View from My Bubble

The View from My Bubble

It has long occurred to me that we all live in our own little bubbles. My bubble contains friends who generally look like me, think like me, live the same sort of life and, sadly, often act like me. We don’t necessarily agree on everything but generally we experience life in the same way from the same perspective so in our bubble our understanding of “normal” is the same. I suspect most of us are like that. Clearly, however, everyone’s bubble is not the same and the truth of that has recently been brought home to me in a pretty drastic manner.

These are extraordinary times. Because of that, I think everyone knows that our lives are going to change. Still, many of us seem to hope that we all go back to our old ways of life, back to our own “normal” bubbles. I’m here to suggest that is the LAST thing we should do.

There is much to like in the “old normal” – but more so for some than others. Put another way, a growing percentage of our neighbors are not experiencing as much to like in their bubble as I do in mine. Racism, low paying jobs, poor housing, these are just some of the things about the old normal that people are not in a hurry to go back to.

A simple thing like healthcare for example. Most other advanced countries have figured this out but in the US if you need it but don’t have a full-time job with health benefits or one of the federal programs you are out of luck. There’s a reason that 60% of all bankruptcies in US are because of healthcare bills.

Or education. Everyone is encouraged to get some kind of training or college education but the cost is so overwhelming that one must either take out loans that will last decades or simply forgo it. (And don’t think about bankruptcy, thanks to Congress they are non-dischargeable through bankruptcy.)

And affordable housing? Forget it. Median priced home in Twin Cities is about $300,000 so essentially it doesn’t exist for at least 50% of the population and probably much more. Same with renting - average 1BR apartment is about $1500/mo. Affordable? Not for a lot of people. Why? Not enough income.

50% of households in America make $65,000/yr or less. (About $70k in Minnesota - yippee.) The next 25% make $120,000 or less.   If you make 240k or more, congrats, you are in the top 10% of income in the country! (How much to the top 1%? Don’t ask.)

So what happened? The average person has been screwed as money moved from working people to the investor class. In the last ten years - and actually long before that –. 75% of all new jobs pay $50,000/yr or less. Over 40% of all US workers make LESS than $15/hr. You know, like the cashiers and gig workers with no benefits that kept delivering your food?  (Maybe they should go to college, right? See above.) The result is that the top 1% of Americans earn about 20% of ALL income in the US while the ENTIRE bottom 50% get 13 percent. That’ll teach them for not being successful!

Speaking of the stock market, the market (Dow) has rallied back almost to where it was since it bottomed in March which is great, right? Never mind the fact that about 40 million workers have been laid off which is unheard of since the Great Depression and millions of businesses have been crushed. It has been good for the 20% of the population (hint: it ain’t the bottom 20%) that own 80% of all shares. Okay, disclaimer: I own mutual funds so I guess we’re in that lucky 20%.

Fun Fact: Here is a uniquely normal American business reality. About 16% of ALL US businesses are considered “zombie companies.” These are businesses that are so indebted, so poorly run or just plain dumb that they can only stay in business by using continuous, low interest debt (handed out like candy – or drugs – by our peerless leaders and the Federal Reserve.) Many will almost certainly soon be gone taking with them millions more jobs.

A final thought on the old normal in the economy. The pandemic has been terrible for everyone but that doesn’t mean the pain has been spread evenly. Who do you think makes up practically ALL of those laid off? If you said those in the lowest 50% of income you would be correct. Bonus question: which workers were able to work from home and continued to get paid? Yes, mostly the top 25% of income workers.

So maybe you can see why a lot of folks may not want to be back in their old normal bubble.

Minneapolis at Night from My Bubble 

There’s much more of the old normal that we do not want to go back to and this was brought home by the events of recent days related to the death of yet another black man at the hands of the police. The huge issue of underlying racism in America just keeps rearing its ugly head year after year. These things happen, many outcries and then . . . nothing changes.

The same with gun violence. Every year thousands of people are gunned down in America in mass shootings and we always get “thoughts and prayers” from our leaders. And again, sound of crickets chirping.  

