Live With It?

I may have said this before, but I think on some level, COVID-19 is something that we as a civilization will simply have to learn to live with...at least for the next several years.

Yes, I know, it's deadly--but so were tuberculosis, malaria, yellow fever (want to know how bad yellow fever could be? Watch the movie Jezebel sometime.), and a host of other maladies we dealt with in the past (and I'm not even going to go back to the days of smallpox and plague). The difference today is, I think, two-fold.

1. We have a much better understanding of disease and how it spreads then we did even 80 years ago, when our soldiers brought back malaria from the South Pacific. That means we can treat things better and control the infection rate.

2. Conversely, we have greater ability to track the spread and inform the public...not only in our own nation, but worldwide...and that's one of the problems. Sometimes information is scary.

The thing that worries me even more than living with the virus for another two years is what it is doing to our political life. None of the other scourges I mentioned (or others such as polio) became politicized in the way COVID-19 has. Nobody called the Spanish Flu a political hoax--at least not in any reports I've read. Nobody suggested the annual polio epidemics or yellow fever epidemics were a tool being used by their political opponents.

That is even scarier than the epidemic itself.

Extremities

Am I alone in thinking that our current situation--pandemic, lock-down, racial and political unrest--has caused normally sane, rational people to go off the deep end? All too often I see postings from people I have known for years espousing extreme positions--on both the right and the left. I see writings from newspaper columnists--who I may have disagreed with in the past but who I always thought of as reasonable--that take positions so far from the center as to fall off the edge.

I'm not naming names or posting examples. I'm not interested in starting any flame wars. But I sincerely wonder if we can continue in our present state without coming to blows with those with whom we used to share common interests, if not always the same opinions.

New Computer II

OK...so I'm on the new computer. I never did manage to get the virtual machine with Windows 7 set up--because I couldn't get a working version of Win7 (or of any earlier version of Windows, despite having disks for 95 and 98 still on hand from older computers).

But it has forced me to explore some of the capabilities of parts of Win10 I wasn't aware of. Turns out Paint 3D will do a lot of the things I wanted that other, older, image program for...not in the same way and not without some finagling, but I can achieve many of the same effects.

I'd still like to find a good video editor, since Win10 eliminated Moviemaker. MS claims Photos' video editor is just as good, but--from what I can tell in playing around with it--no, it's not. For instance, in Moviemaker, I could "splice" two videos together by starting with one and then inserting the other one, and then doing a fade or some other transition to the next. Can't do that in Photos and believe me, I've looked through the instructions and the help files.

Anyone have a good video editor they trust, preferably free?

Musing on "Mason"

Jill likes the old Perry Mason series--she uses it as background noise while she's working (in part because the distinctive theme song helps her keep track of time) and finds it to be soothing TV at bedtime. That has got me thinking about how to revive/reboot the concept, especially since so many people seem to think the current attempt, with an "origin" story, has failed.

Here's my idea:

Erle Stanley Gardner wrote 82 Mason novels from the early 1930s to the mid '60s...and each was set contemporary to the time it was written. Let's set the series somewhere in the middle, say early 1950s, and only use adaptations of the actual novels. Yes, some details of each might have to be altered to fit the period, but not radically so. Each episode should run 90 minutes, to give enough time not to rush the story.

If this sounds like the A&E Nero Wolfe series with Timothy Hutton, yes, it does. I've always thought that was the best way to get a long-running book series on TV.

Illustration vs. "Art"

As I mentioned yesterday, this morning Jill and I visited the Brandywine River Museum, dedicated to the works of the Wyeth family and related artists. It has one of the finest collections of book and magazine illustration from the "Golden Age" (circa 1880 to 1920), including, of course, the work of the family patriarch, N.C. Wyeth.

Despite a very successful career, Wyeth struggled with being recognized within the larger art community, in which he was derided as "merely an illustrator," as were his friends and contemporaries Howard Pyle and Norman Rockwell--as well as all those who turned out dozens of drawings, paintings to illustrate stories, articles, books, and magazine covers. To be honest, it's a distinction I've never understood.

First of all, if the objection is that the illustrators worked on commission, producing not what they wished but what their clients wished, then so did hundreds of "classical" painters. Perhaps the most famous painting of all time, the Mona Lisa, was done on commission for the subject's husband. If the objection is that, rather than painting from their own imaginations or from nature, the illustrators are interpreting the words of storyteller, how does that differ from da Vinci interpreting the words of the Gospels to delineate the Last Supper, or Botticelli interpreting the Roman myths to paint the birth of Venus?

