, the magnitude of the desolation was his daily panorama, the disfigured and dismembered survivors burying their dead while the town was burning. Is this what our president wishes for?
Not if our Governors have any say in it, and they are not backing down, that’s the good news. The bad news is, our state is in the mist of the president’s calls to insurrection with protesters brandishing “My body my choice” signs. It’s the same folks denying women their choice for their bodies, treating women like vessels to carry babies for their religious agenda but taking no responsibility as a society, to ensure that the child is fed, housed or that the mother can provide for it while having to work as soon as possible after giving birth. The hypocrisy stinks to high heaven! So far only seven states have mandated wearing a mask in public gatherings, the folks pushing against that mandate should think about the parents of the five year old girl, the daughter of a First Responder, who died on a ventilator, nursed by a helpless and distressed human been dressed in a hazmat suit. With no human warmth and comfort, can anyone imagine the fear this poor child must have experienced, the only contact with her loving parents through bandwidth. It’s not a question, when the resistance brandish slogans like “My body, my right”, they should be told ‘what if she was your child’, or your brother or sister’s child, or spouse, wouldn’t you want to do anything in your power to make sure they don’t catch covid?

I keep on checking the town official site only to find it unchanged, I have the feeling that I was told of changes just to shut me up, that obviously would be a mistake, as I plan to be vocal about it and press further for action. I am firmly convinced that I am doing the right thing, to ask that town officials inform and educate citizens while explaining what’s at stake. Information is the most important weapon against covid and the most important figure in a small town, is the mayor. It’s the person citizens go to when in trouble, they to Town Hall. They go to pay taxes, get permits or announce events, it’s the center of a town life. A detailed message with recommendations from the mayor on the first page would make an impression on people, perhaps then, would they take the pandemic seriously and start protecting themselves and others from catching covid. I have a hard time understanding why that would not be a benefit to the community. Unless of course, politics are involved. If that’s the reason, I’d like to know what politics have to do in a state of siege, because, like it or not, that’s where we are now, in fact, isolated and deprived of liberties, not by another human, but by the vicious covid virus.

 

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A penny for your thoughts.

The Mask

I picked up a discarded mask laying on the parking lot’s asphalt top. It had been there overnight and I saw it on the same spot today. After going to the loft for proper protection, rubber gloves, something I rarely use, relying now mostly on washing hands instead, or viricide if soap and water is unavailable. But the necessity of gloves was necessary for the task, I use a mask stepping out of the front door of the loft religiously and without thinking, it has become a part of my wardrobe. So equipped, I grabbed a plastic container from our recycle bin and went on my way to carefully collect the offending mask. After placing it in the container, I disposed of it, together with the gloves, it the appropriate trash bin. It’s my good deed of the day, a small gesture without little consequence, and I felt good vibes from it. Carolle is online trying to buy coffee filters. Apparently, there is a shortage of coffee filters, and if I had to bet, masks have a play in it. I doubt folks are drinking more coffee, specially when they are told to stay confined. Not that coffee consumption has declined, as I’m sipping a cup now, one of our daily diet, but some folks may not want to be energized when there is little to do. Unless the recent uprising is comprised of people so pumped up on caffeine that their energy is turning them into violent thugs, from all the coffee they drink. Doubtful, they are only a minority. The good thing now, something those thugs have miscalculated, is that there is so many clear images of all of them, that, for sure, they are catalogued in a government database. It’s inevitable with the face recognition system the world has adopted and it’s ironical that a group of folks intent on breaking the government to ‘regain their freedom’, and breaking the law all the while, would assemble like pins in bowling alleys, to be identified and prosecuted, worse, to be declared a home terrorist group, and loose all liberties. Perhaps that’s what the president has in plan. In any case, I’m pretty sure the protesters will be watched closely. They should all have worn  masks, one of the mandate some were protesting against. Mark Twain would have made some humorous remark on the protesters and their mottos and banners, and the nonsensical messages they convey.  He would have found the whole affair ridiculous and fertile with anecdotes, albeit the seriousness of covid, to spin yarn onstage in his one man shows around the world. He would have been very distraught as well, furthering his dim view of humanity in general.
The Opera today is another Richard Strauss work, Elektra adapted from Sophocles, a Greek tragedy involving untimely death and despair. Compared to that, our lives are pretty rosy, or it was before covid descended on us. Our stimulus check from the government has not arrived. Carolle says she will start a GoFundMe for our local food bank and use the money as a seed. I’m not sure that I can give the whole amount, but I can make a contribution. That’s if we get any money, we should as we are below the limit, but who knows. I only believe I ’have’ money when it’s in the bank, learning from the experiences of having made or sold stuff and never been paid, that promises are cheap, specially when they are never kept. We will see if the promises of adequate testing for covid are kept, but so far, what we see from our confinement, is utter confusion, litanies of statements often refuted by health experts, while governors are scrambling to keep their citizens safe and try to restart business. I suspect that we will see a second wave of infections in the coming weeks. I want very much to be wrong about that, it would make me extremely happy to have erred on that assumption, my humble ego would not be chattered. But I would be surprised, specially if travel resumes and folks think they can move freely. Would New York want visitors from states that still have a covid problem, without properly testing the visitors? Should only people who have been tested negative be allowed on planes or other means of transportation?

