"[W]hen Hurricane Irene devastated my state, Vermont, in 2011, people turned out within hours, bringing tools from backhoes to brooms."

"They mucked out basements and rebuilt driveways, and they kept coming back for weeks, until the job was done. They did it for strangers, mostly—although they didn’t remain strangers for long. But, with coronavirus, none of that is possible. There’s little way to be of use except to disappear inside your home, so that you can’t infect anyone. Indeed, even the places we gather for solace are increasingly off limits. Churches.... Schools....  sports...  We should use the quiet of these suddenly uncrowded days to think a little about how much we’ve allowed social isolation to grow in our society, even without illness as an excuse.... If we pay attention, we may value more fully the moment we’re released from our detention, and we may even make some changes in our lives as a result. It will be a relief, above all, when we’re allowed to get back to caring for one another, which is what socially evolved primates do best."

From "With the Coronavirus, Hell Is No Other People" by Bill McKibben (in The New Yorker).

There is the forced isolation of social distancing, and there is the isolation we choose for ourselves. During the forced isolation, we can reflect on the good and the bad of our chosen isolation. I don't agree with the implication that because we are "socially evolved primates," the meaning of life is to socialize. There is great value in solitude and in life within marriage and within a family. But this is a time to reflect on what really matters, and in addition to the trouble and pain, we may experience deeper benefits.

As we protect ourselves and others through this isolation, we should be thinking about how we can help. We can't help but going about ministering to others. And we need to help by doing what we can to avoid being among those who need medical care or cause anyone else to need medical care. Don't be part of the physical problem. But we can also help by using this time not to agonize and stir each other up but to preserve and refine our mind and our soul.

At the Wednesday Night Café...

... you can talk all night.

"To lessen the risk to our community as much as possible, UW-Madison will suspend Spring Semester face-to-face instruction effective Monday, March 23..."

"... the date that classes would typically resume after next week’s Spring Break. Alternate delivery of classes will begin on March 23 and continue at least through Friday, April 10.... Residents [of dorms] are being asked to take essential belongings, academic materials, laptops and medications with them for Spring Break and not return to residence halls following Spring Break through at least April 10. We hope that students will return to their permanent residence and complete their coursework remotely.... We recognize that some students may be unable to return to their permanent residence for various reasons and will need to stay in their residence halls.... Residence halls will remain available to these students where necessary, but we expect the majority of dorm residents to return home, leaving the residence halls much emptier and making it easier for remaining students to maintain social distance."

The University of Wisconsin announces this morning.

Forbes regrets any inconvenience when I click on the headline in its "popular" list, "Does Joe Biden Have Dementia? Does It Matter?"

The link on the front page takes me here:



I wasn't able to recover that as a Google cache or using the "Wayback Machine."

Poking around, I did find this from 2 days ago, written by Ted Rall, "Joe Biden Obviously Has Dementia and Should Withdraw":

You Democrats ought to be ashamed of yourselves. You spent the last four years criticizing Donald Trump in no small part for his mental state, and rightly so.... Trump is not merely a jerk. Psychologists have been so alarmed that they have violated a core ethical principle of their profession by attempting to diagnose him at a remove....

Now Democrats are conspiring to gaslight the American people by engineering the presidential election of a man clearly suffering from dementia, Joe Biden. This is no time to be “polite.” We are talking about the presidency.... Contrary to current ridiculous Democratic talking points, it is not ageist to point this out.....

It is neither necessary nor possible to scientifically determine whether the former vice president has dementia. On the other hand, you don’t need an astronomer to know that the sun rises in the east. If you have encountered dementia, you know Joe Biden has it. There is so much blame to go around for this BS that I can’t figure out what order to put it in....

None of the media seem interested in the truth about Biden.... Right-wing outlets like Fox News are gleefully trumpeting Biden’s mental decline but they would say that even if it wasn’t true....

I spent the last few years watching my mother’s decline due to dementia caused by Alzheimer’s. She had been brilliant.... No one who has been close to someone deteriorating from that disease could fail to see the same signs in Joe Biden.

In online discussions Biden apologists sometimes say that a senile Biden is better than an evil Trump. Is this really where we are?....

I wonder what was in that Forbes article. I guess the 2 questions are answered: "Does Joe Biden Have Dementia? Does It Matter?" I'm guessing their answer was either "yes" and "no" or "it's unclear" and "no."

"Does Joe Biden Have Dementia? Does It Matter?"

He does, but it doesn't matter.

He doesn't, but if he did, it would matter.

He does, and it matters.

He doesn't, but if he did, it wouldn't matter

It's not clear, but it does matter.

It's not clear, but that's okay, because it doesn't matter.

 

pollcode.com free polls

Harvey Weinstein gets 23 years.

Hollywood Reporter reports.

Before his sentencing, Weinstein — who opted not to testify during his New York sexual assault trial — addressed the judge. Speaking, in a low voice, of the women who have accused him of misconduct, he said, "I have great remorse for all of you. I have great remorse for all women.... I really feel remorse for this situation. I feel it deeply in my heart."

Lead prosecutor Joan Illuzzi had asked Judge Burke to sentence Weinstein to "the maximum or near the maximum" years in prison, which could have been up to 29 years....

"Four years ago, Bernie Sanders put up a surprisingly strong fight against Hillary Clinton on the strength of his support among white working-class voters..."

"... who proceeded to desert Clinton in November... [T]he left quickly [concluded that]... the Democrats had failed to offer the kind of progressive radical alternative Sanders stood for, voters instead opted for Trump’s reactionary attack on globalism. In order to win them back and defeat Trump, Democrats needed to reorganize themselves as a radical populist party.... The second Sanders campaign has shown conclusively how badly the left misunderstood the electorate.... White working-class and rural voters have swung heavily against him.... The factor that actually explains 2016, as some of us chagrined liberals insisted at the time, was Hillary Clinton’s idiosyncratic personal unpopularity. It turned out large portions of the public, even of the Democratic electorate, simply detested her.... Clinton hatred allowed Sanders to draw more than 40 percent of the primary vote, and Clinton hatred allowed Donald Trump to narrowly win...."

From "Bernie’s Whole Campaign Was Based On a Misreading of the 2016 Election" by Jonathan Chait (NY Magazine).

"The tricky thing is that social distancing works best when done preventatively, before things get really bad..."

"... says [Lori Uscher-Pines, a senior health-policy researcher at the RAND Corporation]. But there are downsides, too — canceled events mean lost money (and sometimes lost jobs), and self-isolation can be hard on one’s mental health. For that reason, says Uscher-Pines, many public-health officials find it challenging to decide when to instate social-distancing regulations.... 'If you are personally concerned about COVID-19, you should try to limit your contact and exposure to crowded places, and try to maintain a distance of three to six feet [from other people],' she says.... Err on the side of a liberal interpretation, when possible — for instance, if (and when) schools close, keep kids away from their classmates outside the school building too. 'A big concern with something like school closure is that school will be closed, but then kids will mix on their own outside of school, and that kind of defeats the purpose,' she adds."

From "What Does ‘Social Distancing’ Really Mean?" (New York Magazine).

ADDED: The term "social distancing" is not familiar enough for me to feel comfortable using it in explaining why I'm not doing something. When I wrote an email to cancel an appointment just now, I referred to what I'm doing as "taking a 'social distancing' approach," and I thought that sounded rude and changed it to "taking a 'self-isolating' approach." That's more I'm doing this to myself and less I'm doing this to you.