"Hugh says that if we ever get separate bedrooms that’s it — he’s finished. I know this works for a lot of couples..."

"... they’re happy being down the hall from each other, but I couldn’t bear such an arrangement. 'This is what I’ll miss after you’re dead,' I tell him as I turn out the light, meaning, I guess, the sensation of being dead together."

 There's a new David Sedaris story at The New Yorker.

"For a long time, Roth kept two small signs near his desk. One read, 'Stay Put,' the other, 'No Optional Striving.'"

"Optional striving appears to be a category that includes everything save writing, exercise, sleep, and solitude.... 'That act of passionate and minute memory is what binds your days together—days, weeks, months—and living with that is my greatest pleasure. I think for any novelist it has to be the greatest pleasure, that’s why you’re doing it—to make the daily connections. I do it by living a very austere life. I don’t experience it as being austere in any negative sense, but you have to be a bit like a soldier with a barracks life, or whatever you want to call it. That is to say, I rule everything else out of my life. I didn’t always, but I do now.... I have to tell you that I don’t believe in death, I don’t experience the time as limited. I know it is, but I don’t feel it.... I could live three hours or I could live thirty years, I don’t know. Time doesn’t prey upon my mind. It should, but it doesn’t. I don’t know yet what this will all add up to, and it no longer matters, because there’s no stopping.'"

From a 2000 article in The New Yorker, "Into the Clear/Philip Roth puts turbulence in its place." 

I'm reading that because the recent talk of the new — and out of print! — biography of Roth led me to read his novel "The Human Stain," which came out in 2000, so I was reading contemporaneous articles about that. 

I chose that quote for blogging because it's about heroic isolation and dedication to writing — writing and staying alive. Here's a passage that I found in "The Human Stain" that goes into the same subject:

Abnegation of society, abstention from distraction, a self-imposed separation from every last professional yearning and social delusion and cultural poison and alluring intimacy, a rigorous reclusion such as that practiced by religious devouts who immure themselves in caves or cells or isolated forest huts, is maintained on stuff more obdurate than I am made of. I had lasted alone just five years—five years of reading and writing a few miles up Madamaska Mountain in a pleasant two-room cabin situated between a small pond at the back of my place and, through the scrub across the dirt road, a ten-acre marsh where the migrating Canada geese take shelter each evening and a patient blue heron does its solitary angling all summer long. The secret to living in the rush of the world with a minimum of pain is to get as many people as possible to string along with your delusions; the trick to living alone up here, away from all agitating entanglements, allurements, and expectations, apart especially from one’s own intensity, is to organize the silence, to think of its mountaintop plenitude as capital, silence as wealth exponentially increasing. The encircling silence as your chosen source of advantage and your only intimate. The trick is to find sustenance in (Hawthorne again) “the communications of a solitary mind with itself.” The secret is to find sustenance in people like Hawthorne, in the wisdom of the brilliant deceased.

I put 2 things in boldface to connect them for the purpose of contemplating whether they are the same thing.

"Patients with underlying conditions were 12 times as likely to die of covid-19 as otherwise healthy people, CDC finds."

A WaPo headline, quoted along with substantial text from the article by my son John at Facebook, where I expressed surprise that the factor was so low and asked:

Did they count obesity as a "condition" when they did that calculation?

Then:

I looked at the CDC report, and I see it only counted "severe obesity (body mass index ≥40 kg/m2)" as a condition. I'm a 5'5" woman, and I would need to weigh more than 240 pounds — more than 100 pounds over normal weight — to enter that BMI range.

Obesity begins at a 30 BMI, which would be 180 pounds for my height. That's 60 pounds less than the weight the CDC counted as a "condition" when it did its calculation. It wouldn't be 12 times as likely but what? — 100 times? — if they'd included the merely obese. And what if they'd counted the overweight but not obese? That would go all the way down to 150 for my height. It would be useful to know, because we have some power over our own weight!

