It's the Wolverines vs. the 2020 Pandemic in Michael Lewis's new book, "The Premonition"

The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center web site has become the key Covid-19 site in the U.S. and probably worldwide.

Stats as of 5/13/21:

160 million-plus cases worldwide and 3.3 million deaths.

32.8 million U.S. cases and 584,371 deaths.

And the numbers keep going up, dramatically in some countries such as India.

In the U.S., Connecticut leads the nation in percent of population vaccinated at 42.5% and Mississippi, as it often is, is at the bottom with 23.8%. Wyoming ain't much better at 27.8%. National average is 36.2%.

Statistics are sobering. 

It didn't have to be this way. That's what I kept muttering as I read Michael Lewis's "The Premonition." It traces what could have been if the U.S. had a health care system designed for emergencies like the pandemic and not one geared to profits. The book is not a polemic about a fractured system. Instead, Lewis tracks the efforts of an odd group of citizens forced to face the fact that one day, a plague would be loosed upon the land. They called themselves the Wolverines after the young rebels in 1984's "Red Dawn" who take to the Colorado mountains to fight a Soviet invasion. It's a bit jingoistic but a fun Cold War romp. 

Lewis gave us the insiders' look at the stock market in "The Big Short" and a group of geek baseball statisticians in "Moneyball." Lewis's forte is exploring the people behind big issues, people we may never have heard of but who played a big part in complicated events. Both were made into good movies and "The Premonition" will be one of a rash of pandemic-themed movies and streaming series in the next few years. Lewis is a master at character development and storytelling. "The Premonition" reads like a good thriller and its subtitle "A Pandemic Story" shows the focus. 

I did not have any premonitions as I read. The unpleasant event has already happened. But I did see the writing on the wall. As the Wolverines gathered and tried to come up with a pandemic plan, they knew something bad was on the way. They also knew that the U.S., despite its hubris, was not ready. These Cassandras had a plan but how to get the clueless to listen? The Centers for Disease Control had become a shadow of its former self. Most experts concentrated on vaccine development rather than what steps to take while awaiting a vaccine, steps that had proven effective in the past.

One of the most interesting aspects of the story is the origins of the core group. In 2005, an advisor to George W. Bush recommended a recently-published book to the president. The book was "The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History" by John M. Barry. I was surprised that Bush read it and convened a task force to plan for the next pandemic. It's not like he wasn't busy elsewhere in the world. But he gets credit for acting on a real threat. Plans were drafted and were refined during the Obama administration. We had a plan but then along came Trump.

Another eye-opener: leaders do not need all of the information when an emergency arises. They need to act, even in the face of massive criticism. The example that keeps cropping up is "Churchill vs. Chamberlain." As a leader, will you see the danger ahead, speak out, and eventually find yourself in a position to lead (Winston Churchill). Or do you see yourself as a Neville Chamberlain, more interested in maintaining the status quo, "peace in our time" in this case? As England's prime minister, he made mistakes but he led, pugnacious to the end of the war and the end of his political career.

In the face of the gathering storm, U.S. leaders in 2020 failed to act. For that, they should be judged harshly. Lewis could have spent 300 pages telling us about Trump's many missteps. Instead, he shows us that there was an alternative universe of statisticians, physicians, and civil servants convinced that a plague was coming and we could plan and we could act.

Lewis ends the book deep into the pandemic with the story of Carter Mecher's parents. Mecher is known as the "redneck epidemiologist" in the book and is a members of the Wolverines. After all his work on the disease, he is torn asunder when his aging father gets Covid-19, passes it on to his mother and she dies. In the epilogue, "Sins of Omission," the writer follows one of the main characters, physician and former county health officer Charity Dean, as she seeks the grave of a former patient in a vast California cemetery. We get into Dean's head as she ponders her ability to sense things. But now, late into the pandemic, she now knows that, with communicable diseases, we are always looking into the rearview mirror. 

Covid had given the country a glimpse of what Charity has always thought might be coming -- a pathogen that might move through the population with the help of asymptomatic spreaders, and it had a talent for floating on air.... Now that we knew how badly we responded to such a threat, we could begin to prepare for it.

The French have a term, apres nous, le deluge, supposedly uttered by the despot Charles XV. The basic translation is after we're gone, the flood will come but we don't care.

That could easily be a Trump phrase although it's a bit too poetic for him. It is reminiscent of the slogan written on the back of First Lady Melania Trump's coat: "I really don't care do U?

I prefer to leave with some lines from Jackson Browne's "Before the Deluge." He speaks of another crisis, the looming climate disaster, but it also applies to the current deluge: 

And when the sand was gone and the time arrived 

In the naked dawn only a few survived 

And in attempts to understand a thing so simple and so huge 

Believed that they were meant to live after the deluge 

After the deluge, the Wolverines abide.

Pandemic tip: You can view most Wyoming public art from the comfort and safety of your car

I was noodling around on my PC and I clicked on the Cheyenne Arts web site. I was pleased to see an upgraded site now includes a Cheyenne Arts Public Art Tour. Kudos to Bill Lindstrom and the tech-savvy people who compiled the tour. Open the site and find a portfolio of the 82 registered public artworks. Click on the photo to go to the page to find more photos and some background on the piece. Location is listed at the bottom of the page. There's a link to a Google Maps which takes you to the map and lists the public art's latitude and longitude. This assists those touring with the help of GPS and also geocaching aficionados. When I was at the Wyoming Arts Council, I was part of many discussions for online tours in Cheyenne, other communities, and statewide. Locally, it never happened until Arts Cheyenne took it on. 

Sheridan Public Arts has been around since 1992. Its permanent collection boasts 59 pieces. Artists and museums loan pieces to exhibit on Grinnell Plaza and downtown. One of the latest is a sculpture by the late Native American artist Allan Houser. No better way to spend a summer day -- tour the art and wrap it up at Black Tooth Brewing Company for craft beers and discussion. 

Not sure if Casper has an online public art tour but the city has many pieces of representational and non-representational artwork. One of my faves is on the Casper College campus. It's "Man and Energy" by Robert Russin. Its somber nature flashed me back to my duck-and-cover nuke drill days. The artist, who died in 2007 was a New York transplant who taught at UW for almost four decades. He is best known for his massive bronze Lincoln head perched at the top of Sherman Hill. Visit Casper is developing an Arts & Culture Pass. Not many offerings yet but these things take time. 

Russin also is known for the playful family sculpture installed in 1983 on UW's Prexy's Pasture. "The University Family" represents a nuclear family of three in white marble. Recently, it has been criticized because it doesn't represent a broader range of UW students and family. One proposal is to move it indoors to protect it and replace it with a more monumental sculpture, such as a bronze of graduating students or a bucking horse and rider. As if the UW campus doesn't already have bucking horses and riders aplenty.

Here's the thing about public art: it's easy to criticize because it's so public. In our bitterly divided country, artwork can be attacked from many sides. And is. The coal/oil/gas lobby that pours millions into UW objected to a public artwork called "Carbon Sink: What Goes Around Comes Around" by Chris Drury. UW decided to spirit it away in the dead of night and allegedly burned its beetle-killed logs and chunks of coal in the campus furnace. Many art students were kept warm that night by a funeral pyre of public art.

