Writing While Waiting

As a writer, my natural tendency (and preferred state) is to sit in front of my computer, plotting or writing whatever projects I have going on at the time. At the time of this post, I have two novels, two screenplays, and a longish short story in progress along with this blog I'm updating every day. If you knew me, you'd know I'm at my happiest with a lot going on.

So, while this self-isolation is no picnic, I'm not feeling the least closed in or anxious for human interaction. Perhaps I'm a bit anti-social--certainly, being surrounded by staunch Republicans throughout this community, I don't feel compelled to engage my neighbors and endure their flag-waving and MAGA hats. I have my wife and she's just like I am. Our few friends are scattered throughout the country and we keep in contact with them through email, text, phone calls, and the occasional video chat.

Thus, you can see where I'm going with this...I'm in my milieu. Not having to go out unless I have to is no big sacrifice to me. In fact, it's the exact opposite. It's a luxury. I get to write all day if I want and read when I'm not writing.

Now there is a downside to all of this isolation time. I can't stop my brain from coming up with new ideas for things to write. I use Evernote and Bear, to multi-platform applications that are fantastic for capturing ideas on the fly. I'm one of those writers that if I get something in my head I'd like to write someday, I jot down as much of the story (synopsis, dialog, whatever) as I can until I have enough down where I can come back later to really do something with it.

I know, some writers never come back to their old ideas or write thousands of words or multiple pages (for screenplays you measure in pages), only to abandon it forever. Not me. I've pulled partial scripts or synopses out of my files and have completed first drafts.

These are the times that artists of all stripes relish. Naturally, it's not the circumstances for the isolation we celebrate, it's the end result.

Yours in words,
Michael

Worrying Across the Miles

My eighty-six-year-old mother lives in the Hudson Valley in New York, over 1,200 miles away from us. As everyone knows by now, her state is the worst hit by the coronavirus in the United States. Andrew Cuomo, their governor, is doing the best he can despite the federal government's inaction and over antipathy toward him, but it's clear New York is going to be impacted for a long time to come.

My sister lives in the same town where my mother is and she has some siblings, grandsons, and a few nieces and nephews in fairly close proximity. Still, I worry a lot about her because she lives alone in the house I grew up and she has a number of underlying conditions (including pulmonary fibrosis, an interstitial lung disease), making her quite vulnerable to the impact this novel virus could inflict on her if she were to get it.

As a matter of managing all her health issues, her calendar is filled with doctors' visits: such as a cardiologist, a neurologist, a pulmonologist, a vascular specialist, not to mention her primary care physician and dentist (she has teeth issues, too). Needless to say, her staying home from her regular appointments is worrisome enough.

I speak to her every day. Yesterday, she told me she fell walking back in the house from getting the newspaper from the delivery box out on the street. She fell on her side, bruising her ribs, but thankfully, she was able to get herself up and back in the house.

While it doesn't sound like she broke anything, the thought that she could've fallen unconscious on the front stoop is scary as hell. But then even if she decided she needed to go to the ER or urgent care (or someone who found her), would she be safe going and exposing herself to the virus with sick people in the waiting room? And then there's the decision as to whether to impose on already strained emergency services...what's the right thing to do?

In the end, she chose not to call for an ambulance and based on what she told me, I agreed with her. But if something really terrible happened and she had no choice, what could she do?

Scary thoughts.

Yours in bubble wrap,
Michael

Zoom - All the Cool Kids Are Doing It

During this time of self-isolation, it's comforting knowing there are easy (and free) ways to video conference with multiple friends.

Zoom (www.zoom.us) is one such tool and seemed to have "zoomed" in popularity since we've all begun self-isolating (sorry for the bad pun).

I used Zoom back in the early days several years ago, so I was already familiar with the app. Not only that but in my past life, I telecommuted and initiated teleconferences hundreds of times using other programs. Call me a veteran in this regard.

Thus intrigued about how much Zoom has improved, I installed it today after Face-timing with my stepson. He mentioned he and several of his buddies used Zoom to have a virtual get-together, thus prompting me to get up to speed again.

Yes, it's very easy to sign up and install. I now have it on both my phone and my Mac, so I'm set in case a teleconference suddenly breaks out. Invitations are mailed (or you can copy/paste the invite into text). All the features of premium teleconference tools are there. It's easy to control audio, video, and other in-conference functions. All in all, a winner in my book.

