If I had a Heart as Big as a New York City Nurse

                In a previous life, I worked as a nurse and a nurse practitioner. I was a crappy nurse. I knew the textbook knowledge, but I could never seem to put together the knowledge in my head with the observations of the person in front of me. And I really lacked the sympathy, empathy, plain caring that makes an excellent nurse.

                So, when I’m listening to nurses and doctors working on the frontlines of the pandemic talk about their experiences, reading their posts on Facebook, seeing the pictures in the news, I find myself tearing up. I’m not an overly emotional person, but listening to the tired voices of these amazing people talk about working round the clock to try to save people, losing patients, and trying to comfort families that couldn’t be there when their loved ones died, I feel like I’m in the presence of human beings who have skills and compassion at a level that I can only imagine.

                In the face of their sacrifice and caring, listening to the protesters in Michigan whose protests blocked access to a hospital is disturbing. Don’t get me wrong, I believe protesting the things we think our government is doing wrong is a cornerstone of a democracy. But our demonstrations, our protests, should never make the work of these incredible health care workers harder. It should never make light of the incredible loss of life we are experiencing in this pandemic. It should never make the grief of those who have lost loved ones worse.

                Normal is gone. Yet, when we come out the other side of this world changing time we will have our work cut out for us to restore our democracy. We will have to address the income inequality and institutional racism that have been exposed during this pandemic. We will have to recognize that the people who kept our world going were not politicians or billionaires, but minimum wage workers working in grocery stores, nurses and doctors working double shifts to offer skilled compassionate care, teachers learning on the fly how to teach remotely. We will have to realize that we need a single payer health care system so that everyone can afford health care without going bankrupt.

                Before that though, right now, in the midst of the pandemic, what we need is compassion for others. We need to be more concerned about the needs of others, than our own wants and desires.

Earth Day Watch

It's been 50 years since the first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970.  That's still a week or so off, but I wanted to post a few facts relating to the current environment in this country.

(All notes are from the Jan./Feb. 2020 issue of "Sierra" magazine)

"There are nearly 3 billion few birds today in North America than there were in 1970."

"An analysis of seafloor mud off the shore of Santa Barbara reveals that between 1945 and 2009, plastic levels in the ocean doubled every 15 years."

"The Trump administration moves to exempt Alaska's Tongass National Forest from road-building rules, opening the door to logging on 165,000 acres of old-growth forest."

And some good news...

"Next year, Texas will produce more electricity from wind than from coal."

"Almost two-thirds of Americans now believe that climate change is either a crisis or a serious problem."

Let's sincerely hope that's true, because we need as many Americans as possible to stand up for the land we share.

Six Mergansers

Six male mergansers swim on the river. The sight of Ben and I walking by causes them to take to the air. Their webbed-feet skim along the water, as they fly downstream. The brilliant white of their bodies in stark contrast to the deep dark river. 

I hear the wild chattering call of a belted kingfisher. Spy its steel blue feathers in a barren willow tree. The first of the season. Earlier than usual this year.  

As we approach Route 13, the roar of cars causes Ben to sit and drop the beer can he is carrying. This is our routine. He picks up beer cans as we walk to take home and turn in for a deposit. He stops and sits when a car comes toward us, to be rewarded with a dog biscuit. Biscuits paid for by the cans he has collected. But no car is turning down the road. It takes a while to convince Ben that sitting for imaginary cars is only rewarded with imaginary biscuits. 

On the way home a huge dark bird flies low overhead. Too big for a hawk, it lacks the silhouette of a vulture. There is no telltale white head or tail glistening in the sun. Not an eagle then, unless maybe it’s a juvenile.  

In the midst of a pandemic, it is spring as usual for the mergansers, kingfishers, eagles. Only we have been sent to our rooms by Mother Nature. 

Measuring Economic Well-being

A therapist once told me I catastrophized everything. When something bad or unpleasant happens, my mind runs ahead to the worst-case scenario. Bad day at work? I'm going to be fired, never work again, be homeless and on the streets in the matter of a year. Bruce is late from work? Surely, he's been in a car accident. Probably is dead. I've got his funeral planned and am figuring out how I'll be able to make ends meet without him about the time he pulls in the driveway. The therapist, of course, thought this was a bad thing. I might be happier if I could learn to not assume the worst. To me though it's just good planning. Preparing myself for the inevitable bad things that will eventually come down the road. Because, in the midst of a pandemic, it's obvious that bad things do inevitably come down the road. 

