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04/08/20 11:34 AM #7143    

 

Daniel Cody

Mark I remember it well.  If you will recall it invoved VanHorn aka Bugsy from his Camp St Joseph counselor days.  You surreptitiously  asked me about the identity of an odor permenting our area.  You said it smelled like male reproductive fluid. I merely asked how you knew what it smelled like.  Laughter ensued and Van Horn demanded an explanation as to our outburst.  He approached the inquiry like a Dominican friar in Spain.  He then made the threat to cast me from the senior wing windows.  You will also recall that I didn't give you up.  Truly a senior year classic.


04/08/20 11:50 AM #7144    

 

Sheila McCarthy (Gardner)

Dave: John Prine ... diminished old man? With all due respect, I don't think so ... from today's obituary in the New York Times: 

"In 2019, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and his album “Tree of Forgiveness” was nominated for a Grammy, for best Americana album. It was his 19th album and his first of original material in more than a decade. Mr. Prine went on tour in 2018 to promote “Tree of Forgiveness,” and after a two-night stand at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville — known there as the mother church of country music — Margaret Renkl, a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, wrote, under the headline “American Oracle”“The mother church of country music, where the seats are scratched-up pews and the windows are stained glass, is the place where the new John Prine — older now, scarred by cancer surgeries, his voice deeper and full of gravel — is most clearly still the old John Prine: mischievous, delighting in tomfoolery, but also worried about the world.”

I might point out, at 73, he is only a year or two older than we are, If this is "diminished," bring it on!  


04/08/20 12:09 PM #7145    

 

David Mitchell

Sheila,

Thanks for pointing out my misleading choice of adjectives. I was referring to his physical health and matured appearance - so different from the days when he first recorded that song. 

 

Added later; POP QUIZ - anybody remember who Bonnie Raitt's (famous) dad was?


04/08/20 05:39 PM #7146    

 

James Hamilton, M. D.

Most individuals have been maintaining the correct Social Distancing recommendations. yes

 

But there are always those who refuse to do so. no

Jim


04/08/20 10:27 PM #7147    

 

Timothy Lavelle

"There's nothing like a little tomato soup to sooth the soul.

Even if it's cold.

Over ice.

With a celery stalk.

And vodka."

 


04/09/20 12:32 PM #7148    

 

David Mitchell

Jim,

Do you think maybe they thougth it was "cloven" virus?


04/09/20 01:07 PM #7149    

 

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

I have been talking to Beth during these last several weeks of the "stay-at-home" mandate.  I was initially very curious to know what her son, Nick was sharing with her about COVID-19.  Nick (since his college days, he has chosen to go by his first name, Holt) is a very well-respected critical care doctor at the University of Pittsbugh Medical Center Mercy who had trained as an emergency physician.  Just a few days ago she decided to share with me a segment of a PBS NEWSHOUR filmed in June, 2019.  In this very prophetic series on influenza and pandemics, Nick is featured for saving the life of a young girl stricken down with an unknown virus in 2014.  I talked to Beth this morning and I asked if she would mind if I shared the video on the Message Forum as well as excerpts from the book, INFLUENZA, in which this story is documented.  She was concerned about it being boastful of her son's great accomplishments, but I was able to persuade her that given its very timely subject matter, it begged to be shared.  

Have blessed Holy Thursday, everyone.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-another-flu-pandemic-is-likely-just-a-matter-of-when




04/09/20 02:02 PM #7150    

 

Joseph D. McCarthy

Just thought I would give a little bit of good news.

Recently I corresponded with Donna (Kelley) Velazquez.  She and her husband Julio are fine.  Going out for groceries only, she didn't say if that included Sangria.  Their lockdown was just extended for another month at least.  A niece and two friends are recovering fro Covid-19; and after a month are still suffering severe headaches.  Best wishes to Donna and Julio.

Also, just got off the phone with Richard (Dick) McNamara.  He and his wife Janey are doing their best under the circumstances.  Janey has been on oxygen for at least a year so I called to see how this was affecting them.  Dick still operates his Machine business.

Joe


04/09/20 03:10 PM #7151    

 

James Hamilton, M. D.

