And more from Bill Taylor in Salut!'s little lockdown series, in his case from Toronto, Canada, with a little ps from west London on contrasting sides of human nature. See all the articles here ...Son of notes from the trenches: TGIF…
Oh, yeah? Why? What am I gonna do tomorrow that I couldn’t do yesterday?
After half a century as a newspaperman, I know how the game is played. But I’m so tired of click-bait speculative doom and gloom, such as this Globe and Mail headline: “COVID-19 could spark a mental health tsunami.”
Maybe it will. Or maybe it won’t. Maybe we’ll all be just fine. Either way, dwelling on the possibility and planting the suggestion does no one any good.
It’s not just the Globe that’s doing it. C’mon, find something else to fill your damned news-holes. There’s no shortage of valid – and valuable – material.
As they used to say on the old cop shows: “Just the facts, Ma’am.”
Do kids, when they’re allowed outside, still play tag? If this goes on long enough, they’ll forget how. Teaching them could be a business opportunity for someone:
“Okay, you guys start running and Tommy, you start chasing them… no, no, you won’t be arrested. Probably not, anyway. Just keep your hands away from your pockets.”
I don’t remember ever seeing gasoline so cheap at downtown service stations. I hung around one for a while yesterday. No takers.
Good Friday is only two weeks away. If Trump bulldozes his Easter plan through to declare the country open for business again, the US will be having a lot more crucifixions than resurrections.
Anyone up for chanting “Build that wall!” at Justin Trudeau? I mean, maybe having troops along the border isn’t an entirely bad idea. But on our side, not theirs.
With the president persisting in calling Covid-19 the China virus, a friend of Lesley’s in Philadelphia has a good answer:
Start calling MAGA hats “China hats”. Because that’s where they come from.
I have to confess, though, to defending Trump this week. I overheard someone saying The Donald wasn’t fit to wipe Joe Biden’s backside. I said he was.
Call me cynical, but I’m having nothing to do with the early morning hour set aside by supermarkets for senior citizens to buy their groceries. Apart from not wanting to rise with the dawn chorus, I’m afraid they might be trying to corral the most vulnerable to infect one another and get it over with. If we were in Trump’s America, I’d be sure of it.
My friend Maureen has a nice idea for when the weather picks up.
We pack individual picnics, meet at a park, sit on the grass, appropriately spaced, and eat, drink and yell at each other. But no biblical passing (throwing, more like) of the bread and wine.
In my book that beats all hell out of sitting in front of a computer screen making self-conscious small talk and trying not to chew too loudly in case Zoom picks it up and amplifies it even more.
Good one, Mo.
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And a postscript from London: the good and the ugly. Last night, someone rang the bell and gave my wife a rambling story about having been locked out of his home and needing to 'get to my mum's'. Could he please have the use of a bus pass? Putting aside a smidgeon of guilt - could he be genuinely in need? - the door was sharply closed. A quick online check with a neighbourhood loop confirmed not only that this was a well-known local scam but even put a name and face, from recent police reports, to our visitor (there are others like him out and about with variations of his story, showing that crime stops for no crisis).
That's the ugly. This, on the postbox at the end of our street, is the good ... click for a clearer view
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