At any rate, if you have any interest in great illustration, I urge you to visit this museum. Here's a link to its website: https://www.brandywine.org/museum

And, if you are unfamiliar with Wyeth's work, here's one of his paintings for the Charles Scribner edition of Treasure Island:

Looking for Things to Do

With Jill on vacation, we've been searching for things to do. We've run some necessary errands the last few days, but nothing really "fun". We went to church last night--with full pandemic controls (masks, no singing, limited seating).

Tomorrow, we're making a visit to one of our favorite local museums, the Brandywine River Museum, which specializes in the works of the Wyeth family and related subjects, especially illustration art, such as that created by family patriarch N.C. Wythe and his contemporaries. Sunday, we'll be headed out in the same direction to the Chaddsford Winery. I don't drink, but there's other things there and Jill will certainly enjoy it.

New Computer

I'm coming to you today thanks to a new computer.

My old one has been on its last legs for at least a year and especially became difficult after Microsoft stopped supporting Windows 7. Yesterday, a program I use a lot began crashing, and when I tried to re-install it, the system insisted it needed more disk space, even though I had deleted the bad version of that program.

So, that settled it. I did a little investigation and within two hours brought home a brand new HP desktop from Best Buy. A few hours after that, it was up and running with all my old programs...except one that won't even install on Windows 10. Knowing that might be an issue even before yesterday, I had explored my options and my computer whiz son suggested a "virtual machine." I have now contacted him for advice on how to set that up.

Dining Out, Inside

Jill and I had dinner at Iron Hill Brewery in Media, PA last night and it was a pleasant, unstressful experience. Yes, we wore masks, but took them off once we were seated. The restaurant had rearranged things to 50% capacity, but even then were not filled at 6 PM on a Sunday. The bar area seemed busy, but still not filled to its new limits.

The current menu is somewhat limited--only one kind of steak on offer and only one dessert listed. The waiter told us they planned on increasing the selection once they had a better handle on what kind of business to expect (after all, they've only been open for any kind of sit-down service for about two weeks).

We felt comfortable and safe. We saw them cleaning areas that had been used, so they are maintaining standards. I can heartily recommend Iron Hill to my Delaware County neighbors.

Fan Art: Hazard Pay?

More years ago than I care to remember (1975, I think), a friend named Jim Glenn (now known as Teel James Glenn) and I published two issues of a comics fanzine called Factors Unknown. My major contribution was a character called Chris Sheridan, the Hazardman. (Our major claim to fame as editors and publishers is being one of the first places to put George Perez's work in print.)

Anyway, skip ahead about five years, and as I'm working on stuff for Star Trek and Star Wars fanzines, I was asked by one editor (Anne Zeek, I think) to come up with an original idea, as she was expanding what she wanted to publish. I returned to Hazardman and revamped the concept as "H is for Hazard". The character was much the same--a human raised by aliens and returned to  Earth as their agent. He operates in disguise, under the name Hazard, and in pretty much the same outfit I drew him as when he was a comic-book superhero. I added to the regular cast his girlfriend, Caroline, who knew his secret.

I needed models for those characters in illustrating the stories, and I chose Parker Stevenson (The Hardy Boys) for Sheridan/Hazard and Valerie Bertinelli (One Day at a Time) as Caroline (admittedly, she was something of a crush of mine at the time). Again, that art is long disappeared, but here's a recreation of it:

A side note: Chris Sheridan's name comes from a subway stop on the Number 1 line in New York: Christopher Street/Sheridan Square.

Virtue Signaling in the Time of Covid

A week or so ago, I talked about the new PA requirement for masks even outdoors "when social distancing is not possible," and when I questioned the need for them in situations such as walking for exercise and passing through a relatively empty parking lot, I got some pretty fierce pushback--not here directly, but on Facebook.

There were folks who said things like "you never know when someone might get out of their car within six feet of you, or turn a corner and be too close." When I said, in my experience, those instances have been few and far between....and well able to be handled in the moment...I was accused of not caring enough. There were even those who said they put a mask on anytime they walked out the door, even for something like walking the length of their own driveway to pick up the mail or bring in the trash cans.

To me, that's virtue signaling: "I'm better than you are because I'm more cautious than you are." To me, that attitude--brought to its logical conclusion--would have us all living in hermetically sealed bubbles. "I put a mask on before I open the door when the bell rings." That way lies madness.

