Viral Spring #2

    -- By Tom Phillips                                   

                                                        You know something's happening

                        But you don't know what it is -- 

                                                   Do you, Mr. Jones?

New York City now is the "epicenter" of the viral spring, with 23,000 cases of Covid-19, and at least 365 deaths. This is in a city of eight million, and we still don't know anyone who knows they have it.  But we met online with our sidelined hospice singing group last night and heard the news: two people dead in the synagogue of one of our members. A nurse died at a hospital where another member works. Co-workers are angry -- blaming the lack of personal protective equipment.  Some nurses are already exhausted, feeling desperate.  

Outside, people walk in the empty streets to avoid passing on the sidewalk. A cylindrical hut has sprung up on 113th Street, outside the entrance to St. Luke's hospital.  It's a triage center, ready to separate patients into four categories: (1) those needing immediate lifesaving interventions; (2) those who need significant intervention that can be delayed; (3) those needing little or no treatment: (4) those who are so severely ill that survival is unlikely.  

The system was developed in the wars of the last century, when many of the wounded had to be given up for dead.  

Viral Spring

all the merry little birds are

flying in the floating in the

very spirits singing in

are winging in the blossoming...

and everybody never breathed 

quite so many kinds of yes

                       e.e. cummings 

The traditional flora and fauna of the Upper West Side couldn't care less about a coronavirus. While humans huddle in their homes, birds, bees, dogs and rodents enjoy a once-in-a-lifetime springtime  of clean air, quiet streets, and parks with fewer people.

At the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine,  the albino peacock shakes his tail feathers and brazenly charges an eager photographer who moves too close for comfort.   "OK, OK," says the human, backing up hastily.  I thought we were friends.

Corona Journal

-- By Tom Phillips

Things you never thought you'd see:  The world's greatest city, cowed into silence, emptied out by a virus.  This was the scene at Tom's Restaurant on 112th Street at 11 p.m. last night. The everlit neon sign, emblem of Jerry Seinfeld's Upper West Side enlightenment, extinguished.  The nighthawks of  the counter back in their nests.

Closed

Meanwhile three New Yorkers duke it out in the political version of a playground feud.  Bill the Mayor, Andy the Governor, and Donny the Class President each vies to turn this Coronavirus Crisis to his everlasting advantage.  

Bill opens with disastrous blunder. New York should do like San Francisco, he says,  Shelter at Home.  Andy responds with a Bronx cheer.  You jerk, New York don't imitate San Francisco!  Don't tell people what to do.  

Donny from Queens, the wannabe bully who cries every time somebody challenges him, comes up with his latest brilliant idea: He'll borrow a trillion dollars from his father and just hand it out to everybody on the playground!  This idea he stole straight from his enemies, Brooklyn Bernie and the Yang gang.  Donny thinks it will assure his re-election as Class President, which everybody knows he cheated to win the first time.  

Donny's secret is well known.  He borrows money and doesn't pay it back.  

Meanwhile New York's introverts stay home and work on their projects.    

Checkout girls from places like Burkina Faso keep working at West Side Market, handling money all day, three feet or less from their customers.  Who's gonna get sick?  

Homeless people sit on street corners all night.  Donations accepted.  Three guys from Central America huddle on a heating grate outside Columbia, drinking vodka from a bottle, talking it over in Spanish.  St. Luke's is filling up with Coronavirus cases.  Everybody knows we don't have enough beds, not even half the capacity of a place like Italy. Why is that?  

Don't ask Donny.  Somebody asked him -- why is it celebrities are getting tested for the virus, but there's no tests for ordinary people?   

Donny's answer: That's just the "story of life."  

More to come. Worse to come.  

--  Copyright 2020 by Tom Phillips