If the coronavirus ever goes away it will do so in spite of the deniers

True confession: I smoked cigarettes from the age of 15 until I was well into my 60s. Like many long-term smokers, I quit dozens of times…only to start up again a few days or a couple of weeks or even three months later. There was always some excuse. I’m too nervous. I eat too much. I’m sad because my dog died. Whatever.

Six years ago, I quit for good.

I did it by abstaining from cigarettes on Day 1, then telling myself I couldn’t smoke on Day 2 without losing what I had gained the day before. I repeated that mantra on Day 3, 4, 5, 25, 50 and so on until months had passed and I just didn’t want another cigarette. Eventually, I got to one year, then two and now six. I still don’t want another cigarette and I hope I never will. The point is, you have to possess the will to quit, then convince yourself every day that it’s the right thing to do.

And that brings me to COVID-19.

On March 19 – nearly nine months ago – I made my last visit inside a supermarket. I went late at night to avoid a crowd, then came home, wiped down the food, put it away and washed my hands. That’s what we were supposed to do. The next day or so, we were advised to stay home except for essential activities such as work and medical treatment.

I’ve been staying home ever since.

I’m doing it under the same philosophy I applied to quit smoking. Following the COVID guidelines is the right thing to do, but if I were to abandon them on Day 2 or Day 30 or Day 270 it would erase all of the gains I had made previously, and then what would be the point? It would all have been a colossal waste of time, effort and sacrifice, and nothing would have been accomplished.

For the record, I am not in total isolation. I buy groceries online and drive to the pickup location to get them. I just don’t open my window or get out of the car. I use the drive-up window at the pharmacy and the big blue mailbox that sits outside the Post Office. I just don’t go inside. I keep important doctor appointments but postpone the ones that can wait…or meet with the doctor via tele-health. I cut my own hair with clippers rather than go to a hair salon, but I did go to the dentist when my teeth started wearing socks.

I FaceTime with my children and my closest friend. I used to walk my dog every day until she died, but even then I wore a bandana around my neck in case I encountered another person. I wear latex gloves and a mask to pump gas. I buy everyday products from Amazon. I have missed birthday parties at my daughter’s house and even the birth of another grandson. I have skipped funerals for friends and every other social gathering that we have been told to avoid. I intend to keep doing that until it’s safe to do otherwise…if that day ever arrives.

Meanwhile:

* I keep reading stories about people getting on airplanes and flying across the country for family gatherings or sporting events or Thanksgiving dinner with the children. And Christmas is just around the corner.

* West Virginia’s men’s basketball team spent three days in South Dakota – a raging COVID hot spot – for a meaningless tournament after six of the original eight teams had the good sense to opt out. I see clusters of fans at football games with their masks worn under their chins…or no masks at all.

* I hear about school teachers in West Virginia staging a homecoming dance they were forbidden to have by lying about their intention and calling it a religious ceremony of some kind.

* And don’t even get me started on Trump’s no-mask rallies and all of the holiday parties planned for Republican COVID deniers in Washington, so on and on it goes.    

Now we’re being told that a vaccine may soon be available. That will be great news, I guess, but only if my doctor says it’s safe to take and if I live long enough for the waiting list to get down to me. However, even after it’s administered, it will be weeks or maybe months before enough people have built up enough immunity to make it safe to resume our normal lives.

And what happens if half the country rejects the vaccine and continues to go around without masks and without social distancing and refusing to follow any kind of safety guidelines? What does that mean for the rest of us? Will they continue to spread the virus? Will people continue to die? Will we be safe from these COVID deniers or not? I mean, none of the vaccines announced to date is 100 percent effective, so what if I’m in the other 10 percent?

I’ve said it before…if you’re not afraid of this virus you ought to be. But if you’re one of the people who’s out there shopping and dining and partying and clustering without following the guidelines, you’re the reason that COVID-19 cases are on the rise, and the reason people you come in contact with are getting sick and dying, and the reason people like me spend our days staring at the walls inside our houses.   

Here’s the truth: Instead of shouting at Walmart greeters who tell you to wear a mask or driving around proclaiming your “freedom” to live your life as you please or otherwise defying all of the rules, you ought to be thanking people like me for putting our lives on hold while doing everything possible to help keep you and your family alive.

The coronavirus officially known as SARS-CoV-2 may actually go away some day, but if it does, it will do so in spite of the millions of people who still won’t take it seriously and who delight in mocking the people like me who do. It will happen because science will win out over politics and denial, and knowledge will win out over arrogance and stupidity. And it will go away because enough people finally realize it’s time to do the right thing.

One can only hope.

If I had a baseball card it would say ‘Bats L Throws R’

I’m theoretically right-handed. I write with my right hand, type messages into my phone with my right hand and throw a ball with my right hand…but for almost everything else I do, I default to my port-side hand.

I suspect – but can’t prove – that my parents detected my left-handedness at birth and turned me around as an infant. (If they had known how much a mediocre left-handed pitcher could make in the Major League, they might have reconsidered that decision.)

Anyhow, I became a kind of hybrid, using my left hand to hold a phone, open a jar lid and eat with a fork, and my right hand to swing a tennis racket, paint a wall and operate tools. My guitars are strung for a right-handed person, which I always considered odd because the left hand does most of the work, and my drums were arranged for a right-handed person as well.

So that brings me to baseball.

When I was a little kid, the boys in my neighborhood played baseball on a small patch of grass in my friend’s side yard. There was no left field to speak of, just a garage a few feet behind third base, which meant that about once a week, someone would hit a ball over the bag and break out the window in the garage. The offender had to pay for repairs.

About the time my parents decided they didn’t like buying new glass for the garage window, it occurred to me that right field was a lot of green grass with no garages and no windows to break, so I got the brilliant idea to start batting left-handed. It was awkward at first, but if I did manage to hit the ball, it would find its way into that cool ocean of green. Eventually, I got pretty good at it.

When I started Little League, my dad informed me that I was right-handed and would therefore bat accordingly, so I did as he instructed. However, in my effort to be both productive as a hitter and look good doing it, I developed a “hitch” in my swing and became the pop-out king of the Fairmont Lions Baseball Club.

I didn’t play ball for several years after Little League, but in college I started playing slow-pitch softball. With nothing really to lose, I started batting left-handed again. Because I was naturally right-handed, batting lefty was uncomfortable at first, meaning I had to concentrate on my mechanics to produce a level, effective swing. When I did that, it was like a miracle. The “hitch” went away and I became a decent singles hitter, consistently hitting the ball over the second baseman’s head or, if I caught an inside pitch, sharply down the right field line.

I was still a skinny guy with no real muscles to speak of, so I was never going to hit home runs, but I did get a lot of hits and I was pretty fast, so I got on base a lot and could go from first to third on a single and score on a sacrifice fly. I played softball well into my 40s and might have played longer if I hadn’t been transferred out of town.

So when people asked me why I threw with my right hand but batted from the left side, I told them this story, which usually bored them to tears. I don't play softball any longer, but I'm still telling the story, which means I have probably bored you to tears as well. 

For so it goes.

Liberty without regulation is anarchy…and how do we legislate happiness?

A bakery in Buckhannon, West Virginia, made headlines this week when its owners openly defied an order from the governor requiring that masks be worn in indoor public spaces. The bakery’s two owners were relying on some non-specific “rights” they believe were granted to them by an unidentified god which empowered them to ignore the governor’s order and break the law.