Russin's "Fountainhead" sculpture outside of the Casper City Hall came under fire for its water feature. The sculpture shows three stylized red oilfield workers surrounding a pole that represents an oil well. Water once shot out of the top to represent oil but had the bad manners to dampen city bureaucrats on Casper's many windy days. Now the water feature ponds peacefully below the artwork.   

Get more on the Casper arts scene via the ARTCORE site. 

The best-known public art program in Wyoming is in Jackson. 

When I started making work trips to Teton County in 1991, the town's library was in a log cabin. A sleek new library replaced it and is now home to a unique public artwork, "Filament Mind." It's indoors so it's a bit less visible than most public art. But it's worth a visit. A short description:

Installed in January 2013, the sculpture is visually arresting: nearly 1,000 thread-like filaments cascade from a mainframe column. Transcending its technological sophistication, the sculpture exudes a life-like aesthetic, at times resembling a bird in flight, a waterfall, a mountain, a crater, even the willows that whistle around the valley. Each filament flows from the column to the wall and an anchor point tagged by a Dewey Decimal System section title.

 

When a visitor begins a search on WyldCat – the online inventory of the library organized by the Dewey Decimal System – a LED light glows on the filament corresponding with that Dewey Decimal section title – say “International Relations” – and related topics glow as well – like “Political Science.”

 

Filament Mind is designed to be the visual brain of the library and by extension, the community.

Wyomingites from less scenic parts of the state pick on Jackson Hole for its chi-chi attributes. See "Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West" by Justin Farrell and Tim Sandlin's "The Pyms: Unauthorized Tales of Jackson Hole." I've made my share of smart-ass remarks on the subject. 

But Teton County boosts Wyoming's stature as an arts-friendly state. Rich residents are arts patrons and assist arts orgs and facilities with generous donations. The annual Old Bill's Fun Run is a Teton County tradition and raises a ton of money for local orgs. Local, state, and federal funds are a part of the mix.

The Hole is home to the National Museum of Wildlife Art and its amazing collections. It hosts tours of its outdoor sculpture. Many artists and writers I know came to Jackson in the good ol' days of cheap, crowded housing (think ski bum) and many short-term service-industry jobs. Many fled as prices climbed but those creative people who stayed are a stubborn lot. 

For insight on the Teton County art scene, go to Tammy Christel's Jackson Hole Art Blog and Jackson Hole Public Art. 

The Wyoming Arts Council supervises the state's public art initiative. Go to https://wyoarts.state.wy.us for more info and calls for entries.

As the pandemic winds down (we hope), summer visitors may be feeling a bit skittish about touring Wyoming (see "Least Vaccinated U.S. Counties Have Something in Common: Trump Voters"). It may be tough to feel safe at a jam-packed music festival or brewfest. 

But no worries, as most public art can be viewed from the comfort and safety of your vehicle. My high-risk family and I cruised Cheyenne's Paint Slingers Art Festival last July. We watched many of the muralists at work, even shouted out questions to the artists and they shouted their answers. We also attended movies and concerts at the Terry Ranch's Chinook Drive-in. We viewed from our car and listened via a dedicated FM station. 

Covid-19 changed so much. We felt the absence of people gathering to enjoy music, dance, and theatre. It also showed us that creativity can bloom in hard times. 

In Trump Sonnets, poet Ken Waldman tracks how America lost its mind

I just received a copy of Ken Waldman's "Trump Sonnets, Volume 8: The Final Four Months."

This is good news/good news. Another book of Trump sonnets to read. And, as the title says, "final" four months of the Trump scourge. A traumatic four months. A traumatic four years. Poet M.L. Liebler, who published the book at his Ridgeway Press in Michigan, writes in the foreword:

Ken has successfully brought form to the most unformable and unformidable, mean-spirited, fly-by-the-seat-of-his pants scoundrel who did his damndest to take this country down.

Waldman takes us through the final four months through sonnets in the POV of Americans: a dog walker in Brooklyn, a prison guard in Lexington, Kentucky, and a house painter in Hilo, Hawaii. Closer to home are the words of a baker in Cheyenne and a locksmith in Casper. The baker rhapsodizes about the two Q Girls who are "both up for war against Democrats." The locksmith is more thoughtful. He (I think it's a he) says that a civil war may be on the horizon but is wary of "citizens desperate or angry enough" to assassinate a Supreme Court elder or "wayward" senator. There is also an architect in Fort Collins who blasts the "toxic idiocy" of those who believe that Trump won the election. The Brooklyn dog walker sums it up this way: "Put them behind bars -- him, Jared, the kids. Or send them to Mars."

We hear many voices. I've been reading the selections in a more lighthearted mood than I did the first seven "Trump Sonnets." That is because T has disappeared from public view and is no longer on Twitter to rattle my world. He also is gone from the White House which he treated like his own Scarface villa (he already has one of those in Mar-a-Lago).

As evident during Waldman's 35-year career as an itinerant poet and fiddler, he has a keen wit and is always busy creating. He's published 19 poetry and prose books and nine CDs that "mix Appalachian-style string band music with original poetry." As a touring artist whose home base is in Alaska, most of his gigs since March 2020 were cancelled or postponed. He's been featured at the Dodge Poetry Festival in New Jersey, the Woodford Folk Festival in Queensland, Australia, and the Word of South Festival this weekend in Tallahassee, Fla. He's also conducted residencies in more than 200 schools, including ones in Casper and Cheyenne. He's also served as a judge for Wyoming Arts Council literary fellowships.

Front Range dwellers can see him on stage on May 22, 7 p.m., at the Lakewood Cultural Center in Lakewood, Colo. He will appear with Willi Carlisle and special guests Ben Guzman and Colin Gould. Tickets are $27 and you can get them here. 

I will file volume eight with Waldman's one through seven in my presidential library. My grandkids, if I ever have any, might like to read them and see how America lost its mind in the 21st century. 

You can't actually buy the book until September 1. Get more info at the Trump Sonnets site or Waldman's home page. The book will be distributed by nonprofit literary book distributor Small Press Distribution at orders@spdbooks.org. 

Snowbound and Covidbound all in the same week

We received 31 or 36 inches of snow in our weekend blizzard, depending on who's doing the reporting. Anything more than 30 inches is a lot so I won't quibble. What I can say is that I haven't been out of my house since last Friday when I ran a couple of errands on a cloudy day with all the weatherpeople saying that you bastards are really in for it with this Snowmageddon. Pshaw, said I. But they were right. 

Our governor announced on March 12 that most Covid restrictions will expire on March 16. On that day, residents from Cheyenne to Casper were practicing weather-enforced social distancing. Cheyenne doctors and nurses were shuttled to work on a snowmobile belonging to a 17-year-old high school student. You can still get around our neighborhood on snowmobile.

By the time the snow abated on Monday, I could not open our front door. Snow on the porch was piled at least two feet of hard-packed snow. A winter snow is usually what they call "champagne powder" at Jackson Hole Ski Resort. It's light and airy enough to blow into a ground blizzard when the wind blows. When stacked up, it's great to ski in. You can glide and carve into it, blowing up white clouds as you make your way downhill. 

Snowmageddon snow is like concrete. I say "is" because it's almost a week later and our neighborhood is a snowscape. A plow made its first appearance yesterday afternoon. It made one pass down the street and then was gone. It created a path wide enough for one vehicle flanked by four-foot walls of snow. The mounds block our driveways so we're still stuck. Not sure what comes next. Melting is going to take a long time. Our food is running out. We are going stir crazy. 

