Our last in-person visit to a school was in February, 2020. As always, lots of questions from the kids. (photo by Jamie Ceaser)

After two years of teaching memoir-writing classes via Zoom, visiting third-grade classrooms via Zoom, sitting on panel discussions via Zoom, participating in my book club via Zoom, visiting family members via Zoom, I’ve been looking forward to life in person again.

Be careful what you wish for.

The calendar Gods have conspired. Starting January 26, a week from today, I have six, count them, six, in-person events scheduled in one week’s time.

Happy to report that all six events require mask-wearing and full vaccination status. And of course, due to that Greek letter that I never needed to know how to spell before, any of these in-person events could be cancelled at the last minute. As of today, though? My in-person schedule looks like this:

1. Wednesday, January 26: 12:15 pm, lead memoir-writing class in person at senior living and retirement community
2. Friday, January 28:12:40 p.m. to 1:40 pm, visit third-graders in person at Indian Trail Elementary School in Highland Park, Illinois.
3. Tuesday, February 1: 10:50 am, visit third-graders in person at Ravinia Elementary School in Ravinia, Illinois.
4. Tuesday, February 1: 2:40 pm, visit third-graders in person at Braeside Elementary School in Highland Park, Illinois.
5. Wednesday, February 2: 12:15 pm, lead memoir-writing class in person at senior living and retirement community.
6. Wednesday, February 2: 6 pm, participate in panel discussion in person at South Loop Neighbors Speakers Series: Authors Night at Half Sour, 755 S. Clark, Chicago, Illinois.

It’ll be nice to cap off the week at Half Sour – the authors event is free, four local authors will give ten-minute talks about our books and our lives as writers, and keeping the talks short should allow time for questions after. . The event includes an hourlong social hour with a cash bar from 6 to 7, then our little talks at 7 pm.

But wait. There’s more! Ellen Sandmeyer from Sandmeyer’s Bookstore will be carting copies of our books from her store in her little red wagon, and of course we authors will be more than happy to sign them for our book buyers.

A nice neighborhood event, I think. Very flattering to be one of the chosen authors along with Amy Bizzarri (111 Places in Chicago that You Must Not Miss), Sylvester Boyd (The Road from Money), and Greg Borzo (Chicago’s Fabulous Fountains). And who can argue with an author’s night that starts with a 6 p.m. social hour? After that long week of coming-and-going, I’m sure to enjoy a little glass of wine before my ten minutes of fame on 02/02/22. Ge whiz. I may even wear one of the two new dresses that have been sitting idle in my closet since I bought them in January, 2020. Look for me there…in person!

A few years back I posted about how we often anoint wunderkinds as “creators” of a new technology. The point was that scientific and technological advance reflects collaboration, not wunderkinds. That every advancement is sort of a collective milestone in the eternal scientific drive to learn more and do things better.

Right now the commercials we see from the companies that are producing the covid vaccines that are essentially self-anointments. What these companies accomplished is remarkable. But it’s only part of the story.

A NY Times piece (Halting Progress and Happy Accidents: How mRNA Vaccines Were Made) a few days ago illustrated yet another example of how science is a collective effort—the development of the Covid vaccines specifically, and, more broadly, mRNA vaccines. These vaccines hold great promise beyond our current predicament.

And it all started with AIDS, AIDS research and the efforts to develop an AIDS vaccine. From the article:

In December 1996, President Bill Clinton invited Dr. Anthony S. Fauci to the Oval Office to brief him on that era’s grave pandemic, AIDS, which by then had killed more than 350,000 people in the United States and six million more globally.

Dr. Fauci, the top government scientist investigating the virus, was feeling oddly hopeful. For the first time since the virus emerged, annual AIDS deaths in the country had fallen, thanks to several new drugs that were tested and approved after years of intense public pressure by patient activists.

But the most valuable tool remained missing from their arsenal: a vaccine. And the president was impatient.

As the men walked out to the Rose Garden, Dr. Fauci recalled, the president turned to him and said: “You’ve known about AIDS as a disease since 1981. How come you guys don’t have a vaccine yet?”

Dr. Fauci, taken aback, told the president that research efforts thus far had been largely uncoordinated. Then he made a bold pitch: a research facility where scientists from different disciplines could talk to one another and collaborate, with the goal of putting vaccines into arms rather than proving that their own discipline had the answers.

Mr. Clinton turned to his chief of staff, Leon Panetta. “You think we can do that?” he asked.

