Month: April 2020

Opening up a state that doesn’t want to open…yet

I am sure that you’ve heard the news. Brian Kemp, the governor of the great state of Georgia, one of the last to call for a statewide stay at home order, is now one of the very first to open up selected businesses to operation. And his selection is bizarre and telling. Specifically identified in his order: Massage and tattoo parlors, hair and nail salons, bowling alleys, and, starting Monday, movie theaters and restaurants. I can’t tell you how happy I am. I’ve been dying to get a tattoo, a haircut, polished nails and my muscles rubbed into jello. Actually, I wouldn’t mind a massage, but I don’t see the reward good enough for the risk right now. 

You would expect that the governor would confer with his very own handpicked task force of medical, governmental and civic leaders to get feedback on his plan, listen to their insights into the readiness for opening of businesses across the state and set target dates for such. 

He did not do that. He caught mayors from Atlanta to Savannah to Albany by surprise. His lack of communication shows that he determined his best path forward was to do what he wanted to do was to announce first, confer later. It was a surprise attack. That way cleared the way so that no other opinion or person could thwart his plan to move ahead. 

His plan does not adhere to the federal guidelines which call for a demonstrated two week decline in the rates of infection proven by abundant testing. The head of GA’s Department of Public Health, Kathleen Toomey, suggests that data will show a two week of continuing decline in our state’s case rate of infection by the end of the month. She’s reading data tea leaves projecting the future, not proving the present. And that was good enough for Kemp. 

The guidelines also call for a show of readiness to conduct proper testing of the citizenry to stay on top of the virus’s movement. As of Sunday, GA ranked 42nd in the number of test administered per capita. Forty-second!! It more than begs the question: How can we possibly know how we are doing? 

Certainly, opening restaurants affects a lot of people who have been out of work. We love to eat out. The question is, are you going to rush out to eat right now just because the governor has allowed them to open? He’s essentially put it in the businesses’ hands to determine if they are safe enough and if their workers are trained in safety measures and disciplined in their adhering to them. And, interestingly, many restaurateurs have come out and said they are NOT ready to open. They will have to invest in safety gear, training of staff to new procedures and cutting back on how many people they can serve.

I question how many people those targeted businesses really put back to work? And are those the key businesses that fuel GA’s economy? I tried Googling the tattoo business to see how many parlors there are, how many they employ and how many customers they turn a week but I have not found that info yet.  

Yet again, Governor Kemp makes national headlines for Georgia, the kind that continue to cement the backwardness, shortsightedness and generally dumb acts of governing that already pop into most of Americans’ minds when thinking of Georgia. First in the worst of things like health and healthcare. Among the last in the state rankings for important needs like Education…and, now, testing for COVID-19. 

The AJC wrote an editorial to this end titled, “To Gov. Kemp: Don’t add to risk.” Insightful. 

And, Mike Luckovich, the paper’s editorial cartoonist hit the nail on the head with his characterization of the snake from the “Don’t tread on me” flag now on respirator. Freedom at all costs can cost us freedom.

Lessons learned from abroad

A report in ProPublica, a not-for-profit dedicated to investigative journalism, published this piece on what the US Governors can learn from other countries. It interviewed experts and frontline officials from Italy, Germany, Spain, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea. While they differ on the details, their views formed a startlingly united consensus of what’s needed. The number one and two items on their list:. 

• Massive, ongoing testing to detect where the disease is spreading
• a real-time ability to trace contacts of those infected and isolate them

Not everything is bad news

This very interesting hack: One very positive outcome of this is how local whiskey distillers have turned to producing hand sanitizer. After all, one thing they do have on hand is alcohol. With bars and restaurants closed, so has a lot of consumption. Old Fourth Distillery (we buy their gin) is making and bottling the sanitizers at its own expense and giving to the homeless in Atlanta. 

Masked up and anonymous

We don’t get out much, but when we do, we go to our local butcher. The good news is that it has always been a very personal and low traffic shop. Three customers at one time was almost unheard of. In today’s precautionary time, we felt comfortable that it wouldn’t be crowded and certainly, as a food processing spot, it has always been as clean as a whistle. (Which is a weird saying now that I think about it. Since you blow through it. Hmmm.)

The guys at Heywoods Provisions know Julie by name. They know me by Julie’s name too. I am the quiet guy on the standby while Julie does the ordering. Then I do the carrying to the car. 

