DEAR DIARY: DAY 87

Three months ago, “New Normal” was just starting to float around but it was thin on context. I tend to be the last one in the room to get the message but I am catching up. Yesterday, for the first time in months, I went to the grocery store. Earlier I registered with the online shopping service at HyVee grocery store in Belton, MO. I learned how to navigate the shopping software and ordered resupply for my pantry. I used the search bar to find items, picked the date and time I wanted to pick it up, placed the order and then wait. On my chosen date, at the appointed hour, I received a text message. My stuff was ready. So I drove to the store, parked in the numbered spaces near the pharmacy entrance, called the number they provided. Soon a young dude with a face mask brings a cart with my order, puts it in the back of my truck, shows me the receipt and tucks it inside one of the paper bags. When I got home, everything I ordered was there. Due to a few sale prices, my total was less than I had been quoted. 

My truck needs an oil change. New Normal: make an appointment, same place, same people but I’ll take a lawn chair, park in the lot, call the manager and tell him my keys are in the truck. They will do the service wearing rubber gloves and mask while I sit in the shade outside. He will call me back with the amount, I’ll write a cheque, hand it through the door and I’ll wipe everything down before I drive home. Even outside, I’ll keep my mask in place. New Normal. 

My coffee group has begun to meet again. Our old meet up, Paneras, is open but too confined for distancing so my amigos bring their coffee and a lawn chair to a public park where we can distance in the shade or the sunshine, whichever feels better. I went to a lunch gathering with them a few days ago. The group is serious about distancing. Folks who came late and wanted to squeeze in to a space appropriate for the Old Normal were rebuffed summarily and sent off to wide open space. Outside, with a breeze you still distance; our resident expert on nearly everything (he really is well read, well versed but sometimes a little overbearing) informed us that under those conditions you don’t need the mask. He took his off but the rest of us wore ours. If you have something to offer you may need to shout or repeat it but we’ve been  alone so much, it feels like a bonus. 

The New Normal is just what they said it would be. The experts have a much better grip on how the virus works now, what we need to be concerned with and what not, and there is a little wiggle room after all. But the rule hasn’t changed; wear a mask, wash your hands and distance. Don’t assume anything other than, everyone is a potential virus bomb. Like with guns, treat them all as if they are loaded. 

I have a couple of standing invitations to come-hangout at distance. One of these days I’ll do more of that. Early evening is the time when I feel most isolated. It’s when I want to be human, socialize, make eye contact. Television only moves the bubble so far. I try to sympathize with network programmers; they are about out of timely entertainment. Old movies are sandwiched in between commercials; you get a 7 minute sales pitch for a pharmaceutical drug that can cure something but it may also kill you if you have any of a dozen common conditions. Just when you think they are returning to the old Patrick Swayze movie they reboot with Joe Namath or Tom Selleck pitching unnecessary insurance or reverse mortgages. I play a lot of solitaire and mahjong. I’m almost backed into the corner where I have to choose between Mayberry RFD and Hogan’s Heroes. Ron Howard is 66 years old now but Opie Taylor will be a kid with a fishing pole forever. 

DEAR DIARY: DAY 80

One of my favorite quotes comes from Joseph Campbell. His lifework elevated Myth and mythology from ancient fables to include modern day allegory. He said, “Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows but we can choose to live in joy.”  His words rang true with a clear eyed view of man's mortal journey. Campbell was telling us to take the high road when sorrows prevail. You only live once and all you can put your hands on is the here & now. My journey has been a rational unfolding where sorrows were either small or far removed. Buying into his rhetoric was just that. With great timing, good fortune, sufficient diligence and White Privilege my life story has been a situation comedy with a happy ending. I’ve never had to endure grim sorrows that that rain down everywhere except for where I am at the time. 

I could always dodge the weight of a sorrowful world. Maybe I’m too old now. Over time there must be a cumulative effect; what was just, ‘that’s too bad’ at the time gains weight and a deeper meaning. The result is deferred sorrow. The horrors of war and our collective inhumanity to each other either compounds with age or it makes you go numb. In the old days I never saw sorrow coming and when it washed over people like spring floods across bean fields all I could do was move my feet and wonder, ‘. . . what is this about?’. But this one, I see it coming. 

