Day 69

History will not look back on 2020 fondly.

Atlanta got hit pretty hard Friday night by riots and looting stemming from initially peaceful protests over police brutality and recent black deaths at the hands of the police.  Last night, a curfew was enforced and the smaller numbers out on the street kept the violence low. Still, anger and frustration are high, and bottling up the rage may only make it worse when it is finally unleashed. 

New cases of coronavirus and the number of daily covid-related deaths in Georgia are not declining. After an initial peak in mid-April, both numbers dropped somewhat and appear to have plateaued. As businesses reopen and people are getting back to their everyday life, the pathogen is still out there in the community and will only spread as more and more contact occurs among individuals.  This pandemic looks like it will be around for a long while.

We're only five months into 2020 and we've already seen impeachment hearings (I refuse to call the Senate proceedings a "trial"), Australia on fire, a deluge of rain in the American South, a pandemic, the worst economic depression in a century, 40 million unemployed, 100,000 dead from coronavirus, and some of the largest and angriest protests in years.  The upcoming campaigns for the presidential election are likely to be as ugly and dishonest as ever, and the climate is still relentlessly changing.  Good times.

Dreaming of the Masters

For Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and the countless others who've lost their lives to racial hatred in America.

I once read that back in the 60s, an L.A. d.j. played Pharoah Sanders on the radio to calm the rioters in Watts.  Sanders' music has enough fire and energy to get a rioter's attention, but ultimately resolves to peace and love.  I've probably posted this song here before, but we need to hear it again and hear it now, and frankly I'm too lazy to go back and check.

All I can say about Sanders' solo on this piece is "I wish that I had said that."

From the 1967 album, Tauhid.  Sonny Sharrock on guitar, the recently departed Henry Grimes on bass, and Dave Burrell on piano.  Drums and percussion are by Roger Blank and Nat Bettis. 

Day 67

I'm a geologist.  To be a geologist, I went to school for four years and then another two for grad school.  I had to write a thesis and have it reviewed and approved by an academic panel.  I had to study chemistry and physics and take courses in the Humanities.  I had to learn fucking French.  Here in Georgia, I have to register with the Secretary of State for a Professional Geologist licence, which also requires me to pass a written exam and pay an annual licence fee.  All this so I can tell you if a rock is mica schist (protip: half the rock in Georgia is mica schist).

To be a cop, I would have to finish high school, pass a physical, and take an eight-week training course.  Once I cross that threshold, I'm given a gun and a badge and can make life-or-death on the fly, and should I err and kill an innocent civilian, my brother and sister cops will rally around me to see that I'm protected from discipline.

At this point, urban police are just another street gang, albeit one operating legally (but then again, they're the ones enforcing the laws).  Like a gang, they wear their own distinctive colors.  Like a gang, they watch out for each other, and are often more interested in protecting their own ranks than the citizens they were hired to protect.  If one is criticized or attacked, in the media or to their face, they band together and will deny any and all allegations and even defend the murderers and rapists among them rather than let one of their own face judgement.

I understand that many cops, most cops even, do good for the community on a daily basis.  That's their job.  An urban police force might have 1,000 good cops and only 10 bad apples.  But if those 1,000 good cops don't turn in and report the 10 bad apples, then we have a police force of 1,010 bad apples.

Today, they finally arrested the cop who murdered George Floyd, but only after a crowd of angry Minneapolis protesters set a precinct station on fire (by the way, kudos to the Minneapolis protesters - setting a precinct on fire is pretty fucking metal).  And Georgia finally arrested the ex-cops who lynched Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick - after two months had passed and a video of the lynching went viral.  It's a start, but too little, too late, and doesn't address the underlying issue of racist police brutality.

As if we didn't have enough problems, Mike Pence returned to Atlanta today for the second Friday in a row, this time for the funeral of some megachurch pastor.  Meanwhile, in Washington, our so-called "president" called the Minneapolis protesters "thugs" in all capital letters in a tweet, and then went on to say "when they start lootin', we start shootin'" or some similar threat.  Great, a president threatening to kill his own citizens if the police and the Umbrella Man can provoke the protesters into violence.  

To paraphrase Ibram X. Kendi for a moment, in this context, "thug" is a racist word and another way of calling the demonstrators the N-word (even though live news coverage I watched last night showed both black and white protesters).  "Riot" is a racist word in this context in that it smears the demonstrators as wild and out of control, and ignores the cause of the protest.  The term "senseless violence" comes from the perspective of white privilege - it's only "senseless" to those not affected by the root cause of the protest.

Day 666

I don't want to incite violence and I'm not a violent person (I feel strongly about violence). But even as I've been sheltering in place and trying to be a responsible citizen,  I've been seeing ignorant armed rednecks on television protesting their "right" to infect others and not wear face masks in public, and I've seen the police standing idly by even as the protesters stormed into state capitol buildings.  

Then I see horrifying video of the same kind of rednecks in Brunswick, Georgia hunt down and kill a jogger, who's only "crime" was apparently jogging while black.  No arrests were made for two months after the lynching until the video went viral and the outrage was nationwide.  

And then I see another video of a policeman in Minneapolis kneeling on another man's throat, even though the man was pleading for him to get off and saying, "I can't breathe," and spectators were begging the cop to get off him (be knelt on the man's throat for a full eight minutes).  The man died, another black death at the hands of a white policeman.

Naturally, protesters demonstrated in Minneapolis after the killing, but the restraint the police showed for the armed white protesters taking over the capitol building was gone.  The police responded with water cannons and tear gas and rubber bullets, and soon a riot broke out and last night, parts of Minneapolis were on fire. 

I don't believe in violence as a solution to anything, but right now I'm fucking mad and I'm fucking angry and I want to lash out, and to be honest I want to hurt that policeman, those Georgia lynchers, and those mouth-breathing armed protesters.  I want to bring the same shit and suffering down on them that they've brought down on their victims.  I want them to taste their own medicine (although many of the face-mask protesters will be tasting a ventilator soon enough).

