Back in October the Wharton Center at Michigan State University put tickets on sale for the travelling company of Cats. The pandemic was still there, of course, but the ever-rising rate of infection seemed to have petered out. It might be thinkable that three months out we might even be at an end, especially if a booster for the general public were approved and we could wipe the disease out. And so we got tickets for the show. The Thursday show, which ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger thought likely to have the smallest crowd. Just in case.
As you know, western society decided to go ahead and have as much Covid as possible. By the time of the show, daily infection rates were six times what they had been in October (and, today, they're eight times). Forcing us to decide what to do about our tickets.
The Wharton Center set out its rules. Everyone attending had to show proof of vaccination or a negative Covid-19 test. Everyone in the building had to wear a mask. We were vaccinated, of course, and boosted. We have N95 masks. We ... decided to go, after all.
The first reassuring thing was getting to the parking deck, a structure that could really use a few more direction signs from the road. The deck we entered on wasn't crowded at all, suggesting that the place might not be too busy. And it wasn't. bunnyhugger had bought cheap seats, in the back of the auditorium. The whole upper deck seemed to be maybe one-tenth full. Even the main floor seemed to be only about one-quarter full. And people were generally good about mask discipline. Think of being in a place where people understand that a mask needs to cover your nose. It was like that.
We, sitting in the center of the second-most-distant row of the theater, were looking over the cards they gave us in lieu of programs, as a pack of five or so young women, some wearing cat ears, shuffled in. They came up to right next to me and seemed embarrassed to have the seats next to ours. bunnyhugger and I were both readying, as best we can given our knees, to get up and give them space when they shuffled down a few seats instead. This was all probably inevitable.
I'll talk about the show as an experience tomorrow. The closing thought is the one anyone's forced to deal with after doing anything, to wit, was this a good idea? We seem to have come through without getting infected, and haven't got notice of being exposed if they're still trying to report known exposures. But it has been a good two weeks of thinking, is this ache just an indignity of age or is it the first symptom? Am I tired because there's been no source of simple joy for 22 months now or because those women had the virus? The moral luck seems to have been with us, this time.
And it's really hard not to feel ... look, we've been good. We have sacrificed over and over and over. We couldn't go see the Sparks Brothers in theaters. Couldn't see Encanto in theaters. We'd have to cancel pinball league five days later when the daily infection rate would have risen fifty perfect (and I don't have hopes for the league night set for the 25th). I'm not sure Motor City Furry Con will happen in any tolerably safe form in two months. We deserve something that could be nice and pleasant and fun before we go back into a long dead time.
Almost done with the Potter Park Zoo's Wonderland of lights here. I'll be on to other lighted stuff soon.
A couple more lovely splashes of color against the night sky. I'm not sure what the building in the center is, but it is the one with the light-wrapped fence around that I shared a couple days ago.
Here's that set of incandescent bulbs, on the right, reflected in the ice atop that pond, along with the LED set beside it.
And now that it was less crowded we went into the bird house, where we saw a bunch of creatures including these which are not birds. They also had an empty enclosure that one little mouse had colonized, and which we watched scurry around getting things and bringing them back for a comfortable while. There's no photographing a tiny blur at that distance through the glass, though. Sorry.
Trivia: In 1875 the International Telegraph Convention, in St Petersburg, recommended telegraph rates be set per word, replacing the twenty-word ``telegraphic units''. Source: The Power of News: The History of Reuters, Donald Read.
Currently Reading: Pierre-Simon LaPlace, 1749 - 1827, A Life In Exact Science, Charles Coulson Gillispie with Robert Fox and Ivor Grattan-Guinness.
PS: Some Progress on the Infinitude of Monkeys, featuring a comic strip! Also an excerpt from the book I'm reading.
