The Never Ending Virus

All my personal anxieties have been confirmed. And the anxieties of a lot of other people who predicted that this "Flattening the Curve" thing would be a permanent fixture in American life.  

Last night, I was reading about a "new strain" in New York that the vaccine may or may not address. I have heard similar things previously. Wasn't there a British mutation as well. 

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/25/health/variants-coronavirus-new-york-city/index.html

And yet, numerically, we are told, though on or about January 8, the "cases" (defined as I understand it as positives, whether symptomatic or not) were at their high, dropped some 70 percent just a few weeks later. But the fear continues to be disseminated. We are being vaccinated, and we will no doubt HAVE to be vaccinated to do anything, including to go to eat, or a concert (when those things open up in places like New York and California, which right now seems not to be on the table), or fly or take a train, but we are told in the same breath that ALL the restrictions for purported safety must continue to be in place. When someone then asks, "Why be vaccinated?", it is as if someone said what everyone surely must notice, that the Emperor indeed is not wearing clothes. But one must not say it. 

The flu, we are told, has virtually disappeared. But don't mention that the symptoms of the flu, of which people have in the past died in great numbers, is pretty much the same as that of Covid. Following the science of all this is down right crazy making. It is not consistent science if science it is at all. 

I know. Lots and lots of you, many of you my friends, think that any questioning of the "science" is tantamount to mental illness. Or dismissal of the fact that indeed some people (and that include me given my age and any potential co-morbidities assigned to me) do get very sick and die. As far as I know we all will die of something, sooner or later. I hate that anyone will die, of anything. But there it is. And deconstructing a whole society to prevent that which cannot be prevented is plain madness, in my opinion, if I might be allowed to express an opinion that is not in accord with the narrative du jour.

But while people are worrying about someone dying of covid, others are dying of the isolation of nearly one year (as of about March 13). I can tell you what is happening to me. I actually don't want to go out much any more. I don't really want to see anyone. I was a loner to start with---one who is apparently very extroverted when I am with people, but in fact used to and inclined toward the solitary--but now, the restriction is reinforcing my natural tendency. I have had a few occasions to be with people in my "bubble" and I have done them, but frankly, I could easily have dispensed with them. If when venues open again here in California we now have mask wearing as a requirement to prevent any other viruses from infecting us or from the soon to be endless variations of Covid that always existed but now requires the reconstruction of the world, I will simply stop going out. You might say that is good. Is it good that an entire populace is prevented from living a normal life? The life we have been leading is not normal and certainly not so if perpetual, even if potentially acceptable for a short period of time. The euphemism, "The new normal" is another in the new Orwellian lexicon. 

The "New Normal" is a cultural and psychological imprisonment. It's only until. . . .when? When will it no longer be necessary? I asked that question, as did many other people, a year ago. And here we are. There is still no answer to that question.  Well, there is, it is our, well it is my, worst fear. 

Alas, we/I are living every science fiction show or movie there ever has been. Logan's Run. Soylent Green. Blade Runner. The Time Machine. Twilight Zone. Outer Limits. 

We are virtue signalling ourselves unto the death which we claim we have power to prevent. 

I don't ask you to agree with me. Just don't insist I agree with you. Oh, but some people are, and they are the ones in power. Woebetide the rest of us. 

Adventures in Vaccination!

I got a notice from my doctor's group the other day that I should not wait for the pharmacy, with which they are apparently associated for the purpose, to get the vaccine. Looks like they won't, or they won't anytime soon. It is a small pharmacy, probably privately owned. 