I'm not violent and I'm going to remain quarantined at home, but goddamn, these are times that make a motherfucker want to throw a  molotov.  I'm not surprised Minneapolis is burning - I'm more surprised that Washington DC isn't.

Day 65

What is there to say about Day 65 that's different from, say, Day 60, or Day 50, or Day 40 for that matter?

And how will we know when we're done counting the days?

And who will decide when enough have died that it's finally time to deal with this situation seriously (i.e., let the scientists and the doctors call the shots, and not the pundits and the politicians)?

And finally (and this is the question you should really being asking yourself), how long will it be before the statistical odds catch up to you and me?

Part of me wants to title this "Bridge Over Covid Waters," but that's corny.  Just a footbridge in the neighborhood.

Happy Memorial Day

Random pictures of Memorial Day from my locked-down neighborhood..

Day 62

Okay.  A car can't be going 30 miles an hour and 60 mph at the same time.  It can accelerate from 30 to 60, or vice versa, but at any given time it can be going one and only one speed.  It's dualistic - it's going either one speed or the other, but it can't be going both.

Which brings us to time travel.  If we think of "time" as the fourth dimension, we can understand things that just happened recently as the equivalent of "near," and things that happened a long time ago as "far."  Same with the future - things are will happen soon, like sundown tonight, are "near" and things that won't happen for quite a while yet, like the end of 2020 (please!), as "far."

So, conventional thought has it that we're travelling along the stream of time, from the "now" of the "here and now" to first those near-term events and then later to those far-off, future events.  Mind you, I don't necessarily share this view or experience time that way myself, but that's the conventional point of view, right? 

Good.  Still with me?  Now, by this convention, we're all travelling through time at a steady rate of 1 second per second, or one day per day, etc.  That's our "velocity" from the here-and-now present toward the near- and far-term future and away from the events of the past.  

So, here's my beef.  Certain science-fiction authors and some futurists imagine that we'll be capable of time travel in the future. Using some sort of as-yet-unrealized quantum technology, we will some day be able to invent some sort of contraption, device, or vehicle (possibly a modified DeLorean) that can travel into the future at a rate greater than 1 sec/sec, and also go back into the past.  

Here's why I think that's not only impossible, but illogical and frankly silly.  If I got into that modified DeLorean and went back to the future, say, 10 years in 10 seconds, I'd be travelling in time at a rate of 1 year per second.  But notice I said "in 10 seconds."  While we were sitting in that DeLorean, we spent 10 seconds experiencing life at the usual rate of 1 sec/sec.  

But we're in a vehicle travelling at a rate of 1 yr/sec.  We can't be going slower than the vehicle we're in without being left behind by the vehicle, and as I pointed out, nothing can travel at two separate speeds simultaneously.

Checkmate, H.G. Wells.

Anyway, these are the things I think about while laying in bed at 4:15 in the morning.  How's your sleep been during this shelter-in-place quarantine (are you still quarantined)?  I've read that many people are experiencing difficulty sleeping and having strange dreams when they do, so I guess in this respect we're all in this together.

Dreaming of the Masters

I hate to do it, but the only proper way to introduce this video is to once again quote the late Frank Zappa -  "Jazz isn't dead. It just smells that way."

I stumbled across this the other day and I know literally nothing about the performer, Arrington de Dionyso.  I guess he's an inventor?  A plumber?  A PVC pipe fetishist?

Whichever is the case, here he is performing at Paris' Penny Lane record store back in June 2015. 

I can hear echoes of both Eric Dolphy and Anthony Braxton in this performance. 

Day 60

Has there ever been a less auspicious start to a Memorial Day weekend?  I can't remember one.  After two months or so of sheltering in place, the joy of three days off doesn't quite seem like the magic it used to be.

To make matters worse, Atlanta is afflicted today with a visit by so-called vice-president Mike Pence, here to lavish praise on Governor Brian Kemp for the rash re-opening of the economy, and on Senator Kelly Loeffler for, I don't know, grifting?

As everyone knows, Kemp began reopening oddly specific parts of the economy - bowling alleys, massage parlors, tattoo studios, and barber shops - back last April before most people thought it was safe to reopen.  Even Trump said it was "too soon" in one of his rambling, semi-coherent press conferences.  But as many right-wing pundits and Trump supporters have noted, the "second wave" of infections and deaths didn't come, and the folks who were already convinced it was all one big hoax to begin with looked at the Georgia experience as proof of their convictions.  

Those who worried about the health of the community more the the wealth of the aristocrats pointed out that it takes weeks for symptoms to appear after exposure, so the feared "second wave" might still be out there somewhere beyond the horizon but heading our way.  Also, many Georgians ignored Kemp's advise and continued to shelter in place through May, further delaying arrival of the second wave. In other words, keep the champagne on ice.

I hope I'm wrong about this, but there are signs that the second wave is starting to appear in Georgia just now.  The NY Times has been keeping detailed records of new reported covid cases in each state, as well as covid-related deaths.  The Time's totals are higher than those of some other sources because they include both confirmed infections (meaning a laboratory test detected the presence of the coronavirus) and probable infections (meaning the symptoms were consistent with covid in the eyes of the medical professionals treating the case, but a laboratory test wasn't performed).   

Here are the results for Georgia through yesterday.

On Wednesday, May 20, we suffered the most new cases (948) since May 1, and although the number was slightly lower yesterday (May 21), it was still quite a bit higher than the rest of the previous week.   Sadly - tragically - we also had the most deaths (77) yesterday that since the peak back on April 20.  Look at the last bar in the graph above to see how much higher yesterday's death total was than the rest of the month.

The spikes in the data could just be statistical anomalies or the result of some hospitals turning in their data for several days in one lump submittal, but since it's not clear that it isn't in fact the rise of the second wave, we probably shouldn't ease any more restrictions at this point.  Two days of dismaying data do not a trend make, nor does it mean we're definitely in the second wave now.  But it's not inconsistent with a second wave either and if it were occurring, this is exactly what it would look like.