In days gone by, I would have been out there with the shovel as I was in so many other storms. After the Christmas Eve Blizzard of 1982 in Denver, I was outside with my shovel on Christmas Day, shoveling my walks and those of my neighbors in City Park South. Chris and I lived on the top floor of a 100-year-old two-story house. We shared it with a lesbian couple who were our son's first babysitters three years later. We sometimes barbecued together on the tiny front porch. I never knew our neighbors in the basement apartment. 

Our landlord was the one-man Danish counsel for Colorado who owned a tie store downtown. His lavish City Park home had a security gate and was surrounded with cameras just in case the Swedes decided to invade. We sometimes drove over to pay our rent just to see how the other half lived. We wondered how working for Denmark in a remote outpost and selling ties led to such opulence. We imagined that a tie shop on a side street might be a perfect cover for a drug dealer or arms smuggler. We wondered what they made in Denmark that might find a black market in Denver. Cheese danishes? Fjord photos? Reindeer antlers? We didn't know much about Denmark.

So here it is Thursday and maybe I will get out of my driveway and maybe I won't. I haven't shoveled snow since my heart attack in 2013. I rely on a walker (a.k.a. personal mobility device) now. It's possible there exists a walker equipped with a snow blower but I haven't yet looked that up on Amazon. Even if I get in my car and get out of my driveway, I'm not sure about the condition in the rest of my neighborhood. I'm really stuck if I get stuck. 

Our neighbor Mike sent over a couple of teens to clear our walks. They did a good job and we paid them $20. We wanted to make way for the mail delivery person but we haven't got any mail since Saturday. I've been missing those fliers for vinyl windows and life insurance. I might have received a St. Patrick's Day card or two but won't find out for a couple more days. Over the years, I have seen USPS vehicles chained up and struggling through the snow. But chains won't help them get through big drifts of concrete snow.

Daughter Annie has been staying with us during spring break. She has many assignments due next week so we don't see much of her. She ordered a grocery delivery yesterday but didn't tell us. The Instacart person drove up in a massive SUV. She dropped off three 12-packs of Diet Pepsi and packages of toilet paper and paper towels. For edibles, she delivered a family pack of Chips Ahoy cookies, a bag of Cadbury mini-eggs, and a carton of eggs. We quizzed Annie about why she had paid a person to collect Cadbury mini-eggs and Diet Pepsi and drive these crucial, life-giving items through snow clogged streets to our house. We wondered why she hadn't asked us if we needed anything from the store such as bread or peanut butter or soup or spaghetti. You know, necessities for the snowbound.

We're still waiting for an answer.

Senate Democrats go it alone in passing Biden's stimulus bill

NPR just posted this news. It bears reposting:

The Senate approved President Biden's $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan Saturday, securing additional aid for American families, workers and businesses — and a legislative victory for the Biden administration.

After more than 24 hours of debate, the evenly divided Senate voted 50-49 to approve the measure. Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska was absent because he was in Alaska for a family funeral.

The package delivers a new round of financial assistance to Americans grappling with the impact of the pandemic, including $1,400 direct payments, an extension of supplemental unemployment benefits and an increase to the child tax credit.

Individuals earning up to $75,000 and couples earning up to $150,000 would receive the full direct payments of $1,400 per person. But those payments would phase out for individuals and couples who make more than $80,000 and $160,000, respectively.

The income cutoff was lowered after moderate Democrats demanded that the latest round of checks target lower-income families.

Federal unemployment benefits would be extended through Sept. 6 at the current rate of $300 per week and the first $10,200 of those benefits would be tax-free for households that earn $150,000 or less.

Read the rest here.

My comment: Rich Republican senators can now go home and tell their constituents how they're always looking out for the little guy. And by the way, why not donate your $1,400 stimulus check to my next election campaign when I will be screwing you over again.

Got 181 likes. Some commenters didn't like what I said. So what?

Both of Wyoming's senators are multimillionaire Republicans, Barrasso and Lummis. They have blasted our lone U.S. rep, Liz Cheney, for voting for Trump's impeachment. 

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Covid-19 still rages but health workers making progress with vaccinations

I received my first Covid-19 injection on Jan. 15. I saw a message Wednesday on the MyChart page of the Cheyenne Regional Medical Center. It said that those 70 and over could call a number and make an appointment for the Pfizer vaccine, part one. I called immediately and was surprised to get through the first time as the MyChart message said that lines would be busy and callers should leave a call-back message. I didn't have to.

On a cold Friday afternoon, I joined the queue at the CRMC Health Plaza on 20th Street. Three other oldsters lurked ahead of me but we all got into the inner sanctum quickly. The nurses briskly got us to the injection room. My nurse was close to my age. I handed in my paperwork and she shot me in my right arm, the one I use all of the time. That was the point, as movement is important on cutting down the pain and stiffness that goes with the shot. It must have worked as I had no pain and stiffness the next day although I felt a bit fatigued. That was my only symptom. My follow-up shot is Feb. 12 at the same time, same place.

I felt lucky to get my shot so quickly. When I posted the news on Facebook, I had a number of friends asked how I got an appointment. I gave them the news and the number to call. Not sure if they succeeded. You hear all sorts of stories. Busy phones, long lines, three-hour waits. Florida has had trouble as the Governor ordered shots for everyone 65-and-older, a teeming cohort in the Sunshine State. The vaccination stations were overrun. News got out that you didn't have to be from Florida to get a shot so "vaccine tourism" was born. A few days ago, a state government spokesperson announced that shots from Miami to Pensacola, Tampa to Daytona, were restricted to Floridians. So much for vaccine-based travel.

Chris was able to get her injection at the Laramie County Department of Health. She's a youngster at 64. But she works with children at the YMCA which moved her into the educator category and eligible for round one.

My daughter here in Cheyenne and my son in Tucson await their injections. They're youngsters yet I hope they get on the list sooner than later.

In their weekly Friday Covid report (Week 45), WyoFile wrote that health workers in the state had administered 28,889 first doses but less than 5,000 had received their second doses. That's a start. Wyoming has a population of about 580,000. Many live in rural areas which makes the task even more daunting. The Pfizer vaccine had to be stored at sub-freezing temps. Most hospitals are up to standards but not every town has a hospital or even a healthcare clinic. Many live way out of town and it's winter out there which could make travel by the 65-plus cohort even more challenging. 

We also have a new variant of Covid in the state. From WyoFile: 

Health officials, however, remain concerned about the discovery of the UK variant in the northwest pocket of the state, where case counts are soaring. The variant infected an adult male and early information suggests he was exposed to the virus variant locally, the Department of Health said.

State Health Officer Dr. Alexia Harrist was not surprised by the discovery, she said in a release. 

“However, this strain is more transmissible than previous COVID-19 variants and that is a serious concern,” she said. In fact, Teton County is being gripped by a surge that has prompted health officials to move it into the highest category for COVID-19 risk, “critical. 

Teton County is approximately seven travel hours from Cheyenne, and that's on a good day. Add another hour or two for bad weather. 

Still, Covid has shown an amazing ability to quickly cross the globe. Thousands of miles are no impediment to a virus. Other variants include California, South Africa and Brazil. The U.K. strain is rampaging across its namesake country. Now named B117, it has been found in 50 countries. Experts guess that it could cause a 30-40 percent increase in deaths. 

