It’s hard to tell lately whether I’ve got COVID-19, or am just so depressed watching the news I make myself sick. Regardless, it’s hard not to see the latest alert (Breaking News: More Dead!) and just turn off the goddamn TV, play something loud enough to drown a literally virulent world, and settle in with your vice of choice. Or vices.
But a recent discussion with our Liminal Times editor — a bona fide scientist — got the HB thinking there may be an upside to corona. Several, actually:
People have started washing their hands. And sneezing into their elbows, and giving people their personal space, and thinking twice about going to work sick. Will we forget most of it? Probably. But we’ve heard plenty of conspiracy theorists griping about the over-inflated threat of coronavirus. That the flu kills 50,000 people a year. Good; those tips work on the flu, too. You know what’s never over-inflated? Becoming informed.
Cesson-Sévigné The workforce will adapt to home-work more quickly. We were already headed toward a work-from-home society, but so grudgingly it put us far behind other nations. Geezers like myself still don’t know how to work the InterTubes, and businesses remain skeptical about letting employees out of the building. Now neither have a choice but to adapt, and quickly if they want to stay afloat.
The Earth thanks us. According to the EPA, motor vehicles collectively cause 75 percent of carbon monoxide pollution in the U.S. Collectively, cars and trucks account for nearly one-fifth of all U.S. emissions, emitting around 24 pounds of carbon dioxide and other global-warming gases for every gallon of gas. Have you been on the highway lately? We didn’t lessen our carbon footprint; we stripped down to bare feet.
It’s silver-lining hunting, granted. But how about this nerded-out SlapFact: The average number of “good quality air days” in China’s industrial Hubei province increased 21.5% in February, compared to the same period last year, according to China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment. InterTubes!
Like any worldwide existential threat, there’s downside to all of this thinking: We’re instead wiped out as the virus becomes airborne and we become skin-walkers.
However, we’ll leave that to the 24/7s. Have you watched lately? They should install an in-studio fainting couch in case Wolf Blitzer gets the vapors.
But if we make it, we can come from this stronger. And don’t worry. You can still settle into your vices.
The seven-year-old daughter of the wisest soul I know had one question when Mom asked child who she would vote for in the Democratic primary if she had a vote.
“Which one has a cat?” the girl queried.
From the mouth of babes. (Perhaps) unwittingly, her question underscores the embarrassment of riches — and choices — facing Democrats this election year.
Consider the GOP slate of top contenders when they were vying for the top office. A brain-dead brain surgeon. A Senator who fries his bacon on AR-15 muzzles. A Senator who suffered the greatest flop sweat since Broadcast News.
And of course, Agent Orange This isn’t just low-hanging fruit. These are coconuts, rolling off the truck and down the street, ripe for the scooping.
Now consider the Democratic slate: two successful (and legitimate) billionaires, the former vice-president to America’s first African American Chief Executive; an eloquent, gay mayor with Mideast war experience, and a Senator whose looniest notion is Medicare for all.
And we haven’t even gotten to the best candidate: Elizabeth Warren.
This endorsement is wholehearted, but the girl was right. Their pets could as well be the deciding factor in who to choose. Even if one owned a rabid baboon, they’d still get my vote should they win the nomination. You know, since we’re currently presided over by one anyway.
But look closely at the Democratic candidates, and you’ll see Warren’s story arcs eerily similar to our last Democratic president. And both are, at their core, un-corporate American success stories.
Warren grew up in a working class home and neighborhood. She began her career in education. She is criticized for being too ponderous, too deliberate, and too detailed in her answers.
Warren’s victory would be as equally historic as Obama’s, though you’d never know that from the 24/7s. It’s wonderful that the news has paid no attention to the popularity of Bernie Sanders and Michael Bloomberg, two Jewish contenders who would be the first from their faith to become president (remember when being Catholic was a deal breaker?)
But let’s not underplay Warren’s story so much that we forget its history. America tried to elect the first female president four years ago (and her 3 million+ margin of victory should have been the end of the electoral college). An arguably stronger candidate has taken her place, only without the scandals. There are no Burismas, NDA’s, stop-and-frisk scandals in Warren’s closet, so far as we know. Her undressing of Bloomberg in the debates demonstrated she can scrap with a billionaire.
