Category Archives: Coronavirus

Colorado, Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Family, Jefferson County, Mussar, Science, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History

Speak

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Beltane and the Corona Lunacy II

Wednesday gratefuls: The steer that gave his life for our ribeye. The potato, long underground, now eaten. Sweet corn. Mushrooms. Garlic. And, the helpers, butter, Tony’s prime rib rub. Seoah’s cleaning. Kate’s bowl hot pads. More sewing by her. A Red Flag Warning day. Second in a row. Heightened awareness. Taking out the trash.

The clan gathered. Mark says covid cases are down in Saudi Arabia. Might be the heat. Mary sent a drone video of a quieted Singapore. Diane reports no mask, no shopping in San Francisco. We have a VP sweepstakes going, final chips down on May 31. Prize will be one of Kate’s bowl hot pads and a Katydidit mask.

Apres zoom Seoah and I went to the grocery store. I went in, first time in quite awhile since I’ve been using pickup. Sorta wanted to. Bought only a few things: sandwich bags, pasta, snicker’s in the fun size for the freezer. Seoah did the vegetable shopping and bought more mineral water. She doesn’t like the taste of our well water. What taste?

A young couple came into the store as I entered. Oh, I see you’re not wearing masks. I’m 73. You’re putting me in danger. You’re turning away. You should feel ashamed. I’m finding my voice in this masked/unmasked world. Did the same thing at Beau Jo’s a week or so ago. An older woman tapped me on the shoulder. I agree with you. Ever since juniors weren’t allowed to go to the senior prom in Alexandria (1963) I’ve chosen to say out loud what some people keep to themselves. But, want to say.

I know at times I’m shrill. Or, a scold. I’m not willing to suffer fools silently since silence in the face of evil only encourages the bastards to believe there are no consequences. Yes, the three gates: Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind? Sometimes I’m not fully there on the last one. I want to be but my anger over, say, racism or flaunting disease protection protocols, often gets in the way. Working on it.

And, yes, self-righteous. Well, nobody’s perfect, eh?

In Korea the nation is open now, but everyone wears masks outside the home. If everybody wore masks, I’d feel safer and more comfortable out of the house. Though to be fair I did read an epidemiologist and m.d. authored article that said getting infected is unlikely in a shopping situation like a grocery store. They’re big, lots of air circulation, short period of exposure. That sort of thing. However. Choosing where to wear masks only makes overall compliance weaker. Let’s keep them on until we get those downward numbers consistently.

Coronavirus, Family, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History

Tension

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Beltane and the Corona Lunacy II

Thursday gratefuls: Living in interesting times. Rain in the forecast. Kate’s reading the Talmud, too. Breakfast on zoom with Alan this morning. The fifth covenant. Ode’s starry night, which showed up this morning. The dogs pushing me to get outta bed, come on Dad. Kate poking me. Good sleep. Dandelions, good food for bees. Greening in the pastures and meadows and roadsides and creeksides.

We’ve been under lockdown here since March 25th. That’s all of April and now, for Kate and me, half of May. Our lives have not changed too much, at least our daily lives here on the mountain. I still pickup groceries as I have for a year or so. We don’t go out. We haven’t gone out much in the last two years. I see friends and family on Zoom. That’s increased, but also preceded the lockdown. Doctor visits have decreased, thank god. Every time we go to the doctor or for any other errand we mask, used hand sanitizer after. That’s a change.

I understand the desire of workers and small business owners to return to earning money. Our economy leaves so many on a paycheck to paycheck existence. Small businesses have economic struggles in the best of economies. I understand the pentup energy in kids and adults used to being outside, with friends, outta the house. There is no shame in wanting to be active, see family, go to work. That’s life.

Which is the point, though. Life itself sometimes places difficult demands upon us. This is one of those times. Death puts a distinct end to work, to being active, seeing family and friends. For all ages. Which means that this virus creates tension between health and wealth. Where is the balance point? No one knows.

