behind the mask

I am writing this in the middle of my fifth week of "working from home" as a result of precautions being taken to "flatten the curve"* of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, due to the hands-on nature of my job, there is not a lot of work for me to do at home. I have been on "stand-by" for five weeks. Two weeks ago, I did a reworking of a layout that took me all of an hour. Otherwise I have wandered around the confines of my home during most of this time, going downstairs to the kitchen. Upstairs to the den. Over to the bedroom. Back to the den. Back down to the kitchen. I'm starting to realize that my house isn't as big as I thought it was.

My only respite from "workday" boredom is an afternoon walk with my wife. Mrs. Pincus normally works from home, maintaining her eBay business from a home office on the third floor of our house. (Yeah, I go up there, too... sometimes.) Every afternoon, we set out for a stroll around the block for a little fresh air and exercise. We have been doing this for over a year. My previous job allowed me to be home by 4:30 in the afternoon, but circumstances of my current job — which is an hour's commute — leaves Mrs. P to traverse the sidewalks of Elkins Park alone. I have only been able to join her on weekends — until the majority of the nation's workforce was sent home in the middle of March. Now, I accompany her daily and will do so for as long as this home quarantine lasts.

Rules, suggestions, guidelines and mandates have changed regularly throughout the course of this decidedly uncertain situation. The governor of Pennsylvania, who, like a select number of other state governors, has assumed a position of reassuring authority and calm out of necessity. Regular briefings on current state policy are broadcast on local television and on the state's website offering pertinent information to help and guide the residents of my state through this mess. As would be expected, things change. What was once accepted policy could do a complete one-eighty a day later. Just last week, it was strongly recommended that face masks be worn by all Pennsylvania residents when leaving the house, after initially being told the contrary. Instructions on how to fashion a suitable face mask out of a bandanna are readily available all over the internet. My wife, who has been self-designated as the liaison to the outside world, does the shopping, prescription pick-ups, banking and running of small errands for me and her parents. She is the sole representative of the extended Pincus clan that leaves the house to venture further than the perimeter blocks. Before each trip, she puts a colorful bandanna in place, secured with elastic hair ties encircling each ear. When she returns home, she carefully removes the cloth and drops it in a laundry basket in the basement (yeah, I walk those steps sometimes, too) for later cleaning. Then she proceeds to thoroughly was her hands, humming "Happy Birthday" or what lyrics she can remember from the theme to "The Nanny" as presented in a recent YouTube video featuring Fran Drescher. When we go out walking, I wear one, too.

Since this most recent mandate regarding the wearing of face masks, I am surprised by the amount of people we pass on our walks — from a socially acceptable distance of six feet — that are not wearing them. In reality, I see more people not wearing a mask or some sort of facial covering than those who are. I also see a lot of people not practicing "social distancing" (another of those phrases*), stopping to talk to a neighbor and standing close enough to grab an arm or touch a shoulder. We see folks walking dogs, passing other folks walking dogs, stopping to converse while their pets sniff each others asses — yep! their owners are that close. What is wrong with these people? Oh wait.... I know! We live in a time of "The rules don't apply to me." I know we all hear the same warnings, it's just some people think those warnings are for everyone else. Other people have to follow those rules. They can't possibly mean me! After all, I'm me! My wife tells me she sees the same thing in the supermarket. She has witnessed people closing up the temporary, but clearly-marked, six-foot delineations put on the floor. She has had people reach right across the bridge of her nose to get an item on a shelf. A guy even picked up a pair of sunglasses my wife had dropped, despite her loud pleas of "Please don't touch them," his ungloved hand continuing to wrap around the lenses. Oh, right!  Sorry! You can touch them! I didn't realize it was you!

Look, I don't know how long this pandemic will last and how long we will have to maintain this cautious existence. No one does. I just keep envisioning a post-apocalyptic world as depicted in so many movies. Sinewy hollow-faced men and women roaming the streets in ragged clothes with an appropriated rifle strapped to their backs, collecting scavenged scraps of survival from steaming, picked-over spoils, strewn across the decimated landscape. It's a worrisome image that I hope I never see.