Last week the new info on wearing masks came out with the advice now being…wear the mask if you have one. You’re doing it for everyone else in the room. When it came time to hit the butcher shop, and with the new mask recommendation in place, Julie and I flipped a coin for who would go in. I won.

I put on the N95 mask from a packet that I bought last year for yard work and in I went. “Hello, sir,” said Kurt, being polite but with more formality than the normal familiarity. In other words, all masked up, he didn’t put my eyes to the face. Same with Patrick. I know these guys. Call them by name. Generally, they know me, if by greeting me with “How’s Miss Julie doing,” familiarity if I go there alone. 

My point is this. Faces matter in the world. And on this day, I was as good as anonymous. Kind of sad, the humanity of it all. 

Stay safe. Stay well. Stay out of tattoo, massage and beauty parlors, or anything that has “parlor” in its name. Keep reading the titles of the books that appear on the bookshelves behind the people on the news as they report from home. It’s fun. I will miss that when this is over.

OMG Breaking News last night: Trump asked Kemp to hold off opening up Georgia!! Kemp holds firm.

Tequila Friday, April 17, 2020

Ain’t it funny how an old broken bottle,

Looks just like a diamond ring.

And it’s far, far from me. John Prine

It’s Tequila Friday all over again! Thank goodness for that. So, today is a potpourri blending of topics for you to chew on starting with…

What I’ve found in this lost year…so far. 

I’ve found time. Time to listen more. Time to read more. Time to think, consider, reflect and share. 

I have been retired for over a year and you’d think I would have found plenty of time to do those things, but, let me tell you, we’ve been so busy being retired I still couldn’t find, couldn’t make time for those things because of all the other things that we were doing. The biggest consumption of time, energy and money was travel and the virus put an end to that and almost everything else that we had going. The slowdown gave me the inspiration to dig in.

I’ve found my pen and a reason to put it to use. I do hope that my writing has found you. Somewhere, wherever you are. And that you’ve been finding more of yourself in the meantime. I’ve seen your posts on Facebook and Instagram sharing of your experience. So far I’m seeing just how resilient you are and what we can all do together by staying apart.

My sister-in-law loves to hike. She lost her favorite hiking trail when so many new folks looking to get out of their homes hit her favorite trail. It was too close for comfort. So, she did some quick research and found new trails nearby that were empty. It’s brought a new perspective to her hikes. 

Let me know what you’re finding…about you, your family, friends, the country and the world. 

In losing the great John Prine, I’ve found myself lost in his work, his life and all the many tributes paid to them both. My friend Brad said that it is amazing that we had him as long as we did with all of the health issues he had struggled through. And he’s right. We should be happy about that. Happy to have his final album, “Tree of Forgiveness.” 

Zoom – Surprise! 

Just like you, I’ve found Zoom. Until a few weeks ago I had never heard of Zoom. We were pulling together a video chat with our son, Clark, and daughter, Blair and their partners, Sarah and Rob. Blair volunteered to schedule a Zoom meeting, saying that they used it for work. Ever since then, you can’t get out of the way of Zoom. When I saw this story pop in my daily newsfeed I had to check it out. 

This is a great article by Bloomberg News on the video platform, from who started the company, his and its history and mission and the surprise explosion of use rate during the Stay at Home order. If you’ve heard about the security issues and hacking, stalking and malware attacks, this explains where simplicity confronts security. 

Two firsts: Riding in a Saturn and hearing the word, “internet.” 

This article on How the internet started popped up…in the newspaper. The real printed paper to which we still subscribe. I found the web version for the link for you. It’s well worth the read about the guy who actually was involved in the very beginnings, the part that the Bell Telephone folks played and then didn’t play, and his work for the Pentagon to launch it. 

The read reminded me of the first time that I heard the word, “internet.” I was riding in the back seat of a Saturn in Pittsburgh. Why do I remember? Well, let’s just say that it’s the confluence of something new and something else that was so new at the time that it was mostly not known, nor could you Google it because it predated Google. 

The “new,” was the Saturn my friend had just bought. GM had just launched the Saturn brand. It was once billed as “a different kind of car company.” So, it was a big deal. My TV station’s research director was the first person that I knew to own one and this was my first ride. He drove our sales director and me to a luncheon downtown when he dropped the word “internet” into our conversation. Being in the back seat where it can be difficult to hear and understand the driver, I had to ask him to repeat that word: inter-what? “Internet,” he said. I repeated the word to confirm that I was saying it correctly, it sounded so foreign. I asked him what it was, as in, “What IS the internet?” He was a PhD in something like statistics and was pretty ahead of most of us. I remember him explaining how universities were linking together for the purposes of sharing research over communication lines that were not connected to phone lines. He said that  many were forecasting the day we would all be connected. I asked, “Connected to what?” “Everything. Each other. To books and history,” he answered as we arrived at lunch.    

