Tonight, on the way to work, I stopped by a pizzeria I have frequented for about twenty years. It's been a week of eating a 'perpetual stew' that I started off on the stovetop on Monday. I figured that getting a couple of slices was a necessary change of pace, and I also wanted to throw some business to people who have been good to me, at this time of their need. When I arrived, there were two other customers waiting for takeout, everybody maintaining their distance. I placed my order, then the proprietor, Sicilian-born Dominic, and I started talking about current events. His business was doing okay, but numbers were down, then we shifted to other numbers, commiserating about Italy surpassing China in the reported number of COVID-19 cases. He mentioned that his children and grandchildren in NYC were all cooped up, working out of home. I made sure to leave double the usual tip. You support your people, you need them to survive this thing.
The roads were pretty empty, and I got to work just in time to see our contract cleaners, two Colombian-born gentlemen, on their way out. I bid them 'adios' from quarantine distance, and thanked them for doing an extra-thorough job of disinfecting the place. The frontline workers in this disaster, besides the medical personnel, are the cleaners, the counter-staff, the cashiers and shelf-stockers... people who don't get the accolades they deserve, but who are holding this country together.
At any rate, the streets are pretty bare, people have taken the 'shelter in place' message to heart around here. Because of this, the one song that has been going through my head is Ghost Town by the Specials:
The song was originally written about the unemployment crisis sparked by Margaret Thatcher in 1980s England... weird how Conservative policies always seem to end up in economically depressed ghost towns.
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