MONTHLY DEATH COUNTS

I keep hearing about how the number of cOVID-19 deaths is way overstated. Then some anecdote about how someone committed suicide or was killed in a car crash then listed as a COVID death.
But these statistics people are sharp as shit. They cross reference these numbers every which way but loose. In New York City for instance, they usually have about 8000 people die between 3/15 and 5/1. Its somewhat predictable. This year 32,000 died. And it just so happened that 24,000 deaths were attributed to COVID in that time period.

So it kinda all checks out for NYC. They do that for all the regions around the country. When they find discrepancies, they will be looking for problems in the data. These guys are smart...
Here is a chart from Michigan that you can compare deaths for April 2019 and April of 2020. Deaths from all causes and by cause. Interesting how closely balanced the variance is accounting for COVID deaths.

Click HERE

AUNT LOUISE

Years ago I found my grandmother about to set fire to a suitcase full of old family pics. It took a while, but I talked her out of it, and saved the suitcase. I finally started framing some of these pics last week. Most are 100 years old.
One was my Aunt Louise. I never liked Louise much. She seemed all stuffy, like some kind of fuddy-duddy.
Then I found this pic of her this weekend. Look how adorable she is! Those glasses! That mischievous look! Never mind that she kept plastic on the furniture and whenever we went to visit I had to sit on the sofa with my hands in my lap.
Look at her!
If she was to walk into Boomer Jacks tonight they wouldn’t be able to leave her alone.

TUESDAY MORNING

I bought the cutest little lamp at Tuesday Morning 7 years ago. My first lamp I ever bought. Susan helped me carry it in. She dropped it at the doorstep. It shattered into a million pieces. I still tease her about it to this day every chance I get. I know, I'm horrible.
Its like I love Susan even more for it.

The lamp had a fabric shade with a lavender floral design in it that was invisible until you turned the light on. I kept it in the closet for a while hoping to get another lamp to put it on. I was in the closet one day rearranging stuff and the shade fell off the shelf and an avalanche of boxes came down and crushed it. Some things just aren’t to be.

LATE FOR WORK FROM HOME DAY

Between work from home and half furlough days I'm all screwed up. Woke up this morning thinking it was Sunday. Turned on the TV, no Sunday shows. It must be Saturday. Nope. It took 5 full minutes of total disorientation to figure out it was Tuesday.
Tuesday? Oh no! I'm late for work from home day!
What did they put in that burrito last night?

AND LOCK UP YOUR ADDERAL

I've been saying for some time that our politicians are fair game, but we should not take shots at their supporters. I try to live by that. This toe's the line a bit.
I've heard it said "Sure he's crass and vulgar and I wouldn't want him at my BBQ but he gets things done." And that is a valid point.

"Me, I wouldn't want him at my BBQ because he'd take up a dump in the pool and blame it on democrats, boast about grabbing my wife's pussy, take one look at my Latino attorney and contact INS, call the guys in white hoods who crashed the party good people, encourage everyone at the party to drink Drano, put a tariff on the egg rolls and lie about how the Chinese are paying for it, brag about his IQ and then tell my kid the Continental Army took out airports during the revolutionary war, lecture me about how the weather vane at the top of my house kills birds, tell my African-American pal he comes from a shithole country, cheat at miniature golf, call any woman who dare ask him a simple question rude and disrespectful, brag about how his house is better than my house and refuse to shut up about it, kick my transqender friend out of the party, eat all my hot dogs and swear Barack Obama did it even though Barack Obama isn't at the party, screw my pooch and blame it on the pooch, then tell me to get away from the grill because the grill is a big, beautiful grill and it was his idea I buy it in the first place. And when he finally left I'd discovered my cuff links were missing."

