Day 120…
Self-haircut #3.
#2 was like the second performance of a show. Adrenaline gets you through the first one and then, for the second one, you relax and think you are OK. Then it doesn’t go so well.
#3 isn’t actually all that bad, really. I cut off a hunk of hair at the back that felt strange (I couldn’t actually see it.) I’ve caught Michael looking at it a couple of times, but I think that whatever I did back there, he’s gotten used to. I’ll get him to fix it with #4. In the meantime - hair gel.
We are now four months away from the last day that everything was completely normal. I had gotten home from a casting trip the day before and Michael and I went to a gala dinner that night.
We were the guests of a friend who had bought two tables. There were a lot of people there that we knew. We hugged and kissed our friends and laughed together all night long all crammed in together at the same tables. The very idea of wearing a mask would have been absurd.
The next day, when he woke up, Michael wasn’t feeling well.
We have a whole stack of pre-pandemic magazines sitting on top of a storage unit in our hallway. I think that we are just going to toss them all into recycling. Our lives have changed so much over the last four months that anything in them seems either like ancient history or outright fiction.
The Week is a magazine that compiles stories on issues of the moment and presents headlines or a summary of how different outlets, across a broad spectrum of political leanings feel about them. The headline of the magazine that came out at the end of that week back in March was, “Viral Anxiety: How bad will the coronavirus outbreak be?”
In that same early March issue of The Week, a story inside asks the question, “Covid-19: Is Trump up to the challenge?” The responses to it are interesting.
“Denial isn’t going to work against a virus that doesn’t watch Fox News”, said the Atlantic.
“The media spent the last week spreading the lie that Trump dismissed the epidemic itself as a “hoax”: in fact, he used that term to describe the Democrat’s claim he’d mismanage the response”, said the NY Post.
“Sadly, as this virus spreads, the “disgustingly disloyal opposition” will be rooting for Trump to fail”, said the Louisville Courier-Journal.
“Trump can rise to this occasion but so far he’s taken exactly the wrong approach”, said the National Review.
“Anyone looking to Donald Trump for competent leadership in the weeks and months ahead simply hasn’t been paying attention”, said the New York Times.
In just this past month, the United States has seen a rise in over a million new cases of the virus. As of today, we are now seeing over three million people infected, with more than 130,000 people dead. Internationally, the number of cases has risen to over twelve million people with over half a million fatalities.
Dr. Fauci is saying that the states that are experiencing rising numbers should think about shutting down again. He pointed out that according to a CDC study, those numbers could represent just a fraction of what’s really going on out there.
The White House is having none of that. They are relentlessly pushing forward their demands that schools re-open. They lashed out at the CDC for issuing safety guidelines that they feel put too many obstacles in the way of making that happen. It looked like the CDC was going to cave and rewrite them, but this morning Dr. Robert Redfield said they wouldn’t. Instead, they are going to publish an addendum providing additional reference documents. The President is threatening to cut off federal funding to schools that do not open, although his ability to do that is limited.
There’s another quote in that early March issue that comes from New York Magazine. “What passes for reality in American society is far more malleable than anyone realized.”
We have to figure out how to convince half of this country to accept scientific guidance as the way forward through this crisis. COVID-19 is not a political crisis, although the Administration’s handling of it, has created one.
We have spent four solid months in stasis.
Anybody should have the ability to look at the numbers rising at these alarming rates and realize that we are heading in the wrong direction. Anybody should, yet a massive portion of our country either can’t or won’t. Until we cut the current White House out of our response to this virus, what we are experiencing now, is what we are likely going to be experiencing for months to come. Countries that listened to their medical experts are seeing their curves flatten.
We are not.
We cannot fix the economy until we start being able to handle the virus. Both have to be attended to but dealing with the economy first is probably going to damage it far more than it is now.
It doesn’t look like it’s going to rain today which is a relief. I’ve gotten caught in a couple of utterly torrential downpours in recent days that have soaked me to my skin. We even had some hail a few days ago. Not having anywhere to go or anything particularly pressing to do, however, meant that I could enjoy the rain and not worry about being wet. There’s something incredibly freeing about riding a bike through a deluge. With my new haircut #3, it only takes a couple of minutes to dry out once I’m home.
They are painting “Black Lives Matter” on Fifth Avenue today in front of the President’s building. I’m guessing that they chose to do it today because there isn’t any rain in the forecast.
I’m going to shower up now and head downtown to cheer the painters on.
We may not all being paid these days for anything that we do, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that there is still plenty to DO.
So, let’s do it.
and we can
do it
and today
we are
💕