PANDEMIC DIARY: DAY 110

Good fortune would have it, PBS has a large library of documentary films. Even if you’ve seen one, watching it again and maybe even again can be a pleasure. For the past few Friday nights Public Broadcasting is featuring the 6 episode series of a Ken Burns Special, The National Parks. Last night was #4 spanning 1920-1933. What makes Burns’ work special is the way he tells the story, with photos and film clips from the period, overlaid with vignette narratives by famous personalities with easily recognized voices. Present day experts make cameo appearances, setting the stage for what comes next: storytelling at its best. 

I loved it. No commercials, just long fades with transitions to the next part of the story. I identified with people camping at roadside with their Model T cars and improvised tents, all beneath the backdrop of Half Dome and Yosemite Valley. Film quality was poor but feel for the experience was razor keen. In 1989 when everybody in the family had a job for the summer except my 15-almost-16 daughter, we threw our bikes and sleeping bags into the truck and headed west. In Yosemite Valley we sat on the same spot where the cameraman had taken the 1930 film, staring in awe at Half Dome. Nobody camping on the side of the road in ’89 but I recognize the spot, I had been there. 

Several days before that we arrived at Grand Canyon’s East Entrance. Driving west, you are near enough the rim to know exactly where it is with glimpses of wide open space but trees and terrain spoil the view. We drove past the first turnout before we knew what it was but not the next; Grandview Overlook. From the parking area you could see across to the north rim but not into the canyon itself.  As we walked closer to the edge our eyes must have been big as saucers. Each step teased our senses. Imagine a darkened theater as the lights begin to come up, the orchestra starts to play and the tension builds. With perfect timing you get the full effect of music, costumes, lighting, actors and you forget to breathe. In our first unobstructed, panoramic view of the Grande, I forgot to breathe. After a very long first impression we looked each other full eye to eye. Those moments come few and far between. Be with someone you love, share an experience that is too big, too powerful to process, same place in time and communicate instinctively, without words. Sharing that link compounds the effect exponentially; a very special, particular moment I’ll never forget. 

Every time I see the Grande now I get slack-jawed, it’s always awesome but you only get one, first time. In Burns’ black & white photos and film clips I recognized rock formations and river scenes. I’ve gone back to G.C. several times, more than several times. In 2015 the same daughter and I floated 8 days, down the river. The experience from the bottom looking up is even more grand than from the top. It helps that you spend a week or more sleeping on sandy beaches, breaching rapids that overflow the boat, hiking narrow ledges and slot canyons. In ‘1992, for a class at Northern Arizona University, we spent 11 days on the river from Lee’s Ferry to Lake Mead. The next spring my daughter graduated university and I promised a boat ride for her graduation present. Twenty two years later we took a big hit at Badger Creek, the first of over 80 big water rapids we would encounter. Water temp was 48 degrees. A great object lesson about keeping promises.  

When the PBS special spoke of basement rocks, nearly two billion years old, the camera panned across a cliff face and the story moved on as well. But I got up from my chair and opened the curio case where I keep my treasures. From a doily on the 2nd shelf I picked up two rocks, each sized to fit easily in a closed hand. The black one, Vishnu Schist dates out a little over 1.7 billion years. The pinkish/tan one, Zoroaster Granite probably a little older than the schist. While the program shifted to another National Park, I cradled them in the palm of my hand and pommeled them like a craps-shooter with his dice. My basement rocks have their own long story and now I'm just a footnote but a footnote in a Grande story is just that, Grnade. I picked them up in a place where you are not supposed to take souvenirs. At the time, everybody had rocks in their pockets, nobody cared. I don’t think anybody cares now; they are not coming to take them back. 

National Parks; America’s Best Idea. Those are Ken Burns words and I echo them. Right now, with Covis-19, enough to scare the B-Jesus out of any sane human I have begun thinking about what comes next. In the first month I worried, would I survive, couldn’t imagine anything beyond the moment and the next day. Anticipating the next year or the next adventure felt presumptuous but I’m getting over that. I need something to look forward to and I’m thinking it will include National Parks. I would like to watch the sun set again from Grand Canyon’s Desert View watchtower, to hike Point Reyes National Seashore and Muir Woods again. I’ve stalked the ghosts at Little Bighorn Battlefield and pondered Custer’s folly there and I need to go back. I’ve never been to the Dry Tortugas or Sequoia but with a little luck I may still have time. When that day comes I need a reason to be. Herding squirrels in my back yard is necessary now but there has to be more. My days of traveling alone are probably over but I’ve already begun looking for the right companion. 

