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Weekend Butler: Have I solved vaccine resistance? Learn this word: asparagopsis. Blind cats who stick together. A gorgeous song, a thrilling movie, and more.
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Published: Aug 05, 2021
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Weekend
“If you are not vaccinated, your chance of getting through this without having to become either vaccinated or infected is essentially zero.”
– Dr. David Persse, Professor of Medicine and Surgery at the Baylor College of Medicine, physician director for EMS for the city of Houston, medical director for the Houston Fire Department, and the public health authority in Houston’s Department of Health
So how will we contain this variant before it kills many, exhausts our health care professionals, and mutates into an even deadlier variant? Right now, government offers lollipops and money and threatens workers with weekly COVID tests if they don’t get vaccinated. It’s working, but not well enough or fast enough. The greatest incentive so far: personal stories of patients in hospitals who only belatedly understand this thing is real.
It occurs to me there’s a more direct path to near-universal vaccination. It dates from 411 BC, when Aristophanes wrote Lysistrata, a comedy about an audacious plan to end the Peloponnesian War. The heroines are women. The villains are men. The men have weapons. So, it turns out, do the women. And they’ll use them: no sex until the war ends.
Men make promises. Women arouse them but leave them hanging. But when Lysistrata presents a beautiful women named Reconciliation, the war ends.
Could this work now? Not on men whose desire has cooled. Not on men who would use this threat to abuse their women. And surely some moron would use his woman’s refusal to submit as reason enough to kill her.
Here’s why it might work. Media. In a culture that’s both sex-obsessed and repressed, a “no sex without vax” and “keep your distance!” campaign would be catnip for every cable show and social media. And at least some men would submit. And, with luck, the best sex of their lives would follow.
THE BEAUTY PART: CESARIA EVORA
It wasn’t until her 50s that Cesaria Evora became the darling of the world-music crowd. She performed shoeless to express her solidarity with her impoverished countrymen. She stopped singing in mid-concert to sit at a small table and smoke a cigarette. And she sang effortlessly, as if born to beauty. It was a thrill to see her, another thrill to interview her. [To read more about her and for Amazon links, click here.]
HUMAN OF THE WEEK
Chess Grandmaster Anna Muzychuk refused to play in Saudi Arabia. “In a few days, I’ll lose two world titles, one after another,” she said, “because I decided not to go to Saudi Arabia. I refuse to play by special rules, wear abaya, be accompanied by a man so I can get out of the hotel so I don’t feel like a second-class person. I will follow my principles and not compete in the fast chess and blitz world championship where, in just 5 days, I could have made more money than with dozens of other combined tournaments. This is all very unpleasant, but the sad part is that no one seems to care. Bitter feelings, but I can’t go back.’
(If you haven’t “The Queen’s Gambit,” this might be a good time. To read why, click here.)
LEARN THIS WORD: ASPARAGOPSIS
Mother Nature is messaging pretty forcibly right now, temperatures are going up, the storms are getting more intense, the fires are bigger and more expansive and more frequent. Increasingly, leaders are taking note of this. John Kerry is off to Europe to try to lower the temperature. Here he talks with David Remnick.
REMNICK: One of the main difficulties, and there are so many, is that the climate demands sacrifice of everyone to avert catastrophe. Yet we are told we can save the planet and grow the economy at the same time. Transitioning to renewables is going to cost trillions of dollars and upend huge industries. We’re likely to have to eat less meat, use more public transportation. All of this is necessary. To what degree are you and Joe Biden and your foreign counterparts really levelling with everybody?
KERRY: We’re being completely direct and totally transparent. I don’t agree with you that this is sacrifice. I do not believe people will have to necessarily eat differently. Agriculture will change. There’s a lot of research and work being done now on the diet of cattle, for instance. There’s a thing called asparagopsis –— I believe that’s the right name — which is a seaweed that, apparently, in its early trials, has reduced if not eliminated flatulence from cattle.
POEM OF THE WEEK: STANLEY KUNITZ
A few weeks before he was born, his father drank carbolic acid and died. His mother, a tough-minded immigrant, raised two daughters and Stanley for eight years, then married a charming, loving man who was like a father to the boy. Alas, he had a fatal heart attack four years later. The poems in “Passing Through” touch all the bases. Right off, we get the primary wound (which Kunitz repeated by leaving his first wife and young daughter): “You say you had a father once/his name was absence.” He has a healthy interest in women: “I think I’d rather sleep forever/than wake up cold/in a country without women.” He had a loving father’s appreciation for his daughter: “I like the sound of your voice/even when you phone from school/asking for money.” He the earth so much he wanted to stay forever. Stanley Kunitz, became Poet Laureate of the USA at age 95. He died at 100. [For more about him on Head Butler, click here.]
“The Long Boat”
When his boat snapped loose
from its mooring, under
the screaking of the gulls,
he tried at first to wave
to his dear ones on shore,
but in the rolling fog
they had already lost their faces.
Too tired even to choose
between jumping and calling,
somehow he felt absolved and free
of his burdens, those mottoes
stamped on his name-tag:
conscience, ambition, and all
that caring.
He was content to lie down
with the family ghosts
in the slop of his cradle,
buffeted by the storm,
endlessly drifting.
Peace! Peace!
To be rocked by the Infinite!
As if it didn’t matter
which way was home;
as if he didn’t know
he loved the earth so much
he wanted to stay forever.
THE CAT IS BLIND, THEY NEVER LEAVE EACH OTHER
The black cat is blind, they never leave each other. Watch.
THE WEEKEND MOVIE: “THE GHOST WRITER”
The English Prime Minister keeps making news. This reminded me of a thriller about a fictional PM who’s writing his memoirs. His ghostwriter is found dead on the beach. A new ghostwriter arrives… [For more on Butler and to rent the video stream, click here.]
