Day 266…
There is a memorial today for Pete Wright, the August Wilson theatre house flyman who passed away while working at the Winter Garden theatre last month.
It will be held outdoors on the street in front of the theatre. It seems a fitting place to gather. Distanced. Outdoors and, hopefully, well masked.
We obviously can’t be inside.
The Pfizer vaccine was approved for use in the United Kingdom today. Vaccinations could start there next week.
The total population over there is about 66 million people so it will not take them as long to inoculate everyone as it will here.
Like here, they will prioritize who gets it. Elderly nursing home residents and their carers will be the first in line, followed by anyone over 80 and frontline health care workers. They will then target the over 75’s, then the over 70’s along with clinically vulnerable younger adults.
Once they have worked their way all the way down through the over 50’s, they will then decide how to distribute the vaccine to the rest of the population. In the first wave of the program, Pfizer will be making 800,000 doses available. That means 400,000 people will be able to be inoculated given that each person needs two doses at 21 days apart. The Pfizer vaccine is the one that needs to be shipped at and stored at very low temperatures so the British government will need to figure out how to facilitate its distribution.
The Prime Minister of the UK, Boris Johnson, announced last week that London will move into “tier 2” status which means that theatres will be able to reopen this month.
They will reopen with attendance restrictions. They will be allowed to operate at either 50% capacity or with 1000 people in the audience, whichever is lowest. Audience members will be required to wear masks.
Some shows are actually running there now. The new musical Six, started performances but then had to shut down again in the middle of last month. They seem to be on track to reopen a few days from now. Six is a small show, short running time with few people onstage - six performers and a very small band. It doesn’t have to bring in a huge amount of money to sustain itself. They can afford to play to a house with limited seating.
There are some producers, however, who will not open shows over there until even those restrictions are lifted.
Cameron Mackintosh has announced that his new production of Les Miserables will open at the Stephen Sondheim theatre there in May. His productions of Hamilton, Mary Poppins and others will likely start at much the same time.
Andrew Lloyd Webber has a new production of Cinderella and there is a brand-new production of a musical version of the film Back to the Future that are both scheduled to open near that May date as well.
A little closer to home, Jersey Boys is scheduled to reopen at the newly refurbished Trafalgar theatre at the beginning of April.
None of the producers of these shows believe that their shows will be able to run unless they are able to operate at full capacity, so these dates may change depending on what happens with the vaccine roll out.
It is worth paying attention to what is happening over there because it gives us a preview of what is likely to happen here. We have 300 million more people here than they do. We are also not even close to seeing our numbers start to turn down. Far from it, all of them are going up - through the roof.
On this side of the pond, in the United States of America, nearly 100,000 people EVERY SINGLE DAY are becoming sick enough from having contracted the coronavirus that they need to be HOSPITALIZED.
Imagine how sick you need to be to have to go to the hospital.
There were 2,600 deaths from COVID-19 yesterday. On the average last month, 51 people died every. single. hour. Every minute or so last month, somebody in this country lost a family member or a friend. That’s on top of all of the people that we lost to everything else.
Like Pete.
And what is our government doing about it?
Well, our President is holding holiday parties at the White House.
After revealing the decorations in the building on Monday, the First Lady hosted a thank you get together for everyone who helped put them together. People flew in from all over the country and gathered tightly together in the foyer. Pictures from the event show little social distancing and few masks.
There are currently nineteen other parties scheduled. Invitations to them make no mention of the virus.
At a reception last night for Republican National Committee members the President said, “It’s been an amazing four years. We’re trying to do another four years. Otherwise, I’ll see you in four years.”
As recently as last week, the President’s personal lawyer Rudi Giuliani apparently discussed with the President the idea of him getting a pardon.It has also been reported that the President has discussed pre-emptively pardoning the oldest three of his children and his son-in-law.
None of them have been formally charged with anything yet. This would seem to indicate that they are all guilty of something.
To be clear, a presidential pardon will do nothing to stop state and local investigations or charges.
Giuliani has been under investigation this summer for his business dealings in the Ukraine and what his role may have been in the ouster of our Ambassador there.
The President’s name-sake son was under investigation by Robert Mueller for contacts he may have had with the Russians over getting access to Hillary Clinton’s emails during the 2016 election, but he was never charged.
The son-in-law gave false information about his contact with Russian nationals when he was seeking security clearance early in the President’s term but he was granted the clearance anyway.
It is unclear what the other two children may have done, but an investigation into the President’s organization show millions of dollars of questionable tax write-offs - some of which were paid to his daughter.
There is even an investigation being done into allegations that money is being funneled into the White House in exchange for potential pardons. One would expect little else from this President.
While people are becoming ill and dying all around us and the prospects for all of us getting back to any semblance of our normal lives keep getting pushed off, this Administration is not concentrating on any of that.
The Senate Majority Leader has begrudgingly proposed a stimulus package which is only a third of what the House bill asked for.
The President is not even giving the rest of us that much thought. He is avoiding briefings, trying to cover his family’s collective butts, and railing against the election results. And golfing. And throwing super-spreader holiday events in our nation’s White House.
It is like watching a comedy film of the unraveling of a banana republic dictator and all the corrupt people around him. It would be funny if wasn’t so unspeakably tragic.
We aren’t characters in a movie. We are all very real people with very real issues.
In seven weeks, we will have a President who seems to understand that. In the meantime, we are all just going to need to take care of ourselves. And each other.
It would be nice to be able to hold Pete Wright’s memorial inside the theatre where he worked, but outside on the street is good too.
We don’t need a building to remember someone’s life. It’s about the man, himself. It’s about his family, his friends and his colleagues.
The President does not seem to be a person who can understand something that intangible. He seems to need gold bathroom fixtures and luxurious surroundings to feel whole. The First Lady walking though the cold empty pristine halls looks as lost and alone as any single human being could possibly be.
Living like that is their choice. It doesn’t have to be ours. Like the Whos at the end of the Grinch story, the rest of us don’t need big buildings or fancy things around us to feel what’s important.
We just need each other.
We can gather together, outside, at a responsible distance from each other, wear our masks and remember this man.
Nothing else is needed.
RIP Pete.
❤️RIP Pete
yes we all need each other
this
we
can
do
❤️