In their statement issued to the public and the media, the owners said, “We still believe in freedom and our US Constitution and the rights guaranteed by our creator.”

Apparently, they are referring to the line in the Declaration of Independence (not the Constitution) which reads, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

And that has inspired me to offer two points of view.

Point #1: The Declaration of Independence is not a collection of laws. It is a collection of grievances against the King of England written to explain why the colonies in America had chosen to separate themselves from the motherland. In fact, the well-known statement above about unalienable rights is followed in the Declaration by these words: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed….”

In other words, “We’re waving goodbye to England now, and we’ll be back to write down our laws at a later date.”

That said, let’s re-read the Declaration of Independence and break down these so-called “rights” one at a time.

First, the right to life, in the context it was written, seems to expand on the idea that all men are created equal, and thus all men are “endowed by their creator” with an equal right to exist. That’s a nice thought for sure, but it was just a thought until it was codified years later in the Bill of Rights. It was never intended to mean that decades later, during a deadly pandemic in the 21^st Century, a business owner has the right to endanger the lives of countless other people by violating laws intended to protect them from harm.

Next comes the right to liberty. The signers of the Declaration were notifying the king that our citizens were “endowed by their creator” with the right to be free from the tyranny imposed on them by the monarchy of England. Again, who can argue with that? What it doesn’t say, however, is that in America, anything goes. The word “liberty” is defined in part as “the quality or state of being free; the power to do as one pleases; (and) the positive enjoyment of various social, political, or economic rights and privileges.”

But liberty without restraint leads to chaos. The “power to do as one pleases” without some form of regulation is pure anarchy. No matter how you read the Constitution, none of us has that right, and that is surely not what the framers had in mind. In no way does this statement apply to a defiant bakery shop owner who doesn’t like wearing a mask.

And finally, the right to pursue happiness is an ambiguous feel-good phrase that can’t be quantified as a matter of law. How does one even attempt to legislate happiness? By passing the Happiness Act of 2020? We all want to be happy, but when one person’s idea of happiness collides with another person’s conflicting idea of happiness, somebody has to yield.

So listen…if you read the documents that formed this country – the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights – it’s clear that our laws are set forth in the Constitution and its subsequent amendments and not in our declaration of separation from England. And that brings me to Point #2: Nowhere in the Constitution is there a law endowing any rights by any creator to any citizen of the United States, and not one single word of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights was written by any god.

The Constitution was written 11 years after the Declaration of Independence and ratified two years after that. While the framers might have been inspired by the words “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” they didn’t write any laws to specifically address those “unalienable rights,” nor did they attribute any of their work to a creator of any kind. A word search of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights did not find the words “god,” “creator” or “unalienable rights” at all, and the sole reference to the word “religion” appears only in the First Amendment.

So my conclusion is this: If people believe they have a god-given right to walk into a Walmart or a supermarket or a bakery shop without a mask in defiance of a state mandate to do so, they are flat wrong. The Constitution, which they like to flaunt, doesn’t give them that right, and the Declaration of Independence, which does mention rights to freedom and such, was never put into an actual law.

Besides, it said my creator gave me the right to live, but what does that really mean? Do I have the right to live a life of crime? It said I had the right to freedom, but not the absolute freedom to murder, steal, set fires, drive 100 miles an hour or abuse children. It said I have the right to pursue happiness, but not if my happiness means violating the happiness of others. For those rights that are granted to us, we turn to the Constitution and other local laws and not a document full of grievances that merely said goodbye to English rule.

I have read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights more than once, and I guarantee that not one word of those laws was written by anybody’s god.

Things for Democrats to do starting on Day 1

Now that Joe Biden has been elected president and the party held onto majority control of the House of Representatives, attention turns to a pair of runoff elections in Georgia to fill two seats in the U.S. Senate. Should Democrats manage to win those seats, they will find themselves in control of two branches of the federal government.

If that happens, there will be a lot of pressure from the various factions inside the party to implement their specific agendas immediately. 

Far from being philosophically united, the Democratic Party is comprised of a few semi-conservatives and a fair number of centrists, plus leftists, far leftists, farther leftists and extreme leftists. There are the Clintonites, the Bernie Bros, AOC and her Gang of Three (known as The Squad) and the Elizabeth Warren policy wonks, just to name a few of the factions. All of them will have issues they want addressed by the president starting as soon as the inauguration speeches end.

But first things must come first.

Before an all-out effort is made to ram through Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, sensible gun control legislation, free college tuition, criminal justice reform, an end to systemic racism, an effort to slow global climate change and many other programs that liberals support, the president and Congress need to address the Number 1 priority – making sure the Republican Party can never steal another election and that nobody as unqualified, un-American, disengaged and mentally unstable as Donald Trump could ever be elected president again.

The first package of legislation – I’ll call it the Safeguard and Guarantee Our Free and Fair Elections Program – should include at least the following components:

* Restoring the parts of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court stripped away in 2013. The intent, clearly, was to suppress minority voting and to deny to people of color rights they had enjoyed since 1965.

* Eliminating burdensome voter ID laws that serve the same purpose, making it difficult for African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans to vote without the “proper” form of identification.

* Addressing the issue of gerrymandering that has tilted representation in favor of Republicans by creating voting districts that look like runaway Rorschach tests.

* Appropriating the funds necessary to investigate voter interference from foreign countries and making whatever security measures are necessary to prevent it from happening again. This would include identifying the guilty countries and assessing strong sanctions against them.

* Making it illegal for unauthorized “poll watchers” to be within one mile of any place of voting, which would include drop boxes, mail boxes, courthouses and precinct locations, and arresting violators on the spot, especially those carrying assault rifles and hand grenades.

* Making mail-in voting the standard for all citizens regardless of the status of Covid-19 and setting strict regulations to prevent voter fraud, even though very little fraud is ever proven. This would include restoring the Postal Service to its pre-DeJoy condition and appointing a Postmaster General who would make handling election mail the top priority for his or her employees.   

* And finally, introducing a Constitutional Amendment to abolish the Electoral College and assure that the winner of the popular vote is elected president. (I know this will be difficult if not impossible, but as an alternative, I propose legislation that would require all electors in all states to cast their votes for the candidate who received the most votes nationally and not just in their particular state. Otherwise, as it stands now, every vote cast for the winner of the popular vote is nullified if the voter chooses the losing candidate in his or her state.)

The second round of priorities would include legislation to require all candidates for president to undergo a thorough psychiatric examination by at least three independent psychiatrists, provide tax returns for at least the last 20 years and be able to pass the same basic citizenship test given to immigrants who apply to become Americans. (They might also be required to watch the Schoolhouse Rock video of “How a Bill Becomes a Law.) Never again should we be governed by a man or woman who lacks even a rudimentary understanding of how the country works.  

Round 3 would be a package of bills to (1) eliminate any roadblock to indicting a sitting president who commits one or more crimes, (2) limit the president’s pardon power and (3) strengthen the Emoluments Clause to prevent a president from using the office as a profit center and a mechanism to “promote his brand.” Throw in some anti-nepotism requirements as well, and the stipulation that no relative, friend or donor can serve in the White House if they couldn’t pass the security clearance required to become a dishwasher in the Capitol cafeteria.

