A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 105

Already obsolete? The newish Hudson Yards project in Manhattan.

Monday, June 29

Having wondered about how our Manhattan building is coping, I began looking for visions of how cities should adapt to a pandemic-heavy future. It turns out there’s some cogitation going on—although much is still at the head-scratching stage.

As you might expect, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is quite involved. The MIT Senseable City Lab and its Alm Lab are busy placing sensors in various world cities—and collecting data from global sewers. “A vast reservoir of information on human health and behavior lives in our sewage,” proclaims one project website. It foresees “a future in which sewage is mined for real-time information. Insights on eating habits, genetic tendencies, drug consumption, contagious diseases and overall health lie in the sewage system.”

So beyond a world peppered with CCTV monitors, there is a future world in which sensors poke through our filth in order to respond to coming crises. One pilot study involved a 24-hour sampling of stuff from a Cambridge, Mass. manhole. There researchers found and sorted more than 4,000 different bacteria.

There’s also a lot of attention being paid to “sustainable cities”—those with plenty of green space, more bike lanes, and less congested transit systems. But we’ve already heard a lot about that in New York City. In my opinion, it’s very much a work in progress, and at the moment it just means more traffic congestion and more accident-prone streets. Trucks double park in bike lanes. Pedestrians run for their lives across bus lanes and one-way thoroughfares. Dog-walkers and bird-watchers arm-wrestle for space in the park. 

Say what you will about Singapore’s “therapeutic gardens,” serene greenery won’t do that much to ward off the next COVID crisis. Shouldn’t social distancing and some disinfecting mechanism be built-in to future development?

Unsurprisingly, most of the world appears to be going in the wrong direction. “In 10 years, an estimated 20% of the world’s population will live in urban environments with a limited access to appropriate water, health, and sanitation infrastructures,” says one Harvard public-health lecturer quoted by the BBC.

Urban farming? Refashioning neighborhoods so that everything one needs, from groceries to health care to exercise, is no more than 20 minutes away? Unless we abandon our current cities and build altogether new ones, that all seems a tad unreal. 

But perhaps not to the Onassis Foundation, which is sponsoring a new Pandemic Architecture competition, soliciting proposals for city design that take account of pandemic dangers. At this point, the effort is more about raising questions than offering potential solutions. But it is a new undertaking—maybe something will come of it.

A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 104

No elevator pitches, please.

Sunday, June 28

Life back in our Manhattan apartment building must seem right out of dystopian science fiction. Two New York Times articles today highlight the issues.

One article says that for two crucial months this past winter, scientists regularly underestimated the impact of symptomless carriers. “Models using data from Hong Kong, Singapore, and China suggest that 30 to 60 percent of spreading occurs when people have no symptoms,” says the Times.

A primary illustration involves a woman from China who traveled to Germany in January, where she attended two days of long meetings. She only began feeling sick on her flight back home, but even then attributed her headaches and chills to jet lag. Back in Munich, eight people were shortly hospitalized with the coronavirus. Ultimately, 16 infected Germans were identified and, thanks to rapid response, all survived. “Aggressive testing and flawless contact-tracing contained the spread,” says the article.

But how do you avoid infected people if they show no symptoms? The only way is to avoid all people, isn’t it?

Another Times piece examines just how elevator traffic should be managed now that many Manhattan businesses are reopening. If an appropriate social distance between individuals is six feet, how many elevators can make that possible? Not many, of course.

New York state standards require most commercial buildings to have elevators measuring at least 4 feet 3 inches by roughly 5 feet 8 inches. That leaves people standing about four feet apart.

But no talking!

Consultants advise a limit of four people per elevator. But lots of buildings and companies will simply place the onus on individuals. “We recommend using your best judgment,” says one real estate operations executive. Sure—you be the judge. Meanwhile, your boss is waiting for you in a meeting upstairs.

In our residential building, it is already common for there to be lines of people waiting in the lobby for an elevator to arrive. Some of these people have dogs with them; others have bags of groceries or stuff; several will be yakking away on their mobile phones. Then the elevator arrives and everyone jockeys to get onboard.

