DON’T ASK ME HOW IT HAPPENED, and please don’t come at me tomorrow to see if it’s still there. But somehow, someway, to paraphrase the great Marshall Crenshaw, I found not simply acceptance today but optimism.
Maybe it was the dawning hope that a major project unexpectedly handed to me at my new job will be seen through successfully; maybe it was hearing R. cheerfully FaceTime with her cousin this afternoon; maybe it was the bracing 2-mile walk I took while it was still dark this morning; maybe it was the sun-soaked stroll around the neighborhood I took just before lunchtime. Whatever it was, the existential threat of the last several weeks just didn’t seem as looming today.
I’m under no illusions that the next several weeks won’t suck. But it’s … several weeks. Not years, not a lifetime. Several weeks of sucking it up, being there for each other, rolling with it. Yes, me and my family, we’re lucky. For now, and hopefully for as long as this lasts, we can do these things. We can afford to do these things. I hope that as a country, one assaulted by a sickness that cares not for race or age or status, we can close ranks and do the right thing by everyone.
I have sadly little confidence our government can do this. And this is not a both-sides-need-to-get-it-together thing; there’s a party that controls half of the Congress and the White House, and unfortunately it’s the party that has patted science, research, data, and evidence on the head and sent it strolling down the garden path while it catered to the shrinking, shriveling demographic of old straight white guys.
My hope is that the united will of the people — because, again, this is an illness that is striking down the high and the low; COVID-19 doesn’t play the us-versus-them game — can win the day.
Blind optimism, perhaps. But I believe there will come a time, a time not so long away, when I will hug my extended family and my dear friends, when I will shake hands with colleagues, when I will sit in the stands with a cold beer and cheer on my beloved Phillies, when I will go to work — actually go to work, not step into the home office and turn on my laptop. I do not envision this time as a dream or as a hope, but as an eventuality.
He said, eyeing a half-full glass. | DL
Dadlibbing 
I have a little more confidence in local leaders like Val Arkoosh and governors like Cuomo, Bashear and our own Tom Wolf, who respond to facts on the ground in calm and decisive ways. I saw a news story in which Wolf clearly and compassionately summed up the situation:
“This virus, you know, is sneaky,” Wolf said. “You get it before you know you have it. Now, 80% percent who get it, they’re going to be OK. And if you’re part of that 80% you can be forgiven for saying, ‘What’s the big deal?’ The big deal is that 20% are in danger. And that 20% includes our loved ones and our neighbors. And our problem right now is that we cannot treat that 20% if the virus takes off as it did in Italy. We don’t have the capacity in our health care system so we need to buy time.”
Couldn’t agree more, Paul.