A former restaurant on West State Street has seen some recent activity, with lights on and new plywood across the doors, fueling speculation that it will reopen as an outlet shoe store or another restaurant.
In the last week or so, that plywood has either come loose or been moved to the side, leaving the building open with no cars or construction vehicles in the parking lot.
I often jog in the area, and it’s tempting to detour a few steps and poke my head inside. A looky-loo, that’s me.
I haven’t done it, yet. It would be my luck to fall into some unseen hole, twist my ankle or maybe end up on security footage and be embarrassed.
The fear of being shot has never entered into my calculations. That’s an example of white privilege, writ large.
Ask a person who is brown or black why they might peek into a vacant building and you may receive another reason — fear of interactions with other citizens and/or law enforcement that could escalate to the point of arrest or even death.
It happened to Ahmaud Arbery in February. The Georgia man had gone inside a house under construction along his regular jogging route. Later, he was shot to death after three men confronted him and attempted to make a citizen’s arrest, which Arbery resisted.
And if you’re saying, well, he shouldn’t have resisted, ask yourself what you would do if three strangers attempted to take you into “custody” when you were out for a jog or a walk. Under what authority do they have that right? Where are they taking you? Who will know you are gone?
What these three fine, upstanding paragons of justice and virtue could have done, if they felt they had to do anything at all because they were convinced Arbery was a nefarious thief, was to follow him from a safe distance, note his address, and phone the police with their suspicions.
Instead, they were so assured their cause was righteous and so secure in their white privilege that they filmed their interaction and almost got away with a “resisting arrest” narrative before national and international outrage over the footage, released months later by one of the assailants, forced or shamed authorities into taking another look.
The New York Times did a follow up examining the phenomenon of “running while black,” talking with runners of color who contend with the reality of misunderstandings and suspicion every time they lace up their shoes.
Me, I just stretch a little and run. Again, white privilege.
We see the excruciating reality of racial disparities again and again, but often only when it is being recorded by a private citizen. Take the incident in New York City’s Central Park, where a person of color asked Amy Cooper, who is white, to leash her dog. She threatened to call police and say, “There’s an African-American man threatening my life.” (Many commentators appeared more concerned that she was choking her pet during the exchange, recorded by the man, than that she was conniving to use race to get authorities to come running.)
Or, far more tragically, the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis earlier this week after an officer kneeled on his throat while three others stood watching. Floyd said “I can’t breathe” 12 times. All four officers were fired, but a man lost his life, all over an allegedly counterfeit $20 bill.
Zeba Blay, writing about the Amy Cooper incident for the Huffington Post, notes there is “a level of self-examination and self-awareness that white people are not doing that they must do. There’s something that white people, even the ones who believe that they hold no biases, that they wield no power, must admit to themselves and begin to unpack. They are complicit — and even participatory — in the system of white supremacy. Individual white people may not believe they are, but their ability to tap into that system is always within reach.”
Conclusions like these are hard for Euro-Americans to swallow, similar to how hard it is to accept being labeled “Euro-American” and live with a hyphenated existence that acknowledges whiteness is not the default setting in this nation.
If that hyphen rankles, maybe that’s a starting point: a realization that every day one can spend without considering race is a luxury that more than a quarter of this nation does not have.
This reality affects everything — from important considerations about where people live and work and how they interact with neighbors, to more mundane things, like satisfying their curiosity with a quick peek at a building under construction.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Friday, May 29, 2020
Looking at Memorial Day hang-ups
Some people get too uptight about Memorial Day.
Anybody who’s ever found themselves in a debate over who or what the day is intended to memorialize recognizes this.
Purists point out that the day is intended to honor “the men and women who died while in military service,” according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Veterans Day, a more inclusive day in November, is meant to spotlight all those who have served in the U.S. military.
So significant overlap exists between the two holidays, but they aren’t identical. Technically, it would be incorrect to honor on Memorial Day a soldier who passed decades after serving in World War II because he did not die in active service, but correct to honor that same person’s memory on Veterans Day.
But, really, who cares?
And I don’t mean that in a dismissive way toward the great men and women who have given so much to this country through their active participation in the military. Of course I care about them, and I value their commitments and sacrifices, as should every American.
What I mean is, who cares if we cast a wider circle of compassion on Memorial Day than was originally intended?
People who use this weekend in part to decorate graves of family members who never served in the military aren’t “wrong” to do so. They aren’t devaluing in any way the memories of any veterans, living or dead.
And if somebody wants to buy any active-duty soldiers breakfast on Monday, or pay for their groceries, or just nod their head and say “thank you,” there’s nothing wrong with that, either.
They shouldn’t feel they have to wait until Nov. 11, which is the “proper” day to thank living vets.
After all, the meaning of Memorial Day has expanded and changed over the years. It was originally Decoration Day, meant to mark the ultimate sacrifices of Civil War soldiers. And only Union soldiers, at that.
The founder of the day is somewhat in dispute. A commonly floated name is John Alexander Logan, a Union officer who later led a veterans group dedicated to just such recognition. He set May 30, 1868, as the date to decorate soldiers’ graves, according to historian John P. Blair, writing for the National Archives History Office.
But Blair notes other names, as well, including Martha G. Kimball, who wrote to Logan about the custom of grave decoration; Henry Carter Welles and John Boyce Murray, a druggist and county clear, respectively, who pushed for a similar day in New York; and the Ladies Memorial Association in Columbus, Georgia, which pressed for properl burials of Confederate soldiers.
