Search Results

By Alan Resnick After months of heated negotiations, baseball’s compressed 60-game season finally began this week, with cardboard cutouts of fans in the stands instead of people. In an attempt to mitigate as many risk factors as possible while playing in the midst of a pandemic,, Major League Baseball has come up with a hefty new 101-page Operations Manual. The safeguards it establishes apply to everyone: players, manager, coaches, umpires and clubhouse personnel alike. I’m doubtful, though. While I certainly understand their intent, I fear they’ve taken a game that an increasing number of people find bland and boring and made it even more vanilla. The painstaking precautions outlined in the manual fall into a number of different categories. Most relate to COVID-19 testing and health screening, in terms of frequency and the actions to be taken should someone test positive. Others involve safety measures to be taken when traveling on planes and staying in hotels for away games (e.g., the traveling party will have a private check-in and entrance at hotels to avoid interactions with the public). The ones I find most fascinating, however, involve on-field safety rules. There are pages and pages of these precautions. Players are now being “strongly discouraged” from throwing the ball around the infield after an out. Growing up, we called this “around the horn,” an activity that took place when no men were on base after either a strike out or an out at first base. The ball would be tossed from infielder to infielder, always ending with the third basemen, who would then toss the ball back to the pitcher. It was a ritual that we practiced every bit as much as we did batting or fielding. But now the risks of contamination have been deemed to be too great. I suppose that a generic around the horn could be shown on the stadium Jumbotron, but, then again, what’s the point if there are no fans in the stands to see it? Arguing with umpires or with the opposing team in close proximity is now verboten. One of the simple pleasures of the game used to be watching your team’s manager rush out from the dugout and stand toe-to-toe with an umpire to dispute a call. There was your guy, getting in the umpire’s face, kicking dirt on his pants and unintentionally (perhaps?) spraying spittle on his face. Now, an umpire could now possibly wear a protective shield, but it may be difficult to secure a face mask over the top of it. And I suppose that current technology could be used to allow a manager to text his protest, but “you’re blind as a bat” loses much of its bite when not spoken from three inches away from the ump’s face. High fives, fist bumps, and hugs are now prohibited, and players will have to line up six feet apart to celebrate a walk-off hit. (It’s not entirely clear if there will be markers on the baselines to designate the six-foot social distancing requirement or if players will be asked to just guesstimate it.) Displays of emotion on the field have been a controversial subject in baseball in recent years; some have argued that these displays have added needed color to the game, while traditionalists feel that these antics occasionally violate baseball’s unwritten rules about how the game should be played. (I tend to lean toward the traditionalists on this issue.) Perhaps those giant foam finger souvenirs can be distributed to players before they line up so that they can safely slap palms with the hero of the game. Of course, they would have to be disposed of after the celebration. Baseballs used during batting practice must now be disinfected and taken out of circulation for at least five days. When I played organized youth baseball, our equipment bag had maybe a total of six balls. I wonder if the little leagues have adopted a similar rule because, when I played organized youth baseball our equipment bag had maybe a total of six balls. “Can we practice again tomorrow, coach, please?” “No, sorry, Timmy, we can’t practice again until Saturday. I have to go home and sanitize our baseballs and leave them in the garage until the weekend.” Even the phone in the dugout must be wiped down before being used to contact the bullpen. In the past, some managers were criticized for leaving pitchers in the game after they had “lost their stuff.” They did not have a relief pitcher warming up and ready in time to stave off a big inning. But now, managers have an excuse: “I told Schultz to call the bullpen to get Thomas up and ready, but we ran out of Lysol wipes in the clubhouse. By the time they arrived, the game got out of hand.” Another integral part of baseball tradition is the mound visit, where the pitching coach or manager strolls out to have a chat with the pitcher. Other infielders typically join in the scrum, and they cover their mouths with their gloves so that the opposing team cannot read their lips. But now, it is expected that the participants maintain their social distance and that gloves not be raised to the mouth, making it harder to conceal the contents of these strategic discussions in an empty stadium. And the manager and pitching coach will be expected to wear masks and maintain their social distance as well. What was once a tight little circle will look more like the opening of a square dance. The single safety precaution that I find most curious is that team mascots will be allowed in the stadium, but not on the field. I have a simple question: What does a mascot do in an empty stadium? There is no one there to enjoy their zany antics. I can think of little sadder than an adult wearing a mascot suit wandering around the corridors of a deserted stadium. I believe that there is a significant prophylactic that baseball has neglected to consider: the full body condom. I’m not talking about the kind worn by Priscilla Presley and Leslie Neilsen in The Naked Gun, but rather something that looks more like a spacesuit made out of super-thin latex or polyurethane. This would permit full range of motion in the arms and legs, so players could easily swing a bat, bend down to field a ground ball, pitch, throw, or run. They could be tinted in different colors, so that each team could have both a home and away condom. And I’m guessing that designs could be added to reflect each team’s unique insignia. Just imagine a full body condom with the Yankee pinstripes.. I think I’ll contact Major League Baseball after I disinfect my phone and see what they have to say. Alan Resnick is an industrial psychologist with over 40 years of professional experience. He and his wife are sheltering at home in Farmington Hills, Michigan. He is passing the time by cooking, exercising, catching up on friends’ recommendations of must-see TV and writing.