  

Why? Because there are big obstacles to real change. It’s impossible to discuss our old normal without pointing out our sad state of affairs politically. For example, in 2016 we had two candidates for president with the lowest approval ratings EVER - pick your poison and boy, did we ever! In 2020 the two main political parties seem to be doubling down. This time they are providing us with two wholly unsatisfactory, septuagenarian candidates. One is being kept from a retirement he so desperately needs while the other has exhibited so many signs of incompetence and psychological disorders that he should have been removed from office long ago. Neither of these people would even be considered as candidates for dog catcher in any other western democracy yet this is the best that America’s political parties can offer us. This sort of dysfunction exists up and down all the levels of government. The old normal looks pretty sad.

Current Normal US Government

Most of the issues we confront are not flukes or accidental outcomes, they were the intended results of policies that our “leaders” undertook. The government, at all levels and including presidents and Congress of both parties, have been complicit (read: in cahoots) for at least the last 40 years. They created policies encouraging the government to be taken over by big banks, big corporations, big tech, big unions, big healthcare, big education, big political parties, big military - or just big money. You name it and they had a hand in creating policies intended to drive high profits and low taxes for the wealthiest of us while resulting in millions of low paying service jobs and a gutted middle class. (We did get low, low prices at Walmart so there is that.) Besides horrific income inequality these polices also caused the explosion in health care, education and housing costs. In many ways, we’re not much better than a cold Guatemala (I’ve been there and this may be an insult to Guatemala.)

And don't expect any help from America's massive media empire, they too are complicit. They all appear to have decided that facts and truth are directly related to political affiliation and exist to promote ideology instead of seeking truth. Apparently there really are "alternative facts." 

So, our “normal” is a country where 50% (and probably more than that) of the people struggle to save for a vacation let alone deciding between a decent retirement or their kid’s education. Meanwhile, the wonderful story of "upward mobility" in America has been changed from a great book to a short brochure handed out mostly to the top 10% - today how high you start is, sadly for most, an excellent predictor of where you're going. Or not going. Perhaps that's why most of us try to live a life that used to be known as middle class, just hoping like hell we don’t move down the food chain. My life is positively idyllic in comparison but even I can see why some may not want to go back to the old normal.

Minneapolis from Another Bubble

Is there any wonder that there is a powerful sense of anger and frustration among so many of our fellow Americans? Our social issues combined with the sense that our entire economic system is rigged against the average person creates a tragic and powerful coda to our need for change. 

My generation and I have been perhaps the luckiest people in the history of the world. Yet seemingly we have spent the last few decades helping to pull up the ladder behind us creating the old normal. Maybe we didn’t do it intentionally but like the politicians we are complicit. We live in our nice bubble but as with certain politicians and other "special people," sometimes I think that we babyboomers were all born on third base and thought we hit a triple. It's time for us to try to give our children and grandchildren the same shot at the golden ring as we had. The famous saying, "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste" comes to mind. We must take advantage of the changes these terrible events are forcing on us - difficult changes, painful changes but necessary changes. 

Start by paying attention to the lives of those outside our own little bubbles. Then, don’t just sit there, do something - and for God's sake vote!

*One of the groups I volunteer with has a great saying about getting involved: "It’s never convenient." 

Ain’t it the truth.

*Hat tip to the Bird Dogs!

       The Author

I often write letters to the editor, they sometimes actually print them. I usually write because of something I read that was either really stupid or really smart - or sometimes they are a combination of both. Anyway, these are a couple of my May 2020 letters one of which was printed and the other is still to be determined.

First one is about the Supreme Court considering a case regarding Electors in the Electoral College (one of the greater mistakes in the Constitution.)

SCOTUS and Faithless Electors

There is some irony to the Strib news story about the SCOTUS case,the "unfaithful electors." There are many misconceptions about the electoral college. Among them is that electors are somehow associated with political parties. There is no mention of parties in the constitution and, in fact, the founding fathers hoped there wouldn’t be any parties. Fools! And no, the Electoral College (not it’s real name) wasn’t created to help the small states or protect us from big state liberals. And nothing about faithful. It was created to assure that voters didn’t get their way through “passion” and “mob rule.” Electors were to vote for “men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice.” (Whew, that sure worked out!) Anyway, they could vote for anyone, not just the candidates. In essence, make sure it was someone acceptable to the founding fathers (read: someone like them, probably wealthy and certainly white.) They clearly didn’t trust democracy - and maybe now we can all kind of see why. In any event, the original concept went out the door right after Washington retired and turned into just another electoral, political and undemocratic knot that has tied our country up the last couple hundred years. Time for it to go.

