Posted on

A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 102

Born in the U.S.A.

Thursday, June 25

In Mexico during the 1980s, I encountered other travelers from a variety of places—England, New Orleans, you name it. Among them were two women who seemed a bit withdrawn, prickly, even unfriendly. They spoke English, but with an accent that I couldn’t easily place. After a while it came out: They were South African.

They could have had any number of reasons for staying a bit apart. But I believed that they were embarrassed by their country’s policy of racial oppression, apartheid. Maybe they were secret supporters of the liberation struggle. Maybe Nelson Mandela was a family friend. Who knows? But I think they felt that non-South Africans would regard them as something like neo-Nazis. They probably felt themselves to be pariahs—people who others would shun once their nationality became known.

This could be the fate facing Americans if we ever travel again. 

The European Union is preparing to ban American travelers when it reopens its borders on July 1, lumping the U.S. in with Russia and Brazil in terms of countries that have failed to stop the spread of the coronavirus. First, the U.S. banned EU tourists in mid-March, angering political leaders. Now, Europe has largely contained COVID-19, while new cases in the U.S. are increasing in number. Sweet revenge will prevail, as John Prine once sang.

The EU is considering two draft lists of permissible travelers, and U.S. tourists are included on neither, according to The New York Times.

Moreover, Trump’s disgraceful behavior, and that of his yobbish fans, is sufficient reason for non-Americans to regard us warily. Oh, they may well think: You are the type of people who automatically regard Mexicans as rapists and Central Americans as diseased. Maybe you too hate Angela Merkel and Justin Trudeau while admiring Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un.

We were in Scotland a few years ago, and we rushed to make it clear to our B&B hosts and others that we were non-fans of the Orange man. I think they accepted what we said, and quickly changed the subject to an explanation of Scottish ways and a discussion of places we might like to visit. Oh, are you golfers? We had to make it clear that we weren’t—another reason to find us objectionable.

So, compatriots, steel yourselves for Ugly American status.  Maybe you could wear a Black Lives Matter T-shirt or attach a Bernie Sanders bumper sticker onto your rental car. Or maybe COVID-19 will prevent you from ever again traveling abroad.

Tonight’s dinner: Black beans and rice, lettuce and avocado salad.

Entertainment: Concluding episodes of season two of Broadchurch.

Posted on

A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 101

“Chinatown dance rock” group “The Slants.”

Wednesday, June 24

Emily has been taking online Continuing Legal Education courses. (All lawyers must accumulate 24 CLE credits per year, and she now has 14.) Most of these are dull, little videoed lectures delivered by lawyers who should, in many cases, avoid all microphones. I ask her if she chooses the lectures based on their potential for humor. No, she says, you generally cannot tell what the tone will be.

A case in point is the course she just took. “Government Regulation of Hate Speech” turns out to be a discussion of cases involving outrageous branding and trademark law. Could a San Francisco girl-biker group trademark its name, “Dykes On Bikes”? What about an Asian rock band, “The Slants”? Are these names invidious and thus undeserving of intellectual-property protection? What protection does trademark afford such groups, anyway?

This course was a bit like a George Carlin routine. There is something inherently funny about discussing an outrageous subject from a bureaucratic or legalistic perspective. That was the nature of Carlin’s classic monologue “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.” The monologue gave him an excuse for saying the words—shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits—again and again, on television.

Carlin was arrested in 1972 for delivering the monologue. In 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court considered whether a radio broadcast of Carlin’s monologue merited an F.C.C. complaint that could have resulted in penalties against the station. 

According to The Atlantic, “The majority decision stated that the FCC was justified in deciding what’s ‘indecent,’ saying the Carlin act was ‘indecent but not obscene.’ The Court ruled that because Carlin’s routine was broadcast on the radio, during the day, it did not have as much First Amendment protection.”

Years later, you still couldn’t say the forbidden words on broadcast TV. But the rise of anything-goes cable TV along with the Internet has made the ruling pretty much moot.