ADDED: My son questions my observation. The factor should be lower if they included less severe conditions. I agree with him. I'm thinking in terms of being less likely to die. When you're trying to figure out how dangerous the illness is to you, you consider how likely it is for a person in your condition to die if they get the disease. Perhaps it's the case that 99.9% of those who died of the disease were obese. Of course, that's not the same as saying if you get the disease and you're obese, you have a 99.9% chance of dying. But if the overall percentage of those who get the disease and die is 0.1%, then I'd like to know what's the percentage for those who get the disease but are not obese? Is it 0.01%? That would be extremely useful information! For one thing, it would give people something to do to protect themselves: lose weight. But also, it would show us who should continue the more extreme form of social distancing and who should feel free to get out and about.

"The book will... allege that Trump and his father, Fred Trump Sr, contributed to the death of Trump's alcoholic elder brother Fred Trump Jr by failing to help him."

From "Donald Trump’s niece reveals in new book that she leaked details of his 'fraudulent' tax schemes, alleges he contributed to his brother’s death and says his retired federal judge sister disapproves of him" (Daily Mail).

The niece is the daughter of the brother who died. It's sad to think about what could have been done to prevent a death — sad to look for living persons to blame.

Most of the time, we soothe the survivors and tell them there's nothing they could have done, and when we choose to say, no, there are things you could have done that you did not do, it is probably not because those things were more obvious or had more potential to help.

"Do you think about mortality often?"/"I think about the death of the human race. The long strange trip of the naked ape."

"Not to be light on it, but everybody’s life is so transient. Every human being, no matter how strong or mighty, is frail when it comes to death. I think about it in general terms, not in a personal way.... There’s definitely a lot more anxiety and nervousness around now than there used to be. But that only applies to people of a certain age like me and you, Doug. We have a tendency to live in the past, but that’s only us. Youngsters don’t have that tendency. They have no past, so all they know is what they see and hear, and they’ll believe anything.... I like to think of the mind as spirit and the body as substance. How you integrate those two things, I have no idea. I just try to go on a straight line and stay on it, stay on the level."

From "Bob Dylan Has a Lot on His Mind." The question — "Do you think about mortality often?" — is from Douglas Brinkley and the rest of the quote above is Bob Dylan.

Bob Dylan has a new album, "Rough and Rowdy Ways," coming out on June 19th.

"A 56-year-old North Dakota [woman] drowned in a giant vat of sunflower seeds when she lost her footing and was sucked inside the grain bin..."

"The woman was wearing a harness, but it was not attached at the time of the accident and she plunged inside the massive container...." (NY Post).

No better metaphor.

I can think of no better metaphor for this presidency than Donald Trump not wearing a face mask to a face mask factory while the song “Live and Let Die” blares in the background. pic.twitter.com/mJzU1HW7HA

— Jimmy Kimmel (@jimmykimmel) May 5, 2020

He wore goggles. To keep his tears off you.

ADDED:

What does it matter to you?
When you got a job to do
You got to do it well
You got to give the other fellow hell...

"[T]he mortality rate among patients over age 65 exceeded 26 percent, and almost all patients over 65 who needed mechanical ventilation during that period died."

According to a new JAMA article (which studied coronavirus patients in Northwell Health hospitals "in and around New York City"), reported in "Do You Want to Die in an I.C.U.? Pandemic Makes Question All Too Real/Sobering statistics for older patients sharpen the need to draw up advanced directives for treatment and share them with their families" (NYT).

A new study in JAMA Internal Medicine questioned 180 patients over age 60 with serious illnesses; most said they would trade a year of life if that meant they could avoid dying in an I.C.U. on life support.... “Many older patients we’ve encountered with Covid-19 have opted not to undergo ventilation and an I.C.U.,” Dr. White said. “No one should impose that on a patient, though if there’s true scarcity, that may arise. But patients might choose it for themselves.”...

While you're thinking about that, here's the ad the NYT served up for me in the middle of the article:



"More than 20% of Americans think vampires are real/More than 25% think climate change is not"... therefore you might want to donate $1,000 to the World Health Organization. We're supposed to worry that a fifth to a quarter of Americans are so science-ignorant that we should give money to an organization that may or may not represent good science. How would I know? Well, one thing is: I'm wondering if it is really true that 20% of Americans think vampires are real, because if they don't, then the organization is passing on fake statistics and that's evidence against its dedication to good science!

