Lambs to the Slaughter

I hate victims who respect their executioners.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Across America this weekend, fundamentalist clergymen are calling congregants to worship, despite the alarms sounded by scientists, while, inside the White House, pro-business advisors are calling the nation to "reopen" immediately.

Why do followers put credence in such advice?

Do they all harbor a death wish?

Three Cheers for Mom and Pop

Notice the pattern?

Most small businesses—those lucky enough to be deemed "essential"—are innovating.

Most big businesses, on the other hand, are shuttering for the pandemic; so, too, are most mid-size ones.

Employees of "mom and pop" companies are working; employees of large and mid-size companies are filing for unemployment.

We're seeing incarnate which business leaders value employees and customers over shareholders.

And we're seeing which leaders know how to pivot, and which merely talk about pivoting when it suits them.

Three cheers for mom and pop!

These are Days

In late July 1606—part way through a season that would soon premiere King Lear, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra—William Shakespeare was ordered by London's Privy Council to shut down his theater. 

The plague was in town.

The Privy Council was worried that audiences would be “pestered together in small romes" where "infeccion with the plague may rise and growe, to the great hynderaunce of the common wealth of this citty.”

Rather than lay off the troupe, Shakespeare urged his actors to flee hot-spot London for a tour of the provinces, where they could strut the stage while staying safe from the dreadful disease.

But country villages were sleepy places; and many of the days and weeks the actors spent in them were spent idly.

Shakespeare, however, chose to capitalize on the downtime, using it to write three new plays, as recounted by historian James Shapiro in The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606.

Thanks to the plague, 1606 was a very good year for the bard. 

Indeed, no other of his remaining life would be as fruitful a year.

And how about you?

What are you doing with your time?

These are days you'll remember. 

When May is rushing over you with desire
To be part of the miracles you see in every hour.

You'll know it's true that you are blessed and lucky. 

It's true that you are touched by something
That will grow and bloom in you.

— Natalie Merchant

5 Lessons I've Learned from “The Walking Dead”

For five seasons—until I began to turn zombie-like myself—The Walking Dead captured my inner teen’s imagination.

Little did I know the show’s many lessons would come in handy.

Five stand out from the crowd:

Wear gloves and a mask when outdoors. A bandoleer or an ammo belt can look quite stylish, too.

Keep your social distance. Particularly when passersby issue guttural sounds.

Gas up your vehicle. You’ll need it to escape. Besides, gas is under two bucks right now.

Don’t follow leaders. Especially those who’ve turned orange—the first sign they’re zombies!

No matter what, carry on. As the hero Rick Grimes said, “We won’t get weak. That’s not in us anymore. We’ll make it work.”

NOTE: If you or someone near is suffering right now, please forgive my stab at gallows humor. Stay well! And fear the walking dead.

Newark in the Grip

Before Salk's wondrous vaccine reached American schoolkids in the early 1960s, my parents worried about polio. 

A lot.

In the summers, it was everywhere.

Historian Richard Rhodes describes it thus:

"Polio was a plague. One day you had a headache and an hour later you were paralyzed. Parents waited fearfully every summer to see if it would strike. One case turned up and then another. The count began to climb. The city closed the swimming pools and we all stayed home, cooped indoors, shunning other children. Summer seemed like winter then."

The late Philip Roth vivified those days in his brief, heartbreaking 2010 novel Nemesis, winner of the Man Booker International Prize.

It's July 1944. Polio is raging. A playground director, Bucky Cantor, faces a dilemma: should he quit his job and flee for the safety of a kids' summer camp in the Poconos, or should he tough it out in "equatorial" Newark? 

In his inimitable way, Roth shows how an earnest boy comes to grips with history and loses out.

Nemesis is a book about an epidemic; and also about youth, family, decency, religion, sex, love, hope, death, despair and destiny.

In 2010, Roth told NPR host Terry Gross the book began as he brainstormed ideas for a topic:

"I began, as I sometimes do with a book, jotting down on a yellow legal pad all of the historical events that I've lived through that I've not dealt with in fiction. When I came to polio, it was a great revelation to me. I never thought of it before as a subject. And then I remembered how frightening it was and how deadly it was and I thought, 'OK, try to write a book about polio.'"

It's Roth's final novel. And one of his finest.