I’ve been on a ventilator. It saved my life. And even if I haven’t cured cancer or written the great American novel or married Mark Ronson, I’ve gotten *years* more with all of you.

I think about that. About everyone who needs one right now.

It sounds dark. We’ve had dark days before. All the beautiful men who died before there was an AIDS treatment or test or PrEP. Men like Howard Ashman, who wrote so many of our favorite Disney songs. What did we lose when we lost them too early?

I want people to hope. But I also want them to know that we cannot let people die in vain. People are dying in NYC at the rate of every three minutes. That’s just today.

We have to find a way to inspire people to make vast changes. To work from love and compassion. Because this mob mentality is just what Howard Ashman warned us about in Beauty and the Beast. And it’s gotten us where we are.

We don’t like
What we don’t understand
In fact it scares us
And this monster is mysterious at least

Bring your guns
Bring your knives
Save your children and your wives
We’ll save our village and our lives
We’ll kill the Beast!

Whether we want to face it or not, there’s an election going on. It’s April 3, 2020. We have until November 3, 2020 to get our house in order. And it’s not looking good. How do you hold a fair presidential election in a pandemic, let alone the so-called normal times?

I know everyone is in shock right now and they are blinded to reality. They want to eat and drink and binge TV. But this problem won’t fix itself and if we don’t have a new president, then what is it all for?

I read The Cay in 4th grade.

It’s about a young boy who gets shipwrecked and blinded. He lands on an island with an old man. And while he goes around feeling sorry for himself, the old man is finding food and shelter and looking at the horizon for hurricanes. And strapping them to a tree for when it does come. So the boy can survive in spite of himself.

Someone has to be that old man. It’s not glamorous. But it has to be done if we are to survive. We have to survive.