Here's a study from last year (at YouGov) that says 13% of Americans believe in vampires — 14% of Republicans and 8% of Democrats. And here's an IPSOS survey from last year that said "Almost half of Americans believe that ghosts are real (46%), and a third believe that aliens visit earth (32%), while only a small amount believe in vampires (7%) and zombies (6%)."

For $1,000, you need to do better with the statistics. And now I'm wondering about the value of the statistics about how likely you are to die if you're over 65 and end up on a ventilator. Just as the World Health Organization wants its donations, the health care system would benefit if you decline its services and accept home-based death.

"These weeks of confinement can be seen also, it seems to me, as weeks of a national retreat, a chance to reset and rethink our lives, to ponder their fragility."

"I learned one thing in my 20s and 30s in the AIDS epidemic: Living in a plague is just an intensified way of living. It merely unveils the radical uncertainty of life that is already here, and puts it into far sharper focus. We will all die one day, and we will almost all get sick at some point in our lives; none of this makes sense on its own (especially the dying part). The trick, as the great religions teach us, is counterintuitive: not to seize control, but to gain some balance and even serenity in absorbing what you can’t."

Writes Andrew Sullivan in "How to Survive a Plague" (New York Magazine).

"More than two thousand episodes [of Desert Island Discs] are available online as downloads or podcasts..."

"... and I began listening to them a few years ago, as a way of glimpsing times other than my own. I love hearing about the path-altering memories of others—what it was like to experience Beatlemania or Motown or punk before they were settled narratives. At first, I was drawn to specific guests, hoping to learn more about the interiority of David Beckham (the Stone Roses, Elton John, Sidney Bechet), what kind of music Zadie Smith liked (Biggie, Prince, Madonna), where the cultural theorist Stuart Hall found inspiration (Bach, Billie Holiday, Bob Marley—'the sound that saved a lot of second-generation black West Indian kids from just, you know, falling through a hole in the ground').... It’s come to seem less like a show about music and creative inspiration than one about the possibility of loneliness. How do you find meaning in total isolation?... As many people prepare for weeks of 'social distancing' and working from home, we return to comforts.... It never occurred to me, until fairly recently, that this exercise was different from merely naming your favorite songs, or what you considered to be the best.... I didn’t realize that the desert-island choices were really a question about mortality.... What would it mean to survive and find yourself alone (Pharoah Sanders)? Would you bask in memories of friendship (the Beach Boys) and good times (Derrick May), of your greatest love (the Intruders)? Would those memories be too painful? Maybe you would want to listen to music that existed free of context—the last splendid and uplifting thing you heard before getting lost, a reminder that the world goes on without you?"

From "Join Me in My Obsession with 'Desert Island Discs'" by Hua Hsu (in The New Yorker). Go here for the shows.

ADDED: To be clear: "It’s an interview show with a simple premise: each celebrity guest discusses the eight recordings that he or she would bring if cast away alone on a desert island." Just 8 songs. Not albums.

"Isolation and other shifts in behavior during the coronavirus outbreak could also alter our greenhouse gas emissions. But will the changes stick?"

Wonders John Schwartz (in the NYT).

The strategies of avoiding coronavirus — staying home, not flying and driving, using on-line shopping — also reduce your carbon footprint. This social distancing is a green new deal... if it persists. Ever start something for one reason and then continue it for another?

Charles Duhigg, the author of “The Power of Habit” and a former New York Times reporter, said habits built over lifetimes are hard to shake. “As soon as the environment becomes stable again, the habit starts to reassert itself” unless there is a “powerful reward” to the new behavior.

Mr. Duhigg said that while there is no set time for a habit to form or change, some cultural habits could, if the pandemic response lasts long enough, take hold. One example: shaking hands. “I could see other kinds of behavior replacing that habit, or maybe just diminishing,” and wondered aloud whether his own children might one day think “hand shaking is a weird, old-timey thing.”

