2020 Pan­dem­ic – Day 339

The grand­fa­ther clock in the entry hall sounds West­min­ster chimes fol­lowed by six gongs. I roll over and sit up on the edge of the bed in the dark, scratch my head, and yawn. I turn on the light, stum­ble into the bath­room, and look in the mir­ror at an old guy. Mussed-up sil­ver hair, puffy eyes, sag­ging jowls. He is my grandchildren’s Papaw, and he looks the part. 

I take my blood pres­sure pill, shave, brush my teeth, floss, gar­gle, show­er, tow­el off, and step on the scales. Up anoth­er pound. I heave a sigh. 

I dress, go down­stairs, and open a can of dog food. When I set the bowls on the floor, Zoey and P.D. jump around, whip­ping my shins with their ropey tails, hap­py out of their minds about the same meal I’ve fed them twice a day for a decade. 

Cindy and I watch the Chan­nel 7 morn­ing news. Gov­er­nor New­som, his pale face smil­ing like it hurts, begs Cal­i­for­ni­ans to stay at home, then apol­o­gizes yet again for the pho­tos that caught him din­ing indoors at a pricey restau­rant with a dozen peo­ple, none of them masked. “I made a mis­take,” he says, just before he extends California’s stay-at-home order into late January. 

The news anchor reports that yesterday’s death toll in Los Ange­les broke the pre­vi­ous one-day record. She cuts to a clip of May­or Garcetti’s press con­fer­ence, broad­cast last night from his home where he is quar­an­tined because his daugh­ter test­ed pos­i­tive. “Our hos­pi­tals are over­run,” the may­or says with tears in his eyes. I feel sor­ry for him. The lock­down isn’t help­ing, but he doesn’t know what else to do so he dou­bles down. “Can­cel every­thing,” he tells us. 

We fin­ish break­fast. Cindy heads into the fam­i­ly room to work on her needle­point­ing project, a mul­ti­col­ored ele­phant for one of our grandsons. 

I read the news­pa­per. A front page arti­cle describes chaos at an east-side hos­pi­tal. With twelve patients in cri­sis mode, over­head speak­ers sound Code Blues con­tin­u­ous­ly. Sev­en die with­in a six hour shift, two in a hall­way because there was no ICU bed avail­able. Anoth­er arti­cle says 442 peo­ple died state-wide yes­ter­day, one every three and a half min­utes. Hos­pi­tal morgues are over­flow­ing; funer­al homes are turn­ing away corpses. I toss the news­pa­per in the trash and try to purge its dark images from my thoughts.

At eight, I put on my coat and boots for the main event of the day. “I’m leav­ing,” I shout to Cindy. 

“Have a good time.”

I dri­ve to the barn. When I come through the gate, Lily and Jack­son nick­er a greet­ing. I brush Lily’s mane and tail and groom her coat. My daugh­ter and six-year-old grand­daugh­ter lead Marge into the cor­ral from our oth­er barn, tie her up, and tack up Jack­son while I sad­dle Lily. The horse whis­per­er arrives on her geld­ing, Jesse. We’re masked and six feet apart as we mount up and ride out. My daugh­ter leads on Jack­son; I fol­low on Lily; the horse whis­per­er trails on Jesse, pony­ing Marge with my grand­daugh­ter up. 

“Hey, Papaw, what’s the ghost’s favorite plant?” she says. 

“I don’t know.”

“Bam­boooo!”

Our masks muf­fle our laughter. 

It’s a beau­ti­ful day, clear sky, fifty degrees, the air crisp and clean. We crest a hill. Below us, the val­ley floor stretch­es out to pur­ple moun­tains in the east. Lat­er, on flat­land, the horse whis­per­er schools my grand­daugh­ter on trot­ting. Her back is straight; her hands qui­et; her form per­fect. We end the ride with an easy walk down Long Val­ley Road to the barn. 

When the oth­ers leave, I fetch car­rots from the tack room and give one to Lily. She rif­fles my arm with her lips and rests her head on my shoul­der. Jack­son bangs around in the next stall, jeal­ous. I give him a car­rot, pet him, then dri­ve back home. 

