Frick Park

One of the pleasantest things about our current residence is its proximity to Frick Park. Pittsburgh is known for several lovely parks, some of which are quite large. This one originated as the back yard for Mr. Frick's children, because rich children need a place to stretch out that includes several hundred acres, usually (at least I think that sounds plausible), and has now been bequeathed to the city of Pittsburgh and its residents, who are allowed to go walking in it whenever the mood strikes them.

My first year in Pittsburgh was not wonderful. In order to continue my wife's education we had to move while I was in cancer treatments. That first semester, still recovering, unemployed, friendless, in a strange city, my days began with a walk in Frick Park. I spent the rest of it at the piano in our townhouse.

I first became acquainted with the park in July, when it is a vast forest of green, when it is impossible to tell, once you are in the park, that you are surrounded by city. In other seasons of the year it is possible to see distant cars appearing to race through the treetops. Frick Park is actually not all that vast (I think it may not be half a mile wide), but it is large enough to seem enormous when covered in green. It is about three miles north to south, however, and I have since been able to go for long runs along a trail that begins near my house and stretches for 4 and a half miles before stopping. After it leaves the park it continues along the Monongahela river for the final mile and a half.

If you go at the right time of day there are not too many people, and it can be you and nature. There are, of course, some naturally occurring park benches at intervals, manhole covers, and well manicured paths, but the trees do not seem to mind. There are steep hills, just like in all of Pittsburgh. The network of paths provides many choices, and I spent many mornings exploring where they all led that first year. One of them goes to a science center, and flows past a scenic overlook. There are flowing streams, and a couple of empty fields. Pictures will really not do justice to the feeling of being there. I am not saying this to make you jealous; rather it is to remind me of what I have in the park, especially if we move next year and I no longer have it nearby.


There is a cast of characters in the park. A dog walking society comes through every so often. The dogs have been trained so that when someone comes by they all wait patiently in a large group by the side of the path. There also appear to be strange pixies that live in the trees, and if you look carefully you can find their habitations. There is also some artwork, provided by an artist who relishes terrible puns (which is redundant, I know. Is there another kind?)

I will be quiet now, and just let you experience the park, as well as two dimensional pictures will allow.

 

Keeping Score

A few weeks ago I mourned the hard fate of an older fellow who found himself a ghost of a human. locked up in his house with nothing to do, and besides suggesting that one should try not to derive all of one's sense of self worth from that thing that you do for money, regardless of how hard society tries to get you to see it that way, it seemed to me that there must be millions of profitable and interesting ways to spend one's time during quarantine, even while fending off the inevitable anxiety of where the world seems to be headed. There is still joy to be had so long as we breathe. And as a wise teacher once said, "tomorrow has enough trouble of its own."

One of the really exciting things I've come across recently is a series of documentaries and concerts put out by Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony. There are only nine installments, and they were done at pretty much yearly intervals through the early year of this century, stopping in 2011. The symphony has recently decided to release them all online for free. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

For me it was a chance to return to some familiar repertoire, since, as a musician, I've spent so many years acquiring new and varied music to learn and play (not to mention write). Each of the episodes concerns a well-known masterpiece from the orchestral literature, which means I know it well (despite not being a conductor I have sometimes felt that if they pulled people out of the audience to conduct say, one of the Beethoven symphonies I could practically do it). The pieces are mostly from the Romantic era or 20th century. Ives's Holidays Symphony is the odd one out since it is not nearly so popular as the others, and I haven't seen that episode yet. The rest include the Beethoven Eroica, the Tchaikovsky 4th, The Rite of Spring, the Shostakovich 5th, and pieces by Copland and Mahler.

The hour-long documentary potion of each episode features the maestro going on location to houses in which the composers grew up, or visiting the concert halls in which the works premiered. The first program, on the Tchaikovsky 4th, show how the orchestra prepares for a concert. I may have already known what it feels in the moments backstage before you come out to perform, or that bassoonists are obsessed by the making of reeds, but it was still fun to watch Thomas pacing around his apartment, score in hand, singing the phrases (so it's not just me!), then seeing how he marks up the score so that each player has all sorts of interpretive marks to aid with their own practice. You get to see the library at the symphony, and how the librarian takes the conductors penciled marks and transfers them to every part for every player. (This was 16 years ago. Any chance the process is digitized by now?)

