A Television Fire Provokes Me to Check My Smoke Detectors

I watch very little TV, but Renée Youree Kennison recently convinced me to watch the pilot episode of “This is Us.” Wow. Incredible acting, writing, editing, lighting and music. We have been watching a few episodes per week and we are now almost at the end of Season 2 (out or four completed seasons).

I’m writing this post wondering how many lives might have been saved due to the most recent episode we watched. It involved a horrifically vivid fire of a family residence (I won’t say more because I don’t want to spoil it). Maybe I reacted so emotionally to this episode because 18 years ago I woke up out of a deep sleep (thanks to a smoke detector) with my own house on fire. I was astonished that the smoke hadn’t awakened me earlier. I emptied two fire extinguishers on the fire before the fire department arrived. After watching the TV episode, Renée and I found ourselves walking around our houses evaluating our needs for smoke detector and fire extinguishers. I suspect that other people watching that episode did the same thing. I have my fire extinguisher out in the open and visible. I have smoke detectors on every floor and several rooms.

I know that some fire departments are giving out free smoke detectors. Extinguishers and fire blankets are cheap. COVID-19 is not the only danger out there. Please be safe in all ways!

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Flowbee: An Easy and Economical Option for a Haircut in the Age of Coronavirus

Over the past 15 years, people have chuckled when I told them that I don't pay other people to cut my hair. I use a Flowbee. [I can imagine people laughing as I write this].

I was introduced to Flowbee by a well-coiffed gay man, the head of HR at a prominent law firm, who told me that he and many of his friends used a Flowbee to cut their own hair. Yes, it seems ridiculous that people would cut their hair with a device connected to a vacuum cleaner but it does a nice job giving a layered cut quickly and easily (I merely trim around my ears with a trimmer after using the Flowbee). I've saved 15 years of paying someone else to cut my hair and it is immensely satisfying that I no longer need to schedule haircuts - I can cut my own hair whenever I want, and sometimes that is 2 am.

I'm getting ready to cut my hair again today, and it occurred to me that many people out there might want to consider this option, especially in the age of COVIC-19. I'm not getting paid anything for this post, but I am adding this link to Flowbee in case you are interested. As I expected, they are backlogged with orders because of coronavirus. Apparently, others are catching on.

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Axiomatic Civic Responsibility

I’m looking at the “protesters” in Michigan and ruminating on the nature of civil disobedience versus civic aphasia. By that latter term I mean a condition wherein a blank space exists within the psyché where one would expect an appropriate recognition of responsible behavior ought to live.  A condition which seems to allow certain people to feel empowered to simply ignore—or fail to recognize—the point at which a reflexive rejection of authority should yield to a recognition of community responsibility.  That moment when the impulse to challenge, dismiss, or simply ignore what one is being told enlarges to the point of defiance and what ordinarily would be a responsible acceptance of correct behavior in the face of a public duty. It could be about anything from recycling to voting regularly to paying taxes to obeying directives meant to protect entire populations.

Fairly basic exercises in logic should suffice to define the difference between legitimate civil disobedience and civic aphasia. Questions like: “Who does this serve?” And if the answer is anything other than the community at large, discussion should occur to determine the next step.  The protesters in Michigan probably asked, if they asked at all, a related question that falls short of useful answer:  “How does this serve me?”  Depending on how much information they have in the first place, the answer to that question will be of limited utility, especially in cases of public health.

Another way to look at the difference is this:  is the action taken to defend privilege or to extend it? And to whom?

One factor involved in the current expression of misplaced disobedience has to do with weighing consequences. The governor of the state issues a lockdown in order to stem the rate of infection, person to person. It will last a limited time. When the emergency is over (and it will be over), what rights have been lost except a presumed right to be free of any restraint on personal whim?

There is no right to be free of inconvenience.  At best, we have a right to try to avoid it, diminish it, work around it.  Certainly be angry at it.  But there is no law, no agency, no institution that can enforce a freedom from inconvenience.  For one, it could never be made universal.  For another, “inconvenience” is a rather vague definition which is dependent on context.

And then there is the fact that some inconveniences simply have to be accepted and managed.

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Coronavirus as an Opportunity to be Racist

Coronavirus is not an excuse to be racist. We all know that. Nonetheless, as we struggle to deal with the Coronavirus crisis, significant numbers of Americans are dusting off their favorite go-to tactic, racism, and aiming it toward the Far East. This time, it’s racism against Chinese people. For many examples, see the attached clip from Samantha Bee’s show (begin at 3:05 min for many examples where Fox Commentators follow Donald Trump’s xenophobic lead).

I struggle to find words to express my disappointment at this celebration of bigotry, and it’s not simply because I have many acquaintances and friends who are Chinese. It’s not simply because my daughters are Chinese. It’s because engaging in bigotry is a cruel thing to do to any another human being. We need to stop painting hundreds of millions of people with this broad brush. Have we learned NOTHING from the civil rights movement? For those who are tempted to push back at me and continue to blame “the Chinese” for our current struggle, which particular people are you angry at? You know it’s not all the Chinese people. You know that viruses don’t respect national borders. If you know anything about the evolution of viruses, you know that the next pandemic might originate in your own hometown.

Making this even more irritating for me, many of these racists claim to be Christians. Here’s my advice for those of you who are working hard to rename Coronavirus as “Chinese Coronavirus” or “Chinese Virus”: Take a deep breath, look in the mirror, take seriously your own commandment to love your enemy and put your fucking dog whistles away.

PS. This entire episode in hyper-nationalism is predictable by “Terror Management Theory.” (TMT). It’s well documented that people do this kind of shit when they are scared. See, here and here. Also see "The Worm at the Core," an excellent book on TMT by Sheldon Solomon.

That said, we can work harder to become better versions of ourselves in this crisis. We need to do a better job of keeping the focus on saving lives.

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