It’s been a week. Most of it was spent at the Carver theater playing a minor role in a new play, Before I Let Go, a dramedy about the lives and loves of four middle aged Black women. This one was put together on an extremely tight rehearsal schedule. Fortunately, I had all about five minutes of stage time and a role in which I could have my lines on stage with me without anyone noticing so it wasn’t overly exacting. Although I did keep falling asleep backstage during the more than three hour run time. This is my fifth project with Encore Theatre and Gallery and I have learned how to play well in the sandbox with their usual rep company and with their usual audience. I imagine I’ll be back the next time they have need of an old white guy.
The men’s dressing room at the Carver was me and five attractive Black men in their twenties and thirties, well educated, many of them veterans who were moving ahead with their lives in the entertainment industry; all of them vastly more talented than I. It was interesting and enlightening to listen to their conversations in the age of Trump where so many old societal prejudices are once again given free reign. A mix of the same things all young men talk about when they’re together and some rather astute sociopolitical observations on the state of the Deep South and the country as a whole. I listened and learned. At least I didn’t feel completely out of place as I do when when sharing space with college age ensemble members these days.
Next up is Arsenic and Old Lace as one of the cops. I’ve had a couple of blocking rehearsals, a few more this week and then I am absent (with permission) until first tech due to my travel schedule. I’m preparing my sides to take with me this week so I can be off book and fully familiar when I get back and won’t throw anyone else off. The interim is, of course, my major fall vacation. I leave a week from Tuesday for Bucharest so expect the travelogue to start up again around then. I’ll be gone for nearly three weeks visiting various sites in Eastern Europe, a new part of the world to me. The only repeat destination being Budapest where I was some seven years ago.
I’ve had several people reach out to me regarding the somewhat alarming reports of pneumonic plague in the Irkutsk region of Siberia. From what I have been able to piece together from reliable sources, a researcher was infected in a lab. Whether this lab is a bioweapon facility or other is unclear. Yersinia pestis, the bacteria that causes plague, can cause two distinct forms of the disease. The first is bubonic plague in which infected and swollen lymph nodes fill with blood (buboes). Those who recall their world history probably recall that this is not directly transmitted person to person but rather fleas bite an infected animal (usually a rat but other small rodents are also reservoirs) and then bite a human injecting the bacteria into their bloodstream. Pneumonic plague is when the bacillus directly infects the respiratory tract leading to a fulminant pneumonia. This one is directly transmissible person to person through aerosolized droplets from a cough. This appears to be what has gotten loose in Russia. There are no reports that it is spreading through the population although the information coming out is spotty and there are reports of dozens, if not hundreds being isolated as a precaution. Both versions of plague, at least the wild type varieties that have not been genetically engineered in some way, are eminently treatable with common antibiotics so there’s no need for anyone to panic at this point. The biggest danger to us is the deliberate dismantling of public health systems that acted as an early warning, especially the programs that existed to fight disease elsewhere before it could travel to and infect the USA. I’m keeping an eye on things.
While we’re doing disease roundup, time to remind everyone that updated flu and covid vaccines are now available. I got mine yesterday at my local Walgreens. I wanted to have them on board before getting on trans-Atlantic flights. They made me feel a little off last night but nothing serious. I have made the decision to continue getting an annual covid shot, at least for now, as the best protection out there against long covid. I don’t want to join the ten million Americans who have lost health and function to that particular illness. Aging takes enough toll without adding that to the mix. The other one I’m keeping an eye on is Ebola in the Congo where a combination of warfare, poverty, and lack of US Aid are preventing the epidemic from coming under control. If Ebola or any other filovirus makes it over here and gets well established, we are in deep trouble. It’s easily transmissible through body fluids, has a mortality rate of over 50%, and cares little for your health habits or socioeconomic status.
I return to the US just in time to vote in the midterms. I have no idea what sort of chicanery Is planned but if the elections don’t proceed normally, we can more or less kiss our constitutional rule of law goodbye. Actually, we kissed it goodbye twenty-five years ago when we let the Supreme Court appoint the winner of a closely contested election rather than the voters and it’s only gotten worse since then. If we lose it, we will have no one to blame but ourselves and our fifty-year drift towards civic disengagement which has led to significant majorities not bothering to vote. As Thom Hartmann constantly says, democracy is not a spectator sport.