“You’re the president of the United States,” Mr. Panetta recalled saying. “You can do whatever the hell you want.”

To date, the HIV vaccine effort has failed. But it spawned breakthroughs that enabled the mRNA vaccines. And the government’s role in all that has been critical.

mRNA vaccines also required the muscle and ingenuity of private sector medical companies.

Arguing incessantly about government vs. the private sector leaves us stranded in today’s binary world. It’s not either, it’s both. Arguments about the balance are legitimate, but to address big problems, we need both.

I’m as fatigued as everyone else when it comes to dealing with the pandemic. The omicron variant news made a lot of people feel like we’re starting over again. But, for a glass-half-empty kinda guy, I’m optimistic that we have the spiky little pest on the run.

I know that runs counter to news about case counts.  But I’ll quote CDC Director Rochelle Walensky during a recent NPR interview:

…we are standing on the shoulders of now two years of science and a lot of information…

In point of fact, we’re standing on the shoulders of decades of research when it comes to the vaccines, and hundreds of years of life science research. But her point was this: It’s amazing how fast and how much we’ve learned in the last two. Two years ago today, covid felt like a rumor. Two years ago, come this March, it took me five days to be approved to get a covid test, and once I did my drive-up swabs, it took another four days to get the result. I learned the result after growing so ill that I went to the emergency room. The positive test came in while I was there.

Before my hospital stay, I quarantined for days, staying in our bedroom and only coming out for food and drink. I carried a bottle of Clorox and spread a layer of bleach on anything I touched. People were wiping down grocery bags and groceries themselves. (Note: It was and STILL is important to wash your hands thoroughly and often, and to avoid touching your face.)

Now, even with the omicron rush, I can get a test and have results the next day (at the worst). I  know that the surface cleaning didn’t matter a whole lot. I know that masks help and that some masks help more than others. I have had three vaccines counting the booster.

Omicron appears to be much less dangerous than previous flavors, and if South Africa is any indicator, it’ll burn itself out pretty fast. And for those unlucky enough to have caught omicron, there is evidence that in a delicious irony, having had omicron appears to build resistance to the more dangerous delta variant.

Now, if we can get the laggards to get vaccinated, we can also shrink the number of petri dishes that covid can mutate in. At this point, if someone hasn’t gotten their jabs, probably no amount of information or persuasion is going to work. But these economists may be onto something: simple incentives and disincentives.

It’s been two years of a weary slog, but it’s also brought light to how remarkable we humans can be. And also: that the government matters, as explained in this Scientific American article. The government funded much of the research that led to the mRNA vaccines—though big Pharma will reap enormous profits from them.

That’s for another post.

In any case, I’m hopeful. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Hey Y’all,

Sorry I’ve been absent the last couple weeks. The first week I just was worn out … work and life had  been hectic.

The second week … um, I just forgot. Even Beth forgot, and she’s usually the one that keeps me on my toes.

And now we’re in holiday mode. Despite omicron and the pandemic, I’m uncharacteristically optimistic about 2022. For one, 2022 is just a really nice-sounding, round number. For another, I think this omicron thing will burn itself out pretty fast (it already has in South Africa, where it was first detected). For still another, Beth and I just had a splendid visit with a beloved friend, whom we hadn’t seen in two years, reminding us both of what that’s like, and that such things can happen if you do them carefully.

Hoping to do a lot more that kind of thing.

Mostly, I’m feeling grateful. For my health. For my family. For you readers. And for our friends. See you next year.

Back in November my 26-year-old niece Anita texted me:

Beth, quick question for you do ya have any interest in possibly going to A Christmas Carol at Goodman Theater on Saturday the 11th of December at 2

Here in Chicago some families go to the Goodman to see A Christmas Carol each and every Xmas. How pedestrian! Truth be told, I kind of sort of rolled my eyes at Anita’s suggestion. Bah humbug! I had never ever gone to A Christmas Carol at Goodman, and thought it best I keep it that way.

But then came the back-and-forth texts. Anita’s girlfriend Kelly would be coming as well, they had chosen the December 11 performance because that’s the one offering a pre-show audio tour for blind people. Anita and Kelly are a fun couple, smart and witty, we share a lot of laughs when we’re together. And, okay, it was pretty flattering to think they’d go out of their way to spend an afternoon at the theater with their old blind great aunt Beth. No more bah humbugs! I said yes. And am I glad I did!