MM,

 Beth's son is not only an extremely skilled and dedicated physician, but also a very caring one. ECMO is, indeed, a heroic and last ditch therapeutic option and Autumn was very fortunate to have landed in the care of Dr. Murray who pursued that option, even to the point of accompanying her to where it could be "replumbed". During this current pandemic I have neither read nor heard of any patients being put on ECMO, probably because of the high numbers of them in the hospitals. In very busy centers COVID-19 has created an almost "MasCal" senario wherein patients are triaged to various levels of care. Autumn would have eventually ended up in the "Expectant" category, meaning expected to die and given only comfort measures. 

 

Dave,

Clovenvirus, HA, HA! Let's hope that non-entity never becomes a reality and is transmissible to humans. My backyard could be Ground Zero! Some deer already have a tick problem and some of those little ticks carry Lyme Disease. At least there is good treatment for that, if given in the early stages. 

Jim 

 


04/09/20 05:01 PM #7152    

 

John Jackson

Really impressive story about Nick Murray –  hats off to him and to his (more than modest) mom!  Not to bask in his reflected  glory, but I knew Nick during his growing up years as Beth lived just a few miles from us  in central NJ.  Local NJ boy makes good - and then some!


04/09/20 06:42 PM #7153    

 

David Mitchell

Wow Beth,

Now THAT  is Heroism!  

 

Thanks for letting Mary Margaret share it with us.

 

(and how the heck are you?  long time, no post)


04/09/20 06:50 PM #7154    

 

David Mitchell

I hear there is a run on celery stalks in Mossyrock.


04/10/20 12:51 AM #7155    

 

David Barbour

NYT- Good editorial and a Krugmsn column.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/opinion/coronavirus-inequality-america.html?algo=clicks_decay_6&fellback=true&imp_id=905203285&action=

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/opinion/wisconsin-primary-democracy.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

 

This is important stuff to consider!

DB


04/10/20 05:30 AM #7156    

 

Donna Kelley (Velazquez)

MM, thanks for convincing Beth to share the story of Nick's accomplishments.  You have so many reasons to be proud of him, Beth. 

Many thanks to Joe and everyone for checking on us via email, FB, WA and messages on this site.  It means a lot to be in contact these days.  On Sunday we had a Kelley clan Zoom chat with 30 participants (aged 6 months to 80 yrs old).  It was such fun and so important for all of us to "be together" during these difficult times. 

May all of you and your loved ones keep safe. Stay in, stay well.   Happy Easter.


04/10/20 11:52 AM #7157    

 

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

It was great to hear all is well with you in Spain, Donna!  

 


04/10/20 11:55 AM #7158    

 

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

Good Friday..........a day to call to mind the price of true, perfect, sacrifical love.



 

 


04/10/20 01:15 PM #7159    

 

Deborah Alexander (Rogers)

Mary Margaret, thank you so much for posting the beautiful video.  Since we can't go to church on this Good Friday, it was a very moving way of feeling we were visiting the Stations of the Cross from home. 

I'm wishing all my Watterson classmates a very blessed and happy Easter.  Stay safe and healthy, all of you! 

Debbie


04/10/20 02:47 PM #7160    

 

David Mitchell

Mary Margaret and Debbie,

Thanks for reminding us all. Not a day to be sad or guilt ridden. But a day to be overcome with gratitude! Someone gave it all for us. 

 

Imagine a judge in a courtroom, looking down at us from the bench, saying,

"I will take your punishment for you. And I will set your free."


04/10/20 07:38 PM #7161    

 

David Mitchell

A Painting of "The Last Zoom"

 

"Okay Judas, You on?"


04/11/20 12:06 AM #7162    

 

Michael McLeod

Thanks for those thoughtful posts, Dave. We've emerged from devastation before. I hope to live long enough to see that happen again. 


04/11/20 12:08 AM #7163    

 

Joseph D. McCarthy

First I want you to know that my cousin in Detroit send me an e-mail that discussed a message her daughter sent to her father.  "My daughter sent her dad a message to wear his Lions Jersey so he wouldn't catch anything."

One of our anonymous classmates asked me to pass along the following, so here they are Dave.

 


04/11/20 10:02 AM #7164    

 

John Jackson

Joe, those were all winners - I especially liked the one about romaine lettuce.  Look for my next post from Reno.


