A Journal of the Plague Year . . . Week 1

Given plenty of time while self quarantined, many of us are undoubtedly poring over and sharing lots of online news. Some of us are writing, as well.

The traffic from your Facebook friends, however many or few you have, has probably been too much to capture. I’ve collected a representative sample of my thoughts and comments on Facebook as a sort of “journal of the plague year” (with a tip of the hat to Defoe — no, I’ve never read it) which I’ll upload week by week.

Starting with Wednesday, March 11, the last relatively normal day of our lives in 2020. . . . 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11

9:59 a.m. — For many years, I’d been bemused by quite a few men I noticed not really washing their hands in public men’s rooms, though they made an odd gesture in that direction.

They’d dip their hands under a running faucet . . . and that was it. No soap or antibacterial, no scrubbing their skin to speak of. You could tell that was happening without even looking over your shoulder from the urinals: simply by how briefly the water ran, and the utter absence of the metallic hiccup or plastic wheeze of a soap dispenser.

I couldn’t understand what motivated these fellows: how was this behavior any improvement on just walking out the door without bothering to visit the sink at all. Did they fear some kind of sanitary police were going to check on them outside, and the dampness of their hands would absolve them of suspicion?

The question today has become: What percentage of those guys have changed their behavior for the better this month?

[Most of my posts over the next 32 hours concerned the collapse of an audience for the play I was in, the decision to close our show, and the abandonment of our set, the theater, and the play halfway through its run. I’ve set those aside perhaps for another use.]

FRIDAY, MARCH 13

1:24 p.m. — It was a weird experience to open this morning’s Oregonian Arts & Entertainment section and read promotional pieces and reviews for a variety of local events and calendar items — all likely written days and in some cases more than a week ago . . . and recognize that many of them will not be happening after all.

A few, such as the Shamrock Run, are specifically noticed as cancelled in the more up-to-date A section of the paper.

SATURDAY, MARCH 14

11:22 a.m. — I can’t remember any snowfall downtown this past winter. But today — between Friday the 13th and the Ides of March — it finally showed up. Pixie was bemused on her morning walk.

Carole and I braved the morning to patronize the quiet and sparsely vendored and cliented Farmers Market.

1:45 p.m. — A friend said he was bewildered by the national run on toilet paper. Here’s what I posted in response:

Fear can inspire all sorts of irrational responses.

When people realize (when we are suddenly reminded) that we don’t actually have absolute control over our lives . . . some of us run to grab and manipulate the things we CAN control.

Hoarding is an easy way to reassert at least the illusion of control. But I regard this as not that great an extension of the consumer habits has inculcated in us throughout our lives.

A giant corporate-consumer apparatus — from manufacturers who have to move product and media outlets who require advertising revenue, to citizens who can’t stand an idle moment alone with their own mind — will all collaborate to create desire, outright hunger, in us.

This is how a good portion of the economy operates, and has always done: companies work hard to persuade us we are inadequate — not pretty enough, not secure enough, not thin enough, and so on — UNLESS we buy what they’re selling, whereupon all will be well. But of course it won’t.

Coupled to our natural herding instincts (if you’re not doing what everyone around you appears to be doing, you’ll stick out, you’re weird, you’re TOTALLY UNCOOL), the result can be sudden, automatic responses such as this TP stampede. In the past, we adopted cigarette smoking, experimenting with recreational drugs, getting a car as soon as we could, buying a house as soon as a bank could be convinced we would have the necessary money eventually, etc.

Just because “everybody does it” doesn’t mean it’s in our best interest. But it takes patience, thought, and even a little courage sometimes, to say: “Not so fast; what’s really going here? What do I truly want?”

SUNDAY, MARCH 15

11:37 a.m. — We’re not worried about running out of TP in our digs.

The first panic will more likely be due to running out of half ’n’ half for our coffee.

Either that or red wine.

12:22 p.m. — No, I do not have extra time on my hands. I’ve repeatedly scrubbed all of it off.

MONDAY, MARCH 16

11:54 p.m. — This afternoon I receive a rather amusingly worded email message from one of the client medical schools for whom I occasionally work as a standardized patient:
“Due to concerns with COVID - 19 we are canceling End of Life on April 10.”

If only that were possible . . . 

TUESDAY, MARCH 17

12:44 a.m. — On a small rise overlooking our apartment in South Waterfront, a block and a half to the north and one block to the west, is a billboard that reads: “OHSU . . . Health and wellness around every corner.”
Seeing it again tonight while walking the dog makes me feel like I’m in a bad disaster movie with an abysmal sense of irony.

10:33 a.m. — The run on gun and ammo stores highlights the irrationality and personal insecurity of gun lovers.

There are two basic scenarios for how this crisis will end:

1. Utter chaos and the breakdown of supply chains . . . in which case, gun owners will face the lovely prospect of having to shoot their neighbors in order to buy a few more hours or days of survival until a much slower, more painful death. Would you want to live in a world like that? The only positive use for a gun in that situation would be to turn it on yourself. (I already predicted this in a blog commentary about the utility of guns in a world crisis two years ago.)

or

2. After a rough few weeks or months, society returns to relative stability and normality . . . in which case, gun owners will have extra firearms and ammunition on the premises, which, statistics from recent decades tell us, are most likely to be used to kill or maim the owners themselves and/or members of their family — in suicides, domestic quarrels, and accidents, some involving children.

Neither of the above strikes me as a particularly desirable outcome, and that shows how poorly these eager consumers have thought the matter through. I suppose if you live in a highly rural, poverty-stricken, or already crime-ridden urban neighborhood, the odds shift a little closer to “self-protection,” but otherwise . . . no . . . most of us do not need this any more than we’re apt to need 50 extra rolls of toilet paper.

The smart thing to do in this situation — the thoughtful and positive and forward-moving (not to mention Christian) course of action — is moderation, self-restraint, kindness to all, and cooperation with others to arrive at the least-damaging outcome for everyone . . . NOT “every man for himself.”

11:34 a.m. — . . . and to top it off, my 87-year-old mother is undergoing neurosurgery downstate, a procedure supposed to last about 4-1/2 hours. . . . 

8:08 p.m. — “Shelter in place”? But . . . but . . . I’m running low on bourbon and cognac!