Johns Hopkins now counts 2,109,758 deaths worldwide and 419,058 in the U.S. Wyoming has recorded 571 deaths. 

So, get your vaccine when you can and always wear a mask. Stay home, if possible. And keep posted on news from the Biden administration. Those folks actually have a plan to coordinate vaccinations across the country.  

Some blog posts just don't grow into fully-formed stories -- and that's OK

Time to take stock of the year that was.

I wrote 67 posts this year. Published posts, that is. I wrote 10 or more that I didn't post. They just never jelled or I lost interest. The drafts linger on my site but will be banished with the new year.

When family members were quarantined and not working in the spring, we started hauling boxes filled with books up from the basement. I was tasked with separating the keepers from the ones to go to the library store or, when that closed due to Covid, downtown's Phoenix Books. Probably sent six or seven boxes out the door, just a fraction on those remaining. In one box, I saw a tattered copy of "Hells Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga" by Hunter Thompson. This was before "strange and terrible" morphed into "fear and loathing." I really liked it when I read it in the early '70s during my Gonzo period. I didn't want to emulate Thompson's life but I did want to write like him.

I began to read "Hell's Angels" and got hooked. Read it all the way through in a couple of days. I tried to frame an essay about it but could not. Thompson's style I still liked. But I didn't like the sexism and racism. The Angels were noted for gang rapes and Thompson was cavalier about it. We liked the Angels for their outlaw image, at least we did in our youth. Their attraction has waned over the decades. I don't really find anything constructive about them. In my blog, written before the election, I wanted  to paint members as diehard Trump fans but failed. It's a gross generalization to label motorcycle thugs as Trumpists. It's also a mistake to think that all bikers are gang members. Your local attorney is as likely to ride a Harley as your local mechanic. My neighbor is an IT guy and he rides and works on his very expensive Harley. My late brother Dan rode a Harley and he was an air traffic controller. 

The Angels still exist but haven't been the same since Altamont and neither have the Stones. I gave up and put "Hell's Angels" in the discard box.

My conclusion: Thompson documented a lot of what happened in 1960s and '70s America. But, really, how much fear & loathing can a nation bear?

My next subject that didn't jell was about the Boy Scouts of America and its magazine, "Boy's Life." I was a proud Scouter in Colorado, Washington, Kansas and Florida. The Scouts seemed to be something I could count on to be pretty much the same whether we were snow-camping in the Rockies or avoiding water moccasins in the Florida swamps. I read Boy's Life from cover to cover. It was all boys back then, stories about knots and campfires and lifesaving. There was always a feature profiling heroic Scouts. I liked the cartoon about Pedro the Donkey. 

Girls are now part of Scouts and it's about time. As you probably know, the BSA has been roiled by the same sex abuse scandal that rocked the Catholic Church. Girls can now be Scouts and for some reason the mag is still called "Boy's Life." I guess an ancient organization such as the Scouts can move only so fast. They have that in common with the church. My youth involved Scouting, the church and basketball. I abandoned one of those when, in the ninth grade, I discovered girls. I do believe I would have welcomed girls into my Scout troop but it was the 1960s which was a lot like the 1950s in Central Florida. 

I just lost interest as I wrote about Scouts, much as I lost interest in becoming an Eagle Scout when I got my first kiss. Reading a current issue of the magazine did not revive my interest although I was oddly pleased that Pedro the Donkey had made it into the 21st century. 

This is what happens with writers. Not everything we begin has an ending. I have a two-drawer filing cabinet filled with rough drafts and beginnings. Stored on this PC and OneDrive are many finished pieces and many fragments. What seems like a good idea at the time never grows into a finished product that can be published. And not everything is published in any form, whether as a book or a story in a journal or a post on Blogger. That's not easy to understand when you start out but it becomes clear if you stick with it. I have, for some reason. Writing is important to me and no matter how many setbacks come my way, I stick with it.

Nursing home signs should read: Welcome to the Titanic. There are no lifeboats

I don't always read the AARP Bulletin. It's a good publication with lots of helpful info for retirees like me. But, you know, there are books and the Internet and football and writing and "Queen's Gambit" on Netflix. 

This issue of the Bulletin carried a red banner crying SPECIAL EDITION and below that this header: "Covid-19 & Nursing Homes: An American Tragedy." It grabbed me because my stepmother died of Covid in a Florida long-term care facility. And I have been reading other articles on the subject since March and have been shocked with how many people my own age have died. I am 69 now but next week is my birthday and people in their 70s and 80s with underlying conditions are most vulnerable. I soon will be in that cohort.

This comes from the WyoFile weekly pandemic report, 12/11/20:

The Wyoming DOH has reported 321 Covid-19 deaths. That includes 128 in November, the most of any month so far. Many of these have been related to long-term care facilities. Wyoming now ranks third in the country for its rate of nursing-home-related deaths, the Casper Star-Tribune reports.

So there's that. And this subhead from the Bulletin:

In one of the most devastating health debacles in our nation's history, some 54,000 residents and workers in long-term care facilities died of causes related to the coronavirus within four months of the first known infection.

The article spans the 18 weeks from Feb. 29 and the first death in a Seattle nursing home to June 22. The best things are personal stories of patients, family members and health-care workers. Cami Nedleigh relates the story of her mother, Geneva Wood, a resident of the Life Care Center of Kirkland, Wash. Wood went into Life Care in late January to recover from a stroke. She was supposed to be released in early March but fell and broke her hip the last week of February. She stayed in Life Care. 

This from Wood: 

My roommate was coughing. Everybody was saying bronchitis. The I got a cough and could barely breathe. Thought it was pneumonia. I remember them saying I had a 102 fever. I guess I didn't know enough to be scared.

And Nedleigh: 

Mom got better, thankfully. She's a tough old Texas broad. But Mom's roommate didn't make it.

The article conjures scenes of chaos and bravery. In the first week of March, 27 of 108 residents and 25 of the 180 staff had the virus. And nobody really knew what it was and how to treat it. This led to many deaths.

Timothy Killian (Life Care spokesman): We all grew up with these movies about pandemics, in which the government vans swoop in and take control. As the situation escalated and the facility went into lockdown and people started dying. I kept expecting some type of coordinated response, but we saw nothing of that nature.

The facility, of course, gets some of the blame. Killian had obviously seen "Contagion" and "Outbreak." In the latter film, a monkey has the virus and ends up in a California small-town pet shop and starts spreading the virus. The commanding general of the national response team won't act because he knows the virus came from an Army bioweapons lab. Epidemiologists Dustin Hoffman and Renee Russo sneak into the site and start doing their good deeds while the evil general (the usually heroic Morgan Freeman) makes plans to seal off the town and bomb it to destroy the evidence. The most memorable scene takes place in the town's packed movie theater. A virus carrier coughs and we see spit flying around the room in slow motion, landing in people's mouths. Aw hell no, you might say. And you'd be right. 

It hits a bit close to home. Covid carriers were still going to movies in March and spreading the virus to seatmates. Asymptomatic carriers were going out to crowded bars and attending parties. The virus was in pandemic heaven, latching on to many new human hosts and spreading which is what viruses do.