But meanwhile, Pence and Kemp are congratulating each other on Georgia's declining trends and on the "successful" reopening of the economy, and by the time little Mike Pence is back in his airplane and flying out of state, the second wave may already be crashing down on us survivors.

Day 59

From May 13:   "I got an email from a diving shop (of all places) that I used to patronize back in the 90s saying they had a case of N-95s for sale, but when I emailed them saying I'm interested they were silent for a week (no response) and then finally replied that they were all sold out.  No way they were selling a mask in these times to a customer from 25 years ago!"

To my surprise and after at least three weeks had passed, they got back in touch with me, saying that the latest shipment of masks had just arrived from China.  I drove out there today and picked up 10 KN-95 masks for $50.

My arsenal, or if you will, wardrobe, of face masks now consists of two cloth masks hand-sewn for me by a friend,  10 factory-made cloth masks from Pakistan, and 10 Chinese KN-95 surgical masks.  The cloth masks are all washable and the KN-95s are reusable with a little maintenance.

In a perfect world, the federal or state government would be making these available at low cost to citizens to help control the covid-19 pandemic, not relying on each person to exercise his or her own personal network of friends and acquaintances - and purchasing power - to try and find the basic PPE needed to reopen the economy. 

From The Literary Desk

We've been reading The Harrows of Spring, the fourth and reportedly final novel in James Howard Kunstler's A World Made By Hand series.

It's an appropriate book for quarantine reading during this pandemic.  The series of novels is set in upstate New York after a fictional collapse of civilization, and gasoline and electricity are no longer available.  People have reverted to living more or less as their ancestors did during colonial times, surviving on locally grown produce and meat from wildlife they've hunted or livestock they've raised themselves.

I've been reading the books for almost a decade now.  Kunstler is basically an ideas guy and not the greatest word stylist or story-teller in the business.  His books are not bad, but Dostoevsky has nothing to fear.  What makes the novels interesting reads aren't his narrative style or the depth of his characters, but the concepts about what such a life might be like.

What lead to the collapse of civilization is never directly explained, but through random comments and a few bits of exposition, the reader can reconstruct the back story.  A nuclear device in a shipping container in the Port of Long Beach was apparently triggered by terrorists, and as a result, the government began searching every container in every freighter entering every port in the US.  This resulted in week- to month-long waiting times for goods to enter the country and eventually a total breakdown of international trade.  Another nuclear devise hit Washington DC, but the timing is unclear to me whether it was soon or long after the Long Beach explosion.    

Simultaneously, oil production peaked and petroleum was no longer available to fuel trains, planes and automobiles.  Then, and this is the most relevant factor today, a pandemic of something called the "Mexican flu" hit and killed millions, and that was pretty much the end of the modern era as we know it.

As opposed to some other post-apocalyptic stories, the future in the World Made By Hand books is not savage and violent, although savagery and violence do exist.  The people of the fictional Union Grove, New York are decent enough, trying to hold on to some semblance of civility in the hard times.  They're excited about establishment of a laundromat in town, not a Thunderdome.  There are those in town who find it easier to loot and prey than to engage in the hard labor of the times, just as there always are, but the books are not centered around Mad Max-style confrontations between avatars of good and of chaos.  They're more about ordinary people who remember the internet and television and microwave ovens and produce available year-round in the supermarket trying to make a living off the hard land and survive the best that they can.

Kunstler is not very good at portraying women and their lives, other than how it relates to the male protagonists, and a couple of plot lines sound like the author's own personal fantasies.  For example, the main protagonist has to regularly "service" the wife of his best friend due to his friend's erectile dysfunction and lack of Viagra in the brave new world.  Later, he takes as his common-law wife a young woman half his age, whose motivations and attraction to the older man are never fully explained.  These plot lines sound embarrassingly at times like the author's own fevered wet dreams and don't advance the plot or otherwise embellish Kunstler's ideas about post-apocalypse life.

But to Kunstler's credit, he has imagined a whole society of people in his hand-made world.  There's a town full of survivors trying to make do, and there's a gang that's taken over the landfill and extorts people for salvage rights and recycled objects. There's a religious sect that seems like some sort of cult at first, but turns out to be good-enough folks once they're met and people get to know them. There's a industrious plantation owner nearby who's on the verge of generating his own hydro-electricity, but living on his plantation comes at the cost of one's own personal liberty.  And there are stories and rumors about the rest of the country, including a government in exile, race wars in the South, and breakaway republics.  

It's a perfect, easy-read book for the pandemic -  sufficiently relevant for the times on one level, and a beach-blanket page-turner on the other. 

Day 57

Day 56

Day 55

"Today marks the lowest number of COVID-19 positive patients currently hospitalized statewide (1,203) since hospitals began reporting this data on April 8th," Kemp tweeted. "Today also marks the lowest total of ventilators in use (897 with 1,945 available)." 

Last week, trying to be open-minded and as generous as possible, I said that Georgia Governor Brian Kemp may be a lot of things - a cheater (he suppressed the vote in his own election) and a bigot (he ran anti-immigrant campaign ads)  - but he's not necessarily a liar.  He's not very bright, but he doesn't seem to just make stuff up on the fly.  I hoped this his announcement of the low number of covid-19 patients was true, as we could use the good news.  I wanted it to be true.

Turns out it wasn't and it turns out I was wrong - Kemp is a liar.  The press is reporting that the Georgia Department of Public Health updates and estimates of infection and mortality rates was wrong, the bar graph showing progress was mangled and misleading, and Kemp had to apologize after the misinformation was discovered.  

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a bar chart on the DPH website appeared to show that new confirmed covid cases in the Georgia counties with the most infections had dropped every single day for the past two weeks.  However, there was in fact no clear downward trend. The data is still preliminary, but cases have either held steady or dropped only slightly in the past two weeks. Experts agree that cases in those counties were flat when Georgia began to reopen late last month.  The bar chart was revised shortly after discrepancies were found.  

