Why We Quarantine

My wife, our younger son and I spent a nice long Independence Day weekend at the home of our older son and daughter-in-law, admiring our baby granddaughter and helping celebrate her first birthday, which is on the day (which we don't celebrate) when the Continental Congress actually passed the Declaration of Independence.  No writing while we were there, just making silly faces at the baby.  She's at the point where she tries to copy them, and it is a genuine hoot.  The baby's maternal grandparents came down for the day, and we all had a really nice time, almost exactly like everyone had done in the before.

All of us had observed a pretty strict quarantine for this exact reason:  so we could all hang out together on a nice day and enjoy each others' company without worrying about anything pandemic.  Except for each other, none of us has purposely been within six feet of another human being since early March, and have not been indoors with other people (except each other) except for careful grocery runs.  

Of course, there was another reason why we took care to quarantine carefully.  None of us wants to get the virus.  Any of us, even the young, healthy ones.  It's just not an option.

Will we make it safely to the new world?  It's looking more and more like we are in for a very long haul.  Stay tuned. 

Shaggy New World

I got my hair cut today, for the first time since before.  It was a nice day and Abbey cut it out on the deck.  She's been cutting my hair for maybe thirty years.  Always looks great.

As various regions and states open back up, guys are starting to go to barbershops again, for the first time in maybe four months.  I am reminded of a piece on NPR from a few weeks ago.  I couldn't find it in the NPR archives, so you'll have to take my word for it.

A barber was talking about re-opening his shop and getting back to shaving and haircuts (which are no longer two bits).  Most of his customers' hair was probably longer than it had ever been, guys who had been getting haircuts every two weeks for their whole lives.

Some of his customers had discovered that this was not a bad thing.  "It turns out I like it longer," they'd say.  "Just trim it a little, clean it up."

All over the world, guys* are, for the first time, getting to experiment with longer hair.  Many will keep it.  In the new world, hair will be longer.

 * - I have no idea how this plays out for women in hair salons.

Emerson, DC

I got my weekly column from Garrison Keillor in the e-mail today.  He wants to rename Washington DC.  He wants to name it after Ralph Waldo Emerson, the New England transcendental thinker and essayist who had such an influence on Henry David Thoreau.

"Bad times have a scientific value," Emerson wrote a long time ago.  "These are occasions a good learner would not miss... This time, like all times, is a very good one if we but know what to do with it."

Keillor says, "This year, we have seen the worst.  Good.  Now we know what it is.  Now we can rise above it and join forces and work for what should be - equality, justice, prosperity and good sense."

In case you were wondering, this kind of sums up the whole point of this blog.

Tactical Urbanism

It seems that the new world might benefit from tactical urbanism.

Don't you love that term?  So active and edgy.  Although I'm not sure it's a very enlightening descriptor.  But you decide - here are a couple of definitions:

...an approach to city building that uses temporary, affordable, and easily-implemented solutions, often starting small and piloting more permanent change.
Pedestrian Plazas. Parklets. Pop-up Bike Lanes... flexible and short-term projects to advance long-term goals related to street safety, public space, and more.

No doubt we all noticed that there were lots fewer cars on the road when we were shut down.  That allowed people who lived in neighborhoods to make adjustments to the roads and spaces in those neighborhoods, using, among other things, traffic cones, sidewalk chalk and homemade signs.  There are more people - especially children - at home, and we all need more space in order to maintain our distance.  So people in many cities are taking matters into their own hands, and changing traffic flows, adjusting lanes, and often closing off streets to vehicle traffic entirely, with our without their municipality's blessing.

At this point, there's no evidence to suggest that these changes will become permanent. "These guerrilla tactics are not meant to be long-term, but can help disbelievers imagine other possibilities and raise awareness of the debate. "  This is kind of important, because streets, highways, neighborhoods - cities in general - have not been built to serve the best interests of the majority of residents.  Or, to put it more accurately:  Cities are designed for cars, not people (Robert Moses, anyone?).

Many cities are doing their best to redesign their transportation systems - a difficult job, considering the solid, interconnected infrastructure that already exists.  Turns out that where essential workers tend to live is not well-served by efficient public transport, and the workers that the highways were built for are all working from home.  

So we can file this one in the "Will we forget all about this pressing need once things return to normal?" folder.  Of course, that will depend on the normal we return to.  But urban (and, to some extent, suburban) transport has been outmoded and unfair for a while, and if we ever get around to infrastructure week, this would be a great place to start.

10%

I'm hoping that this post becomes a place-marker, and doesn't devolve into a 1,000 word behemoth.  I want to say something simple and then say something more complex later, when there's more to say.

The point is this, and it's a point about the school thing (bet you didn't know that the school thing post wasn't long enough):  there are kids who depend on school for more than learning today's lesson.  For about 10% of public school students, school holds their lives together.  It may be the structure, the safety, the food, the socialization, the connection with unrelated adults who believe in them (the key to resiliency), but without school, their lives will fall apart in many ways.