You can read parts of the Bulletin story at the AARP web site. Kudos to David Hochman and contributors for the story. It appears just as the FDA approves the Pfizer vaccine and hope emerges. That doesn't help the many dead and dying in the U.S., almost 300,000 at last count, with a 16 percent fatality rate in long-term facilities. Compare this to the total U.S. fatality rate is 2.3 percent. 

This final quote is from Judith Regan, a publishing executive whose father, Leo Regan, is a resident of the Long Island State Veterans Home, site of 32 deaths:

The residents and staff are being led to slaughter. He is on the Titanic, but there are no lifeboats.

The week in pandemic news

I wish I could report to you that the pandemic is over. Alas--

Wyoming Dept. of Health, Nov. 14: Seventeen more Coronavirus-related deaths reported.

WyoFile weekly report:

Wyoming reached a critical point in its battle with COVID-19 this week as patient loads overwhelmed hospitals, healthcare workers and contact tracers, prompting the governor to announce plans to tighten health orders for the first time since spring.

Casper Star-Tribune, Nov. 15: Daily Wyoming coronavirus update: 613 new cases, 206 new recoveries (firewall)

Gillette News-Record, Nov. 13: County health officials ask Gordon for mask mandate

AP News, Nov. 13: Wyoming Governor: 'Knuckleheads' behind Covid-19 resurgence

Wyoming Daily News, Nov. 13: Wyoming Governor won't implement mask mandate

When faced with knuckleheads spreading a lethal virus: "We don't need no stinkin' masks."

Go to the Covid-10 Information page to find the Wyoming Testing Location Finder. Chris tested last week after she and some other staffers were sent home after a possible workplace exposure. She was negative. Took less than 72 hours to get results. She is now in quarantine for 14 days. We hope to see her again for Thanksgiving. 

What will the future think of us?

Wyoming has seen a huge Covid-19 upsurge in recent weeks. Wyo shows up regularly in the New York Times pandemic tracker. It shows those states with surges, represented by a tiny arrow pointing up. We're right up there with both of the Dakotas, Alaska and Iowa.

WyoFile's week 33 summary Friday said this: 

The White House Coronavirus Task Force coordinator visited Wyoming this week as the state cemented its status as one of the nation's hotspots for Covid-19 spread. 

As a press conference, Dr. Deborah Birx, wearing a mask, seated next to Gov. Mark Gordon, also wearing a mask, "emphasized the importance of mask use, widespread testing and limited gatherings" to beat the virus. As of Friday, Gov. Gordon had yet to issue a mandatory mask directive. 

On Friday, the Wyoming Department of Health reported 431 new lab-confirmed cases, a new single-day record. Nineteen deaths were reported last week, more deaths than in any week since the pandemic began. 

The Laramie County Health Department has mandated that everyone wear a mask starting Monday. If the past 33 weeks of plague shows us anything, many Wyomingites will ignore the mask mandate. Enforcement is being left up to businesses and individuals. At our hospital, you can't enter with a mask and getting your temp taken. Not sure how small businesses will treat the order. I don't go out without a mask. But I'm a Democrat and I believe in science.

I write this with the idea that someone in the future will read this and wonder about the Americans of 2020. As I researched a novel set in 1919, I read a lot of personal stories and small-town-newspaper articles about the 1918 flu pandemic. Some wore masks; others refused. Many died. Young people were vulnerable. In fact, they often died when older family members survived. It was brutal. I can look back from 2020 and wonder why everyone didn't wear a damn mask. I ask that today. I also ask: will anyone read 21st-century blogs 100 years from now?

A President Joe Biden can't halt the pandemic overnight. But he does have a plan. He will have to bring Americans together on a common goal. We beat the Great Depression, licked the Nazis and went to the moon. With real leadership, we can overcome Covid-19.

This is another problem that has to be remedied. We've learned the hard way that millions of Americans love a bully. They love Trump because he hates the same people he does: liberals, atheists, African-Americans, Hispanic immigrants, urban dwellers, and college professors, just to name a few. They want to marginalize, possibly even eliminate, us. Many are evangelicals who spend a lot of time talking about the Bible although they've paid little attention to lessons in the New Testament. They are a hateful bunch who revel in Trump's cruelty. 

What will they do on election day? Trump has given them carte blanche to disrupt the electoral process. It's naive to think they would not answer Trump's dog whistles. They could also be a factor if Trump loses. They are angry and well-armed. Their esteemed leader has been deposed and someone must pay!

Post-apocalyptic novels, movies and TV shows have been on the rise for some time. They have dealt with plagues, asteroids, environmental catastrophes, space aliens, and outside interference from foreign enemies, mainly commies. Nuclear war used to be a big thing. I can't think if many that deal with a Narcissist as president who tries to remake America in his image and who gets plenty of help from collaborators in the G.O.P. Was it beyond imagining?

I once wrote an post-Apocalyptic novel about a future war in Florida. The Cubans invaded, battles ensued and (spoiler alert!) the good guys won. It was a mess of a novel and a copy gathers dust in my bottom desk drawer, the place where all unpublished first novels belong. As it turns out, I only had to wait a few decades to find out that The End could proceed in the light of day right before our eyes. 

It may not come to that. We'll talk after election day.  

Pandemic Year 2020: A casual lunch with old friends and poetry

Met my friend (and my daughter's godfather) Dick a few weeks ago along with his wife Mary. Personal encounters have suffered during the pandemic. It's almost like a vacation when you get a chance to see old friends in person. We were appropriately social distanced in Cheyenne's Outback Steakhouse in the middle of a Monday afternoon. The couple from Longmont had been at a ranch near Dubois for Mary's school reunion. Mary wore a maroon mask with her school logo, Dick wore a generic mask and I had on one from the Colorado Rockies. A few months ago I began getting masks that showed something personal. The Rockies seemed have cool ones and, after this season, need all the help them can get. I like Black Lives Matter and Biden/Harris 2020 and VOTE! I may spring for those as they also mean a lot to me and the country.   

My friends and I were arrayed at a distance at a three-top table. We talked about old times and ate a late lunch. Dick recited some of his new four-line poems. He is writing more concise verse these days because, as he said, nobody reads his 50-line poems. There is some truth to that. Even though I have plenty of leisure time, hyperactive lives seem to crave brevity even when it's not necessary.

Dick and Mary both are writers. Mary has published a great biography and is a weekly newspaper columnist. Dick writes poems about spirituality and religion, not unusual topics for an ex-priest. Dick wrote this poem which he read to me yesterday and e-mailed me this morning. It's worth repeating as it is rare to have a poem written for me. It's happened before but the occasions are so rare that I remember it. A former Wyoming Poet Laureate wrote me a poem of condolence after my brother died. It was a wonderful thing to do.

In ancient times (BPC -- Before Personal Computers) people wrote poems for all sorts of occasions. Traditionally, England's poet laureate had two jobs, to write a poem for the new year and one for the monarch's birthday. In the 1800s, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, expanded those duties to writing about important events. The best known of these is "Charge of the Light Brigade" commemorating a British regiment's sacrifices in the Crimean War. I once had to memorize the poem as punishment in after-school detention at St. Francis Catholic School in Wichita, Kansas. I still remember many of the lines: "Cannon to the right of them/Cannon to the left of them/ Cannon in front of them/Volleyed and thundered;/Stormed at with shot and shell,/Boldly they rode and well,/Into the jaws of Death,/Into the mouth of hell/Rode the six hundred." 

The Victorian Era spawned many a heroic verse. That came to a bloody halt in the Great War. 

