Spring and the Corona Lunacy
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Category Archives: Coronavirus
HOWL
Spring and the Corona Lunacy
Tuesday gratefuls: All those protesters, Corona Lunacy in full bloom. Seoah shopping at Safeway. The vast amounts of creative energy flowing into peak TV. Game of Thrones. The earlier rising of the sun. Kep and Rigel, still on the 4:30 am clock. Now 5:30. Cool air. Books. Books. The coronavirus, cutting right through the veneer of civilization in the U.S. Friends. You know who you are.
Howling. 8:00 p.m. Go outside. Howl. Continue until it fades. Since early in the lock down neighbors throughout Conifer: Kings Valley, Aspen Park, Evergreen Meadows, up here on Shadow, Conifer, and Black Mountains, we go out at 8 and howl. Doesn’t last long, two minutes, three minutes, but the sound is authentic enough to get Rigel’s attention.
Started out in support of the medical personnel. Now, though. I’m here. I’m here. Still alive. Still ok. This is us. Like the old ladies in the Italian city who threw open their windows and sang into the plague. But this is the mountains, not the land of opera. So, we howl.
Reminded me. A night several years ago in January, north of Ely, on a lonely road leading into the forest. I stood with the eight other students and howled into the night. The wolves answered us. This was a week long educational program put on by the International Wolf Center.
Howling is about solidarity, about personal presence, about territory. It’s also a bit silly up here, and fun.
Give Me Liberty or Give Me Covid
Spring and the Corona Lunacy
Monday gratefuls: Kate in her sewing room. Making cloth masks. With pockets for coffee filters. So good. Oh Death by Ralph Stanley. Talking about death with my old friends on Zoom. Mario, it’s still too abstract. More real in our 80’s or 90’s. Glad he thinks so. The Riyadh, Singapore, San Francisco, Rocky Mountain connection. Got out Jennie’s Dead, started reading. Will start writing when I’m caught up. Feeling better overall.
Might be the imminence of spring. Might be the space between bloody January and today. Might be Kate’s incremental improvements with her fingers and her leaking problems. It certainly is not the current state of Covid-19 testing. Whatever it is, maybe just my cyclical psyche ready for a new era, I’m feeling strong.
Organizing my loft. Again. A periodic task necessitated either by a long down period like this last one or a time of full on work like I’m entering now. Another facet of this change might be an inverse response to cabin fever. I can’t go out, so I may as well go in.
Brother Mark sent me a picture from a rally, a sign that said, Give me Liberty or Give me Covid. These folks understand liberty and freedom in their most restrictive meaning. Liberty means you can’t tell me what to do and freedom means only freedom from, not freedom for, too.
Both have more expansive connotations. Liberty is also the ability to choose for others, to use your power, your resources on behalf of your neighbors. Freedom is not only freedom from the unreasonable intrusion of the state or the opportunity to follow your own dreams wherever they may lead. It’s also freedom to choose community responsibility. Freedom to vote, to organize, to lift up your nation. To stay in your home not only on your own behalf, but also in service to your elders, to the vulnerable.
Give me liberty or give me Covid illustrates too well the blinkered version of Lady Liberty, the one proclaimed by those yellow flags with the snake. That liberty means stay the fuck outta my way. Or, else. Misunderstanding the nature of liberty can be fatal. That sign proves it. Not sure how, or even if, this truncated view of two basic American values gets remedied. Especially if the false choice between liberty and illness gains traction.
What do you when the treasonous bastard encouraging these already misguided folks is the President? Save your sacred Second Amendment, he says. And the connection to all of this is what? Shoot the sick ones? As a New York Times story title says: Head of Government Encourages Anti-Government Protesters. This is where Kristallnacht came from. We’re way past the turn off for a reasonable resolution to this stand off.
What comes next? No idea.
Never again
Spring and the Corona Lunacy
Saturday gratefuls: Brenton and his concern for Murdoch. Nursing assistant skills I’ve learned. Kate’s reduced leakage. Rigel, that rascal. Her spring fever digging at the edge of our deck. The solar snow shovel. Thursday’s snow all gone on the roadways. Remembering Mom and the garden spider at our breakfast table window. Trips to Stratford, Ontario.