Something tells me there will be a lot of people using this program in the future because as we become more isolated, we'll look for a touch of face-to-face contact with multiple people at once.

Give it a try and tell me what you think!

Yours in Videoland,
Michael

The Biggest "Sacrifice"

That title is tongue in cheek, of course. There are no greater sacrifices being made during this pandemic crisis than those of our health workers and first responders who are trying to save a tsunami of sick and dying people in the hopes of preventing a total overwhelming of our hospitals and other facilities.

So when I read or hear people complaining about the few sacrifices we have to make to reduce the spread of this disease, I get a bit miffed, to say the least. Case in point...

I live in a planned community where many snowbirds come for the winter. While there are renters, the vast majority of these temporary residents own these second homes. Unlike us year-round homeowners, they migrate with the seasons.

If you're not familiar with Nextdoor. com, it's a website that allows neighborhoods to connect online, providing message boards as for each community to interact. We joined ours when we lived in Glendale, CA and we belong to the one servicing where we currently live, too...

You wouldn't believe the amount of complaining, whining, and general nastiness our neighbors exhibit online. Talk about a bunch of whiny babies! And most of the whiners are the snowbirds, all of whom take umbrage at the fact that most of our amenities are closed down for the time being. It makes me embarrassed for them.

All of us have to make sacrifices during this time of international crisis. We'd love to be able to go to the gym we have here but realize we can't as long as it's closed and more importantly, there's nothing we can do about it anyway. As noted in another post, sure, we'd love to be able to go out to dinner sometimes but are happy to stay away from crowds until given the all-clear.

What I'm trying to say is people should sit down, shut up, and be thankful they have what they have. Grousing about being cooped up isn't doing you or anyone else any good. You're lucky you have enough food in your larder to weather this storm. Some go hungry every day; some die of starvation every day.

We're all going to get through this if we follow the guidelines and keep a cool head.

Reaching Out Across the Miles

Back in early January, I quit Facebook completely and despite having been there since 2007, I took exception to Mark Zuckerberg's kowtowing to the political right and his allowing Russians to influence our 2016 elections with policies that seemed to invite the same this year.

Instead, I recently began initiating new connections on LinkedIn. My goal was not to use it so much as a business networking tool (admittedly, what its stated intent is), but rather to meet like-minded people in a more professional platform.

The other day, I connected with two gentlemen from Africa, one from Tanzania, the other from Ghana. Both men are proud of their countries and their continent, eager to sing the praises of what their people have to offer the rest of the world.

By sheer coincidence, I drafted a spec screenplay several months ago called Serengeti Rains, inspired by the song Africa by the band Toto. I mentioned this to my new connection and he sounded very intrigued, wanting to know more and offering to be involved in the project should it ever come to fruition. Who knows where that will lead?

The point is that both he and the man in Ghana told me that the coronavirus has barely touched their countries at this point, so they don't share the same concerns about their future. Instead, they are looking forward to the growth of their continent in the eyes of the world. A different perspective, if you will.

Yours in self-isolation,
Michael

Coronavirus Is a Hoax (and Other Lies)

As you would expect, there have been plenty of lies and gaslighting from Trump and his administration about this coronavirus.

Remember when he said this was a "Democrat [sic] hoax?" Or that everything is under control and the few cases would peter our right away? I mean, the number of lies Trump tells in a single day is staggering, but none as damaging as the plain old bullsh#t he spews at every one of daily briefings.

But he's not the only one. Did you hear that there's a supposed man of the cloth who is blaming coronavirus on gay people? Or someone else claiming that this is God's vengeance on liberals? And then there are all those self-proclaimed stable geniuses who still insist that coronavirus is a hoax perpetrated in order to unthrone the Mango Mussolini.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me clarify something for you. Anyone who lays the responsibility of this virus on a supposedly loving God is, to be frank, unhinged.

Now I'm not so uncharitable to suggest anyone who is religious has a screw loose. I'm a spiritual guy but more importantly, I am first and foremost a man of science. I didn't disconnect my brain through eight years of Catholic school and four years of catechism classes.

There is a problem in this country and it rests on the religious right, the so-called "evangelicals" who all too often spew a message of hate of everyone except good ol' God-fearing, white people.

Give me a break.

Cooking Extravaganza

I love to cook. Absolutely. I love all aspects of it...the prep, the cooking itself, the coordination of all the dishes so they're done at the same time, and yes, even the clean-up afterward. My wife gets mad at me because I won't let her even wash or dry the dishes. It's how I relax, I keep telling her.

