David Klein's Blog, page 66

Stay at Home: Week 5

Starting the fifth week of staying at home due to COVID-19. Here are my thoughts:

I’ve gotten a lot done around the house. Repaired a rotted window, rebuilt my firewood crib that had partially collapsed, fenced in an area and started planting vegetables, raked out all beds, fashioned a new door for my Little Free Library.



Also getting a lot of exercise, although none of it is playing tennis. My club is closed, the town park courts are closed. But my garage is open and I have dumbells and a yoga mat and a pull-up bar and I still know how to run and jump rope.



Although I’m a writer and work from home, and therefore accustomed to being home, I’m beginning to feel the longing to get out and go. Almost anywhere. I’d like to visit my siblings or go out for a drink or get up to Canada or . . .



An estimated 8 million people are losing their health insurance, but the Trump administration won’t open the ACA markets. Why? Cruelty, plain and simple. Is there a lesson to be learned? Perhaps tying health insurance to employment status isn’t such a smart idea, but if the United States does it and no other country does, then it must be a good idea.



I made a no-sew mask out of a camouflage bandanna and it looks pretty good. Add my baseball cap and I’m unrecognizable.



Acting Secretary Thomas Modly — What a Trump sycophant that fucker is. He fires Captain Brett Crozier of the USS Theodore Roosevelt for backchanneling efforts to save his coronavirus-infected crew, then he spends a quarter of a million dollars flying to Guam to board the ship and yell at the crew because they cheered for Crozier. He thought his course of action would please Trump and get him nominated to be the permanent secretary. He has resigned. What a shitshow.



Doing quite well in the bunker with spouse and two kids (adults, actually). Celebrated Owen’s 20th birthday yesterday as a family. We’re all watching out for each other. I really am lucky.



My sources of news, in order of preference: New York Times, AP News, Reuters. I do look at the Fox news website everyday just to better understand state propaganda and the behavior of even more sycophants (that’s the word of the day).



I’m using my writing time to take another run at a novel I worked on a few years ago that hasn’t made it to publication yet: A SERIOUS LAPSE. If I take a dispassionate look (don’t know if that’s possible), I’d say I’m 75 percent of the way there, with the other 25 percent still an enigma to me. The first chapter is largely intact and can be read here.



Almost finished rereading LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA. It was on my list of the 25 most important books in my life. I think it deserves a spot in the top ten. Review to come soon. Next on the reread list is THE HOURS. On the new list: THE GLASS HOTEL.

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Happy Birthday, Bob Klein

That’s my dad and I riding bikes past the old casino in Delaware Park, Buffalo, New York, 1973. It was late March, the piles of snow melting in the background. I’m 14 years old, a high school freshman. My father is 46, married, the father of five, a rising marketing executive at a pharmaceutical company.

Today is his birthday. He would have been 93.

The photo is staged because a photographer from the local newspaper, The Courier Express (long gone), spotted us and wanted a picture for the paper. We started out on our bikes and rode toward the camera. I see wet tire marks on the pavement so this probably wasn’t our first take.

Despite the piles of snow, and bare trees, and the month of March in Buffalo, it must not have been a very cold day. We aren’t wearing gloves. I know that’s my St. Joe’s windbreaker I’ve got on and my red Converse All-Stars. No helmets. No one wore helmets then.

This spot in Delaware Park is probably three miles from our family home. It must be a Saturday or a Sunday if I’m riding with my dad. Other weekends, in the winter, he would take us sledding on a hill behind that casino, or we’d ice skate on that frozen lake right next to us. Sometimes we went to the tennis courts in the spring and fall.

I didn’t know my father well back then. I hardly knew myself at age 14. I was awkward and unsure of myself, and we didn’t have the kind of relationship founded on personal or meaningful conversations. We never said I love you to each other. At that point, we were both incapable.

As I grew into adulthood, we got to know each other better, my father and I. He could be rigid, but also extremely kind. He had a finely-tuned moral compass. He loved to read and was a card shark. He was devoted to his children and their well-being, especially after my mother died in 1983, and he showed great interest in his grandchildren. He was a man of deep faith, which I am not.

Bob Klein was also a man of few words. He didn’t gossip, gab or boast. He would do things or fix things without making a big announcement over it. He went about his business. He was from the era when it was acceptable, maybe even preferable, for a man to have his actions speak for him. Like taking a bike ride with his son.

P.S. Thank you, Nancy, for giving me this photo.

