Post 47 - April 27, 2020
Day 47…
Michael cooks and I do the dishes.
That’s our routine.
Michael’s an excellent cook so to do my part, I clean up.
It seems only fair.
In other times, Michael would cook dinner once or twice a week and the rest of the time we would either eat out or not eat at all because we would get wrapped up in work.
Many times, I would just grab something like an egg sandwich from a cart on the street and eat it as I walked downtown to work.
These days, obviously, we eat at home Every. Single. Day.
We have gone down to two meals a day - a kind of involved brunch after noon and then dinner after about 7.
In prepping a meal, Michael manages to use every pot and utensil that we have.
It is truly impressive.
I’m not complaining - at all - the end result is always worth it.
As much as it probably feels like he spends all day at the stove, I feel like I spend all day at the sink.
We have a dishwasher, that I eye-rolled when we installed, but now count as one of my closest friends.
Three months ago, on January 6, the enormous cruise ship the Costa Diliziosa departed from Venice, Italy for a round-the-world trip.
On April 20, the Costa Diliziosa finally docked in Genoa and let its passengers off.
They had spent the 40 days before that at sea without being able to disembark.
It was the last cruise ship still sailing.
In the world.
The crew on that ship was working seven days a week the entire time to take care of those passengers.
So now all of the world’s cruise ships are finally back in port and their passengers, home.
As of a few days ago, the US Coast Guard reported, however, that there were still 65,000 crew members stuck onboard ships docked in the US, the Bahamas and all around the Caribbean with no place to go.
The crews of cruise ships tend to be from poor nations - Thailand, Philippines, West Africa - Their countries are locked down with nobody allowed in and the US’s total aversion to immigration means that we will not let them in either.
So they are stuck there.
If you think that they are lucky to be on a luxurious cruise ship, you’ve never seen the crew quarters on board a cruise ship.
We all need this crisis to pass.
There are currently about 3 million confirmed cases of COVID-10 worldwide.
Of those 3 million, the cases in the United States account for fully 1/3.
To put that in perspective, the next hardest hit country on the globe is Spain who have less than 1/3 of the cases that we have.
Who knows how accurate these actual numbers are?
Testing is spotty at best.
If we can’t test properly, how well can, say Ghana, do it?
Despite this almost total lack of real information, and despite the fact that new case numbers are still climbing, States in the US and Countries all over the world are beginning to dial back stay-at-home restrictions.
Things are starting to re-open.
Restaurants and movie theatres are technically now able to open in Georgia.
Is anybody going?
Can a restaurant afford to stay open if just five or six people at a time are eating in them?
How comfortable is anybody going to be sitting in a movie theatre right now with strangers when there is plenty to watch safely at home?
We are now hearing about a potential second wave of the virus from almost every single health expert.
Governor Cuomo this morning discussed a possible new wave that may come in the fall.
A new wave of coronavirus in September seems almost a given if you listen to them all on TV.
So, if we re-open everything now, do we just re-close everything again in a couple of months?
It is going to cost a lot to re-open.
I’m not for one second suggesting that we don’t reopen - we have to - eventually.
Like many cancer drugs that have awful side effects, this shutdown - the only treatment we could come up with to fight COVID-19 - is having brutal side effects.
Our economy, like the economies of the entire rest of the world, is in tatters.
We have to care for that as much as we have to take care of our own health.
When Broadway reopens, it will cost each show in excess of a million dollars to get up and running again. That is money that is on top of usual weekly operating costs.
Most shows won’t survive having to do that twice. It’s going to be hard enough the first time especially given that social distancing is going to have to be in effect.
When Broadway reopens, there HAS to be a confidence that its not going to just close down again in a couple of months.
A very good friend of mine works at Seattle Repertory Theatre.
There was a show called HERE LIES LOVE that was performed at the Public Theatre in New York and, subsequently, in regional theatres around the country, including Seattle.
One of the things that made this show unique was that all of the seats in the theatre were removed and the audience stood while tall platforms with the performers on top moved through and around them. The audience was in constant movement.
It was like being in a dance club.
In the Seattle production a maximum of about 225 people could fit into the space at one time for each performance.
Somebody at the Rep, just to see what social distancing would mean for a performance like that figured out that a maximum of 12-17 people would fit into that space now.
Nobody can re-open a production with 12-17 people in the audience.
It makes no economic sense and the whole point of the interactive experience that the audience experienced is out the window.
So yes. We HAVE to reopen.
We are no closer to figuring out how today than we were yesterday.
It seems impossible that states reopening plans are lurching forward with as little leadership as we had when we were shutting down.
But they are.
Let me be clear, I don’t have a solution for this.
I don’t see anything like a clear way forward.
I’m not sure anybody does yet.
I don’t see how re-opening some businesses and not others, is going to work.
Businesses are interconnected - they often have a symbiotic relationship with each other.
For example, how many people are going to eat at restaurants in the theatre district if they aren’t going to a show afterwards?
Farmers across the country are now actually having to plow their crops under.
They are rotting in the fields.
Milk is just being dumped.
The restaurant industry was responsible for a huge percentage of agricultural consumption - meat, dairy products, fruit and vegetables.
We aren’t eating in restaurants so that demand has all but evaporated.
Yes, some of that demand has just shifted to grocery stores but food that goes to restaurants is not packaged in the same way that food that goes to grocery stores.
We aren’t going to buy 50lb sacks of flour at Whole Foods.
All of those tiny little cartons of milk that are consumed by students all across the country are not really usable anywhere else.
With schools closed, what do you do with them?
Even the way food is packaged has been radically impacted by recent events and packagers are scrambling to try and adjust.
In the meantime, all of that perishable food is just going to waste.
It is going to waste at the same time that more and more people are in real danger of not having enough.
Last night, Broadway joined together online, from their homes, to celebrate the 90th birthday of Stephen Sondheim.
It was an intensely moving night of some of the greatest living Broadway performers singing some of the most beautiful music ever written for the theatre.
Technical glitches delayed the broadcast for over an hour, but it didn’t matter.
Where else did we have to be?
Last night I saw my industry pull it together and do the best they can.
Those are the people I work with.
That was my job.
The pull to actually get back in the room with them and work is almost unendurable.
Almost.
We do need to figure out how to get back.
There are very real problems in front of us.
None of the solutions for these problems are going to happen without a cost.
There’s always a cost, unfortunately.
I don’t think that just re-opening everything because we are impatient to get a haircut is the way to go.
Primum non nocere.
First, do no harm.
That’s what guides Doctors.
It should guide all of us too.
Michael’s calling. Brunch is served.
Given the smells and noises coming out of the kitchen, it’s going to be a heavy wash day.
And I am beyond grateful.