And Round 4 would include two major bills. One would change Senate rules to require a vote of 60% (or better yet, two-thirds) to confirm a Supreme Court justice who is going to serve a lifetime appointment on the nation’s highest court. I mean, c’mon, any job guaranteed for life that has a profound impact on the lives of so many everyday citizens demands stronger, bi-partisan support than a simple majority of the particular party in power. The second bill would seek to overturn Citizens United and bring campaign finance rules under control.

I could go on and cite a whole long list of examples where Republicans have cheated to win elections, but here are just a few off the top of my head:

* Texas Governor Greg Abbott launched a plan to suppress voting by limiting each county to a single drop-box for mail-in ballots, regardless of the size or population. This applied the same regulation to the smallest rural county as it did to Harris County, where Houston is located, with a population of 4,767,540.

* In California, the Republican Party admitted to placing 50 bogus drop boxes for mail-in ballots in various targeted locations, an obvious act that could lead to voter fraud. They wanted to place 100 but got stopped before they could finish.

* In Georgia in 2018, Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the state’s top elections official — while still serving in that office — allegedly manipulated ballots and suppressed voting to make himself the governor, effectively stealing the election from the more popular candidate, Stacy Abrams, by a margin of 50% to 49%.

* Nationally, Senate Republicans blocked an effort by Democrats to unanimously pass three election security-related bills that would require campaigns to alert the FBI and Federal Election Commission about foreign offers of assistance, as well as legislation to provide more election funding and ban voting machines from being connected to the internet. And don’t even get me started on all of the other bills that would have addressed election issues that have been blocked by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Please don’t get me wrong. I wholeheartedly support Medicare for All, sensible gun laws, college tuition assistance, criminal justice reform, combatting global climate change and many other programs that liberal politicians support. (As for systemic racism, I’m not sure we can ever end that, but we should certainly give it our best shot.) The thing is, the Democrats’ majority in the Senate would be as tenuous as it gets, meaning they may only have two years in which they control the White House and both houses of Congress, so their first priority has to be making sure Democracy is restored and the power of the Republican party to chip away chunks of it is diminished as much as possible if not eliminated altogether.

Then, once power has been restored to the people who actually care about America, the party can begin to address those other issues that liberals support…and they can do it knowing that the voters are behind them and want to be given back the government they deserve.

When you ask yourself ‘what’s the point,’ that IS the point

Some days you wake up, look around and ask yourself, “What’s the point?”

Just consider:

* There’s a deadly virus infecting the country and evidence suggests it’s gearing up for a third wave this fall. It has already killed more than 217,000 people and made 8 million of us sick, and yet one-third or more of our citizens refuse to wear a mask for 15 minutes while they shop in the petri dish we call Walmart. “Not wearing a mask is my god-given right,” they say, even though no god we know of in any religion ever handed down tablets with that message inscribed on them.

* Meanwhile, scientific recommendations to the contrary, schools, bars and restaurants are open, meaning that children, teachers, cooks, bus drivers, janitors, waiters, bus boys, bartenders and waitresses are exposed every day to dozens of students or customers who could be infected with the virus and don’t even know it.

* Every week, college and professional sports teams are engaged in competition – except when they aren’t because the other team is in quarantine because of the virus. One team, the University of Houston, had its first four games canceled because its opponents couldn’t play. One of those games was a replacement game and even that one fell through.

* In West Virginia, high school schedules are adjusted weekly as counties pass into and out of Governor Big Jim Hutt’s color-coded joke of a map. “Oh, your county passed from yellow to orange today? So sorry, but your teams can’t play this weekend. Maybe try again later?”

* In the NFL, your team may or may not have a game on Sunday. You’d better check the ESPN web site to see who’s sick this week.

Moving on, virus or no virus, Donald Trump is still president of the United States. Need I say more?

OK, I will. The most despicable man I have seen in my lifetime is in the final stages of a four-year campaign to get himself re-elected so he can avoid being indicted for a series of crimes so long I don’t have time to list them all here. His entire presidency has been one long campaign in which – when he wasn’t playing golf – he was too busy running for president to actually BE the president. That’s because he doesn’t really want the job. He just wants the title, the adoration, the power, the narcissistic ego massage and the money-making opportunities it presents.

Now he wants us to believe he caught the coronavirus, took some Pepcid, an aspirin and some experimental drugs, flew over to Walter Reed for a couple of hours and was cured…and now he’s Superman and he’s immune. Well I don’t believe it. I could be wrong, but I said from Day 1 that he didn’t really have Covid-19 and I’m sticking by my story. I think this was a political stunt to revive a failing campaign by garnering both sympathy for his “illness” and astonishment over his super-human recovery.

I’m not sure the ruse is working, but it doesn’t really matter. Trump knows he’s losing so he’s busy ginning up Plan B. That includes:

* Declaring in advance that the election is rigged.

* Claiming that absentee ballots are acceptable but that other mail-in ballots are fraudulent, even though there is no difference between the two.

* Manipulating the Postal Service to delay the delivery of ballots so he can dispute the results on election night if things aren’t going his way.

* Sending armed nut-bags posing as “poll watchers” into voting stations in key states to intimidate would-be voters. Never mind that this is against the law. That never stopped him before.

* Refusing to agree to a peaceful transition of power if he should lose.

* Suggesting that Republican state legislators disregard the popular vote in their states and appoint new electors to the Electoral College who will cast their states’ votes for Trump.

* And finally, the coup de grâce, rushing through a Supreme Court nominee who looks and acts like a character from the Handmaid’s Tale so he can use a 6-3 Conservative majority to hand him the election regardless of the will of the people.

If this isn’t enough for you, Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and the leaders of the Republican Party are working with Russian propagandists to smear Trump’s opponent Joe Biden and to influence the outcome of the election.

I took a walk around my neighborhood today, and I noticed that two new Trump/Pence yard signs and a large Trump 2020 flag have sprung up like dandelions in my neighbors’ yards. There were no Biden-Harris signs that I could see. So I came home wondering, “What’s the point?”

And then it came to me. That IS the point. The fact is, we’ve been so beaten down by an out-of-control virus, a White House that allowed it to spread, red state governors who are under the thumb of the president and the Republican campaign to suppress votes and steal an election that we are now asking ourselves why we should care.

And that’s exactly why we should, because if we don’t care, who will? It isn’t time to wring our hands or shake our heads or give in to the idea that everything is fixed and we can’t change it. It IS the time to keep fighting the good fight and do everything possible in the next three weeks to ensure that good will triumph against evil. Otherwise, it’s already over and our side has lost.

Second Covington mystery novel published

High Peaks Publishing and Amazon.com have just published my second novel in the Covington Mystery Series.

In An Empty Seat on the Ferry, journalist-sleuths Jennie and Rob Covington investigate two cold case mysteries involving an overworked single mother of three and a lonely and troubled 18-year-old girl, both of whom go missing without a trace some 20 years apart.

It's a sequel to the first Covington mystery -- Time Capsule -- and follows the married couple from Maryland to Martha's Vineyard where they continue to help solve long-ago-forgotten mysteries. "Ferry" is a character-driven narrative that's strong on dialogue and the occasional plot twist that will make readers move through it quickly toward the end.

Both books are available in paperback and e-book formats at the following links:

Time Capsule

An Empty Seat onthe Ferry

If you see racist behavior or hear racist dialog, it’s racism. Why is there debate about that?

I was asked recently if I am a racist. I was also asked how I would know if someone else is one. I have answers to both of those questions.

First, am I a racist? No, I’m not, but don’t take my word for it. Ask around.

