A pandemic diary: Notes from the bullseye

April 30, 2020

Another grocery pickup today. We found toilet paper with no trouble but didn’t get all the meat we ordered, which is ominous in light of all the recent warnings about shortages. We at least came away with two big fresh whole chickens. Even they might be in short supply in Georgia soon.

Our sanitation protocol goes like this: Gloves on to go through the bags and verify the order. Gloves off before I touch the wheel and the dash. Gloves back on to carry everything to the porch. Gloves off and wash the hands CDC-thoroughly to put the goods away after they’ve been wiped down. Wash hands again. Repeat as necessary and sometimes when it isn’t. This routine drives me nuts, or as Damon Runyon might have said, more than somewhat cuckoo, but of course the alternative is much worse.

There seem to be a few more people wearing masks at the store. Traffic on the roads has clearly surged since the governor started reopening the state against the advice of damned near everybody, even Trump. Sometimes when both sides are on your case, it means you’re doing something right. Not now. All the scientists say there’ll be a second round of infections, and unless we keep our distance it’ll be faster and deadlier.

Think of the plague like a hurricane. One of the eyewalls has just passed over and we’re sitting in the eye where the winds are calm, but the other eyewall is just waiting to blow in. Hurricane Michael (below) devastated the Florida Panhandle and came frighteningly close to my beach house. I’m staying in my shelter.

Insanity

One afternoon in 1978, I walked into the radio newsroom where I had my first reporting job and found myself in the middle of a huge, fast-breaking story: a multiple shooting. The killings in El Paso and Dayton have brought back memories of those times, when these awful events were still rare—and of my own brush with the shooter.

This is what we reported that day: Billy Hardesty, who was 21, unemployed, and had done time for assault and battery, shot his parents dead at their home. After putting his father’s body in a freezer, he killed two men in the parking lot of a bar, gunned down his ex-wife’s brother and wounded two others at their workplace, and held police in a standoff back at his parents’ house before being shot and captured. The state trooper whose bullet hit him was a guy I’d met at church camp during high school.

I was in the courtroom when Hardesty was arraigned. Still recovering from his injuries, he was brought before the judge in a wheelchair, a thickset kid with long, dark hair and a dazed look on his face. From that point on, the key issue in the case was whether he was mentally ill and legally insane, i.e., not responsible for his crimes.

Several months later, I covered a competency hearing in which he rambled about evil movies at the local mall, and asked to be released in the custody of Billy Graham. Not surprisingly, the judge declared he was having trouble dealing with reality and ordered him back to the psychiatric hospital where he was being held.

Afterward I was chatting with another reporter in the hall when we heard a loud noise, the courtroom door popped open, and we saw two detectives wrestling Hardesty to the floor. He’d made a break for freedom but they caught him just in time, with one of the cops hurdling benches to beat him to the door. Another second and he’d have been out, and I’d have been right in his way. I ran to the nearest phone to file the story. I had a few beers too.

Eventually Hardesty was convicted of the five murders, plus two others he’d committed earlier in California, and sentenced to life in prison. His obvious mental problems didn’t stop a judge from ruling him competent to stand trial or a jury from deciding he was legally sane.

It’s likely that no one even imagined a red-flag law that might’ve kept the gun out of his hands. But Billy Hardesty did his killing with a 1970s-vintage .22 rifle. What would have happened if he’d had a military-style assault rifle and a few hundred bullets, like the butchers of today?

A bad spell of whether

It’s official. We’re in a national crisis. You don’t have to take my word for it. Plenty of more authoritative authorities than your Uncle Grumpy have exposed the shocking truth: the White House can’t spell.

In Washington, you know you’re in trouble when two big stories about your problem surface like enemy submarines on the same day. Now, both the Washington Post and the Associated Press have articles listing the spelling and grammar gaffes the new administration has inflicted on the public.

The list isn’t short. Some of these mistake are mildly humorous, like the news that “Teresa May,” a British porn star, would visit the White House instead of Theresa May, the prime minister. (Irrelevant parenthetical question: Since the PM is of the female persuasion, shouldn’t she be called the prime mistress? A lot more people would listen to her speeches!)

But yuks aside, this is an official White House document mucking up the name of a foreign head of state, and not just any old state but bleedin’ Britain, FFS! In the name of equal-opportunity diplomatic insults, another release referred to Colombia as “Columbia.”

Then there was the presidential quote on the official inauguration poster that read in part, “No dream is too big, no challenge is to great.” They blamed a third-party vendor for that one, which is sheep flop.* Having been both vendor and vendee,** I can testify that the client must always, ALWAYS, review and approve the product before it goes to press. Other gems include “unpresidented,” “lose cannon,” and “attaker” for “attacker” (27 times in a single document).