She’s also laid out her plan as president to the smallest details (perhaps too small for a U.S. electorate). But just her first two oaths of her prospective administration — that it will not hire any current lobbyists and that it will not hire employees of for-profit federal contractors — are enough to counteract the nepotism and cronyism that has left the country on life support (literally if coronavirus isn’t brought under control).
Warren, too, is about as progressive as America is ready to go. While Sanders has been refreshingly blunt about his political status — he considers himself a “democratic socialist” — it won’t be long until the GOP labels all his supporters socialists. We do the same thing with Republicans, calling them Trumptards. Well, this outlet does. It’s just so damn on the money!
Warren is just to the right of Sanders, to the left of Biden. Both her and the Biden administrations are more likely to close some of political divisions that riddle the political landscape and draw lawmakers from across the aisle, if not make red states competitive in the Senate. It’s hard to picture Sanders suturing wounds with those in MAGA hat country.
Oh, and in answer to that child’s brilliant question: Most of the candidates have dogs. And Warren’s is a Golden Retriever named Bailey, who accompanies her and her husband on countless campaign stops. ‘Nuff said.
Finally, Warren represents where we are as a nation. The time has never been more right for women to take the reigns. They took the streets with #MeToo. They took Hollywood predators (and others in boardrooms and high-rise offices) off those streets. What would be more fitting — more American — than to pound an authoritarian rapist into the gravel?
Oh, and a side note from my mom, a secret progressive in South Carolina. She reports that, on the cusp of the S.C. primary, Trump was in her state, pleading for them to vote Bernie in what he’s termed “Operation Chaos.”
He’s right. However you vote, vote. Be heard. Cause some chaos. Just not where he expects it.
Tell me where the spirit flees When life has made the choice To bring the body to its knees And let the soul rejoice.
Answer.
Here these are the olden days Here these are the golden days Here these are the days to remember.
For yesterday’s gone And tomorrow’s a song Today is the only glowing ember.
O’ Brother mine! dearest Samuel,
T W E N T Y! Can you fucking believe it? Dude, we may be approaching a record: I looked up double transplants, trying to find the longest living double-organ team, but the records are sketchy. Mayo Clinic is still searching; no word back. I found a case online, in a Dutch medical journal, that said one kidney-pancreas transplant team made it 16 years.
Scrubs.
I still can’t wrap my head around it: We’ve been wed two decades! Guess what movie came out 20 years ago? O’ Brother, Where Art Thou?. So did Memento (one of my favorites), Cast Away, Almost Famous and High Fidelity. The hottest shows in television were The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Frasier. Music sucked (Britney Spears’ Ooops…I Did It Again was all the rage), but we were too busy recuperating to listen to that shit anyway.
Speaking of recuperating, before I begin this unabashedly schmaltzy love letter, an apology.
I’m sorry I nearly annulled this marriage two days in. It’s just my body wasn’t used to being so close to someone, and I guess I tried to wriggle loose; the band with which Dr. Sutherland bonded us briefly schism-ed at the suture. But with some quick counseling, we were back together. And haven’t had a real fight in 20 years. Cite me another couple with such cohesion.
And I can tell you this, without hesitation or qualification: In 20 years, I have never betrayed you. Not once.
That medicinal fidelity wasn’t always the case. Ask Mom. I sucked at taking meds when I was diabetic. I’d miss injections, eat like crap, soar over or crawl beneath my assigned sugar levels. Of course, my failures led to us meeting; sorry, I can’t help but see the past through glasses hued rose since we met. It’s one of the things I love about you.
Now, I take our meds as religiously as pastors take confession. Probably, certainly, more. Ask Mom. I haven’t missed an unhospitalized pill or eye drop in 20 years. That’s 7,300 days of meds, administered 14,600 times, totaling more than 150,000 pills. And that’s a conservative estimate. All that, and not one rejection episode yet.