At that time he turned out to be the connection that readied and opened me to what would become the future in our business, and in our lives.  

Imagine how this worldwide viral infection would be without the internet. 

For the time being we’re seeing all of the in-home shots of news reporters/anchors and all of the people that they are interviewing, all in their homes. Most are positioning themselves with bookshelves behind them. Others, their kitchen, others just the ceiling with phone or computer screen below them and aiming up. That, that makes me scream “Look at what you’re doing! It is not, not, not flattering to you or anybody. 

If it’s their bookshelves behind them I find myself trying to read the titles of the books in their library and cross-reference with the topic and experience they are bringing to the report. 

If they’re in their kitchen, I’m checking on how it is designed. In other words, I’m surfing how they live by what they show and what it says about who they are, how well off they are based.  

I’m not saying that I’m really proud about this but I cannot help myself. Can you?

A couple of notes:

I’m a native North Carolinian with family there so I pay attention to what is going on in my home state. I heard this sad news last night on The Rachel Maddow Show about a  Salisbury nursing home reporting  96 positive COVID19 residents according to the Salisbury Post. 

And, reports are coming from my dear state of Pennsylvania on the growing concern for Western PA becoming a major hotspot for deaths in nursing home facilities. This link is jaw dropping stat in the fight against the virus.

And finally, with tequila already poured and waiting…

If I wrote a book of fiction basing the main character on The Real Donald Trump, using the language that he uses, the statements that he makes whether riffing in his press conferences or his late night Tweets, the way he “runs” the show, his boorish bullying remarks about people and countries, all of that that appears to capture America, my high school Creative Writing teacher would write on my draft in red ink draft, “Overblown. Unbelievable. Too elementary. Just too much. YOU CAN DO BETTER! Try again.”  

Well, sometime it is very hard to handle the truth. And, yes, we can do better. Way better.

Stay safe. Stay away. Stay home. And stay tuned. 

Happy Tequila Friday!!

Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Tax Day…but not. The virus moved it.

“Everybody has it”

Those were the words a New York City radiologist told me based on reading chest scans over the last month. Virtually everyone has the virus. These were chest scans of people who came into the hospital for reasons other than the virus: car accidents, heart attacks, whatever normal non COVID-19 reasons that require a chest scan. In a way, this provides something like a random sample of folks with the very discernible footprint of COVID-19 in their lungs.

Also, the number of people dying at home every day in NYC went from averaging 20/day pre-COVID-19 to 200/day. Officials are not testing the dead for the virus so there is no tracking accountability for cause of death. 

Hospitals have suspended all efforts to establish cause of death because one doctor contracted COVID-19 after conducting an autopsy. We may never know the extent of the deaths caused by novel coronavirus. 

What’s next? Hopefully, nothing.

Back in the early 90s we finally capitulated and bought a phone answering machine after getting ribbed by friends who had called us but couldn’t leave a message. We figured we must be really missing a lot of calls. Then, we installed the machine – I still have the little cassette upon which our kids recorded the, “Hi! You’ve reached the Rileys. We can’t come to the phone right now, but leave a message and we’ll call you back. In the meantime, have a great day.” 

I can’t tell you how empty I felt when, low and behold, we hardly ever had a message waiting for us. Even when we returned home from a week away. Sometimes you’re better off just not knowing.

 I thought about that memory this morning as I looked at my Apple Watch first thing and it said what it has said every day for the last three weeks. “No more events today.” It really drove the emptiness home, especially thinking that this will go on for at least a few more weeks if not months. 

I swiped the watch face to the right until the graphic image of the globe came up. Pure and simple. The world and my time of day. Right now, nothing else matters. 

