Figure 1 – Menu board at the Olde Main Street Pub, Salem, MA, April 17, 2020. (c) DE Wolf 2020.

As I said in my last post, the signs of the isolation can be subtle yet poignant. On Salem’s once bustling, now lonely, Essex Street is the Olde Main Street Pub. According to the pub’s website it offers “fine Contemporary family dining in a cozy pub-like atmosphere.” The darkness inside betrays uncertainty. Figure 1 is a photograph that I took of the menu board in the window. The Pub is closed and offers no menu. But you can see the bleached shadows of many years of past menus. The physics of light is relentless, and you may wonder just how long it will take for the daylight of our new reality to erase all signs of the past. 

It is, perhaps, worth noting. in case some future historian happens to read these words, that we know that this is a transformational moment. Ours is perhaps akin to the uncertainty that Europeans felt during the first World War. We know that the world will never be the same. We do not, however, know, with any precision, how it will change. Some, in arrogance, may suggest that they do know what will happen. But I am reminded of the wisdom of the Tralfamadorians in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughter House Five:

 ‘We know how the Universe ends-‘ said the guide, ‘and Earth has nothing to do with it, except that it gets blown up, too’