The problem is that despite all the catastrophes I’ve been preparing for, a pandemic wasn't on my radar. It never is. I plan for conflicts to arise at meetings, getting my arguments and data all in a row. And then the thing that sets off the disagreement is something I never imagined people would have an issue with. Like why on earth when we can fight over raises, are we fighting over what color to paint the walls? 

There is no point to worrying, I realize that at some intellectual level. I can prepare all I want, but life is still going to throw me the zombie apocalypse when I'm planning for how to fix the Democratic party and save democracy. I really didn't see the zombies coming, but maybe they're all related. Democracies die all kinds of way, often because we either aren't reading or thinking, or maybe we're just eating each other’s brains. 

Even if I had been preparing for the pandemic, I still wouldn’t have had the imagination to think we’d be arguing about saving lives versus helping the economy. It would have felt like the choice between raises and paint colors.

Obviously, as a catastrophizer, I'm not one for seeing silver linings. To try to see the "bright" side of a pandemic is probably to be certifiably pathological. But then again, I'm an INTJ, the villains of the Myers Briggs Personality world, so maybe I'm the only one who can say it. Could an economic slowdown, a time out for humanity, have some positive impacts? Might it slow down climate change? Would it force us to change the way we view the economy and measure economic well-being? 

I wonder if this time could be used for changing our understanding of how economies, countries, and people actually live and work in the world. Could we possibly consider that an economy based on continual growth and consumption might not be possible? Could we maybe decide we'd like to measure economic well-being not on the Stock Market, the GDP, or a consumer price index, but rather on all people's and the planet's health, happiness, and well-being? Can we begin to understand that economic well-being cannot be measured in any meaningful way without including peoples’ health, our very survivability? We won’t have an economy if everyone is dead, so let’s get our priorities straight for once. This is our chance to do it.

Freedom In The Time of Corona

It's hard not to think about freedom at a time when so many of us are sequestered in our homes.  Americans love freedom, and to an extent, it's understandable; it's in the very marrow of our country's bones.  But sometimes that freedom makes me feel a bit uneasy, and the current Coronavirus pandemic is one of those times. 

Freedom is only valid insofar as everyone is treated equally, and only if everyone has the same amount of freedom.  For example, I've long felt that the freedom to own firearms is less valid than the freedom to enjoy a life without mass shootings, gunfights in the street, and guns in the home.  The freedom to exploit natural resources is less valid  than the freedom to breathe clean air, protect water and wildlife, and ensure a viable planet for future generations. 

In this week's new and changing world, the freedom to conduct business as usual is less valid than the need to protect our communities from being overwhelmed by COVID-19.  I can only hope that Americans keeps this in mind once the virus starts to recede into our memories.  Sometimes, giving up a little "freedom" is well worth it.  Anyone who has lived through country-wide wartime involvement will know that.  During WWII, it was actually patriotic to give up freedoms to help in the greater war effort.  I hope that's the collective thought that has been spreading in America over the past week or so.  Now we just need to keep that mindset for the long haul.  Freedom is only valuable when everyone's included. 

The New World

I had all these posts I was going to put up last week about the primaries and polls and telling people to vote blue, no matter who. With the coronavirus pandemic though, the world is changing at such mindboggling speed that much of that feels irrelevant. Don’t get me wrong, it matters more than ever, I get that. But maybe right now we are all trying to just figure out today, this moment. It's as if we walked through a veil and woke up in another dimension. The world has shifted and nothing that came before prepared us for this. No previous time seems like a relevant reference. This is the unknown. What we’ve experienced before – HIV, 9-11, SARS, Vietnam, none of those seem as disorienting and unknowable as this time. Coronavirus pandemic of 2020 feels like the precursor to Climate Catastrophe or whatever fascist state Trump is taking us to. 

On Tuesday of last week several universities, including Cornell, announced they were closing after spring break and having students finish the semester online, in order to slow down the spread of the virus. Then on Friday at 2 pm, Cornell administration announced the classes were ending at 5 that day, students had a week to leave, staff had a week to figure out how to work from home. After that only "essential" staff would be allowed on campus. I picked up Bruce from work without him having any idea if he would be classified essential staff or just placed on furlough for a month - maybe longer. 

We stopped to pick up groceries at Aldi's on the way home and found row after row of bare shelves. Only mushrooms and cabbage were left in the produce aisle. There was no bread anywhere. A lone package of chicken thighs and a few steaks were all that was left in the meat counter. Toilet paper was just a distant memory. Oddly enough, there was plenty of brownie mixes - people really have odd priorities when planning for the apocalypse. 