Second, how do I know if someone else is a racist? Let me count the ways.

* Three men walk into a Fairmont bar. Two are white and one is black. The bartender refuses to serve the black man but tells the white men they can stay. What would you call that? Is that racism? Yes, it is. Did that really happen? Yes, it did. I was one of the white guys.

* A man comes to my house to do some work and tells a racist joke. What would you call that? Is the man a racist? Yes, he is. Did this really happen? Yes, it did. He told the joke to me.

* Another man comes to my house to do some work. He looks in a window and sees an Obama/Biden poster from 2008. He said, “Oooh, you like him?” I reply, “Don’t go there.” What would you call that? Is the man a racist? Yes, he probably is. Did that really happen? Yes, it did. He was talking to me.

* A man is sitting at a basketball game waiting for a friend when a stranger slides over to him on the bleacher. He strikes up a conversation about the mostly all-white visiting team and how their players are “so intelligent,” compared with the mostly all-black home team. What would you call that? Is the man a racist? Yes, he most likely is. Did this really happen? Yes, it did. He was talking to me.

All of these events took place in Fairmont, West Virginia, where I was born, went to public schools and college and have otherwise lived for a large part of my life, including now. When I commented on a Facebook thread that racism has always existed in Fairmont and still does, a person I don't know suggested that maybe I was the racist and not the people who displayed open or dog-whistle racist tendencies.

Again, I suggest you ask around. There are plenty of people who know me. See what any of them think, then judge for yourself.

Just for the record, racism is certainly not limited to Fairmont, West Virginia. I could testify in court about other incidents that took place in other West Virginia cities. Like the time an interracial couple was denied entry to a Charleston establishment, or the time a Jewish friend was refused entry to a Parkersburg club. What would you call that? Are those examples of racism? Yes, they are. Did those events really happen? Yes, they did. I was there.

So back to the original question: How do I know if someone is a racist? It’s pretty simple, really. If I see racist behavior or hear racist dialog, it’s racism. If someone endorses, supports, condones, accepts or tolerates racism, that makes them a racist in my book. I don't know why there is even debate about that. If someone shows up at my door wearing a white Klan hood and holding a burning cross, I’m guessing he’s a racist…but at least he’s honest about it, as opposed to the people who are racists and don’t know it, or the ones who try to deny their racism by saying, “I can’t be a racist. I have a black friend,” or my favorite, “There’s a black guy in my office.”

I contend that the closet racists are the most dangerous because they blend in with the rest of us, pretend to be broad-minded and then let their racism slip out a little at a time so that they think it becomes normalized. Then, when someone calls them on it, they project it back on the other person. When I posted my comment on Facebook, I only mentioned that racism exists in Fairmont, but I never mentioned anybody’s name or accused any person of being a racist. The post elicited a series of angry responses, the reply to which could have been, “If the shoe fits....” 

I could have said that, but I didn't. I wrote this essay instead.

Neither snow, nor rain nor gloom of night could stop my dad…but he never met Donald Trump

My father was a mailman. He worked for the Postal Service for 32 years, through snow, rain, heat and gloom of night. None of it could stay my dad from the swift completion of his appointed rounds.

He was a mailman before we had Zip Codes, before we had sorting machines and before the mailman drove around in little white Jeeps. My father sorted his own mail first thing every morning and delivered it on foot with a large, heavy, leather bag hung off his shoulder. On one of his routes, as I remember it, he told me he walked 11 miles a day, up and down the hills of Fairmont, West Virginia, and up and down thousands of steps to mailboxes on people’s porches.

On rainy days, he got soaking wet. On snowy days, he got freezing cold. On sunny days, he sweated through his clothes. I never heard him complain.

He treated everybody on his route like family. Old ladies would give him money to buy them stamps because they couldn’t get out to the Post Office themselves, and he’d deliver them the following day. At Christmas time, my father delivered thousands of cards and dozens of small packages, working long hours into the night, and he got paid very little overtime for his effort. He also got a lot of fruitcakes, Christmas cards and $5 bills from his customers.

Once every few months he delivered everybody a Sears and Roebuck catalog. Try to imagine what it was like carrying hundreds of those thousand-page books around for eight hours or more.     

He couldn’t carry all the mail at one time, so there were Army green “relay boxes” strategically placed along his route. A truck would drive around in the morning and fill them up, and when my dad came to one, he’d open the box with keys he carried on a long chain and take out a bunch of mail, deliver it, and do the same thing at the next relay stop until all the mail had been disbursed. The next day, he’d do it all again.

Wash, rinse, repeat.  

After so many years, when he had built up a lot of seniority, he was able to “bid into” certain mail routes if they became available. That way, he eventually got to be the mailman who came to our own house. It meant that in bad weather, he could come inside and put on dry clothes or extra socks or a rain slicker, or just spend 10 minutes talking to my mom and getting warm before getting back to work. He could do that because as far as I know, in 32 years on the job, he never took the time he was allowed to eat lunch.

Eventually, the Jeeps arrived and the sorting machines were installed and everybody was assigned a Zip Code and they started sorting Fairmont’s mail in Clarksburg. My dad kept working for a few years, finally retired in the early 1980s and died in 1985.

So why am I writing this essay now?

Because for better or worse, the Post Office has been a part of my life since I was just a little boy, and now the president of the United States is trying to dismantle it to restrict mail-in voting so he can steal the 2020 election…and that really pisses me off. You may have read that the Post Office is one of the largest employers of veterans in the country, and that’s true. My dad was a World War II veteran who got a job there after the war, and was even given credit for his years of military service.

Everybody in Fairmont knew my dad, who probably delivered mail to all of them at one time or another, and I grew up as the mailman’s son. Until recently, when I’d meet someone for the first time, I could say, “You might have known my dad. He was a mailman,” and people would reply with, “Oh, sure, I knew your dad.”

Sadly, the people who could say that now have mostly passed away.

The Post Office is also a very important institution in rural America where an aging population depends on the mail to deliver their bills, their Social Security and pension checks and even their medications. According to The New Yorker:

“In 2012, when the Postal Service planned on closing 3,830 branches, an analysis by Reuters showed that eighty per cent of those branches were in rural areas where the poverty rate topped the national average. You know who delivers the Amazon package the final mile to rural Americans? The U.S.P.S. You know how people get medicine, when the pharmacy is an hour’s drive away? In their mailbox. You know why many people can’t pay their bills electronically? Because too much of rural America has impossibly slow Internet, or none at all. These are the places where, during the pandemic, teachers and students all sit in cars in the school parking lot to Zoom with one another, because that’s the only spot with high-speed Wi-Fi.”

According to Jane Kleeb, chair of Nebraska’s Democratic Party, the mail “is a universal service that literally levels the playing field for all Americans. It is how we order goods, send gifts to our family and keep small businesses alive. In the era of the coronavirus, mail is now our lifeline to have our voices heard for our ballots in the election.”

So it breaks my heart to see what’s happening to the Postal Service. It’s disturbing that a man who has no regard for the history and tradition of this country can systematically strip away everything that’s good about America to feed his own ego and his narcissistic quest to stay in power, and even more disturbing that he is doing it in broad daylight while openly admitting in televised interviews that his motive is to suppress the vote.

More to the point, I want to know why Congress can go home in the midst of such a crisis when mailboxes are being removed and sorting machines are being dismantled and nobody is doing anything about it. I want to know why our leaders are allowing Donald Trump to flush America down the toilet while they sit back and pin their hopes on an election he intends to steal.