Yes, I'm weird.

There was a time when my wife did most of the cooking while I worked outside the house. Even though she's a good cook, she really didn't like it. That's similar to my mother, an Italian born of immigrants who is probably one of the best cooks I know (surpassed only by her mother) and only recently discovered she really never liked doing it.

Talk about messing up my childhood.

Anyway, I must've learned something watching her over the years or maybe there's something to the truth that cooking has to be in your "blood" (or DNA, if we want to modernize the myth a little bit). Whatever it is, once my wife and I moved from L.A. to Phoenix, I took over the cooking duties and never looked back.

My wife is a big fan and she (by her own admittance) is a picky eater but she raves about what I serve. Perhaps I cook specifically to her tastes and preferences, and though I like my own cooking as well, I don't consider it rave-worthy.

Though I mostly only cook for us, I've occasionally done so for others, too, including my mother. To my surprise, I've gotten rave reviews, so I guess I'm doing something right.

The only time I don't cook is when we used to go out to dinner after one of our retail forays. My wife, always complimentary, would enjoy the outdoor food but insist I've ruined her for restaurants forever.

Naturally, this self-isolation we're undergoing is keeping me in the kitchen more frequently than in the past and I'm loving it. It's given me a chance to experiment more, oftentimes with my wife as a muse as she finds recipes that look good to her. I don't mind her input at all...it gives me ideas of what she would like to try.

Besides writing, cooking gives me a creative outlet like no other. I'd invite you over, but we should all shelter in place.

Yours from the kitchen,
Michael

Mega Shopping Trip

After spending ten days at home and building our grocery list to the point where we were low on a few essentials, we decided to make for town (twenty miles away) to hit a couple of stores. My wife has prescriptions to pick up, too, and since they were already at Walgreens, we decided to stop there, too.

Before we left, my wife agreed to the following...or should I say I agreed and she nodded along. 😀

1. We'd only go to two stores, no more. This would limit exposure to other shoppers.
2. I would be the only one going in, she could stay in the car. Neither one of us wants to get sick, but since she had influenza-B already this year, I didn't want to risk her getting sick again--especially since I never got the flu myself despite my taking care of her, allowing me to (perhaps falsely) believe my immune system is pretty strong right now.

Well, it didn't turn out that way. After the drug store, we went to Sam's Club and she told me in no uncertain terms she would be going in with me. I told her fine, she shouldn't touch anything, to just point to what she wanted. To this, she agreed.

I wore surgical gloves before grabbing the cart. Now, before you get all upset about my buying products that should be in the hospital, these are gloves I already owned for cooking purposes, purchased months ago.

My wife held to her promise and pointed, I picked up. We then went to several more stores--breaking rule #1. We really didn't get much of what we needed in the first couple and so went to three more to fill in the gaps.

What I couldn't get I absolutely need -- yeast. I bake bread and I'm low on yeast. So I went online and ended up purchasing it from Amazon, along with a few other things I couldn't get. I also ordered from Costco and Target, too. Thank goodness for free shipping!

One funny story worth sharing. Our Fry's grocery store is in the same strip mall as my wife's hairdresser. We were walking to the store when we saw her coming out with a 12-pack of toilet paper clutched in her hands. She looked so excited and happy, waving it around like a trophy.

As it turns out, we wanted to get TP, too, so I hurried into the store and almost ran to the paper aisle. Along the way, I kept passing people with their own 12-packs. By the time I got to my destination, there were only a few left on the pallet. I snatched one in my greedy hands and hurried to the front of the store to show my wife.

It was like finding gold!

Remember when grocery shopping was a mundane experience. Not anymore in the Age of Corona.

Yours from self-isolation,

Michael

Fitzgerald & Hemingway

The following is a reprint of a letter from F. Scott Fitzgerald to a friend during a Spanish flu quarantine. Long having been an admirer of Hemingway's writing and to some degree his persona (emphasis is mine), I'm not surprised by his attitude. 😀

A LETTER FROM F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, QUARANTINED IN 1920 IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE DURING THE SPANISH INFLUENZA OUTBREAK. 