It would be good if all those gun-toting defenders of the Constitution, maskless and defiant toward those tyrants trying to keep them alive, were right. That the virus would recognize their urgency, their sense of betrayal. That a long burst from a family assault rifle would kill it. That will not be true. Will the lesson of a second wave of deaths be enough to silence them? No. Their spinmeisters already have a script. We’ll hear it soon.

Coronavirus, Health, Politics, Third Phase, US History

“Are You Stupid?”

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Beltane and the Corona Lunacy II

Tuesday gratefuls: Kate. Just because. Rain yesterday. Hoping for more to drive that wildfire danger back down to low. Mark and Elizabeth are ok. Progress on loft reorganization. New workout (old one being recycled). A wet, not so hot week ahead. Lupron. Driving me down while helping me heal. Singapore. Riyadh. San Francisco. Aurora. Context for loved ones.

Tired this morning. Walked up the stairs to the loft thinking, god, I hope this is Lupron. If next month is the last month of Lupron, maybe my strength and energy will return. Hope so. Feel like an old man.

Feeling the pressure to resume “normal” life. Just go to the store. Get gas. Hike. Shake hands. Hug the grandkids. Pick up the restaurant meals with Jon. Go out to eat.

Interesting article about how pandemics end. Messy. Is the answer. A medical end happens when the smallpox gets wiped out in the human population, but that’s very rare. There’s a societal end when folks give in to the pressure, start going out again in spite of the risk. Trouble with the societal end? It risks more flareups, new peaks.

We’re not close to even the societal end of the Covid pandemic. Many folks want to maintain stay at home, don’t want to go back to crowded offices, have customers breathe in their faces. In spite of the pressure I feel I’m in that camp.

Got into an unnecessary and stupid Facebook argument. Thought I’d learned. Apparently not. Bad modeling was at issue. They’ve been wrong. All of them. Since the beginning. All this economy shattering social shuttering was too much response for the reality of Covid.

Predicted response. Sure the initial models proved wrong. Models are only as good as the data that feed them and the algorithms that control them. Early on in a pandemic the data is bad. Noisy. Inaccurate. But it’s the data available. As a pandemic goes on, the data should become better, but with the inadequacy, the gross inadequacy of testing and contact tracing, it’s impossible to get good data. Even now. The modelers try to correct, but it’s assumptions, not facts on the ground.

After several, “are you stupid?” replies, I did not respond to any of them though I really, really wanted to, I went back to the thread and wrote, I apologize for throwing this steak on the table. Trolls gonna troll. Especially when professional trolls are feeding them their lines.

Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Dogs, Family, Feelings, Friends, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History

Up, down

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Beltane and the Corona Lunacy II

Thursday gratefuls: Kate’s slowly healing fingers. The bowl hot pads she’s making. Finding her in her sewing room. Yeah! Yeah! Seoah’s concern about what happens to us when she leaves. Rigel’s blood work. Good except for slightly elevated creatinine. Getting some of my workout in yesterday. New floods for the loft. LED. Blue skies smiling at me. Green Trees and Black Mountain. Shansin filled with love, canine and human. Two meat bundles from Tony’s bought before the oncoming crisis at slaughter houses. Ruby finally clean. Rigel back from her wobbly, painful Tuesday.

As states reopen, it is clear what will follow. Our numbers as a nation, for deaths, for infections, for carriers without symptoms, for increased division between the masked and the unmasked, will multiply. It’s the nature of infection, of putting a penny on one square of a chessboard, then two on the next, then four on the next. You know the result.

Whether or not Trump realizes this, he’s placing a huge, a mega-whopper wager, the worst wager, the worst bet of all time, that the economy will rise before his election chances sink under a sea of body bags. He’ll lose that bet, but not before thousands more die and the infection fills hospitals.

