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To Mask Or Not To Mask, A “Post”-Pandemic Question

To Mask Or Not To Mask, A “Post”-Pandemic Question

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The masks have come off all around.

I got the first inkling that America was “back to normal” when I went down to the Delaware beaches on Memorial Day weekend. As I drove south through the beach towns on Route 1, I noticed that people out on the streets were not wearing masks. “Everyone here must be vaccinated,” I thought. At my destination, a beach resort where my Dad and stepmother live, this sense was compounded when we went out. There were crowds of people, with no one wearing masks. Well, there would usually be an occasional couple or family that were masked, but it was a tiny percentage of the total number of people.

We spent one evening at a bar, and I must admit it felt very strange to be in a crowd where everyone was unmasked. Throughout the lockdown in 2020, I had been having dreams about being unmasked in public, and feeling a sense of dread or guilt. There was only just a hint of that feeling as we sat in that bar, and had some draft beers and pub food. Everyone was very friendly, with the exuberant energy of summer vacation in the air. But what else was in the air? I wasn’t comfortable doing any more pubbing on that trip.

I was visiting because I am finally fully vaccinated, as are my Dad and his wife. It was a “first post-vax hugs” family reunion moment. I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of them on your social media feeds. I hadn’t seen them in person since 2019, so it was a wonderful visit. But I kept repeating the nervous little joke, “everyone in Delaware must be vaccinated, because…”

Back home in Pennsylvania, the masks are also coming off. Stores have stopped requiring them, even for their employees in some cases. I would guess that maybe half of customers in stores are still wearing masks, including me. I have a hunch that the elderly tend to go masked more than younger people do, and one can easily imagine why. I base this on casual observation, not data.

One thing I’ll say is that when I am masked in a store, even if I’m in the minority, I don’t feel uncomfortable about it. Meaning I don’t get any sense of being scorned by the non-mask wearers. I think everyone understands and respects people’s choices. It’s similar to the impression I got at the height of the pandemic, when everyone was complying with mask orders. It spoke to a willingness that the general public has to cooperate with public authorities, despite the fact that the pandemic became politicized. I mean, I read about anti-maskers melting down in public and even violence connected with people resisting mask mandates, but here on the ground, where I live, it is not something I have encountered personally.

We just got back from a Father’s Day trip to Knoebels Amusement Resort, an annual family tradition that was cancelled in 2020. It will be our only summer trip this year, since our other annual tradition, G-Fest, is also cancelled for 2021. Well, everyone at Knoebels must be vaccinated, too, based on the almost complete absence of face masks. Conspicuously, some families were masked, but it was less than 1% of people. Now, this is a venue where you are almost always outdoors, whether riding an attraction or eating a meal. We carried our masks with us but only wore them in a few instances of being in a confined space.

It was nice to return to normal, in one sense, but at the same time it felt like we were taking a chance, especially hearing about this new delta variant that is likely to become a scourge of the unvaccinated. And frankly, I’m pretty sure a large proportion of the visitors at Knoebels were unvaccinated, despite the fact that they were unmasked. I base this on the fact that the resort is popular with working class white people, and well, you’ll have to pardon my prejudice, but they tend to be on the MAGA side politically. The bumper stickers and T-shirts I saw while we were there only confirm this prejudice.

So 2020 is behind us now, and we are slowly changing back to the way things were before. But I have an ominous feeling that 2021 has more havoc in store for us.

The Bear Comes Home

The Bear Comes Home

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The culmination of years of events has finally come to pass – I am now officially moved in with my BFF in Morgantown, PA. Depending on how much you have followed my blog and whether or not you know me IRL, you may have been watching the story unfold.

First, she came to visit me from Pennsylvania while I was living in North Carolina. Then we started visiting each other frequently and travelling together, and a new phase of our lives began. I went up and met her kids for the first time; they were boys age 10 and 13. She came down and met my tabletop gaming buddies. She even brought the kids with her sometimes, and they all joined me at gaming conventions.

Sometimes I would go up to see her, and sometimes she would come down to see me. And we went on a lot of fun trips together. She took me on my first trip to New York City, and to my first Broadway show. We’ve seen so many shows since then; I’ve basically become her theater buddy. And since she’s a director, I got to see a lot of her shows. I became her number one fan.

We travelled to Chicago every summer for G-Fest along with the boys’ Dad, who is also my friend. This was a tradition with them since the boys were even younger, and my joining them was part of the process of being enfolded into their family. But I wasn’t completely enfolded yet, since I was still living in North Carolina. The distance between us was kind of fun at first, since it was exciting to see each other again after an absence of a couple of weeks. But the travelling got tedious. It was a seven hour drive between our houses. Flying was an option, too, since we could get cheap tickets on Frontier Airlines, but even that has its inconveniences.

