April
24, 2020
Today’s
image – A few governors have decided to reopen some nonessential businesses and
encourage people to get back to work – Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida are
leading this initiative much to the skepticism of both other governors and many
of their citizens. I believe that New Yorkers are suffering from PTSD. They can wait for now. Governor Cuomo,
thinking more expansively than most, has joined in an East Coast regional pact
with Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts,
so that these states can coordinate the lifting of their stay at home orders. Nevada’s
governor is looking at April 30 as a go date, while Las Vegas’s mayor has
pushed for her city to open now, saying that the desert heat will keep the
virus at bay. Maybe the casino owners
subscribe to this thinking, but I don’t think the workers are too keen on
it. California Governor Newsom will collaborate
with the Oregon and Washington governors (West Coast regional pact) to begin
their creep toward releasing their stay at home orders. I glad to see how local and regional civic
leaders are taking charge of things, as the president continues to make an ass
of himself and the office with his ill-considered briefings and advice. Recreational
shopping has become a very optional activity, even as those of us staying put
are feeling pangs of restlessness, and missing our significant others like a
flower would miss the bees. If not for the daily dispatches from doctors and
nurses on the wards of the stricken, I’m pretty sure; we’d be pushing for
release too. But their testimonies and
exhausted and defeated looks give us every reason to keep things in idle a
while longer. The engines of our economy
are experiencing withdrawal from the robust business pace that has made us the
top consumers on the planet. And the
stress test of this pandemic revealed how commerce for commerce sakes sticks
out like a sore thumb of avarice, a rather parasitic enterprise, This is not to say that small businesses and local
merchants don’t deserve to feed their families and feather their nests. Corporate commerce that generates copious
profits at the cost of planetary well being is the exposed menace, and this is
where conventional capitalism fails us.
While we wait out the virulence of this contagion a bit longer, please
let wiser civic leaders and prudent policymakers sit together around the
planning tables with ingenuity and circumspect computer modelers as they plot
out how we pick ourselves up and walk forward.
And please include historians at that table.
Today’s
observations – We are cloistered but not without the view of many, many windows. Every morning, I raise my shades to check in
with the wild world outside. The birds busy
themselves with morning routines – white-throated sparrows calling to mates or
chasing about for early bugs, cardinals, blue jays and blackbirds compete for cracked
corn at the feeding box, robins do their spring thing of tussling for territory
or worms. My Westie strikes his brightest
attention pose, watching the squirrels, gray, black and brown, as they scout out
the mast buried last fall in the duff and mulch. Soon, I turn my attention to another window,
my IPhone screen, to consumer the morning news feed, inviting the world into my
space. In Ohio, there is further evidence that we have entered a very dystopic
time. In Columbus, there was a rally for the right to return to work. There, a journalist saw a protester wearing a
Handmaiden Tale costume of a scarlet cape and white bonnet. Her sign said, “My
Body My Choice.” I have to wonder if the conservative activist
had even read Margaret Atwood’s novel of female defiance. Such arbitrary appropriation of illusions and
slogans is both amusing and disturbing. It suggests that this contingent pushes
for something they haven’t really thought through. Over breakfast, I check in to
my social networks, looking for news of my distant families’ lives or my friend’s
favorite lampoons for the day. I can
relax into the image of a spring forest canopy dancing in the wind from the vantage
point of an overhead drone camera. Or I shiver at the sight of a little girl dressed
in a mask and protective gown head to toe by her grandfather, so she can hug
her father in his patrol car. I am
grateful for the post of my granddaughters whom I haven’t seen since December. My classroom is another cyber window, and
students peer at me through their laptop or phone screens as I at them through
mine. In the afternoon, I move to an audio window and listen to NPR. Top story today is about a new computer health
modeling effort by the IHME, based on a question, “What is the maximum number
of new infections that states could handle with their current testing and contact
tracing capacity?” The answer – “one new
infection per one million people.” I shift
to the visual of a chart of dates and states.
This model projects that Iowa could reopen June 26 and Illinois, May 19,
based on these criteria. I wonder if Governor Reynolds is factoring this
information into her decisions. After dinner,
I lean into my sister’s living room, eight hundred miles away, and visit via
Facetime. While
human touch is largely forbidden fruit, we have learned to let our eyes and
voices soften the gaping need. Out my west window, I notice a fingernail crescent hovering above the tree line and an ellipse of headlights on the I-74 bridge.
Today’s
idea – We must practice vigilance like never before. We are a bit like the little pigs, seeking
safety behind untested walls. I admit that I grew up believing in the world as
generally being a safe place, and therefore, security has become quickly
assumed to be a guarantee for modern life. It is easy to let my guard down and
even delude myself into thinking things are not so bad, that we will get
through this relatively unscathed if we only do what we are told by those who
we respect. I am telling myself that I’m
practicing good citizenship.
On
the other hand, I have lived long enough to know how hazards and jeopardy can
simply show up in unexpected ways.
Danger might be a brother to safety, and even in these decadent times,
we can expect to dance with him more than once if we live at all. Isn’t it
those experiences which fuel adventures and secure prized memories, when they
work out. I contrived my share of dumb,
dangerous situations as part of a passage to see what I was made of. It is true, most Americans take safety and
comfort for granted, claiming it to be our legacy. If we are free of fear, it
is because we can live such unimperiled lives most days. But now we are amid a different circumstance, the
scope of which few alive today have ever tangled with before. I have heard
forecaster say we are only finishing the second inning of this game. This, I
believe. Our resilience will be tested; our grace will be tested; our levity
will be tested; our gravity will be tested; our generosity and cooperative
spirits will be tested; our courage will be tested. I just hope our vigilance will be inward as
well as outward and that we grow and evolve to learn how to live with the
wolves at our door. It appears to be our
karma and our dharma now.
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