It took a while for ‘Pandemic’ to register but it did. No safe place on the planet. I will have to hibernate for the next year. Mankind is just begun to suffer a large dose of sorrow. Then, just as Americans are trying to find the handle, another unarmed black man dies, on film, of police brutality. This sorrow on top of the other was too much and now we’ve regressed back to burning, throwing bricks, breaking glass, tear gas, rubber bullets, and billy clubs. I knew it would come back around someday but I wasn’t ready again. I fear. I never had the foresight to do that before. All I can do is stay home and avoid the virus but I’m afraid for so many poor people of color. It seems like a Catch-22. If the virus doesn’t get you the police will.

If you put good people in a corrupted culture, they will either assimilate or be rejected. In order to survive and advance a policeman can not push back against bad policy and practice. After the first Gulf War in 1990, police officers who served with the National Guard returned to their beats with aggressive, military, warrior attitudes. Waging war on the bad guys was addictive. Not that racism wasn’t already flourishing in police ranks but it began to surface with tacit approval. Over 30 years, police departments have morphed into military units with an us vs. them sensibility. White citizens get the benefit of doubt but law enforcement's fundamental priority is to have their way, if not by intimidation then by force, not unlike chivalry among knights in the middle ages. 

Since emancipation, police departments realized the new dilemma, how to keep blacks contained? How do we make them conform to what we think is their rightful place? Not just the South; there was little or no tolerance for them in the North either. 160 years later, unarmed black men and women are still dying at the hands of white policemen. When challenged, authorities do what every smart lawyer does; blame the victim, make token gestures and resume the injustice. 

White privilege has been so comfortable for so long we tend to see that norm as a God given right. When you’ve enjoyed privilege all of your life, then you have to live with a just and fair share of equality it feels like you are being punished. That is where we are. I fear for my country. I fear for white men and women who champion brutal police and condemn people of color for their pigment and a subculture they were funneled into like cattle at the slaughter house. I don’t know what I would do if I were black. I’ve never had to live with this  kind of deep, wide sorrow. Leadership in Government is a myth. Their most important concerns are getting reelected, from the White House down to local mayors and police chiefs. Joseph Campbell is telling me to participate joyfully because it’s all there is. My brain tells me that he is correct but my gut doesn’t want to go in harm’s way just yet. White privilege; easy to hate but hard to let go. 

DEAR DIARY: DAY 74

I’m having a deja vu moment. I watched a movie last night, one I’ve revisited often; can’t say how many times. But it must have been removed long enough that I forgot how a movie can pull you in and how invested you can get with reflections and feelings. The characters and the plot touch enough buttons that you identify at several levels. This was that movie and I had forgotten. So I think I remember writing about this at one time or another but it feels new again. 

The story revolves around ‘Seabiscuit’ a famous racehorse but the story itself is about the human condition. Through the 1920’s and the Great Depression people, even rich people, they struggled with the cards they had been dealt and leaned on each other out of mutual need. In the end, the horse rises to save the day. In short summary, the hook line for the whole movie was introduced early in the plot by the trainer, in defense of the horse. “You don’t throw a whole life away just because he’s banged up a little.” Near the end of the movie the owner resorts to the same line in defense of the jockey. Over and over I got the message, we are all broken toys and we need each other. 

This morning, as my coffee maker began its bubbly, burping I listened to the news. In Minneapolis, MN, in the midst of pandemic, another unarmed black man died in police custody. A white officer had pinned his neck to the ground with his knee for over 7 minutes before the man died. Several days later, demonstrations continue to ferment with violence, looting and burning buildings. More deja vu, race riots from the 1960’s. Not just Minnesota, smoke was rising from coast to coast, north and south. 

Mayors and civic leaders plead for restraint and due process while protestors rightfully question: How far has restraint and due process gotten us in the last 20 years? Civic leaders note, this is not protest. It is nothing less than violent, criminal activity against businesses and citizens that had nothing to do with the killing. I heard black religious leaders taking that position and tended agreed at first but then it started to ring of hypocrisy.