Before the stay-at-home order I would meet my train­er at the gym for an hour’s work­out three days a week. Now I exer­cise at home with weights and an ath­let­ic ball. With­out the trainer’s encour­age­ment I give up after thir­ty minutes. 

Back in the house, Cindy shows me the morning’s hand­i­work. The vivid col­ors and intri­cate stitch­ing on a flat can­vass resem­ble an ana­con­da instead of an ele­phant, but when she con­verts her projects to three dimen­sions, they always mag­i­cal­ly trans­form into a stun­ning work of art. 

After lunch, I sit in my home office and work on my nov­el. Jer­ry Dade is 73, a life-long bank rob­ber who suf­fers from symp­toms of demen­tia. He’s ter­ri­fied, and I want to save him. All the main char­ac­ters in my nov­els came through dark caves into the light, but I can’t seem to find a cred­i­ble way out for Jerry. 

After a cou­ple hours of frus­tra­tion, I take a break, dri­ve to the oth­er barn, and hang out with Marge and Wil­son. Wilson’s a big old boy with a gen­tle dis­po­si­tion. Feel­ing bad that we left him behind today, I promise him I’ll ride him tomor­row. The break helps. I come up with an idea, go back home, and write it out. 

You can set your watch by the dogs’ inter­nal clocks. At four sharp they start danc­ing around my desk. There’s no deny­ing them. I grab their leash­es and dri­ve them to a trail head. We walk less than a mile in an hour as they pause over every scent. 

Back at home, the dogs’ evening meal pro­duces anoth­er fren­zied eupho­ria. Cindy and I grill chick­en and make a sal­ad. After din­ner we watch tele­vi­sion, then go to bed. Cindy falls asleep while I read. I’m in the mid­dle of Paris Trout by Pete Dex­ter. When the page blurs, I turn off the bed­side lamp. I brood about the spread of Covid and the stay-at-home order as I drift off to sleep.

Day 340

The grand­fa­ther clock in the entry hall sounds West­min­ster chimes fol­lowed by six gongs. I roll over and sit up on the edge of the bed in the dark, scratch my head, and yawn. I turn on the light, stum­ble into the bath­room, and look in the mir­ror at an old guy. 

Lat­er, stand­ing at the kitchen counter, I’m open­ing a can of dog food when a descrip­tion of a med­ical cri­sis in yesterday’s news­pa­per comes back to haunt me. A hos­pi­tal bed in an ICU. An endo­tra­cheal tube extends from a patient’s mouth to a gas­ket con­nect­ed to a ven­ti­la­tor. Exhaust­ed health care work­ers in haz­mat suits hov­er over him. His eyes widen with pan­ic. He gasps for breath. 

As I look out the win­dow at the amber glow of anoth­er pic­turesque sun­rise at the top of anoth­er per­fect day a sense of guilt wash­es over me. I’m quar­an­tined in a Gar­den of Eden with Cindy, the hors­es, and the dogs. As long as I keep my dis­tance, I can still see my chil­dren and grand­chil­dren. The rate of infec­tion in Hid­den Hills is among the low­est in the coun­ty, but in the unlike­ly event the virus finds us here, Cindy and I are healthy and we’ll beat it. I’ve got it made, but while oth­ers strug­gle just to sur­vive, I sulk about being locked down in Par­adise. My malaise is self­ish and friv­o­lous, and I’m ashamed of it. 

“You’d bet­ter feed them before they break your legs,” Cindy says, stand­ing beside me. 

I come out of my trance to the sting of ropey dog tails lash­ing my shins. I set the bowls on the floor, and Zoey and P.D. gob­ble up their stan­dard chow like it’s filet mignon. Cindy smiles. I do, too. 

In bed that night, I read Paris Trout. The page blurs. I turn off the light. The day has fol­lowed the pat­tern of all the pre­vi­ous days of the stay-at-home order, but this time as I drift off to sleep, instead of wor­ry­ing about Covid, I think about Cindy’s smile, Lily’s soul­ful eyes, and my grand­daugh­ter rid­ing Marge. 

