Post 187 - September 14, 2020

Day 187…

Sometimes in the mornings in New York City, the traffic can sound like the ocean. Whooshing by, the cars have a similar regularity to the constant waves rushing up on the shore.

Then a truck backs up or an ambulance screams down Columbus and the illusion breaks. So, yes, we are back at home.

For the first time in many days, I have the news on. A filmmaker named Nancy Hamilton has been filming the wildfires north of Sacramento in California. It’s unimaginable.

So far this season, 3.3 million acres have burned in the flames. 4,100 structures have been lost.

3.3million acres. 4100 structures.

To give you an idea of the size of that, all of Manhattan is only 14,478 acres. 228 Manhattans have burned so far. And the fires aren’t even close to being contained yet.

Friends on the west coast are posting pictures of vivid red skies and dense smoky orange air. Last week, temperatures in Los Angeles reached 117 degrees (47C). The only positive result of all of this smoke in the air is that temperatures have fallen in recent days.

The number of people experiencing loss these days is staggering. Not just from the fires, but from everything.

Maybe people are just posting more these days, and this is all very normal, but it seems to me as if friends and friends of friends are losing relatives and loved ones at a much higher rate than I ever remember before. Not to the fires and not to COVID necessarily, but to everything. Rarely does a day go by without word of somebody else passing.

A friend of mine just lost their father to the virus and is having to weigh the risk of air travel versus the very real need to be there to lay him to rest. My Aunt passed away in South Africa, we are still not 100% sure of what, and there is nothing any of us can do about it. Howell Binkley, the lighting designer whom I have worked with for many years passed away from cancer and left the entire theatrical community bereft. Likewise, Jana Llynn, a wonderful stage manager, also just lost her fight with cancer.

There are many more, and all of this just in the last couple of weeks. And none of us can mourn properly.

We are now fifty days away from the election.

The feeling from the different news shows this morning is that despite the overwhelming pressing need, we are unlikely to get a new stimulus bill passed by the Senate until after it’s over.

At some point this week we should be receiving the three weeks of $300 stimulus payments that were announced. That $900 is likely going to have to last for several months. Clearly these Senators have no idea how ineffective three payments of $300 are going to be.

How does this Republican-led decision for total inaction make any sense coming less than two months away from a national election?

As a country, we are all facing a collective loss of faith. How did everything get this bad?

Watergate investigative reporter Bob Woodward is releasing a new book called Rage. For some twisted unfathomable reason, the President sat down with Woodward for 18 hours of a taped interview over several days beginning back on February 7.

In these tapes, the President clearly states that he knew how serious the pandemic was going to be back in January. He told Woodward that on January 28 he was told by the national security advisor Robert O’Brien, "This virus will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency."

He knew how serious it was. He knew THEN that it was aerosol. That you could get it from just breathing the air. He described it as “deadly stuff.”

Two days later in a January 30th speech to the American people he said, “We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five. And those people are all recuperating successfully. But we're working very closely with China and other countries, and we think it's going to have a very good ending for us. So that I can assure you.”

When he was asked later in March why he said that, he responded, “I wanted to, I wanted to always play it down, I still like playing it down– because I don't want to create a panic.”

And he’s still denying that there is a problem. 194,000 Americans dead and he held an indoor rally in Nevada, yesterday for thousands of people. Utterly disregarding a Nevada state emergency ban that prohibits gatherings of more than 50 people, the President packed many times that number inside of a manufacturing facility. CNN and other major networks did not send crews because of safety concerns.

His last indoor rally in Tulsa killed Herman Cain, it will be interesting to see who dies because of this one.

Outside before the event, a TV interviewer asked a woman if she was concerned about attending the event. She responded that anyone who was sick would stay home, “I’m not an idiot. And neither are any of these people.”

When the interviewer followed up by asking if she wasn’t worried about the fact that asymptomatic people can be major transmitters of the disease and they might not know they were sick.

“…No.”

That tiny pause. She hadn’t really thought about it.

All of those people. Following a man who doesn’t care about them at all. Believing him that everything is fine. They are all going to return to their homes, both in Nevada and in other neighboring states, and bring back whatever they’ve picked up at this rally with them. Either COVID-19 or misinformation. - both equally potentially lethal.

That more people seem angry at Bob Woodward for not releasing the information sooner (and frankly I’m angry, too), than they are at the President of the United States for keeping the truth about this virus from us, says a lot about how far into national despair we have all fallen.

We are all losing our ability to focus our anger where it belongs. Every bad thing that happens or comes to light just adds to the pile. It all seems the same. The President knowingly making a decision that leads to the death of nearly 200,000 people starts seeming the same as the First Lady cutting down some historic cherry trees in the Rose Garden. All of these bombshell books against the President and his Administration that come out and make a big splash for a cycle just get shelved in the ever-growing library.

On top of all of the personal loss we all seem to be experiencing these days, we are also starting to feel the loss of faith in our country. That seems to be creating more despair than anything else.

Telling us the truth about this virus would have galvanized us. Look what happened here in New York.

Governor Cuomo was straight with us. He didn’t pull any punches. We knew it was bad and we knew there were things we could do to make it better.

And we did. We worked together as a state, not always smoothly, granted, but we did it, and we flattened the curve of the virus. We knew who the enemy was, and we fought it.

If the President of the United States had had any faith in us at all, he would have done the same. But he didn’t. He had no faith in us. He still doesn’t.

We are going to continue to experience loss. We would even without all of this hysteria happening around us. Some of it is harder to bear than we can imagine. We need each other more than ever to get through this.

Social media is potentially a way to connect, but it is also has the potential to be a place where misery feeds off of itself and grows. If one person is experiencing a particular day of despair and posts something about how the world is ending, what does that do the rest of us? It may make that person feel better in the moment, but now it has plunged many other people into the same despair.

Am I saying keep everything to yourself and suffer in misery? Absolutely not.

That is the last thing that anybody should do. That’s dangerous. First, however, do no harm. Misery loves company so creating more of it just makes it increase.

“We are all doomed” is not a helpful post. It makes everyone who reads it start to feel the same.

“I am starting to feel that things are more difficult than I once thought. What do you think that I can do?” starts a discussion and may actually get some good responses. It makes the people who read it HAVE to think positively - what CAN you do?

We always have more power than we think we do. Even though we may feel trapped, there is usually a way out. It may not be a great solution, but it’s in there, somewhere. Despair is pretty much guaranteed to keep that pathway hidden.

For everybody out there who is experiencing loss, you are not alone.

Not by a longshot. Do not despair.

Much, if not all of our profound national sense of dislocation and uncertainty is being created by the people we have elected to positions in our government.

We need our leaders - our President, our Senators, our Governors - anyone we have chosen to lead us - to do their jobs. They need to tell us the truth and help us figure out a way through the problem so that we can all join together and do our part. When they stop doing that, it is time to replace them.

They’ve stopped doing that.

The time to replace many of them is coming.

We have the power to take charge of the course of our lives and make them better. It doesn’t need to be like this.

Vote.