Hate speech is another matter. Defamatory words are not allowed in trademarks, but violations of the First Amendment aren’t allowed either. In the case known as Matal v. Tam, the Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito, ruled the Trademark Act’s clause regarding disparaging language was a violation of the First Amendment. Thus the group could register the racist slur “The Slants” as its name. (FYI, the group has a well-regarded album “Slanted Eyes, Slanted Hearts.”)

I’m looking forward to seeing a YouTube video of these musical folks. Dykes On Bikes is inherently funny too. I said to Emily that of course they are based in San Francisco—had they been from Des Moines, they’d have felt compelled to move to the Bay Area.

Dinner: leftover balsamic chicken with mushrooms, couscous, and a lettuce and avocado salad.

Entertainment: Episodes from season two of Broadchurch.

Posted on

A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 99

Before and after.

Sunday, June 21

Who needs barbers? Twenty-one weeks passed without a haircut. Today, Emily made like Delilah and rid me of my troublesome locks.

A kit including the required scissors, combs, hair clips, spray bottle, and cape came several days ago via Amazon. I impressed a reluctant Emily into service. And after watching numerous YouTube instructional videos, she agreed to give it a go. So, we took a chair and the other stuff into the backyard, and…voila!

Interviewed afterwards, the erstwhile barber said: “I was terrified.” She feared that it would just look awful, and that I’d be very unhappy. Instead, she admitted, “I’m very pleased,”.

The videos gave her a sense of confidence. “The woman on YouTube said ‘just follow the contours of the head and the neck.’ And that seemed to make sense, so that is what I did.”

A Wookiee no more, I am ready for Phase Three of the reopening. But I’ll still be wearing my mask.

Dinner: Caprese salad (mozzarella cheese, celery, Kalamata olives, tomato, basil, and balsamic vinaigrette) and broiled eggplant with parmesan cheese and tomato sauce.

Entertainment: Episodes of Marcella, season two; and two episodes of Broadchurch. Both shows are about terrible crimes against children, but Broadchurch is much more profound about the resulting family suffering.

Posted on

A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 97

A Florida National Guard RC-26 in action.

Friday, June 19

And the next shortage is…charcoal!

Out of stock, they report at Damark. CVS has none, either, while they do have stuff like cookies, ice cream, milk, lots of bottled beverages, etc.

I had donned my mask and gloves and gone out to get some more Aleve and vitamin D-3, along with a few eats that Peapod failed to deliver. We have enough charcoal to make hamburgers tonight, but that’s likely the end. 

Nor is there any sign of the rabbit this morning, but last evening as the gloaming came on, I could see the little guy sitting near the neighbor’s driveway. There’s new, and likely delicious, sod in their front yard, so that’s probably an attraction.

While I am here blabbing about bunnies, the national security state is taking advantage of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations to refine its surveillance hardware. Both the West Virginia and the Wisconsin national guards have sent state-of-the-art RC-26 airplanes to be eyes-in-the-sky over demos in D.C. and Minneapolis. According to the Times: “Representative Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican who is also an RC-26 pilot in the Wisconsin Air National Guard, said he flew two night missions this month in support of domestic law enforcement officials in Minneapolis, sending real-time video feeds to the authorities on the ground.” These “authorities” can view the real-time feeds on their cellphones, it seems.

However, according to this source, “the plane’s onboard camera was powerful enough to make out the general image of an individual as the three-member crew flew at altitudes between 4,000 and 20,000 feet. But the cameras were not strong enough or sophisticated enough to use for facial recognition or to read license plates on vehicles.” But now that the authorities are aware of that, there could be some tweaks to bring the onboard cameras up to speed.

Why not simply get more CCTV? That’s what they use, to great effect, in all the Brit cop shows. On the cops’ computers, they can zoom in right on a perp’s face or license plate. And if it’s on Netflix, it must be true, right? So, how come the RC-26s?

Well because CCTV wouldn’t add to the bottom line of aircraft makers Fairchild and Lockheed, who no doubt make big campaign contributions to congressional representatives.

And nothing’s too good for our boys in uniform. It’s seems we’ve been handing the planes around to various foreign governments, including Venezuela (!) and Peru.

