CoronaVirus Blog: Lake Mary, Day 67

5-26-20

Last weekend Bob and I rode bikes on the local bike trails and spent the rest of the day at home, which is pretty much our routine now with rare exceptions. I texted D- about the all the bunnies we saw because we biked close to her neighborhood. She texted back:

Oh nice…Over in New Smyrna now getting my hair done! So happy! This town is packed today! We just got take out fish sandwiches and ate them in the shady Garlic restaurant overflow parking lot.

!!!

To me, this text sounded like a testament to Dear Leader Trump who has been threatening church and education leaders with his wrath if they don’t open up right now (even though school is officially over for the summer). He has made it a mark of patriotism to venture out into the virus-ridden world to buy and die for the economy and especially for his reelection prospects.

D- is a nurse, a bit of a germaphobe, a sensible, responsible person except for being a registered Republican and Trump supporter. Still, I thought she would know better. I was shocked, frankly. Her ode to opening the local economy up sounded like doublethink straight out of 1984. The virus death numbers are going down, but it is still killing people and health advisors say stay away from crowds and practice social distancing. But Trump says to reopen the economy right now. Trump is the president, why would he want to kill me? The warnings must be fake news. I will gladly let a stylist breath all over me while she dyes my hair just like the one in the newspaper who recently infected 80 people. It’s fine!

But as dangerous and inane as Trump is, I have heard from at least four people, ardent democrats, who say that Biden is ‘creepy.’ In those exact words. They are not sure they will vote for him.

This kind of thing makes my blood pressure soar.

Trump’s comments about grabbing women, the rich lode of racism he spews like sewage onto twitter, his lies and demagoguery, his violent rhetoric directed towards immigrants, democrats, his lack of all sense of decency, well-

How can he have influenced so many people already that Joe Biden, a respected political figure and ally of Barack Obama, is now considered a doddering, drooling, dumbass?

I thought maybe the one equitable thing that would come out of pandemic is that evidence of Trump’s failure to lead is so colossal, so obvious, that it has actually killed over 100,000 Americans and driven 35 million Americans out of work. What further proof does anyone need that he has to go?

Instead, Americans are put off by Joe Biden’s stuttering.

Is the sea of American democracy so shallow, we are actually aground?

Coronavirus stats from WorldOMeter at 2:35 pm EST:

 

5,642,571 cases (ww)
349,920 deaths (ww)

1,714,371 cases (nw)
100,103 deaths (nw)

51,746 cases (fl)
2,252 deaths (fl)

CoronaVirus Blog: Lake Mary, Day 66

5-25-20

Everyone is afraid  USPS is going to go bankrupt, and Trump won’t give it federal funds to stay afloat because a) he wants to blame it on Jeff Bezos and drive up prices b) he wants to prevent mail-in ballots in the 2020 election. I know this sounds crazy and like a conspiracy theory and, believe me,  I’m hoping that’s all it is.

People say the United States Post Office will never shut down. 

“Au contraire,” I say. In particular, I remember being in Paris during a bus strike, which is irrelevant except it brings to mind other strikes of enthusiastic Parisian participation, one of which entailed mail service. I hear it dragged on for months.

But what the U.S. is facing is drastic-a complete dearth of trash mail and political ads. Which is pretty much all snail mail amounts to these days unless you’re in prison. Most people pay their bills online, communicate through social media, order on Amazon. What do they need the postal service for?

The way I see it, ever since Trump’s trade war with China, U.S. prices have been going up and will continue to do so. Let’s face it- compared to Europe, the Bahamas, Singapore, our goods and services are cheap. True, U.S. salaries have not gone up to a comparable level with prices. Even before the pandemic, based on cost of living increases, real wages declined 1.3% the past few years. And now we’re looking at 25% unemployment. If stamps go up to .75, will people even want to buy them?

As far as voting is concerned, the only reason mail-ins seem important is because Trump is illegally trying to stop people from using them. I am going to early vote at the Lake Mary library as I always do, only this time I’ll wear a mask.

But seriously, every year isn’t there  some screw up with mail-in voting? The ballots aren’t signed, or the poll worker tosses them on a desk and they get buried until January, or a bunch of BMDs are found in some abandoned warehouse or never found at all.

I do not advocate anyone endangering her life, and I support everyone’s venue for voting. But, for me, I will not feel secure that my vote is counted unless I personally feed it into the ballot box scanner. 

Plus, you know Trump will say the election was rigged if he loses, and let’s face it, he could force the U.S. to scrutinize, to count and to recount mail-in ballots for another four years. Why give in to the urge to oppose him? Go ahead, close the post office and see if anyone cares. I mean we’ll care about the unemployed postal workers.