PANDEMIC DIARY: DAY 108

This year, 2020; it started like so many others but by March it had derailed into a train wreck. First it was Covid-19, then Black Lives Matter and police brutality created a social firestorm. For the first time in my memory, there was no safe place to go, to be and you couldn’t count on the police to protect the people. With the most powerful military arsenal ever, with riches beyond imagination we faced a physical threat that we can neither explode nor buy off. There is no way to get around pandemic. The only way is through it and you have to be disciplined as people and as a nation. Populous hyperbole and partisan rhetoric seem to satisfy simple, selfish sheeple but bullshit by any other name . . . 

For the first time in my memory the ugly underbelly of White Privilege revealed itself so clearly it couldn’t be ignored, couldn’t be denied, couldn’t be defended. If you stack the cards in favor of any group, it means the cards are stacked against everybody else. People of color and poor people in general have been living under that yoke forever. It serves the status quo, it is good for business. It has been that way for so long you take it for granted, you learn not to bite the hand that feeds you. All white people benefit from White Privilege. It’s like daylight at dawn; it covers white people wherever they are. But the sun never comes up on people of color. 

So now, in response to this crisis the current strategy from our high command is denial. Racism is bad, law and order is good and the pandemic has been called off. Everything is fine now; go back to work, go play golf, life is good. Be glad America is great again. 

The date, July 4: our birthday. This nation celebrates 244 years of both great and sullied history. What kind of patriot are you? Are you like a child who idolizes the parent: my dad can whip your dad and my dad can do no wrong! So when my parent does do wrong I rationalize that it was a necessity under the conditions and rewrite the book of ethics. Or, it can be like the parent who holds the child accountable. “Do no harm; fix or replace whatever you break.” Nobody is perfect but the “Do no harm” thing feels better than “My dad can whip yours.” Can I love my country, can I celebrate its noble ideals and the virtue of good deeds and still hold it accountable? If I can mot do that then patriotism is simply the glory of ill gotten gain and not getting caught.

Happy Birthday U.S.A. We need to feel good, at least feel better about something. That something should be a universal plus for every American. It’s not us versus them, it’s just us. What we celebrate should reassure every human everywhere that America is moving in a more humane, a more generous, a more forgiving direction. That message has been received loud and clear. Playground bullies and self righteous bigots understand my drift and they don’t like it at all. Addiction to privilege is so deeply rooted it has been redefined. Now we should think of it as, “Divine Intervention” and “Inalienable Rights”. It works so well, God must have ordained it. In their scheme, what is more American than exercising my Liberty to exploit your weakness? What I’m asking for, what I’m hoping for won’t happen in my lifetime. I’m too old and progress is slow; one funeral at a time. But I have today. It’s all I have. I’m still breathing and food still tastes good. I’m celebrating 244 years of good and evil. We are human beings after all, we do the best we can; and that’s not bad for high functioning monkeys. 

PANDEMIC DIARY: DAY 106

As much as our leaders beat the drum for economic recovery and return to normal, the message I keep getting from the credible, health care community is, “Stay Home!” Covid-19 is still raging out of control. From the people who actually know best, consensus is, things will get much worse before they get better. Ironically, the people who know best have no authority. All I can do is speak for myself and from that point of reference, leadership in American government is in short supply. 

Three stories come to mind. The first is about a man who wants to catch a monkey but doesn’t know how. So he hires a monkey trapper. They go into the jungle with only a  short rope, a 2 gallon pickle jar and a banana. He ties the jar to a tree, puts the banana in the jar and they hide in the bush. Soon, a monkey comes along, sees the banana and reaches in to grab the food. The neck of the jar is just big enough for the monkey to slip a hand inside. When it grabs the banana it makes a full fist and can not get it back through the narrow neck. So the dilemma is, let go the banana and escape or hang on and be captured. While the monkey is trying to force a solution that secures both the banana and freedom, the monkey trapper unties the rope from the tree and collars the now captive monkey. Governors DeSantis of Florida and Abbott of Texas look a lot like monkeys on the end of a rope with fists clinched inside a pickle jar.