Instead of the United States, folks around the world will refer to us as Little Italy with a bigger problem. You may have heard, or even read, Fintan O’Toole’s column in the Irish Times, THE WORLD HAS LOVED, HATED AND ENVIED THE U.S. NOW, FOR THE FIRST TIME, WE PITY IT. If you haven’t, here’s the link to a copy of it.

I go up and down. Right now down. Can’t think too much about the armed protesters in Michigan, the willingness to choose the economy over sensible precautions. Puts me out of the now and into a tomorrow I find distressing to imagine. Stay up, Charlie, on Shadow Mountain. With your Family and Dogs. With the Trees and the Mountains. Read the Talmud. Exercise. Write. Play. Let tomorrow come in its own time and in the way it will come.

Colorado, Coronavirus, Denver, Dogs, Family, Health, Jefferson County, Politics, Third Phase, US History

The Unmasked

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Beltane and Corona Lunacy II

Wednesday gratefuls: Rigel’s recovery from dental work. Seoah’s kind heart. All my friends and family who have avoided Covid. So far. The people who believe in Trump. Those of us who don’t, won’t, can’t. Angkor Wat. Bayon. Ta Phrom. Mary and her Singapore. Mark and his Riyadh. Diane and her San Francisco.

Into a theoretically still closed down Englewood/Denver for Kate’s appointment with Pullikottli. She’ll go in; I’ll drive off and read Middle Game. The doctor appointments have decreased. By a lot. Fingers this week. Lungs in June. Nothing else for her at this point.

I get another psa in early July and see Eigner later in the month. Last year at this time it was the Cancer Moon. May, the merry, merry month of May, 2019. Fights with the insurance company. Imaging studies narrowing down my treatment options. Driving to hospitals, lying down under expensive electronics. Drinking this. Having this injected. Waiting for results. Wondering.

Masks. A metaphor. Those who think they don’t need to wear one wear their anger and fear. I suppose masks are a willingness to be vulnerable in public, difficult. Wish the unmasked would realize the masks were to protect their parents, their grandparents. Those they love. For the men, it is an act of masculine protection. If we could make them see this, maybe they would put down the assault rifles. Maybe.

Diane voiced her concern about the new world abornin’. Guns in state capitols. The masked and the unmasked. I’m concerned, too. Basic American values like freedom, liberty, individual rights have been hollowed out and weaponized by a flagrantly stupid demagogue. When my body, my choice gets deployed to defend the right to infect other Americans? Not sure where we go from that point.

Coronavirus, Dogs, Family, Health, Mountains, Plants, Shadow Mountain, Talmud, Third Phase

To Rigel

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Beltane and the Corona Lunacy II

Tuesday gratefuls: Rigel, our amazing 11 year old. “She could pass for five,” said the vet at her physical yesterday. Cool mountain nights. Blue Colorado sky. Being home, having a home. Rocks piled up high, high, high. Streams racing to the leave the Mountain top, to carry its message to the sea.

Busy Tuesday morning. 7 am meeting of the Clan. Clan Keaton. We celebrate and continue my mom’s family. Right after I took Rigel back to the vet for another tooth removal. Cracked. She comes home in about an hour. High intensity workout. Read Talmud. Nap. The morning.

Kate goes in tomorrow morning to see the reconstructive surgeon who worked on her fingertips. The scars have mostly healed, but they hurt at the tips and her sensitivity there has not returned. She can sew, but with less dexterity.

A Mountain spring is here. The forest service moved our wildfire danger from low to moderate. There have already been two smaller fires in Conifer. Covid will impact fire response crews. Those fighting difficult fires are often bunked close together, share equipment, and dining space. Not to mention exhaustion, dehydration. Whatever the impact it will not be positive.

Another clue about spring. The fine yellow mist shaken from new Lodgepole pine cones has begun to spread on Mountain Winds. There’s a faint layer on my computer keyboard. Animacy is in the air.

