The "Post-COVID" Summer

It’s been a while since I posted anything to my blog—about five months—so I think it’s about time for me to update what’s been happening these last few months. 

Pam, our son Brian (both Pfizer) and me (Moderna) were vaccinated in late February and late March, so by mid-April we were ready to emerge from the self-quarantine cocoon that had lasted over a year.

In mid-April my monthly poker group resumed with all of us vaccinated and it was great to exchange stories between hands about how we survived 2020 and our plans for this summer. A couple of the guys planned to meet with their kids, spouses and grandchildren at the beach during the summer. Several of my friends were booked on a train trip sponsored by AAA through the Rockies, but that was cancelled in June.

Pam and I had planned to go to Europe in 2020 for our 50^th Anniversary, but the pandemic blew away that trip. This summer, we discussed a trip to Hawaii, but that state still had travel restrictions for most of the summer. We then planned a trip to New England in mid-July, but a couple of intense downpours cancelled those plans.

Our 22-year-old roof had a serious leak at the rear of our house. We got estimates from several roofing contractors and had the roof replaced two weeks ago. so that was the end of significant trip this summer. We also decided to replace our 11-year-old water heater. Our 41-year-old house is entering its third repair and replacement cycle and we replaced all of our windows last December.  We have decided to defer any significant trip to 2022. 

We have been able to do some good things this summer including attending a few concerts at Blossom. I’ve gone to six Akron Rubberducks games with my friends. Pam and I have gone to the beach at Vermilion on Lake Erie twice and we’ll to go up there again before the fall weather begins.

And that won’t be long. We’ve noticed that sunset is about 45 minutes earlier than it was on the Summer Solstice on June 21. The leaves on the red maples in our back yard are beginning to turn brown—these are the first to go—and I’ve noticed some leaves on other trees starting to lose their green color.

It has been very warm and humid for the past couple of weeks, but the nights seem a bit cooler, so I know that fall is not too far away. Our lawn cutting service has skipped cutting a couple of weeks in the last month as the growth rate of our lawn slows down.

I was hoping for a more significant emergence from the pandemic this summer, but the distressing increase in cases in recent weeks indicates that this fall will bring more restrictions as the unmasked and unvaccinated get infected with the Delta variant. 

I’m not going to say much about masks and vaccines, but in the last week or two, I’ve begun to wear my mask again when I enter a store. I’m over 70 and have several risk factors from COVID-19. But, I also recognize that my vaccine protects me from getting ill or protects me from getting seriously ill if I am exposed to COVID-19.

So, we will muddle through somehow. Pam will be teaching an accounting class online again this fall at the University of Akron and I will be taking an acting class at the Beck Center in Lakewood and taking a couple of non-credit courses online.

I’m also beginning to think about where I will take a winter sabbatical in early 2022, but I am concerned about the re-emergence of COVID in the southwestern states I am considering.

So, it remains a time of great uncertainty. I hope the next wave of COVID doesn’t affect my plans as much as in the past. But, the virus will never go away until the appropriate number of people get vaccinated. And we aren’t nearly there yet.

 

 

Exiting COVID-19

It’s been almost exactly one year since I joined millions of Americans in a self-imposed quarantine to protect ourselves from the COVID-19 pandemic that is particularly dangerous for older people. For the last year, I have mostly stayed at home except for the two or three times a week when I would go out for a drive or my once a week trek to the liquor store. The only other time I have been going out is to a parking lot service at our church on Sunday mornings.

But, there is hope for a return to normalcy in the next few weeks. First, spring is approaching and the first crocuses have bloomed in our front yard and the high temperature is forecast to be in the low 60s for the next few days. 

Second, as I write this I got my first COVID-19 vaccination shot about 10 days ago and will get the second in about two and a half weeks. When I add two weeks for the vaccine to reach full efficacy, I expect to be ready to get out and resume some normal activities by mid-April. 

Our minor league baseball team the Class AA Akron Rubberducks will open their season on May 4 and my group has ticket vouchers from last year that will be good this season. My monthly poker group has decided to get together again after a 14-month hiatus on April 16 assuming everyone is fully-vaccinated by then. And, I’m awaiting an announcement about the summer schedule for the Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom Music Center.