That sort of procedural minutiae might not be interesting to everyone, though I'll bet it would satisfy a lot of curiosity. Most of the time the programs are a mix of composer biography and musical tours through the great moments in the work. Each movement is explored in some detail. There is footage from the Symphony's "Family Concerts" in which the conductor talks through the music to the audience, inviting different members of the orchestra to talk about their parts in the piece being played, how the piccolo solo in the Tchaikovsky Fourth gives piccolo players nightmares, or getting to peer backstage and watch the two harpists practice their part in the Berlioz Symphony Fantastique, or watch Thomas work one on one with his concert master.

One thing that is really interesting is that you get to know, or at least recognize, the members of the orchestra. During the documentary they will talk about certain parts of the piece, but in the accompanying performance, which occupies the second hour of the program, you really get to see them in action. Most concerts on television focus mainly on the conductor. You get to see plenty of the mastro here, too, but the use of multiple cameras and clever editing not only shows the typical shots you get of the players alternating solos and important licks, but tight close ups, wide shots, and traveling camera shots tell more than the story of the symphony. They visually illuminate the symphony, but also put us right in the middle of the action, as if we are part of the orchestra.

One of my favorite moments shows a close up of the horn player playing his solo, before the camera backs away from him until it is right over the shoulder of the maestro. Now we can appreciate just how far away the player actually sits from his conductor. Many similar shots show the relationship between the players and their music director. As the timpanist furiously rolls out the final chord, you can see Thomas facially communicating the intensity that he wants, and the expression in the timpanist's face matches it. It is almost as if the two of them are locked in a duel, except that here the timpanist is acting as an extension of the conductor, focused acutely on every move of the other man, who is some 40 feet away, but has banished every other thought from his mind. It is spellbinding.

The performance itself is so good that after watching the Tchaikovsky episode I thought that if I were ushered to a room in Hell and told I must take dictation of the entire Fourth Symphony from a recording (a punishment doubtless thought up as revenge by my students for taking too much enjoyment from watching their suffering when I announced a dictation in theory class)--faced with such an immense challenge, and having only one recording to listen to in order to write out the complete score, if I could have the performance from this series, I think I could nearly do it. Every note was important, every detail noticed. And there was passion to spare.

I enjoyed being on stage as part of the orchestra, spending time with the players, watching them in the heat of battle. I've spent a little time in an orchestra myself, but not a great deal (this is different than being a soloist in a concerto; there the social arrangement is different. You are out front, and spend your time mainly seeing the conductor from the back. Your only real visual friend is generally the principle cellist). When you are in the audience you rarely are able to familiarize yourself with the visage of the principle bassoonist, even if you are in the front row. Now, just after a few episodes,  I think I could pick most of the woodwind players out of a lineup. I can also tell you how they play, how they move their muscles, what they look like at rest.

Michael Tilson Thomas was at Tanglewood at least one year, where an important award helped him at the beginning of his career. He made his debut a year sooner than Bernstein (I'll bet that ate at the older man). And occasionally, from the right angle, when he makes one of the gestures he seems to have inherited straight from Bernstein, (which isn't all that often; he certain has his own conducting language), you'd swear Lenny lives again. But Thomas was also the inheritor of the New York Philharmonic's "Young People's Concerts" after Bernstein left. The brilliant educational series and the philosophy of connection to an audience are clearly in evidence in Thomas's makeup. But now, over a half century after those concerts began, this video series is able to do things the earlier series couldn't. It is able to take full advantage of visual appeal, recent research, and creative ways to bring the audience along for the entire journey, not just the final product, viewed from a distance.

If you're looking for a productive and exciting way to spend quarantine, and you've gotten tired of watching dysfunctional people do terrible things to each other on Netflix, you should really try this series out. I'll see you in 18 hours.