The DPH has been confusing readers for a while, being inconsistent with data and in the case of the recent bar chart, having dates out of chronological order.

"Where does Sunday take place twice a week?," the AJC asked.  "And May 2 come before April 26?"

“It’s just cuckoo,” said state Rep. Scott Holcomb (D-Atlanta) who sent a letter outlining his concerns to the governor’s office. “I don’t know how anyone can defend this graph as not being misleading. I really don’t.”

Taking a page from the Trump playbook, Kemp, who's been facing scrutiny and criticism for a series of rash decisions to open Georgia businesses prematurely, appears to be faking the data to match his results.  Instead of analyzing good, accurate data and making the best, informed decisions, Kemp appears to be making the worst, uninformed decisions and then faking the data to make it look like its working.

Brian Kemp - cheater, bigot, and liar.

And idiot.

Dreaming Of the Masters

To quote the late Frank Zappa, "Jazz isn't dead. It just smells that way."

I use the quote with affection because I had written jazz off as dead as recently as a couple of years ago.  But as some of the posts here attest, artists like Jaimie Branch and Matana Robers are keeping the flame not only alive but refreshed and renewed, and masters like Oliver Lake are still very much with us and producing essential new music.  

Lake is best known for his tenure with the World Saxophone Quartet, and I was lucky enough to have seen Lake and the WSQ on several occasions back in the 80s and 90s, including a memorable set on the shores of Lake George in upstate New York.

Here's Oliver Lake performing with two drummers (Bill McClellan and Reggie Nicholson) at the Bang On A  Can Marathon at the Brooklyn Museum on May 7, 2017.

Day 53

They say it's possible that this life, this reality as we know it, is really just a computer simulation, and we're all just NPCs in some future video game.  At the very least, it's impossible to prove that we aren't.

If that's the case, I want to return my copy of Reality 2020.  The one I got has a virus.

Day 52

At this point, it's dawned on me that given my age and given the amount of time this virus will still be around, I'm never going to see another live show again.

Given even the most optimistic of conditions, a vaccine is not likely to be in distribution until August 2021.  That is, if everything goes well and there's no interference, political, social, or natural.  I probably won't be the first one to get vaccinated, so I wouldn't expect a clinician to be sticking me until late, let's say December, 2021.  I'll be 67 years old.

There are those who say that at 65 I'm already too old to go to shows and they may be right.  But I don't care - I like music and I'm past the point of caring what other people think.  But 67?  After I've been away for two years?  And that's assuming that shows will resume as soon as a vaccine is available once again.  That's assuming that there's even clubs like The Earl still around and bands still playing the music that I like.

Back when I was last at The Earl in February to see a show by the up-and-coming Atlanta singer Mattiel (her song Count Your Blessings was recently featured in the FX show Better Things), I had no idea that was going to be the last show of my life.  Had I known, would I have acted different?  Would I have enjoyed the show more, or would my expectations for "the last show ever in my life" been so high that nothing could meet them?  I probably wouldn't have chosen that particular show to be my last ever.

There's a life lesson here.  Enjoy every show like it's the last one ever in your life.  Given that we're all going to die but none of us know when, any show may be our last.  Any meal may be our last - shouldn't we eat each one as if it were?  Every day, every physical act of love, every movie, every book, every conversation could be our last.

Impermanence is swift; life-and-death is the great matter.  Read this post as if these were the last words you will ever hear.

Day 51

If you "get" the picture above, you've been playing too much Skyrim.

Today was all about face masks.  For the past month, I've been getting by on a pair of hand-made cloth masks sewn by my dear friend L.  It was a manageable situation because I rarely go out or encounter a situation where a mask is needed.  I don't wear a mask on my multiple walks each day around the block because I rarely encounter  another person while walking, and when I do, I always cross the street and maintain at least a 22-foot separation (the width of the road).  Typically, I just wave and move on or at worse exchange a few pleasantries shouted from opposite sides of the street.  Low risk.

Supermarket excursions are harrowing and despite the one-way markings in the aisles, it's still nearly impossible to maintain a six-foot buffer from everyone else, including the other shoppers, the cashiers, the grocery baggers, etc.    For a trip to the supermarket, I wear a face mask, coat my eyeglasses with a film of soapy water to keep them from fogging up, and put on a pair of nitrile gloves.  Level D PPE as we say in the hazmat business.  I take off the gloves before getting back in the car or touching the steering wheel, and once home wash my hands, forearms and other exposed skin thoroughly.  Then I "quarantine" the groceries by keeping the non-perishable items on a separate shelf in the pantry for a few days, the refrigerated items in a separate closed crisper drawer in the fridge, and the frozen items in a separate shelf in the freezer.  What's the clinical term for fear of groceries?  Krogerphopia?

I've been seeing posts in social media advising my neighbors and I that toilet paper, paper towels, hand sanitizer and/or face masks are available at such-and-such store, but by the time I get there, they're inevitably sold out.  Actually, I'm set on toilet paper and paper towels - I got lucky one day at Publix supermarket while they were stocking the shelves - but I've been to Ace Hardware stores, Rite-Aids, and gas station convenience stores all over the neighborhood chasing down leads on sanitizer and face masks to no avail.

I remember seeing a case of N-95 face masks in the warehouse of my former employer and called asking if I could buy any of them from him.  He said they were all out, meaning he still had some he just wasn't giving them to me.  I got an email from a diving shop (of all places) that I used to patronize back in the 90s saying they had a case of N-95s for sale, but when I emailed them saying I'm interested they were silent for a week (no response) and then finally replied that they were all sold out.  No way they were selling a mask in these times to a customer from 25 years ago!  They said they were getting a new case next week and would write me when they arrived, but I've heard nothing back.  That was three weeks ago.