An Exclusive Report from Florida, the New Epicenter of COVID-19 By An Anonymous Insider I live in Florida and I believe in science. I know there are others like me, but many people who aren’t. As the pandemic spreads through the state with terrifying speed, daily life has become challenging and surreal, and not just because of the difficulties of sheltering in place as much as possible. I am fortunate enough to work from home. With a preexisting condition that makes me highly vulnerable to the coronavirus, I take the common-sense precautions of wearing a mask, washing my hands, using hand sanitizer, not eating in restaurants, not going to bars, ignoring the governor who is desperate to please the President, ignoring the President, who is desperate to be re-elected, and more. But sometimes the challenges are unavoidable. Florida is nationally maligned as a place where ridiculous people do ridiculous things, where stupidity reigns and head-shaking events leave others, particularly Northerners, looking down at us. I have long fought this stereotype of my home state, fought the stereotype of owning guns and being a registered Republican. The state offers natural beauty, year-round weather that I love and so much more. It is getting harder, however, to maintain optimism as the coronavirus not only kills people who could have been saved, but as local politicians and residents ignore and outright deny science to advance their agendas, or promote a culture war or whatever conspiracy theory du jour motivates them. The reality of this sometimes comes as a knock at your door. Recently I hired a national company to do some work outside my house. When their representative showed up at my door, he was wearing a mask over his mouth and below his nose. (Is this a Florida thing?). He attempted to step into my house. This type of behavior no longer startles me because it is the norm in this part of Florida. I stepped back, raised a hand for him to stop and asked him to put on his mask. “I am wearing a mask,” he replied. “The mask has to be over the mouth and the nose for it to work,” I said. He shot me a disgusted look and then stepped into my house. I am not a rude person. During normal times I would allow him to come in, even though there is no reason for him to enter. There are not normal times. “Please step out of my house,” I say. “There’s a virus going around and you don’t need to be inside.” He is agitated and surly. He is not alone in his position in Florida. I am in a doctor’s office for an appointment that is unavoidable but I have been assured they are taking all precautions, including letting in only one patient at a time. And that’s true. When I arrive I am the only one. The receptionist is wearing her mask around her neck. She tells me to sign in.. The sheet is blank and there is one pen, no hand sanitizer, no way to avoid touching a pen that others have clearly touched as it is tethered to the clipboard. Back in the exam room, the nurse is not wearing a mask. I ask her why not. She replies that it’s dangerous to wear one all day and breathe in carbon dioxide. Her boss, the doctor, is an extremely well-educated man, who went to a top-tier medical school. I ask her if she believes in the efficacy of masks for preventing the spread of coronavirus, especially considering that this practice is filled with high-risk people. She strings together a disjointed sentence: “America…coronavirus…you people…will give it to you.” I have no idea what fragmented thought is behind this and finally ask her to put on a mask. She does so reluctantly. People in West Palm Beach are protesting. It is their constitutional right to not wear a mask. I used to bet on sporting events a fair amount. I would push all my chips to the center of the table on this bet: not one of them has ever read the Constitution and has no idea what it says or means. A woman says she has a mask in her pocket but won’t wear it because it is her right to not have to do what the government tells her. The epidemic is swelling to headline-making proportions, putting the state as the U.S. epicenter. Her mask is in her pocket. For every viral video you have seen of an enraged non-mask wearing Costco customer or maskless shoppers turned violent, there are hundreds if not thousands of more people espousing the same “philosophy” of freedom, of constitutional protections. I encounter many of these people on the infrequent occasions I must venture out. In one store, the line is long to check out because they have not staffed the store properly. Again, masks are worn under the nose. The store has a policy that you can’t come in without wearing a mask. Once inside, though, many simply drop the mask around their neck. I live in the part of the state where Democrats dominate. But there are plenty of Trump supporters and many who believe the government is trying to control their lives. (“Are you Trumpers?!” one friend happily exclaimed after not seeing me for years, pre-pandemic. My wife and I blanched: no, we are appalled by him, we explained. The rest of the evening did not go well.) A long, long time ago, Florida was a state ruled by Democrats. Walkin’ Lawton Chiles was a revered political figure and governor. But the 1990s brought impactful demographic changes and Republicans have ruled the state since then, helped along by the ineptitude of the Democratic party (see, e.g., nominating Andrew Gillum, in the middle of an ethics investigation, for governor). As a moderate Republican in the southern part of the state, the politics were not intrusive or divisive on a regular basis in my life, for the most part. Now Governor Ron DeSantis has changed that. He and other politicians and many of my neighbors deny the scope of the healthcare emergency, parrot Trump that more testing means more positive results, and in Trumpian fashion blame the media for whipping up hysteria. I know two people who have died of coronavirus. I know many others who have contracted it, suffered, and survived. I don’t know anyone who has died of the flu. My wife and I no longer watch DeSantis’ briefings. He has left us on our own. Packed bars have led to an explosion of cases. The belief that only old people were dying from coronavirus (as if that were okay) has been exploded by the new statistics showing how many younger people are infected. And still the governor, the self-proclaimed defender of liberty, does nothing, enacts no restrictions, leaves it to local mayors to create ordinances, which many people routinely ignore because no one wants to step on your freedoms, guaranteed by this great country. I know a person who once knocked on our neighbors’ door at 11 p.m. to yell at them and tell them they were making too much and violating the local noise ordinance. That same person is ignoring a county mandate to wear a mask. Constitutional freedoms are a movable feast. Florida remains the place that elicits head-shaking disbelief from much of the rest of the country. We like our guns. We don’t want to wear masks. We have elected Republican governors like DeSantis who take a narrow margin of victory and act as if it were an overwhelming mandate from the people. (Sound familiar?) We protest any attempt to take away our freedom, enjoy no state taxes, have beaches packed with people during the pandemic because of our governor’s inability to protect us from others. We are intolerant of people who try to take away our freedoms. People have told me Fauci is lying. People have told me the media is pumping up the story so Trump doesn’t get re-elected. People have told me that vaccines cause autism. Some of these people hold advanced degrees. Some are doctors. All are Floridians. When the pandemic was growing but before it hit its current stage, my neighbors had a party. There were approximately 50 people in a house that is rented out as an Airbnb. DeSantis had recently signed an executive order limiting Airbnb operations but when I read it, the order was so toothless that it basically prohibited nothing. I tracked down the owner of the Airbnb, a local realtor and told him it wasn’t acceptable. I expected hostility and instead he apologized profusely and said he was going to the house to talk to the renters and warn them they would be kicked out. I was stunned. I know many of you are watching the situation in Florida spiral out of control and making the usual Florida jokes. We know how people in the north feel about people in the south. It is true that we are a state divided, a state where politicians worry more about the economy than lives, where individuals believe they have a freedom to possibly endanger others rather than simply wear a mask. We are a state with a failing school system that has produced more than one generation of people eager to believe in conspiracy theories rather than study and evaluate the science of a virus that is killing us. We are a state that has not invested in its poor, its homeless, its children, its education system and now we are watching this failure play out on the national stage. But if you live in a state like New York where you have apparently flattened the curve, don’t be so quick to shake your head at us. I lived in Manhattan for a time and every day I walked past homeless people sitting or sleeping or laying on the sidewalk. Some were drunk, some were mentally ill, some were people who simply had been discarded. Every day New Yorkers briskly walked past these people, not looking, not noticing, concentrating only on where they were going. And every day I walked past homeless people, I felt a little more of my humanity ebb from my body. So before America make its Florida jokes and shakes its head in disbelief at how the virus is raging out of control here, everyone should look around and see the country that we all have helped build, where fear of change and ignorance define a large part of the population, where lack of quality education has helped build a culture that has allowed a frenzied and phony “culture war” over masks to erupt. Take a good look at us in Florida, because we are you. The writer has asked to remain anonymous for professional reasons.