Mark and Mary have finished their terms, but there’s a two week grade challenge window which keeps them at work. Grade challenge window? Geez. Education has changed, eh? Diane’s choral music class from San Francisco’s Community Education program has moved online. She seems resigned to eventually getting Covid. She tested negative in a community testing program last week. The clan wends its international way through this international pandemic.

Beyond the Boundaries, Coronavirus, Friends, Great Wheel, Great Work, Mountains, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The Move, The West, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths

Shansin. Again.

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Beltane and the Corona Lunacy II

Monday gratefuls: Shansin. Four Mule Deer Does in the yard this morning. Romertopf. The Chicken that gave its life for our meal. Potatoes. Onions. Carrots. Garlic. Sesame oil. Old friends: Tom, Bill, Mark, Paul. Poetry. Wine for Kate. Those who wear masks. Those who don’t. These Mountains. Their Trees. Their Water. Our Wild Neighbors.

At a time of frustration and anxiety Shansin, our home which honors the Korean Mountain Spirit, and Shansin Himself, have gifted me a token of peace. At 5:30 this morning I went out for the newspaper, as I have hundreds of times since we moved here in 2014. A Mule Deer Doe looked up at me from the yard. Good morning, I said. She looked at me, her huge ears standing out from her beautiful face, alert.

Somewhat further away three of her Sisters ate, too. Good morning. Good morning. They each looked at me and continued eating. As I walked along the driveway to the mailbox, they continued eating, occasionally looking up as I moved by them. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re enjoying the grass.

Paper in hand, the latest coronavirus news buzzing off its front page, I walked back to the house, to Shansin with Shansin. They all grazed, content. I was part of their morning, They were part of mine. Neighbors on Shadow Mountain.

Yes, we belong here. Together. Whatever might be elsewhere, we belong here. Our lives continue in mutuality with those others who live among us. Fox. Cougar. Bear. Elk. Moose. Pine Marten. Canada Jay. Magpie. Raven. Crow. Spider. Mouse. Vole. We are all under the protection of Shansin.

At crucial moments in our Mountain time Shansin has sent his angels, his messengers. That first day here on Samain of 2014 when the three Mule Deer Bucks and I met in the back. The first day of radiation therapy when two Elk Bucks jumped our fence and stayed a day and a night eating dandelions. This morning, when my patience and emotional reserve had frayed, left me feeling beleaguered.

It may be the apocalypse(s). It may be. But here on Shadow Mountain I am part of something that will survive. That will flourish in spite of and in part because of them.

This is what the end times look like up here. A newspaper in its tube. Four Mule Deer grazing on our land. A cool Mountain morning underway.

Colorado, Coronavirus, Family, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Shaken, Not Stirred

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Beltane and the Corona Lunacy II

Saturday gratefuls: The Fog. Dr. Gustave. Christine, optical technician. Good pressures. Cataracts and Cataract surgery. Getting gas. Freddie’s delicious Steak burgers. Air conditioning in ruby. Hungarian goulash by Seoah. Friends at CBE. Home. Shadow Mountain. The Mountains. Down the Hill.

Not sure how to talk about this. It’s unpleasant, but I need to put out there the profound dis-ease I felt yesterday. A twice canceled appointment with my ophthalmologist, Dr. Gustave, found me the only car in the Corneal Consultants parking lot. Check-in was by cell phone as was word that they were ready to see me. After locking ruby I walked into the building to find myself the only patient there. Most of the spaces inside, including the waiting area, were dark. It felt like exploring an abandoned structure.

Christine and I greeted each other through our masks, mine a ks94 mailed to us from Korea by Seoah’s Sister and Brother-in-law. We walked past empty exam rooms, the retina camera and visual field equipment room.

We’ll be in here. Any issues with your vision? Yes. My hearing is affecting my vision. When I watch television, I use closed captions, but they’re getting blurry. Also, why are my eyes turning blue?

Dr. Gustave a bit later. We’ll be taking those cataracts out as soon as elective surgeries are authorized again. It wasn’t my glasses? No. Morgan Freeman has the same condition with his eye color. Is it pathological? No. A part of aging for you.

