ROCKING CORONAMANIC WORLDS

I keep trying to write shorter posts. This week, I’ve done it.

About once each winter, I go to watch an ice hockey game. I’ve played some hockey, so I appreciate the players’ skating and stick skills. They’re artists.

In February, 1990, I went to Long Island to see my favorite team, the New York Islanders, play the Chicago Blackhawks. After a slow start to their season, the fundamentally sound Islanders were on a long winning streak. The visiting Blackhawks were also an excellent team but had a very different style. The Hawks had many large, rugged players. They were the roughest, toughest team in the league.

When, in their classic deep red jerseys with black, white, brown, green and yellow logo and details—trust me, the combination works—the Blackhawks emerged, right before the game started, from the tunnel connecting the locker room and the ice, the hometown fans booed the visitors as loudly as I’ve ever heard anyone booed.

My wife asked me why the spectators were reacting so strongly to the team in red. I said, “Because people know they’re a force with which to be reckoned.”

I added, “It can be an honor to be hated. If I were them, I’d love this moment.”

And I’m sure they did.

From the jump, the Blackhawks played in their bruising style, disrupted the Islanders and won handily. The booing seemed to have juiced them up.

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I like hearing from readers in Substack comments, emails, on the phone and in person.

Further, many have sent letters requesting copies of my recent book, Dispatches From a Scamdemic: Why Lockdowns, Masks, Tests and Shots Were Wrong from the Beginning. I’ve very much appreciated these letters, in part because they’re complimentary, but mostly because they let me know what I already knew—or at least hoped I knew— namely, that others have seen the Scam throughout and have been flummoxed, astounded or worse, by their government’s senseless pronouncements and by the fretful conduct of those around them. You’ve told me you appreciated my on-screen, telephonic or in-person company.

The feeling is resolutely mutual; I deeply appreciate all of you. I don’t need affirmation to know that I’ve been right about all of the NPI and jab mania. But knowing that others also saw/see the Scam has lifted my spirit.

This week, I got the following letter, which made me outright LOL.

Like the Chicago Blackhawks did, I like knowing that my message makes some people angry; so angry that they shout and cover their ears. Many people need to have their media-misinformed worlds rocked by logic and reality.

Of course, it’s been painfully disappointing and profoundly damaging that so many have been so freaked out by the mistaken notion of a universally lethal virus. It’s also deeply unfortunate that, since March, 2020 and continuing for four years, most people refuse to hear a perspective that conflicts with that of the bureaucrats and mainstream news outlets.

And women say men don’t listen…

Be that as it may, envisioning adults exclaiming angrily and covering their ears about what I wrote cracked me up. As many have observed, sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying. This has been truer than ever over the past four years.

Thanks, Peter, for sending me that slice of life. And that fisherman drawing is classic.

I received a personal letter from the great, outside-the-box, social observer, Ivan Illich, in his final years. I keep it in a box of mementos. Peter’s letter will go in that same box.

As will the messages that other readers have sent me. I treasure these more than any I got from any girlfriend of yore.

Though I did use to like those letters with the hand-drawn hearts.

Hey, does “Luv” mean the same as “Love?” I was never sure. Being young is confusing.

But first, I gotta find that box. It’s somewhere in the basement. Or maybe the attic.

Hard to say…