Day 3753

Isn't it time we stopped calling this a pandemic and started calling it a plague? It's probably time we stopped blaming people for what has happened too. A plague is a force of nature. Like earthquakes, hurricanes, and volcanic eruptions, I doubt that we'll be able to stop it. Humans have never been very successful at stopping a plague before. Even the medical experts will tell you that "flattening the curve" is a temporary measure at best. If people rebel at being confined before the virus has run its course, the disease will spring up all over again, just like a forest fire that wasn't completely extinguished.

At some point we will have to decide whether preserving the basic fabric of society is more important than saving lives. Maybe we can do both, but there is a breaking point. Civilization can survive with fewer people. It can't survive for long with mass chaos. Nobody is talking publicly about civil unrest, but behind the scenes, I bet leaders in every country are more worried about this than the disease itself. They know people want a return to normalcy and very few are looking forward to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome becoming our new reality.

I think we have to accept that life will never completely return to normal after this virus has burned itself out. The Black Plague in the 1300's fundamentally changed society. It took 200 years for Europe to fully recover. We are determining what the future will look like right now and I hope we get it right. You simply can't place the entire world on pause for very long and expect a good result.

I hope we are able to determine who is immune to the disease or has developed an immunity very quickly. We need these people to keep the world running. If we can reliably determine who is healthy and who is sick it will become much easier to help everybody. At the moment everyone is a potential carrier of the disease and nobody knows how to stop it.

Right now I'm just a bystander following rules set by people who probably don't have a clue what is really going on. Nobody knows what makes this virus so contagious or how to stop it. Unless someone makes a breakthrough discovery, we are just postponing the inevitable. It's not all bad. I'm actually enjoying the lighter traffic. I can finally get out of my driveway again. Unfortunately, there is no place to go.

I hope we all learn something from this. I've never been a fan of globalism. When the world becomes "too big to fail" what happens when it does fail? I think we are finding this out. We all need to become more familiar with the concept of redundancy. Complex machines like rockets and nuclear reactors usually have built-in redundancy. If the primary system fails, a back up system takes over immediately. So what would a redundant world look like? I think there would be lots and lots of small independent countries that were completely self sufficient. If one country screwed up and failed completely, the others wouldn't be affected and would continue on. Who would be the last ones standing if something really bad happened. Who knows? It could easily be the segment of civilization still living in mud huts.

No answers on anything today. We were still able to take our walk in the park and had a really nice dinner. That's probably enough for one day.

Lexi is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3399

Watching Notre Dame burn left me with an uneasy feeling that civilization itself was coming to an end. Paris has always been my favorite city. Every time I've been there, it seemed to represent what a great civilization could become. The place was magic. I'm not sure I'd feel the same way if I returned today. Terrorist attacks, civil unrest, squalid homeless camps, and this horrendous fire have changed the place. I don't know if the fire was caused by simple carelessness or malicious intent, but it shouldn't have happened. We can do better. This building was constructed during the Middle Ages. It survived the French Revolution and two World Wars. The cathedral was a vibrant and important part of European life long before the United States even existed. The fact that it burned today just seems like a bad omen to me.

I've always loved great cathedrals. Janet and I have climbed to the top of St. Peter's and looked out over the Roman skyline. We've stood in awe in front of Gaudi's Sagrada Família in Barcelona. We visited Salisbury Cathedral on our way to Stonehenge. Once, my German hosts took me on a special private tour of The Cathedral of Saint Lorenz at the end of a business trip to Nuremberg. These places were all amazing to me, but probably Notre Dame was the best of them all. It was very sad to see it burn today.

This morning I made arrangements for Dash's funeral. It isn't really a funeral I guess. Just a private cremation. It will seem like a funeral to us. We will spend some time with Dash in a quiet room with candles and say our final goodbyes. The staff will make a paw print and we will wrap him in his favorite blanket. Then I will carry him to the crematory and we will leave. All this ceremony may seem silly to some, but it brings us closure. We have done this for all our dogs. There are five little cedar boxes on our coffee table. Soon there will be six.

I took a walk by myself this morning. I followed one of the trails the dogs used to love when they were young and active. Jeez. We used to walk a long way. I was winded by the time I returned home. Dot and Dash's decline has been so slow and gradual that I never really realized that our walks were getting shorter and shorter. I forget sometimes that I have been walking dogs in this park for thirty years. I know every inch of this place. We are lucky to live near the largest urban lake in the country. Our park is larger than Central Park in New York. It is very pretty. If you were a dog, this is definitely where you would want to live.

I took some more of Dash's things to the storage warehouse this afternoon. The warehouse is getting full again. Sometimes the whole idea of downsizing seems futile. There are always things you want to keep. I have things of my Dad's that I will never use but it seems disrespectful to throw them away. It's easy to throw away an old computer. It's much harder to throw away dog blankets. You should never throw away your dog's collar. We've accumulated a huge collection of dog collars.

I'm still not used to getting enough sleep. It almost seems unnatural.

Krissy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day