The good news for me, though, was that I had not been waiting for them. I didn't sit on the computer all night, as I said in a prior entry, but I did check the local news each day to see if any of the large pharmacies which have been given the contract (I assume it is a contract) had yet received a supply of doses. As it turns out last Thursday, I was making such a perusal when I saw that CVS had been approved and was receiving the vaccine. I went to their main site. I punched in my zip code.  That was fast. Any CVS near my home was already booked or did not actually have the vaccine. So I began punching in surrounding zip codes. After a while I found one at the other end of town, which seemed to have lots of openings. I signed up. There was some reservation as naturally the "if it bleeds it leads" news had highlighted cases in which someone who received the shot was in need of an epi pen rescue. And, of course, I have friends and at least one relative who believe that this vaccine material has the ability to track us forever and a day. I wouldn't be surprised. But to me that ship has sailed. Unless you truly go "off the grid" (and though I have thought about it,  and will think about it again as more nutty things happen in this society,  at this stage of the game, given my age, I probably am not capable of "off the grid") being tracked is the story of our lives already. Besides, in this society, when you only have the statistical likelihood of living maybe another 12 years, 15 at the outside, I don't think there is much for anyone to track when it comes to me. It's not like this society is interested in "the wisdom of the elders". Besides I doubt I have any wisdom to offer, and if I did, it's outdated, and irrelevant, along with Western Civilization. And, while I will still hate to fly, and the idea of wearing a mask for 5-10 hours within the continent makes me panicky, I am pretty sure you won't be able to go anywhere, without that little card that comes with your first appointment for the vaccine.

Apropos of that first appointment. I had my appointment for 2:15 today on Western Avenue in Los Angeles. I used to work not far from there back in the day, and it is reminiscent, to me, of my old Bronx neighborhood until I was about 16--familiarly seedy. It put me in mind of 170th Street, or Fordham Road, circa 1960s to mid 1970s. The parking lot (something not easily found in the Bronx in those days) was oddly constructed, with incredibly narrow lanes to pass through on the way to an available space. I was early, so I went on the check in line, which was fairly long, and in which proper distancing was not readily achievable. Despite that reality, the woman in front of me asked me (though I was wearing two masks) no, rather, she said I was too close to her. I backed up, and was closer to the man behind me, who was less concerned about my presence, and who, it turned out was from the East Coast, about my age, and was friendly. He helped me pass the wait time. The young CVS staff were efficient, and called my name while I stood on the line, checked me in, gave me my proof of vaccination card and asked me to wait for the person doing the injections. I could see how edgy people were feeling, anxious, about getting a paradoxical protection that does not free us from the mandates of social distancing and mask wearing. One elderly man (yes, there are some people older than me; I figure he was the generation just ahead of me) who was Chinese and did not speak any language available at CVS, was two hours early and kept shuffling up to the various staff people trying to understand that they were telling him to come back at 4 (it was 2).  I felt such an affection for the man, and I kept hoping that someone would just let him break into the line and get his vaccination. And they did. And these young people were kind to him. I felt a spark of hope for the youngest adult generation. 

My line buddy and I ended up waiting our turn in adjacent chairs. We talked about stoops, the ones we sat on outside our apartment buildings back in the day, the little stone steps, and street games like stick ball (he played; I didn't. My mother would have killed me if I played in the street), and Skelly, and roller skating on steel skates. He called his wife who asked him, apparently, if her were scared of getting the shot. He wasn't. He noticed the fair number of young people getting the vaccination. He asked about it, and was told that these were largely caregivers of older people. 

My turn came and the technician, Hovig, was kind, and friendly, and surprisingly calm amid the proceeedings. And his administration of the shot-it was masterful in its painlessness. 

I followed the prescription to stay and sit for 15 minutes. The only sensation I had, and that for only a few minutes was an itch at the injection site. That dissipated quickly. Up to the moment I just pulled a sweatshirt off, as I was writing this entry,  I felt nothing at all in that arm, and it is three hours later. But, when I did pull the sweat shirt off, there was just a tiny ache in doing so. Well, that happened with the flu shot too, so, I expect that tonight I might not be able to sleep on that side. But right now, maybe I will escape that little side effect. 

Turns out that the man I spent the hour or so with, not only does he come from the East, but he came from my neighborhood. We waved goodbye at the door. I wonder if I would recognize him were we to meet by chance somewhere around Fairfax and Sunset, where we both do our shopping? 

I have my appointment at the same CVS in exactly one month. It turns out that it wasn't a half bad adventure. I have to say that as I drove away, I breathed a sigh of relief to have jumped this societal and medical  hurdle. 