Tonight’s dinner: hamburgers, baked potatoes with sour cream, and coleslaw.

Entertainment: Two final episodes of the first season of Marcella.

Posted on

A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 96

Wednesday and Thursday,  June 17 and 18

Emily is suffering from her chronic back pain. On Wednesday, she was sitting in an upholstered chair with her laptop on her knee, then she went to get up and suddenly, whammo. I suspect she twisted her back as she leaned forward while gripping the laptop, in a combination of muscle exertions that isn’t good. She had trouble hobbling over to the bed where she lay with a cold pack on her spine.

But after taking some Aleve and sleeping at night, today she is a little better. She even did a few leg raises as a physical therapist once instructed.

She has had this back problem off and on for several years. Is is sciatica? Spinal stenosis?

Here is another problem with the lockdown: Sure, you’re avoiding the pandemic but what if a different medical issue arises? Emily now has an August appointment to see a specialist back in New York City. Yesterday, she spent some time online looking for alternatives out here, maybe at Southampton Hospital. Then this back trouble comes along. Should she seek out a physical therapist in East Hampton? 

We’re both doing just too much sitting. We try to take walks, and I do a little yoga. But strangely enough, Manhattan is a more physically demanding place. And now that no one wants to take the subway and even more people are biking, exercise is on the daily agenda. Furthermore, taking the stairs in lieu of an elevator means even more exertion.

Another Peapod grocery delivery is slated for today, sometime after 5 p.m. As I have noted several times before, this is a mixed blessing: good prices and no social mingling but just how much of what we have ordered will really arrive? And there are always surprise omissions.  (This time, not so bad: no Bonne Maman apricot preserves, no scallions, no vitamin D-3, no Haagen-Dazs ice cream, no mixed nuts, and no Aleve.)

I know: In the midst of an international health crisis when thousands are suffering and dying, I should be embarrassed to complain about such tiny matters. But such are the times.

Right now, Emily is watching a Lawline video on prisoners’ legal rights. The presenter has this upward rising inflection at the end of every sentence—the phenomenon that was once associated with Valley Girl teenagers. Now it’s just habitual with many people, but it once carried some kind of implied meaning. Like, “do you know what I mean?” Or maybe it was offered to express a cut-me-some-slack uncertainty: “this is what I think, I hope you agree?”

Lawyers are required to undergo this continuing education in order to renew their legal licenses. I could go into the other room so as to avoid listening—but I’m going to take a shower instead.

Oh, yes: the rabbit reappeared in our yard this morning!

Dinner: Penne with asparagus pesto and a green salad.

Entertainment: Fritz Lang’s silent classic Mabuse the Gambler; episodes of the Netflix damaged-detective series Marcella.

Posted on

A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 95

Alice and companions in Central Park.

Tuesday,  June 16

Thousands are marching in the streets for racial justice and against police violence. Millions are staying at home in an attempt to stop the spread of COVID-19.

And there’s an escalating conflict over…statues!?

The latest such kerfuffle so far as I know involves an Albuquerque statue of a 16th century conquistador and governor of New Mexico when it was under Spanish imperial rule. He was apparently a brutal guy known for cutting off the feet of Indian prisoners. “He killed 800 Indigenous people in Acoma Pueblo and ordered his men to cut off the foot of at least 24 male captives,” says a Times article. Ultimately, “Spanish authorities convicted him on charges of excessive violence and cruelty, permanently exiling him from New Mexico.”

And yet there are clashes involving armed right-wing militia members who oppose attempts to take down this guy’s statue. What the hey? One man was shot in a clash of opposing groups, and riot-gear-wearing police intervened.

I guess the militia types see Juan de Oñate—that’s the conquistador’s name—as a white guy in need of defense from Antifa—uh, Native American activists.