But back to personal poems. Dick wrote one for me and I wanted to share as poems should be published, one way or another. 

Mike Shay 

by Dick Lechman 

I saw God in Shay 

in his backyard garden 

acting the plant master 

like his friend God, clay master

Thanks, Dick. I would like to think that God exists in me and is revealed as I tend my garden. 

 Amen.

The Covid-19 watch: Trump hopes for an “October Surprise” coronavirus cure

The Covid-19 death counts recorded by the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Tracker shows the U.S. leading the world with 6.26 million cases and 188,000 deaths. California leads the pack with Texas and Florida close behind. Wyoming is second-to-last ahead of only one U.S. state, Vermont, and four of its island territories. Wyoming lists only 4.006 cases with 42 deaths. The U.S. could soon have 200,000 with the possibility of 400,000 by the end of the winter’s flu season.

Those are the stats. The reality is that each of those deaths represents a story. Families grieve but at least they have memories and a story to go with them.

I have already told the story of my stepmother who died with the coronavirus and a handful of debilitating maladies. She was 94 and in a Florida nursing home (go here for the full story). She had more than three strikes against her, three strikes with two outs in the bottom of the ninth with the score tied. Sports references seem apropos in this time of fan-less Major League Baseball.

I watched the Rockies beat the Dodgers in L.A. last night. Two nights in a row! Cardboard fans watched and shouted electronic cheers. It is a surreal scene. Same with NBA games and their projected e-fans inside the Orlando bubble. The NFL begins next weekend and it should be really strange watching the cardboard cutout drunks in Denver’s South Stands with their boos and e-curses. Just kidding. The NFL will censor the real ruckus just as they banished Colin Kaepernick.

Meanwhile, our nation is headed up by a monster whoinsists we are about to turn the corner on the virus as he does everything he can to speed up the arrival of a miracle vaccine to make people love him and vote his way on Nov. 3. The ultimate October Surprise. A survey released yesterday said that 48 percent of Americans would not trust any vaccine that arrived pre-election. Count me among them. I am certain that his base of fans will gladly troupe to the inoculation centers in the hope that they will gain immunity from the flu and become a billionaire like Trump.

Trump’s fans are raging cultists who believe anything Fearless Leader says and contend that anything negative is “fake news.” You can’t reason with them so we must outvote them. It won’t be easy considering the GOP’s mania for voter suppression and gerrymandering. Their goal is to keep people away from the polls. They have an ally in that strategy: Vlad the Putin and his Russian Bots (not a bad punk band name). Trump invited them to be part of our elections in 2016. I’m sure that invitation still stands.

The best ally liberals have in this fight is the Lincoln Project, Trump-hating GOPers that are relentless in their video takedowns of the Orange Demon. Chris and I gladly donated to their cause. Not sure what tricksters Rick Wilson and his pals will do post-election. They would like to reconstitute the GOP. They have their work cut out for them due to the fact that the Trump cult will not be easily silenced. The Lincoln Project could be great allies with liberals in the struggle to bring representative government back to the U.S. Time will tell.

In the suburbs and in our minds, there are little fires everywhere

Just finished reading "Little Fires Everywhere" by Celeste Ng. I had seen the title as I cruised Amazon Prime at night, looking for something to absorb me until sleep. The Amazon series features Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington, two great actors. But I was more interested in "Bosch" and Netflix's "Politician" to embark on another streaming fest.

I came across the title on Kindle and said, "this sounds familiar." I read some of the reviews, read the author's bio. One reviewer called it "a suburban drama" and, for a second, I thought about leaving and finding an "urban drama," usually more my liking. But Kindle offers samples so I pulled it up and read it, all in one sitting. I was so bummed out when it ended that I bought the book and dove right in. The book had captured me. Resistance was futile.

Best thing about my Kindle is portability. Also, you can reset type size and screen brightness, all a boon when you read in bed and your partner is already snoozing away. Sill, it wasn't until the pandemic was in its third month that I uncovered the Kindle buried under manuscript pages and thought about giving it a try. My daughter Annie had give it to me two Christmases ago. I told her I was pleased. I charged it, roamed around on the settings screen, explored Goodreads, and then abandoned it. The coronavirus shutdown gave me plenty of time to clean my office and I found quite a few things on my Island of Abandoned Toys. Noise-cancelling headphones, a book about World War I nurses that I thought had been shipped to the library bookstore by Annie, needle-nose pliers, and assorted other things.

The Kindle was the big find. I bought a Michael Connelly novel. "Fair Warning" features Jack McEvoy, former daily newspaper beat reporter now working for a nonprofit company that investigates consumer complaints. I let the Kindle cool for a few weeks and then found Ng's novel.

Ng builds tension with the simplest tools. I was reading the first few chapters and thought well, we know the house burned down. But the fire caused me to ask the usual questions: the 5 Ws and H. I wanted some answers.

The author varies time and place. One of the terms bandied about by writers is "info dump." Usually it's a couple of paragraphs explaining a character's childhood or motivations. It can slow down a story. We prefer fast-paced stories. Think of 19th century novelists and how they spent a few pages describing a character's mannerisms or a manse's manicured gardens. Think of Charles Dickens and his sweeping sagas that have so many words in each chapter. Dickens serialized his work to boost book sales. Often, he promised the publisher to write 20 chapters of 32 pages each. That's a big book. His info dumps could be chapter-length but they always served some sort of purpose. 

Ng does this in "Little Fires." We flash back to origins of major characters in order to understand the present that begins and ends with a burning house. The suburbs, it seems, is comprised of many types of people with many stories worth telling. Big surprise, right? As if "Weeds" and "American Beauty" and "Ordinary People" didn't delve into that deeply enough. It's a wonderful structure that Ng creates. I began to look forward to the flashback sections because I knew that mysteries lurked, that their structure is as exciting as the main narrative and amps up the tension. A great invented story, which is what we seek during this grim time. 

Two senators from Wyoming who don't have a clue

Here are two GOP senators from Wyoming who don't have a clue about what people are facing out here. I sent them a plea to pass the HEROES Act that the House passed more than two months ago. The Republicans in the Senate, led by McConnell, sat on it for two months hoping COVID-19 would go away magically just as Trump believes. It did not go away. Millions are unemployed and all they care about is making sure businesses can't get sued by people who lost their jobs, possibly their lives, during the pandemic. This is the same bunch who passed a trillion-dollar tax cut for rich Americans. They just don't care. And they are as cruel as Trump, their ringmaster. 

Dear Michael, 

Thank you for taking the time to contact me about the ongoing federal response to the COVID-19 crisis. It is good to hear from you.

I appreciate you sharing your support for H.R.6800, the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act.  America is in an unprecedented health and economic crisis. To save lives and save our economy, Congress has a duty for the duration of this emergency to assist Americans who are facing uncertainty. American's deserve assurances with their jobs, in their homes, and when sending their children back to school. Any relief funding passed by Congress should be temporary, targeted, and focused on keeping Americans employed, getting our students back to school, and providing our healthcare professionals have the resources they need.  The Senate is considering several targeted measures that address impacts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and I look forward to debating these measures along with other proposals that will be brought forward during that debate.  Please know I will keep your thoughts in mind as the Senate continues its work on this issue.  

Again, thank you for taking the time to contact me about the coronavirus crisis. I value your input and look forward to hearing from you in the future.