Be honest--would an objective observer describe your pandemic lifestyle as indolent, slothful, shiftless, loafing, inactive, inert, sluggish, lethargic, languorous, listless, torpid, enervated, slow-moving, slow, heavy, dull and plodding? Have no fear—Charles Polit, the co-founder of Artus Physical Therapy to the rescue! A top Manhattan physical therapist with a doctorate from Columbia University and 15 years of clinical experience, Polit has helpful advice for Insiders, from the lazy bums among us to the fittest physical specimens. And when it comes to exercise, Polit walks the walk. (Runs the run?) A seasoned runner, marathoner, triathlete, swimmer and golfer, Polit shared his secrets with The Insider for staying motivated and safe as you exercise pandemically. In Part 2 of this interview next week, Polit will tell Insider readers about the new craze for remote physical therapy, which is paid for by most commercial insurance and Medicare. The Insider: How did you get interest in exercising? Were you athletic growing up? Charles Polit: I was always active growing up. I lived on a dead-end street in Bohemia, a small town in Long Island. I had friends on my block, as well as the two other dead-end streets next to mine, and we were always playing one sport or another: wiffle ball, hockey, skateboarding, all on these little side streets. With football, it would be two-hand touch--while the player with the ball was on the street, and tackle football if that player chose to run on any and all of our neighbor’s lawns, I really took to baseball and played Little League until junior high school. I would practice throwing and fielding with my dad in the backyard most days after school, as soon as he got home from work. But I didn’t get into actually exercising until my last year of high school. I was 18 and scrawny–118 pounds-- so I decided to start lifting weights to fill out my physique a little more. After two years of community college, I still wasn’t completely sure what I wanted to do for a living, so I took a few years off from school. I then realized that I wanted to do something in the health field, but not spend nine to ten years in med school and residency.. So I decided to go to Hofstra for a degree in exercise science. Afterwards, I found a job in the city working for a corporate fitness/wellness center at Credit Suisse as an exercise specialist. I did that for a few years but found it just wasn't for me, and felt I wanted something more. There was a physical therapy office located in the wellness center where I was working. That appeared to be more challenging and rewarding, so that, along with hurting my back and having it rehabilitated with physical therapy, solidified my desire to return to school, where I received my doctorate of physical therapy from Columbia. It was there that I began to run at 30 years old. Several years later, I heard about the New York City Triathlon, which is Olympic distance. If you joined through a charity, you would be professionally trained for free in exchange for fundraising. The organization is Team in Training (TNT) and they raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Through TNT, I learned how to swim and cycle proficiently, and I did rather well in the tri. I thought if I could do that, maybe I could do the ultimate triathlon, the Ironman. Part of that race includes running an entire marathon though, so if I was realistically going to entertain an Ironman, I needed to see how I would perform in a marathon first. A friend of mine expressed interest in the Tokyo Marathon, and I thought why not, since I was always interested in Asian culture, especially the antiquity and modernity of Japan, so I signed up for it. It was a tough event, but I finished pretty well in that too, and have been running and swimming ever since. The Insider: Do you think that a pandemic couch potato can actually emerge healthier after the pandemic passes? Charles Polit: Sure! I think it’s possible for people who used to exercise, but for one reason or another put their routine on the back burner over the years--busy schedules, long hours stuck in the office, et cetera)--to see that they have all this extra time on their hands and figure, if not now, when? However, it can be difficult for people who have never really been active through their childhood and young adulthood to begin a regimen when they’re older. I recommend for them, as with anyone really, but especially with these individuals, to choose something they don’t hate or do just to get it over with. A better approach, according to exercise psychologists, is to choose something you enjoy, like walking or running, or bicycling or exercise classes, or even dancing, whatever you may have some interest in already. And start easy, a couple of days a week for 10-15 minutes and gradually progress from there. This way, the person is more apt to stay with it, instead of getting into something gung-ho in the beginning out of excitement, only to burn out and give up completely after a week or two. The experts say that you need to stay with a routine for a minimum of three months in order for it to stick and become part of your lifestyle. The Insider: What is your advice for the person who has been sheltering in place and getting very little exercise? Charles Polit: If your baseline is sedentary, you’ve got to start gradually. If you’re not going out at all, and you have enough space in your own house or apartment, try to get 20-30 minutes of (12) increased activity most days of the week. It can be broken down into 10-minute increments, two times a day, three times a day. You can even do small laps back and forth in your home. Be sure to clear away any and all objects, including throw rugs, which you could trip over.. There was a story about a man who did the equivalent of a marathon on his terrace! Just be sure it’s continuous for at least 10 minutes and above your normal walking pace. Your body is used to your everyday pace, so it doesn’t need to adapt and improve if you only stay with that. Conversely, if you push your body safely, you will get the physiological adaptations and benefits, or training effect, of regular exercise: increased capillaries to move more oxygen, decreased heart rate and blood pressure. That's whether you're indoors or outdoors. But if you’re restricted to your home, I would love it if you have a terrace or backyard to get some fresh air. Again, the biggest hurdle getting people to maintain prolonged course of exercise is that it has to become your lifestyle. Some people get too zealous. You’ll burn out, so you’ve got to start easily. The first week, you can do once or twice a week. Don’t take on too much. Walking is one of the most underrated activities you can do, if you do it properly for exercise. Your body is an amazing thing. It’s going to adapt if you push it, You have to do it slightly above pace. I’m not talking about being out of breath. You’re supposed to be able to hold a conversation while you’re walking. Just a tick more than normal—just stay at an elevated pace. Nothing crazy. That would be your minimum, Beyond that, if you’re sheltering