Of course, we all make mistakes, including the very media that reported these. Before I’d even had my coffee this morning, the Post smacked me with, “Capitol Hill Republicans have tread carefully….” It’s trod, folks.

Some of the administration’s fumbles probably stem from plain carelessness, compounded by internet-induced ADD. However, I suspect they’re also caused by what the AP headline suggests as a solution: “Hey, Mr. President: It’s time to make spellcheck great again.” Sorry, but spellcheck wouldn’t have caught Teresa, Columbia, no challenge is to great, or the misuse of “historical” for “historic” in another tweet.

As I told my students in the writing workshops I used to teach, spellcheck can’t save you from yourself. It’s no substitute for thorough reviewing and proofreading by people who know and care about the English language.

This requires time and effort. But correcting and apologizing for mistakes eats up a lot more resources! You can’t even measure the damage that typos, malapropisms, and BAD writing can do to your credibility. I shudder to imagine what people thought of my old newsroom when we quoted a pope as saying, “Life begins at the moment of contraception.”

So block out some proofreading time, get yourself some reading glasses, and be your own spellchecker. Remember, even if you’re as ancient as Uncle G, it’s never two late too lern to right good English!

 

*A euphemism. Use your imagination.
**An actual word! It means, “the person to whom a thing is sold” (Dictionary.com). I could’ve just said “customer,” but this way I get to demonstrate that I know how to use a dictionary.

Alternative Dave

“A top aide to President Trump said the new White House is using new metrics to assess the size of Trump’s inauguration:’ alternative facts‘” – USA TODAY, January 22, 2017.

In the spirit of bipartisanship and cooperation with our new president, I humbly offer these alternative facts about myself:

I possess a full head of striking blonde hair with nary a trace of grey. I also have the physique of a young god and a set of dazzling blue eyes that are often compared to those of the late Paul Newman.

I am a Pro Bowl tight end for the Super Bowl-bound Atlanta Falcons.

My short story “The Fourteenth Pelican,” shattered sales records and led Carl Hiaasen to quit writing fiction about Florida. “This guy’s too good. I’m done,” said he.

I’m the first man in history to climb Mount Everest naked. (Got to use that physique for something!)

I graduated from college in two years flat with an unprecedented quadruple major: nuclear physics, philosophy, sports writing, and music performance, with the focus on being the world’s first punk-rock oboist. I still have Johnny Rotten’s phone number.

No matter what you heard about Bob somebody winning the Nobel Prize for literature, I am the actual winner! I delivered my acceptance speech by streaming video from the driver’s seat of my BMW M3 GT2 while competing in the 24 hours of Le Mans, which of course I won, while setting a new course record of 21 hours.

I don’t like to brag. I’m a humble, reticent Midwesterner, reflecting my roots on the great prairie of Kalamazoo, Michigan, where I lived with my parents and eleven brothers and sisters.

As a boy, I could plow 100 acres in a single afternoon. With just my fingernails!

I usually know when to stop writing.

I approved this message. Please listen.

A polarizing Republican, both loved and reviled for his views and his record, widely suspected of dark misdeeds. A game but weakened Democrat, lacking the passion and charisma of other Democrats and struggling to overcome campaign blunders. A young voter unhappy with those choices.

I know this sounds too familiar. But I’m not talking about Trump and Clinton in 2016. “Young voter” means me, and no one except a kindly 90-year-old would call me young anymore. This was another election year, when I made a decision that I regret to this day – which I hope with all my heart that no one who reads this will repeat in November.

It happened the first time I was eligible to vote. I had no intention of going Republican because of peer pressure from college friends and classmates, and because the candidate repelled me as he did millions of others. For reasons I can’t fathom now, the Democrat seemed flat, unimpressive, unlikely to deliver on campaign promises, and not worth my support. The nominees’ gaping differences – in policy, demeanor, integrity, and fitness for office – just didn’t register.

In a moment of 18-year-old smugness and blindness, I decided not to cast a ballot for either side. Though people I knew worked to register Democrats and get them to the polls, I didn’t join them. On Election Day I stayed home.

The year was 1972. The Republican was Richard Nixon and the Democrat was George McGovern. My one vote would’ve been buried by the 49-state tsunami that handed Nixon his abbreviated second term. But McGovern, rest his soul, was definitely the better man and despite his failings as a candidate would have been a far better president.

If you weren’t around back then, the legendary Hunter S. Thompson summed up the situation pretty well: “McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for. Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?”

I’m still embarrassed that I couldn’t figure this out. I wish I could say I stood for something and used my precious voting power to help my country. I can’t.

But I haven’t missed an election since. And I can say this: Whether you’re 18, 98, or somewhere in between, please, please, put down your phone and VOTE. Help us avoid a disaster worse than anything Nixon wrought.

Don’t be a self-righteous schmuck like I was in ’72. Be a mensch instead.

I’m David Swan and I approved this message.