Watching Orwell come alive again. Still. With Trump. Using the word liberated to incite insurrection against legally elected government officials. LIBERATE MICHIGAN! Even Minnesota. Calm, orderly, polite, compassionate Minnesota. Treason is a capital crime, a crime emanating from our capitol. Playing to his base in the basest way possible: hand out money, fan understandable frustration into the flames of unrest. Friends, it’s alternate universe time.
Life in the slow, slow, sloth lane. While all that swirls around, we eat breakfast, feed our dogs, shake our heads.
And in the third year of a faux monarch’s reign came a plague, not just here, but all across the world. Before this plague our country, beautiful and vibrant, had become ugly, violent, cruel. Now we’re sick and dying. What the hellfire and brimstone preachers called Old Testament times. Yet it is not long ago, not in a world of different customs and languages, but in our time, in our nation. It makes my heart sick. My head ache.
How can we teach our grandchildren that this is not what a nation is? When the Wizard of Oz pulls the curtains aside himself and makes clear that all he has are levers and knobs and steam whistles where competency need to be, what do we say to them? How do we explain that we have stood for freedom, for true liberation, for inclusion, compassion for the poor, the sick, and the elderly?
It was true in my memory, I’ll say. No, of course it was never all this or all that, of course not, but never did we have a party and a President who made it their holy crusade to pollute the rivers and skies, cage children, glorify sexual predation, and those made ill by race hatred. Never did we have a President and a party who praised our enemies and blamed our allies. America, like any nation, has always had greed, servants of Mammon, but rarely have we turned our government into a mechanism for siphoning money from the poor into their hands.
No, I’ll say, this is not us. It just is not us and it will require your good will, your good sense, your compassion, your sense of justice to make right. I hope you, Ruth and Gabe, can muster all these, can grow into the leaders who remedy the failures of this time. I will support you and any of your generation who are able.
High Tech, High Touch
Spring and the Corona Luna
Friday gratefuls: Kate on coming to bed last night, “I’m super tired.” She stayed for the whole virtual board meeting and long range planning session. The snow. About a foot of new whiteness. Black Mountain white against blue. Cold weather. Good sleeping. Unorthodox on Netflix. Good high intensity workout yesterday.
The Third Wave. Alvin Toffler. 1980. He said in it, high tech, high touch. That stuck with me. What he meant was, the more we use high technology, and it’s gotten higher and higher since 1980, the more we will want in the flesh interactions with others. We’re living through dramatic proof of his prescience.
Zoom. Went from 10 million users to 200 million over the first weeks of stay at home orders. Virtual seder. Online mussar class. The clan gathering: Mary, Mark, Diane. Old friends: Mark, Tom, Paul, Bill. About to arrange a gathering for the Johnson sisters. Kabbalah class. All zoom. Woollies, too.
The sessions with fewer folks work better for me than the larger ones. The seder was meaningful and Rabbi Jamie used breakout rooms to help, but it still felt distant. Although, the same number of people at round tables at Mt. Vernon Country Club would have been distant, too. Yet not. Bodies are important. Just their presence is reassuring. 53 people
Mussar has fifteen. It works well, but I wonder how well it would work if we didn’t already know each other. The Kabbalah class works, but I preferred the one day I drove into the Kabbalah Experience space. Since I didn’t know these folks at the beginning, I rarely knew the context for their remarks.
The best are the Clan gathering and the Old Friends. But, again. These are folks I know well, over periods of many years. The Woolly sessions lie somewhere between these two and the others.
They are way better than nothing. I will stipulate that. I can see facial expressions, some body language, and it keeps us in touch with each others lives. All good.
But. I miss the actual flesh. Don’t want it to sound weird, but the embodied person is different from the virtual one. If we ever get holograms in wide use, I imagine it will be the same. We’re pack animals, like dogs, and an important part of the pack experience is physical presence.
As a temporary measure, the chance to interact even on screen is wonderful. It alleviates the worst part of physical distancing, staying at home: feeling shut in. Over time though I would miss the chance for casual moments off from the group, for hugs, for shaking hands.
Even though only yesterday I wrote about a personal stay at home order for a year, I find regular time with other folks, especially those I know and love, important. Like most introverts I find interaction with others draining, so I have limits. Not getting close to them these days.