A story from Japan: A small village sits on the seashore. Behind the village a steep cliff rises up to the heights, covered with terraces and rice paddies. Fishermen go out fishing while gardeners tend to the rice. In the predawn a man climbs up the cliff to watch the sun rise. Far out on the horizon he sees a great tsunami wave headed for the shore. If he doesn’t do something to warn the sleeping village they will either be drowned or washed out to sea. Too far to call out, shouting an alarm would be fruitless. All he had was a lantern. So he made a torch of dry grass and set fire to the rice. Soon the whole rice crop, all of the rice paddies were blazing. Someone in the village smelled smoke and everyone rushed up the cliff to put the fire out. At first the people were angry over the loss of their rice crop but then they looked at the flooding in the village. Nobody drowned or washed out to sea. The boats were trashed but there was enough seed to plant again and boats could be replaced. The tsunami had been a disaster but they had survived. There is a moral  in there somewhere.

Last, Damocles was a mythical king who dreamt the same nightmare every night. There was a great sword dangling over his head, held there by a thread. If it broke, he would be skewered like a chicken on a pike. He realized the dream was an allusion to the imminent and ever-present peril faced by those in positions of power. Something addictive about leadership and power; you don’t want to give it up. In good times, leadership is easy enough but if you fail when times turn against your people; like a chicken on a pike. You get kicked to the curb and a new pretender takes your place.

After four months of pandemic I have an opinion, maybe biased but aren’t they all! I think I think; a combination of unique conditions have collided and a new kind of wisdom will be required. Collectively, humankind can regress to tribal hierarchy, of us versus them and we know how that narrow, self service unfolds. Or, we can push into an unclear future with a revolutionary sense of common cause. Not mythical religion or greedy economics but something really new. I don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t know what that would look like and I don’t think anybody else does either. But we have a well documented legacy of how paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and god-like technology have reduced us to selfish monkeys with our fists trapped inside a jar. Nothing is static, everything changes. 

The last line of our Pledge of Allegiance, “. . . with Liberty and Justice for all.” Maybe the popular (White Privilege) perception of Liberty and Justice needs a face lift. In the land of the free and the home of the brave, that liberty and justice ring of devious duplicity no less than one of our leader’s tweets. “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is fairest of us all!” 

I see this has turned into a rant. I usually try not to go there but sometimes you need to shake out the dirty laundry and make some noise. I missed out on the demonstrations but I did cut up some downed branches and burn them in the chiminea. 

PANDEMIC DIARY: DAY 100

My bike isn’t a bike at all, actually a recumbent trike. It has three wheels, two in front and the drive wheel behind the seat. Still a long history with bicycles and I call everything that moves under pedal power a bike. My normal is to ride for an hour first thing in the morning, about 10 miles of flat, smooth streets in my neighborhood, never straying more than 5 blocks from my house. That makes me an authority on every crack, bump and undulation along the route. There is one short descent where I roll out for a couple of hundred feet followed by a climb where I have to gear down to regain the lost elevation. The work is probably more important now than ever before. Good cardiovascular exercise is critical to both my physical well being and a balanced psyche. After 9:00 a.m. my day turns pretty much sedentary. With pandemic forecast through the next year I don’t know what I’ll do come cold weather; maybe buy a stationary exercise bike. 

I take breakfast after my ride on the patio if I’m cooking on the grill or cold cereal inside. Cereal isn’t tasty as eggs and sausage but I can watch the bird feeders from the kitchen window. Today my favorite customers were intimidated by starlings on the peanut feeder and four, young sibling squirrels. They have to work long and hard for a sunflower seed but they monopolize the feeder and keep the finches away. So I watch their tactics and theorize how I can squirrel-proof the feeder. I’ll be working on that later. Squirrels have a reputation, well deserved no less, for being clever if not shrewd. I don’t think so; relentless is a better word for their quest for food. They are rodents, tree rats with gnawing teeth that never stop growing. That’s why they can chew holes in metal bird feeders and seemingly indestructible obstacles. They don’t have anything better to do. 

