THIS MEMORIAL DAY

The Blog this Memorial day remembers when the President said in February  that "It will all be over in a few days" which was the  president displaying his acute powers of prognostication. It is no surprise that the man who could not even squeeze a profit out of a casino where the odds are fixed in favour of the house, has little ability when it comes to anything, especially predicting events that call for an appreciation of science. 

On Sunday the NY Times took the extraordinary step of printing some of the names of the 100,000 Americans who died because of the "nothing" that became something. Think of this. In January, 100,000 of us were living our lives. In the back of their minds was the social compact that we all live by- in exchange for taxes and military service and jury duty, and following the law, we in return expect our government to protect us in times of crisis. Except when an Orange Orangutan who delights in grabbing women by their genitals is in charge. Now four months later one hundred thousand of us are gone- dead because we did not act one week sooner in recognizing this crisis.   Starting social distancing one week earlier would have saved 36,000 lives.

We  scanned the front page of the Sunday  NY Times here, and decided to randomly reprint some of the names and descriptions of our fellow Americans who died- some because of the criminal negligence of leaders who deny reason and science. 

As we wrote this, we were overcome with the basic goodness of our fellow citizens. It was a moving experience to read and re-write the short descriptions of full lives:

Cornelius Lawyer, 84, A sharecropper's son; Michael Mika,73, Vietnam Veteran; Carl Redd, 62, squeezed in every moment he could with his only grandchild; Dez-Ann Roman, 36, innovative high school principal; Freddy Rodriguez, Sr, 89, played saxophone at Denver's only jazz club for 40 years; Roger Lene, 93, could be a real jokester; Louvenia Henderson, 44, proud single mother of three; George Valentine, 66, lawyer who mentored others; Julian Anguiano-Mayo, 51, was the life of the party; Jessica Beatriz Cortez, 32, immigrated to the US three years ago; Cedric Dixon, 48, Police Detective in Harlem with a gift for interrogation; Douglas Hickok, 57, military's first virus casualty; Horace Saunders, 96, tailor; Jose Vasquez, 51, husband and father; Angelo Piro, 87, known for serenading friends with Tony Bennett songs; Roger Eckart, 78, retired firefighter and old-school barber; Mary Minervini, 91, sign-language interpreter; Albert Petrocelli, 73, fire chief who responded to ground zero on 9/11; Florencio Almazo Moran, 65, one man army; Harold L. Hayes, 96, original member of Navy's elite underwater demolition team; Lloyd Paul Leftwich, 91, inveterate harmonica player; Ann Kolb, 78, leader in interrogating schools. Lila A. Fenwick, 87, First Black Woman to graduate from Harvard Law School; Jose Diaz-Ayala, 38, served the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office for 14 years; Kyra Swartz, volunteered for pet rescue organizations; Kimarlee Nguyen, 33, writer who inspired her Brooklyn high school students;  Leo Sreebny, 98, preferred bolo ties to neckties and suspenders to belts; Peter Kafkis, 91, worked mostly factory jobs to support his family; Marie Scanian Walker, 91, never drew attention to herself; Myles Coker, 69, freed from life in prison;  Arola Rawls, 81, caretake of her neighborhood; Bernard David Seckler, 95, Math reader for Recordings for the Blind; Cynthia Whiting, 66, a retiree determined to spoil her granddaughter; Orlando Moncada, 56, left Peru and grabbed hold of the American dream; Jerry Glowczewski, 97, last of the WWII Polish fighter pilots; Michael Hill, 58, railroad worker with a big, joyful, personality; Rodrick Samuels, 49, never let anyone mess with his younger brother; Alan F. Krupp, 83, quoted Longfellow and Tennyson from memory; Eric Frazier, 44, well regarded bailiff and mentor to colleagues; Barry Webber, 67, general surgeon who volunteered to treat Covid-19 patients; Richard Emmett Powers, 76, well respected criminal defense attorney in Detroit; Wogene Debele, 43, mother survived by her newborn child; James W. Landis, 57, loved his truck, Dorney Park, Disney World, model trains and especially California cheeseburgers; Annie Glenn, 100, champion of people with speech disorders. 

This took a toll. 100,000 Americans dead. Soon we will pass two-Vietnam wars worth of deaths.