Then, a few years ago, some Water Spirits came and trashed my house, teaching me a lesson about the relative importance of material things, but also helping me to realize what a spoiled bear I am. Some months later my job in North Carolina came to an end. It was starting to look like the Universe was sending me a message. I went up into the mountains to watch a solar eclipse and ponder my next course in life.

I started looking for work in Pennsylvania, so that I could move closer to my BFF and her family. I enjoyed my last months in North Carolina boardgaming with my buddies and performing with my choir. Then I landed a position in Wilmington, DE and in a whirlwind five weeks got an apartment in West Chester, PA and moved on up. My recently renovated house quickly sold, and I’m pretty sure the buyer re-did all the work that the insurance company paid for.

The apartment was expensive and the commute to Wilmington was a pain. It made sense for me to eventually move in with her family, though I would have to find a new job first that would put me closer to her house. I have to admit I was dragging my feet. I have a lot of stuff and I like to control my personal space. It would be a big change for me to move in with someone for good, after more than a decade of living alone.

I did get a new job, which took care of the commuting problem. And then along came a little thing called the novel coronavirus. Suddenly I was working from home, and it only made sense for me to be doing this from my BFF’s house. I brought my essential things over and hunkered down with her. The apartment languished, unused.

As we got used to the routine of living together and sharing her house, it was obvious that I should just complete the move. There was a little wrangling over how we would use the space and where my stuff would end up. I mostly fought to have a place to shelve all my books and boardgames – that carefully curated collection I’ve built up over my many years. Figuring out how to share space is just part of the hard work of building a lasting relationship.

The big move happened last week, and all that’s left now is to clean up the apartment and collect a few final possessions. The lease expires soon. As for my new commute – well, I’m not sure when that will start up. Pennsylvania is loosening coronavirus restrictions, but I haven’t heard anything about going back to the office. So I’ll be here in Morgantown for the foreseeable future.

It’s been a long trip to get to this stage of my life. Along the way I’ve done a lot with my BFF, and our relationship has bloomed. I’ve joined her family and I’ve watched her boys grow up – her eldest is in college now, and has a car, a job, and a girlfriend! And it’s good that I’m living with her now, considering that she needs support at a time when her industry – theater – is so troubled.

It’s also good that we got so much travelling done during the past six years, considering that we’re likely to be homebound for a long while to come. I’m just glad that home is here now, with my girl.

Books and games waiting to be unpacked in the office.
G-Fest Brings Two Countries Together

G-Fest Brings Two Countries Together

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For this summer’s trip to G-Fest in Chicago, we decided to fly instead of drive. No one had the time for an extended vacation like the one last year. We flew on Frontier airlines, which let me add to my Frontier mascot collection on Facebook.

G-Fest is an annual convention held in the U.S. that celebrates kaiju, the giant monsters of Japanese film. The most famous of these monsters, of course, is Godzilla, whose storied franchise began in 1954, not long after the end of the Second World War. Through this film genre, the Japanese people have processed the utter helplessness and massive urban destruction they experienced at the hands of the United States during the war.

Despite the experience of the war, there is actually an affinity between Japan and the U.S. that goes back to the years before then, perhaps best exemplified by American baseball star Babe Ruth’s visit to Japan in 1934. In the post-war years, it shows in the extent to which Americans have embraced aspects of Japanese culture, such as anime. It’s connected to the story of how Japan was the first non-Western nation to adopt Western ways and become an economic powerhouse, both in the industrial age before the war, and in the information age afterwards.

A panel includes guest Keizo Murase (right), monster suit builder whose career goes back to the beginning. He was born in 1933.

G-Fest is relatively small as geeky conventions go, but it has all of the trappings one would expect from such an event – cosplay, gaming, art both amateur and professional, merchandise, discussion panels, and special guests. This year marked the convention’s 25th anniversary – G-Fest XXV – and a review was published in the Chicago Tribune, which has lots of pictures from the costume contest, evidence of the heart that people put into their fandom.

The boy gets an autograph from Megumi Odaka, who played a recurring character in six Godzilla films. She was born in 1972.

The affinity between our two nations really shines at G-Fest, where you can see the love that American fans have for the veteran Japanese actors and film technicians who appear as guests of the convention. It shows in the money raised by auctioning vintage art and memorabilia in support of the victims of Japan’s recent flooding disaster. It’s almost as though Americans are doing penance for the destruction their ancestors caused.

Me with Don Frye, best known for his martial arts career, but also an actor who appeared in Godzilla: Final Wars. We are about the same age.