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Happy Anniversary

It was among the art and light and spring air of Paris that we first got our start, and a year ago today Harriet and I returned to that same city to celebrate our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. For our twenty-sixth, we’re housebound.

She’s upstairs at her desk working from home. I’m downstairs at mine. Two college-age kids are back living with us, finishing their semesters online. We’re all trying to ride out the plague.

If it weren’t for the sickness and death around us, if it weren’t for the ineptitude of our leadership, if it weren’t for the moral failures of our system of government, if it weren’t for the economic inequities, if it weren’t for our dismal profit-driven health care system . . . well, I might be perfectly content.

Because I’m one of the lucky ones. I’ve really only wanted two things most of my life: love and writing. And I’ve gotten both. I believe Harriet has saved me from what would have been a lonely, unstable, nomadic life. I believe my family has anchored me not in a weighty, restrictive way, but in providing a foundation and roots that have given me room to flourish and grow as a person.

As for writing — I’ve been writing all my adult life. I haven’t achieved everything I’ve wanted, but I’ve cobbled together a living and accomplished what once was my singular writing dream and goal: publishing novels. Sure, attain one dream, another one takes its place: I want to publish more. I want my writing to be critically acclaimed. I want my writing to win prizes. But I can only control the writing part, and that I’m doing the best I can.

I have Harriet to thank for giving me the space and time to be a writer. I have Harriet to thank for our two wonderful children. I have her to thank for pretty much everything that’s right in my life.

Twenty-six years is a chunk of time. It’s a commitment. Ask me the secret to marriage longevity, and I say there is no secret. It’s like anything else you want: You dedicate yourself to the cause, you make every effort to overcome the inevitable setbacks, you accept as you want to be accepted. Most of all, you find the right person. I did. It takes some luck, it takes good judgment.

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Dinner with Family — and the Mob

What to do when hunkering down with the family? We ate spaghetti dinner thanks to my son, 19, who made us sauce, and we watched The Godfather, one of my favorite movies of all time. About family.

I tried to get the kids to watch The Godfather when they were still too young, probably six or seven years ago. It didn’t hold their interest. This time it did.

Daughter 21, watched a three-hour movie that so captivated her she wasn’t even checking her phone. Son had studied the movie in his film class and already knew the story well. Wife and I were family with every scene and sequence, yet still picked up on subtleties and nuances we’d not noticed before.

I love the scene when Michael, at his father’s bedside in the hospital following the assassination attempt on Don Veto Corleone, saying, “I’ll take care of you now. I’m with you now.” It’s the turning point of the movie, the beginning of Michael’s ascension to the role of Godfather. And then he enlists Enzo, the baker, to stand outside the hospital with him to keep his father’s enemies away.

What fascinates about The Godfather is the sympathy we have for these gangsters and murderers. Why? Because within their story world, they act with honor and loyalty and devotion. They operate for their cause without fear. Nothing is more important than family (Right, Fredo?)

The Godfather had a place of lore in my childhood. My mother was an Italian woman from Niagara Falls. She loved the novel and the movie. Her cousins, Duane and Raymond, operated an auto junkyard and were reportedly in the mob. My mother told me that Duane was arrested for shooting the husband of his mistress, but got off on self-defense. Uncle Leo had no visible means of support, yet wore diamond rings and flashed hundred dollar bills in front of his wide-eyed grand nieces and nephews.

And, of course, there was a copy of Mario Puzo’s novel in our house, and I remember my sister pointing out the scandalous passage (page 27 — I’ll never forget page 27) to me. “. . . my insides felt as mushy as macaroni boiled for an hour.” What a line, Mario.

Watching The Godfather with my family turned into a moment of real togetherness. It allowed us to back-burner for a few hours the horrors of the virus. By the time we got up from the couch, our plates and pans were dried and crusted with sauce and pasta. I scrubbed them clean.

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Today I Bled, and Other COVID Thoughts

I had to get out of the house and I put on my hiking boots and at the end of my neighborhood I ducked into a wooded area on top of the ridge above our rail trail. The landscape was gray and brown, like the rest of the day and my spirit.