How to save America revisited

I was looking at the final election map one night and it just came to me, like an epiphany that was so simple I'm surprised I didn't think of it earlier..

IT’S TIME TO SAVE AMERICA BY BREAKING UP THE UNITED STATES.

We’ve already noted the differences between Hillary Clinton’s America and Donald Trump’s, so this is the perfect time to go one step further and make it official. Here’s the plan:

Step 1. We’ve known for some time that Texas wants to secede from the union, so I say we let them. They can become independent or go back to Mexico or become Greater Guatemala. I don’t really give a rat’s ass.

Step 2. People in California are already talking about having a Calexit, so I say we add in the contiguous blue states of Nevada, Washington and Oregon (plus Hawaii) and create West Coastlandia, with San Francisco as the capital and the government buildings located next to Ben and Jerry’s at the corner of Haight and Ashbury. (Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Jeff Sessions.)

Step 3. New England joins with NY, NJ, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia to create The Thirteen Colonies Minus a Few But Much Better Than the Original 2.0. We make Annapolis the capital so the Navy can defend it any against Trump supporters who might escape the Virginia boondocks. Of course, Trump will have to move out of New York because the president can’t live in a foreign country. Trump Tower will be demolished and a statue of President Obama holding his birth certificate will be erected in its place. It will be one foot taller than the Statue of Liberty.

Step 4. That leaves the blue states of Illinois, which has enough weapons to defend itself while standing alone; Minnesota, which we’ll give to Canada where it belongs; and the Colorado/New Mexico Rectangle, which we’ll name New Colomexiradoco. Say it with me: Col-o-mex-i-rad-o-co. It rolls off the tongue. This new country will be given back to the Native Americans we stole it from.

Step 5. We allow Trump to govern all of the remaining red states, which will be renamed Trump’s Golden Basket of Poorly Educated Low Information Deplorables. I’d put the capitol in Mississippi and make Trump and his ceramic family live there among the stupid, uninformed confederate flag-flying redneck racists who elected him president.

Step 6. Finally, Trump’s government will deport all of us red state liberals to the new blue country of our choosing, and we’ll all live happily ever after without ever having to hear his voice or see his tiny hands again.

That time when the president talked and talked and couldn’t tell the truth

I just finished watching Jonathan Swan’s complete Axios interview with Donald Trump, and I believe I can truthfully say that Trump told more lies in 38 minutes than I have told in my entire life. He lied about the coronavirus, he lied about the economy, he lied about Russia, he lied about Portland and he lied about African Americans and Black Lives Matter.

He probably lied about some other things that I don’t know much about, so I’ll give him a pass on them since I can’t prove otherwise, but I know he told eight lies in the first five minutes of the interview, and that’s got to be some kind of record. Trump likes to claim records for a lot of different things, so I will gladly give that one to him.

I’ve been watching and hearing this narcissistic cretin tell tens of thousands of lies in the five-plus years since he slithered down the golden escalator and announced he was running for president, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him talk for nearly 40 minutes without ever actually telling the truth. (Well, he did say “I don’t know” a couple of times, so there’s that. I’m sure some day people will write books about all the things he didn’t know, so I’m calling that statement the truth.)

It was a most remarkable interview considering the guy Swan was talking with is supposed to be the most powerful man on the planet. Trump claims to be a stable genius, but frankly, if this interview was an accurate record of his mental acuity, he could sit by himself in a school bus shelter and still not be the smartest person in the room.

I took notes all during the interview, which really has to be seen to be believed. If you’ve got 38 minutes to spare (and who doesn’t in the age of COVID), I encourage you to watch it for yourself. If you can’t or would rather not, I have compiled this convenient summary for your reading pleasure. The lies start at 1:55 and go all the way to the end, so buckle up, buttercup, it’s going to get bumpy at times.

Swan began the interview asking about Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic which has been universally criticized for its slow response, lack of planning and uncoordinated communications strategy.

1:55 – “I think we’ve done an incredible job,” Trump says. (Only if you mean incredibly bad.)

2:17 – By closing off travel from China and later Europe, “we have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.” (The virus was already in America and spreading before Trump took any action.)

3:03 – “Nobody knew what this thing was all about.” (Yes, a lot of scientists did, but Trump refused to believe them, or at least disregarded their warnings.)

3:18 – “There are 188 countries that are far worse off than we are.” (There are not.)

3:50 – When the virus hit “we were beating China on trade.” (No, we weren’t.)

4:04 – China “was paying billions of dollars” in tariffs. (China was simply adding the tariffs to the price of its exports and American consumers were paying the added cost.)

4:17 – When the virus hit, “I closed down the greatest economy ever in history.” (Only if you base economic success solely on the stock market.)

4:49 – “Those people who really understand it (the pandemic) say it’s incredible the job we’ve done.” (When Swan asked “what people,” he couldn’t name anyone.)

5:34 – Trump claimed that 12,000 people attended his Tulsa rally, which actually drew just 6,000 people. “You couldn’t get in. It was like an armed camp.” (It wasn’t. There was a lot of open space.)

5:50 – He claimed that the virus was “pretty much over” in Tulsa and Oklahoma at the time, when, in fact, both the city and the state were hot spots before the rally and a lot worse after it.

6:58 – He claimed that he canceled a subsequent rally in New Hampshire because of the virus, but at the time, his staff said it was canceled because of an impending storm.

7:23 – “Right now I think (the virus) is under control.” (One thousand Americans are dying every day.)

Are you starting to get the idea?

I have a lot more notes. There’s basically one lie, half-truth or questionable comment every minute throughout the rest of the interview, but I’ll spare you the gory details and just hit the highlights.

* COVID deaths – The U.S. has the lowest death rate in the world. (You can google this. It’s far from true.)

* On Russia paying bounties to the Taliban to kill American troops – “Many people said that was fake news,” and that specific intelligence “never reached my desk.”

* On his recent phone call with Russian president Vladimir Putin – He didn’t discuss the bounties but talked about nuclear proliferation, “which is a bigger problem than global warming.” Asked about Russia providing weapons to the Taliban, he first said, “We did that too” when Russia was fighting in Afghanistan, then said he has “heard people say” that was happening before backtracking to, again, “It never reached my desk.”

* On whether he reads his daily intelligence briefings – “I read a lot and comprehend extraordinarily well, probably better than anyone you have interviewed in a long time.”

* On voting by mail – “There is a new phenomenon called mail-in voting.” (Swan corrected him to point out that mail-in voting started during the Civil War.) Trump claimed that ballots would be sent automatically to dead people and even to people’s dogs. (There is no evidence that anything like this happens in 99.9999% of the cases.)

* On rioting in Portland – Videos of unidentified stormtroopers beating and gassing peaceful protesters were “fake news;” the problems were all caused by Antifa, anarchists and agitators; and that the violent protests “got better” after his troops arrived (in fact they got worse). He also said the troops wore no identifying patches or markings because “anarchists could read their names (on their uniforms), find out where they live and go scare the hell out of their families.”

* On African Americans – “I’m doing very well with the black community and we were becoming a unified country” before the virus hit. “I did more for the black community than anybody with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln, like it or not.” (I’m just going to leave that right there.)

* And finally, on the death of civil rights icon John Lewis – “I don’t know John Lewis. He chose not to come to my inauguration. He didn’t come to my State of the Union speeches. I think he made a big mistake.”    

