Jack London's Nightmare

All man's toil upon the planet was just so much foam. 

— Jack London

In Seattle's Left Bank Books a few years ago, I bought a novel by one of my favorite writers, the left-leaning nihilist and dog-loving Jack London. I took my copy of The Scarlet Plague around the corner and into the Pike Place Starbucks, where I sat on a stool and read the whole of the 60-page book.

First published in 1912, The Scarlet Plague, focusing as it does on man's craven response to pandemic, remains one of modern literature's finest examples of post-apocalyptic storytelling.

Set in a ruined California, the tale takes place 60 years after the 2013 outbreak the "Red Death," a mysterious virus that depopulates the world. 

Jim Smith, an eye-witness to the pandemic, recounts to his grandsons how people were gripped by ancestral fear.

"We were sure that the bacteriologists would find a way to overcome this new germ, just as they had overcome other germs in the past,” he tells them. But panic set in when everyone realized “the astonishing quickness with which this germ destroyed human beings, and the fact that it inevitably killed any human body it entered."

Smith describes how the virus infects:

“The heart began to beat faster and the heat of the body to increase. Then came the scarlet rash, spreading like wildfire over the face and body. Most persons never noticed the increase in heat and heart-beat, and the first they knew was when the scarlet rash came out. Usually, they had convulsions at the time of the appearance of the rash. But these convulsions did not last long and were not very severe. The heels became numb first, then the legs, and hips, and when the numbness reached as high as his heart he died.”

Victims' corpses rot instantly, spewing the virus into the air. Pandemonium erupts and terrified citizens flee for safety:

“Imagine, my grandsons, people, thicker than the salmon-run you have seen on the Sacramento river, pouring out of the cities by millions, madly over the country, in vain attempt to escape the ubiquitous death. You see, they carried the germs with them. Even the airships of the rich, fleeing for mountain and desert fastnesses, carried the germs.”

Jim himself panics:

“I caught up my handbag and fled. The sights in the streets were terrible. One stumbled on bodies everywhere. Some were not yet dead. And even as you looked, you saw men sink down with the death fastened upon them. There were numerous fires burning in Berkeley, while Oakland and San Francisco were apparently being swept by vast conflagrations. The smoke of the burning filled the heavens, so that the midday was as a gloomy twilight, and, in the shifts of wind, sometimes the sun shone through dimly, a dull red orb. Truly, my grandsons, it was like the last days of the end of the world."

While you're self-quarantined, mix yourself a Bloody Mary and read The Scarlet Plague.

You'll also enjoy the CDC's review of Jack London's remarkable—and nightmarish—story.

Stay well!

Song and Dance

Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass;
it’s about learning to dance in the rain.

― Vivian Greene

When students at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts demanded tuition refunds this week, insisting online classes aren't satisfactory, Dean Allyson Green responded by sending them a video of herself dancing.

According to The New York Post, the students claimed classes hosted on Zoom "are not worth the school’s $58,000-a-year tuition."

Green notified students by email they would not receive a refund, attaching the curious video.

She told The Post, "What I meant to demonstrate is my certainty that even with the unprecedented hardships of social distancing and remotely-held classes, it is still possible for the Tisch community to make art together."

Encore

Yippee! I've sold two paintings. 

And launched an "encore" career.

I'm heartened as well to learn "it takes only a few people to make a career," according to New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz.

It takes as few people as 12:

• One dealer who pushes your work and "who’ll be honest with you about your crappy or great art."
  

• Six collectors. "Even if you have only six collectors, that’s enough for you to make enough money to have enough time to make your work."
  
  
• Three critics "who seem to get what you’re doing."
  
  
• Two curators "who would put you in shows from time to time."

"Surely your crappy art can fake out 12 stupid people," Saltz says. "I’ve seen it done with only three or four supporters. I’ve seen it done with one!"

It doesn't take a village to succeed.

At Jasper Johns' very first show, the Museum of Modern Art bought three of his works. The artist also landed on the cover of ARTnews.

Elizabeth Peyton’s breakthrough show took place in an empty room in the Chelsea Hotel, where visitors could see 21 of her charcoal-and-ink drawings. 

"According to the hotel ledger, only 38 people saw the show after the opening,'" Saltz says.

"It doesn’t take much."

Today Peyton's works sell for a million dollars. 

Painting by Bob James

Silent Killers

Al Wesch (left) was one of 25,000 soldiers stationed at Camp Dix in 1918.

While serving his country during World War I, my grandfather was deployed to Manhattan from nearby Camp Dix, New Jersey, to aid in removing the bodies of Spanish flu victims from the city's hospitals.