Tributes to John Prine

Here are some very good  tributes to John Prine

• This RS article details his final month and more.
• This one is written by a music critic who interviewed Prine but is more importantly about how Prine touched his life way before the interview 
• This tribute by his longtime guitar player Jason Wilbur
• Thoughts from Sturgill Simpson about John after his passing
• Great Grammy related session with John and Sturgill Simpson that I mentioned yesterday
• And this is a cool interview with John and Bill Murray who knew each other from their Chicago days.
• And this beautiful duet of John and Stephen Colbert performing “That’s the way the world goes round” in 2016. It was previously only released on the internet and not broadcast. 
• Rolling Stone review/picks of his top 25 songs. I really encourage you to listen to the videos and read the story that goes along with them. 

Now this late breaking news

President Trump puts his name on the Stimulus Checks, an unprecedented and unpresidential action. 

“John Prine 😢” 

That’s the text that popped up on my phone last night while Julie and I were watching tv. It came from our daughter Blair. It was a message I was expecting to get from somewhere all too soon. Too much time had passed without any good word from Prine’s wife, Fiona, posted on her Facebook page. And every day was another day on the ventilator. The last gasp hope when the lungs are failing from this disease. 

We paused the show and I went online and there it was everywhere. 

Julie and I hugged each other tight. And then hugged even tighter. Squeezing out the loss. 

I sent a text to my guitar playing buddy, Brad. He replied with a Prine line, saying he’s kissing “a pretty girl on the tilt-a-whirl.”

It was late, even in Retirementville. We gave up what we were watching. Julie went upstairs. I found my guitar, sat down and played the songs I’ve been playing for years without even thinking of order or what’s next. Just a stream that started with the first song of his that I learned from Brad, “A Good Time,” then “Angel From Montgomery,” “Sweet Revenge” and finally, “Fish & Whistle.” I sang ‘em soft when they were soft. Gruff when called for and revolting when necessary before ending on playful. 

We’ve got three lamps on timers downstairs cause we’re lazy and to make the place look lived in when we’re living somewhere else. One lamp after the other cut off during the last song. I finished in the dark. Apropos. A thematic occurrence. A cosmic cue.  

Goodnight John. Too soon to say goodbye but the lights are out and it’s time to go. 

That was last night.

This morning I woke up to John’s voice, singing to me in my head. And, I’m not making this up, the first words were the chorus to his song, “Please don’t bury me down in the cold cold ground. No, I’d rather have them cut me up and pass me all around. Throw my brain in a hurricane and the blind can have my eyes. And the deaf can have both of my ears if they don’t mind the size.” 

The chorus took me to the beginning of the story.  

“Woke up the morning, put on my slippers, walked in the kitchen and died. And oh what a feeling when my soul went through the ceiling and on up into heaven I did rise. When I got there they did say, John, it happened this a way, you slipped upon the floor and hit your head. And all the angels say, just before you passed away, these were the very last words that you said…” 

CHORUS…Please don’t bury me…

And so it goes. And so he’s gone. I never met him in person, but more than almost any writer out there, I knew much about him from his songs, from interviews and from a 2015 biography written by Eddie Huffman. It’s called, “John Prine In Spite of Himself,” a riff off of Prine’s song, “In Spite of Ourselves.” 

It reveals the birthplace of his quirkiness to fit just the right turn of a phrase, to recognize the mundane in all of our lives, while speaking to the meaning mundane occurrences add to our living. 

Sometimes spoofing who we are, who he is and what we all seem to do at one time or the other. Sometimes playfully underscoring his self-deprecating humor. And, often, he speaks to the sadness and loneliness of living through the people you meet in his stories, like Donald and Lydia, and, Sam Stone to name a few.  

That really nails the man that I know. He was the least driven man to “make it” but his ability to play, write and sing in such a touching, fun loving mixture of emotions grabbed the attention of Kris Kristofferson and Paul Anka and made him an overnight success. For years, he never even considered himself a songwriter. According to Huffman, “He just thought he was a MidWestern kid who loved to make up songs.” And make them up he did, but many of them were based on truth, things that had happened that he had heard about or seen for himself that turned into a lyric. Something like an accident he discovered on his way to shovel snow off the church house sidewalks in “Bruised Orange Chain of Sorrow”:

I heard sirens on the train track howl naked gettin’ nuder, An altar boy’s been hit by a local commuter, Just from walking with his back turned To the train that was coming so slow., 

Or, words of wisdom from a level-headed (topless) dancer in “Spanish Pipedream”: 

“Blow up your tv, throw away your paper, move to the country, build you a home. Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches, Try and find Jesus on your own.”

The amount of words and songs written about and for him over the last few weeks has been a virtual love-in. Social media has harbored and spread the love in the blink of an eye, originally to push that love somehow through to him on his dying bed and encourage him to get well, get up and get going. 