Just out for a run

One morning I went for a run. By morning I mean about 4:30 a.m. It's usually cool enough in the summer at that hour, and it's quiet. Plenty of street lights, but it's still pretty dark. I like it.

The first hill is a serious climb. Once I get to the top, and on through a pleasant neighborhood, I descend into the park.

A short way down the hill I saw someone coming toward me. I'll admit to having my guard up for a second. It was not yet 5 a.m. and nobody was around.

It was a large, black man. He had his shirt off, and he was ripped. As soon as I saw he had running clothes on I relaxed. I've gotten mugged before so I have visceral reason to know not all random encounters with strangers on city streets are friendly.

I kept running. He kept running. He was running toward me, and I was running toward him. In a few seconds we....

passed each other and kept running.



Why, did you think that story was going to be more interesting?

Here's why I remember this guy at all. A couple of days later the same thing happened. We ran passed each other at around 4:45 in the morning outside the park, and in pretty much the same location. He was the same tall, seriously ripped dude he'd been the last time. He obviously knew his way around a gym. I tried not to be jealous.

We may have met a third time, I can't remember. Then, I went for a run and did not see him. In fact, I've never seen him since.

There aren't a lot of people out running in the predawn hours. You get to know them. For instance, there's this woman I keep passing in the same neighborhood, again going the other way. We'll wave at each other as we pass. I haven't got a clue who she is, but apparently she is used to getting up around the same time I do and running a route that takes her in the opposite direction through at least one major section of town. When I am running ten minutes late or she is early we might pass a few blocks over in one direction or other, but it happens enough that I always notice, there is that woman again, out for a run. You start to feel like part of the same club after a while, even though you will never actually know each other.

So when this athletic fellow stopped running by, I wondered what had happened. Maybe he moved, or changed his route, or decided to quit running. But it is at least as likely--let's not be too naive, now, it's probably the real reason--he didn't feel safe running by there at 5 a.m.

I hope I didn't have anything to do with it, but again, let's be honest, maybe he wasn't sure he wanted to keep running past a white guy in the dark. Sure, I'm a small guy, not very muscular, and this guy could have taken about six of me in a fight, but I am the one statistically more likely to be carrying a gun and to use it when a person whose skin color makes me think he's probably a criminal comes along and makes me feel scared because of his mere presence. Is that too much honesty for some of you?

Two months ago Mahmoud Arbery was out for a run and was gunned down by two white men. They later claimed that he looked like a suspect in a string of robberies in the area. The problem was that there hadn't been a string of robberies in the area. The last time anything had been reported was 7 weeks earlier when the assailants themselves had a gun stolen from an unlocked vehicle. There is nothing to indicate that they had any idea what the thief looked like.

So without Mr. Arbery actually committing any crime, which is what most laws require before you are allowed to play vigilante, they just assumed he was a criminal. This is the basis for most of the deaths-by-racism in this country. Somebody just feels in their bones that someone else is a criminal, and acts accordingly. Even when the police dispatch tells them not to pursue. Even when they are not in any danger. They confront, and ultimately kill. And then they have to tell a story about how threatened they felt. And I'm not sure they aren't telling the truth. The problem is they have a pretty screwed up sense of who a threat is. And, of course, it never occurs to them that they themselves are a much larger threat. Two white guys with guns in a state with a long history of lynching are chasing a black guy in a truck. Don't you think he had a right to be frightened?

We are in the process of finding out who was a threat to whom. Nearly two months after the killing, which was never even going to even be prosecuted before a national outcry, we are learning about the participants' shady pasts. Not the victim--although attempts were made to make it look like he somehow deserved it. Did you know he was arrested for shoplifting a couple of years back? Of course you did. No word on what he took. It's also irrelevant. He was justly arrested (we hope). That is not a license to shoot him on sight two years later.

But the assailants have, not surprisingly, problems of their own. The not unfamiliar background of a screw-up police officer who was not keeping up with his training, was not meeting the qualifications, had to be taken off the street, seemed very interested in combating jihad and not at all interested in community relations, because getting those people was more interesting than keeping real people safe in real situations.  But if Georgia was ever invaded by Isis, he would have been ready.

