Veiled Lady”, Raffaelo Monti c.1860, Minneapolis Institute of Arts …
A tear in our plague shroud?

Wanting to see how this new reality unfolded, I narrowed my focus briefly to local observations with little to no following of the broader national, regional, or state plague reporting. Upon this closer view, I noticed that people looked less strained, and they occasionally smiled. Even under their masks you could discern their smiles. This brought home to me the fact that since the outbreak of plague no one had been seen to smile in public. We had been stifled under an airless shroud, in which a tear has now been made. As I clicked back on my cable TV channels, I learned that this rift was widening; soon we might have new therapeutics and maybe vaccines that would allow us to breathe and live freely.

—–

Our newly transplanted, late 70-something neighbor from California has kept to his daily pre-plague regimen of driving his new, tarted-up Tesla Model 3 for Uber. His stories of herbed up millennial passengers and other adventurers enjoying their release from incarceration are equal parts entertaining and questionable given his lack of protection, his age and chronic health issues despite not needing the dough. I guess some still get their plague kicks on Georgia Route one-nine-six.

—–

This was written three weeks or so ago in mid-April:

Our plague land of the damned initially became after the panic small life boats of survivors as we bent the curves. Exile isolated us from all the others in our lives, surrounding ourselves with the media’s endless days of terror; now we are setting out from our individual home ports onto a new sea voyage towards the unexplored shores of our new reality.

Does our coming new reality mean an eventual return to new movie house premieres, sporting venue events, large indoor music concerts as well as food and fashion crazes — even sillier and emptier than they were before the plague? Am I being cynical or realistic? Public new movie openings will only be one of the many commercial activities to see new reality changes. We’ll attend them, since we adore their illusion.

Whatever illusions we eventually choose to pursue, we’ll pay the full price since the return to life after the lockdown gates are opened will offer powerful outer comforting aspects of the “before.” Yet even these comfortings will be an illusion. In each of our hearts, in varying degrees, will be scars of the plague. But each of us will have new dimensions as an individual.

Comment on the above in early May:

Damn. The illusions we now openly embrace are stunning in their power over most of us. I severely underestimated them.

—–

Please excuse the following observations since they are much like those throwaway lines of long ago, on scene radio commentators and reporters.

—–

In these times of economic and health woe, here’s my take on a Chatham County (5th most populous in the state of Georgia) misery index:

30+% unemployment rate (increased 10 fold in 6 weeks)
30+% poverty rate pre-plague

That works out to a 60+% misery index rating. Depressing.

—–

The sudden and often WTF-inducing rollbacks broad-jump-aheads of our plague exile were as welcome as they were unlooked-for, yet, many of us in older sections of this town were in no hurry to jubilate in the Empire. The many months we had lived through this and past widespread disease times had taught us prudence, and we had come to count less and less on a speedy end of this plague.

All else took a back seat then; that daily there were new victims counted for little beside that staggering fact; the nation’s weekly totals showed small jerky decreases in daily death rates, new infections (when controlled for massively increased testing), and stable and then declining local and regional hospitalization population.

One of today’s signs that a return to new but different, perhaps gilded, age of health is nearing is that our neighbors, careful though they are not to voice their hope, now talk in a carefully detached tones of the new reality of life that would set in after this plague.

All agree that the amenities of the past can’t be restored all at once — destruction is easier and speedier process than reconstruction. What gives folks a basis for pushing the limits are the incessant reports on promising new therapeutics and vaccine trials.

In the dark corners of us grey haired oldsters’ individual perceptions of the new reality lurk wild, extravagant hopes, so consequently often one of us upon such a dream’s utterance hastily adds that even in the rosiest view we shouldn’t expect the plague to stop by one specific day or another. Yet, the plague locally looks to be trending in our favor more rapidly than we could reasonably have expected or that the experts and their models had predicted way back in April (yeah, a month during plague time is a long time for us, the networked but distanced digiterati).

Still to a few of us, the plague seems to be leaving our locale as unaccountably as it had come. So we wonder whether is it defeated, retreating to regroup or going off to some distant corner of the globe to die a lonely death.

Time will tell.

—–

Recent conversation

W: You remind me of dough!
Marlow: What?
W: Well, like pizza dough I leave you both alone for awhile, and you double in size.
Marlow: That’s just me “fattening the curve.”

Marlow “thinking outside of the box” comments: I now live in fear of a Peloton being dropped shipped to our front porch. Anyone else gain a few pounds these past few months?

—–

Life during the plague continues to play out like a Tom Clancy novel. From the WSJ:

Chi­nese and Iran­ian hack­ers are ag­gres­sively tar­get­ing Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ties, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and other health-care firms in a way that could be ham­per­ing their ef­forts to find a vac­cine to counter the coro­n­avirus pan­demic, U.S. of­fi­cials said.

Since at least Jan. 3, the two coun­tries have waged cy­ber­at­tacks against a range of Amer­i­can firms and in­sti­tu­tions that are work­ing to find a vac­cine for Covid-19, the dis­ease caused by the coro­n­avirus, of­fi­cials said.

Folks of serious US national security mindfulness that some of you readers know are softly discussing whether these acts constitute willful acts of war on the US.
—–

Thoughts on plague snacking:

– IMO, peanut butter toast goes well with bourbon. But, for the ultimate taste treat to go with Kentucky’s finest, try an Elvis Sandwich (grilled peanut butter, bacon, and banana sandwich). It’s serious eats.

– A neighbor claims that rosé wine goes well with snickdoodle cookies.

Copyright © 2020 From My Isle Seat
http://www.vicsocotra.com

Author’s Note: Vic,

It’s a sunny crisp 75 degree day here in the Empire. Hope all is well.

Here’s the piece I wrote earlier this week.

– Marlow

Editor’s Note: We have pretty good weather today, building to rain all next week. There is something about the plague, isn’t there?

– Vic