Over the years, as the immediacy of the Civil War receded in Americans’ memories, the annual commemoration grew to include dead soldiers from other American wars. (A sad reality of history is that there are always new wars — and new war dead.)
The modern commemoration of Memorial Day dates back just 52 years, when Congress in 1968 standardized the day as the last Monday in May to give federal employees a long weekend.
This year, of course, will be like no other Memorial Day in history, with parades canceled and in-person observances transitioning online because of coronavirus concerns. Maybe the most feasible way to observe Memorial Day 2020 will be the National Moment of Remembrance at 3 p.m., a chance to step away from other obligations — including work, for many — to reflect on the ultimate price made by many veterans.
Or Americans may elect to do nothing at all, admittedly not a very good look, but still another option paid for in large part by the strength and sacrifice of our brave men and women in uniform.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Anybody who’s ever found themselves in a debate over who or what the day is intended to memorialize recognizes this.
Purists point out that the day is intended to honor “the men and women who died while in military service,” according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Veterans Day, a more inclusive day in November, is meant to spotlight all those who have served in the U.S. military.
So significant overlap exists between the two holidays, but they aren’t identical. Technically, it would be incorrect to honor on Memorial Day a soldier who passed decades after serving in World War II because he did not die in active service, but correct to honor that same person’s memory on Veterans Day.
But, really, who cares?
And I don’t mean that in a dismissive way toward the great men and women who have given so much to this country through their active participation in the military. Of course I care about them, and I value their commitments and sacrifices, as should every American.
What I mean is, who cares if we cast a wider circle of compassion on Memorial Day than was originally intended?
People who use this weekend in part to decorate graves of family members who never served in the military aren’t “wrong” to do so. They aren’t devaluing in any way the memories of any veterans, living or dead.
And if somebody wants to buy any active-duty soldiers breakfast on Monday, or pay for their groceries, or just nod their head and say “thank you,” there’s nothing wrong with that, either.
They shouldn’t feel they have to wait until Nov. 11, which is the “proper” day to thank living vets.
After all, the meaning of Memorial Day has expanded and changed over the years. It was originally Decoration Day, meant to mark the ultimate sacrifices of Civil War soldiers. And only Union soldiers, at that.
The founder of the day is somewhat in dispute. A commonly floated name is John Alexander Logan, a Union officer who later led a veterans group dedicated to just such recognition. He set May 30, 1868, as the date to decorate soldiers’ graves, according to historian John P. Blair, writing for the National Archives History Office.
But Blair notes other names, as well, including Martha G. Kimball, who wrote to Logan about the custom of grave decoration; Henry Carter Welles and John Boyce Murray, a druggist and county clear, respectively, who pushed for a similar day in New York; and the Ladies Memorial Association in Columbus, Georgia, which pressed for properl burials of Confederate soldiers.
Over the years, as the immediacy of the Civil War receded in Americans’ memories, the annual commemoration grew to include dead soldiers from other American wars. (A sad reality of history is that there are always new wars — and new war dead.)
The modern commemoration of Memorial Day dates back just 52 years, when Congress in 1968 standardized the day as the last Monday in May to give federal employees a long weekend.
This year, of course, will be like no other Memorial Day in history, with parades canceled and in-person observances transitioning online because of coronavirus concerns. Maybe the most feasible way to observe Memorial Day 2020 will be the National Moment of Remembrance at 3 p.m., a chance to step away from other obligations — including work, for many — to reflect on the ultimate price made by many veterans.
Or Americans may elect to do nothing at all, admittedly not a very good look, but still another option paid for in large part by the strength and sacrifice of our brave men and women in uniform.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Sunday, May 17, 2020
One more layer of regulation
The vast majority of us woke up this morning to lives regulated by the government.
A local city or county department approved the location and size of our homes. The Ohio Construction Industry Licensing Board approved the professionals who installed the pipes and wiring, which are in turn regulated by industry standards at the national level.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio regulate the water that flows from our taps and the sewer lines that flow beneath our homes. The latter is what keeps us from throwing our night slops out the window each morning, where they would run into the street and eventually foul our water source, as often happened in medieval times.
This morning, we dressed in clothes with labels dictated by the Federal Trade Commission and made of fabrics and blends regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission in factories where working conditions were dictated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Labor (if the factories were American).
Even wearing clothes, beyond being a largely self-enforced norm, is required by various ordinances and is the policy of most businesses. No shirt, no shoes, no service.
When we opened our refrigerators or pantries to scrounge for breakfast, the food there conformed to government standards. The USDA regulated the safety of the meat, poultry and eggs. The FDA regulated everything most everything else.
That two-day-old slice of pepperoni pizza we eventually decided upon — dry and pasty now but just waiting for revitalization in a microwave oven whose manufacture and wattage is also regulated by the FDA — was the result of oversight by a network of governmental bodies who weigh in on the growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, transportation, preparation and selling of individual ingredients.
On our way to the microwave we stopped to pet the dog, who wears a license issued by the county auditor’s office and paid for with a fee set by the county commissioners. Fido’s rabies vaccinations are mandated by the state.
After dressing and eating, we climbed into our cars, manufactured according to mandates set by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which among other things conducts stringent crash testing to help protect the health and wellbeing of drivers and passengers.
As drivers, we are licensed by the state. We listen to radio stations on our car radios that are regulated by the Federal Communications Commission. We wear safety belts, another government mandate, drive on the right side of the road, obey traffic signals and stay at or below certain speeds, all regulated by the government.
If we break any of these laws, we are subjected to punishment by the government, up to and including temporary or permanent revocation of our driving privileges.