And I have a sticker to prove it!

One Mask, Two Mask, Three Mask Whee!

I have been trying to balance being well informed with maintaining my sanity. It has been a herculean task. 

I shall leave aside, for this entry, the double impeachment theatrics costing the American people, once again, lots of money that could be better spent reducing the trillions of dollars of debt currently in progress in the great halls of the Senate. Today is an update on life with masks, you know, that short term effort to flatten the curve imposed in early 2020 and its concomitant contradictions.

The last few days, there has been a suggestion, a strong suggestion, likely soon to be a mandate, that two masks are far better protection against the present coronavirus (certainly to be superseded ad infinitum by one of the many other coronavirus's out there since time immemorial). This is interesting in that at the same time, and just coincidentally in the middle to late part of January, the number of "cases" (defined, is it, the number of positives with or without symptoms?) went down, and just as the highly anticipated and solution of solutions, the vaccination, is being (very badly) rolled out in states like my own. I just heard, today, for example, that because there are no more first doses, places like Dodger Stadium are being closed down for the time being for distribution. Ahem. I am in one of the categories denominated as needing the vaccine. My doctor's office, though like most or all of them, not distributing the vaccine, has sent me several general e mails saying that they will be reaching out to those in the key categories. I have also received many e mails from the pharmacy with which I am signed up, but they haven't yet been approved to receive the vaccine. You might say, well you could do what others have done, and stay on the computer all through the night until you manage to find someplace 100 miles from your home to get that first dose. Forgive me in saying that I do not consider that reasonable, particularly when the mantra has been the critical need to make the vaccine available.

It is critical. Until it really is not. But I digress. Masks. 

So, we should be wearing two masks. I personally have had (and though they are afraid to say it out loud for fear of improper opinion others have had) a very hard time in wearing a mask. I do it when I do go out, because I have no choice, and because the propaganda has made me so afraid--despite my common sense and the fact that nothing that the science has said has been consistent--in being around anyone without it. One of the goals of whatever this last year has been about, beyond the claim of it being about public health--has been to isolate the population. It is inhibiting community. It has prevented family and advocates of the elderly in nursing homes from being able to have any personal contact or to be sure that their loved ones are being adequately treated and protected. Mission, whatever it is, accomplished. Those people--and I guarantee you they cross all political affiliations--who dare to go out and try to live ordinary lives--are excoriated for being selfish. Now that California is allowing outside dining again, I am having a birthday dinner (his, not mine) with a friend. The pleasure of that type of event today is not the same as it was over a year ago. I have been dissuaded, as again, appears to have been the purpose, from wanting to go out, ever. I heard today also that there is talk of not allowing Americans to travel between states. If the cases are going down, why? The science. 

But, those who will cross the borders without benefit of going through the immigration process can travel freely, as a matter of humanitarian good. 

I heard over and over how people should not have private parties or go to watch parties at bars and restaurants when the Super Bowl was shown last week.  Some restaurants covered their televisions.

But I don't get it. If the Super Bowl was a potential super spreader, then why not cancel it. I will give you one guess. Money. This was one bit of profit that would not be squelched. But my neighborhood restaurant. Bye Bye. Shut up. Take you 1200, or 600. Oh, and as to that, why are people who are retired getting stimulus checks? Are they expected to start a business.

Masks. I have to remember. Masks. They will save us. I wonder if Amazon sells cheap Hazmat suits. 

Yippee! They do. Several selections. Here is one.

I never felt this way before. And, one of the things I am feeling. Fear. Fear in my nation, for my nation, and for myself, and my community and my friends and family. And fear from fellow Americans. 

Rediscovery and Memories: The Bee Gees

As I write, I am listening to Barry Gibb and Friends and an innovative rendition of many of the Bee Gees hits. I had forgotten. I loved the Bee Gees in their two major incarnations, or well, the ones I was aware of, the mid-1960s and then after nearly a decade the mid-1970s. They were entirely different in those two incarnations. Actually, make that three incarnations. The one in the seventies kind of had two parts. For me, they were enjoyable, in a crescendo kind of way.