His passing amplified the amount in a quantum leap of intensity as people touched by him release their moments, connections and sadness. 

Clark shared Rolling Stone’s version of Prine’s top 25 songs. It is more than worth checking out. The article contains links to all 25 of the songs, a feat only made possible by the wired world in which we live. And through it all, I’m hearing more songs of his than I knew before. It opened up his catalogue in a bolt of lightning. My personal collection was frozen in time that stopped with “Bruised Orange” until last year when I picked up his latest, “The Tree of Forgiveness.” 

Hearing old songs off of un-bought albums for the first time is like hearing something new. And, I think that that will go far in getting through this. 

It goes without saying that John was an old soul as a 20 year old. But, at 73, he was far too young to leave us so soon. He had rekindled his writing muse with “Tree.” He was set to tour again. He had life ahead of him, until he didn’t. Until a pandemic unleashed and struck him at his most vulnerable. As I hear the numbers reported in each newscast of the infected and dead, I now know the owner of one of those numbers.

And to end with his own words off of “Summer’s End” on Tree of Forgiveness:

“Summer’s end came faster than we wanted. Come on home. Just come on home.” 

The most fitting way to close out is with this from his mortality romp on Tree:

“When I get to heaven, I’m gonna take that wristwatch off my arm. What are you gonna do with time/After you’ve bought the farm?

“I’m gonna have cocktail, vodka and ginger ale, gonna smoke a cigarette that’s nine miles long. I’m gonna kiss that pretty girl, on the tilt-a-whirl, yeah, this ole man is going to town.”

Monday April 6, 2020

April: Month of Coronavirus Birthdays, Hoorays and Horses’ Asses

April is the birthday month of Rileys. Eight birthdays in all of the family by a combination of three of the five kids (including me), my sister-in-law, second and third gen children of the family, and one significant other. It’s a month that requires a lot of card buying and mailing – we all live all over the place. 

It will be a month of birthdays upon which I hope we all look back with our healthy selves on our coronavirus birthday celebrations, held alone but alone together. 

Today is my big sister Marti’s day…all day. Here’s to you, Marti. We’re all singing “Happy Birthday” to you, followed by our traditional family “Hooray”  chant. If you’re not in the inner circle of Rileys, you most likely have not heard about this version of the “Hooray” chant.  

It’s an endearing chant born of a moment of serendipity during a Riley family gathering in Beech Mountain, NC for Labor Day 2008. While we were all together, Julie and I orchestrated a little cocktail hour celebration for our daughter’s recent college graduation. With champagne in hand, we all circled around on the deck, I made a short toast to Blair and then Dad started a rhythmic celebratory clap setting rhythm and we all quickly picked up on it not knowing exactly where it was going. Dad started chanting, “Hooray for Blair! Hooray for Blair!” in time with the claps. We picked up his queue and joined in unison as we hit the third “Hooray for Blair!” at which point Dad took an unexpected and startling turn to finish with, “Hooray for Blair, she’s a horse’s ass!” Bam.

We all gasped. What? Did Granddaddy just say that about Blair? Our sweet daughter? His granddaughter? A horse’s ass? We were all stunned and just looked at Dad. He seemed a little shocked himself but managed to downplay it all. He said, “What? You’ve never heard that before?” This was classic Homer, acting as if it was nothing. Then he held up his glass and said as sweet and grandfatherly as you could imagine. “Congratulations Blair. We’re very proud of you.” 

That started the tradition which has lasted 12 years because, true to Riley form, we don’t let things go. It also brings us into a closer circle of memory of Dad’s sense of humor and timing.

By now, everyone has borne the indignity of the coda to be counted a true Riley. We added that to all “Happy Birthday” songs within the family and, occasionally, with folks we trust would understand and even appreciate being included after the initial shock followed by explanation. 

So, “Hooray for Marti! Hooray for Marti! Hooray for Marti! She’s a horse’s ass!”

Happy birthday Big Sister. You…were the first born of the horse’s ass crowd. Enjoy.

As we continue to stay apart from each other in physical distance…Take care. Stay Safe. Call family and friends. And, continue to “Stay the F**k Home!