We really are in a reality show, just like the president wanted when he ran for office. Only he’s the villain in this story, not the hero. He’s a bumbling, inept, stupid stupid man. Denial until it’s too late. States bidding against each other for ventilators and protective equipment. Refusing to open the ACA exchanges that would allow people to get health insurance. Telling Governors they’re responsible for their own states. Governors who won’t lead saying it’s up to individuals to take responsibility. Rewording a federal website to explain why states can’t have the federal stockpile of ventilators (here’s looking at you, Jared). Decreeing women’s reproductive care elective rather than essential. On and on. Corruption. Cronyism. Cynicism (my own). I would hate my country except that . . .



We do have real leaders, we have heroes. The doctors, nurses, volunteers, delivery drivers, bus drivers. The Amazon employee fired for staging a walkout due to unsafe conditions. The aircraft carrier captain fired for trying to save his sailors. All those putting others above themselves.



What’s so great about capitalism when it has to be bailed out by socialism every ten years or so? If this pandemic isn’t a call for universal health care coverage, an adequate social safety net, and protections for workers, then nothing is. We’ll find out when this pandemic ends. I’m already anticipating extreme disappointment.



I’m an introverted, work-at-home writer and not a leader type possessing the skills to rally all of us around the single, shared, relevant goal of defeating the pandemic. I’m more of an individual contributor. Citizen K. I’m doing what I can. I’m staying home. I’m trying to be good to my family and help shepherd us through this troubling time. We’re making donations to important causes. For us, that’s food banks and Planned Parenthood.



Today I bled, my pint-sized contribution to help allay the severe blood shortage. How kind and efficient the Red Cross team was. How careful and professional. I couldn’t see their faces behind their masks. I couldn’t smell anything other than disinfectant. Still, in the air — I wondered. Was the agent floating unseen and predatory? Was it planning an attack?



Oh, it’s there all right. There is a disease infecting us, but not a new one. The disease has always been with us. It is the quest for power, the willingness to do whatever necessary to gain it, the ability to marginalize others, the paranoid grabbing of finite resources. Is that what’s meant by survival of the fittest?

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ASYMMETRY – Lisa Halliday

I had to think on this novel for a while. “Asymmetry” was a darling of the literary media when it appeared in 2018. The New Yorker called it a “literary phenomenon,” The New York Times included the novel on its list of top books for the year, as did Barak Obama.

Of course I had to find out what the fuss was all about. My conclusion is as asymmetrical as the novel itself: I found Asymmetry to be both intriguing and disappointing.

The novel is structured in three sections. The first, Folly, is about a young editorial assistant, Alice, who has an affair with a much older famous writer, Ezra Blazer, who is clearly modeled after Philip Roth. More on that in a bit.

The second section, Madness, about an Iraqi American detained at Heathrow Airport on his way to search for his missing brother in Iraq, seemingly has nothing to do with the first section. The third, and shortest part, is an interview conducted by the BBC with Ezra Blazer.

Halliday’s writing is masterful, and the stories themselves grab you and hold on (except for the last one), and overall I’m impressed with this novel.

Except.

The author did have a relationship with Philip Roth in her early twenties, and the portrayal of Ezra as what I can only describe as a “dirty old man” bothered me. Roth has written some of my favorite novels of all time, including “American Pastoral,” “The Human Stain,” and “Goodbye Columbus.” Frankly, I don’t care about his personal life, especially a fictionalized, sensationalized rendering of his worst inclinations. And the relationship between Ezra and Alice, while well-written, isn’t the stuff of great literature.

So while reading that entire section I felt like a voyeur, unable to look away from the carnage.

The second section on Amar, on the other hand, was quite deft, shifting back and forth between his detainment and questioning at the airport, and his family backstory.

I couldn’t put the two sections together, until I read the third, when I discovered (not at first, I had to look again), that during the interview with the BBC, Ezra mentions a young friend of his who wrote a novel, and the Amar story is that novel.

Very disappointing to me was that “Asymmetry” ends with Ezra propositioning his interviewer — as if I hadn’t enough of the lecherous portrayal already. Maybe that’s just me, because I’ve been such a huge Roth fan and he’s been an influence on my writing, if not my personal life.

Ultimately, Halliday has written a clever and impressive book, but in the way a magic trick is clever and impressive, more than the way a great novel (such as “American Pastoral”) is.

I think Halliday can do much better, and will.

3 stars out of 5.

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The Backstory On First Chapters

Here’s the backstory on the first chapters of novels posted on this site:

My literary agent sold STASH to Random House in a two-book contract, the second book turning out to be CLEAN BREAK.  After years of writing and rejection, I had made it as a novelist with a major publishing house.