in place but going outside and already walking a lot, chances are that you’re not doing that in a sustained way most days of the week. So you have something to work up to—a walking program of 20-30 minutes a day, most days of the week, at an elevated pace. That will do wonders for your blood pressure and your heart rate. You’re trying to be more efficient. It’s not a miracle that marathon runners are in better shape. They’re pumping out more oxygen per pump than the average person. The sedentary person (and the more comorbidities, the worse the situation, of course) typically places more strain on their heart and cardiovascular system, as they require more beats per minute to get the necessary oxygen to all the cells. Often this is via more occluded, sclerotic vessels, which creates increased blood pressure and further taxes of the system. If you’re an active person, you’re going to pump more efficiently—hence, much less strain on the blood vessels, fewer sclerotic problems. So I highly recommend walking if you’re sedentary. Beyond that, there are tons of classes online now. I do yoga myself. There’s also Pilates, if you have some experience with that. You don’t want to go willy-nilly and get hurt doing a class. You’re not going to get personalized guidance; this is for the masses. You’ve got to be careful with that. If you have some background in those classes, I think they’re phenomenal at home. I’m thrilled that a lot of people are getting healthier now. It’s awesome that they’re doing it. The Insider: What about the super athlete? Is it safe to run a lot now? Charles Polit: I think so, as long as you do it safely. You have to look at the continuum: zero risk, which doesn’t exist, to maximal risk. You have to play with that yourself as an individual. I do it myself anytime I step outside—we all do. So I’m going to go with the guidelines. I’m always going to stay at least six feet apart when I can. I always have a mask with me. At first, I thought, always wear the mask running. I’d rather err on the side of being careful. It’s not easy, but I did it. Then, as more information emerged, I discovered that if you’re not near anyone, you don’t need it. So I went from wearing it outside all of the time, to wearing it now just as I am entering or leaving my building, because you never know if you’re going to pass someone. Then, anytime I approach anyone, I don it. It’s not necessary if no one’s around you. But I purposely stay away from everyone. There’s no reason not to run if you have a safe distance around you. If you just want to try running for the first time, it’s like anything else, like the bike or like the walking. Don’t go gung-ho. We all want instant gratification. It’s the American way: if something’s good, let’s get more of it. People have the best of intentions, but you see them fall flat on their face. You don’t like to do it then—it becomes not enjoyable. And you may get stress injuries to boot.. The Insider: How about golf as a pandemic sport? Charles Polit: It depends upon the course. Some public golf courses are very strict and some are not. They all require you to have face masks in the starting and ending areas. I’m very cautious, but it’s like anything in life: you have people who are cautious and other people who don’t think it’s that big a deal. I’ll go by myself, but they group you with others. You can stay apart if you choose to, but I see instances all the time where golfers are still close together and not wearing masks. I don’t wear a mask when I play, but I certainly keep my distance and I’m outside, and there’s wind. The Insider: What about Peloton bikes? https://www.onepeloton.com/shop/bike Charles Polit: I’m definitely a fan. Remember—to increase adherence, if you can last for three months at any kind of new activity, you’re more likely to keep that as part of your lifestyle. That’s what you need—not just a few weeks if you want long-term gain. You have to stay with it. And to make it more likely that you’ll do it, you choose something you enjoy. If someone hates biking, I’m not going to push them and say, “You should do it anyway, shut up and do it!” It doesn’t work like that. So if people like cycling, they’ll love Peloton. It’s a live class, and you pay for the access to that class remotely. There are wonderful instructors and you have different visuals. You pay for the bike and the subscription. But it’s not something to try if you don’t’ like cycling—it’s expensive. If you’re tinkering with whether you’ll like cycling, get a cheap bike and try that. And if you really like it, Peloton is the next level. The Insider: What about swimming? Is that safe? Charles Polit: My own laps have come to a halt, except for limited and brief ocean swims. since the pool at my gym has been shut down, Here is the CDC’s official advice about swimming:: https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/swimming/index.html The Insider: In some areas of the country, gyms are beginning to open. Is that safe or would you recommend against it? Charles Polit: That’s a tough one. I'm concerned with people being in indoor spaces, some smaller than others, with people who are breathing heavily, and not always social-distancing or wearing masks. And how do you know if the machines you're touching are that clean? I don’t think that I would feel comfortable telling anyone that it is safe yet, because it may not be. There are many safer, fun, quality alternatives out there! Charles Polit is the co-founder of Artus Physical Therapy in Manhattan. He is working both remotely and in-person during the pandemic. info@artuspt.com (Artus email address) (646) 559-2656 (Artus phone number)

By Mitch Polstein Jr. As a tennis bum, the pandemic has made it hell trying to find a place in Manhattan to play. By play, I mean hitting balls over an imaginary net in an unlocked schoolyard or over a clothesline strung between two poles of a repurposed volleyball court. Players have also snuck in to hit against forbidden walls on handball courts, on paved and unpaved paths and in the empty plaza in front of the bandshell in Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center. One would think social distancing would be easy on a tennis court, but the Powers That Be thought otherwise. Most public courts are finally now open with a host of new rules, depending upon the facility, such as no doubles, singles only. Well, I never liked my doubles partner much anyway. Players are also requested to enter and exit the court socially distanced. The Central Park courts. the crown jewel, have not yet opened due to technical difficulties. Which is to say that technically, they don’t know what they’re doing. The clubhouse and locker rooms will remain closed. The pro shop might sell merchandise online. I have visions of someone tossing cans of tennis balls off their roof, à la Trump and the paper towel debacle in Puerto Rico. In the end, tennis isn’t really that important, except for the fact that it is the only true test of one’s worth as a human being. Tennis, anyone? Mitch Polstein Jr., a native Manhattanite, was the men’s tennis coach at Hunter College in New York City.