We dropped off our kids at a school where teachers are licensed by the state, where curriculum is approved by a locally elected board, where state-required tests are given, and where attendance is compelled by law.
Then, we headed to the barber or beautician for a haircut — at least those of us who are fortunate enough to have hair — and trusted our coiffures to a professional licensed by the state.
Next we went to a doctor’s appointment, where we put our health into the hands of people regulated by state medical and nursing boards, who prescribe medication approved by the federal government.
Finally, it was off to a lunch at a restaurant which follows food preparation and hygienic norms from state and local health departments.
All this regulation, an invisible web of interlocking safety standards that people seldom stop to ponder, and it’s only noon.
Why, then, are so many people angry about health officials restricting certain businesses and activities, advocating for six feet of social separation and advising that we wear masks in public? These are extra layers of caution — and temporary ones, at that — to protect everybody during a public-health crisis.
Given all the ways the nanny state safeguards our lives already, these additional elements are minimal.
It’s enough to make one wonder if it’s not really about the mask at all, but more about contrarianism for the sake of being contrary, a head-scratching and unconscionable way of saying, “I care more about me than I do everybody else.”
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
A local city or county department approved the location and size of our homes. The Ohio Construction Industry Licensing Board approved the professionals who installed the pipes and wiring, which are in turn regulated by industry standards at the national level.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio regulate the water that flows from our taps and the sewer lines that flow beneath our homes. The latter is what keeps us from throwing our night slops out the window each morning, where they would run into the street and eventually foul our water source, as often happened in medieval times.
This morning, we dressed in clothes with labels dictated by the Federal Trade Commission and made of fabrics and blends regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission in factories where working conditions were dictated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Labor (if the factories were American).
Even wearing clothes, beyond being a largely self-enforced norm, is required by various ordinances and is the policy of most businesses. No shirt, no shoes, no service.
When we opened our refrigerators or pantries to scrounge for breakfast, the food there conformed to government standards. The USDA regulated the safety of the meat, poultry and eggs. The FDA regulated everything most everything else.
That two-day-old slice of pepperoni pizza we eventually decided upon — dry and pasty now but just waiting for revitalization in a microwave oven whose manufacture and wattage is also regulated by the FDA — was the result of oversight by a network of governmental bodies who weigh in on the growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, transportation, preparation and selling of individual ingredients.
On our way to the microwave we stopped to pet the dog, who wears a license issued by the county auditor’s office and paid for with a fee set by the county commissioners. Fido’s rabies vaccinations are mandated by the state.
After dressing and eating, we climbed into our cars, manufactured according to mandates set by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which among other things conducts stringent crash testing to help protect the health and wellbeing of drivers and passengers.
As drivers, we are licensed by the state. We listen to radio stations on our car radios that are regulated by the Federal Communications Commission. We wear safety belts, another government mandate, drive on the right side of the road, obey traffic signals and stay at or below certain speeds, all regulated by the government.
If we break any of these laws, we are subjected to punishment by the government, up to and including temporary or permanent revocation of our driving privileges.
We dropped off our kids at a school where teachers are licensed by the state, where curriculum is approved by a locally elected board, where state-required tests are given, and where attendance is compelled by law.
Then, we headed to the barber or beautician for a haircut — at least those of us who are fortunate enough to have hair — and trusted our coiffures to a professional licensed by the state.
Next we went to a doctor’s appointment, where we put our health into the hands of people regulated by state medical and nursing boards, who prescribe medication approved by the federal government.
Finally, it was off to a lunch at a restaurant which follows food preparation and hygienic norms from state and local health departments.
All this regulation, an invisible web of interlocking safety standards that people seldom stop to ponder, and it’s only noon.
Why, then, are so many people angry about health officials restricting certain businesses and activities, advocating for six feet of social separation and advising that we wear masks in public? These are extra layers of caution — and temporary ones, at that — to protect everybody during a public-health crisis.
Given all the ways the nanny state safeguards our lives already, these additional elements are minimal.
It’s enough to make one wonder if it’s not really about the mask at all, but more about contrarianism for the sake of being contrary, a head-scratching and unconscionable way of saying, “I care more about me than I do everybody else.”
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
A letter to the Class of 2020
Dear High School Seniors,
It wasn’t supposed to end this way.
You were supposed to have those special moments. The last day of classes. Prom. Graduation practice. Graduation. Graduation parties.
As a teacher, I view my final day with seniors through a lens of joy and dread.
Joy because it is a well-deserved milestone, the last time a particular group of young adults moves in unison at the prompting of a bell, the last time they will complete a routine they are ready to shed.
Dread because it means they are leaving, and that when I see them again, the dynamic and the circumstances will have altered — a polite exchange in a store, maybe an email or two, or a heart emoji on Twitter and Facebook.
On that last day, there are always more than a few moist eyes from even the most stoic of students — and educators.
Graduation brings plenty of tears, too, but they are different. The ceremony is more formal, the roles more clearly delineated — Pomp and Circumstance, a litany of speeches, hats tossed in the air, cookies, fruit punch, exit.
The enormity of it doesn’t hit me in the same way as that last day with 12th-graders in the hallways and the classroom.
But, you, Class of 2020, aren’t getting that.
I wish we had known, back in March, that our couple weeks of “extended spring break” would last until the end of May, that this last day of school was really the Last Day of School. Maybe we could have had something that resembled closure.
But we couldn’t know, so we didn’t appreciate what was about to happen.