When silence becomes endorsement, someone needs to speak

As I write this, the United States of America is in crisis.

First, unidentified storm troopers acting under the direction of the Department of Homeland Security, and with the approval of the man in the White House, are roaming free in our cities, dragging American citizens off the streets and throwing them into unmarked vehicles for undisclosed crimes. Presumably, many of these “perpetrators” are guilty of nothing more serious than exercising their First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly.

Mostly recently, the governor of Oregon, the mayor of Portland and that state’s congressional representatives have demanded that these secret police leave the area immediately because their presence, supposedly intended to calm the situation, has actually inflamed the protesters and made it worse.

“Authoritarian governments, not democratic republics, send unmarked authorities after protesters,” tweeted U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat representing Oregon. The Oregon attorney general filed a lawsuit alleging that the federal government had violated Oregonians’ civil rights by seizing and detaining people without probable cause and without warrants during protests against police brutality. The U.S. Attorney for the Oregon District has also asked for an investigation.

To make matters worse, Ken Cuccinelli, acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, told NPR the department was not pulling back on its activity in Portland and, in fact, is planning to take its commando raids to other cities across the U.S.

This kind of third-world, banana republic, militarized police incursion tactic is highly disturbing in a democratic republic, especially when you consider that a certain cult of citizens claim their rights are being violated because they’re asked to wear masks in public, but don’t seem similarly concerned about the violation of their neighbors’ civil rights.

By remaining silent, I wonder if they accept and endorse this kind of behavior?

Even though it hasn’t happened yet in West Virginia, I would think this type of Fascist-inspired police action would be of interest to my elected representatives—Senators Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito and Representative David McKinley—but I haven’t heard anything from them, even though I receive their weekly newsletters and follow them on Facebook.

By remaining silent, I wonder if they accept and endorse this kind of behavior?

Second, according to reports, the president of the United States has made the decision to ignore a murderous pandemic that has killed more than 140,000 Americans because it interferes with his campaign for re-election. Even worse than ignoring the coronavirus, the administration has pulled the United States from the World Health Organization, cut funding for the Centers for Disease Control, ordered hospitals to bypass the CDC and report Covid-19 statistics directly to him, forbidden CDC officials from testifying before Congress and is now trying to block billions of dollars in aid for states to conduct testing and contact tracing.

Our only elected Democrat, Senator Manchin, took issue with Trump’s plan to bypass the CDC on coronavirus reporting, writing, “In the midst of a global pandemic, these changes pose serious challenges to the nation’s response by increasing the data management burden for hospitals, potentially delaying critical supply shipments, compromising access to key data for many states, and reducing transparency for the public.”

                                                                                                            

Republicans McKinley and Capito have had nothing to say so far. By remaining silent, I wonder if they accept and endorse this kind of behavior?

And third, an adversary of the United States is—by all reasonable accounts—offering a bounty to members of a terrorist organization to murder American soldiers overseas while once again meddling in the upcoming presidential election. Now we learn that this same enemy, Russia, is reportedly hacking into American computers to steal research into a coronavirus vaccine.

According to The New York Times, “A hacking group implicated in the 2016 break-ins into Democratic Party servers has been trying to steal intelligence on vaccines from universities, companies and other health care organizations. The group, associated with Russian intelligence…has sought to exploit the chaos created by the coronavirus pandemic, officials said. American intelligence officials said the Russians were aiming to steal research to develop their own vaccine more quickly, not to sabotage other countries’ efforts.”

The president is aware of all of these intrusions but refuses to act because of his bromance with the murderous Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

Meanwhile, we hear nothing from our elected representatives about any of Russia’s misdeeds. By remaining silent, I wonder if they accept and endorse this kind of behavior?

It’s worth noting that Donald Trump, while running away from Russian intrusions, the Covid-19 pandemic and Gestapo-like police activity on the streets of our own cities, has nevertheless found time to remove the official portraits of former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush from the Grand Foyer of the White House—replacing them with two Republican presidents who served more than a century ago—and to pose for a photo of himself selling Mexican-style beans off the top of the Resolute Desk.

I don’t hear any outrage against that, either.

The point is, when people stand silent against aggression, their silence becomes endorsement or at least acceptance. It’s only when someone speaks that wrongs can be righted. I know a lot of people plan to “speak” during the election on November 3, and I do, too. I kinda wish more people would speak up between now and then.  

So much information, so little knowledge

Never in the history of the world has more information been available or easier to obtain, yet about half the population of the United States seems to get dumber by the day.

Three examples of that phenomenon came to light this weekend, courtesy of a U.S. president who refuses to read, study or enlighten himself about the history and culture of the nation he professes to lead.

Example 1: On the day before Independence Day, Donald Trump stood on a platform at the base of Mount Rushmore in Lakota Sioux Indian territory and delivered a speech that essentially divided Americans into Republican patriots and leftist Democrat Fascists, an oxymoron that doesn’t even make sense, considering that Fascists cling to the extreme right wing of the political spectrum.

That divisive and derogatory speech on the eve of our national day of independence would have been bad enough, but during this latest unhinged rant, Trump also defended what he called America’s sacred historical monuments, referencing statues of Confederate generals and other traitors and malcontents who tried for years to overthrow this country, leading to the Civil War. One of those “great people” that Trump idolized was our seventh president, Andrew Jackson, the man who orchestrated and oversaw the infamous “Trail of Tears” in 1836.

I knew a little about the Trail of Tears from my early education, but not enough to discuss the subject thoughtfully at parties, so I looked it up on Google. The information was there and it was easy to find, as I said in the intro to this essay.

According to the Cherokee Historical Association: 

“The Trail of Tears was the forced and brutal relocation of approximately 100,000 indigenous people (belonging to Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole, among other nations) living between Michigan, Louisiana, and Florida to land west of the Mississippi River. Motivated by gold and land, Congress (under President Andrew Jackson) passed the Indian Removal Act by a slim and controversial margin in 1830.

“Between May 1838 and March 1839, federal soldiers and state militia rounded up 16,000 Cherokees from Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and North Carolina, taking them to stockades, and forcing them to get on boats and then march to Indian territory, present-day Oklahoma. At least 4,000 Cherokees died—one quarter of the population—and many were buried in unmarked graves. This devastating chapter in American history is known as the Trail of Tears.”

I’m fairly certain that Donald Trump had never heard of the Trail of Tears before making a speech praising the man who was responsible for this historical atrocity, but the fact that he said it on Native American land was not a coincidence, in my opinion. I believe the speech was fed to him by Stephen Miller or another one of his West Wing agitators as a way to press the racist narrative that has become central to Trump’s campaign.

Mocking the Lakota Sioux by arriving uninvited in their homeland and praising their mortal enemy was just more red meat for Trump’s base, a collection of poorly educated bigoted voters who Trump would never invite into his houses or hotels but who follow the president faithfully because they hate what Trump hates and aren’t afraid to demonstrate that sentiment in public.

Example 2: The next day, in Washington to help celebrate Independence Day, Trump went off on another word salad ramble in which he stupidly announced that Operation Desert Storm was fought in the jungles of Vietnam. He also invented a new word – swiffian – and said our American way of life started in 1492:

“We will never allow an angry mob to tear down our statues, erase our history, indoctrinate our children…and we will protect and preserve American way of life, which began in 1492 when Columbus discovered America.”