Post Script: Appar­ent­ly, my sense of guilt is not unique. See The Para­dox of Priv­i­lege: Guilt Dur­ing Covid-19 at https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/the-paradox-of-privilege-guilt-during-covid19-65509/ 

Bob­bye Marrs, a world-class pub­lish­ing assis­tant, talked me into writ­ing a month­ly blog five years ago. She pitched the idea while we sat in a cor­ner of Eric and Pamela Hutchins’ home in Texas at a writ­ers’ con­fer­ence. “It sounds like a lot of work,” I said. “What pur­pose does it serve?”

She said a peri­od­ic newslet­ter with a blog post could help build the read­er­ship for my nov­els. I didn’t want to do it, but she per­sist­ed, drag­ging ideas out of me while I did my best to remain stuck in the mud.

When Pamela joined our table and asked how we were pro­gress­ing, I intend­ed to say, “No way I’m going to waste time and ener­gy on a blog,” but Bob­bye beat me to the punch. “He’s got plen­ty of mate­r­i­al. Thoughts about writ­ing. Sto­ries about his fam­i­ly. Fun­ny times with his dogs. He should def­i­nite­ly give it a try.”

“It’ll take too much time,” I grumped. “I can’t write nov­els if I have to churn out an essay every week.”

“So don’t write every week,” Bob­bye said. “Write one post a month or when­ev­er you feel like it. Why not give it a try? See how it goes?”

I con­tin­ued to resist, but Pamela and Bob­bye kept at it until I agreed to write a few draft blog posts. An exper­i­ment in futil­i­ty, I told myself while I sat at the com­put­er bang­ing out three short works. I wasn’t impressed with what I wrote. “I don’t know if I’m cut out for this,” I said in an email to Bob­bye, attach­ing Swanie, Dog Days, and What’s in a Name. “These seem corny to me.”

Know­ing she need­ed rein­force­ments to break open my closed mind, Bob­bye sent my drafts to SkipJack’s social media guru, Abbey Road. “She’s not afraid to say what’s on her mind,” Bob­bye told me, “and she’s been doing this kind of thing suc­cess­ful­ly for a long time so I know we’ll get an hon­est eval­u­a­tion from her.”

My expec­ta­tions were low, so as Bob­bye had planned, I was bowled over when I got Abbey’s feed­back. “Bob­bye, these are WONDERFUL blogs. I could read these all day. They are per­fect. Please tell Ken not to feel ‘corny.’ Tell him to run free. This is what blogs are sup­posed to be. Good short sto­ries. Real life hap­pen­ings and rec­ol­lec­tions. Pub­lish these. Just put it out there and keep going.”

They say flat­tery goes a long way with those who have small minds and big egos. I don’t know any­thing about that, but all of a sud­den, this blog­ging busi­ness seemed like a great idea. We put those first three works out there and kept going, rolling out one a month for the next four years.

The orig­i­nal con­cept was that I would write about the craft of cre­at­ing a nov­el, but I soon dis­cov­ered I don’t have much to offer on that sub­ject. My “process” is mad­den­ing­ly chaot­ic. I write a huge vol­ume of unpub­lish­able blath­er, cull out the few coher­ent pas­sages, revise them end­less­ly, and throw away most of the rewrites. When I’m on the verge of jump­ing off a tall build­ing in frus­tra­tion, a sto­ry some­times steps out of the fog of con­fu­sion and grabs me by the throat and the writ­ing begins to flow. I don’t under­stand it; I wouldn’t wish it on any­one; and I sure as hell don’t want to write about it.

Cast­ing around for a dif­fer­ent approach, I exper­i­ment­ed with short non­fic­tion pieces about my past. They were fun to write and they received a pos­i­tive reac­tion from read­ers. So I stayed with that. Hit­ting my stride after a few months, I found myself revis­it­ing events in my life going all the way back to my ear­li­est mem­o­ries, turn­ing them over in my mind, weigh­ing their mean­ing, and under­stand­ing them much more deeply than I did when I lived through them. From encoun­ters with inter­est­ing peo­ple like Muham­mad Ali, Pres­i­dent Clin­ton, Anna Ander­son, who claimed to be the daugh­ter of the Tsar of Rus­sia, and Harold Swan­son, Hollywood’s first lit­er­ary agent, to com­ing to grips with life and death deci­sions, the trau­ma of aging, the heart­break of demen­tia, sur­vival dur­ing a pan­dem­ic, and rep­re­sent­ing a death row defen­dant, my month­ly writ­ing jour­ney spanned the emo­tion­al spec­trum and became enor­mous­ly impor­tant to me.