It may still come. But if you had told me in January 2000 that I’d get 20 years of perfect blood sugars, 20 years of no self-injections, 20 years of not having diabetes nibble off fingers, toes, perhaps feet, I would have not only said ‘Hell yeah!’ I would not have believed the offer.
I know your perspective is vastly different. I am sorry and so torn about that, Sam. The decision your mom Valerie made — despite reservations from your father — remains the bravest act of human love I’ve ever witnessed. To weigh that Decision, have that Talk, all while bracing for the Goodbye. She is as cool under pressure as any nerve-steeled Apollo pilot, and I carry her boy as I would a newborn, swaddled and close to my heart, hoping some of that Flegel bravery will wear off on me. In me.
I told Spencer that we were approaching 20 years. He said he would have guessed it had been longer. I would have guessed it had been shorter. Like, 19 years and six months shorter. Time does flatten a man.
But not you. Over the years, you have grown mythical in my eyes. Once you were a 21-year-old kid from Fargo, 14 years my junior. Now you have risen to deity-level. I now see a truly noble soul, angel pure, who loved dogs, waved “Hi” for family pictures (who else is that sincere in happiness?), and overcame educational hurdles to become an engineer at Red River Valley and Western Railroad. You are Paul Bunyan. And i get to soldier forward arm-in-arm with you? Who should be so blessed to be your wing man!
Here’s what I love about you, O’ Brother mine:
You make me feel strong. Whenever I see stories of what passes for bravery nowadays, particularly in our halls of law, I think of you. And I’ll say to ourself, ‘That’s great. Ever laid on a gurney, split open from the belly button downward, for eight straight hours — on a gamble?” You are my definition of strength, and I draw from you for it constantly.
You make me feel wise. Knowing how precariously you and I cling together has altered my definition of…well, everything. Time. Life. Death. Illness. Health. Deadlines. Pressures. You have taught me when to let go (though I often fail). To be content when I’m a bug in amber. To, in truth, see the time-strangling beauty of those moments. You are my definition of wisdom, and I need your counsel daily.
You make me feel loved. In every step of this journey, I have never felt alone. You probably figured out early that I tend to get introverted; I still have danced publicly only once in my life (not everyone is as brave as you). But fleeting is the moment when I feel isolated. You are my definition of love, and I look to you every time I need a heart or shoulder.
You know what’s creepy? A doctor predicted all this, five years before I was born: that I would meet a soul named Sam; that he would open my eyes to the beauty of life’s fleeting ways; that I would take him profoundly into myself.
The doctor? Theodore Seuss Geisel. Fucking Dr. Seuss!
Surely, you know the story of Green Eggs and Ham. Or at least the refrain: “I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam-I-Am.”
But read a’ might closer, and you’d swear there was a serendipitous through-line here about us. The story goes like this: Sam-I-Am pesters his friend, Guy-Am-I (!) to eat a dish of green eggs and ham. Guy refuses, even as Sam persistently follows him, asking to eat them in eight locations (house, box, car, tree, train, dark, rain, boat) and with three animals (mouse, fox, goat). Guy still refuses, saying, “I wouldn’t not like them here (Current location) or there (Previous location)! I would not like them anywhere!” Finally, Guy vainly accepts Sam’s offer and samples the green eggs and ham, happily announcing he would eat them anywhere and with anyone and ends the story, saying, “I do so like green eggs and ham. Thank you. Thank you, Sam-I-Am.”
Damn straight, Dr. Ted. Sam, I am.
Those tools in the jewelry business say that a 20-year-anniversary is to be recognized with platinum (a diamond is their recommended gift of 10 years!). I can’t afford their bullshit menu, but I did want to give you the only thing I really own: my word, located just beneath my left rib cage.
It says this: I am with you, to the end. I have your back, and you have mine.
Even that pledge is a pittance, I know, a lowball offer for what you have given me without asking for a thing in return.
So take my arm this time. I have taken yours so often. Rest here for a moment. Rejoice here. Because I have an idea…
You know, a marathon is 26.219 miles. Whaddaya say? We’ve only got 6.219 miles left. Up for more? Why stop now?