But — goddammit! — those men and women better be wearing masks and keeping their distance.

www.joshpincusiscrying.com

* If I may stray from my point for just a second (as I often do), there are certain words and phrases that I have come to loathe as specific hot-button topics trend in the news. Media outlets tend to stick these words and phrases into every report, no matter how applicable it is to the current hot story. Over the years, the constant repetition of words like "Iraqi" during the days of Operation: Desert Storm and "Lewinsky" during the infamous Clinton scandal drove me crazy! More recently, "quid pro quo" was quickly replaced by the current "flatten the curve" — a phrase that is slowly losing its meaning as it is repeated over and over again on a daily basis and repeated by people who just heard it repeated on a news broadcast. 

good morning here's the news

“I hate the news!” – Roger Rabbit

I stopped watching the news in 2016, just after the last Presidential election. I lost faith in the caliber of reporting offered by the major networks including CNN. I grew irritated with the news anchors, reporters and guest commentators. They were no longer reporting the news. Instead they were creating sensationalized stories that were introduced with jarring teasers that ultimately ended with empty non-stories. In addition, all news broadcasts became political quagmires and it was making my head spin. So I stopped watching. I switched to my local newscasts, only paying attention to Philadelphia-focused stories, weather forecasts and tales of how poorly the Philadelphia Phillies were performing. Otherwise, I never watched any television news broadcasts.

This doesn’t mean I was uninformed. I still read headlines on Yahoo’s homepage on the internet, electing to read further if a particular headline caught my attention. If this occurred, I would only read two or three sentences, which was usually enough to get the gist of the story. I also stayed informed by logging on to Twitter, where a “hot button” topic was presented, critiqued and hilariously mocked by the select group of sarcastic assholes (and I mean that with the highest respect) I choose to follow.

During the (now anticlimactic) Mueller Report, I began watching CNN with my wife again. Nothing had changed. It was the same rehashing of extreme commentary and blown-out-of-proportion reporting that we had previously turned off in disgust.

It's the end of the world as we know it...

I have only seen bits and pieces of the right-wing propaganda mouthpiece that is Fox News, mostly in clips shown during pointed jabs on HBO's "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver." I consider myself a liberal and have only ever voted for Democratic candidates in any election*, so I naturally gravitated towards news reports that appear to be more left-leaning, but I have come to the conclusion that CNN is no different from Fox. They both use the exact same methods and tactics to report the same stories, except Fox takes the extreme right view point and CNN takes the extreme left view. Otherwise, they are identical.

So, I stopped watching national news again. I was sick of politics.

...and I feel fine.

My wife and I are preparing for another cruise with stops in the Caribbean, including Freeport in The Bahamas. At the end of August, that part of the Caribbean was hit – and hit hard – by Hurricane Dorian. We watched The Weather Channel in horror as live pictures of hundred-mile-per-hour winds and torrential rains ripped through the frail structures of Freeport, obliterating everything in its path. At one point, Mrs. P changed the channel to CNN. There was nothing political about a hurricane. We expected straight reporting about a weather phenomenon. We wanted to see professional, qualified reporters offering insight and documentation of the devastation occurring in a major tourist area – one that we would be visiting shortly. Instead – and keeping with CNN’s “lowest common denominator” style, we heard sensationalized editorializing that would have been more suited to a live report about Armageddon. We have seen reports of this nature usually reserved for winter storm predictions. But now we were witnessing solemn-faced news anchors with wide eyes and slow, deliberate deliveries, make vague blanket statements, leading viewers to believe that the entirety of the Bahamian Islands were, at this point, merely a memory. In reality, Freeport and the surrounding areas suffered the brunt of Dorian’s wrath. However, the Bahamas is an archipelago of 700 islands. Nassau, a popular stop for many cruise lines, sits on the island of New Providence, 130 miles away from Freeport. While Nassau received its share of the storm, it only experienced minimal damage. CNN made it seem as though the Bahamas were wiped from the face of the earth. They showed the same footage of flooding and played the same audio of people pleading and crying, without once clarifying that this was limited to the Freeport area and that most other parts of the Bahamas were spared. In my opinion, this was inaccurate and irresponsible reporting.

Network news has become entertainment. The focus is on ratings – getting the viewer to stick around and not change the channel. Reporting the actual news is waaaaay down on the priority list.

I won’t be watching the news anymore. Besides, it cuts into my Andy Griffith Show time.

www.joshpincusiscrying.com

*mostly due to residual feelings about the Republican-leaning voting records of my bigoted father and my bigoted grandmother.