But Trump is still going to lose, and I’m not mailing that in.

CoronaVirus Stats from WorldOMeter at 10:15 am EST:

5,531,043 cases (ww)
347,217 deaths (ww)

1,689,581 cases (nw)
99,381 deaths (nw)

50,867 cases (fl)
2,237 deaths (fl)

459 cases (sc)
12 deaths (sc)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CoronaVirus Blog: Lake Mary, Day 65

5-24-20

A teacher colleague once called me a racist. I was complaining that our department had never nominated a black kid for its annual awards. I had a few kids in mind. But I was overruled based on the core tenet of white social complacency: it’s racial quality that counts, not racial quantity. And minorities have no right to aspire to quality.

Not only is that excuse irrational and misleading, it is false. In fact, it is thinly veiled eugenics, the policy of exclusion, the belief that certain inheritable characteristics are superior to others. Like skin color.

And that is why I am holding my breath, hoping, praying that the Democratic candidate running for president selects a woman of color as his running mate. Joe Biden may feel he’s done enough pledging to pick a woman to run for Vice President on the Democratic ticket. He has not. It is time, way past time, to remind everyone that the reins of government power are not the exclusive province of white America.

Joe Biden is in a unique position and moment in history to accomplish this. His candidacy is clearly and largely the result of a conglomerate of minority support kicked off in South Carolina by Jim Clyburn, the highest-ranking African American Democrat in Congress. He was Barack Obama’s compatible and effective vice president. Representative John Lewis, the iconic Civil Rights activist, has endorsed him.

Of course, his record is not all racial sunshine. There was his unfortunate comment to Charlamagne Tha God, which he apologized for. And Anita Hill has never accepted his apology for hectoring her about reporting comments by Clarence Thomas, but if he selects a woman of color as his running mate she may finally forgive him.

On the other hand, if the former vice president just plays it safe by sticking with the status quo- a female Tim Kaine- I, for one, will feel deflated. Just like my former high school students, his roster of candidates are equally matched by and large. It is not a question of quality.

In my view, the only good thing about the Trump presidency is that I feel it gives everyone tremendous leeway on all the regrets and errors in life. If the country can live with itself after all the harm and embarrassment embodied in his administration everyone else’s efforts and challenges look infinitely better.

Yet it will be a huge blunder if Biden fails this test of history. It would be a failure of courage, as much as a risk to the democratic challenge. Since quality is not an issue, Joe Biden’s choice for a vice presidential candidacy should unequivocally include inclusiveness and fairness. And there is nothing racist about that.

CoronaVirus Stats from WorldOMeter at 9:47 EST

5,435,994 cases (ww)
344,514 deaths (ww)

1,668,493 cases (nw)
98,706 deaths (nw)

No updated data (fl)

No updated data (sc)

CoronaVirus Blog: Lake Mary, Day 64

5-23-20

I have noticed that I hesitate to say I’m working when I plan on writing. Perhaps it’s because I don’t work very hard. But I’m no worse than Ernest Hemingway who used to write for a couple of hours every morning and then take off for a day of drinking at Sloppy Joes.

I have sent out at least a dozen queries for the various books I’ve written, and I’ve had no responses. I was listed as a finalist in the Indie Book Awards, but that seems kind of meaningless except maybe as a reference. I can’t tell you how many times I thought things were breaking for me, that my destiny as a writer was about to evolve.

It never really happened. Now that I’m 65 years old, I am surprised to realize I still believe it will.

F.X. Toole was 70 when he sold Million Dollar Baby.

So I write for a couple of hours every day. Right now, I’m working on a new novel (22 pages in) titled: Fire is the Test of Gold. It’s based on this newspaper story last summer about these two firefighters, old buddies, who went out for boat ride and never returned. The boat was a 24 foot center console with one motor, no GPS, or flares. It belonged to the father of one of the firefighters who’d died six weeks before. The day the two men went out, the weather was kind of iffy, and all they ever found of them was a small tackle bag off the coast of St. Augustine. There was this massive search, but neither the men nor the boat ever turned up. And it has not been in the news since September 2019.

I looked up the wife’s blog on facebook. She’s a Pilates or yoga instructor, very religious, with two small kids. Very pretty. She will remarry someday, probably another firefighter.

But I thought it would make a great fiction story. Lois Duncan always said to ‘What if’ stories. What if the men weren’t shipwrecked and drowned? What if they just disappeared to start a new life? There are so many threads to this story. What if one of the men, not the husband, had some kind of connection to the wife and this was all an elaborate scheme to get rid of the husband?