THEY SHOULD WEAR CAPES

"Just got moved off of the COVID19 floor to a regular room where staff aren't wearing space suits! I can eat with silverware, real dishes & see the faces of the people caring for me! Hospital's aren't fun for anyone but the absolute worst part of the small quarantine floor I was on was hearing the screams of real COVID19 patients. The nurses were tense, sad & clearly stressed by the number of things going on. I hated to ask for things because others needed them more. I heard at least 3 code blue calls, saw nurses comfort each other & saw chaos from staff running to other rooms, from the little window in my room where a nurse sat & watched 2 patients for 12 hours. She'd come out of one room & changed gear, disinfected her helmet, hands, etc. Then suit back up to enter my room. I asked my last quarantine nurse if they were having a lot of new people this morning, as she was frantically getting me ready for the room transfer...she apologized for rushing me & said "you have no idea"....I felt so bad for her, she couldn't even wipe her own tears through the spacesuit helmet she was wearing. I have a serious new respect for all our healthcare heroes. They should wear capes, have time to eat, have bathroom breaks & definitely make more money. But for now every one I see, is 'wearing a cape', because they are the real Super Heroes of this pandemic."

A friend of mine, quarantined for COVID 19 for several days and eventually tested negative.

Detailed further..."...EVERY LOSS IS PERSONAL...""I was brought in by ambulance to a special entrance specifically for probable COVID19 patients. Nurses in full protective gear met the ambulance & paramedics to transfer me to triage. I had to stay in triage for several hours before a room in the COVID19 unit freed up. Never thought to ask why it freed up...
But anyway, they put me in that part of the hospital where the rooms were set up with 1 nurse in a spacesuit & helmet, watched 2 rooms on either side of a split window. I was too sick when I went in to notice how many rooms where on the floor but when I left, there appeared to be about 5 stations on each side of the central nursing desk. That would be around 20 patients with 10 nurses, sitting outside the rooms. This was in tower 4. I was told each tower had a COVID19 unit. I got meds through a double sided closet door/window. Techs put it in outside & my nurse would take it out on my side of the room to give me. Techs were walking around helping but they only wore black plastic "trash bag" looking gowns & masks. I did ask one of them if they were really medical grade gowns or if the hospital was improvising. She laughed & said they were actually medical gowns.
I had to wear a mask whenever any staff entered my room too. The doctors had the most protective gear. Full spacesuits, helmet's, masks, gloves & shoe coverings. Nurses had the second best level of protection & techs had the least. All my meals were delivered through the double-sided door. Everything was in disposable Styrofoam. Once I asked if they would re-microwave my coffee. They said that once something had entered a contaminated room, it couldn't leave except as trash.
Even though I couldn't see any other patients, I could hear them. Lots of PA announcements, codes, (code blue), coughing, crying & staff running down the hallways. Sometimes I'd see nurses appear to be breaking down, from exhaustion or sadness...I don't know which, but they were clearly stressed.
This morning, very suddenly, all heck broke loose & a tech & nurse started getting me ready to transfer. It was confusing but I'd guessed more patients were needing a bed in the unit. The nurse apologized for rushing me. I asked if everything was okay & she said "No!" I asked what was happening & she started crying & said "You'd never understand". She couldn't hide her tears under the space helmet.
I was only quarantined for 4 days & had 3 COVID19 tests before being sent to a less restrictive area. So I'm on a regular floor now. No one should doubt that this is a very serious infection or that people aren't dying from it. I'm very grateful to merely have septicemia which is easily treated with antibiotics. I've got only prayers for those still left in the quarantined areas.They are completely alone when they need their families the most. The staff was great but they aren't family. (Although you can see it in their eyes, that every loss is personal.) Yes, there are lots of very sick people who are quarantined here at this hospital. Please pray they get to go home & that you are well enough to stay in yours! I know I will."

I got to tell you she's probably the prettiest girl I ever dated!

BACK TO WORK

And what a wonderful thing that artifice can be. Now that we are all working from home, amid the children, the toast crumbs and the laundry, we are realising that the pretence of an orderly life at the office is also a liberation. It allows each day to have its own architecture, its rhythms of departure and arrival. Putting on a perfectly ironed silk shirt or a crisp suit and leaving the house may be contrived but it is also, says Kellaway, “one of the beauties of working life…It allows us to be a different person. And we’re all so fed up with who we are, the opportunity to be someone else, someone a little bit more impressive, is just so tempting.” When such an escape is denied us, that allure may only grow.