This morning, my brother sent an email saying he just got 20 KN-95s, the Chinese equivalent on N-95s, from a pharmacy in his home state of Maine.  He said they shipped and I should contact them if I wanted some.  I called the pharmacy and sure enough, they were out, but she said she'd take my name and call me when the next shipment arrived next week.  When she learned I was calling all the way from Georgia, she had to put me on hold twice to make sure it was okay to do business.  I gave her my name and number but suspect that like the local diving shop, I'll never hear back from them again.  No way they're selling a mask to a customer 1,000 miles away - I'm almost guaranteed not to give them any repeat business.

And then I heard some alarming things about the poor quality of some Chinese-made KN-95s, so it may be for the best.

But I finally had a breakthrough today.  A neighbor rounded up a bunch of us and placed an order for 50 packs of 10 cloth masks each.  I paid him via Venmo and picked them up from him today - he set up shop in a local playground.  Yes, they're cloth, but they're professionally made (in Pakistan), fit snugly, and cover my face nicely.  Still fog up my eyeglasses, though.  But they nicely supplement my two hand-made masks.

Cloth masks won't prevent you from getting infected if you're close to a carrier of the virus, but they are pretty effective at protecting others from anything you might be carrying.  Plus they reduce the incidents of touching your face when you're out and about.  My strategy on staying  healthy is to continue to shelter in place and wear my mask and gloves when I absolutely have to go out (groceries, etc.).  I'll continue to keep an eye out for the industrial-grade N-95 masks for when things start to get really hairy.

Next, hand sanitizer.

Day 50

Here's a little chronology of my voluntary shelter-in-place day today, as reconstructed from memory and the meticulous over-documentation by my iPhone:

Alarm clock goes off at 7:00 a.m. but I sleep until 9:00 and lay in bed until 10:00 checking email, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and Next Door.  To be honest, I pretty much spend most of every day compulsively monitoring email and social media.  Between that and checking the news on The Times and The Guardian, my cell phone screen time is now up to an astonishing average of 4 hours and 51 minutes a day. 

Put on some coffee and drink it black with a plain bagel (no cream cheese or butter).  Download and listen to the "Song of the Day" from three radio station websites (KEXP Seattle, KCRW Santa Monica, and Minnesota Public Radio).

Meditate (30 minutes).

Walk around the block twice for a total of 0.56 miles (like almost everything else in my life, from screen time to crossword puzzle stats, my phone tracks my walking distances down to the hour).

Second cup of coffee plus a banana, an orange, and a cup of yogurt.

Go on line, pay a few bills, and check on my IRA.  I don't want to talk about it.

Play Far Cry Primal for a short while, really just long enough to capture one outpost and refill my supplies.

Walk a second two trips around the block.  According to my phone, this time the trip was 0.48 miles long for some reason. 

2:30 p.m.: Eat a late lunch (chicken-and-sausage gumbo fortified with some jasmine rice) while reading David Quammen's article in The New Yorker on the 2003 SARS pandemic 

Listen to the 2009 album Daughter of Darkness V by the French drone band Natural Snow Buildings. Write and post a review of it over on the music blog.  

Back outside for my third walk of the day.  This time, I log 0.64 miles.  The block is either expanding along with the natural universe, other incidental mileage around the house is getting included with my walks, or the odometer function on my phone is erratic.  I suspect a little of all three.

Read a couple short chapters of the novel The Harrows of Spring by James Howard Kunstler.

Solve the N.Y. Times crossword puzzle in 10 minutes, 39 seconds.  Since I solve it using the app on my phone, I know that my personal best for a Tuesday puzzle is 8 minutes, 11 seconds, and my average time is 18:16.

Replay a mission in the game Hitman 2.   Assassinate all three targets in Mumbai, seemingly without being detected, but the game once again refuses to award me the "Not Spotted" or "No Bodies Found" bonus points.  I'll have to try again tomorrow and be even more careful than I was today.

7:00 p.m.: Feed the cats and scoop the litter.

While outside dropping the scooped litter into the garbage bin, walk the fourth and final set of laps around the block.  The day's total adds up to 2.5 miles (6,443 steps according to my phone). I'm sure that wandering around the house looking for my glasses must add something to the daily total.

Dinnertime: tortellini with marinara sauce and grated parmigiana tonight.   Simple but filling.

Cocktail hour begins! Actually, it began when I uncorked a cabernet to go with dinner.  But most other days, it begins at 8:00 p.m. with an old pal.

This present moment, right now, finds me posting to Water Dissolves Water.  Obviously.  Later tonight, I anticipate a little binge watching, most likely a few more episodes of Season 2 of Netflix' dark comedy Dead To Me, and probably some MSNBC,  The Daily Show, and Stephen Colbert.

I'll probably do most all of the same things tomorrow, just like I did yesterday and the day before and the day before that, although not necessarily in the same order.

Day 49

ATLANTA, ABANDONED from Brent Dey on Vimeo.

We're all yearning for good news lately, any good news really, and on Saturday morning, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp posted a tweet touting lower COVID-19 hospitalization rates across the state.

"Today marks the lowest number of COVID-19 positive patients currently hospitalized statewide (1,203) since hospitals began reporting this data on April 8th," Kemp tweeted. "Today also marks the lowest total of ventilators in use (897 with 1,945 available)." 

Kemp may be a cheater and a bigot (he suppressed the vote in his own election and ran anti-immigrant campaign ads) but he's not necessarily a liar, at least not in the pathological Donald Trump sense.  He's not very bright, but he doesn't seem to just make stuff up on the fly.  I hope this is indeed good news for my sake and the sake of the people of the state of Georgia.  I want it to be true.

But I worry that Georgia is well situated to be ground zero for the next wave of covid-19 infections. It's well known that the virus is spreading fastest among communities of color, in nursing homes,  and in meat-packing facilities, and there's little data available regarding the undocumented immigrant population.    Georgia has a lot of all of the above.

Five of the nation’s top 10 counties with the highest deaths rates from coronavirus per 100,000 are in southwest Georgia. Black people were the largest racial group in all five of these counties, in and around Albany, Georgia.