It's only funny on television. In real life, Barney Fife gets people killed.

Let's have a little training exercise of our own, shall we?

I live in a narrow row house with a tiny backyard. I hear a sound and when I look up I see a black man going through the trash within feet of my window. Do I

a) run out to confront him with my gun
b) call the police
c) realize he is my neighbor taking out his trash and leave him alone

I think you realized the correct answer was C. If you have no idea what my neighbor looks like, then I suggest waiting to see if the person in question actually does something illegal or dangerous before taking any action against him. In this case, the worst thing he could possibly do would be to steal my trash can, which, frankly, he can have. And seriously, what are the odds he'd want it?

Let's try another one. We got a locked bike stolen off our back porch a couple of years ago. I see a black person walking up the street. Do I

a) question him about the bike
b) make him wait while I call the cops
c) not assume he must have stolen it unless I see him riding it, and even then proceed carefully

The reason for the back half of letter C is because I do not want to create a situation in which either of us might get killed over an old bike. Not worth it. Also, you could still be wrong. Maybe the bike just looks like yours, or maybe he got it from somebody else. The point being, yes, let's not be naive, crimes happen, and sometimes they are committed by people of color. But here's a thought. Let's actually be sure a crime is being committed (not just has been but is in progress) and people are in real danger before we put them in real danger because of an assumption.

Sure, there is a small chance the African American I meet on the street just committed a crime that I
don't know about, but for all he knows, I knocked over a bank this morning before breakfast. I mean, you don't know. I'd rather he not decide to question me about it with his gun. You neither? What a coincidence.

But I am probably not going to be randomly stopped by a vigilante because I look like a guy who may have robbed a bank sometime in the last year someplace in the county. Because I'm white. We all need to be aware of that.

Stay safe. And don't kill anybody. Is that really so difficult? For most of us, I think not. But for the Barney Fifes of the world, I'm afraid we'll never get through to them. Because at its core racism is an irrational fear, and people who have the greatest amount of this disease (everyone has at least a bit) spend an awful lot of time and energy trying to make what is irrational seem rational. That's why some folks are going to believe that there was a good reason to kill Mr. Arbery. No matter what. Trying to get people to see that in themselves usually produces a lot of anger, which is the only way to protect that inner wound from the sting of the antiseptic that is reality. Sometimes it is known as "white fragility." If this column has made you really angry and you want to fire back with a thousand reasons why I'm wrong and it makes logical sense to chase a guy out jogging in a truck with a gun and if he'd just made nice with them everything would be fine, I'd urge you to think about why you need to believe that. Why is it so hard for you see that there is something wrong with this? Why do you feel so threatened by mere words? Or is it something else?




 If you need a little feel good story to end on, one about how we're really making racial progress in this country, like the pablum I grew up on, here's one.

A black man went jogging in past a white man one morning. He didn't get shot.



Yay.

Choices

My sixth grade Sunday school teacher had a favorite word. It was "choice."

When I was in college, I heard that she had left the church in a dispute with the pastor. Lots of other people had done that, too. I remember feeling disappointed in her, though years later I wonder whether perhaps she did make the right choice. I wasn't around for that particular pastor war so I don't know where I would have fallen, or if I would even be seeing the issue the same way now. I only know she made a choice.

Last week's news cycle centered around the choices we are or aren't making. It is time, some say, to re-open the economy. In some cases, that means workers are required to go back to work, whether or not they feel safe doing it. There will be no unemployment check. They will, you might say, not really have a choice.

Mamon is once again taking human sacrifices.

In the noisy market of arguments and counter-arguments, there are also the "peacemakers." Be kind, one of them says, to everyone, regardless of their choices. If someone wants to rush out and get their nails done right away, let them do it. If you want to stay home, that's fine too.

To me, those are the worst kind of arguments. Someone who claims to be neutral, above the fray, and a diplomat, actually chooses a side and then says, "why can't we all just get along?" I've seen it a million times. And since we'd all like to be kind and civil once in a while, it does kind of suck us in. Why not be kind to everyone? Diversity is good, right? I always feel better when I affirm everybody else rather than feel threatened by them.