The problem with race relations and police tactics is not that minorities make bad decisions or that there are a few bad apples in the power grid. It is not about individuals rather, it conforms to a racial, cultural pattern of privilege and discrimination that has been systematically ingrained. We of the white race have great difficulty dealing with the “beam in our own eye” (Jesus’ sermon on the mount). It feels like a universal constant that prevails on the merit of its own hyperbole. Once upon a time, I think I was in college; someone I respected and admired shared his long suffering, hard earned wisdom. He said, “There are three corrupt institutions in this country that hide behind a thin veil of noble pretense. There is the legal system from the Congress to the Supreme Court down to local law enforcement. Then, there are banks and insurance companies. They are hand holding, kissing cousins. All three entities are predicated on and committed to advancing and preserving the status quo.” In simple language that means, power and wealth are interchangeable and should remain in the hands of the rich and powerful. . . if God didn’t want them in charge he would not have put them there. There need be a vertical hierarchy that allows for limited mobility, for a privileged few. Anybody can rise but not everybody. In order to have winners, there must be losers. It is incumbent on the power class to manipulate the culture to their own advantage. The underclass provides a pool of semi-slave, beast of burden resources to be spent in the pursuit of profit. In any case, the military doesn’t flinch in the clear eyed truth. Rank has its privilege. 

I am not an expert on anything but I do know something about ghetto culture and white privilege. My people survived the Great Depression. We rose along with millions of other WW2 people from sharecroppers to home owners. But more than the good timing and hard work, we were white Christians, in the right place at the right time. That is so obvious in my experience but so unthinkable for most of my peers; it boggles my mind.  

So, in less than 12 hours I’ve been down memory lane with mankind’s truly noble story (Seabiscuit) and been jerked back to denial and hypocrisy (America’s appetite for racist classism.) As much as we do need each other it is nigh impossible to self diagnose the curse we’ve come to depend on. I’ve been sheltered and blessed with white/male/christian privilege all my life. Whatever my input, it was necessary but my station in life has been less about me and more about the path I was on. George Floyd is dead today and people of color everywhere are pissed. They are not going to get over it. You can’t flourish in a system that preys on the underclass (poor people of color) and think they will get over it just because they did last time. Treyvon Martin is still dead and his murderer is free but it is old news. But black people have not forgotten. Every time the law is written to protect law enforcement (status quo) first suspects can be reduced to animals, unarmed people of color will be killed as a matter of protocol and their people are going to set things on fire. Flourishing at the expense of the underclass; that is another story by itself and way-too much for me to take on by myself. 

DEAR DIARY; DAY 65

Writing about one’s thoughts and feelings while a pandemic is sweeping the planet is a challenge. In fact, it is more about keeping busy and staying sane. At first I avoided news, it was all bad. I listened to music and watched reruns on television. By now we understand that pandemics are not new and that civilization has weathered the storm every time. The Black Death came and went in the 14th century with a death toll that stagers the imagination. Covid-19 kills a small percentage compared to the Bubonic Plague but in the 21st century, the 3rd largest nation, even a small percentage is a really big number. The virus is new, no history so no head start on the learning curve. 

So how does it make me feel? Anxious is one feeling I’ve been experiencing. There is no fix yet, won’t be for a long time. No cure, no safe place to hide; how would you feel if you knew there were thousands of assassins out there who want nothing more than to take you out? Not just me, the virus needs people to replicate and anybody will do. So we learn fast, people carry the virus that can jump from one person to another on a sneeze or a cough or even a loud shout. We take our chances every time we get in a car but you can see cars coming. Wash your hands, don’t touch your face, wear a mask and keep a distance. The new normal is, anxiety and fear can pop up without warning. 

I feel sad. Civilization, my culture has taken a big hit. American Exceptionalism is a popular myth that elevates us above other nations in terms of morality, creativity, leadership and industry. We have prospered and we are quick to sing our own praise. I have no qualms with praise but likewise, we conquered a pristine continent and its people, then replicated our own civilization very much the same way a virus takes over its unsuspecting host. Still, it is my culture and we are unprepared to compete with pandemic. We have a powerful military and an economic infrastructure that works as long as everything conforms to an established paradigm. But a wild card in the deck changes the rules. So much for international supply lines and industrialized agriculture. We are hurting and I’m not the only one afraid it will get worse before it gets better. 

My thoughts are scattered. Believers have Faith to fall back on but even in my righteous period, my doubts superseded Belief. If I were faithful I’m sure I would feel better but it’s not something you can turn on and off. I am sequestered in my home with a big yard and a fence. As long as I can keep that buffer between me and other people I don’t have to worry about the virus. It doesn’t survive very well outside living tissue. 

