The outside world.
Sunday, March 8th, 2020
There are days, and today may be one of them, where I turn to the available distractions of our life in order to avoid thinking too much about the world outside our door.
My old client, (Verizon’s) FiOS1, consigned to the graveyard of 24 hour local news channels, tried to use that very phrase as a slogan for a while: bringing you the world outside your door. Nowadays, I think the general reaction would be: no, don’t bring that world in here. Deliver me a steady stream of fiction and ‘reality’ TV and plenty of unbaked internet bits that enable me to delve deep into areas my brain is momentarily enchanted with.
But then I come up for air, so to speak, and put on coverage from the CBC and the BBC and Sky News and France 24 and, oh yeah, CNN, NBC, and CBS. And guess what? The world outside our door is still, hm, how to say it? Troubling. Chaotic. Very uncertain?
CNBC: Dow futures tumble more than 1,000 points as all-out oil price war adds to coronavirus stress; 10-year Treasury yield drops below 0.5% CNN: Ben Carson: There’s a plan, but I don’t want to talk about it NYT: Senator Ted Cruz will self-quarantine this week after interacting with a person at the Conservative Political Action Conference who has since tested positive for the coronavirus.
(I include these headlines in the sincere hope that I can re-read them a decade from now and shake my head in delight that we made it.)
Enjoy your week ahead. I’m going to look up how license plates were made in the early 1960s. Or something.