Everyone was excited about STASH. The publisher at the novel’s imprint, Broadway Books, said it was exciting and full of moral complications.

And then things got complicated for me. Within a week of signing the contract with me, the publisher and my editor at Broadway Books both were fired. I don’t think it was because they signed me, but I’ll never know–I never spoke to either of them again.

I’d lost my main advocates at the publishing house, but other editors took over. As part of the two-book deal, the Random House retained “right of first refusal” on a third novel. That means they had first dibs on anything I wrote next.

Turned out for a number of reasons that STASH and CLEAN BREAK weren’t bestsellers, but most readers who discovered the books gave positive reviews. In publishing, like most businesses, sales results drive a lot of decision making, and my publisher exercised its right to refuse my third novel, THE FINISH LINE. I’m pretty sure almost anything I would have written they would have rejected. Why would they want to lose more money on me?

I had a lot of passion for THE FINISH LINE, which continued the story of two minor characters from STASH who had stayed with me after I finished writing that novel. Their story still fascinated me–Aaron and Dana–and I had to keep writing it. My agent loved THE FINISH LINE. She tried to sell the novel to other publishers, without success.  

So I went back to work. I wrote A SERIOUS LAPSE. That novel didn’t sell either, despite my agent’s efforts and enthusiasm, and her support for me as a writer. Our relationship began to show strain. She probably wished I wrote a different book; I wished she had better connections in the publishing world. At this time, I might have entered a fugue state, as had Robert, the main character in the unsold novel.

Following these publishing setbacks, I veered in a new direction with my writing. No doubt inspired by the state of the world around me and my personal world, I wrote a dystopian speculative thriller, THE CULLING, the most commercial, page-turning idea my brain could conjure. The novel is a cross between Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and Ridley Scott’s “Bladerunner,” about a woman on the run from an unjust death sentence and the mercenary assigned to hunt her. I really enjoyed writing it.

My agent, who strongly preferred upmarket and literary fiction, read THE CULLING and parted ways with me. Not for her. I need a new agent now.

But writing. I’m always writing. A story is always being conceived, mulled over, worked on, discarded or continued. There’s always a light peeking through the clouds, like in the photo I took at the top of this page.

New addition (3/11/20): I recently finished a new novel, THE SUITOR, about a recent college graduate who suddenly falls in love with an ambitious schemer, causing her father to become obsessed about preventing the marriage.

This is almost an afterthought: I wrote STILL LIFE (and other novels) before I wrote STASH. It began as a short story, “The Painter’s Son,” that was published in Storyquarterly, a respected literary journal. It is another example of characters and story I wasn’t finished with yet, and so I expanded the story into a novel, adding an essential character into the protagonist’s life. STILL LIFE has a very secure place in my heart.

That’s the backstory on the First Chapters. Here are introductions to those novels:

THE SUITOR

It’s
been a tough year for Anna. She barely escaped a murderous shooting and has
faced relentless academic pressure to be accepted at a prestigious law school. She
needs a break from all that stress. Following college graduation, she heads to
her family’s unoccupied lake house for the summer and takes a job at a resort
restaurant, but her adventure goes awry when she is seduced by the party life
and falls in love with her boss, the ambitious and scheming Kyle.

Kyle
has risen from a miserable childhood and remains on the lookout for any
opportunity to further advance. While he tells himself he loves Anna, he also
sees in her a path to his own success. He will do what it takes to keep her,
including encouraging her destructive behaviors and manipulating her feelings.

Soon,
Anna realizes she doesn’t want to go to law school—she wants to marry Kyle and
open a restaurant and bar with him, which she will help finance using
inheritance money from her grandmother. Anna’s father, Art, senses the trap his
vulnerable daughter is falling into. Faced with personal health issues, he must
also battle against Anna and Kyle’s relationship, and prevent the marriage
without alienating his daughter.

At first, Art offers to pay Kyle to disappear, and when that doesn’t work he resorts to blackmail and threats. But he doesn’t anticipate Kyle’s response or the impact his maneuvers will have on Anna or even himself, and all three of them end up facing life or death consequences.  

Read Chapter One: THE SUITOR

THE CULLING

A barbaric constitutional amendment has resulted in a
Lottery that culls a percentage of the population each year—all in the name of ensuring
equality. The algorithm draws your number, you report. No exceptions, unless
you have immunity. Maren, a director at a charitable organization founded by
the country’s first lady, still has immunity from when her husband volunteered
for the Lottery. To battle her loneliness and despair, she regularly runs all
76 flights of stairs in her apartment tower.

