It is Christmas eve.  Conditions have turned bone chilling cold outside.  It is 12 degrees Fahrenheit according to the iphone weather app.  Those are unforgiving conditions, like the honed edge of a tempered steel blade.

I read this report in today’s New York Times, written by David Leonhardt:

Yet it is also clear that our impatience is killing people. Almost 20,000 Americans died of confirmed Covid cases in the past week, and next week’s toll will probably be worse.

The words were written as consequence of an interview with President elect Joe Biden.  I shudder at the thought of so many deaths in one week with worse to come.  Poor people are disproportionately dying of the virus because they are unable to socially distance all of the time.  When you cannot pay the rent, and do not have enough to eat, the possibility of contracting the virus is not as immediate as hunger.  The well-to-do on the other hand, impatient with the inconvenience of social isolation, do whatever they can afford to do.  Fly across the country for a family gathering, — no problem.  Airport baggage check-in counters are humming with holiday travelers.  Americans have a right to do whatever we desire, do we not?  This lesson we have learned from our history, and by example of many of our leaders.

Tonight we plan to have a special Christmas eve dinner.  Poetry will be read around the table, each adult reading one poem aloud.  The poem selected for my reading is entitled A Poem for Emily by Miller Williams.  The poem is about a grandfather’s love for his newborn grand daughter.  The language is poignant, heavy with enduring significance.  I’ve rehearsed my reading of the verses several times.  I doubt if I will finish the entire poem without my voice breaking.

An anticipated book arrived yesterday.  The title: The Communism of Love, An Inquiry into the Poverty of Exchange Value by Richard Gilman-Opalsky.  A friend who studied under Gilman-Opalsky at the University of Illinois recommended the newly published book.  I look forward to discussing the book with him while we both read our copies.  Seems to me that ideas from “the Left” are indispensable if we are to modify our practice of capitalism.  The economy which we now have, in which we all perform our bit-parts, is one that consumes it’s own young.  Markets are awash with cash, while Main street languishes.  Even in pre-covid days technology was employed to replace workers whenever possible.  The pandemic is an accelerator of this trend.

I do not expect anything written by a Leftist intellectual to gain traction, to spark any creative reflection.  The labels “socialist” and “communist” are used as damning epithets among a socially conservative majority of Americans.

And so it goes…

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I recommend The Dead Don’t Die, a 2019 comedy/horror film starring Bill Murray.  It is a droll, tongue in cheek homage to the walking-dead genre of story telling.  A working principle of Murry is understatement.  Viewing the film is a holiday delight, a respite from the formalities of the season.  Find the film on Amazon Prime and Netflix.

Of the film actors that I’d like to meet, Bill Murry is at the top of the list.