— Catherine Nixey, from “Death of the Office” in The Economist

MONKEY WARDS

I was sharing at an NA meeting a few weeks ago. Recounted that in 1972 I got busted for a little pot. I had to go to counseling. They didn’t have NA around here back then. So my parents and I attended Montgomery Wards Family Counseling Services. I could sense that hardly anyone in the group had any idea what Montgomery Wards was.
“It was a department store y’all, like Sears or Pennys”
“Ohhhh” you could hear them all sigh.
Probably paid on a Monkey Wards CC.

Couple more years and it will be "Sears who?"

FOR THE PEOPLE

"So you talk about mobs and the working classes as if they were the question. You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists."
 - G. K. Chesterton
The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

A GIFT

As they were leaving the garden
one of the angels bent down to them and whispered

I am to give you this
as you are leaving the garden

I do not know what it is
or what it is for
what you will do with it

you will not be able to keep it
but you will not be able

to keep anything
yet they both reached at once

for the present
and when their hands met

they laughed

–W.S. Merwin from Garden Time
source: beautywelove

HOT AUGUST NIGHT

The last round of my ten favorite albums, Part Two.
I hate to admit it but I love Neil Diamond. Some albums will get you laid, Breads “Baby I’ma Want You” and that’s reason enough to like Bread.
No one would ever accuse Neil Diamond of doing an album that would get you laid.
But I gotta tell you “Hot August Night” is so easy to listen to.
And I had a friend when I was a good little church boy named James Packard who did a rousing rendition of “Brother Loves Travelling Salvation Show”.
He did it so good that it might have gotten HIM laid a time or two, and I’m not sure if its OK to say that here or not, but there it is.
Me? That last side with “Holly Holy”, “I Am I said” and “Soolaiman” really does it for me.
Do you want to know how dumb I am?
When I was in the 6th Grade there was a kid at school named Mike Wright. He was like the Burt Reynolds of the sixth grade with a full beard and everything.
“I Am I Said” was a big hit, they played it every hour on the radio.
When It got to the chorus:
“I am I cried
I am said I”
I thought they were talking about Mike Wright.
“I am I cried”…get it?

A TALE OF TWO TESTS

Last month it was "Everybody will get a test, OK? We got beautiful tests, the best tests. We're number one in testing."
Now its like "Not my tests".

BULLETHOLES HAS A DONUT

The doctor has had me track my blood sugar on a spreadsheet the last month. I went in yesterday with the results. He glanced at it for a moment.
“This doesn’t look too bad “ he said “A lot of 100’s and 120”s”
“Thank you sir”
Then he looked a little more deeply.
‘What’s this day… 220, 247 and 298? “
“That’s the day I had a coupla few donuts”
“Coupla few? What’s that?”

“Its like two or three. Maybe four. Ok, it was five donuts.”
“You ate five donuts?”
“Uh-huh. And maybe an apple fritter”

MY SUPERPOWER

“And so I remind myself: my real challenge right now is a spiritual one. In the midst of an evolving, unprecedented crisis, can I truly practice living moment to moment? Can I take on this strange new life day by day, from a place of tender awareness rather than fear? Can I let go of the ways I thought life would unfold and save my strength to swim with the tide? Can I stay focused on what’s good, right now?” ~ Katrina Kenison, from “The gift of an ordinary day”