This letter obviously is about two different commentaries. One on the fact that a LOT of businesses are not coming back and probably shouldn't, pandemic or no. The other is about the consequences of the elimination of jobs due to automation that seems to be coming no matter what we wish. 

Two opinion pieces in the 5/23 paper are related and gloomy. Not to mention accurate. Cowen’s commentary should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention for the last 30 years or so. I believe most thinking people have suspected that our economy has become a flimsy shell of its former self borne out by how quickly it collapsed with the onset of the pandemic. Taken over by the financial industry, our economy is now captive to vague financial “instruments” that have enriched the top 1% while creating millions of low paying jobs in the service industry. As Cowen points out, many of the “service companies” with these employees couldn’t really exist without cheap, excessive debt - thanks to the Fed – for both businesses and we indebted consumers. That reckoning is just starting.

Trivedi’s piece regarding automation is equally telling. It is clear that a huge number of the jobs that exist for the average worker today are at risk of being automated and eliminated including many white-collar jobs as well. It has often been said, and was true, that automation creates more and better jobs. In fact, it seems that, again in the last 30 years, for most workers automation has simply driven the job creation to ever lower skill and lower paying jobs. I think what Trivedi’s is implying is that the next stop on this dismal train may be no jobs created. If true then, as he says, we really will have to rethink how our entire economy operates.

The massive job destruction by the pandemic may be just a preview of what our future might look like.     

You can decide for yourself on my view.

No Small Government Conservatives in a Foxhole

I think we all know that there are going to be many changes in our society and work lives due to the coronavirus. Some seem obvious like more people regularly working from home, most people continuing to use online delivery for a lot of household items and maybe online education and telemedicine will become more mainstream. These will all have large impacts on the economy and depending on your job, some good and some bad.  Also on our personal lives - hello frugality, savings accounts and family dinners. There are certain to be some unexpected changes as well.

There is a famous saying in the military that there are no atheists in a foxhole, meaning that when one’s life is on the line even the most devout non-believers suddenly become believers. I wonder if a version of that will occur in our regard to the government after this mess. Perhaps we will find that there are no small government conservatives in a pandemic foxhole.

Was anyone else shocked, amazed and perhaps appalled at how fast things collapsed after the onset of the virus? In a little over a month some 30 million Americans are unemployed. How can that be?! Didn’t any of the companies have several months’ worth of expenses per the most basic advice? On the other hand, most Americans themselves don’t have any kind of saving to that extent either with most living paycheck to paycheck by necessity (assuming you include large cell phone and cable bills and eating out necessities.) So, one of the lessons that big slaps upside the head like this pandemic tell us is that modern life and certainly the modern economy is an awfully fragile – one might say flimsy - thing with just a cascade of bad outcomes. Thank God for big government, right?!

Unlike most of our modern democratic country counter parts, we Americans are famous for our distrust of big gub’mint. Instilled in us by Founding Fathers, all of whom were the wealthy elite of the day, we have proudly carried forward that tradition for some 233 years with the only exceptions being . . . well, every time trouble comes our way. During wars, recessions, hurricanes, floods and generally bad times the good Uncle Sam is there to bail us out. And that’s okay, that’s how governments are supposed to work. As long as there have been governments there has been an expectation that the government would help the people and the people would support the government. (Well, mostly.) Nothing has changed – except the people. I should say, except how people make a living.

When our constitution was written the country was 90 percent farm and rural, today it’s 20% rural and 80% urban – as is most of the world. And that brings me to why our economy and, to a certain extent, our society is so fragile. Also, why big government shouldn’t be a surprise. 