But when it comes to a disease that will keep spreading indiscriminately, and killing as long as it can find hosts, some of us choosing to let it continue is not going to be much help to any of us, including those who chose to stay home. And we'll have to keep staying home longer.

The exaltation of individual choice has been around in our society for a long time. The arguments for it, however, usually don't need to be made unless I'm defending something that someone else finds a problem. If I want to defend my right to do something destructive to myself, like smoking or not wearing a seat belt, I'll argue that I can take a risk if I want to and that nothing bad is going to happen to you.

But it isn't true. Back when smoking was allowed in restaurants, those of us with asthma, who sat in the "no smoking" section, got to breathe in plenty of smoke that drifted over the useless partitions. It was like sitting in a crowded movie theater and being told that if the guy next to us wanted to hold a loud conversation during the movie, that was his choice, and if you want to be quiet and listen to the movie, that's cool too, just do it and don't complain about the other guy. Just everybody do their thing and get along. And good luck hearing the movie.

The individuals making their individual choices also don't consider that maybe we don't want all of our relatives who smoke to die of lung cancer (true for me, except for the one uncle who almost died and then recovered) or have somebody's guts splattered all over the road because they exercised their divine right not to use restraint. At the least that's going to make me late for work and cause everyone's insurance to go up a little. But I can still remember a radio talk show host from a couple of decades ago getting really exorcised about it. Nanny state government, he roared. Trying to take away our individual choice!

Generally, it's the right of the individual to make bad choices that has to be defended. And if history is any guide, this fall, like the autumn of 1918, six months into that ancient pandemic, could see the deaths of millions and be much worse than what we've seen so far. And why do I have the feeling that the people who are now screaming about being allowed to take their own risks (assuming that it isn't going to kill grandma) are not going to be so sanguine when the consequences start rolling in? Getting what you asked for can sometimes be a real problem.

Scientists are also realists. They had built into their computer models that only half of us would take their warnings seriously. So it was a bit of a surprise that the death toll wasn't considerably higher this spring. But we've already lost 75,000 people or more in the U.S., and this virus is just getting started. It is time for a different argument. One they don't have to try to sell.

The White House now admits that in June we will probably lose a 9/11's worth of Americans every single day. And they want business as usual anyhow. And their reason is this: we are going to make you do it. You can't stop us. People will die. Too bad.

Millions of human beings don't get to make individual choices and never have, their lives wasted by the exploitation and greed of others. As a society we sometimes seem to be overcoming some of that tendency, but it is slow, it is uneven, and it is ugly. In my time I am fortunate to have escaped being in the mist of a destructive domestic war, being forced to fight and perhaps die in such a war, or being enslaved or incarcerated. I am one of the truly lucky ones in the larger picture. You probably are, too.

I suppose I should feel lucky that this is a pandemic and not a war. It will involve lots of death but at least leave the spectacular property damage. Human beings feel the need to kill each other in large numbers every so often. I've never been able to figure out why but it keeps happening. But hey, if you don't like being in a war zone, just don't shoot anybody!

And keep your head down.

Coping Skills

From my quarantine hut to yours: I hope these words find you well and well-adjusted, under the circumstances.  There are many of us who are having a difficult time with all of this, even in situations where their external circumstances are not all that unfortunate, and then there are some people who sound as if they are having a very very very very very very bad time indeed.

One of these persons, a friend of a friend, confided to the Facebook universe recently that he moped around all day feeling like "the walking dead" and wondered what on earth was the point of even living the next 14 years until retirement given how cruel his circumstances currently were. His lengthy rant caused me to wonder how on earth this fellow could feel so bad about having to stay home from his job for a few weeks, especially as he provided little actually evidence that, apart from the anxiety of not having a paycheck for the time being, that his life was in complete disarray, though I imagined he is one of these persons who has been taught that he has no value outside of what job he does, and now that he is not allowed to do it, all of his self-worth has vanished. His routine is gone as well, and as he probably has no skills at directing his own activities, he kept going on in the most hyperbolic language about how there was nothing to do, sounding like a bored teenager. I kept thinking of the millions of entertainment options he could access, all of the things he could learn, the opportunities for self-improvement, the people he could catch up with by phone or internet. Surely this man is thirsty in the midst of a freshwater ocean.