John Barrasso, M.D.
United States Senator

Barrasso's net worth in 2018 was $15,928,012 according to Open Secrets. He is the 14th-richest U.S. Senator. Wall Street Journal (9/2019), using info from Roll Call, estimated $2.7 million. I'm sure it's higher now, in the COVID-19 year of 2020, especially after he gave himself a sweet tax cut.

 

Dear Michael:

 

The outbreak of COVID-19 is being carefully monitored and the federal government is working closely with state, local, tribal, and territorial partners to respond to this public health threat.

 

I voted in support of the third Senate package to combat the outbreak of COVID-19, the CARES Act (S.3548), and the Senate passed it unanimously. This package helps to fill in the gaps of the previous packages and provide the financial assistance needed for small businesses and employees in order to avoid massive unemployment lines and a complete economic collapse of our country.

 

In terms of a future relief package, the legislation is still being debated. I believe it is important for Congress to spend responsibly. I recognize the unprecedented crisis presented by COVID-19 and I have supported the necessary response, but we have already run up a $2.7 trillion deficit this year, more than triple the size of the deficit we ran at the same time last year. Our focus with any new legislation should be helping kids get back to school, getting Americans back to work and providing health care resources needed to fight this virus. In the meantime, it’s important for folks to continue to slow the spread within our communities by wearing masks and socially distancing when possible.

 

I will certainly keep your thoughts and concerns in mind as I continue to work with my colleagues on this critical issue. Thanks for getting in touch.

 

Sincerely,

Michael B. Enzi

United States Senator

Open Secrets (Center for Responsive Politics) shows Mike Enzi worth $2,137,028 in 2018 (ranked 48th in Senate). Wall Street Journal shows a mere $500,000. Still, Enzi takes his dough into a retirement paid for by you and me, the great unwashed who do not deserve a weekly unemployment bump of $600 because the U.S. has a big budget deficit created by some mysterious force that has nothing to do with the U.S. Senate.

No road trip for me

I decided to cancel my Aug. 3 appearance at ARTCORE'S Music & Poetry Series in Casper. I was on a double bill with musician Lauren Podjun. Writer Gayle Irwin will replace me. I met Gayle through Wyoming Writers, Inc, our statewide writing group.

Why did I cancel? Covid-19. Knowing ARTCORE Director Carolyn Deuel as I do, I am sure that the Bourgeois Pig venue would be as virus-safe as possible. ARTCORE is one of the first local arts agencies in Wyoming. Carolyn has been at its helm for most of that time.

That said, there is one overriding problem. I am a high-risk human during this pandemic. I am 69 and a cardiac patient since 2013. I experienced a widowmaker heart attack and, because I delayed getting help, now walk around with an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator or ICD in my chest. This makes me a prime target for the coronavirus. From the beginning, the top three riskiest groups are the elderly, cardiac patients and diabetics. I'm in the first two categories and Chris is one and three. Young, healthy people have caught the virus and died. Often, they also have pre-existing conditions. Any complication can be a deadly one. Young people like to gather and when they do, they pass along COVID-19 and being it home to older parents and other family members.

This doesn't have to be. Wear a mask. Practice social distancing and, if possible, stay home. And wash your hands. Sanitize kitchen and bathroom surfaces.

Wyoming Governor Gordon conducts COVID-19 briefings and has issued a series of orders. Those policies never included a mandatory mask policy which puts us in the company of such Coronavirus success stories as Florida and Texas. In March, the Governor did issue some strict policies that closed many businesses, performing venues, restaurants and coffee shops. He has gradually loosened the restrictions although he had to extend the latest one from July 31 to Aug. 15 due to a spike in infections that put us on the New York Times and Johns Hopkins COVID site hot zone charts. Today, Idaho is on the list due to rising cases. Tomorrow, it may be your state.

When I do get out of my bunker to the grocery store, I note that many people do not wear masks. I do. Employees do. Others don't. We've all seen mask-shaming and no-mask-shaming incidents online. I don't tell people what to do and that's the prevailing attitude in Wyoming. But the science is clear -- masks help protect you and those around you. Social-distancing does too, and that has been suggested to businesses around the state but not required. Grocery stores guide you with floor signs which keep us separated in line. Arrows point out directions for carts to travel, although that's violated regularly. No head-on casualties thus far, as far as I know.

No travel for me. No reading from my new book. That means I have to stay home to rewrite and revise, a major part of any writing enterprise.

So, in a time when getting out of the house is a blessing, I am not getting out of the house. I have lots of books and know where to get more without leaving home.

P.S.: U.S. COVID-19 death toll passed 150,000 today.

Hunkered down -- four months and counting

I posted my first blog about the pandemic on March 15. In "The pandemic comes to Wyoming," I mused about the deadly virus and the impact it could have on us. I don't have to read between the lines to know I was scared. The spiky virus laid in wait for us all. I had nightmares. Already there was a toilet paper shortage.

Four months to the day later and I'm still here. Still hunkered down, for the most part. I'm high risk so wear a mask when I go out. In the beginning, the only masks I could find were bandannas. I then graduated to hospital-style paper masks that my daughter brought home from her part-time job. Later I ordered cloth masks and we now have plenty. Not enough to share with all of the maskless shoppers at the grocery store. But enough. I still tend to buy too much food when I shop, especially non-perishable items such as canned milk, canned fruit, soup, and pasta. I'm versed on various ways humanity can perish thanks to books and movies. I go all the way back to the bomb shelter building days of the 1950s, duck-and-cover classroom drills. The threat was real then. We thought atomic fire would end us. Other threats lurked, less bombastic ones that could do us in.

And here we are.

If you add to that an imbecile in the White House, economic meltdown, global warming, racial strife, and unhinged evangelicals, we are in deep shit.

It also is a great time for creativity especially if it involves humor. Dark humor. The darker the better.

To be continued...

COVID-19 highlights lowlights are in the headlines

Some days, I get up and stare at the coronavirus news on my smartphone screen. I can access every news source on the planet and, even though most of them have paywalls, many allow me to read the headers and sometimes a bit of the story. Here are some lowlights from today:

New York Times:  With Virus Response, Governors Face Unending and Very Public Test

Denver Post: More Colorado families consider online education as COVID-19 risks look over upcoming school year

Reuters: Coronavirus cases hit 13 million, WHO sounds alarm

Miami Herald: This iconic Miami Beach hotel recently reopened. Coronavirus is making it close again

Wyoming Tribune Eagle: UW confirms a person working on campus contracted virus

And this: UW expects substantial enrollment decline

Toronto Star: Canadian snowbirds in flux as insurance firms deny them COVID coverage – but there is a solution

TrialSite News (Italy): University of Padua Vo Study: One Possible Hypothesis of How to Contain COVID-19

The Jakarta Post: Hong Kong Book Fair postponed amid spike in coronavirus cases

CNN: Trump turns on Fauci as disaster grows

Fox News: Local governments weigh tax hikes to plug coronavirus-induced shortfalls

The news is dismal on this Monday morning. It was dismal yesterday and the day before. The U.S., especially, is seeing spikes in the South and West. A sputtering economy tried to roar again but many leaders, even some Republican ones, on backtracking on their open strategies. The Atlanta mayor, a Democrat, has been diagnosed with the virus and is slowing its reopening which has made the Republican governor very mad. When I say mad I mean angry, although both apply in this case. Florida’s governor. A Trump ass-kisser, is moving ahead full speed on reopening. He plans to get school open next month, saying that if Wal-Mart can open so can schools. U.S. Education Secretary DeVos, a Trump flunky, tells communities to get kids back in school OR ELSE!