Never mind that Christopher Columbus, the Italian adventurer who set out to find a shortcut to India and is often credited with “discovering America,” never set foot on what would eventually become U.S. soil, or that there were already people living in the places where he did arrive.

Google tells us that Columbus made four voyages west from Spain, landing in such places as the Bahamas, Haiti, Cuba, various Caribbean islands, Panama, Central and South America. It also reveals that Columbus and his men were known to murder and enslave the native people who they encountered after the Spanish ships arrived. In that regard, it’s ironic that Trump sees the acts of stealing land and taking slaves as the beginning of the “American way of life.”

You can read more about Columbus on numerous web sites, including history.com. 

Example 3: The Trump campaign likes to use songs by Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young to fire up the crowds at its rallies, believing the songs to be patriotic in nature. After all, what could be more pro-Trump than “Born in the U.S.A.” or “Rockin’ in the Free World?”

Until you read the lyrics, that is.

A quick and easy google finds this:

Born down in a dead man's town

The first kick I took was when I hit the ground

You end up like a dog that's been beat too much

Then you spend half your life tryna cover it all

Born in the USA

Born in the USA

Born in the USA

Got in a little hometown jam so they put a rifle in my hand

Sent me off to a foreign land, go and kill the yellow man

I was born in the USA

Born in the USA

Born in the USA

Come back home to the refinery

Hiring man says, "Son if it was up to me"

Went down to see my V.A. man

He said, "Son don't you understand"

And this:

There's colors on the street

Red, white and blue

People shufflin' their feet

People sleepin' in their shoes

But there's a warnin' sign on the road ahead

There's a lot of people sayin' we'd be better off dead

Don't feel like Satan, but I am to them

So I try to forget it, any way I can.

Keep on rockin' in the free world,

Keep on rockin' in the free world

Keep on rockin' in the free world,

Keep on rockin' in the free world.

So much information, so little knowledge. So here’s an idea: If you’re stuck at home during the COVID-19 pandemic and bored out of your skull, try reading a little U.S. history. You might learn about the plight of Native Americans, what Columbus really did when he hit “American” soil and what Bruce Springsteen was upset about when he sang his signature song.

If you do that, you’ll be smarter than the president of the United States, who apparently doesn’t know that stuff…and shows no interest in looking any of it up.  

Waking up from a bad dream…but wait!

I had a dream the other night that the world was infected with a deadly virus that started in a foreign country and spread rapidly around the globe. When it reached the United States, it affected more than 2 million people and killed more than 120,000 in less than six weeks, and was continuing to spread almost uncontrolled on the 19^th day of June.

One state – Florida—reported 17 consecutive days of more than 1,000 new cases per day, and at least 25 of the 50 states saw escalating numbers of positive test results.

While this was happening, doctors and epidemiologists were telling us that all we had to do to fight off this virus was stay at home for a few weeks, shut down non-essential businesses, avoid group gatherings, wear a mask when we went out in public and wash our hands a lot.

It was that simple…and we couldn’t do it.

We couldn’t do it because the president of the United States – who was worried about his chances of re-election – was slow to respond to the virus, telling the country that only a few people were sick and they were getting better, the virus would magically disappear when the weather got warmer and that masks weren’t necessary because they made him look silly.

(Never mind that the virus was also affecting countries with very hot climates, the number of cases was growing exponentially and the president – who wore orange makeup and combed his bleached hair from one side of his head to the middle and then toward the back – looked silly even without a mask.)   

We couldn’t do it because the president convinced a lot of sycophantic governors to reopen shuttered businesses too early, claiming that saving the economy was more important than saving people’s lives. When that happened, we forgot about masks and gloves and “social distancing” and flocked to beaches, malls, restaurants and parks to celebrate.

We couldn’t do it because pampered people of privilege – after only a few weeks of isolation – went stir crazy and suddenly decided they desperately needed haircuts, nail trims, beach vacations and family outings at the nearest bowling alley.

And we couldn’t do it because, sadly, we’re a nation full of greedy, thoughtless, under-educated and selfish people who don’t care about anyone but themselves…and have a twisted idea of the protections they think are afforded them by the Constitution. We’re surrounded by millions of people who refuse to wear masks to protect other people, and are quick to mock those who do wear masks to protect themselves and others.

It’s because of these thoughtless “Deplorables” that people like me – who are staying home and avoiding places where the virus is likely to spread – can’t go out to the supermarket now and then or enjoy anything resembling a normal life. It doesn’t matter if I wear my mask in public if other people are breathing, talking, yelling, coughing, hacking and sneezing all over me. It won’t matter to any of them if I catch the coronavirus, and it won’t matter to most of them if I’m dead.    

So it is that three months after the first cases of coronavirus started to appear in the U.S., the president is preparing for an indoor rally that will attract 19,000 people to a convention center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, (and thousands more to an overflow venue) where they will pack in like sardines to hoot, holler, chant, yell and scream their love for a president who doesn’t care that he’s putting all of their lives at risk.

The Centers for Disease Control describes events such as Trump's rally as "highest risk," and doctors say if you wanted to plan an event that would put the most people in jeopardy and cause the greatest potential for spread of the virus, it would be a rally like the one Trump is going to have.  

At the same time, he’s planning for his convention speech in Florida in a few weeks – assuming there’s anyone left alive in Florida by then – and the rest of the country is following his lead and ignoring safety precautions we were all told to follow back in March.

Meanwhile, millions of people have set the virus aside, believing the unfortunate lie that the worst of it has passed. That’s why they are keeping their vacation bookings, wondering if they can use those concert tickets they bought last year, making plans for July 4 celebrations and trips to the county fair and worrying about whether we’ll have football games this fall.

This was the dream I had. It was a very long dream that seemed to go on all night. It was one of those bad dreams that you’re happy to put behind you when you finally wake up, a little sweaty and out of breath, and find yourself safe and secure in your own little bed.

Then I clicked on my television set and realized that everything I dreamed about was true.

COVID-19 is lurking out there, waiting for me to screw up

Well, May is over and June has arrived, and the COVID-19 virus that the president said would magically disappear when warm weather arrived in April continues to infect hundreds of West Virginians every week. It has also killed 75 people so far. It’s the number one thing that everybody in the state is talking about – or at least it should be – and I wouldn’t be much of a blogger if I didn’t write something about this pandemic as it moves into the summer months.

A couple of weeks ago I created an Excel chart to illustrate the progress of the disease. It’s a simple line graph with two lines – a blue line that shows the number of cases reported each day by the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources, and a red line that shows the cumulative number of cases identified since March 17, when the first case was confirmed in the state.

The WV DHHR issues two reports every day, one at 10 a.m. and one at 5 p.m., and every day I add the 5 p.m. statistics to my chart. I’ll show it to you in a few minutes. 

After I posted my graph on Facebook for the first time, it got shared around a bit which started a debate about the accuracy and value of the data. I was criticized for ignoring some variables that went into the reporting while being lectured by other posters with Trumpian talking points about the “real” number of cases, the liberal hysteria, the importance of saving the economy and other baseless Fox News rhetoric.

OK, fine. I get it. One man’s 18,000 lies are another man’s truth. I’m accustomed to that dynamic when arguing with people who think Trump is a genius businessman and TV star who was sent to earth by god to save the white man from discrimination.    

But back in the real world, here’s the simplest of simple truths: My chart was never intended to be a comprehensive, in-depth statistical analysis of the spread of the coronavirus and its various demographic components. It was intended to show two trends and two trends only:

(1) That a certain number of new cases is reported every day in the state.