By John Rolfe “You grow your own vegetables? Smart move! You won’t starve if the food supply is disrupted.” So I’ve been told since the pandemic hit, but starvation is still a distinct possibility, thanks to the critters that dine in our 35-foot by 70-foot patch of produce. Animals are encroaching on mankind’s territory while humans spend more time sheltering indoors. Monkeys, goats, wild pigs, pumas and more have been roaming towns and cities around the world. I’ve yet to spot a rhinoceros in our backyard here in New York’s Hudson Valley, but there is a great abundance of the customary deer, chipmunks, skunks, raccoons, possums, foxes and the most dreaded varmint of all: the wily whistlepig (aka groundhog or woodchuck). A type of large ground squirrel, Marmota monaxis also called a “whistlepig” because it whistles to alert its henchmen to danger, such as the approach of an irate gardener. Each day, it consumes one-third of its body weight (as much as five pounds of veggies) and stuffs itself all summer in order to survive the winter without eating. “The woodchuck, despite its deformities both of mind and body, possesses some of the amenities of a higher civilization,” the New Hampshire Legislative Woodchuck Committee declared in 1883. Nature’s excavator, it can displace up to six cubic feet (or 640 pounds) of soil while creating its living quarters (as far down as three feet, and up to 24 feet long), undermining the foundations of small buildings in the process. Miraculously, my family’s garden remained untouched by groundhogs for 18 years, invaded only by deer, chipmunks, cucumber beetles, squash bugs, flea beetles, cabbage worms and other insects that enjoy a salad. But last summer, we noticed our peas, cabbage, kale, brussels sprouts and tomatoes were being ravaged despite applications of my wife’s homemade repellent spray (egg, garlic and cayenne pepper) that keeps even neighbors and unwanted relatives away. Then we discovered the telltale hole under our garden shed. We erected barriers around the garden and covered the critter’s favored veggies with netting and cayenne powder. Yet, the fiendish pest continued to feast, even on the bait in the trap I set. Whenever we spotted it stuffing its face, I swore it smiled and waved before scampering off. I eventually contemplated using explosives as Bill Murray’s groundskeeper character did in the film Caddy Shack. Yes, the wily whistlepig is a defiant cuss. I don’t know if this tale is true, but I read about a frustrated man who, while locked in battle with a groundhog, peed in the opening of its burrow, chortling in the knowledge that whistlepigs are fastidious creatures repelled by urine. A day or so later, while working in his garage, the man sensed something behind him and turned. The groundhog was sauntering in. It stopped, stared at him, and relieved itself on the floor before casually sauntering out. Again, I don’t know if this actually happened, but it sounds about right. We finally brought our marauder to justice after I discovered I’d been setting the trap incorrectly, which allowed it to escape. The plump thief was then remanded to the Whistlepig Protection Program. Supposedly capable of returning to its turf from as far as 20 miles, it was relocated in a remote area on the other side of the Hudson River. I’m sure it will eventually discover and use the Rip Van Winkle Bridge to get back here. This summer, we’ve already trapped four groundhogs. When we try to make friends fully understand the menace to their gardens, we sound like Science Officer Ash in Alien telling the doomed crew, “You don’t know what you’re dealing with … I can’t lie to you about your chances, but you have my sympathies.” A master gardener, my wife is helping one local gentleman with his horticultural pursuits. After explaining that the only choices are to kill the groundhog, trap it, or let it ingest his garden, she sadly shook her head when the gentleman insisted he’s OK with letting the munching machine “have some of the kale.” “Good luck,” she said. “That thing will make short work of all those little plants and move on to everything else.” Blessedly, all’s quiet on our whistlepig front at the moment, though a family of deer is helping itself to our carrots and green beans at every opportunity. Each day, we see them out there eyeing the goods. Between the critters and the pandemic, I can see us foraging in the woods for wild berries, starchy roots and tubers before long. John Rolfe is a former senior editor for Sports Illustrated for Kids, a longtime columnist for the Poughkeepsie Journal/USA Today Network, and author of The Goose in the Bathroom: Stirring Tales of Family Life. His school bus drivin’ blog “Hellions, Mayhem and Brake Failure” is parked on his website Celestialchuckle.com (https://celestialchuckle.com) with the meter running.

How to Reason with a Trumpie By Mary Coombs A couple of days ago, I was sitting at an outdoor table of a favorite cafe with a coffee and a pastry. I struck up a conversation with a man (6 feet away) at the next table. I was unmasked (allowed while you were eating), as was he--involved with his iPad. I’m not sure how the topic of masks came up. (The governor has issued an order requiring them when indoors; this café had required them even before that.) He lectured me that he used to own restaurants; germs were transmitted by hands. Masks were useless since the spaces in the fabric of a cloth mask were larger than the size of a virus. In any event, it was his constitutional right not to wear a mask. And if the owner tried to exclude him for not wearing a mask, he was ready to sue her. You can fill in my side of this conversation. Even if a mask didn’t prevent every particle from getting through, it could drastically reduce how much virus you were exposed to. The purpose of masks is largely to protect others from us, and we can’t know for sure that we’re not contagious, since we can infect others when we are asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic. What provision of the Constitution are you thinking of? (You can imagine my getting on my high horse in a debate between a restaurant owner and a retired law professor over the meaning of the Constitution!) If a business owner refuses to serve you because you are not wearing a mask – or not wearing shoes – or, if she wants, because she isn’t admitting anyone today wearing purple, that is her legal right. But as I thought later about this conversation, I wondered why I had engaged with him. Each step was quite predictable. I wasn’t going to move him one inch; he wasn’t going to move me one centimeter. I realized that the answer lay in the pandemic. For over four months, I haven’t touched another human being. Even live conversations are rare. When I go out walking, I sometimes wave to another walker, or exchange a few words in passing, or maybe admire and pet a dog if it’s on a long enough leash. An argument isn’t a conversation. But it’s a verbal interchange, live and in-person, with another human being. I guess I need to try harder to sit 6-plus feet away from someone with whom I can talk about anodyne topics like the weather! But if after all of this, you do decide to engage with a Trumpie, here are ten legal arguments you can make if someone tells you, “I have a right not to wear a mask!” 1. Let’s think of what kind of “rights” claims people are making and how to respond more precisely and accurately than just “no, you don’t, you idiot.” (Not that I haven’t been tempted.) If all they say is “I have a right,” the answer is that this is unanswerable because it is meaningless. A claimed right must come from somewhere, or it’s just a cry of a two-year-old. 2. If they say “I have a God-given right,” that’s a little trickier. I’m not aware of anything in the Old or New Testament that seems to support this, but I am not deeply grounded in these texts. I suspect some of this is not based in a text but more of a “God told me,” or “God told my pastor who announced it.” So we are back in the unanswerable, although religious freedom rights in the U.S. do not allow you to do anything you claim is allowed by your religion, in contradiction to public laws. 3. Some say “I have a civil-law right.” This is profoundly silly since the United States (apart from some aspects of Louisiana law, carried over from its French history) has never had civil law, but is rooted in common law with a thick overlay of statute and Constitution. 