Post 279 - December 15, 2020

Day 279…

It looks like we may get slammed with some snow starting tomorrow evening. We’ll see when and if it happens, but I have to say that I am actually somewhat looking forward to it.

New York when it snows, and you don’t have to go anywhere, can be fantastic. Especially before the holidays, it becomes the perfect backdrop for all of the decorations up and down the avenues. Piled up on cars and air conditioners, it muffles the jagged edges and jarring sounds of the city and makes it all just seem softer.

The beauty of it, alas, doesn’t last very long.

My mother and I were coming back from a trip years ago and got stuck in Los Angeles because of a big New York snowstorm. Since we had the day, we went to Disneyland and rode the Indiana Jones ride three times in a row while drifts accumulated on the streets back east.

By the time we were able to fly out the next day, the snow had already started melting and forming giant lakes of brown and grey slush on every street corner. Then everything froze again, and the sidewalks and streets became lethal skating rinks.

The main victim of a sizable snowstorm this week will be our city’s outdoor dining. For anything under an inch, everything can continue as usual with establishments taking some steps to ensure that their patrons and workers remain safe - keeping pathways clear and salting the sidewalks near the tables.

For more than about an inch, however, the NY Sanitation Department will issue an alert. If that happens then outdoor dining areas are going to have to be dismantled and taken off the street so that plows can remove the snow.

Currently the dining areas that have been set up off the sidewalk on the street are right where the piles of snow that get pushed off the trafficked areas usually go. Once they have been dismantled and moved, it is likely to take several days if not weeks to get them back. Restaurants are going to have to figure out where to put those piles of snow before they can rebuild. In normal times, those piles can persist for weeks. A few melting and freezing cycles and they become solid.

With indoor dining now cancelled again, this winter storm is really going to hit some of these restaurants hard if there is actually some accumulation. They will need to rely on take-out and delivery.

The Electoral College vote concluded yesterday without incident confirming that our next President will be Joseph R. Biden. Some Republican Senators grudgingly admitted that he won once the College votes were finally cast, but the Senate Majority Leader hasn’t said a word.

Part of this is political expediency.

Given the erratic and childish behavior of this President, antagonizing him by acknowledging the truth of the election essentially means that he will retaliate by refusing to sign any legislation. The Senate Majority Leader and his cabal of Republican Senators, by remaining fiercely loyal to the man holding the office are at least guaranteed to have his ear.

As some of the Leader’s staunchest allies have now signaled their acceptance of the results, their power as a group, however, has started to crumble. Retribution from the President appears imminent.

At almost the exact same time that California cast their Electoral votes confirming that the President-elect had passed the 270 votes needed to win the election, the President tweeted that his Attorney General was stepping down.

Barr’s unwavering support of the President wavered when he announced that the election was secure. The President then froze him out. Fearing he was going to fired, he, instead, resigned. He will be replaced by Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen who will hold the position for less than a month before the new Administration takes over.

The outgoing Attorney General has time and time again supported the President at the expense of the country. His departure, while creating confusion and weakening us in the eyes of the rest of the world, is somewhat anti-climactic.

Perhaps one of the most egregious things the man did was to whitewash the results of the Mueller investigation into the interference by the Russians in the 2016 elections. We have never gotten a satisfactory conclusion to that investigation largely due to interference from the man who most directly benefited from it - the President. His Attorney General aided and abetted him in that.

Yesterday, it was reported that Russian intelligence agencies had engineered a massive hack against the Pentagon, our own intelligence agencies, nuclear labs and many Fortune 500 companies. The State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, as well as the Treasury and Commerce Departments all appear to have been compromised.

We didn’t discover this. A private cybersecurity firm named FireEye did and reported it. It is reported that over 18,000 government and civilian users downloaded a software update that acted as a Trojan horse for Russian malware. That gave the Russians a way into all of these systems. It is still not clear what the extent of the damage from this attack is.

Whatever this Administration’s actual ties to Russia are, are not going to be discovered while this President is holding office.

The State Department is refusing to directly acknowledge that Russia is responsible. The Secretary of State attempted to deflect a direct question about it by saying, “(there has) been a consistent effort of the Russians to try and get into American servers, not only those of government agencies, but of businesses. We see this even more strongly from the Chinese Communist Party, from the North Koreans, as well.”

The Chinese and North Koreans didn’t do this. The Russians did.

Not that the Departing Attorney General would have done anything about this, but the incoming acting one likely won’t have the time, clout, or given who appointed him, the inclination to do anything about it either. Make no mistake about it, this was a serious attack. We are only in the beginning stages of trying to figure out what actually happened and how badly we have been hurt.

Along with this snowstorm coming, we are also getting the news that we may be facing a new wave of shutdowns here in the city. Our positivity rate has gone above 5%. It should be below 1.5%.

News from London is that tomorrow that city will enter into a Tier Three status meaning that all of the theatres that have re-opened up over there will need to close back down.

This is exactly what we will not be able to afford to do over here. It is somewhat cheaper to produce shows in London that it is here so they may be able to weather a certain number of re-openings and closings. That won’t work on Broadway. It’s much too expensive and the marketing too complicated. Shows that reopen will really only be able to do that properly once. Producers, here, are going to be more careful about when they decide to do it.

In other sad theatre news, Ann Reinking passed away yesterday in her sleep. I didn’t know her personally, but she was an indelible part of our community.

The quintessential Bob Fosse dancer, she was mesmerizing onstage. Back when I was in high school, I saw her in Dancin’ which was essentially a review of Fosse’s work. Later, I saw her in the long-running revival of Chicago. There was nothing like the experience of watching her dance. She made her razor-like precision seem completely effortless.

A dancer’s performing life is short. Like any other athlete, what is required to dance the way she did is strength and stamina and flexibility. When the body begins to rebel, it becomes time to pass the knowledge on and that’s what she did.

She started teaching and choreographing. Almost every dancer I know, including my own sister, took classes with her at one time or another. She will live on in all of those people and then, in turn, within the people that they then teach and work with.

Remarkably, the Senate Majority Leader has just this moment delivered a speech on the Senate floor congratulating Joseph R. Biden on winning the election to become the next President of the United States. He said that the Electoral College, “has spoken”.

One less rat on the deck of the ship.

What can we now expect in response from the President? Two of his staunchest allies have now deserted him. What is he going to do?

Buckle up. There is a storm coming.

It could rage and do some real damage, or it could just blow itself out. Who knows which it will be?

We will just have to hunker down and wait and see.