I think about how life, how American Exceptionalism has dealt me good cards, how I enjoy the benefits of white privilege and of male privilege. Before the pandemic I worked with a volunteer organization that fed the homeless. Our clients came in all colors, all genders but not many old, white men. Those that I met were veterans who had been discarded by the system. I saw me in their faces. All it takes is one wrong place at a bad time and you no longer have a life; it has you. Those people are still out there, hungry, many hopeless, trying to make it through another day. Now they have pandemic to contend with. I think about gratitude. I think about how arrogant it is to think you can judge others when you don’t know what’s what. Who deserves privilege and who does not? After all, by definition Privilege is unmerited. If it’s earned it isn’t a privilege. 

This pandemic will unfold. Someday its survivors will look back on it with understanding that hasn’t been born yet. A day at a time sounds corny and dated but it still works.

DEAR DIARY: DAY 58

Day 58: My favorite radio station is one of several public venues that affiliate with NPR, 90.9 The Bridge. It offers an all music format that explores all forms and styles. The local DJ’s make up the play list and do live or prerecorded interviews with artists who are in town to help promote their concert schedules. If the music doesn’t suit me I can always play something from my I Tunes library. This morning they read my mind, knew what would please me. 

Kansas City’s big time NPR station is trying to keep us informed with stories and reporting on the virus and with what leadership either is or isn’t doing. In either case, a little bit goes a long way and to spend much time with them is a lose-lose, self inflicted wound. There is no good news other than we woke up this morning. So music that soothes the weary soul is welcome. 

I only make coffee a couple of times a week. Today was one of those days and everything felt a little less stressed. The Bridge was playing story songs, like you get with song writers playing their own stuff in small venues. The name, Margaret Glaspy was new to me but her song put me at ease. “Stay With Me” pretty much fit the pandemic feel. You don’t know what will happen but here in the moment, you do what you can. I listened, then got on You Tube and listened to it again. Feeling good about my discovery; I can download her song for $1.29 and add it to one of my many play lists. At breakfast’s end I was glad that with all of the bad news I had skipped over, I had reason to feel no so bad.

In quarantine I discovered, not a surprise but still noteworthy, how much comfort I take from the birds that frequent my feeders. Just outside the kitchen window I have two peanut feeders, two suet cages and a squirrel-proof sunflower seed feeder. I require food but it ain’t what it once was. What makes food wonderful now is the company you keep in the process. Otherwise it’s just fuel. I find my woodpeckers, titmice, finches and cardinals to be wonderful breakfast companions. 

For several days I’ve been fretting my short supply of bird seed. If I don’t set the table, they don’t come around. Today I called the local supplier; asked if I could transact business without coming inside the store. I made my order over the phone, like online grocery shopping and he filled it. At the loading dock I slid the cheque in a crack between the glass and the window frame while he loaded my bird food into the back of my pick up. No contact, not even close. I’ll leave the stuff in the back of the truck for a few days to be sure any contamination has dissipated. Come the weekend I’ll reload the feeders. I would love to be sharing coffee and a scone with friends at Panera’s. Those days are only a few months past but our coffee klatches are now virtual and online. I don’t think they can be recreated, not for a long time. Our Zoom get-togethers are the best we can do and I’m happy to get that feed back. I haven’t touched another human or held a door open or shared coffee and cookies over a friend’s birthday since February. I’ll just have to make do withy my birds. 

DEAR DIARY: DAY 54

Dear Diary; day 54. The grim reality of Covid-19 is beginning to sink in. After three months we realize that we are still in the early phase of global pandemic. Time has a way of dulling memory and minimizing things that hurt us and have passed. Look forward  to possibility rather than dwell in the wreckage of that other memory. “We’re going to whip this thing soon and come back better than before. Trust me!” DT doesn’t have to make it through the pandemic. All he cares about is winning in November. In 1918 the Spanish Flu did pretty much everything that Covid-19 has the potential to do. It took two years to run its course. The big difference as I see it is that we have a century’s worth of new knowledge and technology that they didn’t have. Still, we were unprepared and will be playing catch up until the window closes.

Even though we know the demographics of who is at higher risk, we don’t know about the long term aftermath of the infection. If only 5% of those infected die immediately, there is no way to know how the other 95% will fare over time. Mother Nature would say, "The gene pool needs stirring." As this story unfolds we become characters in the plot with no say in the script. 

I write to understand more so than to be understood. I am not preaching, just trying to get my head around this and to process my feelings. I can manipulate any rational approach but feelings have always overruled logic. My influence on my own feelings is indirect, the result of collective experience and what I make of it. I can mitigate some of it with brain-washing but that result is temporary and loses potency over time. In the end, the brain’s Amygdala, ’Fight/Flight’ makes the call when fear and anxiety are involved. 

