Not that I want to brood on untoward anniversaries, but this month marks two years since everything shut down, but good. I find with some amazement that I’ve been able to keep publishing this paper—and that its quality has been improving—over the Long Intermission. I think the word I’m looking for is “flabbergasted.” “Gobsmacked” is inadequate.
Seriously, how are you? (I listen to a somewhat chirpy Canadian broadcaster via NPR every day to accompany my one p.m. breakfast, and he asks each one of his guests. “How are you?” And some of them tell him exactly how they are.) If you’re like me, you’re still hunkered in your bunker, waiting for the “All Clear” to sound. Our Northeastern governors have given a tentative reprieve on mask mandates—at least until the Spring Variants parade down the runway to the applause of no one.
Having acquired nearly a full set of chronic ailments in my nearly sixty years of life, I haven’t been one of those hardy souls to go down the street licking doorknobs in defiance of the gods. I deeply envy anyone who can thumb their nose at the law of averages while riding a unicycle on a two-by-four across an alligator pit. I begin to feel I’ve used up all the dumb luck I was granted at birth.
It’s almost impossible to discuss the topic of Pandemic Death Avoidance without making at least fifty percent of the people mad at you.