Although not as plentiful as in adjacent Florida, Georgia has a thriving elderly care and nursing home industry.  The vulnerable populations in these facilities account for a significant portion of the state’s overall coronavirus deaths.

Shockingly high infection rates and death rates have been documented at meat-processing plants in the midwest.  Georgia has a similar and huge chicken-processing industry, particularly in the northeast part of the state, and a significant increase in infections has recently been reported in and around Gainesville, the epicenter of the poultry industry.

Georgia also employs a large number of undocumented immigrant workers in Atlanta's thriving construction (which by and large continued unabated through the lockdown), the south Georgia farming community, and the aforementioned poultry plants.  For understandable reasons, undocumented workers are reluctant to get tested and treated for the virus, and the infection rate among that largely Hispanic population is largely unknown.

So on top of all that, with all of these vulnerable and increasingly impacted communities present, Kemp has thrown open the doors for business as usual.  Based on my own limited observations and numerous reports that I've read in both the news and social media, people are not practicing social distancing and are not wearing face masks and other PPE.  

So we've got the contagion present here, the covid-19 virus, we've got the vulnerable population (minorities, elderly, poultry workers, and undocumented immigrants), and we've  got the means to spread the contagion - the lifting of shelter n place restrictions and a cavalier attitude toward protection by the general population.  In epidemiological terms, we got the disease, the receptors, and a complete pathway for exposure.

I hope I'm wrong - I really, truly do - but it seems like the perfect formula for a "second wave" hotspot.

It's Mothers' Day!

Happy Mothers' Day and a belated Happy May Day!

Mothers of the World, Unite!  We can beat this coronavirus, and overcome the economic system that distributes the associated suffering disproportionately among the classes, races, and ages.

To all the mothers in my life and yours, as Tupac Shakur once said, "You are appreciated."

Dreaming of the Masters

Here's New York saxophonist and clarinetist, composer and improviser, sound experimentalist and visual artist Matana Roberts (AACM) performing in December 2010 at the Godspeed-curated All Tomorrow's Parties in Minnehead, UK.

Day 46

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Day 45

We're not all in the same boat, and I know that I'm lucky to be in the position I find myself in now - retired, not reliant on the arrival of a paycheck, and no dependents relying on me.

I can afford to continue to shelter in place, and my situation allows me to feel that the state-wide order shouldn't have been lifted so soon here in Georgia.  

While I can afford to stay at home a little longer, both financially and psychologically, what I can't afford is to get sick.  There's an old saying that if you can't do the time, don't do the crime.  Well, I can't afford to be ill, so my ass is staying up on this hill.  

I'm 65 years old and just entering the age where the coronavirus can be particularly punishing.  I live alone, and don't have anyone here to help care for me should I get deathly ill.  Sure, there are people in my life who will come by to bring me food and medicine, but I would hate to put them in a situation where they might catch my infection.  Not to be overly dramatic, but if I were to come down with covid-19, it could very well be a death sentence for me.

So I'm being very careful.  I've been venturing out to the supermarket about once every other week, but otherwise I've been staying at home and avoiding people as much as possible.  I've exchanged pleasantries with neighbors from opposite sides of the street a few times, but that's been about it.

But I recognize that if my position were different, my attitude would probably also be different.  If all this hit, say, 10 years go, when I still needed a fairly regular paycheck, I'd be needing to go back to work and I would have needed clients back at their work, too.   I that were the case, my subconscious "elephant" would be heading back out into the business marketplace, and my rational "monkey" would be saying the government doesn't have the right to tell me if I can or can't earn a living (see yesterday's post for an explanation of Jonathan Haidt's subconscious-elephant-and-rational-monkey model).  I wouldn't be one of those yahoos storming the Governor's office with an automatic weapon in my hand, but I would be "questioning the science" and embracing theories on herd immunity and miracle cures.

Our situation determines our position in this matter, not the other way around.

Day 44

So there's a war going on right now on my Facebook feed and my Instagram posts, on my Next Door app and on my favorite sub-Reddits, between those fighting to open America back up for the sake of individual freedom and the economy, and those fighting to keep America closed for the health of the community. I've tried to tone down the verbal violence by "unfriending" those whose viewpoints disagreed with mine, but not only did that feel close-minded (am I really so challenged by differing points of view?) but it didn't work, anyway - people I don't know, but with whom I share a vastly different perspective, would still comment on my opinions and those of my virtual friends and cause chaos and disharmony in my social media.  

In The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1974), Erich Fromm points out that people need a picture of the world and their place in it that is structured and has inner cohesion.  Without a mental map of the natural and social world, we are confused and unable to act purposefully and consistently. Psychologists call this mental map schema; Buddhists call it samskara.  We all have it - all people in all societies - although it can often be quite different from those of others.  An individual may believe that he or she has no such overall picture or map and that they respond to the various phenomena  and incidents of life on a case-by-case basis, as judgement and logic guide them.  But these people are merely taking their own schema for granted.  To them, their perceptions and opinions seem to be common sense and they are unaware that their concepts rest on a commonly accepted frame of reference.  When such a person is confronted with someone with a totally different schema, they judge that person as "crazy" or "irrational" or "childish," while they consider themselves as being completely rational.

Jonathan Haidt, in The Righteous Mind (2012), uses the analogy of the elephant and its monkey driver.  The monkey, our rational mind, thinks it is in control and is steering the elephant, but in reality, the elephant, our intuitive, subconscious mind, goes wherever it wants and the rational monkey is just making up excuses and alibis for the elephant's behavior.  Liberals and progressives have one set of values that determines their schema, their subconscious elephants, and conservatives and fundamentalists have another.  To change someone's mind, Haidt points out, we needn't bother addressing the logical monkey - it's not in control anyway - but instead try to influence the elephant.

