Writes Mark Higdon:

This evening, I received a haircut from my devoted and talented daughter (mother of four of my grandchildren). It took a while, but the results were crackerjack. The company was nonpareil.

I had not had a haircut since the last time I visited my regular professional barber back in February. Like others in her profession, she was out of work by state decree for at least a couple of months. When our state’s procurator allowed barbershops to reopen, I quickly learned that there were lots of barriers, limitations, socialist distancing et al. nonsense involved in re-accessing services. I put off making an appointment in the hope of such things relaxing. Instead, mandatory masks were added to the mix.

I have gone to this young woman (about my daughter’s age) for many years. The appointments were enjoyable, without exception. We always inquired and knew about each other’s families. When I went back to her after a long battle with cancer, her welcome was so touchingly warm and heartfelt. It hurts me to now be part of the reason for her reduced income. However, I have my own substantial concerns in that category.

Going to the barber shop used to be like going to church in this sense: you could leave the world outside and be insulated from it inside. No more, in both venues.

I miss my barber. I will not go back to her shop–as I will not go back to church–until the world is once again kept at bay from both locations. Which may be never.

The future that I see from this microcosm is basically DIY. Among other things:

• Kitchen stool haircuts.
• Eating in (who wants to eat out and be served, while masked, by masked wait staff? Bar talk? Fuggeddaboudit.).
• Cable, Netflix et al. (indoor theaters are dead-dead-dead!).
• Shopping, as rarely as possible. “No-contact” deliveries-deliveries-deliveries.
• Neighbors, mostly gone. Relatives, if you can keep them.
• Vacations diminishingly affordable or accessible. (Flying? Fuggeddaboudit. Road trip? Maybe. Staycations? The new, lame normal.)
• Being your own primary physician.
• Being your own confessor, unless you prefer being policed at socialist distancing by floor stickers and a security guard.
• Et cetera, et cetera and so forth.

Our unfolding New World is depressing and fearsome: the antithesis of brave. In the words of the dying Jimmy Malone, in The Untouchables: “What are you prepared to do?”