Day 147…
Breathe.
I am sitting in the Meat Rack otherwise known as the benches surrounding Town Hall in Provincetown. Yesterday’s torrential rain and wind from hurricane Isaias has left today crystal clear and, basically, perfect.
It is easy, I think, wherever we are, to think that everything that is going on is only affecting wherever we happen to be. While we have visited friends in other places in the past few weeks, this is the first time we have actually stayed in another place.
COVID-19 is affecting the entire planet. I, of course, am well aware of that from the news, but there is something unreal about the news. I don’t mean that it’s fake, I mean that it comes out of the television along with the rest of our entertainment. It’s sometimes hard not to think of the two as the same thing.
Sitting here, just off of Commercial Street, I am as surrounded by this global pandemic as I have been in New York. Everyone, and I truly mean everyone, without exception, is wearing a mask. The traffic cops are wearing masks.
Provincetown is taking everything seriously. “Entering Mandatory Mask Zone” signs are on the streets for cars to see and on the sidewalks to alert pedestrians. You don’t want to wear a mask, fine, then you don’t come in. By just making mask-wearing a blanket rule, nobody is confused about what they should do.
It is so EASY.
Some places in Europe have made mask wearing mandatory in all public places regardless of what the set-up is. If you leave your house in Madrid or Hong Kong, you have to put a mask on regardless of where you go. The same is true in all of Greece.
The thinking behind this is not that anyone really thinks that you are at a high risk for contracting the virus outdoors in a park. The problem is that there is so much confusion and too many arguments about when you should wear a mask and when you shouldn’t. It’s far easier to say just put on a mask all of the time. Period. No confusion.
It makes the messaging simple to follow. It’s annoying but far less annoying than possibly killing someone or dying yourself.
If we all simply did that in the rest of the United States as well, we would get the numbers down in a couple of months so that when it gets colder and we are all forced indoors we don’t all get hit with a massive second wave.
We only have about two or three months left where getting together and eating outdoors will be possible. After that, the temperatures will plummet, and we will head into late fall and winter. We will then have about five solid months where it won’t be so pleasant to gather together outside. We will all be indoors where the risk of transmission becomes many times higher.
I wish I had enough faith in our fellow citizens to think that any sort of concerted and unified initiative in the coming weeks could work. It certainly won’t happen with this President whose mantra is, “Just stay calm. It will go away.”
Breathe.
While I am sitting out here under a tree, Michael is rehearsing a Zoom reading back in the apartment online.
Last night I had a Zoom meeting, myself, about a theatre project that is scheduled to start in March. There are no guarantees that we will actually be able to do this project in March, but if we are able to do it then, now is when we need to start planning for it. So, that’s what we are doing.
There were people on the call from at least three different countries. It’s honestly not a bad way to work. While it is nice to all be sitting around a table in one room, there is very little that can’t be done remotely when you are initially putting a show together. I think that when COVID-19 finally does go away, or at least, becomes somewhat controllable, that many of these meetings are going to continue to happen online. There are some things that you can’t really get a handle on without physically being in the space but maybe that means one group visit to the space rather than several.
We are planning on creating the show itself rather than how we are going to be able to accomplish it under pandemic conditions. There are various contingency plans vaguely in place to address some different scenarios that might arise. It’s a way of working that makes sense. Hope for the best and plan for the worst. All in good time. The practical application will come later when we know more.
Breathe.
The PUA payments, as I thought they would, look like they are on track to continue in some form or another. There is simply no way whatsoever for the economy to function under pandemic conditions without them.
The Democratic Congress passed a bill that would extend the $600 payments through to the end of the pandemic some time ago.
The Republicans who control the Senate initially said that they wouldn’t support it and would shut off the PUA payments completely. That didn’t work for anybody, so they upped their offer to $200 a week.
Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s analytics estimates that we could lose 1.1 million jobs by the end of the year without any payments at all which would, in turn, reduce the gross domestic product by 1.27%. With payments at $200/week, there could still potentially be 1 million jobs lost.
Yesterday a Senate committee floated the idea of a $400 a week payment that would last until December 15.
The Democrats, however, are holding firm. $600 or bust.
Yesterday, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that he would back the $600/week payments if the President did. If the President says no to that, then he is out on a limb on his own without the support of his party. It seems unlikely that that will happen. He SEEMS to be leaning towards approving it.
The Democrats are also looking for $50 billion in childcare subsidies.
The Republicans want $15 billion.
We will see. At least some progress seems to be being made.
Grab some popcorn. And breathe.
It’s gotten busier out here on the street. Most of the little art galleries and boutiques are open but with limits on how many people at a time can enter. There’s plenty of outdoor dining.
People have adjusted to living this way. Everyone seems to be calm. They all seem to be breathing.
The nightlife of P-Town seems to be the thing that has really been impacted. While there are some socially distant cabaret shows happening, the dances are not. We missed my friend Cacophony Daniels’ drag show last week. Cacophony performs in New York usually but was invited up for a couple of sold-out shows (Cacophony is a spectacular Frankie Valli, too, by the way!).
Choosing between mountains or ocean, I will always lean towards the latter. Don’t get me wrong, I love the mountains, too, but the ocean really lets me breathe.
So, I am going to take a walk along Commercial Street. I’m going to buy some stuff I don’t need from some local merchants. I am going to trust that everything will work out, because, in the long run, everything always does.
And I am going to take in as many deep breaths of ocean air as I can.
And breathe.
everything is going to work out, it always does
xx