“It was the best of times. it was the worst of times. Hold on a minute…let’s scratch that first sentence and repeat the second.”---W.T. Killeen
Home Alone (Tuesday, March 10)
Well, isn’t this jolly? Ming the Merciless has hit us with his deadly Coronavirus Bomb and Flash Gordon is nowhere to be found. Even the Pope and his magic powers have been hamstrung as Italian virus-fighters scurry about covering the entire country with plywood. In the U.S., Washington state is awash in the slimy stuff and the capital of the disaster is Marty Jourard’s home town of Kirkland. Thomas Wolfe was right, Marty, you can’t go home again.
The major professional sports leagues are discussing playing their games in empty arenas. You’ll be able to hear the echo of the basketballs bouncing. Undoubtedly, there will eventually be lotteries with about two dozen winners, one to sit in each section of the arena. You’ll have to bring your own popcorn. Television ratings of the games will shoot up into the stratosphere because everyone will be home alone with nothing to do.
I have some experience with home alone. When I was in the second grade, I somehow contracted Rheumatic Fever and could only attend school the first and last months of the term. I flopped around the house in pajamas and a bathrobe and read a lot of comic books. Naturally, that was the year New England had one of its greatest snowfalls in history. I had to watch everyone having fun from my living room window. But at least I was the only one inconvenienced.
Remember when the milkman came to your house every morning and the doctor visited when you were sick? That will be 2020 in spades. You’ll get the milkman, the falafel man, the nacho man and the biscuits and gravy truck. The coffee man will visit three times a day, followed by the donut man. If anyone is prepared for this sort of thing, it’s Domino’s, which perfected home delivery and shunned in-store dining right from the beginning. With restaurants becoming taboo, the already fast-expanding food-truck industry will burst into a nova. Those who do go out in public will be spritzed with virus-killer on the way into and out of all buildings, like in the science-fiction movies.
Automobiles will be serviced by the beleaguered petro man, who will often arrive late, leading to an explosion in electric car sales. No one will fly anymore so all the planes will be relocated to a colorful area just outside Taos, New Mexico, where they will be converted into bizarro residences for the local off-the-grid housing project. Ocean liners will summarily be sunk and eventually morph into spectacular coral reefs. And the human race will see its carbon footprint reduced and the planet saved. “It’s an ill wind that bloweth no man good.” John Heywood said that. John knew what he was talking about.
Heartwarming (Thursday, March 12)
It’s eleven days since Bill’s Great Escape from the hospital and things are going well, although the medication requirements have jumped. Instead of one lonely prescription medication (carvedilol), I now have an additional THREE, which puts me somewhere near invalid country. Plavix, of course is a blood-thinner, so I guess I have fat blood. Lipitor is a statin, which cleans up those doughnut-juice-filled arteries. And Lisinopril reduces your blood pressure, although mine was pretty low to begin with. This morning my BP was 97/55, so I’ll probably be falling down a lot. Watch out if you see my Cadillac coming at you, I’ll probably be passed out in the driver’s seat. Apparently, all this is necessary to coddle my sulking heart into thinking I’ll behave better in the future. I thought the gym and a good diet would be enough but strange things happen when you near the land of Octogenaria.
Just to be on the safest side possible, I’ll be heading to the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio in early May for a confab with the superdocs. The CC is rated by just about everyone as the best cardio hospital in the country and is very progressive. As discussed in an earlier column, Cleveland is ahead of everyone on their heart regeneration research and is currently investigating the use of stem cells to beef up heart muscle. There is a Cleveland Clinic just outside Miami in Weston, but the Ohio version is vastly better. I was discussing the options with my old pal, Marcia Hansen, and she warned me if I didn’t hightail it up there soon, she’d be driving down from Atlanta to whup me with an ugly stick. So I’m going, Marcia, you can stop calling at three in the morning.
I have an echocardiogram scheduled for April 10 and a session with CVI’s Dr. Daniel Van Roy on the 20th. The echo will tell me whether or not there has been an abrupt halt to my ejection fraction decline and a trend upward. I think the latter will be the case since I now find it easier to walk at 4.4 mph on the gym treadmill. Running is still verboten but the ban is up in two weeks and that will be an even better test. It’s hard to keep a good man down…and even harder to keep me there. Though I suspect my glorious half-marathon career will die a-borning.
Well, he would be if there was such a person. Charles Henry Dow was a journalist from Connecticut, born in 1851, who started his career at 21 with the Springfield Daily Republican newspaper in Massachusetts. In 1879, Dow and a stalwart crew of tycoons, geologists, lawmakers and other muckety-mucks trained out to Colorado to publicize silver mining. During the trip, Dow learned a lot about finances and soon found work at the Kiernan Wall Street Financial News Bureau. When the boss asked him to add another reporter, Dow enlisted an old workmate, Edward David Jones, to join him. In 1882, the pair started their own agency, Dow, Jones & Company in the basement of a candy store. In 1883, the company began publishing an afternoon two-page summary of the day’s financial news called The Customers’ Afternoon Letter, which included the Dow Jones stock average, an index that included nine railroad issues, one steamship line and Western Union. Things took off a bit from there.
