Guest Post: What if that rocket hits me?
My friend Sam Gwynne confronts his mortality and searches for a gin delivery service
Sam Gwynne is one of my favorite writers and probably one of yours. We met when he profiled Chris Bell, the 2006 Texas gubernatorial nominee. This was before he wrote Empire of the Summer Moon, the book that cemented his place in American letters, his excellent biography of Stonewall Jackson, or his recent myth-busting history of the last year of the Civil War, Hymns of the Republic, which I loved. Sam had some thoughts he gracious offered to The Stanford Newsletter Experiment, and I couldn’t be more grateful.
Back in the good old days of the Cold War, when doomsday existed in the form of Russian or Chinese intercontinental ballistic missiles, we were all supposed to be terrified of nuclear annihilation. We were constantly reminded that the US alone had an arsenal big enough to destroy the world several times over, that we were all in great and collective mortal danger, and that we should be very, very afraid. I got the annihilation part when I was younger, but not the fear. If we were all going to die in global thermonuclear war, then what was the point of worrying? My death would coincide with a clean finish to the human species. Who would want to be alive anyway?
The thing to actually fear, I always thought, was a rocket with the name “Sam Gwynne” painted on it, and aimed at me. That idea is terrifying—as that Iranian general recently discovered. But I knew there was no such rocket, and I never lost sleep over the prospect of nuclear war.
Fast forward to 2020. I am no longer a carefree teenager or young adult with the luxury of laughing at death. Not only that, but at the age of 66, with a history of smoking, a recent respiratory illness, and a compromised immune system, I have become the thing I feared: a target. This thing, whatever it is called, corona virus, novel corona virus, new corona virus, COVID 19, or COVFEFE 20, is actually pointed at me. Not only me, of course, but other geezers like me. I have heard that millenials are calling it the “Boomer Remover” and they are right. This rocket does have my name on it.
So what does the intrepid writer do when faced with asphyxiation in a cold room somewhere, unattended, without doctors or ventilators? Worry about the gin supply, for one thing. I am willing to forego toilet paper and hand sanitizer, but not gin. If the latest estimates are correct—150 million Americans will be infected and 3 million will die—then we have to assume that the virus is crawling invisibly over everything that humans touch. Which means liquor stores. I would rather not have my epitaph read: “He traded his life for a liter bottle of Gordon’s and a four-pack of elderflower tonic water." So I have to find a gin delivery service. I am working on that. Otherwise I hunker down, which in the dictionary definition means “to squat or crouch” and which at my age is quite imposslble for more than about 10 seconds. In the current vernacular, it actually means “doing nothing useful for long periods of time.”
I do a few things. I walk the dogs with my wife. I chat with neighbors, keeping a distance of 10 feet. We seem to be in a competition with each other to see who can be the most pessimistic. I know many people who were blue-sky optimists just days ago. No longer. Now they use sanitary wipes on their delivered newspapers. These days optimists die hard.
But, seriously, what is a writer supposed to do? In times of crisis people need builders and doctors and scientists and engineers and social workers and lawyers, etc. They really don’t need writers. Writers are more or less useless for anything but entertainment. Reporters are something different; they perform practical services like telling us that there won't nearly enough hospital beds for the sick. They quantify the apocalypse, thereby boosting sales of Gordon’s gin.
But I no longer work for newspapers or magazines, as I did for most of my career. I am a homebound historian in a world where all libraries are closed. It’s a curious feeling of utter uselessness. I submitted a book proposal last week about the early days of commercial aviation, which right now seems about as relevant as a book about pink bunny rabbits on the outer moons of Jupiter.
With nothing else to do, and no way to help anyone since I can’t really leave my house, I have decided to write a memoir. Or as my clueless neighbor pronounces it, a “mem-wah.” Don’t laugh. Actually, I laugh every time I see another review of a book by someone who grew up poor and abused, somehow went to Yale, then struggled with her own problems of drug abuse and self-loathing, not to mention her fraught relationship with her father. Is there no end to the market’s appetite for this sort of crap?
Anyway, my memoir will be nothing of the sort. My lovely and brilliant daughter, who was born when I was 40, knows very little about my life before her birth and virtually nothing about her wider family. Nor is she even curious to know it. So I will supply a need that doesn’t exist. I will write a letter to my daughter, for her eyes only. It will be a history of me and my family. I will put photographs and documents into it. This seems like a pretty good idea to me, especially right now. I mean, what if that rocket hits me?
That is what I will be doing for the next few months. (Even if I manage to sell this book proposal, I won’t be able to start working on the book in the near future. I need libraries. I need to travel.)
Still, I try to keep my spirits up. I went to the pharmacy a few days ago—before the woman in line in front of me delivered a rapid-fire sequence of sneezes that made me decide not to go there anymore—and picked up my usual prescription. The pharmacist asked me if I needed anything else and I answered “Oh, four or five bottles of hand sanitizer.” Everyone laughed. The sneezing woman even laughed. “Corona joke,” I said, and everyone laughed again.
What I’m reading
A quarter of baby boomers have not changed their daily lives because of the coronavirus.
Here’s a recipe for ramen carbonara I’m dying to make.
Here’s the latest polling on how Americans are reacting to the pandemic.
This advice for running online meetings is so good that I got a little excited to run a meeting. The feeling passed.
This was genuinely funny and a signal for corporate communicators.
I defy you to read this headline and not read the article.
What I’m watching
Suddenly getting recommendations on what to watch has some urgency, no? Anna Paquin’s FLACK is uneven and too-obviously trying to ride Fleabag’s smarter and more stylish coattails. But the fifth episode of season one is good, tense television. Season one is streaming on Amazon Prime, or you can pay for each episode on iTunes.
What I’m listening to
If you’re trying to find some stillness in the old brain, listen to Ryan Holiday interviewing Austin Kleon, author of Steal Like an Artist, or Seth Godin tell Brian Koppleman why we need to stop day trading in emotions.
By the way, I can’t believe none of you told me about Swamp Dogg. I mean. And I’m sad that the revival of Bad Girls Upset by the Truth was cancelled. (Here’s an article I wrote about her three years ago in the before times.) And here is NPR’s Austin 100, six hours of streaming the best new bands you would have heard at SXSW.
But the theme for this week is not regret. This week we find out about songs That Make You Smile and Dance in Your Socks.
Dayglow is a new Austin pop act whose spring tour was selling out. Now it’s canceled, but you can enjoy the lead single “Listerine” here. If you want to feel happy, play this song a lot.
Caroline Rose is doing some interesting stuff. I was a big fan of the single off her last album, “Jeannie Becomes a Mom,” but her latest album, Superstar, is deeper. The lead single, “I Feel the Way I Want,” sounds like it was designed by scientists determined to get you to dance in your living room.
Big Freedia, the queen of New Orleans bounce music, has gone mainstream. She was supposed to tour this year with her pal Kesha. That’s all up in the air now, of course, but she just dropped an EP called “Louder.” Put the living in your living room and throw a dance party, y’all.
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