04/11/20 11:31 AM #7165    

 

Michael McLeod

That's great Joe. Love the first one.

Writing a story about how people are coping.

Lots of chalk-on-sidewalk artists cropping up down here.

It's safe, it's communal, it's out of the house, it's something to do. 

Sidewalks are usually invisible to us - not a destination, a means to an end, utilitarian and invisible, just something to take us where we want to go. Now in this new reality they are transformed. I have a feeling there are a lot of overlooked things that are suddenly of use.

In general, at least where I am in Florida, it's not bad. Yet.

Anyway as I am looking for material for my story, if you'd like to help I will deputize you all as cub reporters and you can let me know if you see people engaged in creative ways of getting around this sterile, masked world we're locked into for the moment.

Meanwhile, here's an essay you might like. It's sad but sublimely written:

The acclaimed Italian novelist Francesca Melandri, who has been under lockdown in Rome for almost three weeks due to the Covid-19 outbreak, has written a letter to fellow Europeans “from your future”, laying out the range of emotions people are likely to go through over the coming weeks.

 

"I am writing to you from Italy, which means I am writing from your future. We are now where you will be in a few days. The epidemic’s charts show us all entwined in a parallel dance.

We are but a few steps ahead of you in the path of time, just like Wuhan was a few weeks ahead of us. We watch you as you behave just as we did. You hold the same arguments we did until a short time ago, between those who still say “it’s only a flu, why all the fuss?” and those who have already understood.

As we watch you from here, from your future, we know that many of you, as you were told to lock yourselves up into your homes, quoted Orwell, some even Hobbes. But soon you’ll be too busy for that.

First of all, you’ll eat. Not just because it will be one of the few last things that you can still do.

You’ll find dozens of social networking groups with tutorials on how to spend your free time in fruitful ways. You will join them all, then ignore them completely after a few days.

You’ll pull apocalyptic literature out of your bookshelves, but will soon find you don’t really feel like reading any of it.

You’ll eat again. You will not sleep well. You will ask yourselves what is happening to democracy.

You will miss your adult children like you never have before; the realisation that you have no idea when you will ever see them again will hit you like a punch in the chest.

Old resentments and falling-outs will seem irrelevant. You will call people you had sworn never to talk to ever again, so as to ask them: “How are you doing?” Many women will be beaten in their homes.

You will wonder what is happening to all those who can’t stay home because they don’t have one. You will feel vulnerable when going out shopping in the deserted streets, especially if you are a woman. You will ask yourselves if this is how societies collapse. Does it really happen so fast? You’ll block out these thoughts and when you get back home you’ll eat again.

You will put on weight. You’ll look for online fitness training.

You’ll laugh. You’ll laugh a lot. You’ll flaunt a gallows humour you never had before. Even people who’ve always taken everything dead seriously will contemplate the absurdity of life, of the universe and of it all.

You will make appointments in the supermarket queues with your friends and lovers, so as to briefly see them in person, all the while abiding by the social distancing rules.

You will count all the things you do not need.

The true nature of the people around you will be revealed with total clarity. You will have confirmations and surprises.

Literati who had been omnipresent in the news will disappear, their opinions suddenly irrelevant; some will take refuge in rationalisations which will be so totally lacking in empathy that people will stop listening to them. People whom you had overlooked, instead, will turn out to be reassuring, generous, reliable, pragmatic and clairvoyant.

Those who invite you to see all this mess as an opportunity for planetary renewal will help you to put things in a larger perspective. You will also find them terribly annoying: nice, the planet is breathing better because of the halved CO2 emissions, but how will you pay your bills next month?

You will not understand if witnessing the birth of a new world is more a grandiose or a miserable affair.

You will play music from your windows and lawns. When you saw us singing opera from our balconies, you thought “ah, those Italians”. But we know you will sing uplifting songs to each other too. And when you blast I Will Survive from your windows, we’ll watch you and nod just like the people of Wuhan, who sung from their windows in February, nodded while watching us.

Many of you will fall asleep vowing that the very first thing you’ll do as soon as lockdown is over is file for divorce.

Many children will be conceived.

Your children will be schooled online. They’ll be horrible nuisances; they’ll give you joy.