Dearest Rosemary,

It was a limpid dreary day, hung as in a basket from a single dull star. I thank you for your letter. Outside, I perceive what may be a collection of fallen leaves tussling against a trash can. It rings like jazz to my ears. The streets are that empty. It seems as though the bulk of the city has retreated to their quarters, rightfully so. At this time, it seems very poignant to avoid all public spaces. Even the bars, as I told Hemingway, but to that, he punched me in the stomach, to which I asked if he had washed his hands. He hadn’t. He is much the denier, that one. Why, he considers the virus to be just influenza. I’m curious of his sources. The officials have alerted us to ensure we have a month’s worth of necessities. Zelda and I have stocked up on red wine, whiskey, rum, vermouth, absinthe, white wine, sherry, gin, and lord, if we need it, brandy. Please pray for us. You should see the square, oh, it is terrible. I weep for the damned eventualities this future brings. The long afternoons rolling forward slowly on the ever-slick bottomless highball. Z. says it’s no excuse to drink, but I just can’t seem to steady my hand. In the distance, from my brooding perch, the shoreline is cloaked in a dull haze where I can discern an unremitting penance that has been heading this way for a long, long while. And yet, amongst the cracked cloudline of an evening’s cast, I focus on a single strain of light, calling me forth to believe in a better morrow.

Faithfully yours,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Stay safe and stay healthy!

The Name of the Blog

In case you haven't figured it out, I call this blog "Love in the Time of Corona" as a play on the famous 1985 book Love in the Time of Cholera by Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez. A movie of the same name was released in 2007.

From Wikipedia:

The main characters of the novel are Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza. Florentino and Fermina fall in love in their youth. A secret relationship blossoms between the two with the help of Fermina's Aunt Escolástica. They exchange several love letters. However, once Fermina's father, Lorenzo Daza, finds out about the two, he forces his daughter to stop seeing Florentino immediately. When she refuses, he and his daughter move in with his deceased wife's family in another city. Regardless of the distance, Fermina and Florentino continue to communicate via telegraph. However, upon her return, Fermina realizes that her relationship with Florentino was nothing but a dream since they are practically strangers; she breaks off her engagement to Florentino and returns all his letters.

A young and accomplished national hero, Dr. Juvenal Urbino, meets Fermina and begins to court her. Despite her initial dislike of Urbino, Fermina gives in to her father's persuasion and the security and wealth Urbino offers, and they wed. Urbino is a physician devoted to science, modernity, and "order and progress". He is committed to the eradication of cholera and to the promotion of public works. He is a rational man whose life is organized precisely and who greatly values his importance and reputation in society. He is a herald of progress and modernization.

Even after Fermina's engagement and marriage, Florentino swore to stay faithful and wait for her. However, his promiscuity gets the better of him. Even with all the women he is with, he makes sure that Fermina will never find out. Meanwhile, Fermina and Urbino grow old together, going through happy years and unhappy ones and experiencing all the reality of marriage. At an elderly age, Urbino attempts to get his pet parrot out of his mango tree, only to fall off the ladder he was standing on and die. After the funeral, Florentino proclaims his love for Fermina once again and tells her he has stayed faithful to her all these years. Hesitant at first because she is only recently widowed, and finding his advances untoward, Fermina eventually gives him a second chance. They attempt a life together, having lived two lives separately for over five decades.

Urbino proves in the end not to have been an entirely faithful husband, confessing one affair to Fermina many years into their marriage. Though the novel seems to suggest that Urbino's love for Fermina was never as spiritually chaste as Florentino's was, it also complicates Florentino's devotion by cataloging his many trysts as well as a few potentially genuine loves. By the end of the book, Fermina comes to recognize Florentino's wisdom and maturity, and their love is allowed to blossom during their old age.

 A link to the entire article is here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_in_the_Time_of_Cholera

I remember reading the book when it first came out and loved it. I never did see the movie, however. 

Binge Watching

Like everyone else, we've ramped up our binge-watching to get us through this self-imposed isolation we're living with. Some thoughts on three of them.

Manifest (NBC Streaming) -- Science fiction with a large dollop of human entanglements. An airplane filled with passengers on the way to the U.S. from Jamaica gets "lost" for five years and when the passengers return home, they find time only stopped for them, not the rest of the world.

The acting is a bit melodramatic sometimes, though there are some particularly good bright spots. The plot is quite intriguing and overall, the feeling of suspense (and realism) is well-done.

Rating: 4.2/5

Hunters (Amazon Prime) -- 1977 New York City. A ragtag band of Nazi hunters seek out and execute Nazis who are hiding in the United States. Stars Al Pacino, which for me is always a plus. Very violent, though. A little like Quentin Tarantino on steroids at times.