I considered responding to this comment on my friend's thread, but I've never met the guy, and I imagined nothing good would come of it. He seems determined to feel put upon, I thought. It's not that he has no misfortune, but his response seemed totally out of proportion--is life not worth living because we are temporarily furloughed? Does he really think he lost everything because, through no fault of his one, he won't be allowed to report to work for a few weeks? (No sign that he actually lost his job, by the way) I realize we all are having a hard time adjusting to disrupted schedules and the threat of worse to come, but we do not need to succomb to our worst fears just because we have to stay home for a while. We need not compare it to slavery or imprisonment, either. Calamities come in different sizes. Most of us have not experienced the worst of our fellow beings, we have been merely set back a little. And while it may knock you back at first, life can go on.

But that depends on your ability to cope. I took a wild guess as to this fellow's age, education, and political affiliation, and turned out to be correct (clicking on his picture I was of course able to read his profile). He appears to have been only high school educated, older, white, pretty angry, and I think you can guess who he voted for in the last election. I was able to confirm this by some of his previous posts.

The reason I'm bringing all this up is because his patron saint has some pretty poor coping skills as well. In fact, the entire movement on which he rose to power is based mostly on the feelings of relatively well-off people who, old, cranky, and without having learned the kind of emotional intelligence that some of us take for granted, feel endlessly persecuted and put upon by everybody else--foreigners, the media, liberals, people who don't pay their elders enough respect, and so forth. There are people who have really suffered, and whose situation is being made worse by their leader's policies. But a great number of them whine about being constantly denied the good things in life while simultaneously rolling in those very things. Far from being grateful for life's gifts, they are always complaining about how someone is trying to take away the little they have, even in the midst of their plenty, and with no evidence that they will truly have to give any of it up. It is no wonder that neither they, nor their leader, know what to do with themselves when they are asked to make so great a sacrifice as to lie on their couch for a few days. (And no, I am not unaware that in some cases that can lead to financial issues as well. This is not that.)

The kind of directionlessness that I'm talking about has its roots in the domination of the mind by what has been come to be called "magical thinking." Imagine a four-year old in his room thinking about how great it would be to become President some day. How he would make the best rules, and say the wisest things, and how everybody would think he was wonderful. There isn't the slightest connection with the way the world actually works in this thinking, but there doesn't have to be. It's all in the mind, and the mind, in absolute control of the situation, can conveniently remove the inevitable opposition from the other party under practically any circumstances, good or bad, the difficultly of getting policies made and laws passed, rather than simply speaking (or tweeting) them into being. But when you are four, with no sense of the Constitution or human nature, what does it matter?

But suppose seven decades later you still see the world the same way. You haven't grown at all in understanding or emotional intelligence. Now you are at a press conference lapping up all the attention, and because you always assume that whatever occurs to you is worth sharing with everyone, you mention what you think is a potential cure for the disease that is plaguing the county. You expect praise from all of the medical professionals around you, wishing they had thought of something so brilliant. And instead, you get criticized. So you take your ball and go home. For a few days, anyway.

I'm sure he was gobsmacked. After all, he didn't actually command people to go and inject disinfectant. Contrary to our darkest opinions of his learning skills, he actually was listening after the last time he pedaled a quack cure, one which, to be absolutely fair, was the subject of a study (if shoddy and since unreplicated) and his unsolicited Presidential medical advice only killed a couple of his followers because, without asking a doctor, they took the drug in an improper form and dosage. Someone seems to have gotten through to him in the meantime about how it is necessary to do studies first to see if a drug really works before you just go randomly injecting them into people's veins en masse. So this time he added, well, I'm not a doctor, but I am brilliant, and you guys should go check it out. Do your scientific doctor thing and get back to us when you find out what a genius I am later.