Unfortunately we don’t hear much about details and although some states are syndicating, there is no coordinated central effort, and while those states have taken measures to combat covid, others are anxious to reopen the economy, tossing aside the health risk and hoping for the best. The gamble could undermine the work done in the lockdown states if covid is allowed to travel. Imagine the Apprentice on a grand scale, the United States Of America is the stage, the States are the players and we are collateral. And the show host is passing the blame.

Thirty five people died in one nursing home in our state, twenty six in only one week. The facility was vigilant, checking workers for signs of contamination and careful about cleaning, but perhaps too late to stop covid from spreading. At least four news reporters have gotten sick with covid, First responders, some complaining lack of protection at work, are also catching the virus. The death toll in Connecticut is approaching 1500 and there are 20,000 confirmed infected folks. Country wide, the number of death is over 45,000, with 824,00 covid patients. There is no good news on the spread of the virus, for now, it’s part of our lives.

The economy’s near future is in serious jeopardy, a problem made worse by the flagrant greed exposed during the distribution of the PPP money. The details are in the news and have been checked, trickery was used for the large corporations to syphon a big part of the money to their coffers. And people wonder how we have gotten ourselves into that quick sand, when the answer is right in front of everyone’s eyes, today, as covid flushes out the generosity and the greed, it’s evident generosity did not place us in the situation we are facing today. Greed takes the blame, sometimes masked as benevolence by the propaganda machines, but greed is the culprit.
We see it now with the PPP program when corporations worth billions of dollars are using loopholes to grab as much wealth as they can while the small businesses, the heart of or economy, are left with an empty purse. There lays the source of our problems, the road of this brand of capitalism is plagued with potholes and has led us dangerously close to the cliff. We don’t need socialism, in fact it’s already here in one form or another, we need a better capitalism with a better distribution of money.
First pay folks living wages and provide universal healthcare, notice that there is no reported food lines in Europe like there are here. It goes hand in hand with the lack or underfunded social services in the USA. Adding insult to injury, the money is sucked by the runaway capitalists, aided by the government in generous tax breaks gifts. The solution is simple, scrap this capitalist system working for the few privileged and replace it with a capitalism that benefits all. Greed is not in our country’s interest, it undermines our social fabric.
Twenty years into our millennium and our system of capitalism is still anchored in the twentieth century. Hopefully, our kids will boot it out soon when they see the poisoned fruit their elders left them with. It’s in their interest, for their society’s future, and for their own well been.
I am afraid the calls to reopen the country is more linked to greed than to necessity, the irony is that it probably will not work. Covid is now scaring people, I may be overly cautious but I don’t see myself out of lockdown for at least another month. My trips to restaurants will only be memories until an efficient medication or a vaccine is developed.