Mean­while, Bob­bye made it easy to pub­lish my sto­ries. She set up my web­site in its cur­rent form and main­tains it. She rides herd on the weird dudes in Lon­don, who fight off the Russ­ian bots, spam jock­eys, and ubiq­ui­tous hack­ers deter­mined to sad­dle my posts with links to porn, pay­day loans, bit­coin traders, Via­gra ven­dors, pho­ny casi­nos, a young woman named Kristi­na who’s search­ing for a sug­ar dad­dy, and a host of oth­er scam artists. She proof­reads the Word doc­u­ment I send her every month for typos and con­tent, syn­the­sizes it with pho­tos, and cre­ates the pre­sen­ta­tion you find on my website’s blog page. She pre­pares the for­mat and pro­mo­tion­al pitch­es for my newslet­ter, main­tains its mail­ing list, dis­trib­utes it, and for­wards all the read­ers’ com­ments to me. I’m tech­no­log­i­cal­ly incom­pe­tent, so when I do some­thing that fouls up the entire web­site, she some­how straight­ens it out, cre­at­ing order out of ram­pant chaos.

Keep­ing the Promise is the result of our part­ner­ship, a col­lec­tion of my first fifty blog posts, a series of non-fic­tion short sto­ries in the nature of an episod­ic mem­oir pre­sent­ed out of chrono­log­i­cal order and grouped under the head­ings Mile­stones, Inter­est­ing Peo­ple I’ve Met Along the Way, Growth From Adver­si­ty, Mur­der Most Foul, Faith­ful Com­pan­ions, and On Writ­ing. The book’s title is tak­en from a post about my grand­fa­ther pub­lished in May 2020, in the ear­ly days of the cur­rent pan­dem­ic. A short time before he passed away, he asked me to promise him I’d always try hard at every­thing I did. I made the promise, although I wasn’t sure I would keep it, and I haven’t always lived up to it in the fifty years that fol­lowed. These posts recall events on both sides of that ledger. The blog post, Keep­ing the Promise, leads them off because it gives you a good sense of the posts that fol­low and because I kept my promise with each essay and tried my best.

Since we orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished the sto­ries on my blog for free, I hoped to offer this col­lec­tion for free as well. Cur­rent­ly, the ebook is avail­able for free on Ama­zon, Nook, Apple, Kobo, and Google Play. Although I’ve waived the roy­al­ties, at some point these sites will like­ly insist on charg­ing a trans­fer­ence fee, so if you want a free ebook, down­load it soon. With the paper­back, the $6.99 charge is the low­est price we could nego­ti­ate with the printer.

Writ­ing these sto­ries took me back in time and gave me new per­spec­tives on the art of liv­ing a long life. They made me laugh and they made me cry, some­times in the same breath. If you read Keep­ing The Promise all the way through, you’ll know me bet­ter when you fin­ish than I knew myself when I start­ed writ­ing it. No guar­an­tee that’s a good thing for either one of us, but hey, in your case at least you get a free book.

Pol­i­tics makes me sick. Lit­er­al­ly. On elec­tion day in 2016, I woke up feel­ing nau­seous. I blew break­fast mid-morn­ing and ripped through a series of dry heaves that after­noon.  Exhaust­ed, I col­lapsed on our liv­ing room recliner.

“I’m real­ly sick,” I told my wife as we watched the elec­tion cov­er­age. “I must have food poisoning.”

“I don’t think so,” Cindy said. “We both ate the same things. Maybe it’s the election.”

I stared at the obnox­ious talk­ing heads yam­mer­ing away on the tele­vi­sion screen and thought she might be on to something.