It’s an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm played for real. Imagine numerous aggressive and whining Larry Davids as your neighbors. Arriving at their floors, they push past you to get in or out of the elevator. And we have to make our way up to the 18th floor.

Our building has only two passenger elevators and no freight elevator. So it’s also common for one elevator to be “in service,” with movers bringing furniture in or out of the building or maybe building staff taking big bags of garbage out to the curbside. 

Just waiting around in the lobby, where it’s hard to imagine proper social distancing, will be hazardous. And New Yorkers aren’t the most patient or deferential of people. Oh, you go next—after you, after you. 

Sure.

There are stairs—two flights will get you from one floor up or down to the next. I negotiated the stairs a lot during Hurricane Sandy back in 2012. Going down ain’t great. As your legs and ankles get tired, it’s easy to stumble. Going up is truly punishing—four floors, and you’re huffing as if you’ve been in a mini-marathon.

You could just stay in your apartment, but what about food and other necessities? Will the doorman allow delivery people to bring stuff upstairs? 

There are people we could telephone to find out just how these things are being handled right now. But it feels awkward to get in touch. Oh, so you want to know exactly what, Mr. East Hampton refugee?

Dinner: chicken salad with apples, walnuts and mayo, plus a sugar snap pea stir fry with scallions and Asian seasonings.

Entertainment: A streaming video from the Film Forum, Jean-Pierre Melville’s When You Read This Letter.

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.

A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 100

Our victory garden.

Monday, June 22

“With remarkable speed, social life revived. People’s ability to forget what they do not want to know, to overlook what is before their eyes, was seldom put to the test better.… The population decided—out of sheer panic at first—to carry on as if nothing had happened.”—W.G. Sebald, On The Natural History of Destruction

That was Germany at the end of World War II, but across history, human responses to catastrophe can be much the same. As the U.S. lockdown restrictions ease—and Phase Three arrives on Wednesday—will Americans behave in a similar fashion, carrying on as if nothing had happened?

So far, near sanity seems to be prevailing. The flopped Trump rally in Oklahoma suggests that the survival instinct is stronger than any American desire for torchlight parades and scapegoating.  “Kung Flu,” as Orange Man dubbed COVID-19, was said to be both a Chinese import and a hoax invented by the liberal media. In a Tulsa stadium that seats 19,000, only 6,200 people were persuaded. Others stayed at home with their Swanson frozen dinners or delivery pizza. 

Phase Three allows restaurants here to reopen with a 50% capacity so long as tables are six feet apart. Personal services such as nail salons and massage joints can reopen, too. But, even though Long Island has been spared the worst of the pandemic, I don’t envision long lines outside of Sam’s or Babette’s on Newtown Lane in East Hampton. Few people are that desperate. 

Here I still struggle with our petty daily tasks, primarily menu planning and cooking. (We don’t do a lot of cleaning, and I pay others to attend to yard duty.) Considerations include using fresh vegetables before they turn bad, and keeping dinners interesting by avoiding repetition and introducing new dishes. Emily has discovered that Peapod will deliver fresh sugar snap peas, so I’ve made sugar snap peas with mushrooms; a sugar snap peas, yogurt, and dill salad (I threw in cucumbers and used goat cheese rather than feta); and I am thinking about a stir-fry with sugar snap peas, water chestnuts, and some kind of Asian sauce.

Tonight we’ll use the fresh mushrooms in an oft-served dish, chicken with mushrooms and balsamic vinegar. One remaining chicken breast from a package of three remains in the freezer. I’ll likely use it in a chicken salad with apples and celery. Maybe the snap pea stir-fry would make a good accompaniment. In between the two chicken dishes, I might make a pasta dish we’ve also had several times, penne with roasted red peppers, goat cheese, and toasted walnuts.

And in-between, there can be more beans and rice or a lentil salad with scallions and walnuts.