Today is Earth Day. Carolle marched at the first one, in New York City, fifty years ago in 1970. I remember a customer coming to the store we had downtown, her and her late husband had a shoe store in Greenwich Village, during the march, and she told us about selling a lot of ‘earth shoes’ at that same time. It had been three decades but the two of them remembered the large crowds and the significance of the event. Fifty years later, our president is doing his best to walk back on conservation and preservation efforts erasing safeguards to protect nature and people, all in the name of greed. One step forward, two steps backwards, Sisyphus is dangerously close to ground level.

The sun has come back this morning and the tree outside our widow is showing more bloom, not peeking yet but putting on a better show. April can bring strange weather patterns, today, Mother Nature sent us flurries together with rays of sunshine. It lasted only a few minute but the white blossoms of our tree and the white flakes seemed to work in unison to add to the confusion, making the scene an optical illusion of blossoms floating towards the blue sky. Mother Nature is playful on this Earth Day and the spectacle lifted my spirit.
After watching La Tosca, another Puccini Opera where the main characters die in surprisingly quick deaths, we took a walk that was shorten by the cool air pushed sporadically by the breeze. The sun on our shoulders was not enough to keep us comfortably warm,  had we not been walking, the shadowed part of the sidewalk with a noticeable drop in temperature would have felt like winter was still with us, that’s the weather in New England. We both wore masks and it helped keep our faces warm, a small perk for a rather annoying obligation in the days of covid.
The weather kept us inside for a couple of days and I have not gone grocery shopping in a week. I suspect we will be fine for a few more days. Carolle has bouts of cabin fever, and our walks are an important routine to attenuate the feelings of imprisonment we all experience. To keep an illusion of normality, we dress everyday, make the bed everyday and have kept our meal schedule unchanged from the time before covid. The discipline seems to work and the days past without too much changes from our ordinary life. The thought is a bit unsettling, probably placing us squarely in the boring folks section of the population spectrum. The motto “better bored than dead” fits perfectly for curing cabin fever, and we are intent to stay alive and working hard at it.
As the day fades, new figures from the covid Pandemic in the USA are posted online,
covid-19 cases total: 802,583,

covid-19 deaths total: 44,575

There is no way to mask the tragedy.

 

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A penny for your thoughts.

Have a Cigar

Covid has a way to surprise us daily and if it wasn’t for the reality of it, one could find humor in our predicament. We hear and see leading proponents of the magic potion our President was promoting, the drug with a name no one can pronounce, backpedaling at Olympic speed, to refute its benefit.  The President, after pushing for the reopening of States, reprimands a republican governor for declaring he would reopen his state.  A political volte-face, a tool to deny accusations of having enticed militias and citizens to disobey governor’s authority? Another tragicomic episode of the Apprentice displayed on national news.

A southern newspaper in France reported that only 5% of hospitalizations due to covid were smokers, and studies are been done now with nicotine patches. For something that usually kills you to develop into a life saver is a though concept to grasp, an alternate reality, a macabre Russian roulette each and everyone is faced with since covid took over our daily lives. The old magazine advertisings with the good doctor encouraging smoking, before tobacco ads were verboten, may be revived. Think of the money tobacco companies could rake in, forget the death warnings printed on the pack, all replaced with the product’s benefit to fight covid. Lawsuits against the companies tossed on merit in light of the new beneficial use of nicotine. Have a cigar.
Not so fast, the FDA has contradictory guidelines. Other news are more worrisome, concerning individuals with high blood pressure and their medications. Covid seems to use the same path as drugs designed to treat hypertension and that could facilitates infection, according to the author of an article in  Infection Control Today “hypertension may be a primary risk factor and driver of the severe symptoms of COVID-19”.
I am on the dangerous side of the scale and thinking about changing medication and I am seeking advice from my physician.

Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann first scenes displays a bit of flesh, and promises of magic eyes glasses. The main character’s view through theses magic glasses alter his perception of reality. I am afraid a lot of folks are wearing the same glasses today, with all the dissent around the best way to combat covid, and living in an alternate reality. That’s my view from the bottom of the pile, and I am fortunate. Daily checks on the bank account we use for tax returns have not changed, we are still waiting for the check.The official website just gives us a canned answer. On the other end, dead folks have been receiving checks, perhaps the admin is waiting that we croak, after all, we both are in the critical age group vulnerable to covid.
We are not anxious but for all the talks of getting the money ‘soon’, so far we are on the side of ‘later’.

Carolle is very creative with food and cooking, and it comes in handy during our lockdown. The bulk of our trash is recyclable, the rest is minimized to a few vegetable peels and dinner plate scraps. Leftovers become another dish when judiciously combined. No need for magic glasses, the meal is real and delicious. Looking at the food again, I probably was conservative in my need to visit the store again, my food anxiety must have kicked in.

Another day gone and another bad news, Remdesivir, the drug I had so much hope on to fight covid, is not giving hopeful results, in fact, it seems that trials involving the drug are closing.
But there is still hope for new solutions, the most genius minds are digging at all possibilities. There is no limit to the thoughts our president gather to find a cure for covid. His sources for research are deep and complex, his advisory newsfeeds totally attuned to covid and how to get rid of it. Covid is not so tough against a myriad of ordinary cleaning products like chlorine. We know how much our president abhors germs, all gold has to shine in the tower, wouldn’t want it to look like dull brass. Gold, the warn shiny metal that makes him mellow, and chlorine, the wonder and miraculous killer of germs, two of the best human invention after the horse, both yellow, must have untapped benefits ready to be reaped. It’s not a coincidence that they share the same spot on the rainbow, perhaps even the intention of the creator, the one who works in mysterious ways, chlorine may be  as good as gold. After his disappointment with chloroquine, in part because it seems to kill the patient, the president’s stable genius went into full gear, and faster than a Tesla, proposed a well thought train of ideas.

“I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning. As you see it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.”
Donald Trump

What an idea! All it took is a little thinking. None of the virologists thought of that, no wonders scientists are the first folks sent to the scaffold during uprisings and change of regime, all a bunch of useless alchemists! All it took is the smartest president we ever had, a studious reader of Dr. Mengele’s textbook on human experiments, to come up with the brilliant way to cleanse covid. The only missing detail is, how are they going to inject the wipes with the chlorox.
Now the official word is the president’s quote was meant as sarcasm, that’s food for thoughts. A bit of search and one finds presidential sarcastic quotes, I did not verified the veracity, but they seem to fit:

From Jimmy Carter, after his presidency.
“My esteem in the country has gone up substantially. It is very nice now that when people wave at me, they use all their fingers.”
That’s witty and quite humbling.

From Ronald Reagan, during his presidency, oh man do I miss him, I did not know at the time that we would get any worse:
“I have left orders to be awakened at any time during national emergency, even if I’m in a cabinet meeting.”

From Abraham Lincoln debating Stephen A. Douglas:
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
Pretty good for a rail splitter!

Or course, comparing these three good Presidents to the one we have now is like comparing apples to bitter oranges (pun intended). Sarcasm without wit is just….hard to come up with a word…but it could be all the words the thesaurus web site offers, the most pertinent at the top of the list:

Take your pick. I like corrosiveness, goes well with chlorination. Following the thesaurus words brings you into a maelstrom of mostly  unflattering traits tied to “sarcasm”.
It is surprising that the Republicans, usually so crafty with words, very good at branding with words that stick, would have chosen that word to repair an already chattered image, a president uttering nonsense on prime television time, during a pandemic unseen in a hundred years. Perhaps they’ve had enough, and may be they are looking ahead and have no appetite to govern in a deep recession. It would not be the first time, the scenario has been played before. But the damage is still not done, covid sees to that.

 

Renée Fleming will entertain us in The Merry Widow, by Franz Lehár. The stock market is up, I have ceased to to look at the covid numbers, just another day in confinement.