The whole experience there was unsettling. Christine told me they would wipe down the exam room with clorox after I left. That made me feel strange. It was wise, yes, but still.

There were further errands to run. I needed to get some cash, so I went to a Wells Fargo branch that I know has a drive-through. This drive through is closed. Huh? O.K. I put the Korean mask back on, slipped a glove on my right hand, and went into the lobby prepared to face actual people. But from a safe distance. Closed. This branch has been closed for a month said guy coming downstairs from his office above the bank. Well. Damn.

At Freddy’s Steak Burger I waited in a very long line, maybe 15 cars, to get a double bacon cheeseburger, fries, and a chocolate shake. A treat I’d looked forward to when I knew I would be visiting this bank. They’re close by each other. A Chick Fil’a up the street had employees outside, helping drive-up customers. Freddy’s did not.

Unease had begun to set in when I walked through the darkened halls of Corneal Consultants. It got amplified by the absence of other patients, by the clorox comment, by the face shield worn by Dr. Gustave. The closed bank. The very long line at Freddy’s. The also closed car wash where I got gas. The dysfunctional car wash I tried next further down Hwy 470. I wanted to get home.

Getting into the mountains usually calms me, but this time unwelcome anxiety had seeped in, jangled my nerves. I felt better on 285, headed toward Conifer, but not ok. I mailed some bills in Aspen Park.

At home I recounted this trip to Kate. I felt unsafe, I told her. People weren’t wearing masks. The step back from stay at home orders meant there were a lot more people out, cars on the road. All the signals of the contagion. Dark exam rooms. A closed bank. Where, btw, our safety deposit box is. The car washes. The long line at Freddy’s.

It left me, I said, a bit shaken. Dis-eased. I’m so glad to be home. It’s safe here. I don’t want to go out again.

When I heard myself say that, and when I realized I meant it, I felt old and frail. Which of course jacked everything else up a little higher.

It’s the next morning now. I’ve had some sleep. I’m aware how much my home means to me. How important it is to have this shelter right now. Yet, I still feel the dark penumbra of the virus corona. It has changed my world and I don’t like the feeling of threat that has come with it.

Coronavirus, Great Wheel

Beltane 2020

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Beltane and the Corona Lunacy II

Friday gratefuls: Dr. Gustave and his care for my glaucoma. Another Colorado sunny day, blue sky. The ski runs on Black Mountain still have snow, like our backyard. Bernard Cornwall, historical fiction writer. People who write. Buddy Mark Odegard’s Starry Night. A slow workout yesterday.

Ennui. A word for a pandemic. Punctuated though by what Woolly Jim Johnson referred to as the perennial. It’s Lambing time on the Casper’s ranch outside Aberdeen, South Dakota. This is an ancient ritual honored first on the Great Wheel by Imbolc on February 1st. Imbolc means in the belly and refers to the pregnancy of the Ewes.

Imbolc, which marks a season by the fertility of a farm’s Ewes, is one of four Celtic cross-quarter holidays. Cross-quarter holidays come between the equinoxes and the solstices. Thus, Imbolc is halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox.

Beltane, the next cross-quarter holiday, is today, between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice. In the deep past the Celts only had two seasons, the fallow time beginning at Samain on October 31st, and Beltane, the growing season, which started on May 1st.

Beltane marked the beginning of a market week when villagers would come together to sell goods made over the fallow time, livestock, and any foodstuffs in surplus. Couples interested in each other as potential partners could do a handfasting, marriage for a year and a day. Workers made contracts for the growing season with farmers.

Bonfires blazed at night. Cattle were driven through them to ward off disease and women wishing to quicken would leap over smaller fires. Men and women made love in the fields, hoping to transfer their fertility to the soil.