I was a new teenager in the late 1960s, and I loved trying to belt out "I Gotta Get a Message to You" or the mournful "I Started a Joke". They had been around earlier, but they had been in England and Australia and I guess the Beatles kind of overshadowed them-at least in the earlier days. But they became part of my young life's tapestry. But though they continued to write music, for a while, I kind of lost track of them until I was in college, actually almost out of college, around 1975. I was was watching the "Midnight Special" on New York's Channel Four--I still lived in New York in those days--and there they were, Barry, Maurice and Robin, singing something called, "Nights on Broadway" from their new album "Main Course".  I didn't know these guys. But you know, I was so happy for them, as if there had been some achievement of my own. I was kind of happy in those days, despite some early life loss (the death of my mother). I had found my college radio station. I found that I excelled in that kind of avocation. I wanted it to be a vocation, but I realized pretty quickly that it was too hit or miss for me to take that chance and I was not a risk taker. So my life's achievements were pretty small, but somehow they tracked this large achievement of a group whose music had given me pleasure nearly a decade before. I liked this kind of new sound. It was enthusiastic. Energetic. Fun. When I made my first ever visit to Los Angeles in June 1977, I brought a copy of that album to my young (then 14) cousin. My affection for the Bee Gees was enormous. And then that same year 1977, the third transformation, the explosion of the album Saturday Night Fever which featured many of the Bee Gees compositions. When THAT album was released, which I think was actually the beginning of the year, I brought it to a New Year's Eve party held by my college friend Glenn, announcing it was going to be a big hit. I wish I had had a piece of the financial action. I could then have easily gone into radio and not worried about making a living. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2SDf42guB4

I moved to Los Angeles in the early 1980s and after that I mostly lost trackof the Brothers Gibb. There was that album, which I liked, with Barbara Streisand and Barry, but I wasn't quite as intensely enthralled. By then their young brother Andy was in the mix, but I wasn't a huge fan probably because I was getting older and anyway, I was trying now to make a living as an attorney, and settle fully into my new surroundings, ever so different from those of New York where I had heretofore spent nearly three decades of my life. Andy died of a heart attack at the age of 30 after too much high life. 

And the years, my years, their years, passed. Robin and Maurice the younger fraternal twins of the threesome, died. I saw a You Tube clip in which Barry, the one who had been arguably the most handsome because of his mane of hair, aged and now long since having lost the healthy mane, regretting that he had not had a great relationship with either of his late brothers just before they died. His pain was real, and affecting.

Then the other day, as I was riffing through my documentary options during these Covid consuming days, I saw that one had been released on the Bee Gees. My affection for them was renewed. When some of the songs were played on the documentary, tears came to my eyes as the memories of my own life washed over me. And how their music had been a huge part of those memories. 

And I found out that Barry, in tribute to his brothers, but also in another re-invention, call it a fourth incarnation, had put out an album, Barry Gibb and Friends, Volume I, with a whole new vision of the old songs in a country vibe. Did it work? For me it did, and apparently it has for a whole lot of others, as it made the Billboard Country Chart. 

I just was listening to it as I began to write this entry. And it made me feel young again, as if all that time and all that history, good and bad, had not yet happened. 

I cannot wait for Volume II. The Bee Gees live!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqxTqkR_qRM

 

A Black Cloud Day

 It is five days into the New Year. I am trying not to be disappointed by the expected nation and world-wide realities which I surely understood to be following from the last one. More than that, I am trying to sort out how I will adapt to the constant braying of human conflict and pride in the ability to determine the things of life, and death without reference to God in whose hands our lives actually reside. 

Today is the run-off election for Senators in Georgia. As I write, with early return percentages in, it appears that the Democrat candidates are in the lead. A lot of people will be delighted to the tips of their toes about that. Others will feel, in the marrows of their beings, that a noble, but still very young (in terms of the span of history) part of the civilization, once known as the United States of America, imperfect but better than all others, will fall. 

