A. D. Coleman Interview Session on Zoom Cancelled (Again)

A. D. Coleman/ATOA Zoom Session Cancelled (Again)

The virtual Zoom interview with me that got rescheduled for 7 p.m. this evening, Monday, May 8, has been cancelled once again — this time because the interviewer, Douglas I. Sheer, president of the critically acclaimed series Artists Talk On Art (ATOA), came down with COVID.

ATOA’s season has come to an end, so we will reschedule the session for sometime next fall. Meanwhile, I hope you’ll join me in wishing Doug a speedy and full recovery. Our friendship goes back to kindergarten; we played together in a Greenwich Village sandbox some 76 years ago. So this is personal.

It’s Not Over Till It’s Over

The U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security and the UN World Health Organization (WHO) may have decided to declare the COVID emergency over as of May 11, but “‘Last week, COVID-19 claimed a life every three minutes — and that’s just the deaths we know about,’ said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, briefing the media at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva. ‘[The virus] is still killing and it is still changing. The risk remains of new variants emerging that cause new surges in cases and deaths.'”

Ironically, the same afternoon I learned that Doug had contracted this virus a forty-something man mocked me in the supermarket for wearing a mask, as I continue to do in public spaces. “What are you, a bank robber?” he sneered.

I opted not to respond to this sarcastic twerp. But consider the options he treated with such smug disdain:

1. I could have a compromised immune system requiring this simple precaution.
2. I could have recovered from a case of COVID, or suffer from long COVID, and decided to protect my fellow citizens from any virus I might shed by taking this simple precaution.
3. Or I could simply be what I am: A 79-year-old man — which places me in a high-risk demographic — taking reasonable precautions for my own health in the middle of what remains a global pandemic.

I don’t wish COVID on anyone, not even arrogant a-holes like this one. But he and people like him top the list of reasons why this epidemic got as bad as it did, and lasted as long as it did, and endures.

xxxx