Easier said than done, but Ibram X. Kendi in an article that ran this week in The Atlantic, had a remarkable insight into the subconscious mind of our intuitive elephants.  Among other values and elements of their schema, liberals and progressives value fairness and the freedom from subjugation by others, which in coronavirus terms, means freedom from infection.  Alternately, the values and other elements in the schema of conservatives and fundamentalists is liberty and the freedom to exercise their will, which in pandemic terms means cooperating with a quarantine only so far as they are willing.    

In the fighting and the name-calling and exchange of insults I've seen lately on social media ("anti-social media"?), I've seen both sides argue about the facts and the data, and the sources of the facts and the data, but not address these underlying values.  Liberals are calling conservatives "crazy" for wanting to re-open the economy too soon; conservatives are calling liberals "irrational" for wanting to destroy the entire economy in a misguided attempt to not lose even a single life.  Both sides see the other as "childish."

For liberals, so convince a conservative to stay indoors, don't argue about CDC mortality and infection rates, the shape of the curve, or the mechanisms of infection, and most importantly don't tell them they don't have the right to go outside.  The former are just the rational monkey's excuses and don't change anything and the latter challenges the subconscious elephant.  Acknowledge their right to go outside (in most states, they legally do now, anyway) but also point out their right to stay indoors, to protect their families and children from the virus, and to maintain their health.  Without telling the elephant it doesn't have the right to do any one thing, instead suggest that  the elephant also has the right to do other things as well.

For conservatives, to convince a liberal that it may not be necessary to remain sequestered in place, don't argue about individual rights and constitutionality and don't challenge their models on epidemiology, but most importantly don't argue that they don't have the right of freedom from infection and from the effects of other people's actions.  Remind them that we're not all in the same boat, that many working people should have the right to provide for their families by going out and working, and that people have the right to maintain their physical and emotional health by exercise and fresh air and social, if distant, contact.  Without telling their elephants they don't have the right to freedom from infection, remind them that we're all maintaining our lives as best we know how.

Here's a case study.  Atlanta's July 4th Peachtree Road Race was postponed this year due to the coronavirus. An argument broke out on Next Door when someone said that he wanted to run the route that day anyway, and did anyone know of any others or organized groups that planned to do the same?  Many people were immediately aghast at the prospect of swarms of runners all bunched together without social distancing, infecting themselves and each other, their families, and the community.  The runners were called names, and the people that thought it was a fine idea to be out running responded in kind.  Numbers and statistics were thrown around along with insults by both sides, and were also widely ignored by both.

I decided I had to jump into the fun.  "Enjoy your run and good luck," I began, tacitly acknowledging his right to choose and thus not spooking his elephant away.  "I'm not an expert on medicine or infection," I continued, "but wanted to remind you that the virus is spread by droplets, including exhalation and possibly perspiration.  It's probably difficult to impossible to run with a dust mask on, so have you considered how to protect yourself and your family from the others?"  I ended by saying "I'm not telling you not to run - your choice - and hope for your sake that you stay healthy."

I acknowledged his right to choose his own behavior.  I exposed my own vulnerability by admitting I wasn't an expert, but framed his decision not as him-versus-the-community, but as to how he could remain safe.

"Thank you for your comments and your encouragement," he replied.  "Look," he went on, "all I want to do is run down Peachtree Street, which is still legal and allowable as far as I know, and if a few others want to join me for company and traffic safety, all the better.  After weeks spent indoors, I just want to get out and get some exercise."  He shared a few credible citations on the potential for the virus to be spread by perspiration (low, as it turns out) but be acknowledged respiration as a viable pathway.  He ended by saying, "Hope you stay healthy, too."

That was by far the most civil reply I'd seen in the tread.  He didn't say he changed his mind and wasn't going to run after all, but I wasn't asking him to say that.  However, I took his "all I want" as a signal that he now saw the problem with a large group of people in close quarters all running a 5-k together.  He may or may not still run that day, I would never know anyway, but I think the exchange may have influenced a few more elephants reading the comments than heated accusations of "You're going to kill everybody" and "There'll be blood on your hands" ever would. Also, no one else chimed in to debate either of us.

It's not abut right or wrong, it's about different schema and different mental maps of the world.  We're not going to get beyond this moment without some acknowledgement of that.

It's Cinco De Mayo!

There is a war going on right now between those fighting to open America back up for the sake of individual freedom and the economy, and those fighting to keep America closed for the sake of the health of the community.  Scroll down the Comments section of any related news article that still even allows comments and you'll see what I mean.  Discussions on this issue among so-called friends on Facebook and among neighbors in the Next Door social-media app are as nasty and combative as any topic I can recall seeing.  If you're for re-opening America, you're called "irresponsible," "a pig," "misinformed" and worse,  If you're for extending shelter in place, you're called a "fear-monger," "a  fascist," and "stupid." It's a civil war over the very meaning, the very utility of freedom - the freedom to do what one wants versus the freedom from infection and death.

I saw a thread on Next Door, started by a resident asking her neighbors if two small snakes she spotted in her garden were poisonous or harmless (they were harmless).  But for some reason the thread quickly descended into a rancorous argument over this very issue. The rhetoric soon got so heated and so vitriolic - name calling devolving into actual threats of physical violence - that the administrators eventually removed the entire discussion from the app. 

Regarding Georgia's premature reopening of businesses, Ibram X. Kendi wrote in The Atlantic:

Georgia was the classic case of a state not ready to relax social distancing. As a prerequisite for opening states back up, public-health officials have almost universally called for widespread testing and contact tracing. They must grasp the extent of the spread to safely usher people out of their quarantines. But Georgia’s per-capita testing rate has been one of the lowest in the country. 

Worse still, neither the viral pandemic nor the racial pandemic was under control in Georgia when Governor Brian Kemp relaxed restrictions on April 24. The day before, five of the nation’s top 10 counties with the highest deaths rates per 100,000 were in southwest Georgia. Black people were the largest racial group in all five of these counties, in and around Albany, Georgia. 