Friday, April 3, 2020

Finally, it’s Tequila Friday – even during the virus

We enjoy a longstanding ritual in our house of celebrating and memorialization of Finally it’s Friday with tequila. Good tequila. Sipping, savoring, lingering tequila. Not that you can’t enjoy tequila on any other day, but, what better way to set the tone that the weekend is here? And, for all of you folks reading this that are still working, yes, the weekends mean something even to retirees. It’s those two days when all our working friends are available to play with us. The approach of Friday still creates a building feeling of excitement.

Maintaining rituals that give you joy during this time of coronavirus is very important. So, whatever might bring you joy that Friday has, indeed, arrived, is cause for celebration. In this time of the virus, finding small reasons for celebration is really important to give us a bit of a release valve.  

We may not wait as late in the day to crack the bottle as per usual, but crack it we will.

Cheers to you and your joy. But first…

Finally, our Governor learned what the world knew for weeks, if not months. 

Governor Brian Kemp announced on Wednesday that he was going to sign an order on Thursday that would put the whole state of Georgia on a “Stay at Home” order on Friday because, well, he just learned in the last 24 hours (that would have been on Tuesday) that, uh, people who don’t even know that they have been infected with the virus can actually spread the virus. I mean, he’s in charge of the whole of Georgia. He has people to advise him. He could watch the news and see that all of the scientists in the land have been warning us about that fact. Not only could some person we don’t know have and spread the virus before they even knew they had it, but, actually, each of us could be infected, not know it, and spread it to people we know and love…and to people we’ll never know.

Sorry to go political on you here for a moment, but there’s a direct connection between Kemp and Trump. And Kemp fell in line with Trump’s position of denial as did many other Republican governors across America. That includes the dolt in Florida who allowed the beaches to remain open for Spring Break. Yes, the mayors and county managers played a role in that, but the governor could have used his power to protect the citizens of Florida, and those crazy citizens from out of state who flocked to what they turned into an incubation site. 

I am left without words to describe this stupidity. 

The Virus and Senior Citizens Communities

My mom lives in a pretty large retirement community in Durham that opened 20 years ago. They have been on lockdown for over a week, and had put social distancing practices into place prior to that. And, get this, they went into lockdown without one case of COVID-19! They chose a preemptive measure to protect these highly social and highly vulnerable charges. 

With the lockdown, no one passes through except for employees, all of whose temperatures are checked before they can pass. Even relatives are not admitted.

All deliveries are intercepted at the gate, taken in by the “command center,” then delivered to the residents. 

Almost all residents are on some kind of meal plan which generally is served in the dining hall. Now, residents order all meals a day in advance which are delivered to their home or apartment  the following day. Residents cannot gather or visit one another. Weekly housekeeping has ceased for fear that the cleaning crew could inadvertently spread the virus from home to home while they were, ironically, cleaning. 

This isn’t the Home’s first rodeo. They went into lockdown in 2010 when they were hit by the Norovirus. The management team has institutional knowledge built by experience and best practices. 

When news of the novel coronavirus began to service in January and February, the team started making preparations. I know because I personally spoke with the executive director. They had calls with the CDC and members of the Durham board of health along with advisors in the medical community at large. And what they learned was that this virus was coming and it was time to get ready.

They began ordering supplies in advance, reviewing with their associated medical staff from Duke University Hospital. They trained their staff, preparing them for the safety practices necessary. And, they prepared to handle the anxiety, fear and occasional anger and frustration from residents that could come with any kind of quarantining restrictions.  

Beginning in mid-March, the executive director began holding a closed circuit talk every day which is transcribed and emailed out to all residents. He has different members of his staff join him on days, sometimes to review the health side, sometimes reviewing the meals system, sometimes their director of physical fitness…you get the picture. And I receive it every day and forward to our family. 

The team has been working, adapting and improving their plan along the way.

This is how our federal and state government should have been acting on our behalf. Organizing, communicating and leading us through a planned response based on the best science supported by a prepared medical system and using military precision. 

Happily (so far) for my mother’s community, that has been the case. And, to date, not one case of coronavirus or the flu has been reported. Zero. Now that can and probably will change. But early action gives them more of a fighting chance for the most vulnerable among us.

Sadly for our country, that has not been the case. And the results have been fatal. Need I say more? 

The irony of this the Spring of Coronavirus

My goodness, the weather couldn’t be more beautiful. To quote my former boss, “It’s why we live in Atlanta.” Yes, every place enjoys Spring in its own way. I know that my friends in Pittsburgh do. They just have to wait another month or so for it to creep up there. Here, it just explodes. Sometimes, a little ahead of the last frost and we lose our pear and cherry blossoms, and maybe the japanese maples get stung and have to rebud. But not this year. The daffodils popped in late January and foretold a beautiful embarking into Spring. 