Yeah, but shaking hands didn't affect your carbon footprint (handprint?).

Some practices, like videoconferencing and telecommuting, may gain ground, Mr. Duhigg said, for a reward of saved time and trouble. He expressed doubts, however, that leisure travel behavior would see a similar shift. “It seems unlikely to me that people will say, ‘You know, I loved not taking vacations. I learned staying at home with my kids is so rewarding!’”

Oh, the sarcasm! What I'm picturing is a married couple where one of them says I loved staying home, and the other is massively alarmed if not angry. The one then adds the climate change factor to his (and I do mean "his") side of the argument, and the other explodes in a confetti burst of wokeism. Ha ha, the anti-travelist wins! The erstwhile bucket list kicks the bucket, and the forced stay at home goes on and on... until death comes to take that frustrated travel bug on that long-anticipated, truly exotic trip — out of the world altogether.

"I have my sister in bed, dead, I don’t know what to do. I cannot give her the honor she deserves because the institutions have abandoned me. I contacted everyone, but nobody was able to give me an answer."

Said Luca Franzese, an Italian actor and mixed martial arts trainer, after more than 36 hours of trying to find a funeral home to take care of the decomposing body — quoted in "‘Italy has abandoned us’: People are being trapped at home with their loved ones’ bodies amid coronavirus lockdown" (WaPo).

Franzese spoke on a video posted on Facebook that has over 9 million views, and the attention did work to get a funeral home to come collect the body.

Yet another disturbing scenario played out this week when a woman was quarantined alongside the body of her dead husband. Giancarlo Canepa, the mayor of Borghetto Santo Spirito in northern Italy, told CNN that the man died at 2 a.m. Monday, but that nobody would be allowed to remove his body until Wednesday morning....

The man, who has not been publicly identified, tested positive for coronavirus before he died, but refused to be taken to the hospital, Canepa told CNN. After he passed away, quarantine measures prevented anyone from entering the house and collecting his body.

The decision prompted an uproar, with neighbors telling television news station IVG.it that it was painful to know that the grieving widow was alone with her deceased husband’s body. The woman had been standing on her balcony and crying for help, they said, and the man’s relatives were desperately pleading for someone to interfere....

Death comes for Max von Sydow.

The great Swedish actor was 90. From the NYT obituary:

Carl Adolf von Sydow was born on April 10, 1929, in Lund, in southern Sweden.... He was said to have adopted the name Max from the star performer in a flea circus he saw while serving in the Swedish Quartermaster Corps....

For all his connection to the land of his birth and of Bergman, Sweden became distant to Mr. von Sydow.... "I have nowhere really to call home... I feel I have lost my Swedish roots. It’s funny because I’ve been working in so many places that now I feel at home in many locations. But Sweden is the only place I feel less and less at home."

Did he really name himself after a flea?! From a 2012 interview (in The Guardian):

Is it true he named himself after a flea? "Ha ha ha!" booms Von Sydow, his laugh filling the room. "Yes! Ha ha ha! During my military service, I performed a sketch in which I played a flea called Max. So when critics kept misspelling my name, I decided to change it and thought, 'Ah! Max!'"

Ah, so it was not an actual flea "in a flea circus he saw," as the New York Times put it. He himself was in a show playing a character that happened to be a flea.

A flea circus is a show on a tiny stage that has real fleas performing (or tiny imitation fleas):

The first records of flea performances were from watchmakers who were demonstrating their metalworking skills. In 1578, Mark Scaliot produced a lock and chain that were attached to a flea. The first recorded flea circus dates back to the early 1820s, when an Italian impresario called Louis Bertolotto advertised an “extraordinary exhibition of industrious fleas” on Regent Street, London. Some flea circuses persisted in very small venues in the United States as late as the 1960s....

Here's Charlie Chaplin with his flea circus in one of my all-time favorite movies — "Limelight" (which I'll put up as a meditation on death alongside "The Seventh Seal," so please make that your double feature):