A Midsummer Mystery - weekly column

Lawrence (Mack) Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

A Midsummer Mystery

A friend was riffed from his job two weeks ago, and for those two weeks all his attempts to apply for unemployment compensation have been futile. When he telephones Workforce (sic) he is made to spend hours on hold, and often his call is simply dropped after hours of waiting. When he can get through to a functionary he is told that he needs to validate his employment for a period when he was not employed, which is a self-cancelling requirement. He has also been told that he needs to provide proof of having tried to find a job when (1) he has been told to isolate at home, and (2) almost 7 million workers have been forced out of their jobs.

Apparently the people who handle unemployment take their service model from the VA or from Kafka’s Das Schloss.

The concept of essential and nonessential employees and businesses is a curious one. How can there be nonessential employees? Do employers ever choose to hire nonessential employees? And no business is nonessential. Anyone who runs a business does so because that is his or her livelihood, and the livelihood of the employees. Even a one-week gap would be devastating to a business, depriving the owner and the employees of 25% of their monthly income. And this gap is into its second month.

I have no solution to the economic stasis, but the Big Noises in Austin and D.C. must remember that no worker is nonessential, and that without food, clothing, and shelter life ends.

A friend brought me lots of plants by way of another friend, so I have been busily digging holes for them. For the plants, that is, not for the friends. Friends are wonderful.

The tomato plants are putting out their first fruits as little green spheres. The plants were but seeds at the beginning of March, when the multi-named virus (Legion?) began to attract our attention. In illo tempore there were no lockdowns, separations, isolations, restrictions, masks, empty streets, closed shops. These things were not even considered. We could go to a café’ with friends, book a haircut, visit the dentist, buy toilet paper, attend church, host a birthday party, go to work, volunteer at the nursing home or at the school, and every way celebrate all the little joys of life.

Now we consider a half-hour at the grocery store a mission to be planned and then executed as quickly as possible before returning to the bunker.

We know what life was like when the tomato plants were seedling; what will life be like when the tomatoes are ripe and red under the midsummer sun?

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