Starlings and squirrels are just trying to earn a living; I know that. They can’t help it that DNA only knows one tune. They are simply replicating links in a long chain; in that regard, not that different than humans. The fact that I like titmice and woodpeckers is about me and I lure them to my patio with their favorite food. But it also attracts critters that I didn’t invite. Extending privilege to some and not others doesn’t make me a racist when it applies to different species. Still it is what it is, my intentions are selective and exclusively targeted. I don’t wish starlings or squirrels harm, just stacking the cards so my favorites don’t have to work so hard. The others are on their own but enforcing my rules is impossible. Between people, the privilege paradigm discriminates against people we don’t identify with, it goes tribal in a heartbeat and you get racism, Nationalism or both. 

Nature instills in us a preference to keep company and support of our own kind; not just other people, people who look and behave the same as us. But evolution has equipped us with a revolutionary tool, the cerebral cortex. Squirrels have them too but too small to draw comparisons. Our cortex allows us to be subjective, to correlate unrelated bits of information and make predictions. It’s like writing. If you have enough pages you can write a very long story with multiple plots and the human cerebral cortex has more pages than we can count. But often, most often, we default to the old, prehistoric, instinctive brain where fight & flight call the shots. In that mode we don’t care for nuance nor do we pause to weight the options. Privilege is hardwired into the old brain. That paleolithic legacy began with bonds between blood relatives and can extend to others in our tribe. Still we can override the reflex, embracing and rewarding strangers when it makes sense. 

When I began this story I was making the segue from physical exercise to watching birds at the peanut feeder. Now I’m exercising the cerebral cortex, in the teacher-talk mode. But humans are addicted to a conscious preoccupation with self. As far as we know, we are unique among other mammals in that we think about what other people may be thinking. The fact that we think about thinking at all is testament to that cerebral cortex. I doubt any squirrel has ever pondered the significance of “Why?” Still, my big brain is tasked with making my sunflower seed feeder squirrel proof.  

In the current state of pandemic I think a lot about what my countrymen are thinking about. All around me people are exploiting privilege, calling it “Liberty” as if it makes us immune to the virus. Americans are subdivided into artificial, ideological tribes where feeling good in the moment is preferable to addressing risky behavior and bad news looming on the horizon. This is day 100 and it feels like the first mile of a marathon. 

DEAR DIARY: DAY 94

I’ve been picking away at my guitar, making recognizable noise and I’ve been singing. The singing is slow and weak but I get to say words out loud and there is a story there if I make it thru the last verse. I go long stretches without making a sound and like anything else that you want to manage; use it or lose it. After several repetitions of the song I dial up the volume and reach for a little timbre. 

My song book has been pared down to about 8 or 10 songs that sound good no matter the source. I can read them as poetry and they sound great without the melody. The song I do most, do best is “Wonderful World”. The line I like to vocalize goes, “I hear babies cry and I watch them grow, they’ll learn much more than I’ll ever know.” Then I move on to “Saint James Infirmary Blues”. The louder the better. Seems grimly appropriate during our coronavirus ordeal. A couple of rounds and I thumb ahead to “Summertime, and the living is easy.” I do both St. James & Summertime in the key of Am. I like the Dm chord and it drops in at just the right time in both songs. 

Before I finish, I do a couple of rounds of “Over The Rainbow.” In Wizard of Oz, Dorothy just wanted to get back to Kansas. “Birds fly, over the rainbow, why then oh why can’t I?” I’m not enthralled with Kansas but I identify with being trapped in a strange, other world. I will have sung enough, worked both hands on the guitar and move on to something else but often come back for an encore.

It feels like everyone in my realm has moved on, as if the virus has given us a reprieve but we all know better. It may not kill you but then almost dead with scarred lungs isn't how I want to spend the rest of my 80's. Day 94 and who knows, maybe another 400 days before we get good news. People have to go to work and some would rather risk infection than change their behavior. Politics and public outcry against police brutality compete for front page headlines. Still, I’m too old to be taking chances; so if I don't have to go out it's stay home, wash my hands, wear a mask and keep distance from people. 

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.