The acting is strong. All the characters are three-dimension, fraught with their own demons and agendas. The plot, a bit stretched in some places, is very good with a lot of plot twists to keep you on your toes. And the action...well, let's say it's superb.

Rating: 4.5/5

Jack Ryan (Amazon Prime) -- Based on the Tom Clancy character, Jack Ryan (played by John Krasinski, best known for The Office) is a former Marine turned CIA analyst whose sole mission is to save the world from the bad guys. I know that's generic, but it's what it is. Each season is one long action movie, following the entirety of the plot down to the last frame.

The acting is excellent as are the storylines. Krasinski is quite a fine dramatic actor and he plays Jack Ryan in an understated way, which is a high compliment. I love the way the stories unfold and the multiple plot twists. Definitely exciting!

Stay tuned for more reviews in the future.

Social Distancing Is Already Our Norm

My wife & I live in a Pulte community and are surrounded by mostly God-fearing Trumpers, which scares the bejebus out of us. I've seen the numbers of Democrats who live here and it's minuscule compared with the rest. Of course, not everyone declares a party, so it may not be as bad as we fear.

To give you an idea of how onerous it is, recently someone posted a notice on Nextdoor.com for our neighborhood that an open meeting for any interested Democrats was to be held in one of the community rooms. This simple announcement engendered threats of protests outside the venue, an action threatened and organized by one of the most vociferous Trumpers around here. Her harsh words ended up forcing a cancelation of the meeting by the organizer.

(I understand it was eventually held at someone's home instead. Perhaps it's hyperbolic to say it, but it felt like the Resistance when they had to hide their meetings from the Nazis in occupied France!).

Be that as it may, because we don't feel comfortable with our neighbors, we already are social-distancing. My wife is an introvert and I'm an ambivert; in either case, interacting with others is something we avoid doing. It's just us here and our family is back east. Therefore, this new normal we're all living is no big deal for us.

However, on Nextdoor.com (again), the social butterflies in the community are up in arms--perhaps literally--complaining that our recreation center is closed to all indoor activities. These are supposed to be adults and yet what I've read seems like it's coming from junior high school students.

Fun times.

Grocery Trips, The Early Days

We live about twenty miles away from the closest grocery store, so our pre-pandemic norm was to drive into town about twice a week for groceries. Being the cook in the family, I kept multiple lists of items needed in each store we would need to go to.

The last time we made a retail run was a week ago today (on March 13th). We went out later than usual with the brilliant idea that we'd avoid the crowds. Even though we heard of empty shelves at our usual places, we felt certain that the staff would've had the time to restock the shelves after the mad hordes had left.

Wrong.

We ended up going to five grocery stores and we were only able to get three-quarters of what we deemed as necessary. Fortunately, we had plenty of paper products to begin with and most everything essential, including pasta and tomato sauce. I stupidly failed to buy ground beef at our previous Costco run and didn't find any at any of the stores we stopped at that night.

Right now, we have plenty of everything we need and are able to stay here for a month or longer if we need to without rationing. However, we do have to go into town to pick up prescriptions, though we plan to shift to a delivery system right after we pick up this load. While out, we'll make a stop in a couple of stores to see if we can get the few things we'd like to have on hand (again, ground beef).

This is the new normal. We're slowly coming to grips with that sad fact.

Day One of Many

I doubt I will keep this blog up for very long, but I'm going to try as long as we're effectively in lockdown thanks to COVID-19 pandemic. The novel coronavirus has changed life as we know it, perhaps forever. I hope this will be a chronicle of life during and after this global crisis.

Here, I will not only share my observations about daily existence but also my thoughts about how our future world will look once we're past this mess. Only time will tell how right or wrong I am.

Warning: this blog will not stray from making political statements. While the virus in and of itself did get started as a result of our politicians, it certainly has worsened under the poor leadership from the White House and the GOP. History will show how badly they failed us all--of that I have no doubt.

I have a zero-tolerance policy for trolls. If you post offensive or threatening comments, you'll either be blocked or reported (or both). Write your own blog if you want to communicate opp argumentative opposing views.

If you have a difference of opinion and want to share it in a logical and thoughtful way, have at it. It doesn't mean I won't disagree with you but at least I won't disrespect you. I expect the same courtesy; otherwise, you're gone. Life's too short, as are quickly learning.

Welcome to my blog. There's no turning back.