Don’t get me wrong. Administrators, teachers, parents and communities around the nation are doing everything they can to honor you and your accomplishments.
Signs are being displayed, awards ceremonies are being broadcast on YouTube, virtual class photos are being shared, social-distance parades are stepping off. One principal in Dallas delivered a candy bar and a note to each senior in his high school — more than 600 of them.
Graduations, too, are moving online. Big-name speakers like Barack Obama are offering words of encouragement in televised ceremonies. Students are being filmed individually in their caps and gowns, receiving diplomas in nearly empty auditoriums to a smattering of applause from family members, the event recorded and stitched together with footage of their peers doing the same.
Some districts keep pushing graduation back into late June, July, August, and even dates in the fall, when students are home from college for a weekend, hoping to find a time when it is safe for everybody to be together.
It’s not that we aren’t trying to honor your accomplishments. We are.
But it’s not the same. We all recognize that.
Some words of encouragement from your elders aren’t all that encouraging, either.
I’ve heard and read comments saying to suck it up, that some 18-year-olds in the past have marched off the graduation stage and into World War II or Vietnam. That people are dying while you’re mourning the cancellation of prom or an overnight trip. That this will give you something to laugh about in 10 or 20 years.
These sentiments come from people who mean well, mostly. Reminders that the institution from which everybody graduates is the School of Hard Knocks.
But the truth is that it’s always easy to find somebody who has it worse.
Of course, people are dying. You know that. Some of you are dealing with that loss, too.
Yes, young adults in the past have been handed some raw deals. Some weren’t able to go to school at all, or were sent off to work in the mines, or were denied basic human rights. If raw deals were placed on a continuum, who knows where social distancing during one’s senior year would fall.
None of that means that you can’t be sad or angry for what you’re losing right now, today.
So go ahead. Kick a can. Cry. Write it all out on a piece of paper and then crumple it up or tear it to shreds.
Or just shrug your shoulders and move on.
There isn’t an instruction manual about how to handle this situation, a prepared series of boxes to check. It’s unprecedented.
You know what else is unprecedented? The strength of the Class of 2020. You will push through this adversity. You will conquer it. You will move on. Because you are strong and resilient, something you have proven by switching from face-to-face to remote instruction, socializing with friends via FaceTime and Zoom, stepping up to become breadwinners in families in which employment has been disrupted by shutdowns.
And while your teachers weren’t able to say goodbye to you properly on that last day of school in March, I think I can speak for all of them when I say how proud of you we are, how much we respect everything you have accomplished so far, and how much we anticipate all the good you will do.
You rock. I only wish I could tell you in person.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
It wasn’t supposed to end this way.
You were supposed to have those special moments. The last day of classes. Prom. Graduation practice. Graduation. Graduation parties.
As a teacher, I view my final day with seniors through a lens of joy and dread.
Joy because it is a well-deserved milestone, the last time a particular group of young adults moves in unison at the prompting of a bell, the last time they will complete a routine they are ready to shed.
Dread because it means they are leaving, and that when I see them again, the dynamic and the circumstances will have altered — a polite exchange in a store, maybe an email or two, or a heart emoji on Twitter and Facebook.
On that last day, there are always more than a few moist eyes from even the most stoic of students — and educators.
Graduation brings plenty of tears, too, but they are different. The ceremony is more formal, the roles more clearly delineated — Pomp and Circumstance, a litany of speeches, hats tossed in the air, cookies, fruit punch, exit.
The enormity of it doesn’t hit me in the same way as that last day with 12th-graders in the hallways and the classroom.
But, you, Class of 2020, aren’t getting that.
I wish we had known, back in March, that our couple weeks of “extended spring break” would last until the end of May, that this last day of school was really the Last Day of School. Maybe we could have had something that resembled closure.
But we couldn’t know, so we didn’t appreciate what was about to happen.
Don’t get me wrong. Administrators, teachers, parents and communities around the nation are doing everything they can to honor you and your accomplishments.
Signs are being displayed, awards ceremonies are being broadcast on YouTube, virtual class photos are being shared, social-distance parades are stepping off. One principal in Dallas delivered a candy bar and a note to each senior in his high school — more than 600 of them.
Graduations, too, are moving online. Big-name speakers like Barack Obama are offering words of encouragement in televised ceremonies. Students are being filmed individually in their caps and gowns, receiving diplomas in nearly empty auditoriums to a smattering of applause from family members, the event recorded and stitched together with footage of their peers doing the same.
Some districts keep pushing graduation back into late June, July, August, and even dates in the fall, when students are home from college for a weekend, hoping to find a time when it is safe for everybody to be together.
It’s not that we aren’t trying to honor your accomplishments. We are.
But it’s not the same. We all recognize that.
Some words of encouragement from your elders aren’t all that encouraging, either.
I’ve heard and read comments saying to suck it up, that some 18-year-olds in the past have marched off the graduation stage and into World War II or Vietnam. That people are dying while you’re mourning the cancellation of prom or an overnight trip. That this will give you something to laugh about in 10 or 20 years.
These sentiments come from people who mean well, mostly. Reminders that the institution from which everybody graduates is the School of Hard Knocks.
But the truth is that it’s always easy to find somebody who has it worse.
Of course, people are dying. You know that. Some of you are dealing with that loss, too.
Yes, young adults in the past have been handed some raw deals. Some weren’t able to go to school at all, or were sent off to work in the mines, or were denied basic human rights. If raw deals were placed on a continuum, who knows where social distancing during one’s senior year would fall.
None of that means that you can’t be sad or angry for what you’re losing right now, today.