Rain, Rain Go Away

We're expecting rain--heavy, drenching rain--all day today and into tomorrow, as a result of Tropical Storm Fay, the sixth named storm of the season. Reportedly, this is the earliest we've ever had a sixth named storm in the nearly 70 years of that tradition. It's certainly the earliest I can recall such a storm reaching the mid-Atlantic region--usually the waters of our coast are too cold to sustain a tropical system this early in the summer.

Respected scientists tell us that this phenomenon is the result of climate change...that now and in the future tropical storm/hurricane season will begin earlier and end later and that the storms will tend to be stronger and more violent. Deniers will pooh-pooh this, with anecdotal stories along the lines of "Why, I remember the devastating storm of ...." well, whatever year they choose to pick. Of course, there have been strong storms in the past, but usually they come one to a season (and there were seasons without any unusually strong storms) and late in the season, after months of warming air and water.

But now we're seeing storms like this every season, and over the past decade or so, multiple storms like this. No one can deny something's changed...so why deny the explanation the experts give us?

Theater Gripes

Everyone who has spent any time doing theater--especially amateur theater--can point to experiences on stage that were frustrating, unsuccessful, or just plain unhappy. Without pointing to specific people or productions, here are some of mine:

1. The director who has "pet" performers. Nothing worse than being part of an ensemble and finding out the director will let certain cast members get away with almost anything on stage, but be an absolute martinet with everyone else.

2. The prima donna. Although the term originally applied to only female performers, there are plenty of male examples of the type...the actor who insists on special treatment or who wants to, essentially, direct him- or herself. These people are a pain to a director, but they're no fun for their fellow cast members, either.

3. Haphazard productions. Most of the time, it's the individual director who is responsible for this, but sometimes it's simply the way the particular theater operates. I've been in shows where the set wasn't completed (and I'm not talking about paint, I mean walls and doors) until opening night--and one in which elements of it changed between the first and second weekends. I've had directors who didn't let actors use props (not even temporary ones) until dress rehearsal.

4. Pre-casting. Yes, as a director, I often choose a show because I have ideas about who I know that might be a good choice for a leading role (there's nothing worse than trying to cast a show and discovering nobody in the available talent pool fits the bill). But, IMO, a director should never claim to be having "open auditions" for all roles, when he knows damned well he has already picked the actors for certain plum parts--and those actors might not even have to make the pretense of showing up to try out. There are exceptions--if the role calls for a specific skill (playing the violin, let's say), then there's nothing wrong with going to your fiddler actor buddy and saying, "Would you play this?" But then you have to say, in the audition notice, "The role of Victor the Violinist has already been cast."

Those are some of my bug-bears; what are yours?

No Place Like Home?

Jill is taking a week of vacation next week...and we're looking for things to do in that time. We had planned a quick trip to Lancaster to see friends but that has fallen through for a number of reasons, Covid among them, but also impending severe weather.

Anybody got ideas for a post-middle-aged couple in the Philly area for a staycation?

Weather or Not?

My area in southeast Pennsylvania is in a heat wave--highs at 90 or above for four days now and expected to be so for at least another week, and humidity that makes it feel close to 100. Thunderstorms nearly every afternoon and evening--yesterday they started at about 3 PM and went on until about 10.

So, what's it like around you? And if it's like it is here, how are you coping in the midst of the pandemic?

Fan Art: Modesty and the Doctor

More years ago than I want to remember (though I think it must have been about 1979-80) I wrote and illustrated a fanfic story about the Third Doctor of Doctor Who meeting and having an adventure with Modesty Blaise, the sexy criminal/adventurer created by Peter O'Donnell in a British comic strip and then in a series of excellent thriller novels. It was one of a series I was thinking of, with various incarnations of the Doctor meeting characters from comic books and comic strips. (The only other one that was ever finished involved the Fourth Doctor and a member of the Green Lantern Corps. I had planned on one with the First Doctor meeting the Fantastic Four early in their career, but never got around to it.)

Anyway, since I wanted the art to be similar for both the Doctor's characters and Modesty's, I had to "cast" actors to play Modesty and her partner Willie Garvin. (Obviously, I used photo reference of Jon Pertwee and Katie Manning for the Doctor and Jo Grant.) The art from that story is lost to time, but I decided to try and re-create it here and now. Modesty is "portrayed" by Barbara Bach (best known from The Spy Who Loved Me and as Ringo Starr's wife); Willie is David Warner (the number of movies and TV shows he's been in is countless, but you might know him as Jack the Ripper in Time After Time).