Tickets for A Christmas Carol are usually quite expensive, but in its efforts to be “a theater for all” and a “place where diverse audiences experience extraordinary productions,” Goodman offers reduced-price tickets to people who attend the touch tours. Anita and Kelly were accompanying their blind old great-aunt Beth, so they got the same discount I did.

Black Lab Luna guided me from home to the theater last Saturday, I showed my proof-of-double-vaccination card with pride, and handed over my ticket. “Box seats!” The ticket-taker sounded impressed.

When Goodman’s’ house manager/accessibility coordinator Andy Wilson greeted me in the lobby, he explained they save those box seats for people who might find accessing regular theater seats difficult. “Your box is on the main floor,” he explained. “No stairs!” Bonus: Box seats are great for social distancing, and Luna could sprawl during the show without bothering anyone else.

Andy directed Luna and me to our starting point in the lobby, where they had three of the understudies’ costumes available for me to touch (the ones the actors would be wearing were not available for obvious reasons). I appreciated having the costumes displayed on dressmaker dummies — that way I can feel the fabrics with structure and imagine how they might look — and fit. A costumer from the show was on hand to give me the back story on each piece. My favorite? A top and hoop skirt worn by the Ghost of Christmas Present. I was encouraged to touch the fabric, the stitching, the piping, the braids, the brocades, the hoops, everything.

Anita and Kelly showed up in time to enjoy some of the costumes, and from there they escorted me into the theater to meet some of the main actors in the play for the pre-show. One of them was the one playing the Ghost of Christmas Present — the one who’d be wearing the hoop skirt. “I’m supposed to look like a Christmas tree,” she laughed, then went on to explain the real reason behind the hoop skirt. “It hides the harness I have to wear.”

Harness?

Yes, harness. She wears it to hold up the weight of the Christmas tree hanging off her shoulders. “A couple other actors wear harnesses under their costumes, too,” she added, explaining that Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Past actually fly during the show. “They need harnesses on to do that.” My mind went right to my childhood, when I marveled at the TV presentation of Sandy Duncan flying in the Broadway revival of Peter Pan.

The actors chatted briefly about their role in the play, their appearance and/or physicality and how they might approach that in their portrayal. The Ghost of Christmas Present described herself as having “brown skin and black hair” and told us she plays a charwoman near the end of the play, too. Each actor gave us a few lines from the play, too. Astonishing to hear the Ghost of Christmas Present sing one of her lighthearted lines from when she’s in her hoop skirt, then transform to a baritone charwoman for that later scene…all right before my very ears!

The last actor to describe themselves was the Ghost of Christmas Past. You can get a great example of how generous the actors are with their descriptions hear by listening to a recording of Lucky Stiff describing what it’s like to dress as the Ghost of Christmas Past for every performance. (Use the link to the audio player below.)

Ghost of Christmas Past Goodman Touch Tour

When Goodman’s Andy Wilson explained that they switch up the performance every year, I couldn’t help but laugh. “Sounds like this one’s gonna be like Cirque du Soleil!”

• • Musicians on stage throughout the play portray buskers on the street outside of Scrooge’s office –sounded to me like a bass, a French horn, a violin, a recorder, an acoustic guitar, even an…accordion! So nice to hear live music on stage again.
  • Rather than Scrooge having a nephew Fred, in this version he has a niece Frida who invites Scrooge over every Christmas.
  • The party where all the dancing goes on is traditionally at Mr. Fezziwig’s place, (he’s a businessman who uses Scrooge as his banker) but in this version the business is owned by two women. Mrs. Fezziwig & Mrs. Fezziwig dance together in this scene.
  • Tiny Tim is portrayed by a 12-year-old Chicago girl whose parents immigrated here from India
  •  And lest we forget: some of the characters fly — Scrooge flies with Lucky, the Ghost of Christmas Past.

Anita, Kelly and I learned most of what I’m reporting above from going to that “audio tour” before the show. During the pre-show the actors explained to me exactly when the flying scene would happen, how the flying contraption works, how heavy it is to wear and so on. Audio describer Jason Harrington jumped on stage at one point to walk around it and describe the setting and scene changes  — so helpful.

Forgive me for going on and on about this. I had a wonderful time with Kelly and Anita, they both were so kind-hearted and very helpful to me: ordering coffee before the show, snacks during intermission and then a Lyft ride home afterwards. Our afternoon at the Goodman finally got me into the Christmas spirit this year. I recommend A Christmas Carol at the Goodman to you all. It’s a winter wonderland of fun.