So go ahead. Kick a can. Cry. Write it all out on a piece of paper and then crumple it up or tear it to shreds.
Or just shrug your shoulders and move on.
There isn’t an instruction manual about how to handle this situation, a prepared series of boxes to check. It’s unprecedented.
You know what else is unprecedented? The strength of the Class of 2020. You will push through this adversity. You will conquer it. You will move on. Because you are strong and resilient, something you have proven by switching from face-to-face to remote instruction, socializing with friends via FaceTime and Zoom, stepping up to become breadwinners in families in which employment has been disrupted by shutdowns.
And while your teachers weren’t able to say goodbye to you properly on that last day of school in March, I think I can speak for all of them when I say how proud of you we are, how much we respect everything you have accomplished so far, and how much we anticipate all the good you will do.
You rock. I only wish I could tell you in person.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Tuesday, May 5, 2020
DeWine's about-face on masks is unfortunate
Gov. Mike DeWine has received well-deserved praise both inside and outside Ohio for his handling of the coronavirus crisis.
He has consistently made tough calls earlier than most other state leaders, and certainly ahead of an uneven response at the federal level. (A less charitable description of the federal response is “criminally negligent,” but I digress.)
DeWine’s willingness to take the hard road earned him some wiggle room with me when he announced that some parts of the state economy would reopen in May, accompanied by stringent regulations.
I’m no epidemiologist — I don’t even play one on TV — but from experts I’ve heard interviewed, a rush to reopen the economy could do more harm than good, especially if the coronavirus resurges and the wheels of commerce must grind to a halt again.
Nevertheless, DeWine had a plan, which he presented, characteristically, in a methodical, careful fashion. I was especially heartened when I learned the state would require all shoppers to wear masks. That, at least, would help to slow the spread of the virus and would serve as a visible reminder that caution must rule our public interactions until a vaccine, or at least an effective treatment, is found.
But then the governor backpedaled.
He said he had received extensive public feedback about the mandatory-mask policy, that some people found it “offensive.”
DeWine did note that he still strongly urged Ohioans to wear masks when shopping, and that individual businesses could still require shoppers to wear them.
I hope all businesses will, but I doubt it. Store owners and managers are not in the habit of turning away dollars, and with this about-face from state leaders, few will feel emboldened to enforce a policy when the government is unwilling.
But I have to ask, why would anybody find the idea of being forced to wear a mask in public “offensive”?
I know such people are out there. I see them posting on social media about how they refuse to cover their mouths and noses and will defy any such orders, that they aren’t criminals and won’t abide being treated like one.
They aren’t the lunatic fringe, by and large. They are people who love and care for their families, who bring food when their neighbors are sick and who support charities that help their communities.
Perhaps they see masks as a bridge too far, an encroachment on their inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Maybe they believe the people most vulnerable to dying from the coronavirus — the elderly, the immuno-compromised — should be the ones wearing masks and sheltering in place, instead of healthy people and their families.
What they don’t fully appreciate is how insidious this virus is. How some people can be carriers without symptoms, going about their daily affairs touching bags of mulch in the garden section of the hardware store and sneezing in aisle five of the grocery store, leaving little patches of COVID for other shoppers to pick up.
These other shoppers may be buying supplies for people who are too compromised to be in public. Now, these good Samaritans take the virus with them to a elderly parent or grandparent, to a child who will eventually go to summer camp and interact with dozens of other children, any of whom can — again, completely asymptomatically — infect somebody who will not just shrug off the infection, but who will instead die from it.
Masks are not foolproof, of course. But when I’m wearing one in an indoor public venue, it’s a reminder to be conscientious, to use hand sanitizer at the entrance and exit, to stay six feet away from others when possible.
The mask is also helping to make sure I don’t inadvertently infect somebody with a potentially deadly virus I may not even know I have.
I understand that COVID fatigue is setting in. I vacillate in any given hour from believing the virus has been overhyped by the media to believing that it hasn’t been emphasized enough, especially when I read of the carnage it’s causing in hot spots around the nation and the world.
I’m glad I don’t live in one of those hot spots, and one reason I don’t is because of the proactive choices made by Gov. DeWine and his advisors, including his May 1 decision to extend stay-at-home orders.
Yet I’m disappointed by the policy change about the masks, and the unintended message it sends to rush back to normal later this spring and summer.
That sense of misplaced urgency could mean that a lot more people won’t be with us in the fall.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
He has consistently made tough calls earlier than most other state leaders, and certainly ahead of an uneven response at the federal level. (A less charitable description of the federal response is “criminally negligent,” but I digress.)
DeWine’s willingness to take the hard road earned him some wiggle room with me when he announced that some parts of the state economy would reopen in May, accompanied by stringent regulations.
I’m no epidemiologist — I don’t even play one on TV — but from experts I’ve heard interviewed, a rush to reopen the economy could do more harm than good, especially if the coronavirus resurges and the wheels of commerce must grind to a halt again.
Nevertheless, DeWine had a plan, which he presented, characteristically, in a methodical, careful fashion. I was especially heartened when I learned the state would require all shoppers to wear masks. That, at least, would help to slow the spread of the virus and would serve as a visible reminder that caution must rule our public interactions until a vaccine, or at least an effective treatment, is found.
But then the governor backpedaled.
He said he had received extensive public feedback about the mandatory-mask policy, that some people found it “offensive.”
DeWine did note that he still strongly urged Ohioans to wear masks when shopping, and that individual businesses could still require shoppers to wear them.