In real life, the poor woman seems heartbroken, but I’m talking about fiction. In fact, I have the whole book mapped out in my mind. It starts like this:

Chapter 1: The Day Before: Bryon

The first death threat showed up on his Facebook page, and it couldn’t have been there long because a few minutes later when he looked again it was gone, blacked out, with some message about content. Then the second one popped up. Then the third.

He sat there for a long time staring at the screen of his laptop, stomach churning, trying to configure the new parameters of his life. In appearance, Byron was not exceptional or anything outside a typical product of the digital boom generation, with a slightly doughy face, a short haircut, a genial expression. He was a lanky man with the slightly stooped shoulders of a swimmer. In church, when he knelt and offered up prayers of penance, he looked guilty. Yet his composure was evident as he picked up his cell phone and pressed the screen a couple of times. He held it to his ear for a few seconds. It rang. Justin picked up.

“The time,” Byron said. “Tomorrow morning. Meet me at 11.”

All I have to do is write the rest of it.

CoronaVirus Stats from WorldOMeter at 3:30 pm:

5,373,900 cases (ww)
342,717 deaths (ww)

1,657,831  cases (nw)
98,337 death (nw)

50,127 cases (fl)
2,233 deaths (fl)

454 cases (sc)
12 deaths (sc)

CoronaVirus Blog: Lake Mary, Day 63

5-22-20

I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to keep this blog going. Cases and deaths from the CoronaVirus in Florida have gone up a bit- 95 new deaths yesterday- but I don’t see a huge spike for a few weeks or months, if then. We went to S-’s house for dinner last night as he has not gone out at all in the past two months so it was about as safe as it gets. Bob and I have no plans to go anywhere or do anything, although I do have dreams of going to Canada this summer.

I would like to go to Prince Edward Island in August when the temperature in Florida is as hot as Neptune. I don’t want to do anything special. It would take 27 hours of driving to get there, about four days. I would see the Lucy Montgomery house and go cycling on a bridge. There is a beach and a fishing village and every summer they put on a musical based on the Anne of Green Gables books.

If gas stays cheap, it wouldn’t be that expensive. They have mostly inns at less than $100 U.S. dollars a night.

I just want to go somewhere cool. It’s already in the 90’s every day in Lake Mary. There was a hailstorm last night; K- texted me holding a chunk of ice in her hand as big as a small snowball. It’s getting harder and harder to walk in this heat- I fear I will have to go back to the gym when it opens at the end of the month. I’m getting weak and gaining weight. Whoever said exercising at home and walking keeps you fit is just flat crazy or has much lower standards than I do.

I don’t want to go to the movies or to a restaurant or to the mall. I just want to get out of Florida for a couple of weeks. We’ll see if CoronaVirus lets me.

Here are the CoronaVirus Stats for today at 6:00 p.m.:

5,281,378 cases (ww)
338,721 deaths (ww)

1,642,468 (nw)
97,533 deaths (nw)

49,451 (fl)
2,190 deaths (fl)

449 cases (sc)
12 deaths (sc)

CoronaVirus Blog: Lake Mary, Day 62

5-21-20

I passed a lot of people on my walk this morning who were jogging. They were mostly heavier than me-sporting the butts, bellies, and meaty thighs of extended quarantine.

I have gained back the five pounds I lost a year ago. While I was stuffing my face I chose to ignore how hard it is to lose weight at my age, particularly with all the gyms closed. Also, I think my running days may be over. I have persistent pain in my hips even when I walk.

And I have to walk over five miles (two and a half hours) to get even a fraction of the aerobic benefit I get from running.

So it looks like I have to get used to my weight hovering around 115 or start eating practically nothing. I have gotten back into cooking now that we no longer eat out, and all my recipes entail butter, white sauce, cheese. Naturally, the weight is not budging.

In stores, as I recall since I no longer go out, there are whole sections set aside for plump women with corresponding hefty mannequins. And I am trying to see my obsession with a slim build as social conditioning. After all, I only look bad because I do not measure up to a waifish standard.

But even in the wall size oils of nudes (all women, now that I think of it, where are the naked portraits of men?)  that hang in museums, the figures look doughy, slack, with the color and the appeal of whey.

Since I’m older, I read a lot more into a person’s appearance than her physical attributes. Even flaws can become endearing. But I hold myself to a stricter standard. I want to look as good as I can for whatever age I am.