*******

That is the challenge isnt it? I was just at the grocery. I see all the people. They are worried. Nervous. I want to reach out, but we have to keep our distance. So I find myself sauntering along with a stupid smile on my face waiting for someone to look up so I can give them my best “How do you do?”.
But people these days are so afraid to look up.
Twice, maybe three times I choked up a little over this distance that has had to be imposed. Its like a vaccuum. I just want to fill it.
A couple years ago I came into possession of a big Rudolph head. You put it over your head, and its got the big screen eyes you can see through. Suddenly you are a disney character. Ive had so much fun wearing that thing during Christmas; meetings, parties, even wore it to an art show.
An idea came over me two weeks ago. I should wear it to the grocery, with a little mask! So I posted a pic on FB and asked should I or should I not do this?
Of course everyone says yes. I could do it, it is my Superpower, doing stuff like that.
But SHOULD I?
So I made a dry run to the store. No mask, just trying to get a feel for people.
Two weeks ago was just like today. Every body is too nervous, too on edge. I don't want to appear to make light of this serious situation we are in. I don't want to disrespect anyone's dignity, or mess with their serenity. That’s the challenge.
But here one day, when things aren't so tight, maybe I wear my mask in.

''There are no easy answers, no clear path through any of this, other than caution, kindness, and care for ourselves and others.
That is the challenge...""

Until then I’ll just have to stick to a big smile and “How do you do?”

COUNTING TO ZERO BY JEFFREY LITTLE

1
I’m sitting inside a circle of duct tape, counting tissues. Everything’s either boned-up, ghosting, or it’s Gone. It takes me about an hour to work my way to zero. Nothing yet has plummeted from the sky, not even a turkey. I’m beginning to think that it’s all a practical joke of some kind, or a new way of counting to zero. I go on-line and buy myself a metric socket-wrench for seventeen bucks. You never know. It’s true. Just today I found out why they put the Do Not Remove tag on a mattress. It’s complicated and involves the French, the Dreyfus Affair. When you see a picture of him, it looks like he’s counting. No matter what you may think of the length of the baseball season, we still must respect the primacy of the numbers. The tallying appears to have no end. Another siren, another false alarm. Or a real alarm, but lacking context, and context is what we’re all struggling with here. If you stop and really think about it, has any of us ever seen the inside of an egg? It could be like a palace in there. Roll top desks and weird green lamps. Like in France. I walk up the stairs and I wash my hands.











2
I walk down the stairs and I wash my hands. The things we do in front of a mirror. Everyone is sort of sick. Maybe if a trellis of smoke filled the sky, or I saw someone moved on a gurney into a black sedan. But this, this is a television show. Outside it’s just a little empty, and nice. A neighbor kid on her bicycle and a breeze. A breeze! Have you ever tried to count a breeze? It’s tricky. Someone’s always coming in from the cold. When I think back and try to picture the way things were it looks a lot like today, only now through a buffer of glass. In the right light a pane of glass can be a mirror. I see a version of myself looking back into the house watching me watch the neighbor kid riding a bike. This reminds me of the obscure dread evoked in old movies of staring down into a winding staircase, a splash of dissonant piano with a single cymbal and the eyes, tied as they are to the stomach, the eyes go wide, then bottom. I realize I’m looking out the glass screen door with what could only charitably be called a slack-jawed gape. The neighbor kid’s seen worse. She brakes, and counts on her fingers the number of cats.











3
Everyone is waiting inside except the cats, the ferals and the nearly so. They think themselves responsible for this change in the situation, they patrol like lions, and at night settle upon the empty porches. Beyond hammerfall and doomcrack this is, for now, what’s left us. I would’ve imagined something a bit more gothic. Not zombies, these days they seem a little too stylized, but sewer beasts, or wendingos, or a bomb, something with a gravitas to its wake, like that silent cortege of stumps in Siberia, in the Taiga, what was Tunguska in 1908. That, I could wrap my head around. No school, no work, no beach to scurry to away from, I see a lot of people just staring at the sky. Walking around town in my six foot bubble of separation I see a lot of things, but nothing desperate, at least not today, or at least not yet anyway, that’ll come with the flies, or when the liquor stores are locked and shuttered, and the dry it comes in hard. The last, last straw. Windows are made for one purpose, really, push come to shove, windows are made to break, to shower a sidewalk with the shards of the new transactions, now that it’s been rearranged.