Dinner tonight: Along with the balsamic chicken, there will be couscous (we’ve got lots) and a green salad.

Entertainment: more episodes of Broadchurch.

A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 99

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.

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.

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.

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.

A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 83

Political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville.

Monday and Tuesday, June 1 and 2

The nationwide demonstrations against police killings of black youths—accompanied by wild scenes of looting and mayhem—appear to be escalating. But why…how? 

Social scientists have long attempted to figure out why some events trigger rebellion, while other, even more outrageous occurrences do not. The 18th century French population put up with years of oppression from its monarchs and aristocracy—until the dam broke in 1789. Other years notable for such explosions include 1848, a year of revolution across Europe; 1914, the year of the Russian revolution; and 1968, when Paris exploded in a wave of student/worker protest. All things considered, there weren’t very many.

None of this is to say that I imagine we’re now in a revolutionary period. But even if we are not, the level of protest is truly breathtaking. It’s not just one night—but night after day after night of marches, demonstrations, and street violence.

The press tends to quote participants who say the equivalent of “enough is enough”—as if outrage upon repeated outrage has prompted the rebellion. I don’t know: Trump lives to pile outrage on top of outrage, and he has been doing it for years without provoking anything like the current level of protest.

A conventional social-science analysis refers to crises of rising expectations: People tend to rebel, the theory says, not when the population is overwhelmed, but just as things seem to get a little bit better. The first observer to offer this analysis was probably 19th century writer Alexis de Tocqueville in his book L’Ancien Regime et la Revolution. When the weight of oppression is lightened just a bit, that is the moment when people rise up, he said. “The evil, which was suffered patiently as inevitable, seems unendurable as soon as the idea of escaping from it is conceived.” The people are able to imagine an alternative.

So what would that rising expectation be in the current moment? The possibility of Trump’s electoral ouster? The fact that an increasing number of big-city mayors and progressive-state governors are denouncing police killings? The fact that we might be seeing light at the end of the pandemic tunnel? 

Or could it be all of these things together?

These are matters to ponder as I make my weekly trip to the recycling center. 

Tonight’s dinner: Korean barbecue-style meatballs, spicy wok-charred snow peas, and rice.

Entertainment: The Belgian policier The Break.

A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 80

Polish dictator Wojciech Jaruzelski

Thursday and Friday, May 28 and 29

These two days have contained little but routine: a trip to the recycling center, meal preparation, dish washing, videos. I paid a telephone bill and considered whether or not other bills were due. I thought about foodstuffs we need to order—mayonnaise, goat cheese, candy. Should I try to make a pizza on Sunday? No, I would have to get some mozzarella, so we’ll just have some Progresso soup and corn muffins.

The Netflix thrillers seem to be declining in quality. Both Retribution, a tale of a family conspiracy against a murderer, and Safe, a story of a missing teenage girl, had worthwhile moments then plodded their way to unsatisfying, operatic conclusions. Each contained red herrings involving drug use. In one, the villain turned out to be an otherwise appealing police officer. 

Better than either of these is the cold-war-era Polish whodunit The Mire, with its uneasy journo-buddy principals confronting a double murder and a possible double suicide. Appropriately, the colors are dirty greens and blotched flesh tones. One journalist is old and seedy, the other, young and Clark Kent nerdy. Everybody guzzles vodka, smokes, and indulges in extramarital sex when it’s available. Citizens stand in long lines in front of butcher shops. Prostitutes only accept U.S. currency. Newspaper stories get rewritten to the satisfaction of Stalinist officialdom; reporters are made to forsake investigations of shocking crimes and encouraged to write happy-talk articles on a new cafeteria. It all makes one long for the days of Wojciech Jaruzelski.

The Rose Tremain novel The Road Home had a disappointingly happy ending. In today’s climate, who needs Pollyanna? Give me despondency and pessimism, please. 

Dinner: Balsamic and garlic chicken with mushrooms, couscous, green salad.

Entertainment: two episodes of the wacko fantasy-thriller Ragnarok.