Los Angeles citizens, among citizens of many other places, have been told that Covid is everywhere. There is a "risk of exposure whenever you leave your home" quoth the LA Times.  Barbara Ferrer says, "It is everywhere;, looking for a willing host".  But isn't Covid finding its way into households, which I assume means where we are, indoors? I only know what I hear. I don't know what is true of what I hear any more.

Vaccines were to be the saving grace, but now we have heard that no, vaccines don't mean we can "get back to normal". Half the population believes that anyone who thinks there is something wrong with this approach--to stop EVERYTHING--is a moral imperative, although what is moral has long ago been rendered a matter of relativity, determined not by principle but by power. The other half's opinion is irrelevant because the first half has determined what "the science" is and is not and seeks to silence any objection, or alternatives. Someone says you can't stop a whole society in order to prevent illness and death. And he is trounced as a denier of Covid. 

We have everything to fear, including fear itself.  Nice to know that the world has caught up with my life long world view. Now I am in the mainstream. I have tried to fight the fears imposed from without, accompanying those within. I completely understand the power of propaganda. How it works on you. I don't believe that our leaders have a clue how this particular virus is spreading.  Frankly, I am now in the camp that believes this whole virus was manufactured, and released, accidentally or on purpose. And so it is unique in the way it spreads.  I have also found myself in the camp that believes there are people, some very not nice people, much like the not very nice people of the far and recent past, who are using this real virus, among other real viruses and bacterias, to control and deprive the rest of us. 

But it is going on a year and we are, notwithstanding that leaders and their followers insist that it is for our good, and we are effectively imprisoned for a felony we commit by merely going outside. No trial. Someone, "they" all got together and convicted us of something that used to be called living.

Yeah. Five days into the New Year, I am feeling pretty down. I am looking only to one place, one Person. God Almighty. Because everything and everyone else feels hopeless. 

One practical thing I have to do, aside from prayer, which never comes easily, is to absent myself from much of the news, or as much as I can without becoming an information luddite. I keep trying. 

We are dying, and not only from Covid-19. 

My downstairs neighbor is making the best of it. He is barbecuing on his tiny patio, attached to his apartment, which looks exactly like my own, which he is, like me, like all of us, exorted not to leave. For how long? Until we flatten the curve toward death, that can never, ultimately, be flattened by the human hand.  So a long time indeed. 

BTW. I think my neighbor just missed starting a fire. Smoke was gathering in my working dining room. I went downstairs. He said it was the barbecue was off.  I mentioned the flame and the smoke that I could see coming from the closed hood. 

Surely, it is no safer at home. 

The Strange New Year's Eve

As I write, the last third of one of my favorite movies is playing, "The Bishop's Wife".  It likely couldn't be made today, a time when mankind has no need of angels, let alone God. 

I am, like so many, home for the evening. Even though I am not much of a party person on such holidays, I usually do at least get out for dinner with a friend or two. But this year, unless one is rebelling against the restrictions which much of the country thinks is justified and the other half thinks is pure diabolic manipulation, one is staying put. 

As I watch the movie, I am moved, by its thematic grace, but also by the fact that the moral center which it represents is long past in favor of a false utopian sensibility. 

It is not a totally lost, this evening, in terms of the milk of human kindness. I ordered take out from Greenblatt's. I had a craving for a French Dip sandwich. The man who delivered it was a breath of fresh air, friendly, and happy, and wishing me a good New Year.  I wished him the same. For a brief moment, I even felt it was possible that our New Year would improve and the gloom would dissipate. But that would have to be a miracle. Human beings think they can provide their own miracles these days. So, the moment did not last. 

The movie has helped a little. Hark the Herald Angels Sing is the backdrop of a scene in the movie. The words we remember talk about a New Born King, who will transform the world an our souls.

I wish this night I could feel the hope for more than a passing moment. But I suppose that in the circumstances a passing moment is good enough. 

I must seize the moment because God is in it. And then, maybe, the moment will become a lifetime, and then an eternity. I wish you the same as 2021 descends upon us.