Beautiful until…something else blew in with it. Something else the likes of which we had never experienced, the results of which we’d never seen.

And now it’s upon us. But unlike the signs of Spring, we cannot see it. We have to avoid it “like the plague with an abundance of caution which means we are highly restricted in our outward enjoyment of the great weather. Parks are closed. Beltlines and trails are out of bounds.

If you have a yard, enjoy it to the max. Make it your private park. Julie and I have planted bulbs this year for the first time in a long time. We’re digging a little bit almost every day. Seeds are next. Flats of flowers for some of our beds are in the queue too. Only this year, we won’t be wandering through Pikes, our local garden shop. We’ll call in an order, have them put it together, and we’ll go pick it up. Not as much fun but the results are the same. Blooms that bring us joy and beauty. 

Update on playing games

Well, I told you a few updates ago that Julie and I had dusted off the Backgammon game, reviewed the rules, and now we’re playing the best out of three. Here’s the problem. It’s only taking two games each night for Julie to defeat me. She’s won four straight. Not that I’m counting. A couple have come down to her being just one roll ahead of me. Last night she emptied her board leaving me with one checker left right at the off rail. 

I’ve got to improve my strategy. 

Clark and Blair joined with their cousins, Peyton and Russell, are playing board games online. Clark is in Portland, Russell in Raleigh, Peyton in Knoxville and Blair in Atlanta. They are all big time board gamers. 

Playing video games online certainly isn’t new, but playing board games online is. They played 7 Wonders. 

Stay the f**k home!

If you are lonely, and many of us are. Do something about it. Call someone you haven’t talked with in far too long. Take advantage of the extra time you may have – since you don’t have to commute to work. The info on the myriad number of things that you can do with this time on our hands – which may feel like not doing anything but is actually doing the MOST IMPORTANT action we can each take. In the words of Samuel L. Jackson, “Stay the F**K home!” It’s hilariously serious. Here’s the full interview of Jimmy Kimmell with SLJ. The poem is six minutes in if you need to get to the meat of it. 

Stay healthy. Stay informed. Stay out of the parks! And stay the f**k home! 

Love ya

“I’ve been thinking lately ‘bout the people I meet. The car wash on the corner and the hole in the street. The way my ankles hurt with no shoes on my feet…and I wonder if I’m gonna see tomorrow.”   Fish & Whistle by J Prine, who else?

I can’t stop thinking and writing and talking about John Prine. So much so that I decided not to put this under the Coronavirus Diary string post. I’m breaking it out on its own. It deserves that. 

As far as John’s health and recovery go, I haven’t seen an update since his wife said that he was critical, but stable. I’m hoping that no news is good news. I’m hoping that he gets off the ventilator soon. 

After publishing yesterday’s post, I called my buddy Brad to make sure that he knew I was thinking and writing about him. He answered in that soft voice tinged with maybe some excitement that my name popped up on his phone. It had been a while since last we spoke. He’s working still at his stained glass shop in Winston-Salem, but in a reduced level. Only one other guy is working with him. They keep their distance. People stop in still to talk about making an order. He promised me that he “practices social distance. I suggested that he talk louder than his normal soft tones so they would stay at least six feet away. Otherwise, his voice draws people in too close for safety. 

One important thing that we got straightened out was that he had changed his email address and rarely checked the old one. Hence, he had not seen any of the new blog posts. 

That fixed, we moved on to talking about Prine, which took us to Seattle and our trip out there over 45 years ago. He said he didn’t remember turning me on to John’s music but he did remember how much we played Prine’s songs together. I said, that’s the way life is a lot of times. People share things with us, like dropping seeds. They don’t remember doing it or that it had that much influence on another. But those who receive the insight never forget from whom it came. At least when it made a difference in their lives that lived on. John Prine was one of the many seeds Brad dropped into my life that have grown and stayed with me ever since. And I’m grateful.

We talked about some of our other great memories, sort of polished them up again like restoring old photographs. We promised to keep in touch and then hung up. 

If anything positive has come out of John’s  illness, it’s the outpouring of love for him and his music. 

When I got up this morning and started brewing coffee, I opened up my phone and there was Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgewick, Kevin playing a mandolin and Kyra strumming a ukulele, singing “In Spite of Ourselves” for John. It’s very good. Give it a look.

