They found themselves trying to imagine what a German invasion would be like. Their jobs and families and home towns and routines were thrown into chaos. I have a small collection of books that are journals or letters from the time. Here we go.įor many years, I’ve been fascinated by stories about what it was like in England, on the “home front,” during the World Wars. With his permission, I am going to be publishing a few of them, one a week. This is precisely the sort of mail writers tend to ignore, and I will admit that I almost did. They were hand-printed and xeroxed he does not use a computer. He has spent the last year or two writing pokes of his own and he sent them to me. He is a fan of the "pokes" I write - doggerel re-telling corny old jokes. Several weeks ago I got a letter in the mail - the snail mail - from an elderly (75) guy in Florida, a retired sixth-grade teacher and elementary school principal. It ain't pretty, but it's what we do, and we win this one. It's got the same instructions that our genes have: We do have to kill it, but that's what life is about. The virus is trying to do the same thing. Whatever cosmic plan for the universe, that is the key imperative: We survive. I think we're going to lose some people we love, but that's what we do, as humans. Ephrain and Bella, who run it, are staying open because some of the neighbors don't have cars, and so this store is their backstop, and even if it is not profitable to stay open, they are staying open. It's never going to be the s-t store to us again. It serves a small, blue-collar community with absolute essentials, from beer and wine to toilet paper and paper towels and canned goods and dog and cat food and the like. Rachel and I call it, between ourselves, "the s-t store," which is a joke and completely unfair. There is a convenience store that is a half-block from my house. The key takeaway? I think this is probably provoking meaningful conversations in households across America. We laughed about it, and we had conversations about it I am not going to reveal here. This creates an interesting imbalance in a relationship. Should one of us get the virus, we will surely transmit it to the other, so we are in this together, but not exactly equally. I am less young and less hale and less hearty. So, Rachel and I got into this interesting conversation. Last night, Rachel and I watched "Chernobyl." The whole thing. I feel connected to history and the march of humanity: I feel connected to medieval persons, when everyone stank and no one noticed or cared. " Then, epiphanically: "Maybe I will!" I personally have not showered in three days. She just said to me: "I'm thinking of changing my clothes today. This is unusual for her she is really dedicated to her job. Rachel works at the Post, and she is not at work. When people are filled with fear, they need to laugh." I wrote it a few days after 9/11, to explain why I was still writing a humor column, and it got circulated a bit: "When people are filled with grief, they need to cry. When I die, whether it be next week or, like, when I am already a rotting old corpse, I'd like to have one quote attributed to me. Well, this is a chat like no other chats to date.
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