Just when we thought it couldn’t get any crazier, it did. It was a week ago tonight that President Trump tweeted that he and the First Lady tested positive for Covid 19. This after he returned from a private fund raiser at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey after he found out that Hope Hicks, one of his top and closest advisors, tested positive for the virus. Of course, there were very few masks and little social distancing at the event. The next evening it was off to the hospital after Trump needed oxygen at the White House. We were told very little by his personal doctor, Dr. Sean Conley, who looked like a doctor from an old daytime soap opera. He was clearly overwhelmed by the moment and following Trump’s orders to reveal as little as possible about his condition. There were pictures from the hospital with Trump posing at a table pretending to be writing sometime on a blank piece of paper with the oversized black marker he uses to sign all his Executive Orders. He didn’t hold up the paper as he usually does.

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It was a live American horror show. Three and half years of the Trump madness spewing out for the most frightening 90 minutes in the history of presidential politics, We’ve seen and heard it all on a daily basis for so long, we’ve grown exhausted and numb. Last night’s presidential debate wasn’t really a debate, and certainly wasn’t presidential. Trump came out growling and swinging knowing he had to bully and overwhelm Joe Biden because he was desperate. He knows he’s losing. He knows he’s survived by telling lies and living in an alternate reality universe where he’s always right and he can do wrong. He knows the clock is ticking and he’ll do anything to avoid being a loser and a fraud on Election Day.

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This was a sad and frightening week in a year that’s had more weeks that were once thought unimaginable. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg lost her gallant fight against cancer in hopes of outlasting the Trump presidency. There couldn’t be two people more different. Could you imagine the outpouring of admiration and respect for Trump that has been shown to Justice Ginsburg? It came out in stark relief when Trump went to pay his respects to Ginsburg as she laid in repose at the top of the Supreme Court steps as dozens of her former law clerks stood down the steps paying honor to her memory. Trump stood stone faced behind a mask (a rare sighting) as the crowd chanted “Vote him out.” It spoke volumes about the state of the country. Trump later said he didn’t the chants. Everyone else did.

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You can’t escape it. It’s everywhere. The election. It’s even at the beach. We’ve all seen the planes fly over the beach with the banners advertising a local bar, restaurant, or a product we don’t really need. While sitting on a Jersey shore beach yesterday after two weeks of political conventions, you think you could enjoy the sunshine, refreshing breeze and perfect water temperature. Then my wife and I heard the sound of that buzzing single engine plane. It didn’t say “Eat at Joe’s” or “4 to 6 Happy Hour at the Clam Shack”. It said “Ukrainians for Trump”. We all know the trouble he had with Ukraine. He got impeached over it. So, we were unsure if this was a pro-Trump banner, or an anti-Trump banner. Were the people who had spent money on this Ukrainians who loved Trump and didn’t think he did anything wrong by pressuring their government to dig up political dirt on Joe Biden? Or was it mocking Trump for his betrayal of the law?

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Democrats are feeling confident and relieved after Joe Biden gave the speech of his life last night. It was all about hope, trust, honesty and decency. The contrast between Biden and Donald Trump couldn’t be sharper. The Democrats are painting the election as a race between a good, decent guy, who grew up in a struggling middle class family, who’s dealt with terrible loss, and who’s spent his life serving the country versus the man they feel is the worst human being to ever sit in the Oval Office. Next week, at the Republican National Convention, Trump and his party will get their chance to make their case about how great things have been under his leadership. They will paint Biden as weak, old, and a tool of the extreme left who will destroy America as we know it. We all know the issues, and it’s unlikely many people are undecided about who will get their vote. But I see this election as an end and a beginning.

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They come around every year, the Dog Days of Summer. The hot, sultry days that are supposed to be days at the beach, in the mountains, picnics, barbecues, trips to national parks, even to Europe, going to a ball game, looking forward to football in a few weeks, and squeezing the fun out of the last few days of summer before going back to school. How’s that working out for you this year? By way of little astronomy, the dog days got its name because the sun is in the same region of the sky as Sirius, the brightest star visible from any place on Earth. It’s part of constellation Canis Major, which everyone knows, means “The Greater Dog.” Well, it certainly has been a dog of a summer.

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A friend of mine died suddenly a few days ago. I had played golf with him just two weeks earlier and he seemed fine. A couple days after we played, he went into the hospital and needed some serious surgery. A couple of days after the surgery, he died from complications. The unexpected suddenness of his death shocked his friends. He was in his early 70s. Life expectancy studies of men show we can expect to make it to between 75-78. Once we break the 70 mark, the countdown clock starts. Sudden deaths run in my family. My father died at 74 from what was likely a thoracic aortic aneurysm. He went to bed feeling fine. Less than two hours later he was dead. His father died at 50. His two brothers and a sister died in their 60s. I believe from the same condition. I know genetics and lifestyle have a much to do with how long we live. It’s when it blindsides us, that makes us stop and think about our own life.

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In the last few days, we all started hearing about Juneteenth and the Tulsa, Oklahoma massacre and burning of a prosperous black section of the city 99 years ago. They are two unrelated historical events brought together by a president who doesn’t understand history or the racial tension and reckoning that has been boiling over in the last few weeks. He only cares about himself and how he can get a crowd to cheer for him. The biggest concern and regret Trump seems to have over the pandemic and what it’s done to the world is that the lockdown was preventing him from having a political rally where thousands of white people in red hats cheer his bragging and laugh at his lame jokes and insults aimed at opponents. So as parts of the country were starting to re-open, it was his chance to get back out on the road and bask in the love and roar of the approving crowd. But leave it to Trump to plan his roadshow comeback without thinking.

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How did we get here? It seems every day we are suffering another convulsion. Many think it started at the beginning of the year from hell with the coronavirus. China’s deception. Our country’s leaders’ incompetence. Let’s not deal with it and it will go away. Suddenly we were locked in our homes, millions out of work. We were hiding behind masks to protect ourselves from a killer we couldn’t see, but feared it could be hidden in a friends’ or strangers’ breath. We were floundering and afraid. How could this happen? We thought we were the greatest country in the world. We have the best health care system in the world. But years of bad decisions about what’s important caught up with us. It was like going to war and realizing we didn’t have enough guns, ammunition, and helmets. Then it got worse. The disease we’ve been trying to fight for 400 years and couldn’t cure exploded from below the surface of society where it has always haunted us.

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The unofficial start of summer in the age of coronavirus is upon us with the Memorial Day weekend coming up. The old Gershwin song told us, “Summertime, And the livin’ is easy”. Well, not so fast. Yes, all 50 states are starting to re-open, some quicker than others. The Jersey shore beaches and boardwalks will be open with social distancing, of course. But no amusement rides yet. Good news in Pennsylvania, you can now order a cocktail with your curbside pick up order from your favorite restaurant. You can enjoy your Cosmo is a Styraform cup. There are still demonstrations and even arrests at small businesses like gyms whose owners are desperate to survive and are defying orders to stay closed. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer thought she had her hands full with armed protestors showing at the capital demanding she open the state back up. Now she’s dealing with catastrophic flooding in Midland after two dams broke sending nine feet of water into a small city of just over 40,000.

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