But it is going to be a bitch to lose five or six pounds. I hate flesh spilling over a waistband, all my clothes too tight and not being able to even wear half of them.

How ironic that Bob has the opposite problem. He is up to 126 pounds, but that is still at least five pounds underweight.

He can have my pounds. If only.

The word from China is that the CoronaVirus has mutated to a more dangerous strain, which is what I feared after reading The Great Influenza of 1918.  I’ve heard people can lose 15 pounds in one week.

But I’ll pass on the CoronaVirus diet.

CoronaVirus stats from WorldOMeter at 3:00 pm:

5,154,738 cases (ww)
332,351 deaths (ww)

1,608,036 cases (nw)
95,707 deaths (nw)

48,675 cases (fl)
2,144 deaths (fl)

445 cases (sc)
12 deaths (sc)

CoronaVirus Blog-Lake Mary, Day 61

5-20-20

One of our Bookaneer members, P- likes nonfiction or best seller fiction and most of her choices have been ok with the exception of The Hillbilly Elegy. But she has grown increasingly critical of other member’s selections. Two months ago, she reviewed The Giver of Stars, a book I actually wept over: “Sorry, I won’t be joining. I would rather watch paint dry, grass grow, or have my eyes torn out. I cannot get into this book. I have restarted it three times and it just does not pull me in in anyway. Sorry.”

Then, last Friday during our Zoom meeting, she told us she hated 1984 because it was too dark and, “I’m all sunshine, rainbows, and sparkles. “

She said the same thing at our last live meeting for The Heretic’s Daughter.

P- is the most overt among the Bookaneers in expressing resentment based upon book choices. S- has occasionally annoyed me by nitpicky questioning about protocol and L- has, more than once, declared hatred for a meeting place or a book suggestion.

I’m guessing these remarks have something to do with empowerment. When there is not much control over the big things in life, the little things become important to manipulate, to misplace one’s anger toward, to provide evidence that other people do things wrong too.

If only people were as adversely generous when things go right for someone. But that requires depth, and sunshine, rainbows, and sparkles are superficial. They do not preclude lacking consensus, ignoring another perspective, or disproving a point. They have little to do with how knowledge, empathy, respect are generated.

I don’t expect life to be easy or people to be perfect or for everyone to like at least most of the titles read in a book club (although I would expect you to drop out if all the selections are unbearable to you). But I have to say about this and many other incidents in society, “Don’t try to make me feel small to feel better about yourself. And please note how politely and diplomatically I treat you. Do me the same courtesy.”

CoronaVirus Blog at 12:42 pm from WorldOMeter:

5,035,991 cases (ww)
326,239 deaths (ww)

1,576,455 cases (nw)
93,858 (nw)

47,471 cases (fl)
2,096 deaths (fl)

442 cases (sc)
12 deaths (sc)

CoronaVirus Blog-Lake Mary, Day 60

5-19-20

My grandma used to tell me to do things to save my teeth. ‘My teeth?’ I thought. ‘Save them from what? They’re right here it my head, they’re not going anywhere.’

Little did I know that my teeth would turn out to be a constant headache, literally and figuratively, costing tens of thousands of dollars, requiring numerous x-rays, operations, visits to periodontists.  I found that teeth, like any other mineral, tend to erode, to grind down, to thin. If I had actually listened to my grandma, and not shunned milk for four or five years, I would definitely have stronger and healthier molars, bicuspids, incisors today and tomorrow.

But there was no way I was ever going to listen to her. What would life be like if teenagers didn’t need experience to learn things? As an educator, I know that actually doing things is the best, perhaps the only way of imprinting knowledge. Just reading about it, even discussing it, leaves an individual at an extreme shortfall of reliable information with which to make a decision.

So by the time I’m old, yes, I have a certain fount of wisdom based on life experiences, history, trial and error. But no one is interested in hearing it, particularly young people who would benefit most. They live in the present and the future is some Emerald City where all their dreams come true no matter what happened on the way there.

Personally, I wish I could time travel back to my younger self and say ‘do this’ and ‘don’t do that.’ There is no doubt I could significantly alter the trajectory of my life. And I’m not even going to wonder if it would be better because it would have to be.

But I can’t apply hindsight to my own life, and everyone else has to learn on their own. And that may have been my grandma’s point, focusing on teeth, because that at least would have been an easy fix. If only I had listened.