Most of us work for “the man.” In a nutshell, we can train and go to school but in the end “the man” is responsible for providing jobs. It worked pretty well for a long time but something has broken down in the system the last 30 or 40 years; a lot of the jobs aren’t that great and the middle class is being downsized.

So here we are, a raging pandemic wiping out jobs, in many cases the jobs that weren’t the highest paying (although suddenly most valuable, as anyone who goes to the grocery store or has food delivered would vouch for.) And there is no one except the government that can step in to help our friends and neighbors. I mean a big, burly government, one that we hate every other day of the year. One that constantly intrudes in our lives telling us what to do, how fast we can drive, how much we can pollute, who we can’t discriminate against. You know, BIG government. Sadly, and I do mean sadly, we can’t have it both ways. There is much to dislike about our government: the hypocrisy of our so-called political leaders, the intrusion into our lives and the corruption that money has caused. It stinks. But when we need several trillion (borrowed) dollars to save our economy’s bacon there is only one place to go: the government. Like so many things in life, it means you can’t have your cake and eat it too – you have to take the bad with the good

On the other hand, that doesn't mean we can’t do anything about the “bad.” As far as I know we still have the right to vote. Maybe it’s time to pay attention and start demanding more from our government. Not in money or favors. Not for political parties and partisanship. Not for special interest groups. We need to demand more leadership and commitment to doing what’s right it for the average American, like you and me. We are not powerless unless you just give up!

In the meantime, friends, keep your heads down in that foxhole - from both virus and the government - and stay safe.

This too shall pass. 

   

A re-post but a damn good one if I do say so myself.

Now I know how the Inca’s may have felt. Or the Hittites. Or even those stone worshipping people on New Guinea – sheesh. 

The life and society I have lived is being buried. First, you take away a man’s beer like Budweiser and replace it with Moose Drool or something equally stupid. Then you make him wear lycra shorts and a helmet to go for a bike ride. Isn’t that enough?  Apparently not and now they’ve gone too far; they’re stealing my childhood food.

Listen to this (From Sept 15 Star Tribune Food section): ” Delicately spiced pork shoulder defies it’s bologna shape; its thinly sliced, warmed and slightly scorched on the stove, cloaked with Gruyere and sharp cheddar and tucked into a toasted and buttered roll.” All for only $11. This is the modern replacement for the good old bologna, Wonder Bread and chunk - of - cheddar cheese sandwich. Really.

First, if you even know what Gruyere cheese is I don’t want anything to do with you!  Next, why would anyone do this? Can you imagine your mom saying, when you come in from a morning of playing ball with your buddies (without a single adult interaction), “Come on, honey, it's almost done, I’m just slightly scorching your pork shoulder and Gruyere sandwich. I’ll get the sugar free kool aid and low salt chips in a second.” Yeah.

Thanks, mom, but could I just have a hotdog? “Sure, dear, I’ll get your Limousin beef dog blanketed with a barrage of Asian inspirations: tangy kimshi, yuzu fruit mayonnaise, avocado, chopped egg, charred shishito peppers, pickled ginger. . .” Limousin beef?! Fruity mayonnaise? First, I only use Miracle Whip and second, NEVER on a hot dog. (Although I do put it on my bologna sandwich - and almost everything else.) I’ve got your shishito right here!  

Well, can’t screw up dessert, right? How about S’Mores? Sure, as long as it’s “a light, spongy graham cake indulged with chocolate cremeux (fancy word for pudding) with picture perfect pillows of meringue marshmallows strategically placed around the artful plate.” Picture perfect pillows. . . huh. That will NOT look good on the camp fire. Is nothing sacred!?

You know, it’s okay if all stores have to be "upscale." It’s also fine if we only build “upper end” homes and apartments. It’s even okay if no hip person would be caught dead going to a regular restaurant. (Gotta be a trendy joint that serves this kind of stuff – and covered with kale, no doubt. Yuck.) But this is going too far! Taking the remnants of my youth and trashing it by charging $11 dollars for a bologna and cheese sandwich (replacement), well, that’s just too much. 

I guess this is a not too subtle reminder that I might be just a bit out of step with the times and need to go gently into that good night (on the town at Olive Garden.)

Move it on over, Inca’s, a big old dog is movin’ in! 