We live in Cal­i­for­nia. It’s basi­cal­ly a one-par­ty state. The Cal­i­for­nia Repub­li­can Par­ty has been on life sup­port for a decade. By 2016 there were more Cal­i­for­nia vot­ers reg­is­tered as Unaf­fil­i­at­ed than as Repub­li­cans. Demo­c­rat vic­to­ries became so rou­tine that even the Demo­c­rat-con­trolled state leg­is­la­ture got bored with the process. To cre­ate com­pet­i­tive con­tests in Novem­ber, it amend­ed Cal­i­for­nia elec­tion laws to pit the top two vote-get­ters in the open pri­maries, almost always Democ­rats, against each oth­er in the gen­er­al election.

You might think like-mind­ed can­di­dates from the same par­ty would run clean cam­paigns. Think again. In 2012, redis­trict­ing forced two Demo­c­rat incum­bents to run against each oth­er for the 30^th Dis­trict of the House, which cov­ers the San Fer­nan­do Val­ley where I live. Hav­ing served ten terms, Howard Berman was Chair­man of the House For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee. Brad Sher­man had served sev­en terms and sat on the same committee. 

Good friends when the cam­paign start­ed, they shared almost iden­ti­cal vot­ing records. Unable to find much to dis­agree about on pol­i­cy, their pitch to the vot­ers quick­ly devolved into increas­ing­ly bit­ter per­son­al attacks, cul­mi­nat­ing in a tele­vised phys­i­cal alter­ca­tion on the debate stage at Pierce Col­lege. When Howard accused Brad of being “delu­sion­al,” he lost it. Brad crossed the stage, grabbed Howard by the shoul­ders, and jammed his nose in his face. “You want to get into this?” he shout­ed. A sheriff’s deputy and the debate mod­er­a­tor jumped between them and pulled Brad away. 

Brad’s cam­paign man­ag­er claimed Howard start­ed it by step­ping toward Brad in a threat­en­ing man­ner. It strained creduli­ty. Resem­bling a bald-head­ed Big Bird, Brad is taller and thir­ty pounds heav­ier than Howard and Howard was 71 years old at the time. Despite the tele­vised assault, Brad won by twen­ty points, send­ing poor Howard to the polit­i­cal bone­yard. A har­bin­ger of things to come. 

The pukey con­test in 2016 was the nation­al Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Hillary Clin­ton and Don­ald Trump ran relent­less­ly neg­a­tive cam­paigns with her bas­ket of deplorables and his ral­ly chants of “Lock her up.” I felt like a rat poised at the head of a T‑shaped Skin­ner Box with both met­al bars at oppo­site ends of the T set to deliv­er a high volt­age shock no mat­ter which lever I pulled.

On elec­tion night, I thought my angst about that god-awful choice had made me sick, but my upset stom­ach turned out to be an ear­ly symp­tom of an infect­ed gall blad­der that spent the next two months try­ing to kill me. The doc­tors cut it out on Christ­mas Eve and I ful­ly recov­ered, but with next Tues­day rolling inex­orably toward us, my nau­sea has returned. Since my gan­grenous gall blad­der is long gone, the 2020 elec­tion seems the like­ly cul­prit this time.

My queasi­ness began with California’s new vot­ing process. The state mailed bal­lots to all vot­ers this year so we could vote with­out risk of expo­sure to Covid at a polling place. We can mail our bal­lot or deliv­er it to a Cal­i­for­nia drop box at des­ig­nat­ed civic locations.

In a des­per­ate attempt to increase their vot­er turnout, the small band of remain­ing Cal­i­for­nia Repub­li­cans cre­at­ed their own bal­lot box­es, labeled them “Offi­cial,” and placed them in strate­gic loca­tions across the state. The Democ­rats went bal­lis­tic. The state Attor­ney Gen­er­al, Xavier Becer­ra, a Demo­c­rat, launched an investigation.

The Repub­li­cans defend­ed their box­es as per­mis­si­ble “bal­lot har­vest­ing.” The Demo­c­rat-con­trolled leg­is­la­ture passed a law sev­er­al years ago allow­ing cam­paign work­ers and par­ty offi­cials to col­lect bal­lots from vot­ers and take them to the polls. Repub­li­cans screamed bloody mur­der at the time, accus­ing Democ­rats of legal­iz­ing vot­er fraud, but this year they appar­ent­ly decid­ed to push the enve­lope of the new rules by har­vest­ing bal­lots in pri­vate drop boxes. 