4. What about “I have a constitutional right to not wear a mask anywhere I don’t want to wear a mask”? The Constitution is a text, so if there is such a right it must show up somewhere in the text. The original Constitution talks only about government structure and powers. But this “constitutional right” must come from some limit on government power. 5. What about the “Bill of Rights” (the first 10 Amendments)? None of the “enumerated” rights – freedom of speech, right to a jury trial, etc. -- are relevant. Admittedly, Amendments IX (“The enumeration of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”) and X (“The powers not delegated to the United States . . are reserved …to the people.) might include the right to go maskless. But it might include anything – and the courts have basically decided that these Amendments don’t have any real “bite” (even without a mask on), apart from a recognition of a right of personal privacy grounded in part on these provisions. But the right of privacy doesn’t apply to actions taken in public spaces which can impact directly on the interests of others. 6. The likeliest constitutional provision they might be thinking of is the Fourteenth Amendment: “nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The last part is irrelevant since all the laws and regulations regarding masking apply equally to everyone (except for recognizing relevant differences, such as excusing very young children or people with proof of health conditions that make wearing a mask dangerous – these are rare). 7. As to the “due process clause,” note that it doesn’t prevent people from being deprived of a “liberty,” only that the deprivation must be done following due process of law. It is possible that some mask mandates are issued by an executive in a state where its laws and constitution reserve this power to the legislature, or by a county or municipality in a state where only the state itself can do this. But the claims I’ve seen of “I have a constitutional right not to wear a mask,” are broad-brush and thus simply wrong. 8. Maybe they mean “I have a right under civil-rights law not to wear a mask.” Nope. Our civil-rights laws are all about categories of people being treated differently– not that I have a right to rent a house or go to a college or go in a restaurant, but that the landlord or college or restaurant owner can’t exclude me for certain specified reasons. Not because of my race, color or previous condition of servitude; not because of my sex/gender (now determined in at least some circumstances to include not because I am gay, or lesbian, or transgender). There’s no civil-rights law protection for denying you some benefit you might want because you are putting others at risk or because you are stupid, or just because the landlord or restaurant owner doesn’t like you. 9. And that brings us to the last claim I have heard: “I have a right not to wear a mask, and the management of X store or Y restaurant has no right to prevent me. If they try to throw me out, I’ll have a temper tantrum (obnoxious, but not asserting a “right”) or I will sue them.” WRONG. Go back to the civil-rights laws: they were designed to say that property owners can’t exercise their freedom to decide who they will hire, rent to, or serve if – but only if -- they can be shown to have done so based on the would-be employee, tenant, or customer’s race, sex or other specifically protected category. 10. Absent such a law, the restaurant or store owner retains the right to decide who to serve. Think of the “no shoes, no shirt, no service” sign one would sometimes see in a store window. When I mentioned writing this little screed, a friend told me a story (perhaps apocryphal) of a restaurant with such a sign. The would-be customer entered wearing a shirt, socks and shoes, and no pants or underpants. (I wondered, if it were true, if the waitress was especially careful when refilling said customer’s coffee cup!) Mary I. Coombs earned a B.A. in 1965, an M.A. in sociology in 1967, an M.A. in library science in 1970, and a J.D. in 1978, all from the University of Michigan. Following graduation from law school, she served as law clerk to Judge Henry J. Friendly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She was in private practice until she joined the University of Miami School of Law faculty in 1983. She was a professor at the law school for 31 years, until retiring in 2014

FRED PLOTKIN is one of America’s foremost experts on opera and has distinguished himself in many fields as a writer, speaker, consultant and as a compelling teacher. He is an expert on everything Italian, the person other so-called Italy experts turn to for definitive information.  Fred discovered the concept of "The Renaissance Man" as a small child and has devoted himself to pursuing that ideal as the central role of his life. In a “Public Lives” profile inThe New York Timeson August 30, 2002, Plotkin was described as "one of those New York word-of-mouth legends, known by the cognoscenti for his renaissance mastery of two seemingly separate disciplines: music and the food of Italy." In the same publication, on May 11, 2006, it was written that "Fred is a New Yorker, but has the soul of an Italian."

July 15, 2020 Jeffrey D. Sachs | Project Syndicate As the world’s largest economies, the G20’s members have one overriding responsibility at their finance ministers' upcoming meeting: to agree on actions to suppress the pandemic. Ensuring effective public-health measures is today’s essential economic policy. NEW YORK – The G20 ministers of finance meet this week under the auspices of Saudi Arabia, which holds the group’s presidency this year. But it is hard to imagine the G20 countries leading the world, as they like to pretend that they do. Most of them can’t effectively lead themselves through the current COVID-19 crisis. As the world’s largest economies, the G20’s members have one overriding responsibility at the upcoming meeting: to agree on actions to suppress the pandemic. A few G20 countries are doing well; the laggard countries need to take urgent measures to stop the spread of the virus. All G20 countries need to cooperate on global-scale policies to overcome the health crisis. An overview of the G20 countries is sobering. Many are so poorly governed that they have been utterly ineffective in containing the pandemic. Judging by data from the past two weeks, the biggest G20 failure, at 176 new cases per day per million population, is Brazil, led by the reckless populist Jair Bolsonaro, who has himself now contracted the virus. The second-biggest failure is the United States, led by the Bolsonaro of the north, Donald Trump, with 137 new cases per day per million population. The two other G20 countries with more than 100 new cases per day per million population