                Pandemic TV Viewing                  Echo in the Canyon

Turn Turn Turn  The Byrds

We finally got around to watching "Echo in the Canyon," the marvelous show about all the musicians and music that cross pollinated in LA and specifically in the Laurel Canyon area of the Hollywood Hills in the early 60's. It opens with those wonderful 6 opening chords from the song above . . . and bang zoom I’m a senior in high school! Why do you think that is? This dude has an answer:

"It has long been held that, just as objective time is dictated by clocks, subjective time (barring external influences) aligns to physiological metronomes. Music creates discrete temporal units but ones that do not typically align with the discrete temporal units in which we measure time. Rather, music embodies (or, rather, is embodied within) a separate, quasi-independent concept of time, able to distort or negate “clock-time.” This other time creates a parallel temporal world in which we are prone to lose ourselves, or at least to lose all semblance of objective time.  Perhaps the clearest evidence of musical hijacking is this: In 2004, the Royal Automobile Club Foundation for Motoring deemed Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyrie” the most dangerous music to listen to while driving. It is not so much the distraction, but the substitution of the frenzied tempo of the music that challenges drivers’ normal sense of speed—and the objective cue of the speedometer—and causes them to speed."  JONATHAN BERGER, COMPOSER

That’s exactly what I was thinking! Okay, maybe not exactly but close. Everyone knows/thinks that music has a special effect on us, it’s a real time machine – albeit it only goes in one direction – and we understand how it can launch you back to a specific time and place with as much accuracy as memory allows.

Jakob Dylan (yeah, the son of OUR Dylan) does a great job interviewing many of the prime movers from that time interspersed with some of the best music of the era. Guys like Jim McGuinn and David Crosby of the Byrds, Tom Petty, Brian Wilson, Jackson Brown, Michelle Phillips of Mamas and Papas - even Ringo Starr - and countless others. (Yeah, I know there were a LOT of talented women like Joni Mitchell, Carol King and Judy Collins who, sadly, don’t get nearly enough credit.) This was when American music was just coming out of the old 50’s stuff and the boring folk era in the early 60’s. I won’t ruin it for you but I will just say there was lot more than free love and marijuana going around out there then, hint:  a lot of it had to do with The Beatles (duh) and Brian Wilson (who Tom Petty equated with Mozart - who am I to argue?) But enough about them, let’s talk about me.

I listen to a lot music because Mrs. Dear Leader listens to a lot of music. She is more up to date than I but we both still mostly prefer music from past. You know, I admire the people - people of a certain age - who wholeheartedly embrace the most recent music (and I acknowledge that there are a lot of talented people out there now) but generally I’m not one of them. Do I think “my” music is so superior that it’s not worth my time to even listen to new stuff? No - as long as they can top the Beatles or Steely Dan!

Is it because I can’t relate to the people who are creating new music? (Well, Bruno Mars and I do have the same kind of hat.)  Maybe I just don’t have the energy, ambition or desire to stay up to date (I’m very busy you know.) Or maybe, like comfort food, there’s comfort music, music that you are familiar with and that you identify with; music that allows you to instantaneously escape your current situation (even a pandemic) and maybe revisit the younger you or at least who the younger you was when that music came out. (Huh?) Anyway, it allows us to forget the whole aging process and slip back to that young, svelte handsome dude of yesteryear.

Perhaps. But perhaps it’s not my fault, perhaps I’m a victim! I read somewhere that another smart guy theorized that like a lot of other things, many of us stop paying attention to new music somewhere in our early 30’s. Thus, we just get stuck in a particular era (sort of like a lot of my friend’s golf wardrobes) and our tastes live there forever. I don’t know, maybe that’s right. As Mr. Berger says, music “distorts clock-time” allowing us to actually relive some other period of our life. And it’s not just the “good” times but also the bad times so it’s an equal opportunity device. On the other hand, it could be more than just revisiting your youth. Time speeds by so fast leaving all in its wake – including our youth – that it’s easy to think that our lives kind of lose their meaning in the debris. So maybe these musical journeys back help to validate us, to prove that, hey, I lived on this planet too, you know!