A Pagan’s Way
Spring and the Corona Luna
Wednesday gratefuls: Ed Smith. His hands. Kate’s new feeding tube. Getting there on the leaks. Slowly. Glacially. But, getting there. Seoah’s concern, love for Kate. Her helpfulness. Rigel and Kep, always. Masks. Gloves. Those who hope the coronavirus will lead us to rethink society. Among them me. Mountain Waste Removal. Mt. Evan’s Home Health Care. The snow pack above average.
The spirit of 2019. An urgent doctor visit yesterday. The balloon that holds Kate’s feeding tube in place collapsed. Back to the surgeon. He put in a new, slightly larger tube and said anytime Kate had trouble to come see him. This was our first urgent visit since Bloody January though it was the norm in 2019. The gaps between visits are longer. May they continue and lengthen.
Since we went to a medical building I put on mask and gloves. Kate had a mask. These were the smaller masks, but Seoah’s sister’s husband found 50 NS95 masks for us. Just because. Her sister mailed 8 of them to us yesterday. The Korean government allows 8 a month to be sent out and then only to family. She’ll keep sending them as long as the crisis and her supply continue.
Can you feel the irony here? The world hegemon is getting medical supplies from South Korea. It’s a sixth of our size. And, can you feel the love? Family. Across oceans and cultures.
Hard to be sure but I think the newly administered Lupron, my third, has weakened me some. I had a tough time on my workout Monday. I had a two hour nap yesterday, then slept an hour or so long last night. We’ll see about my workout today. The hotflashs have been somewhat more frequent. Life in the chemo lane.
Been reading the book Braiding Sweetgrass. It’s the first book in the Rocky Mountain Land Library’s book club. Robin Wall Kimmerer is the author, a botanist and a member of the Potawatomi nation. Kate Strickland worked, I believe as an intern, at Milkweed Editions when they were publishing this book and got to know Ms. Kimmerer well. It’s a compilation of short think pieces, not quite essays, closer to memoir.
In the human narrative class with Rabbi Jamie we’re reading the last section of Art Green’s book, Israel. In it Green talks about the relationship between a people and the land. In wondering what I could learn from this chapter, I decided I would focus on how a people, all people, relate to the land.
That brought to mind both the Rocky Mountain Land Library and its unusual mission and my episodic work on reimagining, reconstructing faith. Increasingly this reenvisioning has come to focus on how to articulate my pagan way, not as the way, but as a way, one that might guide more folks back to the literal source all life, the sacred marriage between the sun and mother earth. And, in so doing, spur them protect our mother, or, more accurately, protect a space for humankind here.
I decided to read the four books in the Land Library Book club over the time of the Israel kabbalah class, which runs into June. I added a couple of other books I have, the Lunar Tao and Becoming Native to This Place.
A chapter in an often imagined book about my pagan way will be my presentation for the class. It’s tentatively titled, Becoming Native to This Place. Something to do while the world sinks into itself.
No Excuses
Spring and the Corona Luna
Monday gratefuls: Snow. 7 degrees. A white palette outside my window. Even the sky is a gray white. Braiding Sweetgrass. Becoming Native to This Place. Kate’s good day. Rigel’s eating. Kep’s joy. Murdoch in the pictures from Brenton. Moving my reading chair in front of the window. Ikigai. Caesar Salad. Fuji apples. Cheese curds. Matzah.
A quiet day yesterday. Some snow. Cold weather. Old friends on zoom. Reading the Talmud. Reading Braiding Sweetgrass. Finished Radical Judaism. Watched an episode or two of Ozark on Netflix. My rest day.
What the idiot is doing. Yes, I just looked at the newspapers. Here’s the headslapper. Well, one of them. Quoted in today’s NYT:
“Governors, get your states testing programs & apparatus perfected,” President Trump tweeted on Sunday night. “Be ready, big things are happening. No excuses!”
Chutzpah. Of bigly proportions. First, bail on your responsibilities. Second, demand that others fulfill them, then threaten them. Nice, dude. Makes America Grate.
Buddy Mark Odegard is happy. Getting lots of strokes from his book, drawing cranes, learning about cranes. Easing into mystery.
I’m happy, too. Progress, though two steps forward, one back, with Kate. Seoah’s cleaning, cooking, cheerfulness. The house calm after the Murdoch/Kepler wars in Bloody January. My ikigai returns with a focus first on a chapter for my book on a Pagan Way. Also feeling a novel nudging me. Work. Good work.