Bob Umberger, another great friend dating back to junior high, wrote to me after yesterday’s post. Bob told me about a Facebook page devoted to John. Check it out. Right now, it’s post after post after post of ordinary folks playing their instruments, guitars mostly, and singing their favorite Prine song. It’s crazy. Even if the musicianship and vocals won’t launch their careers, it’s not about that. It’s actually in spite of that that they play. Alone with their guitars, fathers and sons, Husbands and wives, young and old, boys and girls, long hair, no hair, sitting in living rooms, garages, dens or kitchens, going on the record and playing for John, playing for his recovery. I spent the morning before Julie was up strumming through the posts.

Bob also told me a story about his John Prine sighting. Bob lives and works in Nashville.

On Christmas Eve (1:45 pm ish) John came into the liquor store where I work. (And hopefully be able to go back to if this rona will ever leave). He was buying for a party: bought handles of Smirnoff and Tito’s, a fifth of Capt Morgan and a six pack of Yazoo Gerst Amber Ale. I helped him find his items and chatted a bit. I told him I loved his work.

You never know when or where you’ll run into someone. Hopefully, John will make it through this and come visit Bob at the liquor store once again.

Searching for one thing often discovers something else.

Last night, I searched to find the photo I had saved of John to use in yesterday’s post. The search under “Prine” pulled up the photo plus a Word doc with “Prine” in the title dated April 15, 2005. I opened it up and there was a review I had written about a John Prine concert. Fifteen years ago! That might be the last time that we saw John here in Atlanta. I had forgotten that I had written it to be honest. And, back then, I didn’t have a blog. I guess I was just writing about stuff for myself and waiting for the interweb to get going so I could one day start self-publishing in a blog.

I don’t think anyone has ever read this piece except for Julie. I’m sure I shared it with her. After all, she’s a major part of it. Unfortunately, I didn’t mention the venue in the review nor the actual date of the concert. We can’t remember those details but it most certainly occurred around my birthday in April of 2005 Here it is…

John Prine In His Prime

This won’t be your regular review. It will be about the music and the musician, but we don’t love music solely because of those reasons. We love our music because of what it does to “us.” So, even though we talk about “them,” the musicians, we mostly talk about us; how their music affected (affects) us. When you engage in a discussion with others it boils down to how and when “you” discovered them – and this can get very competitive in the “who heard who first.” And this review will have a little comment on that. But I just felt like I needed to set the record straight on what kind of review this is. It’s personal.

I didn’t go to the concert intending to write about it so I didn’t observe it like a journalist, noting the song list in their actual order. Julie bought the tickets as a birthday gift, just like she did some 25 years ago.

I could not wait but I also couldn’t prepare. You know what I am talking about. You build your anticipation for a live concert by listening to the music of the artist that you have in your collection. It’s a weird ritual but one that many of us go through.

But in this case, I’m stuck in between technologies. When it comes to John Prine’s music, I’m stuck in the album world – not that there’s anything wrong with that except that I don’t have a working turntable hooked up. I have a turntable that works – bought it with my new fancy digital dolby system. But I don’t have the cabinet space for it. But that’s my issue. It all goes to say that, well, John Prine has been around much longer than digital audio formats. Okay, so I’ve established that I didn’t do my homework and refresh my memory of all of his songs and the lyrics etc. What I found out was that it really wasn’t necessary.

I think of Prine a lot living around Atlanta with its many four-way stops. One of his songs, “the accident” is about “a four-way stop dilemma. We all arrived at the same time. I yielded to the man to right of me and he yielded right back to mine. Well, the yield went around and around until Pamela finally tried. Just then the man in the light blue sedan hit Pamela’s passenger side.”

From the moment John stepped out on the stage and started plunking I was home. Home with the melodies and the lyrics which just flowed out of my head to the constant rhythm of his alternating bass note guitar picking style. My wife and I can not agree on the first song of the night, mostly because after a night of song after song the memory of the order fades. However, his last song, “Paradise,” was a beautiful rendition that brought Keb Mo back on stage for a duet.

 So, the first song, we think, was “Fish and Whistle” but we’re not sure. And it doesn’t matter the order. All that mattered was how the night and being in the same room with John, mattered to us. 

That’s right. It’s personal.

One more video: Stephen Colbert had John on the show in 2016. They sang a song together. “That’s the way that the world goes round.”