I hope all businesses will, but I doubt it. Store owners and managers are not in the habit of turning away dollars, and with this about-face from state leaders, few will feel emboldened to enforce a policy when the government is unwilling.
But I have to ask, why would anybody find the idea of being forced to wear a mask in public “offensive”?
I know such people are out there. I see them posting on social media about how they refuse to cover their mouths and noses and will defy any such orders, that they aren’t criminals and won’t abide being treated like one.
They aren’t the lunatic fringe, by and large. They are people who love and care for their families, who bring food when their neighbors are sick and who support charities that help their communities.
Perhaps they see masks as a bridge too far, an encroachment on their inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Maybe they believe the people most vulnerable to dying from the coronavirus — the elderly, the immuno-compromised — should be the ones wearing masks and sheltering in place, instead of healthy people and their families.
What they don’t fully appreciate is how insidious this virus is. How some people can be carriers without symptoms, going about their daily affairs touching bags of mulch in the garden section of the hardware store and sneezing in aisle five of the grocery store, leaving little patches of COVID for other shoppers to pick up.
These other shoppers may be buying supplies for people who are too compromised to be in public. Now, these good Samaritans take the virus with them to a elderly parent or grandparent, to a child who will eventually go to summer camp and interact with dozens of other children, any of whom can — again, completely asymptomatically — infect somebody who will not just shrug off the infection, but who will instead die from it.
Masks are not foolproof, of course. But when I’m wearing one in an indoor public venue, it’s a reminder to be conscientious, to use hand sanitizer at the entrance and exit, to stay six feet away from others when possible.
The mask is also helping to make sure I don’t inadvertently infect somebody with a potentially deadly virus I may not even know I have.
I understand that COVID fatigue is setting in. I vacillate in any given hour from believing the virus has been overhyped by the media to believing that it hasn’t been emphasized enough, especially when I read of the carnage it’s causing in hot spots around the nation and the world.
I’m glad I don’t live in one of those hot spots, and one reason I don’t is because of the proactive choices made by Gov. DeWine and his advisors, including his May 1 decision to extend stay-at-home orders.
Yet I’m disappointed by the policy change about the masks, and the unintended message it sends to rush back to normal later this spring and summer.
That sense of misplaced urgency could mean that a lot more people won’t be with us in the fall.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Thursday, April 30, 2020
America innovates in time of need
The spirit of American adaptation and innovation never ceases to amaze me.
I was pondering this the other morning as I stood in line to get into the local Walmart, mask around my face, disposable gloves on standby, and phone at the ready to pay without touching cash or handling a credit card.
Two months earlier, the experience of shopping with so many people dressed in full-plague gear would have been equal parts depressing and surreal. Now, it’s just Wednesday.
Not only did it take the public a remarkably short time to adjust to a new normal, but it took the retail and grocery world only a few weeks to institute systems to provide services safely — plexiglass shields at checkouts, X’s along sidewalks to encourage social distancing and one-way aisles to decrease traffic.
One part of mask-wearing I hate is that people can’t see you smile. And, indeed, companies have started to manufacture transparent masks, the better to catch those nonverbals and to aid people who are deaf and read lips.
Last week, I completed a touchless pickup at a local pizza franchise. My wife called ahead and ordered, paying over the phone. When I arrived, an employee brought the order outside, placed it on the hood of my car with a canvas bag underneath, and then backed away to the safety of the sidewalk. Once I had exited the vehicle, picked up the pizza and put it into my car, he came back and retrieved the bag.
Here was a ritual that didn’t exist a few weeks earlier, and one you would be hard-pressed to explain to any time traveler visiting from the distant era of, oh, February.
As strange as this all felt, in another couple of months it will be so commonplace as to be hardly worthy of comment, much like increased security for airplane flights were so unreal in those first months after 9/11, yet today we are acclimated to taking off our shoes and opening our luggage.
Our boundless capacity for adaptation and change on full display, once again.
Even when we conquer this coronavirus and are standing at the door of a reopened economy, like John Travolta’s immuno-compromised character in “The Boy in the Plastic Bubble,” wiggling our collective toes at the yellow tape separating shelter-in-place with complete freedom, some concessions may have to be made.
I can envision a world where, like those ubiquitous bagcheck stations at ballparks and concert venues, screeners take ticket holders’ temperatures and ask a few basic questions: Recent fever? Cough? Shortness of breath?
It may be the price we pay for watching a double-header on a sultry July day or seeing a favorite band prance about on the stage. Someday, our kids and grandkids will marvel about a time when this didn’t happen, when sick people were encouraged to go to work and weren’t asked to leave public places.
It will also be interesting to see how many work-at-homers and learn-at-homers are allowed to continue in this fashion, even once stay-at-home directives are lifted. After all, businesses have invested in outfitting workers for remote work, so maybe that will become the new norm, or at least some hybrid version dividing time between home and office/school. (Tax preparers should expect to see a deluge of deductions for home offices next April.)
Also remaining to be seen is how the pandemic shifts America’s — and the world’s — buying habits and, more importantly, priorities. Economists speculate that some big-name retailers may not bounce back, their business eclipsed by online options and an inevitable recession. The pandemic would have only hastened the demise of some, where the writing has long been on the wall.
As for our priorities, perhaps Julio Vincent Gambuto, writing for Forge, said it best in a recent column when he urged Americans to resist gaslighting attempts by the Establishment — the potent forces of government and advertising — to convince us to return quickly to “normal.”
