COVID-19 Crisis Diary
I meant to mention this in my recent segment on Walmart that my local superstore recently implemented a line queue at its entrance, sort of like those long winding lines you'll find at airline security, designed to limit width of the lane for concurrent entry. It adds a few dozen yards to entering the store. I don't mind the extra exercise but usually, when I go, there's only a handful of people going into the store, if that. Maybe it's necessary in early store hours, but in this case it was overkill.I've definitely noticed an uptick in store personnel and customers wearing face masks, but at least a handful of customers, lifting up their masks to over their mouths, which sort of defeats the whole purpose.
I saw a tall girl joke (at the expense of shorter guys, like me), arguing that short guys think social distancing of 6 feet really amounts to 5'8" or so. (The context of the joke is that guys round up their actual height a few inches. So a 5'11" woman may find a shorter guy arguing she must be at least 6'2" because he claims to be 6 feet tall.) Actually, I've never inflated my height, although I think tall women often claim to be shorter than they are because they think 6 feet sounds too tall. I do recall while I was UH grad student, I think shopping at Montgomery Ward, I was paying by check (nowadays I almost always pay by credit card), and so the very pretty black saleslady was writing ID stuff on the back of the check, and she wrote/called out my height as 5'11". Not sure where she got that number; my real height (about 2 inches less) is on my drivers license. Maybe she was flirting with me.
Trump's Impulsiveness Undermines His Credibility
Trump needs to stop spitballing. In the past, I've often contrasted him (unfavorably) to "Silent Cal" Coolidge. He does a lot of compulsive talking and tweeting; a lot of it is self-promotion and defensiveness. It backfires on him, like when he claimed not to accept responsibility for things in the government response or tries to shift blame to Obama. He doesn't do things like fact checking or spellchecks on tweets.I'm not going to go into a full rant here on Trump's adolescent behavior, but two recent tweets caught my eye.
The first was when he tweeted out "Happy Good Friday!" Oh, my God. You would think almost any Christian knows the anniversary of Christ's brutal torture and execution isn't a day of celebration.
The second wasn't so much a tweet but a soundbite where he's describing a rapidly mutating COVID-19 outstripping antibiotics ability to treat it. Antibiotics are used against bacterial, not viral infections.
Eddie and Sarah
Growing up in the integrated military, I encountered many kids of other racial/ethic groups: blacks, Asian-Americans, Latinos, etc., and from other religious backgrounds, especially from various Protestant denominations in contrast to my Catholicism from birth. (Catholicism is part of my Franco-American heritage.) Whereas I've always had a strong bond with and belief/confidence in my faith (as the "one true faith"), I was more curious than confrontational about individual differences with people from other backgrounds. No, I did not blame Jews in general for the Roman execution of Christ. I knew some Jews in His lifetime did not follow Him and/or recognize Him as the Messiah and the Christian faith soon forked outside of Judaism (you can see this in the latter books of the New Testament (where, for example, there is debate on whether gentile converts must be circumcised). I was curious about the reasons for these differences and how and why we departed from certain common roots, e.g., the Sabbath vs. Sunday worship, dietary practices (for example, ground pork dishes are popular in Franco-American culture).Estimates for the Jewish population in the US tend to range between 3 to 4% (cf. Pew), depending on various assessments (including non-practicing). In the military, it's roughly 1.7% of personnel, comparable to the percentage of self-identified Jews in Pew Research. It really wasn't until high school (I went to a local Texas high school, not one on the Air Force base, so I met local residents who weren't military brats). One of my friends SK, who was also a valedictorian the year after I graduated, was Jewish; I don't recall how the topic of his religious identification came up: maybe he had mentioned celebrating Passover or some other Jewish holiday. I asked him some question about the dietary laws, like eating pork products, noting they were generally safe to consume in modern times. He looked at me with utter contempt, saying "I'm a Reformed Jew!", i.e., we eat the same things as the rest of you guys; we don't practice certain old practices. I'm not sure why he would think I should know he was a Reformed Jew. Of course, I later looked up the topic and learned there are three prominent sects in Judaism: orthodox, conservative, and reformed, basically in order of adherence to old practices.
I have met and befriended other Jews as an adult, including Lynn, a fellow Navy officer who eventually married (and later divorced) my best buddy Joe D. and RR, a technical architect/project manager I worked with at a private company later acquired by Equifax. I think Lynn may have been orthodox because of her first husband's appearance and I know she was active in her temple. RR really didn't discuss his religion, but I do know he had invited a Jewish colleague to his home for Seder (Passover meal) and told me he would invite me to a future one, which never happened probably because I left Equifax before the next Passover. RR knew I was Catholic, and there is a difference of opinion about gentiles like me attending a Seder, although I think that mostly involves involvement in meal preparation.
As Catholics, we do not observe Passover directly, although the timing is close because Holy Week (commemorating the passion of Christ, His execution, prior to Easter Sunday and His resurrection) is based on the timing of Jesus' arrest during the week of Passover. I think I went to one or 2 Seder simulations during CCD (Catholic Sunday school), and Mom used to occasionally buy boxes of Matzos (and I've bought them on and off since then) For the unfamiliar reader, Matzos are unleavened flatbreads, sort of like sheets of crispy unsalted crackers. It is no accident that Communion hosts/wafers are also unleavened bread, commemorating Jesus' breaking of the bread at the Last Supper.
So all of this is context for a recent hashtag on Twitter named "Eddie and Sarah". The basic context is a conservative Jewish married couple (let's call them David and Ester) invited David's brother Eddie and spouse Sarah to Seder. Apparently Eddie doesn't practice his faith. He and Sarah show up with a box of conventional (leavened) bagels, which horrifies David as an explicit violation of Seder practices. He asks Eddie to take his bagels out of the house (back to his car). Eddie refuses, saying David and Ester are free to eat what they want, but he and Sarah are eating bagels. David tries to convince Eddie to eat the prepared meal; Eddie basically says that the food is unappealing to him and he really wants to eat his bagels. Long story short, David and Eddie are at an impasse, and David asks Eddie and Susan to leave. So, basically, David is asking what other people think: is he an asshole for kicking Eddie out?
I wrote a couple of tweets on this trend. First of all, I rebuked all the COVID-19 politically correct police condemning David for violating stay-at-home guidelines by inviting over Eddie and Sarah. Second, I gave a nuanced opinion, saying guests should honor the host's observation of Seder, not impose his preferences on the meal in deliberate violation of customs. Even I, a gentile only modestly aware of the Jewish diet, would not have brought leavened bread to my friend RR's home; that would be like poking a bear with a stick, and I'm absolutely sure Eddie in bringing bagels knew that his brother would be upset. It would be a different thing if they went to restaurant or celebrated Passover at Eddie's.
There are similar considerations elsewhere, e.g., many, if not most, Muslims don't eat pork; and of course many, if not most, Indians are vegetarians, with one notable exception: a lot of them eat chicken. And there are a lot of differences in practice; my friend RN, a Hindu (who spent hours talking about various gods and goddesses), admitted to eating his fair share of burgers (vs. the sacred cow). For most of my tenure as an IT professional, I have almost always worked with Indians. With pizza the unofficial food choice in high tech in joint meals, coordinators will almost always ensure at least one or 2 pies are veggie. I remember once convincing my Indian colleagues on a Waukesha project to go to Boston Market (with its signature rotisserie chicken, never mind various veggie sides), and soon they were suggesting it on their own.