As I watch this interchange, I can’t help but think that these movies were all made during the American Century, when the U.S. was the leader of the free world, and defended Japan in exchange for Japan’s promise not to arm itself offensively. This was an arrangement made as part of the Japanese surrender in WWII, but as a new age emerges, it is being called into question. Will our relationship change in the future?

There is a G-fest tradition of going to see movies specially chosen for the event at the nearby Pickwick theater. This year we saw Rampage (neither the worst nor the best monster movie ever made) and as I watched the mutated creatures smashing there way through Chicago I reflected on how the United States is still processing 9/11. We are still trying to find our way in the 21st century.

The boy meets on of his favorite YouTubers, DaikajuLegends. They are both from the Millennial generation.

As the American Century winds down, the special bond we share with Japan thanks to kaiju is sure to remain. For one, the young generation has picked it up. There are many young fans, sustaining a cottage industry on YouTube of homegrown films in the genre. The platform is only a decade old, but for the young generation, it is as meaningful as any other medium.

And Godzilla lives on, rebooted in the new MonsterVerse franchise. The monster suits have been replaced by CGI, but the spirit is the same. The next movie in the series will be out in the summer of 2019. I’m sure it will be all anyone is talking about at G-Fext XXVI.

A monster suit of the G-Fest mascot, Gfantis, lies in front of some prop buildings in the Dojo Studios room.

My Summer Vacation

My Summer Vacation

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This post is about a long vacation taken with my dear friend Aileen, which included a road trip to Chicago and then a four-day weekend in New York City. We did so many things in two weeks that I am calling it a “craycation” – the opposite of a staycation.

For the trip to Chicago, we rented an SUV, since we were transporting ourselves, three boys, and a large kaiju costume. Why, you ask? We were on our way to G-Fest, the world’s largest gathering of Godzilla and Japanese monster fans! I have to thank Aileen for letting me share her kids, since I don’t have any biological children, but believe that it is fitting in my stage of life to assume some sort of fatherly responsibility for the next generation.

Well I was certainly given that chance, and it was a test of my endurance and my tolerance. It’s a challenge for me to be in a family because I have been alone for almost all of my adult life. Part of the logic of renting a full-sized SUV was knowing we would all be in close quarters for a week and could use the extra space. When the kids asked about its fuel efficiency I said, “It gets ‘Murica miles per gallon!”

We drove to Chicago via Pittsburgh and Cleveland, stopping at no fewer than four different museums on the way. The first was Fort Pitt in Pittsburgh, because I like history – so get you some history, boys!

Pittsburgh skyline
Pittsburgh is quite a lovely city

There was also the Living Dead Museum in Evans City, where George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead was filmed, including a visit to the cemetery where the first scene was shot.

In Cleveland we visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which is a lot of fun, and if you could make only one of these stops I would recommend this one. As we got closer to Chicago, Aileen discovered this place in a brochure at a rest area, and it became our bonus museum.

Titanosaurus has been spotted on the outskirts of Cleveland!

Once we got to G-Fest, Gavin joined us by plane. Then it was three+ days of monster fun, including movies, art, action figures, our second annual victory in the Kaiju Assault tournament, and of course the costume contest.

The return to PA was accomplished in an epic 13-hour drive in one day, made easier by the audio book of Watership Down.  But there wasn’t much time for rest for Aileen and I, as we next drove to New York City to attend a Broadway teachers’ conference.  This was for her work, and I was attending for companionship, learning, and to see some shows!

There were workshops, including learning dance moves from one of the dance captains from Hamilton, and other kinds of educational workshops which were new to me, although old hat for Aileen. There were talks and chances to learn about what life is like for professionals in the Broadway world.

And then there were shows, the two best of which were Dear Evan Hansen and Come From Away.  Oh, and let’s not forget a stop off at Madame Tussauds. 🙂

And just like that two weeks are over and this exhausted bear has to get back to the grind.  Five museums, two conferences, seven stage shows and three movies later the bank account feels starved.

Titanosaurus roaming the halls at G-Fest

I am so grateful to Aileen for letting me into her family, for giving me the opportunity to tell Dad jokes while driving a gas-guzzling SUV down the hot and crowded highways of post-modern America, and experience a family vacation with all its tensions and dramas and excitement and joy. I’ve been alone most of my life, and I feel like I’ve missed out on much of what life has to offer, a fate for which I am fully responsible, since it all came out of choices I have made.

But I look around, and see how lucky we are to be alive right now. Our generation is at its peak in life, and we are making our mark in entertainment and in business and in politics, and it’s messy and it’s scary, but that’s just how my generation grew up to be, so we’ll just have to go down the road and see where it takes us. As my career continues to ascend, new possibilities open up for a life the feels like it has only just begun.

This is why I vacation like I’m running out of time, ’cause there’s a million things I haven’t done. But just you wait.