Elsewhere, statues of Confederate generals including Robert E. Lee and Nathan Bedford Forrest are endangered. There are positive things to be said about Lee, but Forrest is particularly objectionable since before the Civil War he was a slave dealer and during the conflict he was responsible for a massacre of black Union troops at a siege of Fort Pillow. After the war he became the head of the Ku Klux Klan. (Later he quit, renounced the organization, and called for racial harmony.) Efforts to remove a prominent statue of Forrest in my home city of Memphis were successful only in 2017.

A controversial bust of the general remains in the Tennessee state Capitol building.

As celebrations of past heroes, these memorials aren’t particularly effective. There are statues all across Manhattan, but I bet only a fraction of the people who frequently walk past these likenesses can say just who they are. In Union Square park, I can recall representations of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Mohandas Karamchand Ghandi, but I bet there are other statues, too. In nearby Madison Square, I can recall monuments to the gallant World War I dead and one elaborate monument to Civil War Admiral David Farragut. Who else?

Here’s a simple proposal: Let’s not only take down the statues of Confederate generals but also the statues of all generals and military men. Are these really the figures we want future generations to celebrate? We could replace them with statues of writers, poets, and scientists. There are precedents in Central Park, where there are statues of Hans Christian Andersen, William Shakespeare, and Samuel F.B. Morse. Or what about more figures from fiction, such as the Central Park representation of Alice in Wonderland accompanied by the white rabbit and the Mad Hatter?

I’m not ready for a statue of Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter—but maybe we could agree on a statue of Scout from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. There’s a hero for sure.

Dinner: barbecued pork chops, asparagus, and couscous.

Entertainment: The Netflix movie Sarajevo.

Posted on

A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 94

Solomon Northrup, author of Twelve Years A Slave.

Monday,  June 15

It’s a somewhat presumptuous thing to write a memoir—or a memoirish blog like this one: You’re presuming that someone will actually want to read it. But as a sometime historian, I know how important such memoirs can be, particularly when they cover very intense periods of history. History is contested terrain, as is attested by current controversies over U.S. military-base names or the presence of Confederate figures’ statues, and that means witnesses need to weigh in.

Who cares about old diaries? Lots of people do. Think about the slave narratives such as Solomon Northrup’s Twelve Years a Slave. Or there’s Mary Chestnut’s influential portrait of slaveholder society, A Diary from Dixie.

Think of the many accounts of life during the Great Depression, notably Studs Terkel’s Hard Times. Our time is not quite as extraordinary as either of those periods, but no one would deny that we’re living through an astonishing era that people may care to read about in the future. 

I also intended from the beginning that this blog might be read right now by our friends, who are wondering just what we are up to during the lockdown. I, in turn, wonder what they are doing—just how they are filling their potentially empty hours.

I was mulling over all these matters when I recalled that in a recent e-mail, our friend Sonia Jaffe Robbins had noted that she has an Internet-posted memoir of her life and work. 

Sonia is a former law client of Emily’s, a plaintiff in the landmark Tasini v. The New York Times et al. case over the electronic reproduction of freelancers’ work, and the wife of a late, former BusinessWeek colleague of mine, Jack Robbins.

Her memoir covers a much broader swath of time than does my blog—from her birth in 1942 up to the current date. I suspect that she pieced it together over some years, as it details the nine different places she lived as a youth, the several institutions of higher learning that she attended, and eight different places where she would go on to work. Amazing to me is her ability to recall the names of various public-school teachers (I can remember maybe three). 

She also remembers various possibly embarrassing moments, such as how students at her Connecticut elementary school had to recite an unfamiliar litany: “Are father who artin heaven halloween be thy name….” She recalls being afraid of the ducktail-haircut boys at her new high school, her subsequent facility in learning French and the rules of football, and her parents’ early cold-war-era caution about political activism. After college, there were jobs at publishers Bantam Books and Bobbs-Merrill, The Village Voice, New York University, and freelancing here and there. And beginning in the 1990s, Sonia became active in an international women’s organization, the Network of East-West Women, which helps forge links between women in the West and in formerly communist lands.

