in Disney’s 1994 live-action “Jungle Book”
(“Baloo hit me in the chest with his
snout”); Aladdin, in an “Arabian Nights”
miniseries; a kindly Hawaiian surfer (“So,
you’re from outer space, huh? I heard the
surfing’s choice!”), in Disney’s “Lilo &
Stitch.” His relationship with martial
arts has continued. “After a while, it be-
comes a part of you,” he said.
Lee went outside: bright-blue sky, lush
vegetation. “It’s up in the rain forest, yeah?”
he said. “There’s a very specific, lilting
birdsong here”—of the finch-like ’ele-
paio—“and I fell in love with that.” He
headed toward a greenhouse. “This is
some Kahili ginger, yellow flowers in
bloom. It’s kind of a pain in the butt, be-
cause it grows so rapidly up here. Here’s
some of my old tomato trellises and stuff.”
Lee’s garden is overgrown. In recent years,
he and his family have lived in Singa-
pore, and then in San Diego. In the spring,
when “Mulan” was supposed to come out,
he went to London for the première and
came back with Covid. (Others did, too;
“Mulan” ’s eventual release was stream-
ing only.) He recovered, and the family
returned to Hawaii indefinitely—“The
kids can run around”—and, now that his
energy is back, he’s gardening again. “I’m
trying a new strain of taro,” he said. “Blue-
berries—they’re kind of fickle.” He con-
tinued on: mamaki tree, curry-leaf tree,
mulberry bush, Hapu’u tree ferns, rain-
water-fed reservoir.
Gardening, too, becomes a part of
you. “A few years ago, I did this docu-
mentary”—“Secrets of Shaolin with
Jason Scott Lee”—“at Shaolin Temple,
in China,” Lee said. “The medicine guy
said, ‘I suggest you do less kung fu and
more meditative work.’ The gardening
motions with the hand tools I use are
similar to the martial arts—the posture,
the breathing, the relaxation.” He looked
contemplative. “It’s more of a noncom-
bative feeling of poetry in motion.” He
laughed. “And, getting older, I feel like
it’s easier on the joints.”
—Sarah Larson
1
DEPT.OFCOPING
DISASTERDISHESI
n 2011, Don Moyer, a retired graphic
designer, inherited a Blue Willow plate
from his grandmother. Moyer lives in
Pittsburgh, on Mt. Washington, and
draws every day. “I got this plate and I
was studying it, and I really kind of liked
it,” he said. “The design was very busy,
like doodling—no place was at rest.” He
sketched the familiar scene in his note-
book: willow tree, bridge, pagoda. At the
end, for no particular reason, he added a
small pterodactyl. He drew another ver-
sion with flying monkeys descending from
the sky. He drew one with zombie poodles
and one with giant frogs. Then he had
the drawings made into blue-and-white
porcelain plates, like his grandmother’s.
When people started buying them, he
formed a company: Calamityware.
During the pandemic, sales at Ca-
lamityware have soared. In May, the
company sold as much as it would in a
typical holiday month, with customers
especially drawn to a mug titled “Things
Could Be Worse.” “The mug is our big-
gest seller,” Lynnette Kelley, the firm’s
business manager, said. Kelley and her
husband, Jack, who is in charge of mar-
keting and the Web site, are Calamity-
ware’s only employees besides Moyer;
they live twenty minutes down the road.
When face masks became mandatory
in some states, they sold out of the ban-
dannas that Moyer had been making.
(Dragons eating pizza; robot uprisings.)
“That was just dumb luck,” Jack said.
The “Things Could Be Worse” mug
features an array of disasters on the tra-
ditional Blue Willow background. There’sa Sasquatch on a decorative bridge, a
U.F.O., and a blob monster menacing a
pagoda. Each mug comes with a card.
“Everyone has bad days. You lose your
keys. You lose your job. You lose your su-
perpowers,” it reads. “This mug helps you
cope with hard times by reminding you
that things could be much worse. You
could also be pursued by giant robots,
plagued by pterodactyls, pestered by zom-
bie poodles, and worse. Cheer up.”
Sue Shock, an editorial assistant in
New London, New Hampshire, found
the mug online while researching a Blue
Willow pattern that she remembered
from a children’s book. “When the cala-
mity actually hit, I thought, Oh, my
God, this is perfect!” she said. She
bought a mug for each of her three
grown children, who live in different
places. “I sent them a note that said,
‘Now we can all be drinking our tea or
coffee with the same mug, thinking, It
could be worse.” On family Quaran-Tea
nights on Zoom, she sometimes fills
hers with a rum daiquiri.
Valissa Johnson, a librarian in Greens-
boro, North Carolina, found Calamity-
ware on Facebook while checking on rel-
atives. Johnson collects china. “I thought,
Oh, this is so cute and witty. The whole
idea of: How bad could it get?” she said.
During the next few weeks, her library
shut down, and the restaurant where her
husband works closed. When her “Things
Could Be Worse” mug arrived, she was
at her parents’ house helping them pre-
pare for the lockdown. “It was a moment
of: Wow, it’s scary, and it’s weird, but look
how bad it could be,” she said.
Amanda Wheeler and Reilly Jen-
nings, who live in Washington Heights,
in Manhattan, received a “Things Could
Be Worse” mug as a wedding gift. They
had planned to marry in front of their
friends and family in October, but they
moved the date up when New York began
shutting down. An ordained friend offi-
ciated from his fourth-floor window
while they stood on the sidewalk. A few
days later, the mug showed up. “We were
stoked,” Wheeler said. “It’s just, like, no
matter how bad things are, you could be
getting chased by a giant frog right now.”
Recently, on a video call at home in
Pittsburgh, Moyer held up a side plate
featuring a giant snail crushing an or-
nate garden. (“He’s a true pessimist,”
Jason Scott Lee Lynnette had said earlier.) He showed
18 THENEWYORKER,SEPTEMBER14, 2020