April
4, 2020
Today’s
image – Exploring social cohorts. So, on campus now there is a small village of
us living together, the remnants of those in residence this year. We are an international population: seven from
the US, six from Vietnam, five from China, four from Morocco, one from the DR and two
dogs/three cats. We share four large
buildings where we live, take our meals, study and exercise, on a five-acre
campus. The rest of the two hundred and sixty or seventy odd community members
are sheltering in their homes; some of the teachers and administrators dropping
by during the week to work in their offices.
We have had little or no contact with them so far. Our chef and his crew of two come in by rotation
to prepare and serve the daily meals, a maintenance duo tend to the essential
tasks and repairs, the city services haul away trash and recycling, the postal service,
UPS and FedEx still deliver mail and packages.
It’s Iowa and the governor has been holding out on a statewide lock
down, as we live a voluntary version of it. She says she honors and trusts individual
decision making. I am thinking about how the frantic parents of our remaining
residential students are managing their worry. Worry about safety and worry
about care, safe care. In school we all
learned about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – biological and psychological needs
at the base with safety and stability resting on them, nurturing and community
needs placed upon those, then esteem which lays the stage for self-actualization. I have read a counter to this hierarchy that
bears some attention in times like these.
Social neuroscientist, Dr. Matthew Liberman contends that Maslow got the
order of needs wrong. He wrote, “Love and
belonging might seem like a convenience that we can live without, but our
biology is built to thirst for connection because it is built in our most basic
survival needs.” Humans need community
to thrive. Here,
we seem foisted upon the horns of a dilemma – to prioritize safety for the
individual at the expensed of an equal need for human connection which often brings
family or extended family closer than six feet.
And in our case, who is family in this village? Thus, the concept of social cohort begs for
our attention because in this time of defining the lines of who we trust to
help safeguard the dependent ones in a codependent group living in share space
and circumstance, we must define terms and roles. A cohort is defined as a group
of people who share common characteristics and/or experiences, another word for
clan. And if we are clan kin by circumstance, then are we a social group that
can interact familial as extended family would?
I have requested that we start a conversation around this idea and let
the collective genius of our little village decide how we live together in this
period of social isolation. We can call
it a citizens’ science project. I’ll
take notes.
Today’s
idea – I talked with a long time and dear friend in Connecticut – also a
teacher and an artist. We compared notes
about life in a private boarding school during the time of corona virus. Of course, she is managing life with her
family in the first ring of proximity beyond the global epicenter of the
pandemic, while I rest in a more relaxed vigilance in the backwaters of the
crisis. (for now, anyway). Like us, everyone
who could go home, did that, so theirs boarding population, like ours, is now made
up of only the kids who did not have that option. Unlike our situation, their cafeteria closed,
and the remaining students do “take out,” with the residential faculty on their
own for meals. They’re greatest concern
in the little town is with the New Yorkers who have arrived to escape the heat
of things by moving into their vacation homes.
Without honoring a quarantine period, the locals feel vulnerable to exposure.
I don’t think there is anything they can do about it if the mayor doesn’t speak
to the concern. Maybe that’s
coming. All in all, we agreed that we
have both landed well in our circumstance for sheltering, being in the blessed
and fortunate demographic of the times, so we sat with that gratitude for a
minute together. We also agreed how
amazing the art and writing will be that comes out of this epic global
experience. She has already begun a
class about it. Is it called the modern apocalyptic
renaissance? I’m kidding, Lisa.
Today’s
observation – I got to take a bike ride today!
It was in the evening, it was still sunny but brisk, a tolerable 52°F. There were a few other cyclists and several
walkers enjoying the evening along my seven-mile loop. The birdsong at that
time of the day, rivals any community symphony or choir. All the new migratory arrivals called in full
vociferocity: red-winged blackbirds, grackles, robins and warblers competed for
aerial audio space. The cardinals, who are year-round residents, have broken
into their Spring repertoire. A lone bald eagle fished along the flooded forest
of a river slough. Cycling along the Mississippi,
I not only noticed the continued rise in the river and its feeder streams or
creeks, but also submerged marshes, wetlands and fields; and there is an
impressive amount of equipment newly placed at strategic locations: mobile
pumps with coils of big hoses, bucket loaders parked beside stacks of materials
that will serve as temporary levies. The current health crisis headlines have
not clouded the priorities of the water works managers of this big river. Today the river is at 16.25’, a foot and a half
above flood stage, in the moderate range.
By Friday it is expected to rise another foot and a half, still below
major flood levels. Last year, Davenport
was underwater with unprecedented levels - at 22 ½ feet, more than 7 feet above
flood level; it was called a century flood.
Residents and the municipalities are still rebuilding from it. With the
soil saturation high and fields already underwater, this river city is not fooling
around. Maybe we are living the pandemic
that followed the epic flood. So what? Next
year we prepare for the plague of locusts? I think that the locust will meet
their match. Bayer, Dupont and BASF all have insecticide facilities in this
river valley and could be counting on their arrival to boost a soggy bottom
line.
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