(2) That the number of cases reported since March 17, when Patient Zero was diagnosed as positive for COVID-19, continues to climb and has now reached more than 2,000.

Why are these statistics important?

First off, the daily “blue line” shows that on average, 26 new cases are reported every single day. After the first few days in mid-March when COVID was just getting warmed up, the number jumped by 19 on March 24, and has fluctuated between a low of 7 and a high of 102 ever since. It spiked at 72, 71 and 67 on three days in May. The 102-point spike came about when the DHHR changed the way it reported positive COVID tests, which skewed the numbers for one day, but even at that, 56 new cases were reported using the old protocol. The blue line hit lows of 7 and 9 new cases on May 11 and 12, but at no time has this number ever reached zero, which would suggest that we had finally reached our peak and flattened out the curve.

Second, the cumulative number or “red line” has continued to climb steadily from Case #1 on March 17 to 2,010 cases on May 31. Because it’s cumulative, this line can never go down, but at no time has it ever gone flat, which, again, would indicate a peak number of cases and a flattening of the curve.

Meanwhile, instead of holding firm with his stay-home order and cautious approach to the virus, our governor is following the lead of the president and opening up hospitals, businesses, gyms, restaurants, malls, parks, trails and playgrounds around the state and encouraging people to resume their normal activities so we can collectively rescue the economy.

Oh, sure, there are still restrictions like when and where to don masks and how far apart to stand from other people, but have you been out there lately? How many people are actually following the guidelines? Friends tell me the employees in one of our supermarkets refused to wear masks until customers complained, and I have seen with my own eyes gatherings of people without protective equipment and behaving with no regard for the health and safety of others.   

That’s why I continue to stay at home, buy my groceries online, pick them up without leaving my car and get my prescriptions out of a slide-out drawer at the drive-up window at CVS. I have so many packages delivered my mailman wants to know when I’m putting up my Christmas tree. I have canceled three doctor appointments, refuse to go to the dentist and wash my hands after receiving any mail. As I’ve said before, I’m in five risk categories for dying if I ever contract this virus, and by my count, that’s five too many.

So while I’m staying home, I’m also charting the daily reports on COVID-19 on my simple little graph. It’s my way of visualizing my own potential safety. I mean, as long as the blue line keeps bouncing up and down between 20- or 30-something and 102, I know the virus is still out there, lurking, and waiting for me to make a mistake. And as long as the red line is shooting skyward like that rocket ship did Saturday, I know there’s still plenty of danger. “Danger, Will Robinson.” (Apologies to “Lost in Space.”)

But rest assured. If that blue line ever does hit zero new cases and stays at zero for an extended period of time, and if the red line reaches, say, 2,500 and then goes flat and stays flat for days, then life as we know it could begin to return to normal. That won’t stop me from charting the daily reports, but it might encourage me to see a doctor, visit some friends or shop for my own groceries.

Or maybe not. There’s still the second wave to worry about. And the third wave in the fall, and flu season, and mutations, and….ah, nevermind.

I may not survive COVID-19, but it won’t be for lack of trying

Next Tuesday will mark 60 days since my last visit to a public place, an eye doctor appointment in the afternoon followed by a late night trip to the supermarket. A couple of days later, the governor issued a “stay home” directive for West Virginia, and I quit going where the people are.

It feels like a lot longer, but before I complain about the inconvenience of having to stay home for two months, I remember that my parents lived through both the Great Depression and World War II and came out okay on the other side. My dad was even alive – although very young – during the flu epidemic of 1918 and all of WWI, so the fact that I have to shop for essentials at Amazon, buy groceries online and use the drive-up window at CVS seems insignificant compared to what his generation went through.

That’s why it puzzles me to see people losing their minds because they can’t get a haircut, work out at the gym or go bowling. I’m astonished to see photos of people jamming into restaurants in Colorado or bars in Wisconsin without masks and ignoring social distancing guidelines, and don’t even get me started with those public officials who are pushing to reopen schools. I think that everybody who wants to reopen our classrooms in the fall should have to report to one every day, interact with as many students as possible, eat in the cafeteria and see how long it takes before they get sick.

I understand what’s happening to the nation’s economy and I truly feel bad for the millions of people who have lost their jobs. I do. I’m retired, so I don’t have to worry about going to work. Every month, money just shows up in my bank account. But if I were to weigh making a premature fix to the economy versus keeping millions of people from getting sick and thousands of people from dying, the economy would come in second on my list.

I believe that Georgia was the first state to officially reopen for business and immediately they saw a 40% spike in coronavirus cases. In Michigan, armed hoodlums protesting against lockdown orders from their governor staged rallies at the state capitol, then went home and infected friends and family throughout rural areas of the state that the virus previously had spared. Texas reopened recently and suffered the largest single day of death since the pandemic began.

I don’t know what part of “stay home, stay alive” was confusing for these people.

Now the governor of West Virginia – who it seemed was doing the right thing throughout the past few weeks – is phasing out his stay home order and opening portions of the state’s business a little at a time. I’ve been contacted by not one but two dentists asking me to make an appointment (no thanks), stores downtown are starting to advertise their new hours and gyms will be allowed to reopen starting Monday. Thank god for that, because panting and sweating through aerobic exercises with 50 of my closest friends or pumping iron or riding the stationary bikes are certainly among my top priorities during a pandemic that has killed more than 85,000 Americans in a little over two months.

(Here’s an idea: Instead of risking your life at a gym, try doing pushups or situps in your living room, running in place in the garage or lifting two milk jugs full of water on the patio out back.)

I drove to the Post Office a little while ago to mail my absentee ballots. It was my big road trip for the day. I slipped the envelopes into the neck of the big blue mailbox outside on the curb and drove away. I saw no one and never left my car. I did, however, observe maybe 20 people riding bicycles, walking the city streets, exiting stores and otherwise hanging out. Of the 20, only one was wearing a mask. I’m afraid that no one can help them if they refuse to help themselves.

Next week, I have to make a decision. I have two doctor appointments, one of which will be conducted by tele-health and one that may require me to drive to Morgantown. Ironically, it’s the same ophthalmologist I saw the last time I went out. His office has been closed and I’m waiting to see if it even opens back up next week.

Beyond that, I’m happy to keep on keeping on, or, more accurately, to keep on not keeping on. I’m not required to go to the dentist or the gym or the bowling alley just because they’re open and I’ve never been one to get a lot of haircuts. If I want one, we have clippers, so if the mood strikes me I’ll get my wife to shave it all off and I can start over again from scratch. I never go anywhere, so what does it matter how I look? Besides, I’ve got a lot of hats.

In summary, we have a long way to go before there’s a vaccine to prevent this virus or even an effective way to treat it, and we have a president who seems to oppose even testing for it because the number of victims makes him look bad in an election year. That tells me that we’ll be staying home and avoiding crowds for a lot longer than 60 days.

So in the meantime, I’m doing what I’m supposed to do to survive in the age of COVID-19, even if those around me aren’t. I’m not going out of my way to risk my life for some stupid reason, and I can’t understand why other people are willing to do that. I don’t know what will happen in the future or whether life will ever return to normal, and frankly, I don’t know if I will survive this pandemic or not, but if I don’t, it won’t be for a lack of trying.

That’s about that all any of us can do...and I encourage my friends to do the same.