Becer­ra filed suit seek­ing a cease and desist order, and the Repub­li­cans are fight­ing the case. They removed the “Offi­cial” label, but they insist the box­es oth­er­wise com­ply with the law. As I write this, thou­sands of bal­lots are sus­pend­ed in legal lim­bo inside those boxes.

Worse yet, a cre­ative soul invent­ed a new vot­er sup­pres­sion tech­nique based on the design of the real Cal­i­for­nia drop box­es. The state con­struct­ed them with heavy met­al so no one could pen­e­trate them and tam­per with the bal­lots. Know­ing that, an arson­ist in Bald­win Park jammed burn­ing paper through the bal­lot slot. While smoke belched from the mouth of the box, cit­i­zens on the scene couldn’t break into it to res­cue its con­tents. By the time the fire depart­ment cut it open with a met­al saw, more than a hun­dred bal­lots had burned to a crisp. Elec­tion offi­cials are try­ing to fig­ure out how to iden­ti­fy the vot­ers and give them replace­ment bal­lots. Good luck with that.

Even if I man­age to cast my bal­lot safe­ly, my vote won’t make much dif­fer­ence. Most of the con­tests are lop­sided; their out­comes fore­gone con­clu­sions. The only dogfight is the race for LA Coun­ty Dis­trict Attor­ney. The incum­bent, Jack­ie Lacey, is the first woman and first African Amer­i­can to serve in that posi­tion since its cre­ation in 1850. She’s run­ning on her two-term record. Her chal­lenger, George Gas­con, is a for­mer LAPD Assis­tant Chief and for­mer San Fran­cis­co Dis­trict Attor­ney, who sup­ports police reform and the elim­i­na­tion of cash bail.

Lacey looked like a shoo-in until she got cross­wise with Black Lives Mat­ter. Upset with some of her deci­sions not to pros­e­cute police offi­cers accused of racial vio­lence, forty BLM pro­test­ers gath­ered in front of her home before dawn on March 2 and shout­ed for her to come out­side. When she didn’t respond, three of their lead­ers went to the front door and rang the door­bell. Lacey’s hus­band came to the door bran­dish­ing a gun. “I will shoot you,” he said. “Get off my porch.” Attor­ney Gen­er­al Becer­ra filed crim­i­nal mis­de­meanor charges against him, and BLM lead­ers filed a civ­il suit alleg­ing assault and inflic­tion of emo­tion­al dis­tress. The race is now a toss-up.

The 2020 pres­i­den­tial con­test presents anoth­er high volt­age Skin­ner Box. Trump says Biden is a crook who’s lost his mar­bles. Biden says Trump is a crook who nev­er had any mar­bles in the first place. The way things have gone so far in 2020, they’re both prob­a­bly right.

Mean­while, Brad Sher­man is coast­ing to reelec­tion in my dis­trict for his thir­teenth term. I’ve vot­ed against Bel­li­cose Brad four times since he beat up on old Howard. I’m vot­ing against him again this time but it won’t do any good. He seems des­tined to be my rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Wash­ing­ton until one of us dies. Noth­ing per­son­al, but I hope he kicks the buck­et first.

This morn­ing I marked, sealed, and signed my bal­lot, drove to the Cal­abasas City Hall drop box, looked around furtive­ly for arson­ists lurk­ing in the weeds, then shoved my vote through the slot.

I haven’t thrown up yet, but it’s not over. With the uncer­tain­ties of the process and both pres­i­den­tial cam­paigns gear­ing up for legal chal­lenges, I’ll be chug­ging Pep­to Bis­mol all the way to Inau­gu­ra­tion Day.

Post­script: Appar­ent­ly, I’m not alone. The Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion report­ed last week that 68% of Amer­i­can adults cur­rent­ly suf­fer from Elec­tion Stress Dis­or­der. Symp­toms include loss of sleep, sud­den irri­tabil­i­ty, and, of course, an upset stomach.