And then they moved the chains on him. Because in this case, they don't need to do a study. We already know what happens when you put disinfectant into a human body that is still alive and it isn't good. That's what he could have found out by reading the warning label on the bottle.

But perhaps the sadder example of his narrow emotional capacity involved the question he was asked at another press conference. "What would you say to the millions of Americans who are scared right now?" And because he is always wired to start conflicts without cause, and because he has decided "The Media" is his enemy, he naturally tore into the person who asked the question. If you are a supporter of The Donald (tm), and have somehow read this far, you probably also assume that there was no other response he could reasonably offer. Let me show you one.

He could have made a speech in which he acknowledged that we were in for some difficult days and that he understood our anxiety. Then he could have talked about all of the brave Americans who would see us through this crises, the innovators who would find a cure, the thinkers who were putting their best ideas forward. Then he could tell us that America has been through tough times before and has had some of its finest hours in times of crises. He could have assured us, inspired us, filled us with hope, and had us, by the end, cheering like a football team at the end of a rousing half-time speech by a great coach. It could have been his FDR moment, his JFK moment, a phrase or two from it going down in history as the thing that galvanized America when we needed it most.

But he's not that kind of man. Instead, all he could see was a reporter he couldn't stand, and the voices in his head were telling him that now that he was President people were expected to be universally happy all the time and that this very bad man was telling him it wasn't so and bursting his bubble. Every president in his lifetime had their opponents but still four-year old Donald was sure that when he got in there it wouldn't happen to him because opposition is for losers. Nobody would be afraid on his watch. Not even so that he could have his finest moment and encourage the nation, not even so he could shine in history as the man who led us through a great crises. He can't see that far.

He could have hit a home run. The reporter gave him a belt-high fast ball with a full count, bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth, and instead of drilling it way over the center field fence, he whined to the umpire that the pitcher threw the ball too fast.

A few days later, Nancy Pelosi did a radio interview in which a reporter started off by saying that critics of her bailout measure said that it didn't include enough aid for states and localities, and how would she "defend [her]r=self." She told the reporter that she was a very rotten person.

I'm kidding. Of course Ms. Pelosi answered the question. She simply did as requested and defended herself. Whether you thought she sold her position or not, at least she kept her eye on the ball instead of yelling at the pitcher.

There are an awful lot of people who think the guy in the first two examples is a great guy and doing a wonderful job. Their ability to deal with real and perceived adversity is limited. They believed their leader when he told them that America in 2016 was a complete disaster, because they felt that way themselves. When he dropped gems about our airports being like third-world countries, these folks in no way found that ridiculous, in part because they'd never actually seen an airport in a third-world country, but mostly because they hated the man in charge and nothing was allowed to be better than awful because of it. These folks make political decisions in a democracry, and those decisions can lead to things like upwards of a hundred thousand people dying in a pandemic (so far). The last guy we put in charge dealt with an Ebola pandemic in which there were only three American cases and nobody died.

If this civilization collapses before we figure this problem out, then let us at least document it so the next one can work on the problem: in an advanced, partially educated society, what to do with the large number of people whose uncontrollable anxiety, distrust of and lack of education cause our country to make so many boneheaded decisions that so negatively effect all of us and may eventually spell real, rather than imagined, disaster for everyone. This is really part of an even larger problem: when some people choose not to quarantine, we all are at risk, just as, if some people have no clean drinking water, or live in poverty, or think violence is the answer to a problem, or feel alienated, opressed, and alone, and lash out at what they perceive as a cruel, uncaring society, or blame it all on a particular sector of it, we all suffer. Of course, teaching more people to widen their hearts and use their brains (from which so many useful things emerge, from coping skills in a pandemic to making the world a better place) is something that will always be difficult as long as it is not in the best interests of those in power to have independant thinkers who are harder to manipulate and perform repetitive tasks, or who think more for us is less for them. That is what makes this a conundrum for the ages. And maybe, someone reading this a thousand years from now will be shaking their head and muttering that they still haven't figured it out.