On Wednesday, in a study of hospitalizations in Georgia, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that more than four-fifths of hospitalized coronavirus patients were black. As of Friday, black people composed 40.76 percent of the known coronavirus cases in Georgia and 53 percent of the coronavirus deaths, while making up 32.40 percent of the population, according to the COVID Racial Data Tracker. 

Public-health officials fear a surge in deaths in states that open prematurely. If current racial disparities are any indication, then people of color are likely to bear the brunt of the infection and death surges in the 18 states that have reopened, as of Friday. In 13 of the 16 reopened states that have made racial-demographic data available, people of color are suffering disproportionate harm from COVID-19.

“Georgians are now the largely unwilling canaries in an invisible coal mine, sent to find out just how many individuals need to lose their job or their life for a state to work through a plague,” Amanda Mull explained, also in The Atlantic.

Kendi went on to point out that it's not wrong to long for your favorite restaurant or bar or stadium or nightclub or mall or lecture hall. It is not immoral to want to stop with the homeschooling already, to want to go back to work, or to hang out with loved ones you haven’t seen in a while. It's natural for an individual to want to free their social self from the agony of social distancing. 

However, the freedom of an individual should never come at the expense of deaths in the community. No individual should have the freedom to infect a community. No one. Not me. Not you. Not even Vice President Mike Pence. He should not have the freedom to stroll through the Mayo Clinic without a mask.

The individual should be restricted from harming the community. But some Americans want to live in a society that frees them, as individuals, to subjugate the larger community. The freedom to infect others if it furthers their individual goal.  This is the ultimate in privileged entitlement.  When a business owner decides their profit is more important than their workers earning a living wage, that's not a viable business plan - it's privileged entitlement.  When a bunch of frat boys decide to throw a kegger in the park at this tenuous time, that's not exercising the freedom to enjoy your own private life - it's deciding that your own personal enjoyment takes priority over the welfare and health, even the lives, of others.  

I want to live in a society that grants me, as an individual, the freedom from subjugation for the benefit of another.  The freedom from versus the freedom to.

It's Water Dissolves Water's Birthday!

Everything is unique, nothing happens more than once in a lifetime. The physical pleasure which a certain woman gave you at a certain moment, the exquisite dish which you ate on a certain day - you will never meet either again. Nothing is repeated, and everything is unparalleled. 

- The Goncourt Brothers

This blog was born on May 4, 2004 in the smoldering shadows of the war-torn post-9/11 world and the 34th anniversary of the Kent State Massacre.  Now, it celebrates its Sweet 16 in the infectious world of the covid-19 pandemic.  The banner picture still seems appropriate for both situations.  

It's Britney's Birthday!

32 years old today, and saving the world one CDC case study at a time.  A weary nation's hope against the Covid-19 pandemic. A fourth-year Atlanta native, a cat lover, caretaker for an extraordinary balcony, and the kindest person you're likely ever to meet.  

Happy birthday, Birthday Girl!

Dreaming of the Masters

Remember Sun Ra?  We used to post a lot of the Arkestra here.  In case you've forgotten, here they are in East Berlin, performing behind the Iron Curtain in 1986, before the wall came down.

Day 39

Happy May Day, comrades!  If you're reading this, it means you've survived April 2020 and made it to May the 1st.  Congratulations, you're doing better than a quarter million people around the world!

We're not all in the same boat and I'm aware, acutely aware, of how fortunate I am to not be worrying about a paycheck not coming in (I'm retired).  I'm also aware that my comfort level may also be shaping my outlook on a continued quarantine versus the rush to reopen businesses, just as the need of others to start earning a paycheck again and soon is making the idea of an "acceptable" number of deaths seem like a tolerable trade-off for getting the economy back on track.  Our needs shape our outlook, and different needs result in different outlooks.

But I also see the extremely wealthy, the Wilbur Ross' and Steve Mnuchin's of the world, behind the push to get people to return to work.  They realize that there is nothing, absolutely nothing, billionaires and financiers can do to create wealth - they can only steal and redistribute it but they can't create it.  Not meaning to sound like a Marxist here, but value is created by the labor of the workers, and the very rich need the workers to get back to it so they can start stealing and redistributing the wealth once again.  And if a few hundred thousand die of the covid-19 in the process?  Well, collateral damage.  It's not like anyone in their families will be denied a ventilator if it comes to that.  Besides, no one lives forever, amiright?

But wait.  As always, there's more.  Thanks  to the recent events, we can pretty much kiss off the prospect of seeing an increase in the minimum wage anytime soon.  Just when it was starting to look like the concept of a living wage for American workers might actually come to pass, just as progressive politics was starting to embrace the concept and at least two presidential candidates (Warren and Sanders) included the idea in their platforms, a full 20% of American workers suddenly lose their jobs and just as suddenly, it's an employer's market for new hiring.  As businesses return to the marketplace, they can simply say they're only paying the minimum, or even less than that with a little creative lawyering, and if you don't like it, get a job somewhere else.  Beggars can't be choosers.  

On top of that, the bosses can legitimately claim financial hardship - "profits are down, cash is tight" - and say they can't afford to pay anything more than the minimum, which by the way, wasn't enough then for a family to survive on.  As the cash starts rolling back in, how long (if ever) do you think it will be before the captains of industry decide that it's time to share the bounty with the workers and give them a pay raise?  My guess is never.

Ross and Mnuchin are aware of this.  I won't give them the credit of saying this was all a scheme devised by them to break labor's back and insure an increased wealth gap between the rich and the poor, but I won't deny that they've realized it and are doing everything possible to capitalize on it.

After decades of stagnant wages and a declining standard of living, the working class, despite the low unemployment rate, was already on the verge of collapse.  The new, post-pandemic economy will crush them - the cost of virtually everything will increase due to supply-chain disruption, and their wages will become locked at or below the current minimum.  They will effectively become serfs and the rich will become like feudal lords, and this dystopian future will be as much the tragedy of the pandemic as the sickness and the death itself.

This won't end well for anyone involved.