As long as I stay busy I manage. But under house arrest, living alone, it’s easy to default and lose your way. Keeping social (physical) distance makes it hard to acquire things like garden plants and tools. If I want to grow green things this year I’ll have to solve that riddle soon. My wood shop is at hand and I’m sure it will turn to glue and sawdust rather than fret over what I can’t control. I remember when I planned next week and next month but getting through the day is about all I can handle in the  present. 

I’ve never been a flag-waving patriot. From my Army days I could neither ignore nor justify the fractious, arrogant side of nationalism and its self righteous exploitation of the underclass. What passes for freedom is a cleverly distorted matrix of privilege and license. Still, as Coronavirus demonstrates, nature does not discriminate. I feel sad and helpless as the whole world, as my country is reeling from this storm. Most will survive but nobody is immune. I never identified as an old man but I feel all of it now. All at once I’m at a new beginning and I hadn’t planned for that, it is scary. One thing that hasn’t changed with me is the belief: we do spectacular things when viewed through our own gilded lens but baboons would make the same claim if they had a few more neurons and language. Our leaders and wanna be leaders are more concerned with coming out on the other side with more power and wealth than they are about what happens to ordinary citizens. What happens to people who don’t contribute to their campaigns doesn’t matter. Reminds me of, Lord Of The Rings. Frodo, where are you when we need you?

DEAR DIARY

April 28, day 42 of strict social (physical) distancing for me. I have a good network of friends and family. We connect by telephone and internet regularly and waving to strangers has even filled a little niche in the need to be human. But the past few weeks have been difficult. Covid-19 is like a snake with two heads. It kills people who have been weakened by compromised health or old age. My health is sound enough but there is noting I can do about my age. On the other end, the civil construct that we take for granted, fresh water, electricity, grocery stores, jobs, and an economy that is tailored to meet our needs; it slows to a crawl. In both cases, being human takes on risks that we never prepared for. So I am anxious by way of the risk for infection and equally, I fret over precarious times. 

When you need to know something and don’t know what it is that you don’t know, it’s easy to be caught unawares. How do you plan for a never-before, not a clue emergency? I don’t think you can. With good luck and good instincts, versatility and cooperation can be godsends. But all of our invention and smarts seem to be focused 0n politics. Pandemics are not new but with short memories, we think we think and the survivors have to reinvent a new normal. Who knows what that will look like? 

May 3, 2020:day 47. I went to virtual church today. My internet connection at the house is so weak it fails about every 10 minutes and it can take another 10 to get it back. So I transfer everything to the truck cab and drive up to the shopping center parking lot. I get 3 bars there and did the whole service with no interruptions. The sermon was about ‘Grace’. Christians have some pretty narrow beliefs when it comes to Grace but the whole idea is older than Jesus and it’s incorporated by nearly every religion. Unitarians have no trouble getting their heads and arms around Grace. Grace, by definition is an unexpected gift. It doesn’t have to be about salvation, it doesn’t need a god. Today our Intern Minister did a nice job with it. The fundamental premiss for the 15 minute oratory was; the only appropriate response to an act of Grace is, Gratitude. Then, Gratitude expressed with action gives birth to a new form of Grace. It’s sort of like paying it forward. I liked it. Sitting in the truck with towels draped over the window and sun visor to keep glare off the screen and out of my eyes; I must have been a weird sight but it was a big parking lot, far away from the few stores that were open. I don’t think anybody noticed. 

Out of the need to create a ‘Tribal’ sense of identity, religion relies on all forms of ritual and liturgy. Stand up together, sing together, responsive reading together, Lord’s Prayer together, sit down together, kneel together; you get the picture. Absolute conformity to fundamental ritual does that. Even Unitarians use ritual and liturgy. In every service we recite our covenant: “Good will is the spirit of this church and service is its law. This is our great covenant, to dwell together in peace, to seek the truth in love and to help one another.” Isolated in my truck, in a deserted parking lot, we recited our covenant together and I felt the connection with over a hundred other Unitarians, scattered around the city, attending virtual church. I know exactly how, “Hail Mary full of grace” centers Catholics and how it bridges the space between them. I’ll not convert but then, neither will I insult their intelligence or snub their traditions.