I take another picture, the world is waiting

[sovay]

Massachusetts is reopening and I have gone back to the glassy feeling of not quite being in the same reality as the people who are saying the words. "Tough times never last, tough people do." Well, good for the tough people. Shame about the rest of us. I don't expect a second spike of infections in the fall, I expect one by July at the latest. But I'm glad houses of worship are considered essential businesses in Massachusetts. I'm sure that ancestor of mine from the Puritan migration would be thrilled.

Comments

[redbird]

I'm staying home until the end of the month, because there's a slight chance I have covid-19, and then I will see what Somerville advises. (Belmont, where I live now, has said almost nothing, and my doctor and hairdresser are both in Somerville.)

[dewline]

We are not as disposable as the "tough people" insist we ought to become. We never have been.

[julian]

Yah, I mean, I think it's a reasonable list of openings *if we were doing better than we are at infections,* but as it is, nope.

Sigh.

[batdina]

I still have a backyard. I mean, it's not much, but it's an outside. So far as I know, we're still staying strict, though some stuff is easing around here just not masks. We've been a relatively speaking low hit county so the board of supes is feeling like loosening things.

That said, Gov Newsom, who has been smart, seems to be eating stupid pills these days so ...

[choco_frosh]

But I'm glad houses of worship are considered essential businesses in Massachusetts.
Agreed; though the Diocese of Mass. is currently leaving in-person services suspended until July. On the one hand, this is sucky and terrible (and somewhat questionable from a theological standpoint); on the other hand, it has to be admitted that in-person church services combine piles of likely transmission vectors (inc. singing.)
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In modest defense of the governor, I think staying shut-down all summer would lead to mass disobedience, economic collapse,* or both. So we have to start reopening at some point.

I really don't get the hairdresser thing, though.

* Yes, I know, unless the federal or Commonwealth government paid people lots of money to stay home; but I can't see that getting through the legislature.

[gwynnega]

I'm sorry. Hair salons and barbershops reopening in a week seems especially ill-advised.

[sholio]

*sends you good thoughts and hugs*

[julian]

I note, after going away and taking a walk and observing two families of goslings, I do think of you as tough; just not the sort of tough whatsisface meant.

[dramaticirony]

Curtatone confirmed this evening that Somerville will be taking things more slowly, so at least there's that.

I understand they mean a lot to many people, but it's really hard to see how, in terms of risk, houses of worship shouldn't be at the back of the line, with movie theaters.

[the_future_modernes]

I expect an explosion in June. And for all that Americans claim the Aztec were grotesque with their human sacrifices, here they have been since before the founding of the country, sacrificing human after human by the millions for fucking money. This country insists on disappointing and enraging me.

The lone and level sands stretch far away

[vass]

"Tough times never last, tough people do." Well, good for the tough people. Shame about the rest of us.

Shame on the speaker.

It's also untrue. "Tough times never last" is a statement that's only necessarily true in the long run. And in the long run everyone dies, tough or not.

[a_reasonable_man]

The provision regarding places of worship reminded me of a story John Kenneth Galbraith liked to tell, about his work in the Office of Price Administration during the Second World War. When the OPA first issued regulations mandating gas rationing, it exempted "essential personnel": doctors, police, and mailmen. A couple of days later, they got a memo from President Roosevelt himself: "What blithering idiot decided clergy aren't essential personnel?" So they exempted clergy.

[lokifan]

"Tough times never last, tough people do." Well, good for the tough people. Shame about the rest of us.

Quite.