CoronaVirus Stats from WorldOMeter at 11:10 am:

4,928,70 cases (ww)
320,964 deaths (ww)

1,554,951 cases (nw)
92,188 deaths (nw)

46,944 cases (fl)
2,052 deaths (fl)

435 cases (sc)
12 deaths

CoronaVirus Blog: Lake Mary, Day 59

5-18-20

“If only a decent man could light the sacred flame of justice in their souls.” Emile Zola

Sometimes, I experience self-loathing so intense, that I would give anything to write off the whole ‘introspection is key to mental health’ fallacy.

I have lived 65 years, and I have done stupid things going back to three years of age when my memory surfaces, playing in the yard in Queens with C- and H-. I used to drink from hoses in those days and jump from at least a four-foot stoop to the concrete pavement below. I broke an arm falling off a pogo stick when I was six. At eight, I used to ride my bike down Red Hill Road with my hands in the air as if I were on a roller coaster.

But it’s not remembering the near misses and prat falls that make my stomach hurt. It’s the stupid risks I took that didn’t pan out. The presentation on a new proprietary software product I gave without calling in the experts. The PP presentation for a job interview that wouldn’t load. The time I rented a car to pick up a company executive for an appearance, and I went to the wrong hotel. The time I almost lost an expensive piece of business hardware by boarding a flight and leaving it in the terminal.

Then there are the people I let down-the parent and the little girl I scolded at one of C’s- parties because she didn’t RSVP until the kid burst into tears. Not driving Bob to the doctor about his bad back when we were first married because I had to keep some other appointment. Telling C- it was OK with me for her to move back to Maryland without celebrating her high school graduation. H-, whose childhood I raced through, my eye on a goal that precluded ensuring her emotional wellbeing.

Then there are all the things I’ve done, which, if I had known the outcome I would have avoided like the plague. Eating all those potato chips during quarantine. Going out to Colorado last summer and getting on the bad side of H-. Allowing C- to move in the last time in 2017. Having much to do with my mother and sisters after I left home. Saying yes when M- asked me out in 1972.

The list goes on in all of the above categories. And there are many more categories I could add, replete with excruciating detailed memories.

I thought of that corny old black and white movie It’s a Wonderful Life where George goes on an adventure in his pajamas, visiting the people in the town where he lived as if he’d never existed. His wife had never married, which was seen as a tragedy, the pharmacist had poisoned a patient, his brother drowned ice skating. So all his sacrifice and despair had been worth it. Was he being challenged when things went wrong? Or did things go wrong because he was challenged ?

Since the outcome of my life, is growing handily, I have to wonder about its quality. The hardest part of summing up a life is weighing the balance between the good and the bad.

The only good thing about the Trump administration is that I feel it gives me tremendous leeway on all the regrets and errors in my own life. If he can live with himself after all the harm and embarrassment embodied in his history, my efforts and challenges look infinitely better.

CoronaVirus Stats from WorldOMeter at 9:50 am:

4,833,610 cases (ww)
317,234 deaths (ww)

1,529,291 cases (nw)
91,005 deaths (nw)

(fl) not updated since yesterday, but numbers are going down

432 cases (sc)
12 deaths (sc)

CoronaVirus Blog-Lake Mary, Day 58

5-17-20

I consider myself still in coronavirus quarantine, even though Florida is opening back up again. In fact, Planet Fitness opens tomorrow and it is tempting to go back and work off the three pounds I’ve gained in the past two months. And the B’s- are coming over today to celebrate D’s- birthday. I’m meeting L- for a brown bag lunch in the Lake Mary park, and Bob and I are going to dinner at S’s- house (pizza) Thursday.

But Bob and I are still practicing social distancing and only interacting with, well, at least three feet distance, no hugging, and face masks in public places. I will not be going back to the gym for weeks, maybe ever, or to the movies, or museums, or airplanes, trains, boats.

At the Bookaneer’s Zoom meeting, C-, a new member who is based in Michigan, complained about Governor Whitmore and her strict stay at home policies. The rest of the group is in no hurry to reconvene live, and I have meetings planned into August that are on Zoom.

Not everyone is so patient, so cautious. President  Trump is trying to fast track a vaccine without appropriate testing or proven results. He will end up poisoning people (as he did with his ‘magic bullet’ hydroxychloroquine) and spending a shitload of money for nothing. He calls it ‘Operation Warp-Speed.’

I will be happy when Trump leaves the white house. That’s my idea of Operation Warp-Speed.

CoronaVirus stats at 11:21 am on WorldOMeter:

4,753,445 cases (ww)
313,882 deaths (ww)

1,511,295 cases (nw)
90,198 deaths (nw)

45,484 cases (fl)
2,112 deaths (fl)

433 cases (sc)
13 deaths (sc)