Beltane’s coming means the Great Wheel has turned toward growth, fertility, abundance. In spite of a human pandemic Daffodils*, Crocus, Grape Hyacinths, Bloodroot, spring ephemerals that bloom before the trees leaf out have come. The Lodgepole Pines have their new cones. The Aspens have buds. Robins and Hummingbirds have returned to the mountains. The Black Bears forage while yearling Mule Deer hunt for good food amongst all the greening.

Look for what is growing within you. Within your relationships. Outside your front door. The coronavirus will wane. You need growth. This is a wonderful time to seek what’s pushing through the Soil of your Mind.

*I’m adopting Robin Wall Kimmerer’s suggestion to capitalize names of those things animated by the Great Spirit, Ohr, the One. This signals my respect for the living world. I’m also adopting her understanding of animacy which includes all things except those made by human hands. So, for instance, Rock. Black Mountain. Grass. Soil.

Coronavirus, Dogs, Family, Feelings, Health, Judaism, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

So Lucky

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Spring and Corona Lunacy II

Friday gratefuls: New tricks for an old dog. Appreciative inquiry. Kate on the board, planning for the next five years. Kate sewing. Kate smiling. Kate. Seoah and her sadness. The coronavirus, what has it done for you today? My life’s quieter, less strained. Got me into spring organizing for the loft. Has laid bare the true fault lines in our country: economic and racial inequity, the emissions which poison us and are overheating our planet, yet another wave of know nothingism. The virus is only a medical crisis and it will pass.

This morning about 5 am I came awake as I usually do around that time. The electric blanket warmed me, the cold night air streamed from my open window. Rigel was asleep, her head between mine and Kate’s, her long body stretched out. Kep curled up at the end of the bend. Kate was asleep, too. I laid there for about a half hour, feeling so lucky. So lucky.

About 5:30 Kep jumped on me, as he does every morning, eager and happy, pressing down, saying hello, good morning, let’s get up! Rigel, a very heavy sleeper, lifted her head. Oh, no. Not now. Let me sleep a little longer. Come on, Rigel, time for breakfast, let’s get up, big girl! Her head sinks back to the bed. Nope. Not right now.

Rigel! Get up. Time for breakfast. She slowly rises and shakes herself, standing on Kate’s legs. All right, all right. I’m coming. I let the two of them out by the downstairs door. They run off, their bladders full, like mine. We’re all just mammals, doing what us warm blooded animals do after waking.

The early morning goes on. Let them back inside. The clink of food in dog bowls. Treats. Kep goes back down to sleep with Kate. Rigel stays in the sewing room. I get the paper, put it at Kate’s place. Pour some cold coffee into the big Santa Claus mug, grab my phone. On the way out of the house and up to the loft I turn on Kate’s upstairs oxygen, make sure the canula is around the newel post nearest the downstairs.

There’s a light coating of snow. I felt it during the night on my head. That open window. A bit of ice on the stairs up to the loft. Careful with my feet, that hard-earned Minnesota knowledge of how to walk on slippery surfaces.

It’s around 6 when I open the door, switch on the lights. Things are in a bit of disarray, more so than usual that is, because I’m rearranging furniture. Yesterday and the day before I moved my computer to a different spot. It had been in the same one for almost five years. Books related to Judaism going on a freshly cleaned off bookshelf. Reading chairs now with their backs to the window overlooking Black Mountain and Black Mountain Drive.

When my order of five banker’s boxes get here, I’m going to store all my object files from my docent days in them, take the boxes downstairs to the garage. Never used them. The plastic bins they’re in now will receive the two million words of Ancientrails printed out last fall. The pages will have cardboard year separators like a comic book store. That will free up the desk which Kate used for study during medical school. It will go parallel to the art cart and on the rug. On it will go my painting and sumi-e supplies, freeing up the whole surface of the art cart for painting, working with ink.

The manuscript of Jennie’s Dead is on the round table next to the computer, partially edited, awaiting more work. It’s only now, in retrospect, that I can see through the cloud that settled over me, a fog hiding the creative impulse, the simple joys.

So lucky.