Back in the sixties, they called it a happening: Something supposedly unadvertised that attracts people in a clandestine but friendly way. The effect is a nice surprise and a way to spend moments otherwise wasted.
I was confronted with one on my daily walk Monday. I get my steps in on a street that's quiet and stately, without much foot traffic. There are lots of homes with front porches. On one of them were a trio of a violinist, a guitarist, and a singer. They were middle-aged or older, they were unobtrusive, and they were good.
The porch was off the street a distance, so it became something of a bandshell. The sound projected nicely. It felt comfortable, the kind of thing a neighborhood would scare up just because it was fun.
The day was excellent. By the time it had started--something before 5--the temperature had fallen below 70. There wasn't much of a breeze. It was a day for conversing on someone's porch or someone's front stoop, which families had spent plenty of time doing throughout the summer (as I saw whenever I walked).
News must have spread fast. There were easily more than a hundred people seated, mostly on lawn chairs, relatively near that porch. They were on both sides of Hackett Avenue, not far down from the business district of Downer Avenue. They sat lazily on both sidewalks, some actually in the street, almost daring anybody in a car to scoot through them. Many had masks, but since it was outside, many did not. Such is the confusion of the day.
We are starving for such entertainment, for such an opportunity to enjoy leisure time instead of huddling on our own porches or backyards. It's the safest thing to do, of course, but it's also drudgery. Yes, we can still just gather within ourselves one more time, one more day, until this scourge has passed. But it's still a challenge, still a haunting reminder of the danger that's out there. "A pandemic upends everything," writes Jill Lepore in The New Yorker, "including the relationship between the private and the public, the rich and the poor, the city and the country, and the outdoors and the indoors."
But this was such a nice day, such a nice opportunity, that it didn't surprise me that so many of the neighborhood patrons, free of charge, free from fast-talking vendors, decided to hedge the hazard, take a calculated risk, and feel like a community again, if only temporarily and artificially.
The music was folksy, easy to take. The group was the kind you'd see in coffee shops and during dinner time at open-air restaurants--not particularly slick and professional, but practiced and the kind of advanced amateurs that create a following. It was nice to see that they were still around, still wheeling out their wares, still playing for the sheer enjoyment of doing so.
It didn't have the same obnoxious, uber-independent feel as a bunch of bikers spending an entire weekend in Sturgis, South Dakota over the Fourth, and thus, apparently, giving each other an ongoing supply of 209 cases of Covid-19, from which one has died. But you could see it from there. You could see where a bunch of people could pretend that nothing was going to happen to them, that they would not only survive an entire weekend of exposure, why, the exposure was baloney, anyhow. Wasn't it?
I stopped for a song, being careful not to obscure any views or get too close to anyone. Everyone else seemed to be doing the same. Nobody coughed or, because there were no electric guitars, did they have to talk loudly. It's a shame, though. Whenever things like this happen, I sometimes take a minute and chat up someone who looks like they could stand a conversation. I knew better. So, it looked, did we all. Nothing personal, but I can't completely trust you. We lose the casual closeness in these situations. It was a limitation, But for the moment, acceptable, since something like this was so rare.
It continues to annoy me. This is yet another result of Covid-19, which could have, and should have, been under control by now. 45 and his vice are just breezing past it, promising better days ahead, while taking not the slightest bit of responsibility for it, making sure not to mention the massive numbers of dead and sick. It makes the Democrats look negative, when in fact they're the ones who, if allowed to take over, have a much better chance of improving livelihood for millions.
It's like the Republicans have burned down your house and now that the damage has been done, promise that they'll help you rebuild it better than ever. Give us a minute, we'll get there. Let's think about what happens after this, not about being in the middle of it. That's no fun. But in Congress, they're the ones who are halting the latest monetary outlay.
After driving the country into incredible debt again and again far before the virus hit, they're the ones who say they're so worried about being a debtor nation. The hypocrisy is incredible. Another way they've caved to the 45 mentality: When you're caught saying something outrageous, why, just hop on that wagon and keep right on going. Every so often, someone shows up on Fox News and, with something approximating a conscience, confirms what we all know. But that's rare.
Beyond that, I think I know why, on the East Side where the education level is high and there are far more Biden signs than those backing 45, there were some with masks and some without. People are getting tired. They're tired of being wary. They're tired of wearing masks. I have caught myself going outside maskless more often now, doh, running back in to get one.
In a way it makes sense, because first, science has caught up with some of this and the paranoia surrounding it has subsided; and second, the time of maximum, collective infection has been put farther and farther into the past, without much change about its status. We are kind of grudgingly and almost mindlessly slogging through all this. It's achieved a kind of consistency that dulls the mind. I wonder if prisoners of war have ever felt that way, that you can get used to anything so awful if it lasts long enough.
Many more of us than we prefer to admit want this thing to be over right now so badly that we want to wish it to be so, suspend reality and act as if it is so. People on Hackett Avenue sat, in places, in little conclaves of two and three. I'm sure they figured that if none of them had the virus, then they couldn't get it, could they? Well, if they remained in those closed-up little fortresses, then I guess they couldn't. I guess. If, in fact, nobody coughed, sneezed or talked loudly amongst each other, masks or no masks. It's kind of daring, but not too daring.
That's dangerous, of course, since the total number of infections and/or deaths hasn't really slowed down much, and continues to bounce up and down depending on what state you happen to be in. Though the endless alertness people have had to adapt to this has worn people out, it's still all-Covid, all the time. If wishful thinking takes over, it will be a long and awful winter ahead. You can still get very sick from this, and you can still die. Many of those people looked old enough to be in the most volatile group.
Winter is coming to Wisconsin, but shuttering ourselves up for another few months feels more daunting now. We have wandered outward, testing the limits of freedom; reopening, once it's happened, is far more difficult to reverse. But you can still get others sick no less than you could back in March. The numbers are still there. The numbers are still growing. Nobody's indestructible.
45 has taken to promise that a vaccine will be available by the last week in October. Why he would be so stupid to tell people that, when it's still a good bet there won't be one, is beyond me besides trying to fool them just long enough to borrow their loyalty just long enough. It wouldn't be beyond him to announce that he's managed to buy tens of millions of doses from the Russians, since Putin claims to have found a vaccine (except funny, reports of that have fallen away). See, I told you it made sense to make friends with him.
I hope people remember all the dead--which will surpass 200,000 by the election--and all the sick, which has passed 6,000,000 and will probably hit seven. That's been done on his watch. Absolutely the worst president we've ever had, under the worst circumstances.
Maybe this time we can get rid of him, at least get him out of the most dangerous place for an irresponsible, lying lout to be. That would be quite a happening, too, wouldn't it? I could really get into something like that, as we used to say.
In the meantime, be well. Stay healthy, Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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