During a special news event, the first lady volunteers to be
culled in the ultimate show of support for her husband, the president general.
She lies in state during a national broadcast. Yet that same night Maren spots
the first lady in disguise with two guards—and in turn is spotted by
them. Quickly, Maren is notified to report by the Lottery Commission, and her
immunity credentials are invalidated.

Ven Nowak, a mercenary who hunts citizens that refuse to
comply with a Lottery notification, is working to earn permanent freedom for
his disabled brother and himself. He’s running out of time because his license
is about to expire and he’ll never pass the recertification test. Not with his
arthritic shoulder and debilitating asthma.

Ven is awarded the assignment to hunt Maren, which can earn
him enough points to retire. But when he discovers she is the woman he recently
met and has been fantasizing about, he hesitates capturing her, misses his
deadline, and is himself now eligible for the Lottery. Instead of hunting
Maren, Ven forges an alliance with her, against his brother’s warnings.

Maren and Ven attempt to escape to Canada together where they can join the resistance. The long and dangerous journey requires them to get past checkpoints and navigate the violent upcountry, while being relentlessly pursued by other mercenaries and federal troopers. Relying on skills, wits, and luck, they’ll make their escape together—or be destroyed in the process.

Read Chapter One: THE CULLING

A SERIOUS LAPSE

Successful, happily married man and devoted father Robert Besch is traveling for business when he survives a deadly plane crash. He manages to rescue fellow passengers from the burning plane, but he lapses into a fugue state, forgetting who or where he is.

Several days later he wakes up in a hotel room with a woman beside him. He has no idea what happened. No way to explain. Returning home, he must put his life back together while enduring the stigma of his psychological collapse and the pain he’s caused his family.

As a series of unwanted memories from the fugue state slowly return, Robert begins to question his motives in the crash’s aftermath. Is he is really the man he believed himself to be? Or have unconscious desires taken control of his life?

Read Chapter One: A SERIOUS LAPSE

THE FINISH LINE

When Aaron, a damaged young veteran just released from prison attempts to apologize to Dana, the collegiate athlete he’d once sexually assaulted, she recoils in fear and rejects him, but soon an uneasy bond develops between them when she discovers he might hold the clue to her father’s unsolved murder.

Read Chapter One: A FINISH LINE

STILL LIFE

A painter on the verge of success loses his creative spark and alienates the woman he loves when his estranged father forces him to confront their damaged relationship.

Read Chapter One: STILL LIFE

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“You Only Live Twice”

I corkscrewed down the research rabbit hole today. I got interested in stories of people who faked their own death — the whys and hows of it — and I came across an interview with an expert in faking death, Elizabeth Greenwood, who wrote a book titled “Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud.” This book is now on my to-read list.

Turns out that lots of people want to fake their own deaths, and most of them don’t get away with it. The reasons for faking your own death are typical: to escape debt or criminal prosecution, or to commit fraud and collect on a life insurance policy.

Not as common might be the desire to change your identity and start a new life, but you’d really need to have a problem with who you are or your situation in order to go to such extremes. One fascinating case was Ukraine’s security forces faking the murder of journalist Arkady Babchenko in order to flush out Russian assassins who were targeting him.

According to Greenwood, it takes a lot of money and planning to successfully fake your own death, particularly in an era where almost everyone is leaving digital footprints everywhere they go.

Why am I researching death fraud? Because I’m generating ideas for stories and novels. Why else? But this topic hasn’t crystallized yet. The idea of premeditation — planning long in advance to create a new identity and establish the death story — is one path. With enough foresight and attention to detail, you can probably get away with it. The story would have to focus on motivation for faking your death, execution of your plan, complications along the way, and finally whether or not you can do it.

But what about a spontaneous decision to fake your death? That strikes me as more interesting. What situation could cause you to commit death fraud? A terrible mistake you made? A suddenly recognized need or opportunity? How would that story play out?

I don’t know and may never know. It’s just research, after all. What I do know is Nancy Sinatra sings like a mythological Siren the opening credits of the James Bond Movie, “You Only Live Twice.” I love the line, “One life for yourself, and one for your dreams.”

Ah, the rabbit hole.

