The mother of all blessings

I got to live my life before the shit hit the fan.

"Interesting times"

16 pages of obits in Sunday's Boston Globe

Hint, hint

There aren't many women world leaders, but somehow they're leading the coronavirus fight

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Good news

TOTANIC BLUES has a home IF the theater company survives the pandemic. Generous praise from a voice that matters to me.

An A for chyron writing

Nails it: I warned of Trump’s attack on science. But I never predicted the horror that lay ahead by Ariel Dorfman

These critiques of his behavior, however valid, should not let us lose sight of something more fundamental that is going on. Today’s chaotic and bumbling response to this emergency is no accident, but deeply rooted and systemic, the direct result of a pattern of callow benightedness that verges on the criminal and that goes back to the very start of Trump’s regime, embedded in the very recalcitrant anti-intellectual DNA of this president and his followers.

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An old story. Further reading:

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter

The Age of American Unreason in a Culture of Lies by Susan Jacoby

Ahead of the curve

Over 20 years ago I was teaching an online screenwriting class for Writers on the Net, soon duplicated for college credit at Eastern Oregon University, there because every Portland area college had reservations about teaching online. Today the virus is making online education the norm. Told ya! oh so long ago.

Before arthritis

This is the moment that contempt for science comes home to roost by Robert Harrington

Without saying so out loud, because they know how ridiculous it would sound if they did, Trump supporters, particularly those among them who are evangelical, fundamentalist Christians, hold science in contempt. Our current crisis provides a microcosm of how quickly that contempt can turn deadly. When science spoke they should have listened. They should stop treating science like an embarrassing but clever relation they occasionally invite to dinner. Science ought to be the first thing they turn to for answers, not the last.

Read the article. 

Sailors cheer Navy captain fired for COVID-19 warning as he leaves ship

This story hit home because it reminded me of my dad.

He had lied about his age to join the Navy and escape working in a paper mill. As a teenager he saw pre-communist China's poverty and once told me, If I were Chinese, I'd be a Communist.

After the war he reupped to go for 30. He was captain of a supply ship serving Guam and nearby islands. One day he and his crew rescued natives from a burning ship. He was a local hero.

However, the Navy had a different view. He had put his (white) men at risk to rescue mere (brown) natives. Dad was reprimanded. That was the last straw for him and with 22 years in, he bagged a Navy career.

What would my life have been like if he had stayed for 30? I wouldn't have grown up in Pasadena, for one.

Read the story

Dark justice

So we elect an incompetent president and this is what happens. To quote the ending of one of my plays, 'What the people expect they get. What they get they deserve. Always."

Reaping what you sow and all that. 

Well, I listen to a lot of favorite cool jazz and remember moments of human accomplishment. In a zero sum universe, definitely time to wallow in the positive.

A good time to be retired!