Day 142…
I’m exceedingly grateful that five months into this global pandemic that I have yet to leave the house without pants.
Yet, I fear, is the operative word in that sentence.
I use the word pants in its American sense meaning trousers or shorts, not in the British sense which means underwear. I’m living in my underwear. So far, I don’t feel that I am in danger of leaving the house without my underwear. But, you know, early days.
When I was in tech rehearsals for the original Broadway production of Jersey Boys, I was subletting a friend’s studio somewhere out in Brooklyn.
American tech rehearsals are a uniquely exhausting and ridiculous series of days that can start from 8am and continue on to midnight. Tech work by the crew begins first thing in the morning. Things get built or repaired. At about 10:30am the crew breaks for coffee. After coffee, there is an hour or two where we can dry tech. Basically, that means programming in set moves and lighting levels without the actors being present.
At noon everybody breaks for lunch for an hour and then we pick up again with the actors at 1pm. Despite the fact that it is part of my job to keep an eagle eye on the time and call the appropriate breaks, the rest of the day is usually a blur.
Tech days go on and on. The unions allow us to work through the last two weeks before the first public performance without a day off. Nothing breaks up the days. They seem to last forever and there is never enough time. One day bleeds into another. It becomes difficult to remember a time when tech rehearsals weren’t happening.
My commute to this Brooklyn studio where I was staying during the Jersey Boys tech was at least an hour in each direction. There was never time to get enough sleep.
One morning, I walked out of the apartment and out onto the street and something felt odd. I could feel the buckles of my backpack and they seemed strangely cold.
I had forgotten to put a shirt on.
The endless repetition of these coronavirus days is mind-boggling. There is very little that is happening to differentiate one day from the next.
People joke that it’s like we are all in early retirement. Except that this isn’t what anyone expected their retirement to be. I don’t think that many people envision being confined at home during their retirements. Travel! Classes! Poker! Dinners! Whatever. We only really have that virtually.
The most frustrating part of this is that a great deal of what we are all going through now was completely avoidable. That, more than anything else, is what makes this all so completely infuriating.
Forget this over-privileged white guy who’s a bit bored and antsy at home, what about the people who are out there every single day putting their lives on the line so that we can buy groceries?
If you work in the armed forces or law enforcement or are a first responder, you accept a certain amount of risk when take on your job. It takes a certain kind of person who is willing to risk their life to work as a firefighter. Those people go into that line of work knowing and understanding the risk. I cannot imagine that many hairstylists go into their field expecting to put their lives on the line in their salons.
When we need to, we can do anything. We can endure more than anybody knows. We can certainly endure this, but we shouldn’t HAVE to be enduring this.
There’s a Congressional select sub-committee coronavirus hearing with Dr. Fauci being broadcast this morning. It is difficult to watch.
Representative Jackie Walorski, a Republican from Indiana cannot stop talking about China and their blame in all of this.
This is a HEALTH issue not a POLITICAL one. Discussing whatever China did or didn’t do gets us not one single micro-step closer to getting the virus under control in the United States of America.
Nobody in charge is looking beyond our own borders to see that our response to this is a DISASTER.
The US was a world leader before this. Now we are floundering. We aren’t listed among the world’s successes. We aren’t even in the middle. We are, instead, listed at the bottom along with Brazil and South Africa and other places whose response to these health issues have totally failed.
The lack of a uniform coordinated response from this Administration is possibly the worst crime ever committed against the citizens of this country.
Just under 3,000 people died during the terrorist attacks on the US during 9-11. That same number of people are now dying from COVID-19 in this country EVERY THREE DAYS.
Michael went to get a virus test on Wednesday from one of the City-sponsored medical facilities that are providing free testing. He had been hiccupping on and off for a couple of days and read somewhere that that might be a COVID symptom. We are also really curious to know whether he still has the antibodies.
It could be two weeks before he gets the results.
That is not an acceptable response time. It’s not even helpful. Imagine how many people an infected person could come into contact with over a two-week period.
The President keeps touting what a great job we are doing with our testing. We are doing over 800,000 tests being a day! More than anywhere else!
We should be doing five times that many tests every day. And there should be enough testing capacity to ensure that the results come back within 48 hours. I was listening to a virologist this morning who thinks that for every person who is testing positive for the virus, that there could be an additional 10-12 people who are infected who haven’t been tested yet.
Barrington Stage Company in the Berkshires has gone to great lengths to try and get a season of performances going this summer. They have tried to follow all of the guidelines that the various unions have put into place. 2/3 of their seats have been removed. Specific entrances and exits were identified for different areas of the auditorium. Actors’ Equity, the union of theatrical actors and stage managers had tentatively given them the go ahead.
The state of Massachusetts has now told them that they cannot do any performances indoors at all. Barrington Stage is now looking into how it might be able to do the performances outdoors.
If we had had a strong unified national response based on science at the beginning of this pandemic, it is likely that the entire country would now be in the same place that New York state is. The virus would still be here, but the curve would be way down. The risk to each and every one of us would be far lower. Barrington Stage might actually be able to do their season.
The conclusion at the end of this morning’s Congressional task force meeting is that there is no plan.
There is no plan for testing.
There is no plan for contact tracing.
There is no plan for how to get our schools opened safely.
There are quite literally no US governmental plans in place whatsoever to combat the spread of COVID-19 throughout the United States.
How many people are going to need to get sick and die before this country wakes up?
Here in New York, we did our bit. We shut down, stayed at home for a couple of months and got our numbers down. We still can’t live our lives, though, because huge groups of people throughout the rest of the country refuse to do the same thing.
My shorts are draped over the back of my chair at the dining table. That way, I think, I have a pretty decent chance of remembering to put them on. At some point I feel sure that I am going to be out on a CitiBike and something’s going to feel weird. There’s going to be more breeze than I am used to. At least with all of the biking I’ve been doing, my legs are in pretty good shape.
I’m running out of new places to bike to. I’m getting a bit tired of going to the same places, day in and day out. But it is something and I am grateful for it. At this rate we are going to be in no better a state when summer is over than we are now. Biking is going to be less pleasant in the snow.
I guess I am going to get in the shower, get dressed, put on my shorts and head out. I am going to try not to be enraged at the government or the people around the country who are listening to them rather than to the health experts.
If, at some point, you happen to see me out there on my bike without my shorts on, just look the other way.
By the time that happens, I probably won’t be the only one. We are all in danger of getting a little squirrelly.
If you do stare and laugh at me, don’t worry, I won’t notice at all because I will be off in my own head dreaming about being back in tech.
At least you haven’t lost your sense of humor!
I’ll join you in dreaming
I believe they come true
....you can bike over the BB to Brooklyn
along with Michael
all with masks
we will see each other
Plan?
I have mine
continue to take the best care of myself
keep my dreams alive and my vision/ true to my truth
And look up
to the stars
believe in a vast universe
with plans
beyond my wildest imagination
I have zero tolerance for liars and manipulation
but a heart and soul open to the existence of great things
beginning
now
and
continuing
always