If we don't fully open all schools, the damage will be incalculable.  But, of course, if we do fully open all schools...

I suspect that there are volumes to be written about this.  I'm keeping watch, and will report back.

Font Purgatory

It's obvious that I still don't have control of the fonts.  I have no idea what to do.  I often spend as much time screwing with the fonts as I do writing the post.

If anyone read this blog, maybe I could get some help.  Until then, all non-readers will have to put up with font purgatory.

Randy Newman and the Golden Horde

This is a long one. It's mostly Randy Newman's fault. It's also a depressing one, which is my fault. And yours. And everyone's.

I did eventually start watching “The Black Death” on Amazon. It's a Great Courses title which is really quite good, if you don't mind the 23 half-hour lecture format. I probably won't finish it because it's an Amazon teaser, slated to disappear on July 1.

Last night's episode, tracing the route that death took from Asia to Europe, told the story of Caffa (now called Feodosiya), a Crimean city on the Black Sea. 

In the mid 13^th century there were a lot of Genoan traders in Caffa, largely because the city was built near the mouth of the Don River (of “Quiet Flows the...” fame, for all you Nobel Prize for Literature fans). Just as an aside, there were a lot of Genoan traders everywhere in the 13^th and 14^th century. It's probably not a coincidence that, shortly thereafter, another Genoan ended up in the Americas.

Anyway, in 1343 a conflict broke out between the Genoans and the Mongol occupiers in Caffa. This conflict apparently began as a barfight. It escalated to a siege, by the Mongols (actually called the Golden Horde), who laid siege to the heavily fortified Genoan compound.

Suddenly, the plague breaks out in the Mongol army. A huge (but unknown) proportion of the army dies in a few days. It devastates them in short order, and they organize a retreat.

And here's the point of my story. Before leaving, the Mongols loaded thousands of the plague-wracked bodies of their comrades into their trebuchets and, in “the most spectacular incident of biological warfare ever,” flung them over the walls into the Genoan compound.

Thousands of corpses with bloody pustules raining down on a trading outpost. Thousands. Imagine that.

As you might have guessed, it is generally agreed that it was the Genoan population of Caffa, fleeing this horror, returning to European ports in the Mediterranean, who brought with them the Black Death and the destruction of up to half the population of Europe.

The point I want to draw out here is this: the Mongol soldiers loaded their friends and comrades' bodies – friends and comrades they had just watched die horribly – and, knowing that they themselves would probably die horribly in a day or so, flung those bodies at a bunch of foreigners so that they would die horribly too.

These were human beings, just like you and me. I'll leave it at that for now.

Next up is Randy Newman:

When Karl Marx was a boy, he took a hard look around

He saw people were starving all over the place while others were painting the town

The public spirited boy became a public spirited man

So he worked very hard and he read everything until he came up with a plan

There'll be no exploitation of the worker or his kin

No discrimination 'cause of the color of your skin

No more private property; it would not be allowed

No one could rise too high; no one could sink too low

Or go under completely like some we all know

If Marx were living today, he'd be rolling around in his grave

And if I had him here in my mansion on the hill

I'd tell him a story t'would give his old heart a chill

It's something that happened to me

I'd say, Karl I recently stumbled into a new family

With two little children in school where all little children should be

I went to the orientation; all the young mommies were there

Karl, you never have seen such a glorious sight:

As these beautiful women arrayed for the night

Just like countesses, empresses, movie stars and queens

And they'd come there with men much like me - froggish men, unpleasant to see

Were you to kiss one, Karl, nary a prince would there be

Oh Karl the world isn't fair - it isn't and never will be

They tried out your plan - it brought misery instead

If you'd seen how they worked it, You'd be glad you were dead

Just like I'm glad I'm living in the land of the free

Where the rich just get richer, and the poor you don't ever have to see

It would depress us, Karl, because we care

That the world still isn't fair

                                                   (c) 1999 - SKG Music, LLC 

Tongue firmly in cheek, Newman lays it out like it is: the world isn't fair, and the haves make sure that there are enough have-nots to keep their own larders full.  If you know a better articulation of this, you're free to substitute it.

So, to the point: the new world will be constructed by Mongols and Randy Newman. Which is to say, whatever it is that resulted in the decision to infect Cassa (or to murder six million Jews, or to cut off enemies' feet in Rwanda, or to distribute smallpox-infested blankets to North American indigenous peoples) is still lurking in the complex consciousnesses of those who will forge the new world. It's still there, in all of us, somewhere. And there's no doubt that, for those who benefit from the unfairness of the world, maintaining that injustice and greediocracy will be the highest priority.

So, it seems, those of us who want to overcome the human urges to destroy and prevail – we need to be doing a lot of purposeful and difficult work, starting now.

Where do we start?