This could be a tragicomedy but it’s real. Very real. The Johns Hopkins University coronavirus tracking site lists more than 3 million U.S. cases and 135-plus thousand deaths. New cases are at 24,000 and climbing as it’s early yet.

Trump fiddles as the U.S. burns.

Chris and I are both high-risk and are staying home. I wear a mask when I do go out to the grocery store or fast-food drive-ups. Hunkering down is still SOP for us.

Good luck, wherever you are.

The "Poetry Apothecary" prescribes plenty of poetry and art

How have the arts been impacted by the pandemic?

Bigly.

No surprise, since the creating of art can be a solitary act but it's enjoyed with others. We gather for concerts, dance performances, plays. We gather in museums and galleries to appreciate the visual arts. We read singly yet gather for talks and book signings by writers. We gather in book clubs to celebrate our favorite writers and maybe drink some wine.

This is the summer of ungathering.

Many arts groups, not content to start planning for 2021, have come up with creative ways to reframe their events. Impromptu performances from city balconies. Zoom collaborations. Drive-in concerts.

I wrote about one of these groups this week for WyoFile's Studio Wyoming Review.

The coronavirus cancelled the annual June Jackson Hole Writers Conference, one of the most esteemed events on the country’s literary calendar. Since planning is done years in advance, staffers scrambled to put conference sessions online for free (registration is usually around $375) and only charged fees for critiques offered by faculty.

Matt Daly, assistant director of the JHWC, came up with the "Poetry Apothecary" that showcases visual arts and writing. The show is up at the Center for the Arts gallery until the end of July. The JHWC web site features a video tour (updated regularly) of the exhibit along with two other videos featuring artist/poet collaborations.

Daly proposed “Poetry Apothecary” well before the pandemic but needed to do some fancy footwork to adjust to the times. As he was helping to redesign the conference, he also was installing the show at the Center for the Arts. As anyone who works in the arts knows, fancy footwork is part of the job.

Read my Studio Wyoming Review article on the show on WyoFile. It was posted yesterday in a slightly edited form. 

All articles need editors. As one, I have revised, reframed, and rejected many stories. I tell young writers to expect changes to everything you write. My daughter Annie recently submitted a script to the True Troupe. The acting company is reviewing play scripts for the fall. Annie read one of my old short stories and transformed it to a one-act. She asked me to be thorough in my critique. I was. What I wasn't prepared for was Annie's interpretation of my story. She condensed and rearranged it. I had the chance to experience my work anew. She had workshopped my story before I had a chance to edit her. 

One of my Dad the Editor lines is "it's not finished until it's finished." She obviously was paying attention. My story, 15 years on, was still being finished. And it won't be finished yet. If the troupe adopts the script, the director and actors and crew will workshop it again. Lines may be dropped and lines may be added. Characters may change or disappear altogether. It's a wonderful process and not one for the faint of heart. 

Take some time to read Studio Wyoming Review. It's supported by WyoFile and grants from the Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund and the Wyoming Arts Council. 

And then there's this:

From noon to 12:30 p.m. on Thursday, July 23, “Prescribe,” a livestream "Poetry Apothecary" reading, will be presented in the Center for the Arts Mainstage in Jackson. Medical professionals read poems as acts of healing. Masks and social distancing will be in effect.

Life in the Time of Distancing

My sister-in-law, Ellen Berry, died last week in Florida after a three-year bout with lung cancer. She was 61.

She was a wonderful person and I will miss her. My wife Chris, her only sibling, was with her at home for five days before she passed. Chris was lucky to get a flight out at a decent price. She was in shock when Ellen’s husband Chuck called with bad news on Saturday morning, June 20. He came home from work on Friday evening and found her on the floor. She was rushed to the hospital and put in ICU.

Chris and I scrambled to get her on a plane from Cheyenne to Daytona Beach. She flew Delta on June 23 on a bereavement fare. She was thankful to be with her sister in the final days.

Chris stayed in Ormond Beach for the planned celebration of life. This morning, she called and said that it had been cancelled due to the coronavirus. In case you haven’t heard, Florida is one of the states where Covid-19 has spiked. Chris’s family decided that gathering for a wake was too risky for all, not just for the over-60 high-risk crowd but for everyone. Many young people have been admitted to hospitals in the last few weeks. They have also acted as disease spreaders, the Typhoid Marys of their generation.

It’s a sad thing when you can’t get together to send off a loved one. This is happening all over the world. We need these farewells just as we need the welcoming ceremonies for newborns. Joy and sorrow must be shared. It leaves a hole when it is not. Weddings, reunions, graduations all need to be shared. For those who can’t attend, the photos are gifts to be shared. They also provide mysteries for future generations. Who is that guy with Aunt Mary?

I feel that lack of togetherness today. Chris and I have been hunkered down at home since mid-March. No St. Patrick’s Day parties and now there will be no Fourth of July parties. I miss human contact. I grew up in a big family and we thrived on human contact. I’m also a writer and spend a lot of time by myself, just me and my imagination and my laptop. When I emerge from my den after composing a few pages of prose, I seek out people to bother. These days, most of that bothering is done by phone, e-mail, Zoom. My family members get together almost every Sunday on Skype. It’s a welcome connection. My siblings and their kids are mostly in Florida, a few hours’ drive from each other. I live in Wyoming, a few days drive or a day-long airplane ride away. We have family clusters in Georgia and North Carolina. A niece works in New Zealand and my sister and her husband live in Lyon, France.

While it is wonderful to see and hear relatives via laptop, I miss the in-person gatherings. In December, I attended my niece Meghan’s wedding in Atlanta. It was such a pleasure to shake hands and hug, so much of it in the four days I was there. It’s a small thing, this contact with another human, but now I miss it when it can’t be done. 

A pleasure center activates when we touch. It’s a rush. Sometimes, it’s scary or sad, as when a family member jets off to take a job a half-world away. Our rushed farewells are now at airport curbside. Maybe we get in a quick farewell as we hustle to the security line-up. Back in the day, you could see your wife all of the way to departure gate. You could hold hands and kiss right up until the final call. You could stand by the plate-glass window and see the plane back up and taxi out to the runway. If you were lucky, you could watch as it took off and disappeared over the horizon. Maybe it was worse to linger at the airport instead of being shooed away from the unloading zone by a robotic voice. 

My grandmother Florence, born a decade before the Wright Brothers flight, took my brother and me to lunch at the old Denver airport, Sky Chef I think it was called. We ate and watched the planes. There even was a balcony where you could stand outside and watch all of the comings-and-goings. I was fond of airports. I wasn’t always fond of flying, especially when I jetted away from loved ones, or jetted toward a loved one’s funeral.

Sadness has crept into everything. Hunkering down has had a price. People have lost friends and lost jobs. Police have killed people just for being black. We have a president and an entire political party that thrive on cruelty. We can’t go out to the brewpub and have a beer with an old friend. I wear a mask and I expect you to wear one even though I can’t see your smile.

During all of this, we have discovered humanity in unexpected places. Creativity, too. Let’s let those thrive as we figure a way out of this.