4
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about our curtains. I want to open them, then I want to close them, I settle on open but I am unconvinced, I walk to the kitchen and I wash my hands. Today the number I need to know is 106, which is a larger number than yesterday, which was larger than the day before. The digits are twisted like balloons, as the nightly news broadcasts its warnings and careens from side to side. Six months from now we’ll have been returned to a semblance of normality or else we’ll be scratching at the earth with sharpened sticks, eyes peeled for a tuber or roots. I busy myself eying up the better branches. Our house, now, is always full. Wife, kids, cat, and work, cat, kids, wife. The steps lead somewhere, but where? I wake up and walk down the stairs and wash my hands, feed our cat and the cat plopped on the porch outside. This is my new commute. Someone has closed the curtains, which are deep, deep red. I feel like I’m inside of a vein. Coursing. The word for today is absentia. I heat up a cup of coffee, make a sour face like I’m working, then look out a window to see the sun, all the parked cars and the cats.











5
Still, it seems inevitable. No matter how many times I wash my hands the virus is somewhere waiting. It’s patient. Obsessively precise. Like an accountant or an actuary, as much as for exactly what the virus does as for what waiting on it makes of us. I need to anthropomorphize. I need to give it a face. Anthony Perkins. Nothing personal. I just woke up and I thought, Anthony Perkins, the coronavirus is Anthony Perkins. Now I can go about my day in peace. When I hear the mail jeep outside I feel just like a dog. And when I count I count to one hundred, but still to me it’s like counting to zero. Tomorrow they’ll have me count more. My failure is that I can’t not watch the news. I wouldn’t say that I pay it too much attention but I need to have it on, or available. It’s like being a methadone junkie, no kick but the kick of empty addiction. Usually, I don’t even turn up the sound. Our cat, in the window, looks at the near feral outside on the stoop, an entente is being agreed to. Our place, my family’s, in this informal arrangement, has yet to be determined. Bets, I can hear them being hedged. On the big board the odds keep changing.











6
We wipe down every surface here, only to wipe them all down again. I’m eating a sandwich and I bite my tongue. This is what it boils down to. Everyone is looking for someone to blame. Blame biology, blame life. If I had an electron microscope I could at least start to look inside of the envelope and satisfy some vague imperative. It’s a perfect day and the cats have moved from their porches out onto the lawns. I do a push-up and I count to zero, I wash my hands and I count to twenty, I walk outside and tomorrow moves another step closer, or away. At this magnification it’s impossible to tell. I feel quantum. Birds do bird things. I have no idea what the number is today so I just stroll across the grass to feel it give a little bit beneath me, then I go further down, to where the creek straightens before making a run for it underneath the cul de sac, and out the other side. I want to follow it as it moves through the dark. But there are surfaces that we need to wipe down first before we can wipe them down again. Nothing has prepared me for the next step, whatever the next step is. We eat dinner, we begin.




Jeffrey Little: “All things considered, I would rather be in Philadelphia, watching the Phillies swamp the Mets, eating a soft pretzel and drinking some ale. Heck, down the road in Wilmington watching the Blue Rocks, thinking of ale. Everybody’s missing something these days, or someone. This poem is thinking of them. For what it’s worth, I have three issues of Mudlark you could glance at, along with all the other fine issues housed there, now that you have the time. Also a poster; this poem makes it a Gordie Howe Hat Trick. I’ve always wanted to say that. I have two books of poetry from Spout Press (The Hotel Sterno and The Book of Arcana) and one from Rank Stranger Press (Five and Dime). I am supposed to thank the great, small State of Delaware for an established professional poetry grant. Thanks. Also, poems scampering here and there. Be well.”

Other Mudlarks by Jeffrey Little: The Secret Life of Nouns, Poster No. 154 (2018); Is Nature is as a Sound is as Zero is as the Hook Dog Blues, Issue No. 47 (2012); Biography As In Syntax: The Babble Poems, Issue No. 22 (2003); and crayola in arcana, Issue No. 15 (2000).