All of these activities were cancelled last summer and am really looking forward to them this summer. I’m also looking forward to going the nearby pharmacy where I usually purchase hearing aid batteries, disposable razor blades, allergy medicine and other things that I have had have my son Brian get for me this past year.

I’m looking forward to visiting my barber Margie for a professional haircut and good conversation about her two daughters who are both in media. One is a production assistant for ESPN in Los Angeles and the other is editor of a small-town weekly newspaper in Mississippi. My wife has been cutting my hair for the past year and I am grateful for the work she does, but Margie the barber does a better job with my hair than my wife the CPA.

I’m looking forward to hanging out at a coffee shop with a friend or my laptop on a cloudy, drizzly day. I want to take a car trip later this spring, but I will be careful to avoid any place that is too crowded or is a state where the governor has eliminated a mandate for wearing a mask. I want to visit the Rock Hall and the Cleveland Museum of Art. 

When the weather warms, I want to head for the beach. I want to have a sit-down meal in a good restaurant, something I haven’t done in about a year.

But, most of all, I want to be able to get together with family and friends and exchange hugs and handshakes. Earlier today, I read an article about seven adverse effects of quarantine on mental health and my dangerous spots were having a little too much Bourbon some days and occasionally blowing up in anger at the news on TV. Thankfully, I’ve already cut back on one and will cut back on the other once I get my second vaccine dose.

A couple of weeks ago a dear friend from our church succumbed to COVID-19 after a two-month struggle. He is survived by his wife of 41 years, three children and four grand children. More than half a million Americans have died in the last year from the disease and they are survived by millions of family, friends and co-workers. This has been a horrible experience for the country and here’s hoping it can be committed to history by the end of this year.

On a positive note, I feel a sense of renewal is coming. In the past few months, three new families have moved on to our street, each with young children. Yesterday afternoon, two kids who live next door got off the school bus and their mom waved at the bus driver and hugged her kids. I admit it gave me goose bumps to see something so normal, yet so beautiful.

I believe the quarantine and pandemic have made me stop and appreciate the little things more: the bright sunshine, the crocuses blooming, the chirping of birds—all ordinary things that make me think will get through this trial. And that can’t come a moment too soon.

 

Rejection Letters

I am still self-quarantining because of COVID-19, so I decided to try to clean up my home office and get rid of files and papers I don’t need anymore. As I went through my file cabinet drawers, I found a two folders containing rejection letters I had received over the years after applying for various jobs in Public TV, video production and journalism.

Including the rejection letters, my cover letters and initial job listings, both folders were a couple of inches thick. The documents covered the dates from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. After that, job searching moved online meaning fewer paper rejection letters.

As I sorted through the papers and put most of them in a bag to be recycled, I did retain a few letters from people I knew through mutual acquaintances or who had worked at someplace where I had worked. Most of the job listings came from two sources: “Broadcasting” magazine’s weekly classified listing of positions available and the job search service of the National Association of Broadcasters. It was through a listing in the now-defunct NAEB that I came to work at the University of Akron in 1975.

I also was a member of the International Television Association during the 1980s and 1990s, a group composed of mostly corporate and educational video production professionals. That organization also had a job listing service for members.

During the late 70s and 1980s, I concentrated on positions in the Southeastern US because I wanted get away from the brutal winter weather in Northeast Ohio. In 1990 enrollment at UA began to fall due to a decline in the number of high school graduates in the region. I sensed that the university might eventually close my department for budgetary reasons and that happened in 1995.

In the early 1990s, I began to cast a wider net and apply for positions all over the country. I got some serious nibbles from employers in Florida, Tennessee, the Carolinas and even Washington state. I also interviewed for positions in Northeast Ohio, but there were no offers. 

Early in my career, I was dedicated to the concept of television as a source of good for the audience through my work in Public TV and educational video. I believed in the programming philosophy of public television to inform and entertain. I hoped to get a program director’s position at a PBS affiliate, but that never happened.

After UA closed the TV Center in 1995, I decided to repurpose my career away from video production. I was a reporter for Sun Newspapers, the chain of weekly papers serving suburbs of Cleveland and for Tire Business a Crain Communications publication. Both jobs allowed me to improve my writing skills and learn more about local government and business. I remain grateful to the editors and co-workers who helped me learn a new career. 

Then in 2001 I returned to UA as a multimedia specialist and remained there until I retired in 2011.

