Mask Required to Enter

I was really looking forward to a fresh bagel and coffee around lunchtime today as my husband and I headed for our favorite bagel bistro, the one we pop into twice a week. We pulled open the door as we chattered together and got in line, socially distanced. The cashier up front started saying something to us. She pointed to the door. It took us a minute to understand that she was telling us we now needed a mask to enter their establishment. See sign on door.

 Why? we asked. What changed? We had been coming in for months without a mask, as had a number of other customers, after the local government dropped the mask requirement. Has there been some huge, deadly COVID spike we didn't know about? Was there a new mask edict from the authorities?

Turns out nothing had changed--or so we were told. It's just a small restaurant, so we need to be careful, the staff said. At home I checked the latest stats on the Florida Department of Health web site. Nope, no spike. And the virus has gotten less deadly: If you contract the virus, the chance of dying from it back in October was 2%, while now it is 1.5%. 

So what's going on? Maybe some frightened customer gave the bagel makers holy hell for endangering the public's lives by not mandating masks in their business. He might even have threatened to sue if he came down with the virus after enjoying his spinach-tomato bagel. (We have encountered such zealots. Shortly before Christmas, in a grocery store checkout line, a grizzled man in a Santa hat told us we were going to burn in hell for not wearing masks, even though we explained that we'd had the virus and could not give it to anyone.) 

Maybe someone in the bagel shop tested positive in the four days since we'd been there, and management figured this called for "masking up." Or is it just the Biden-Fauci effect, in which masks--even double masks--are being encouraged and even demanded even in the most non-threatening settings?

I only know that I did not get my bagel or coffee. My husband turned on his heel and I followed him out. The day had just gotten a lot darker.

Times That Show Just Who We Are

A Stop the Steal rally in December 2020 in St. Augustine, Florida.

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country. But he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
    Thomas Paine, 1776

Still true in today's crisis, 244 years later.

 

Hold On Tight

It's clear now that the wild 2020 election will buck and stomp around the corral until it is finally mastered and true vote counts come out. Litigation rolling out in several states, charging election fraud of all kinds, may--God willing--lead to much-needed reform in some state election offices and more. Meanwhile, pray like crazy and hold on tight!

Extra credit: Read Archbishop Vigano's post-election letter to American Catholics and kindred spirits. The text is as unflinching as it is inspiring.

 

Seeking MAN-na in the Desert

Robert Horton with guest in 1959 Wagon Train episode.

I've asked myself why I love westerns so much--Wagon Train, Rawhide, Bonanza, Wanted Dead or Alive, and so forth. I didn't used to. But now I arrange my day to ensure that I can sit down in front of the television at 4 p.m to watch another adventure in the life of that wagon train forever headed west.

These are solid stories that present a serious dilemma that the players must resolve within the hour. In them, deciding the wrong way will have serious repercussions. And if the wagon train crew drag their feet and do nothing, that will end badly, too. The situations call for tough decisions without second-guessing and shillyshallying.  In short, it provides the perfect showcase for truly manly behavior.

This would not be remarkable if we weren't suffering today from a dearth of manliness. Too many men in skinny jeans who know what brow waxing involves. And yes, we can argue that decades of radical feminism have driven men into this androgynous state. Indeed, a study in 2013 caused a stir when it found that women on the Pill felt attracted to less masculine-looking men than did women who were not on it.* Given the massive use of that contraceptive in the U.S. since the early 1960s, this may explain what we're seeing.

But it's high time for real men--there are still some left--to lead the way back. Many women are starved for men who dress like men, walk like men, listen and laugh and display confidence. Men who are willing to take responsibility for their decisions and get on with it. Men who are not afraid to support a wife and children and understand the value of having a family.

A frequent theme in Wagon Train episodes is drought. The train finds itself halfway across a wasteland with another several days still needed to put it behind them, and they've heard there is no water anywhere around. That's how I feel these days about real men. We are decades into this drought of masculinity, and no one knows how far we still need to go to emerge from it.

In the meantime, I advise watching as many westerns as you can. Sit your children down to watch them. Boys need to see what good manliness looks like, and so do our girls. It doesn't matter that we are no longer engaged in the struggle to cross the wilderness and settle the West Coast. These lessons in wisdom vs folly, bravery vs selfishness, patience vs impulsiveness can all be transferred to life in the 21st century. 

Let's get on with being real men and real women. Hitch up that team, strap on your water barrels, and "Wagons, Ho!"

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*More about the study in this Huffington Post article.

Too Many Faces

I recently decided to back away from Instagram. Don't get me wrong--I love sharing good photos, brilliant quotes, and my own electric insights with zillions of people worldwide, or at least my 61 followers.

But I myself follow 32 excellent Instagrammers. Their fine photos and provocative declarations pile up in my feed faster than I can read them. I start to feel that I am falling behind, that I am missing things I should see, should know about. But I have only so much time in a day to scan that Instagram feed.

How do those people feel who attempt to follow 100 folks and more? Like those young people I see hunched over their phones downtown, ignoring the passing parade of real, live people and even the companions sitting on the bench with them, rapidly scrolling through the latest postings. And then there is that haunting hope for just a few more likes and comments to bolster one's sense of worth.

It occurs to me that we were not designed to interact with hundreds of humans per day. At least not electronically. It's different if you are working the cotton candy stand at Coney Island.There you hand a wand of fluffy sugar to a real person. There are smiles and frowns and sticky fingers and small talk and directions on how to find the Tilt-A-Whirl. That job, most of us could handle.

Reading scores or even hundreds of postings a day is different. Each one demands something new from our brain: some analysis, a positive or negative reaction, or a much-needed comment on how wrong the person is. So the user flies along, covering as much virtual ground as possible, touching only lightly here and there.

Rather than getting to know a few people well, we have glancing acquaintanceships with hundreds or even thousands.

And how much do we learn from the time spent scanning and posting on these feeds? Instead of reading a book on early 20th-century photojournalists and the world they revealed, you can just post some touching images you came across of little children in dirty white dresses in front of tenements. What does it mean?

One social media researcher at Lincoln College, Oxford, predicted a baleful result of this activity:  "The mid-21st century mind might almost be infantilised, characterised by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathise and a shaky sense of identity."* 

I ask this question: Would Napoleon have used social media much? I doubt it. He was too busy learning about Egyptian tombs and planning how to take over Europe. Like other towering figures from history, he was focused and he was busy doing things. He did not bother about how many strangers liked his ideas. His sense of identity was by no means shaky. Maybe when I'm tempted to slip back onto social media I'll ask myself, "What would Napoleon do?"

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* https://www.nib.com.au/the-checkup/healthy-living/what-social-media-is-really-doing-to-your-brain

Photo: Marlon Brando as Napoleon with Jean Simmons in Twentieth Century Fox's 1954 film Desiree.