It would be great if everyone I know could write such a memoir, even a short one: Sonia’s is only 56 handwritten pages. Such efforts are gifts to future generations. Yet memoirs can also evoke ghosts, as W.G. Sebald reminds us in his book The Emigrants. “The memoirs, which at points were truly wonderful, had seemed to him like one of those evil German fairy tales in which, once you are under the spell, you have to carry on to the finish, until your heart breaks….”

Dinner: A simple broiled eggplant, tomato sauce and Parmesan cheese thingy, with a little pasta, and some asparagus.

Entertainment: More of the Polish TV show The Woods.

Posted on

A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 90

A high-point of 20th century satire, the Kubrick-Southern movie “Dr. Strangelove”

Wednesday,  June 10

“History will be kind to me,” said Winston Churchill on the eve of his retirement, “for I intend to write it.”

But who will write the history of our current, event-chocked and confusing period? It’s difficult to think of any elected official whose voice, or recollections, we need to hear. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, maybe, in 40 years? We’re more likely to hear from Trump hacks or unreliable, wacky narrators such as Senators Rand Paul or Ben Sasse. Certainly numerous science and politics journalists, from the Times’ Donald G. McNeil Jr. and Maggie Haberman to The New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert, are likely sharpening their pens and memories. And of course publishers would kill to have a book by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or even the much-quoted Vanderbilt University infectious-disease expert Dr. William Schaffner. (Unsurprisingly, there is a “coming wave of coronavirus books,” according to The New York Times.)  

But only time will reveal the true meaning of our triple-crisis.

When the Nixon administration was wooing China back in the early 1970s, Henry Kissinger reportedly asked China’s No. 2 man Zhou Enlai for his evaluation of the French revolution. “Too soon to say,” Zhou allegedly responded, possibly mishearing Kissinger’s query. But it was a profound response anyway—nearly two centuries had passed since the French events and it was perhaps yet too soon to offer an evaluation of Robespierre, Saint-Just, Danton, Marat, the sans-culottes, the Terror, the Committee of Public Safety, Thermidor, and ultimately Napoleon Bonaparte.

Even with the passage of time, some questions from our current period may never be answerable. This began, of course, with a health crisis presided over by a number of incompetent and would-be authoritarian governments, eliding into an international protest movement against racial injustice. Just how were these related? The health crisis hit minority communities hardest. Did that fact encourage the protest movement? Just how did the witlessness of Trump, Boris Johnson, Bolsonaro, etc. feed into the worldwide protests that remain centered on U.S. police brutality against African Americans? 

What about the lockdown? Did thousands rebel against social isolation by going out into the streets to demonstrate? Did job losses and recession have anything to do with the looting—or was that just a crime of opportunity?

And what about the possibly astro-turfed protests against the lockdown by weapons-toting yobs? “I need a haircut!” shouted one such profoundly thoughtful youth. Some of these not-so-well-attended gatherings, it turned out, were coordinated by the likes of the Michigan Freedom Fund, a conservative group with ties to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

But were all of them phony? Or has an anti-science, quasi-anarchistic tendency arrived as a permanent part of the U.S. political scene?

It has become a commonplace saying in the Trump years, “you can’t make it up.” It doesn’t get any more absurd than all of this.

Which means that developments are ripe for a satirical rendering. Writers such as Joseph Heller and filmmakers such as Stanley Kubrick/Terry Southern found fertile material in the Masters of War death cult surrounding World War II and the cold war. (I made my own attempt at Jonathan Swiftish satire a few days back in chapter 88 of this blog.) Some writer is out there now, scribbling down an outlandish, weirded-out version of the bedlam that’s unfolding daily.

Dinner: leftover steak, baked potatoes and sour cream, coleslaw.

Entertainment: The slow-moving Polish policier The Crime.

Posted on

A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 89

Will I be permitted?

Monday and Tuesday, June 8 and 9

To get rid of refuse at the town dump, you must have a permit prominently displayed on your car. On the East Hampton Town website, it says the old permits remain good “until further notice.” But this morning, when I went to the dump, I was told by a staffer at the gatehouse that this was inaccurate. I must apply for a new permit—mine would be expiring on June 15. 