are South Africa (129) and Saudi Arabia (112). The next tier of countries, reporting 10-100 new cases per day per million population, includes Russia (47), Mexico (43), Turkey (16), India (15), and the United Kingdom (11). These countries are all at risk of a significant rise in transmission, with Mexico and India appearing to be at the greatest risk. Six of the G20 countries currently report 1-10 new cases per day per million population – reasonably low rates that make possible decisive suppression of the virus in the near future: Canada (8), France (8), Germany (5), Indonesia (5), Italy (4), and Australia (3). Only three of the G20 countries report under one new case per day per million population: South Korea (0.96), Japan (0.9), and China (0.01). These three northeast Asian countries have displayed the necessary combination of political leadership, public-health professionalism, and responsible behavior (wearing face masks, maintaining physical distancing, and enhancing personal hygiene). An epidemic is a social phenomenon and needs a social response. As South Korea, Japan, and China have shown, the virus can be suppressed – that is, new cases can be brought to near zero – if a basic logic is followed. Those who are infected with the virus need to protect those who are not infected. They can do this in four ways during the two weeks while infectious: keep their physical distance; wear face masks; stay at home and away from others; and remain in a public quarantine if the home is not safe. This protection does not have to be perfect; indeed, it won’t be. It has to be good enough, however, to ensure that on average an infected individual infects less than one other. All people must be cautious until the pandemic is suppressed. That means wearing face masks in public places, keeping a prudent distance from others, and monitoring ourselves and our close contacts for symptoms. Officials must make available testing sites and support services for the isolation of infected individuals, whether at home or in public facilities. Managers of workplaces must take precautionary measures, including remote work or safe physical distancing on site. The egregious G20 failures have in most cases started at the top. The likes of Bolsonaro and Trump are braggarts, bullies, dividers, and sociopaths. Their countries’ massive death tolls have moved them neither to expressions of sympathy nor to effective public-health policies. One sees similar perverse behavior among other G20 strongmen. Whereas women leaders (in New Zealand, Finland, Denmark, and elsewhere) have a superior track record on the pandemic, the G20, alas, has no woman leader. Trump is a special case, because he governs the world’s greatest military power. The sociopathy of a US president is a worldwide tragedy, unlike that of a Brazilian president (though Bolsonaro’s sociopathy affects the world through an anti-environmental agenda that fuels the wanton and deliberate destruction of the Amazon). Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization in the midst of the pandemic battle has immediate global repercussions. The same is true of his efforts to launch a new cold war with China, instead of saving his own country and cooperating with China to help the rest of the world fight the pandemic. In this, China obviously has much to offer. It has used the world’s most decisive measures to suppress a fulminant pandemic (after the first outbreak in Wuhan) and may well be on the way to producing the first useful vaccine. Yet societal outcomes are not just the result of political leadership. They also depend on culture and social responsibility. The Confucian culture of northeast Asia emphasizes social cooperation and pro-social personal behavior such as wearing face masks. American hotheads, stoked by Trump, loudly proclaim the freedom to reject face masks – that is, the freedom to infect other Americans. One would rarely hear such a claim in northeast Asia. What is also notable is the failure of US business leaders to take measures to contain the epidemic. One of America’s leading entrepreneurs, Elon Musk, demanded the reopening of the economy (and his business), rather than using his engineering genius to help contain the virus. Other top business leaders, too, have contributed little or nothing to suppressing the epidemic. This, too, is part of American culture: money over lives, personal wealth over the social good. The G20 finance ministers will no doubt talk of money – budgets, stimulus, monetary policy – and so they should, but only after they have spoken about stopping the virus itself. There is no way to save the economy without stopping the pandemic. Ensuring effective public-health measures is today’s essential economic policy.

By Andy Borowitz July 15, 2020 WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Trying out a new line of attack against the former Vice-President, Donald Trump said on Wednesday that Joe Biden could never have a pandemic as big as his. “Biden was Vice-President for eight years and had all the time in the world to have a pandemic,” Trump said. “Where was his pandemic?” By contrast, Trump asserted, “In just a few months, I’ve built the biggest pandemic this country has seen in a hundred years.” “People are going to be talking about my pandemic for generations to come,” Trump said. “What did Biden ever have? Swine flu? What a joke.” Trump said that Biden’s failure to have “any pandemic worth writing home about” makes him a “terrible choice” to be President. “I’ve worked hard and built an amazing pandemic, but if Biden gets in, all that goes away,” he warned. Andy Borowitz is a Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes The Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news.

A Poem by Dr. Barry Lubetkin “It is 7 p.m., and the city is already clapping, a nightly outpouring of support for health care workers that has taken place for weeks.” New York Times, May 1, 2020 Every night she fussed at the grill Why alone? No husband. No son. No brother. Her dress (the same one every time), blue And gauzed by the illegal smoke. And I, just across the street Separated by an ocean of unforgiving concrete But quiet now, the few cars indifferent to our existence And now she dines, and the smoke is a cloud above her building The napkin lightly touches her lips And signals an end to her daily delight, And, as if we both studied at the Bolshoi, We together slide to our terrace railings She waves at me, it’s 6:58 I never waved back at a stranger so hard! I call out and point to my watch She nods and I think her mouth curls to a smile It’s 6:59, and the connection that I feel with her Embarrasses me The same awkwardness that engulfs me every night As blue dress and I prepare A car siren 16 floors below screams Somewhere near the avenue a trumpet pierces Wild yelling from windows I’ll never see It’s 7:00 p.m. Blue dress and I clap, and clap, and clap No health care worker hears us We clap while locking eyes And each is deaf to the other’s sounds We don’t hear our own noise above the din Will she stop first? Will I? When will the street clamor end? Each aware of the other’s commitment to the moment Who is she really? I turn away. Our moment of closeness blends with the smoke. Barry Lubetkin, Ph.D. is the co-director and co-founder of the Institute for Behavior Therapy in New York City. He is the author of numerous academic and popular articles, as well as two popular self-help books, Bailing Out and Why Do I Need You to Love Me in Order to Like Myself. The Institute for Behavior Therapy is the oldest private cognitive behavior center in the United States.