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Two Weeks In: 10 Thoughts

Two weeks into social distancing I remain in my bunker with spouse and two college-age children. Despite the horror of the coronavirus and the misfortune of many who are suffering, at this point I feel so fortunate to have my family. We’re doing well together.But I also have a helpless feeling — meaning it’s hard to find ways to help if we’re supposed to stay home. The best we’ve done so far is to make monetary donations to food pantries and foundations that help those affected by Covid-19.I place a lot of responsibility for the severity of the outbreak on our dear president and his loyal cronies who at first denied, then delayed response, then fucked up their response. If anything good comes out of this it will be people finally waking up and voting this fraud out of office in November.With plenty of time at home, I’m all caught up on spring cleanup in the yard. Lawn raked, beds cleared, repairs made. Some people are bingeing on Netflix and other streaming content, but I’ve been trying to read more. Just finished rereading a novel that’s on my top 25 of all time, “Mariette in Ecstasy” by Ron Hansen, and am getting near the end of the puzzling “Asymmetry” by Lisa Halliday. I’m taking a free online course offered by Yale University, The Science of Well-Being, taught by Laurie Santos. Although I’m ready to throttle the next person who preaches to me about being mindful, I’m totally engaged in this course and wish I could have taken it forty years ago.Speaking of courses, wow do my kids work hard on their college courses. Their lives have been majorly disrupted and all their classes are online, but they are putting in the time, not complaining, and staying motivated. I salute you, my offspring.I’ve never seen so many people out and about in my neighborhood. Families walking together, dog-walkers, bike riders. I live right across the street from an access point to our local rail trail and it has become a busy thoroughfare.We’ve saved quite a bit of money by not filling our gas tanks or going out to restaurants or doing any other kind of shopping. I feel bad for my friends who own restaurants and plan to order more takeout to help them.My hubris and naivety know no bounds. I’m practicing social distancing and hand washing and all that, but think that if I caught the coronavirus I could fight it off because I have a good immune system and have rarely been sick. This belief, despite the evidence to the contrary all around me: people much younger and healthier getting sick and dying. I told this to my daughter and said that if I die from the virus, don’t believe that it’s because I’ve jinxed myself. So much is random, so much is luck.

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It’s Always Survival of the Fittest

With much of the country shutting down and coronavirus cases continuing to rise, a philosophical question is being asked by economists, politicians, and health experts:

Should a balance be struck between doing everything possible to halt the virus versus keeping some semblance of an economic engine to keep people employed?

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On one extreme, we could let COVID-19 run its course through the population, with some estimates saying that 40 million people worldwide would die. There are now about 7.8 billion people in the world. Forty million is about .005% of the population. That doesn’t seem like that many deaths—unless you or your loved ones are included, or you happen to be compassionate and value every life. But chances are you won’t be included, although the likelihood goes up if you are elderly, poor, or already in compromised health.

In addition, the virus would probably run through the population in a matter of months, certainly is less than a year. Hospitals, of course, would be overrun. Healthcare workers would be crushed. Healthcare would be rationed (as it is today, just like every other service). Remember the hysteria over Obamacare “death panels?” This lie was fabricated by none other than Sarah Palin and perpetuated by right-wing media. Now, some of those same voices echoing the alarm of health care rationing are now willing to sacrifice a few or a few million people in order to jump-start the economy again.

But overall, only .005% of the world’s population would die.

Compare that to the plague which scourged Europe between 1347 and 1351 and is estimated to have killed 30 to 50 percent of Europe’s population. The elderly and those in poor health were more likely to die from Black Death, just as with COVID-19.

Sharon N. DeWitte, an anthropologist at the University of South Carolina, conducted a research study and concluded that there were benefits to the plague in terms of the surviving population being stronger. She suggests that Black Death survivors and their descendants were healthier and longer-living, which indicates that the plague served as a natural selection phenomenon that culled many of the weak and frail from the population. Tip your hat to Darwin.

You see opinions popping up that letting COVI-19 run its course might actually cause fewer deaths than an economic shutdown would, due to depression, suicide, starvation and other factors that a crushed economy would cause. Maybe, but there’s no way of knowing. I do know that my retirement portfolio is in the toilet, and that changes my outlook, but not to the extent that I want to boost the economy at the expense of controlling the virus. That’s not my moral compass.

If it were up to our Dear Leader Trump, we’d prioritize the economy over combatting the virus. Therefore, we should, we must, do just the opposite. I’m following the advice of my governor, Andrew Cuomo. I’m doing my part by staying home.

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