McIntyre House: A Small Life Raft in the Ocean of Drug and Alcohol Residential Rehabilitation

I am guessing that you have the same experience I do when it comes to charities--receiving a veritable flood of solicitations for all sorts of good works being provide for an overwhelming number of needs in every arena of human existence.  I have my favorites, and they tend to be the larger charities because they have the ability to get my attention, places like St. Jude (taking care of children with cancer for free, founded by Danny Thomas (who just happens to have been a sometime parishioner at my Church back in the 70s and 80s), and Best Friends (a growing sanctuary for animals of every kind in Utah). The only way I have become familiar with smaller local charities is by virtue of providence. I have come to accept the truism that there are no accidents--with God. One such "accident" in my life was becoming acquainted with a small residential drug and alcohol rehabilitation program called McIntyre House located in Los Angeles. The total number of beds in the house is for 16 men. That's small in quantity, but not in the quality of the rescue from the depths of despair. I suppose Providence makes it possible, even obligatory, for me to introduce this little essential charity to you and hope that maybe you will see your way to incorporating it into your monetary gifting. Because there are so many worthy charities, places like McIntyre House can get lost in the fundraising shuffle. Despite that reality, it has survived over 20 years, but always operating on a lean budget relative to its larger brothers and sisters in the world of saving lives. 

First, here's the website address, and a picture of the House. McIntyreHouse.org.

A lot of hard work goes on behind those doors. Men come to those steps on their last physical and psychological legs, sometimes having tried everywhere and everything else literally to stay alive. And, even if they cannot pay the approximately $2,500.00 a month for food and board and program, they are not turned away on that account. The Program is based on the precepts of Alcohol Anonymous, and the goal is retrieving the lost self and bringing him back into the community. It happens in this home like community. It isn't fancy, and it is in an ordinary neighborhood, without a million dollar view. But when a man transitions to a sober life, it is a million dollar emotional event. 

McIntyre House is non-sectarian, everybody in need is welcome to seek help.  But it was started by a Catholic priest, and his friend who was, and remains, in the arena of prison ministry. That's how I happened upon it. The late Jeremiah Murphy was my pastor, and his approach to catholic (universal) social justice was to throw a net around some of his parishioners and say, "I'm doing this and I wonder if you would like to help." And through him, and its Executive Dirctor, Brian Hardin, I found myself involved and somehow on the Board. And I have been now, for over 7 years. And I have come to see what a difference this small residence makes in lives. I even got to go to one of the "transitions"--a kind of graduation ceremony with family and friends of the resident to sober living, and I can tell you how profound it is to see someone who was literally in danger of death come back to the world.  

The big places do this too. They save lives. But not everyone can go to them, and so, a place like McIntyre House is a small life raft that needs, in my view, to continue to exist. It has, in some ways, against the odds, because it costs so much to keep going, to keep the lights on so that men can be brought inside those doors.

As I write, the holiday season is upon us, and it won't look like any other in the history of the United States, or the world, due to the Covid crisis. That's been especially hard on people who are trying to recover from (or not fall into) the scourge of drug and alcohol addiction. But the guys of the House are still trying to create a festive atmosphere in which to continue their life affirming work. And to create a way to raise funds in a time when no one can get together live and in person. Normally, we have a party this time of year, and other live gatherings to bring the House to the attention of our friends and the larger community. But this year, the House is going to do something special, "The Twelve Days of McIntyre House". Beginning on December 12, through to the 23rd, with the help of alumni and other friends of the House, there will be an online fundraising event. When you go to the website, there will be a banner for you to click on and to learn about the good work of the House not from talking heads but from the people who have been and are being helped by the fact that the House exists. And, of course, there will be a donor button for you to contribute, if your would, even though you have so many other demands on your funds. And maybe you would consider becoming a sustaining friend of McIntyre House, by clicking on the donor button every month, with whatever you can spare. The need will continue after the holiday season. 

What is that saying? "He who saves one life saves the world entire." 

Your small act of charity will be a life raft for a man who comes to the doors of McIntyre House this coming year and in the years ahead.