Looking through the stack of rejection letters was humbling, but it also made me feel relieved. I am so glad I don’t have to go through the apprehension and disappointment of searching for a job anymore. During all the decades of job searching, I discovered that often it wasn’t necessarily what you knew as much as who you knew. In six of the eight full-time jobs I had during my career, I knew someone who knew someone about the job opening that I was applying for.

Some of the rejection letters ended with the phrase: “Best of luck in your future endeavors.” I’m so glad I don’t have to read that anymore.

  

 

The Tired Town

On a recent sunny and cold day, I decided to go for a drive. Because I am self-quarantining due to COVID-19, one of the few times I leave the house is when I decide to go for a drive to alleviate the boredom. 

On this particular day, I decided to drive to Warren, Ohio, about a 45-minute trip via the Ohio Turnpike and Route 5. I haven’t been there often and the last time I remember visiting this city was in the early 1990s when I produced and directed a TV show for Channels 45/49 about the city’s annual summer festival on square surrounding the Trumbull County courthouse. The highlight of that weekend was two free performances by the Ohio Ballet, a once nationally recognized dance troupe based in Akron. 

The night we videotaped the performance there were thousands of spectators and the weather was nearly perfect. During the festival weekend, streets surrounding the square were closed to vehicles and there were dozens of food and arts and crafts booths. It was an interesting mix of those selling everything from corn dogs to artists selling hand-crafted jewelry and paintings. City officials estimated that tens of thousands of residents visited the festival. 

The first time I visited Warren was in 1969. Pam and I went to see a production at the Packard Music Hall by the Kenley Players. Producer John Kenley attained fame in the 1960s and 70s by putting together a summer stock touring company to present Broadway comedies. The tour usually began in Warren and then moved on to Akron, Columbus and Dayton. Kenley’s formula was to cast a prominent actor from Broadway, TV or the movies to draw crowds. 

That night Pam and I saw “You Know I Can’t Hear You When the Water is Running” starring Arte Johnson—who appeared on “Laugh In” as the wise-cracking Nazi solder peering out from behind a bush with a cigarette dangling from his lips. That hall did not have air conditioning and it was so hot the crew opened a large back door of the stage during the second act to provide some cool air. 

Fast forward to 2021 and the picture was entirely different. As I drove down West Market street towards downtown, I was struck by how deserted the street was on the cool but dry Saturday afternoon. A couple of convenience store-gas stations, a single restaurant and a dollar discount store were the only businesses open. 

There were a large number of vacant lots with remnants of parking lots for business buildings that had been torn down. Off to the north, I could see the dilapidated remains of what looked like a large steel mill. There were some large houses lining Market Street, but many of them looked abandoned with broken and boarded-up windows and peeling paint. It wasn’t always this way in Warren. 

Originally settled as a mill-town in 1798, the original 400-acre plot of the town was once part of the Western Reserve section of Connecticut. Warren remained a small city until the first half of the 20th century when Republic Steel and the Packard Electric Company produced steel and electrical components for auto manufacturers. These companies and others provided thousands of well-paying manufacturing union jobs and Warren’s population swelled to more than 63,000 by 1970. 

Then Warren suffered from the de-industrialization that affected hundreds of other towns and cities in Ohio and the Midwest. Companies closed up factories and mills and moved production to non-union states or other countries. And many Warren residents also left, too. There are now about 39,000 residents according a 2019 estimate by the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly a 40-percent decrease from 1970. 

The economic and social problems caused by the loss of jobs and shrinking population of cities like Warren can’t be minimized and I think this is the major cause of the turnabout in the politics of Trumbull County and Warren. In 2012, the county provided Barack Obama with 60 percent of the votes in his re-election victory. Four years later, 50 percent of the voters went for Donald Trump and the President won that county by more than 10 percent last year. 

In the 1976 hit movie “Network”, actor Peter Finch won an Oscar playing straight-laced newscaster Howard Beale. He became a rabble-rousing TV personality, a precursor of current cable news network hosts and garnered huge audience ratings. During his show, Beale would urge his viewers to get off the couch, open the window and yell: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” 

My guess is that sentiment put Trump in the White House in 2016 and angry voters in depressed cities and towns like Warren are likely to continue to roil the electoral landscape until their economic lot improves.