One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the pandemic and quarantine, Part 10 By Laurence Lerman Alright, I’m gonna pass on the Italian cinema this week, as there are those who pointed out that my previous column was published on Independence Day weekend, and I could have skewed a little more American. (Or even mentioned anything American.) I shall attempt to make things right—while continuing to mine HBO Max’s sprawling library of 2,000-plus titles—by filling in one of the empty slots on my Clint Eastwood dance card. Is that American enough for you?! Between the films he’s directed, the ones he’s starred in and the balance where he’s done both, Clint has been part of at least a half-dozen bona fide classics and another dozen truly great ones. But over the course of more than six decades, he’s also had his share of misses. Back in the late Nineties moving into the 2000s, Clint went on a tear, buying up the rights to hot novels and quickly putting them on the screen while their bestselling embers still glowed. Some of them worked (Robert James Waller’s The Bridges of Madison County in 1995) and others didn’t (John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil in 1997), but that didn’t slow the superstar down. Of the quartet of popular crime novels Clint adapted during those years, 2003’s Mystic River by Dennis Lehane was the big winner, with David Baldacci’s Absolute Power (1997) and Andrew Klavan’s True Crime (1997) tying for a distant second. For my first stream, I decided to go “hemoglobular” with the fourth of the bunch, Clint’s 2002 adaptation of Michael Connelly’s Blood Work, where he plays a retired F.B.I. profiler recovering from a heart transplant who tracks down a serial killer whose latest victim happens to be the provider of the heart that’s beating inside his chest. Directed with his customary efficiency and linear storytelling style, Blood Work is serviceable if not very memorable—a straightforward procedural involving ballistics and blood types, spiked with a couple of brief action sequences and a climactic showdown that hearkens back to the finales of Clint’s Dirty Harry films of the Seventies. Surrounded by such notable—and younger!—costars as Anjelica Huston, Jeff Daniels and Paul Rodriguez, Clint was in his early seventies when he made Blood Work, marking the beginning of his remarkably fertile codger period. All in, he has directed, produced and frequently starred in a staggering 17 films since 2000, including, more recently, the wildly popular American Sniper (2014), Sully (2016) and 2018’s The Mule (2018), which Clint also starred in. Scanning Clint’s filmography, I noted 2000’s unexpectedly enjoyable Space Cowboys and remembered that Jack Nicholson was initially slated to be its star. It made sense as he had played a washed-up astronaut in Terms of Endearment opposite Shirley MacLaine. That was a good one, though I preferred Jack going mano-a-mano with Meryl Streep in Heartburn, Mike Nichols’s 1986 comedy-drama based on Nora Ephron’s semi-autobiographical account of her failed marriage to journalist Carl Bernstein. Along with the 1989’s darkly comic War of the Roses, Heartburn is my favorite to take a seethingly acidic look at an unhappily married couple—and, as usual, one that never should have gotten married in the first place. The day-to-day lives and ultimate unraveling of the union between Streep (a food writer) and Nicholson (a political columnist) deliver primarily because of the pair’s heavyweight performances (which include a few dazzling improvisatory scenes, led by a sequence where the two are eating pizza by candlelight and singing songs with “baby” in the title.). Heartburn opens with Nicholson and Streep meeting each other at a wedding, which they portentously ditch to get a drink by themselves. Strolling the Upper East Side, they share their first kiss beneath the marquee of the Cinema 1 at 60th and Third, which reads, “Best Foreign Film – Mephisto.” More portentousness, right? But even better, a prompt for me to eagerly queue up Mephisto, the 1981 Academy Award Winner for Best Foreign Film, my only knowledge of which was the passionate embrace enjoyed by the film’s director, Hungary’s István Szabó, and its star, Klaus Maria Brandauer, when it won the Oscar nearly 40 years ago. (You can still see it on YouTube.) Mephisto puts a modern spin on the Faust legend by making its central character an intense German stage actor in late-Thirties Berlin who finds unexpected success among the Nazis when he portrays Mephistopheles in an adaption of Goethe’s Faust. His performance is so embraced and admired by the Party that they elevate his career and put him in charge of the national theatre. Reveling in his popularity and rising social position, “Mephisto” abandons his conscience and turns his back on the cultural restrictions, moral compromises and sheer brutality of his Nazi patrons. By the final act, his Mephisto’s soul and very life have become compromised in ways he never could have imagined. Based on the book by Klaus Mann and modeled after German actor Gustaf Gründgens (whose collaborative relationship with the Nazis continues to be disputed), Mephisto makes for two hours of rich, engaging European cinema—its outstanding story, fine acting and superlative production values and period detail answering the question of how a savage Fascist regime could seem appealing to a hungry actor seeking glory. I was familiar with Szabó and Brandauer from some of their post-Oscar English-language work (particularly Brandaeur in 1985s Out of Africa and the Connery-starring Bond reboot Never Say Never Again from 1983), but Mephisto persuaded me to schedule their two other European collaborations, 1985’s Colonel Redl and 1988’s Hanussen, both of which earned Oscar nominations. I returned Stateside for another American stream from the oh-so-American Woody Allen. Men of Crisis: The Harvey Wallinger Story is a curio from 1971—a short film produced for PBS that profiles a fictional political advisor to Richard Nixon, Harvey Wallinger (played by Woody). Incorporating archival material and newsreel footage with new voiceover à la Woody’s later Zelig (1983) and Carl Reiner and Steve Martin’s Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982), this mock documentary is hysterical, filled with great zingers like, “I want you to get an injunction against the Times. Yes, it’s a New York, Jewish, Communist, left-wing, homosexual newspaper. And that’s just the sports section.” Real funny stuff…created by Woody just as he was beginning to roll out his greatest work. It also features cute little bits from Woody’s go-to ladies Diane Keaton as his Wallinger’s cross-eyed wife, a blacksmith major from Vassar ("If you are ashamed, it's American sex.”) and Louise Lasser as his ex-girlfriend, who announces to the press how lousy he was in bed and then wakes up to find herself drafted. As the story goes, PBS asked Woody to cut some scenes that they thought were a bit much—it was 1971 and the station didn’t want to jeopardize its funding from Washington. Woody refused and though PBS reportedly offered it to member stations to broadcast at their own risk, the program was ultimately never aired. But in the spirit of America—of anarchic, rebellious, uncensored America—a tape of a scratchy work-print leaked out of WNET’s New York offices and made it onto YouTube (among other places), where many people, including me, have enjoyed it over the years. Wallinger was to be Woody’s final television project until his 2016 six-episode series Crisis in Six Scenes for Amazon Studios. I would have loved to have seen Woody embark on more television work—it’s where he got his start—but I’m assuming the artistic control he’s had over his feature films for decades was considerably more appealing. Can you blame him? Laurence Lerman is a film journalist, former editor of Video Business--Variety's DVD trade publication--and husband to The Insider's own Gwen Cooper. Over the course of his career he has conducted one-on-one interviews with just about every major director working today, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Kathryn Bigelow, Ridley Scott, Walter Hill, Spike Lee, and Werner Herzog, among numerous others. Once James Cameron specifically requested an interview with Laurence by name, which his wife still likes to brag about. Most recently, he is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online review site DiscDish.com.