Copyright © Mudlark 2019

BULLETHOLES TAKES A WALK

I've lived in my house 4 months now. I finally did something my doctor has been begging me to do for years. I took a walk. He has BEGGED me, but I HATE walking. I drove around the block, its three quarters of a mile. Parked that car and set out afoot, hating every step. I got over to the next block. One of the houses had three younger guys in the front yard. As I approached they waved and gave me a hearty "Hello". They were smiling. I said hello back and a gave little wave.
"How are you doing?" one asked me.The other two looked at me expectantly, waiting for my answer.
That is when I realized these guys were starved for company. They were excited to see a stranger. Like they had been on a deserted island or something. I dont believe their reaction to my presence would have been as visceral any other time. Only now in this forced sequestration because of the COVID 19.
I gave them my best smile and friendliest voice.
"I'm doing great" I said, "How about you all?"
" We are great!" all three in unison, smiles just beaming at me. waiting for my reply.
I slowed down just a step, turned toward them, let a moment pass and said
"Just keepin' my distance, man" and they all three just laughed ..."Right, right, right." they said.
As I walked away I went into one of these little daydreams. I wish I had stopped and talked a little longer. Three complete strangers were so delighted to see me, and as the weeks go by as they have, suddenly I experienced a sense of hope. A sense of that maybe after all this isolation and separation, that maybe we will all fall in love with each other again. That is what we surely do need.
But there is more. I got home and I was getting a glass of water and kind of smiling to myself, thinking about this hope & love. And I thought "I need to go back out tomorrow, walking, and see who I can find". Me, who hates walking. In fact I CANT WAIT to get home tomorrow from work so I can go walking and I'm going to walk until I find somebody.
I just cant hardly wait!

BULLETHOLES STAYS HOME

I bought a piece of art for my house. It needs to be framed, and I have a friend that works at Hobby Lobby. She does frames! I've had it for two weeks, but I thought Hobby Lobby was closed for this COVID 19 crisis until I saw the news yesterday. Hobby Lobby has stayed open, deeming itself "essential".
I sent her a text and yes she was working.
I wanted to take my art and get it framed so I can hang it up. And then I caught myself.
Having Millet's "The Gleaners" framed and on my wall is important to me, I can't wait to put it up, but its hardly essential.
The last ten years I've finally learned to play by the rules. I lived most of my life irresponsible, and in complete disregard for the rules.
"Rules" I said "are for suckers"
Thanks to NA and sober living I've learned to play by the rules. To live life on its own terms. Thats how I came to be able to buy this house.

My work is basically paying me to stay home 2 days a week. They are paying me to stay home, shelter in place, stay healthy. I'm really proud I didnt take a self serving self centered non essential trip to Hobby Lobby. Stay home Bulletholes. You could go to Hobby Lobby and come home dead.

A THANKLESS JOB

SHELTER IN PLACE

All of my 12 step meetings have gone online. I'm having to work from home today. I like to say I don't like people, but its just not true. People who need people are the luckiest people.
I'll never make it till Monday.
Can't Trump pass a law where we go to a Buddy System?
Where can I get Shelter In Place Buddy?

CORONAVIRUS AND 12 STEP GROUPS

Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous Groups have had to suspend in person meetings all around the world. But spreading like wildfire are online meetings through video conferencing apps like ZOOM. I've peered into several the last two days, and virtual attendance at my home group is high. 
Addicts are natural isolator's. We like to say that "an addict alone is an addict in poor company" and one of the many truths we have found is that the most powerful weapon for a recovering addict is another recovering addict.

Here, Ronnie Woods shares his experience strength and hope with the Rolling Stone magazine. Ronnie has 10 plus years clean and sober.
“I will share my hope for the future with myself, my higher power, and my friends. I will also share this with someone who has lost hope. Now, if anything, we have tended to be people who have wanted it all now. To hope is not to demand. Maybe we were a bit demanding. Maybe we were a bit impatient. Maybe that’s why we had such little hope. Hope is believing good will come, even in bad times; hope is knowing that ‘this too shall pass.’ Hope is knowing that no matter how afraid we are, our higher power will be with us. Hope is knowing we never have to be alone again. It is knowing that time is on our side. Hope is giving up control. Hope is knowing we never had control in the first place. I hope this helps you get through another day.”