It occurs to me that during our “prime,” music is just enjoyed in that moment. After all, when we're young we're sure there are certain to be many more moments ahead. I don’t think anyone thinks about how music will affect us in the future – ha, little did we know!

Ah well, on the other hand, maybe this all just bunch of psychobabble. Maybe it’s because we all just turn into fuddy duddies like our parents. Carn sarn that hip hop! Where are The Eagles and Chicago – and The Doors - when you need them?! 

If you don’t get anything else out of this just Put Echo in the Canyon on your watch list today.

California Dreaming    Mamas and Papas

After the Storm

     Well I’ll be damned. It seems like it was just the other day that I was just sitting around with my buddies wondering if we would ever get through this mess and what would happen after. Now, here we are, a couple years later already (time really does fly when you get to be a certain age) and it turns out all of us were a little right and also a little wrong. Okay, a lot wrong.

     I'm shocked! Despite all those folks hoarding toilet paper and buying guns we made it without total collapse. It was touch and go for a while there around the time of 2020 election – a little mass hysteria going on there - but in the end it all worked out. Not everything is going well, of course, it never does. For example, the economy – and my IRA – still haven’t recovered but it seems to be getting better. Also, a lot of jobs never came back because a lot of industries never came back so there's tons of change there - can you say too many restaurants and retail stores? But there’s a lot of change a foot anyway, which shouldn’t be too be a shock; after every earth-shaking event like this including, the Civil War, Great Depression and both World Wars, left behind was a very different, usually better country. That, and a whole generation who will never forget lessons they learned during the Great Pandemic of 2020 (like never take their job or going to the grocery store for granted again and that maybe having savings isn't so stupid after all.) 

Anyway, here’s some of the things that surprised, amazed or shocked my buddies and me.

    Our peerless leaders finally saw that this never-ending cycle of boom/bust/bailout is not a sustainable model. A country built on debt, debt and more debt is not healthy and perhaps we need to get rid of policies that encourage bad behavior by everyone and especially big business. So the Fed is finally trying to normalize interest rates and the rest of us start to be smart. (Pretty sure this is happening but hard to tell in current mess of economy.)

    I guess we’ve lost our taste for consumerism. After weeks or months of social distancing or sheltering in place we've learned that it isn’t necessary to go shopping – online or otherwise - for every new, shiny object and that we really can live without many of the things that have consumed us as we consumed them in the past. (Remains to be seen what this means for the economy that depends 70% on consumerism not to mention jobs in retail.)

    Apparently, our experience spending so much time together just talking, thinking and enjoying simple pleasures like a walk actually became a regular part of way of life for lot us. (And becoming even more hooked on streaming - much to the chagrin of theaters.)

A big shock is that we seem to have developed some empathy for each other and differing views. The extraordinary partisanship and anger about things that, weighed against millions of us getting a disease and thousands dying, just don’t seem that important anymore. Hopefully we will see people starting to think more about what’s good for their community and country, like my mom and dad and grandparents did, and not just our own individual interests. (Hope this is true but way to early to tell.)

    Looks like some of the practical solutions that were seemed necessary during our fight with the virus have become mainstream – hallelujah! Talking to your doc on the phone - telemedicine – proved it works and helps reduce costs for millions of people and God knows we need it! And I was right, online learning goes mainstream!  Note: I taught online college classes for several years and knew it works when done right. Not sure what the education-industrial complex thinks of this but oh well. I'll bet there a lot more things like this going too.

    Who knew?! It seems this mess has finally taught us that we need to streamline, simplify and reduce costs of our whole healthcare system.  I guess watching millions of our friends and neighbors losing their healthcare along with their jobs finally convinced us that our crappy system is no way to run healthcare in a modern country. Sadly, the healthcare-industrial complex is still fighting it but the wheels are turning.

   Well, well apparently experts aren’t so dumb and science seems to work afterall. Maybe using actual data and facts in our decisions is okay. When the facts change so do their conclusions – duh! e.g. face masks. All of a sudden we seemed re-learn something that we shouldn’t have forgotten in the first place, it is better to listen to smartest among us then the dumbest. (The quick acceptance of the new Covid 19 vaccination by anti-vaxxers maybe helped this along.