I walked out of the store fully expecting to see a meteor streaking overhead, or zombies shambling toward us. Is this the apocalypse? Are the zombies Trump's supporters? Does the world end by our falling down a rabbit hole and not recognizing any of the things we thought we'd always known? Is everything familiar and yet not at all the same? Where's the Red Queen yelling "off with their heads?" 

I went to work this Monday, thinking I might still have a way to keep the library open and provide people with some reduced form of services. By the evening we were closed, having the library system in conjunction with state mandates make it clear that any services would be detrimental to “flattening the curve.” I’m a worrier, who thinks I can, through worrying, prepare myself for any eventuality and I never imagined this one.

I wonder if this is what the Flu pandemic of 1918 felt like - the end? But still I think this may be different. Then they wouldn't have known it was happening until they were in the midst of it. This we can almost see coming, but we don't fully know what's coming. It's like seeing the water recede from the beach and walking out to where the sea used to be, wondering what is happening. Not realizing that the tsunami is coming. Not knowing that the time to run is almost gone and the wall of water will be upon us before we can reach safety. 

Zombies you can see and zombies you can fight - but a virus is both too small and the pandemic it causes too large to be able to fully comprehend. When my father died, I had cried myself into exhaustion by the day of the funeral. As people gathered in our house after the service, I fell asleep on the couch. When I awoke, the kitchen was still crowded with neighbors and family, holding plates of food as the spoke in hushed tones. I walked out into the living room, weaving my way through of forest of adult bodies. No one noticed me, as I made my way through the crowded floor. I was a beetle scurrying beneath leaf litter, invisible to the towering trees overhead. I worked me way through the house, finally arriving at an empty space by the back door and the world was different, everything had shifted, nothing I’d ever known or experienced before would help navigate this unknown and changed world.

This pandemic feels like that. All my life experiences haven’t prepared me to understand and comprehend this world we now live in. The unknown, the uncertainty is more scary sometimes than something frightening that is right in front of you. And not to scare people even more, but I can’t help feeling that this is just a precursor to what climate catastrophe is going to be.

There’s a line from Neil Gaiman’s book Coraline that says “Be wise. Be brave. Be Tricky.” I recognize that being tricky can go both ways – Loki after all was tricky. But it also implies being creative and innovative. We need trickiness governed by wisdom and courage. And most of all we need to be kind. We need a government that believes in science and most of all cares for people.

Music (and Mixed Messages)

Last weekend, I went to see the local high school musical,  "The Sound of Music."  The songs are fun and well-known, but the story itself (even embellished -- as it is in the musical) is a lovely example of standing up for good in the face of a cruel and nationalistic government.  We all know (or at least, we're supposed to know) that the Nazis brought a horrible scourge upon Europe.  And it's hard not to cheer when a family who refuses to support such a system flees the country in the dead of night.

So I exited the musical, feeling happy for the students' efforts and talents, and went to get into my car.  Parked next to me was a large, shiny SUV.  And it was plastered with Trump stickers -- "Trump 2020," "I support Trump," and the most unnerving of all, "Pro-gun, pro-life, pro-Trump."  Not a sight I'd ever be thrilled to see, but then it struck me -- whoever was the owner of this car, had also just been watching "The Sound of Music," the same anti-Nazi musical I had.

Now I know there are people who don't like to compare Trump's ensemble to the Nazis, and I understand, as the party under Hitler committed absolutely atrocious acts against human dignity and life.  However, it is true that the neo-Nazi enthusiasts who live in the U.S. have been openly supportive of Trump -- and he of them.  Remember the Charlottesville, VA rallies?  When Trump refused to condemn the racist and white nationalist people and actions, he forever solidified a place of disgust in my mind.  In no dimension, in no world, in no just society, should those types of people ever be supported by a president.  For Trump not to have stood up against such beliefs (as any president in the past 70 years would have done, Democrat or Republican) was unforgiveable. 

And the irony of seeing a proud "Pro-Trump" sticker boldy staring at me from a car, parked in the lot so its inhabitants could go in and see "The Sound of Music," is also unforgiveable.  Despite whatever else is swirling around us, there are still some undeniable truths in this world.  The Nazis were wrong.  They will always be wrong.  And any person or president who refuses to condemn their actions is utterly, horribly, forever wrong.