“Take a deep breath,” Gambuto advises, “ignore the deafening noise, and think deeply about what you want to put back into your life. This is our chance to define a new version of normal, a rare and truly sacred (yes, sacred) opportunity to get rid of the bullsh** and to only bring back what works for us, what makes our lives richer, what makes our kids happier, what makes us truly proud.”
If enough Americans do this, the revolution that follows could be the most significant adaptation and innovation of the 21st century.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
I was pondering this the other morning as I stood in line to get into the local Walmart, mask around my face, disposable gloves on standby, and phone at the ready to pay without touching cash or handling a credit card.
Two months earlier, the experience of shopping with so many people dressed in full-plague gear would have been equal parts depressing and surreal. Now, it’s just Wednesday.
Not only did it take the public a remarkably short time to adjust to a new normal, but it took the retail and grocery world only a few weeks to institute systems to provide services safely — plexiglass shields at checkouts, X’s along sidewalks to encourage social distancing and one-way aisles to decrease traffic.
One part of mask-wearing I hate is that people can’t see you smile. And, indeed, companies have started to manufacture transparent masks, the better to catch those nonverbals and to aid people who are deaf and read lips.
Last week, I completed a touchless pickup at a local pizza franchise. My wife called ahead and ordered, paying over the phone. When I arrived, an employee brought the order outside, placed it on the hood of my car with a canvas bag underneath, and then backed away to the safety of the sidewalk. Once I had exited the vehicle, picked up the pizza and put it into my car, he came back and retrieved the bag.
Here was a ritual that didn’t exist a few weeks earlier, and one you would be hard-pressed to explain to any time traveler visiting from the distant era of, oh, February.
As strange as this all felt, in another couple of months it will be so commonplace as to be hardly worthy of comment, much like increased security for airplane flights were so unreal in those first months after 9/11, yet today we are acclimated to taking off our shoes and opening our luggage.
Our boundless capacity for adaptation and change on full display, once again.
Even when we conquer this coronavirus and are standing at the door of a reopened economy, like John Travolta’s immuno-compromised character in “The Boy in the Plastic Bubble,” wiggling our collective toes at the yellow tape separating shelter-in-place with complete freedom, some concessions may have to be made.
I can envision a world where, like those ubiquitous bagcheck stations at ballparks and concert venues, screeners take ticket holders’ temperatures and ask a few basic questions: Recent fever? Cough? Shortness of breath?
It may be the price we pay for watching a double-header on a sultry July day or seeing a favorite band prance about on the stage. Someday, our kids and grandkids will marvel about a time when this didn’t happen, when sick people were encouraged to go to work and weren’t asked to leave public places.
It will also be interesting to see how many work-at-homers and learn-at-homers are allowed to continue in this fashion, even once stay-at-home directives are lifted. After all, businesses have invested in outfitting workers for remote work, so maybe that will become the new norm, or at least some hybrid version dividing time between home and office/school. (Tax preparers should expect to see a deluge of deductions for home offices next April.)
Also remaining to be seen is how the pandemic shifts America’s — and the world’s — buying habits and, more importantly, priorities. Economists speculate that some big-name retailers may not bounce back, their business eclipsed by online options and an inevitable recession. The pandemic would have only hastened the demise of some, where the writing has long been on the wall.
As for our priorities, perhaps Julio Vincent Gambuto, writing for Forge, said it best in a recent column when he urged Americans to resist gaslighting attempts by the Establishment — the potent forces of government and advertising — to convince us to return quickly to “normal.”
“Take a deep breath,” Gambuto advises, “ignore the deafening noise, and think deeply about what you want to put back into your life. This is our chance to define a new version of normal, a rare and truly sacred (yes, sacred) opportunity to get rid of the bullsh** and to only bring back what works for us, what makes our lives richer, what makes our kids happier, what makes us truly proud.”
If enough Americans do this, the revolution that follows could be the most significant adaptation and innovation of the 21st century.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Tuesday, April 21, 2020
Missives from a home office
For one thing, the commute is grueling.
Today I had to detour around a stack of unwashed dishes and a basket of laundry.
My office is under construction by the cat. He is stomping across the table like Godzilla sashaying through Tokyo, hurling papers and empty plastic bottles of diet iced tea over the side.
He says he’ll be done never, so I relocate to the opposite end of the dining room, where the sun shines in my eyes most of the morning.
My chair is hardly ergonomic. It’s just hard. I should complain to the boss. Oh, wait.
It’s tough to tell what day it is. All I know for sure is that it ends in a “y.” As in, why am I here? What is my purpose?
I know it’s not Saturday or Sunday because the newscasters on TV are the ones who work on the weekdays. I can’t tell the date from the stories because they’re all the same: Some state official is arguing with the big orange guy in D.C., somebody is throwing a virtual birthday party for somebody else, a mom in Poughkeepsie is stressed because she can’t send her three kids, ages 6, 8, and 11, to school.
I start the day playing Brady Bunch on my computer. The game is always the same. Zoom this, Zoom that. Or Google Hangout, let it all hang out.
When we started virtual meetings, everybody had their cameras on, and it was fun to peek into co-workers’ living rooms and kitchens. Somebody had a banana in a wire basket hanging from the ceiling. Each day, it got older and blacker. The banana, not the ceiling. Fascinating.
But now, all the video shades are drawn, and coworkers hide behind avatars. Just disembodied voices, shouting into the void.
I saw a Saturday Night Live skit about virtual meetings recently. Or maybe last year. Time has no meaning anymore.
In the skit, one Zoom participant takes her computer into the bathroom while her co-workers beg her, for the love of God, to stop. It’s supposed to be funny.