    I have to admit that this kind of surprised me, a closet cynic: there actually seems to be a renewal of hope. Instead of cynicism, anger, fear or despair there is a sense that there is a reason to believe. Call it a belief in God, belief in reason, belief in ourselves or, I don’t know, simply the belief that there is always a reason to go on and . . . . . . . . . . . . .

    Ouch, Prudie, get off me! Damn it, dog, you woke me and I was having such a great dream. 

   Okay, okay, I know it’s time for your walk. I need to find my mask and my rubber gloves before I can take you out. Crap, I hope this last shelter in place order since the stupid virus started again in October ends by the end of year and really is the last one cuz we need to get out of here for FL!

   I may not know much and no one has ever called me Pollyanna but I say hang in there, friends, the sun will return and if even only half of these things come true it would still be a great dream.     

            Beatles    Here Comes the Sun

Notes from a Prisoner in Solitary Confinement

So here we are, trapped in our own homes – the horror of it all! You’d think that a guy who has been retired for a few years would be comfortable with sitting around the house all day and pondering his navel. But no, one of the verities of life is that there’s a big difference between doing things we want to do and things you have to do – even if they’re the same things. Watch something on Netflix? Ha, you can’t make me! Take a nap? Who says?! How about cleaning the closet after 10 years of stalling? Who made you the boss?! (Besides there’s plenty of time for that later.) Have a cocktail? My god, are you nuts, it’s only two o’clock! Oh, well, okay.

Luckily, Mrs Dear Leader is very patient with me. In fact, she’s too patient with me – she just ignores me. She ignores my whining about no jelly beans in the house or that I’m tired of washing my freaking hands or that it’s stupid that the golf courses are closed. (Her pet name for me right now is Baby Dougie.) Also, I look stupid in a stupid mask. A mask, I might add, that she made and is busy making masks for neighbors and care givers. I know, right? She's just doing it to make me look stupid and whiny! Well, in fact, everything IS stupid! (Well, not the mask – but I do look stupid in it.)

Thank god, the dog hasn’t given up on me; Prudie is the one constant between the pre-pandemic life and the current sad state of affairs. We had a saying when I was in Thailand defending freedom from the dirty commies lo those many years ago that “every day is Tuesday and every meal is breakfast.” That’s because that’s what it felt like when you flew missions from 11PM until 5am every day, seven days a week, week in, week out.  Hey, pass the beer and waffles! Where was I going with that? Oh, yeah, that’s kind of the way a dog thinks (I think.) For them, every day is the same, every day is sheltering at home. Get up, go for a walk, go poop, have breakfast, take a nap,  have lunch, take a nap - what’s not to like?!

As an aside, I saw that a cat in Belgium caught the covid virus. (And now a freaking Tiger? What's with those felines?!) Yup, all the symptoms – fever, coughing, breathing issues (not sure how you would know with a cat.) Caught it from humans but the cat recovered. Anyway, the larger point is that if a cat can catch the virus, in theory a cat can give you the virus. Now luckily, cats are naturally so good at social distancing that it probably doesn’t matter. In other news, no word that dogs can catch it - thank god! - so score another one for mutts!

Anyway, it’s hard for we humans to embrace a dog’s life no matter how comfortable it might be IF someone is trying make us do it. This seems to be especially true of Americans; we have this independent streak that rears its head at the most inconvenient times. I mean, we put up with a two-party political system that is clearly a total failure without a peep but get mad when we aren’t allowed to infect our neighbors? Sheesh.

Finally, this whole social distancing thing and staying home is a pain but at least we’re all in it together. Well most of us anyway. So don’t be a whiner like me. If you’re retired, you’re lucky. If you still have a job, you’re lucky. If you have good neighbors, you’re lucky. If you have a dog, you’re lucky. (No comment on cats.) For those that aren’t so lucky let’s try to be as generous as possible in whatever way possible to them.

   Neighborhood Mensa club discussing string theory and social distancing

If you don’t have the effing virus you’re lucky so don’t be stupid!

Lucky Man Emerson, Lake and Palmer