Some positive signs on the coronavirus pandemic. We’ll see. I’m sure Trump can swoop in, wave his widdle magic wand, and make all things worse. We’re staying home.
Shut It Down
Found a link to this in the NYT. Passion in the playing and singing and in the work and in the quiet.
Narrow, Pharaoh Mind
Spring and the Corona Luna
Wednesday gratefuls: The garbage collectors. Zaidy’s Deli for Seder fixings. Jewcy for the Haggadah. Kate’s no leak bandage routine. Seoah’s potato and sausage soup. New kabbalah class starting today. Learning and the ability to learn. Books. Printing presses. Newspapers. The much maligned, but oh so important news media. Diane’s willingness to get up early to talk. Mark and Mary in month long lock downs (of varying strictures). Gov. Polis and Mayor Hancock (Denver) for stepping up. Jeffco, too.
What’s the idiot up to now? That’s how I think of my first look at the news when I get up. These days though I find the question moot. He already did it by screwing up the testing, playing keep away with the national stockpile of medical equipment, and blaming, blaming, blaming rather than acting.
John Prine died. One of my favorite musicians. Hello in There. Angel from Montgomery. Ballad of Sam Stone. An American original like Bob Dylan, who was a fan of John’s. Covid-19.
Passover starts tonight. Easter is on Sunday. Zaidy’s Deli in Denver, performing a mitzvah, offered takeaway Seder boxes with matzo, Manischewitz blackberry wine, brisket, haroset and other sides, items for the seder plate. Rigel and I drove over to CBE yesterday to pick up our order. Eve, the executive director at CBE, had put haggadahs in there.
Like many synagogues, most, I imagine, CBE will hold a virtual Passover meal on Thursday night. We’ll use the Jewcy Haggadah, the ritual for the service. It has the famous four questions including how is this night different from all other nights?
The primary purpose of Passover is to recount to children the foundational story of the Hebrew slaves and their liberation from Egypt. Kids hunt for the hidden afikoman, a piece of matzah, and get a reward if they find it. They also hear about all the plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, sing songs, and generally have a good time.
Passover brings many friends and family, including a Gentile or two or more, into a bubbe’s home. Not this year. The story with the plagues has been changed by a plague. The irony has not been missed. Many of our friends are sad because this is a joyous occasion, a time to celebrate, and not having folks in the house will seem very strange.
At passover we move from a narrow place, a narrow pharoah mind, to an expansive place, the Promised Land. Rabbi Jamie in last week’s morning prayers, Maladies and Melodies.
We Are At Home
Spring and the full Corona Luna
Tuesday gratefuls: A good workout. All the delivery people: USPS, UPS, Fedex. Again, and still, all the service workers, warehouse workers, truck drivers, doctors, nurses, governors and mayors who’ve chosen to confront life under the pandemic. And, again, the coronavirus for unveiling the lies we tell ourselves to preserve our status, our pollution, our failed economic systems. Seoah, who cleans and cooks and smiles and laughs and orders from Lululemon.
The snow is melting. We’ve had bright sun shiny days. Jeffco put the entire county on stage 1 fire restrictions indefinitely. It’s unusual for that restriction to come this early, with much snow still to come. Not good news.
What would happen right now if we had a major disaster, like a wildfire? It would up end our life here and create a turmoil wherever we had to go. Or, an earthquake in California. A hurricane hitting Florida or New Orleans. Tornadoes in the south. Disasters during an ongoing disaster. Are we ready for these? They will happen.
We’ve flagged off our housecleaner for the second time. We’ve continued to pay her though, as we will pay our hair stylist. These are one woman businesses. They are our contract employees so we’re supporting them. How long? Don’t know.
Seoah cleans so we’re ok. And the hair? Somebody said a couple of weeks ago that we were only three weeks from knowing everybody’s true hair color. Shaggy’s been my look most of my life. Another couple of months is NBD.
Another zoom time this morning with Clan Keaton. Linking the far flung Ellises and our first cousin, Diane. Mark sent me a clip from the Arab News announcing a 24 hour curfew in Riyadh. Residents can only go out between 6am and 3pm for food and medicine. Today begins a month long lockdown in Singapore with somewhat looser restrictions. San Francisco’s been shelter in place for longer than most.
All this physical distancing and social distancing has begun to work. How much it will flatten the curve and what happens when it ends are still uncertain. Like our lives.