At some point, I wander outside to get the newspaper. I could have sworn one day there was an inch-and-a-half of snow, but it’s April. Unless it’s still March, and my sometimes officemate, who is married to the only other human occupant of the office, got ambitious and changed the calendar early.
Some mornings I wear gloves and turn the newspaper pages gingerly, like they’re brittle artifacts unearthed from a dead civilization. Which, well.
The printed news is the same as on the TV — the COVID Chronicles. It’s the only show that isn’t on hiatus.
I kind of remember watching something about a Tiger King. And Carole, who maybe fed her officemate, who was married to the only other human occupant of her office, to a tiger.
It seems to me they said tigers can devour a person so completely that they leave no bones behind. I thought only pigs did that. I will have to look it up. Maybe this afternoon. Or next year.
Online news isn’t much different than the printed stuff. There’s just more of it. I skip all the big stories in the name of good mental hygiene even though physical hygiene has gone by the wayside.
I might still be brushing my teeth. The toothbrush is wet, at least.
I go straight to the arts and culture sections online. Somebody is writing about plague literature. Again. Did you know Shakespeare wrote many of his best works while the London theaters were closed because of the plague?
All I’ve written during our pandemic is this column. Way to overachieve, Shakespeare.
Anyway, most of those stories also mention Camus and “The Plague,” Stephen King and “The Stand,” and of course Edgar Allan Poe and “The Masque of the Red Death.”
Not so many mention Richard Matheson’s “I Am Legend,” about a plague of vampirism. That’s one of my favorites. At the end, the main character is the only human left in a world of blood-sucking ghouls. Sorry if I spoiled the ending.
By the way, Carole is guilty. There, spoiled that one, too.
Lunch in this office sucks. The in-house cafeteria is serving three-day-old sloppy joes on stale buns, and I have to serve myself. A few oranges are still rattling around, too. At least I won’t get rickets.
Well, gotta go. A rerun of the Brady Bunch is starting.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Today I had to detour around a stack of unwashed dishes and a basket of laundry.
My office is under construction by the cat. He is stomping across the table like Godzilla sashaying through Tokyo, hurling papers and empty plastic bottles of diet iced tea over the side.
He says he’ll be done never, so I relocate to the opposite end of the dining room, where the sun shines in my eyes most of the morning.
My chair is hardly ergonomic. It’s just hard. I should complain to the boss. Oh, wait.
It’s tough to tell what day it is. All I know for sure is that it ends in a “y.” As in, why am I here? What is my purpose?
I know it’s not Saturday or Sunday because the newscasters on TV are the ones who work on the weekdays. I can’t tell the date from the stories because they’re all the same: Some state official is arguing with the big orange guy in D.C., somebody is throwing a virtual birthday party for somebody else, a mom in Poughkeepsie is stressed because she can’t send her three kids, ages 6, 8, and 11, to school.
I start the day playing Brady Bunch on my computer. The game is always the same. Zoom this, Zoom that. Or Google Hangout, let it all hang out.
When we started virtual meetings, everybody had their cameras on, and it was fun to peek into co-workers’ living rooms and kitchens. Somebody had a banana in a wire basket hanging from the ceiling. Each day, it got older and blacker. The banana, not the ceiling. Fascinating.
But now, all the video shades are drawn, and coworkers hide behind avatars. Just disembodied voices, shouting into the void.
I saw a Saturday Night Live skit about virtual meetings recently. Or maybe last year. Time has no meaning anymore.
In the skit, one Zoom participant takes her computer into the bathroom while her co-workers beg her, for the love of God, to stop. It’s supposed to be funny.
At some point, I wander outside to get the newspaper. I could have sworn one day there was an inch-and-a-half of snow, but it’s April. Unless it’s still March, and my sometimes officemate, who is married to the only other human occupant of the office, got ambitious and changed the calendar early.
Some mornings I wear gloves and turn the newspaper pages gingerly, like they’re brittle artifacts unearthed from a dead civilization. Which, well.
The printed news is the same as on the TV — the COVID Chronicles. It’s the only show that isn’t on hiatus.
I kind of remember watching something about a Tiger King. And Carole, who maybe fed her officemate, who was married to the only other human occupant of her office, to a tiger.
It seems to me they said tigers can devour a person so completely that they leave no bones behind. I thought only pigs did that. I will have to look it up. Maybe this afternoon. Or next year.
Online news isn’t much different than the printed stuff. There’s just more of it. I skip all the big stories in the name of good mental hygiene even though physical hygiene has gone by the wayside.
I might still be brushing my teeth. The toothbrush is wet, at least.
I go straight to the arts and culture sections online. Somebody is writing about plague literature. Again. Did you know Shakespeare wrote many of his best works while the London theaters were closed because of the plague?
All I’ve written during our pandemic is this column. Way to overachieve, Shakespeare.
Anyway, most of those stories also mention Camus and “The Plague,” Stephen King and “The Stand,” and of course Edgar Allan Poe and “The Masque of the Red Death.”
Not so many mention Richard Matheson’s “I Am Legend,” about a plague of vampirism. That’s one of my favorites. At the end, the main character is the only human left in a world of blood-sucking ghouls. Sorry if I spoiled the ending.
By the way, Carole is guilty. There, spoiled that one, too.
Lunch in this office sucks. The in-house cafeteria is serving three-day-old sloppy joes on stale buns, and I have to serve myself. A few oranges are still rattling around, too. At least I won’t get rickets.
Well, gotta go. A rerun of the Brady Bunch is starting.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
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