This year’s Dow Jones high-water mark was 29,551.42, the highest ever, set on February 12 of this year. One month later, it fell to 23,000+, the lowest in a million years, causing investors to run screaming into the streets, pulling out their hair and checking for specials in the noose departments. Nobody was on a skyscraper ledge yet, but they were looking out the windows. Comedian-President Donald Thump, suppressing apoplexy, tried to convince everyone the Democrats were spiking the wine but nobody bought it. He suggested keeping all the Coronavirus victims on their cruise boats so the numbers wouldn’t count against U.S. totals. “Thanks, folks, I’ll be here all week. Hey, try the veal!”
If there’s one thing we’ve learned in lo, these many years on Earth, it’s that the stock market will rebound and eventually rise higher than ever before. Neither rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night will stay this index from the swift completion of its appointed rounds. Wars may roil the Earth, plagues wipe out massive populations. Godzilla could stomp Manhattan flat, the Red Sox might leave Boston for Natchez, oil could rise up to fill all the swimming pools in Hollywood and the Dow Jones average would rise to new heights notwithstanding.
The game now and always is to jump the instant the tide turns, when the market is at its absolute lowest. The cleverest investors ignore the false bottoms, sniff the air like hunting dogs, then jump when the time is right. Every disaster has a silver lining, an opportune moment, and so does The Great Coronavirus Scare. When it arrives is for the wise guys to know and for you to find out.
The Sky Is Falling
In a mere two days since we started writing this column, massive changes have taken place on the world stage and in our own neighborhoods. Yesterday, the NCAA announced that its famed post-season basketball tourney, dubbed March Madness, will be held without fans. Shortly after that, the NBA suspended the professional basketball season until further notice. Although sports are unimportant to some, they are hugely significant to others, thus these announcements were stunners. We owe these two organizations some applause because what they have done is to finally wake up the multitudes who are trying to laugh the whole thing off. The actions of the two behemoths will lead to widespread cancellation of major events and perhaps save us from ourselves and our stubborn disinclination to give up a few of our favorite things. I am as guilty of this negligence as the next person. I would probably be at the Florida-Baylor softball game tomorrow night if fans were admitted and I will still go to the Ocala Master Gardeners Spring soiree on Saturday if it is held. The fact that noone in either Marion or Alachua counties has yet been discovered with the Coronavirus has probably influenced my behavior, but after Saturday I’m drawing the line, closing the gate and pulling down the shades.
Since several of you have asked, these are a few of the things I will be doing. Some of them have been widely recommended by health officials, others are my own personal whims and may be unnecessary. Call it good sense or label it paranoia, but here's the menu:
(1) When leaving the house for the suddenly scary outside world, I wear nitrile examination gloves, the type you see in health facilities. Mine are a fetching purple. The gloves come in small, medium and large and are not expensive. When I leave the gym, store or any other location I have visited, I take them off as soon as I walk out the door and dump them in a trash receptacle.
(2) I pay all minor bills with cash. If I don’t have the exact change, I let the recipient keep the overage. I accept no paper receipts. Everything is going one way, I am receiving nothing back but what I bought. Whatever that is will probably be sprayed with isopropyl alcohol or Lysol. If I get new cash from the bank or anywhere else, I spray that, even though the Marion County Health Department deems it unnecessary. I guess they never heard of dirty money.
(3) I keep my credit cards in a small, resealable Ziploc bag, together with a wetwipe. Though it’s advisable to use soap and water whenever possible, I keep a Purell bottle in the left side door of my car and another on my person. I’m doubling up on my regular purchases and making half as many trips to the stores.
(4) The gas station is a pit of negative possibilities. If you don’t have gloves, take whatever paper towels the place offers to hold the gas hose or the window cleaner. Use a station like Wawa, which accepts chip cards, if possible. If not, punch in your numbers on the pump with a pen.
(5) If you are not sitting with people you know at an event, move to a seat with no one on either side whenever possible. There should be plenty of empties.
And from Siobhan: add Hochu-ekki-to; Bu zhong yi qi tang, a known virus-killer, to your tea or coffee. Tea should be consumed throughout the day, always heated, since warm liquids are effective for all viruses.
Finally, drink as much water as possible and skip the ice. Gargle two or three times a day. A simple solution of salt in warm water will suffice. Liquids dispatch the virus from your mouth and throat down into your stomach, where it is attacked and killed by the Acid Monster.
As Phil Esterhaus was prone to advise us on Hill Street Blues, be careful out there. The Coronavirus is on the prowl and elderfolk are as cats to the coyote. We’ve got a sinking feeling we’re going to lose a couple of you, a tragedy since we need all the readers we can get. If you have any questions, call your doctor or the county health office. Hell, email us if you want. Godzilla is loose and he prefers not to take any prisoners. Close the door, they’re coming in the windows.
See you next week, right?
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