Unbeknown to his commander, Major General Hugh Scott, the men of Camp Dix were spreading the deadly disease to New Yorkers.

Between 1918 and 1919, the Spanish flu killed 675,000 Americans. 

Soldiers like my grandfather were the first to come down with the disease, and the chief carriers of the Spanish flu nationwide.

Soldiers at Camp Dix gargle with salt water to prevent Spanish flu, September 1918. Find more photos here.

Cracks

After (in her words) "crossing the line" and offending a respected colleague and Facebook friend, I have resolved, for civility's sake, to stop posting jabs at Trump.

After the president's lazy and inept response to Covid-19, I think my posts are spooking even the most unremitting Republicans among my followers.

Given I've been publishing―with impunity―"never Trump" sarcasms for over three years, my Republican colleague's reaction comes suddenly.

I'm spotting visible cracks in Republicans' denial.

About time.

Republicans' denial to date has been a colossal wall against reality.

It has resembled less your garden-variety credulity than a desperate avoidance of inconvenient truths―a brush-off to the problems of greed, inequity, hate, ignorance, disease and global warming.

But the wall's about to come tumbling down.

The Secret to a Longer Life

The secret to so many artists living so long is that every painting is a new adventure. They're always looking ahead to something new and exciting.

― Norman Rockwell

New research published in BMJ shows that patrons of the arts live longer.

Daisy Fancourt and Andrew Steptoe, both behavioral scientists in the UK, tracked 6,700 seniors (average age 66) for 14 years. 

They found that seniors who visit art museums, galleries and exhibitions, or attend plays, concerts or operas at least once a year have a 14% lower risk of dying than seniors who don't; and that seniors who engage with the arts more frequently―every few months or more―have a 31% lower risk of dying.

Their findings don't depend on race, ethnicity, gender, wealth, health, education, mobility or other activities, such as exercise, club membership, hobbies and church-going.

The researchers concluded that the arts might have a "protective association" with longevity.

"This association might be partly explained by differences in cognition, mental health, and physical activity among those who do and do not engage in the arts, but remains even when the model is adjusted for these factors (italics mine)."

Simply put, the arts protect you from dying.

Painting by Bob James

Manual Therapy

It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters. 

— Epictetus

Nothing separates the cowardly and strong like a good pandemic.

In a pinch like today's pinch, we all want to be pillars of strength—to embody Ernest Hemingway's famous formula, "courage is grace under pressure." 

But it takes a strong foundation.

While you're home—if you're home—you can work on your foundation by reading a manual by the first century Stoic Epictetus.

It's aptly titled Manual.

Manual is a short book that's had a long life among resilient people.

And deservedly so. 

Its author was a mensch.

The son of a slave, Epictetus understood suffering. His sadistic master once purposely broke his leg, leaving him crippled for the rest of his life. When he became a freedman in his late teens, he taught philosophy on street corners in Rome, but was banished for his troubles.

Undaunted, Epictetus moved to Greece, where he founded a school that would eventually attract students from all corners of the empire. 

One of those students took shorthand notes during Epictetus' lectures—notes that became Manual.

Epictetus welcomed adversity as training for moments like ours, when courage and resilience are tested. His philosophy gave students the wisdom to "keep calm and carry on" throughout plagues, wars, fires and earthquakes. 

It also taught them to remember we're all interconnected.

It's no coincidence that when the Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer Xiaomi shipped face masks to Italy last week, all the crates were stamped with a Stoic saying:

We are waves of the same sea, leaves of the same tree, flowers of the same garden.

Shad Bake

Hubris and overconfidence are always dangerous things.

— Erik Larson

It was baked in from the beginning: Trump's hubris could only cause the president to bungle his first "crisis."

History teems with popinjays like him.

One was the Confederate George Pickett, a man many contemporaries described as an "arrogant child."

During the Battle of Five Forks (April 1, 1865), Pickett—yes, the same general who led the futile charge at Gettysburg—was so confident he could repel a Federal attack, he accepted a fellow commander's invitation to attend a shad bake behind the lines, leaving his troops without their leader.

Shad were a fish local to Virginia's rivers, and shad bakes a tasty rite of spring for Virginia boys like Pickett.

Unfortunately, as it turned out, Pickett went off to the picnic without telling anyone he was leaving, where he could be found, or who should command in his absence.

A Federal attack indeed came, and Pickett's leaderless troops were overwhelmed.

His rout resulted in the surrender of the whole Confederate army at Appomattox eight days later.

NOTE: Remember to wash your hands!