This can only be done by mail, since all Town offices are closed due to the COVID-19 lockdown. You must fill out an application, send a check for the required fee, and include a copy of the relevant documents demonstrating that you are indeed a resident of the Town.

There’s the rub: The required document is a copy of your auto’s state registration, showing a local address. But where to get a photocopy made, since many businesses remain closed? I spent the morning in a fury at this assinine requirement as I searched around for a copier—and that meant going out more in public than I have for many weeks. There was no copy machine at the post office, nor at the nearby CVS drugstore, although someone there said she thought there was a place on Newtown Lane near the Stop & Shop supermarket. I tried a computer fix-it place, and they said to try the UPS store down the street. Success! And after only four once-discouraged conversations.

Got the xerox copy, swung by the Chase Bank ATM to get some much-needed cash, then back to the P.O. to mail in the recycling-center form. Oh, and while at CVS I snagged some TOILET PAPER!!!

The center of East Hampton appeared about as busy as any other weekday woud be in any other month of June. Many stores remain closed, but there were plenty of cars in the main parking lot and apparently lots of business going on. At the post office and UPS, there were lines of people—most wearing masks, many waiting to mail large packages. Stuff they had bought online and were now returning, perhaps?

I did all this while wearing my snazzy tartan face mask and lavender rubber gloves, beneath a coif befitting a cast member from the musical Hair. Except there were no gray mop tops in the ‘60s love-rock song fest.  No geezers allowed in the Age of Aquarius.

Will there be anyone at the town clerk’s office to receive my letter and mail me the dump sticker? Only time will tell, but I doubt that this drama will be concluded by the 15th.

Tonight: London broil, marinated in red wine, garlic, and olive oil, plus baked potatoes with sour cream, and green salad with avocado. Sounds artery-clogging and all-American for sure.

Entertainment: Polish alt-history thriller 1983.

Posted on

A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 88

You could look it up!

Sunday, June 7

From the Encyclopedia Prosveshcheniye, 2050 edition: 

COVID-19—An infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-COV-2) at the center of the 2020 pandemic that killed at least 1.5 million people after spreading to over 300 countries across the globe. First thought to have reached humanity after originating in Asian bats or pangolins, it is now believed to have started among a West Texas (U.S.A.) evangelical cult that eschewed all vaccines created after the year 60 A.D., when the apostle Peter is said to have founded the Roman Catholic Church.

There were major outbreaks of the pandemic in China, Western Europe, and the United States during the spring and summer of 2020. The virus seemed to be on the wane in June, then returned in force in the fall of that year in South Carolina, Missouri, and Florida, where U.S. President Donald Trump (see Celebrity Apprentice, Mar-a-Lago) held a series of late-summer campaign rallies jointly sponsored by major police unions. The President’s putative electoral opponent, the Communist former vice-president Joseph R. Biden, also had plans to hold a series of rallies prior to the Department of Homeland Security’s cancellation of the election in the interest of national security. Biden was tried, convicted, and imprisoned for attempted election fraud in January of 2021.

A number of popular 21st century celebrities are thought to have succumbed to the COVID-19 pandemic. Country singer Pecos “Heartbreak” Medvedev and pop artists Ariana Warcraft and Angelina B were all probable victims, as were three members of the steampunk revival band Wehrmacht. FOX News on-air personality Gretchen Marie Kosciukiewicz was quarantined but recovered, something she attributed to to her mother’s home remedy, a mix of Rebel Yell whiskey, Hydroxychloriquine, and Calvin Klein’s Eternity.

There were no cases of COVID-19 in Russia or in North Korea. The countries are widely respected for having charismatic and visionary leaders.

Although a number of pharmaceutical companies such as Moderna, Gilead Sciences, and GlaxoSmithKline worked to create vaccines, no successful vaccine ever emerged to put an end to the pandemic. Instead, COVID-19 is still raging around the world, with seasonal outbreaks still the norm.

Dinner: leftover broccoli stir-fry with chicken and mushrooms, cold noodles with sesame sauce.

Entertainment: episodes of the Netflix series Traitors.