Elderly people will disobey you like rowdy teenagers: you’ll have to fight with them in order to forbid them from going out, to get infected and die.

You will try not to think about the lonely deaths inside the ICU.

You’ll want to cover with rose petals all medical workers’ steps.

You will be told that society is united in a communal effort, that you are all in the same boat. It will be true. This experience will change for good how you perceive yourself as an individual part of a larger whole.

Class, however, will make all the difference. Being locked up in a house with a pretty garden or in an overcrowded housing project will not be the same. Nor is being able to keep on working from home or seeing your job disappear. That boat in which you’ll be sailing in order to defeat the epidemic will not look the same to everyone nor is it actually the same for everyone: it never was.

At some point, you will realise it’s tough. You will be afraid. You will share your fear with your dear ones, or you will keep it to yourselves so as not to burden them with it too.

You will eat again.

We’re in Italy, and this is what we know about your future. But it’s just small-scale fortune-telling. We are very low-key seers.

If we turn our gaze to the more distant future, the future which is unknown both to you and to us too, we can only tell you this: when all of this is over, the world won’t be the same."

 

 

 


04/11/20 12:14 PM #7166    

 

Sheila McCarthy (Gardner)

John: Reno welcomes you .... Burning Man was just canceled, so there will be plenty of room on the playa... we like to think we put the "distance" in social distancing .... 


04/11/20 02:36 PM #7167    

 

David Mitchell

From here and there.

Among my buddies here in our small town are two younger guys from my men's group at church. We used to play basketball together with a young priest (Anglican - married with 2 adorable Korean-American daughters) who loved basketball and organized a "basketball ministry" with about 15 to 18 other guys. I and one other guy (from Ohio State) were the grandpas of the bunch (in our early 60's at the time). The rest were mostly thirty-somethings. But we did play full court and very physical. So that priest left and we wound it down - shame, that was about 8 years and 14 pounds ago.

But I stiil see most of this group 

My two favorites were a Delta pilot (former Air Force tanker pilot who flew the first flight into Kuwait after the First Gulf War), and a handsome and funny young Director of Golf at a nearby "gated-community".  

My Delta pilot buddy and I used to play some golf together, but my heat exaution episode, and our different schedules have let that slide. And I only played once with the golf pro buddy. In case you weren't aware, "club pros" don't really play much golf. They just sit in an office and schedule lessons and answer complaints from spoiled, retired club members. They get to play 2 or 3 holes, now and tehn, if they are lucky.

Lately I heard some interesting comments from these two guys.

The Delta pilot, who has some seniority, but refused to be elevated to "Captain" becuase he loves his currrent route - and he gets to fly the big (corrected later) Airbus A-300 series (which he claims is a "dream' to fly). His regular route is (was) 9 days back and forth from Atlanta to Amsterdam, Paris, and Madrid - then 9 days off here in Bluffton - then 9 days back and forth from Atlanta to Tokyo, Peking, and Shanghai - then 9 days at home again.

But off course that all came to a screeching halt over a month ago. But he was still flying up to last week. Doing Atlanta to Sao Paulo Brazil and back. He got to fly the last scheduled flight to Sap Paulo about 6 days ago and had this to say;

"We had a nearly full plane - taken to our hotel and quarantined there. Food brought to our rooms. But the weirdest part was the normal hour and half to two hour drive back to the airport took only 40 minutes."  He's home now on partial pay, on a rotating list of about 100 guys waiting for a handfull of flights a day out of this region. 

Meanwhile, my golf buddy and I were texting afew days ago and he was at work. You may all have seen that golf courses are staying open, albeit with some new procedures. He says they are walking or riding carts, but only one person to a cart. And the holes are partially pugged so you don't even reach into teh cup to get your ball, and the flags are not allowed to be pulled - no "touchie flagie".       And members only - no guests.  

He said he was working all this out on the first tee with the help of some of the grounds people - the office was actually closed. I asked him if he was getting paid?  He texted back ,"I don't even know".

 

BTW; I would like to ask your paryers for both of these two friends. They are both Minnestoa Vikings fans. I have told them that anybody who roots for a team with horns on their helmets needs all the prayers they can get.


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