Who Tells Your Story

Jill and I watched the streaming version of Hamilton Friday night. As a sometimes director in community theater, I was enthralled by the stagecraft involved. I've never seen a turntable used more effectively, not even in Les Miserables (where it's largely a device to move scenery).

To me, the most moving part of the show is, fittingly, the ending, as Eliza Schuyler Hamilton sings of her devotion to keeping her husband's memory and legacy alive, noting the important thing is "who tells your story".

The next afternoon, we watched the film version of 1776, a more "traditional" musical (though not thought so at the time of its original production), covering much of the same part of history with a more "traditional" focus. But, once more, the real question is "who tells your story". In 1776, the story is told through the eyes of John Adams, a complicated man who, like Hamilton in many ways, was an outsider, difficult to get along with, but adored by his wife.

One of my favorite moments in the script is when Adams complains to Ben Franklin that he will not be remembered by history, but Franklin will be. "Franklin struck his staff on the ground and up sprung George Washington, fully grown and on his horse. Franklin then electrified Washington with his miraculous lightning rod and the three of them--Franklin, Washington, and the horse--won the revolution." Franklin's response? "I like it."

So, who do you want to tell your story?

Happy Fourth!

Given the political turmoil in our country of late, I wanted to be sure I didn't neglect this day, so here some thoughts:

A few years ago, I got into a somewhat heated discussion with Jill about the story of NBC Sports "editing" the Pledge of Allegiance in a patriotic montage they used in their coverage of the US Open. (They took out the part where the class of kids said "under God".) I argued that we had made a fetish of this piece of much-edited 19th Century doggerel ("under God" was added in the 1950s, "indivisible" sometime before that) and that I would much rather our schoolkids memorized something with real meaning to our nation's values. Asked what that should be, I responded, "How about the Preamble to the Constitution?" I think that is something schoolkids should recite every morning, rather than an oath of allegiance to a piece of cloth.

Well, it's Independence Day, so I went looking for something to celebrate with here. I'd have loved to find the musical version of the Preamble I sang in Junior High School chorus (but all I could find was the Schoolhouse Rock song--it's cute, but doesn't have the drama of the one we sang). Instead, here's a little kitsch...William Shatner as James Kirk, from the Star Trek episode "The Omega Glory". Like anything Shatner does, it's a touch over the top, but....



Happy Fourth to you all!

The Last Time

Some rhetorical questions (or you can answer them if you wish):

When was the last time you--

had an in-person discussion with a friend?
had an in-person discussion with a family member who doesn't live with you?
were in a group of more than three people (family or not)?
attended a religious service in person?
went shopping for something other than groceries?
ate at a restaurant (indoor or outdoor)?

More on Masks

Here in PA, the governor announced yesterday that he is expanding the requirement for wearing masks. Previously, under the "green" phase we are currently in, masks were only required when entering buildings. Now, he says they are required even outdoors when social distancing is not possible.

Of course, that's rather vague. Do I need to where a mask in the parking lot of the local shopping center if there's a chance I might pass within six feet of someone else? Or just in outdoor venues that are crowded? Do I need to wear a mask when I walk or run the track at the local middle school if there's someone else doing the same thing?

And, again of course, there's no mention of any kind of enforcement. I seriously doubt if our local police will take a pro-active stance on this, confronting a group of kids in a parking lot about wearing masks. Nor do I think they will take seriously a call from a citizen about such behavior.

Rules without teeth beg to be ignored.

Risk Assessment

I've come to the conclusion that Americans, in general, have lost the ability to assess risk in a competent, sane manner.

On one hand, we have those who--now that some businesses have been allowed to re-open--adamantly refuse to enter any such establishment and say "It's still not safe," as though a five-minute transaction in masks and at a six-foot distance to buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks is equivalent to two hours sitting cheek-by-jowl in a political rally with a bunch of maskless yahoos.

On the other hand, we have, of course, those maskless yahoos--who have determined there is no risk at all, that they will do as they please, defying all logic, common sense and legal restrictions.

I have determined that, for the foreseeable future, we will have to live with the risk of this virus, but live with it by taking suitable precautions. Yes, if you have an underlying condition, stay home and avoid any contact with others. But, also yes, if you are reasonably healthy, it's time to go about your business while abiding by rules about social distancing, masks, building occupancy, etc.

To do otherwise is to live in mortal fear for the rest of your life.