Clear day and the sun is just above the eastern horizon. Sunday morning is here. I am walking westward. The sun feels just a little warm on my back. Thus, I choose to walk the streets that are the most tree lined. There’s a coolness in the air in the shadows that lingers. I will bid my welcome to the morning there.
Funny how I had that dream again last night. It was the dream where I had forgotten to drop several courses and discovered the finals were two days off. 39 years since I was last in the university class. Still, these anxieties roll over me.
The streets are quiet as I set out this morning. Sunday morning has come, golden, quiet and still relatively cool.
Before I started my walk, I listened to the news at 8 AM. So, disheartening to hear how people can’t unbundle their political feelings from their obligations for their own health and the health of others. Health officials, not political officials, are telling you that everyone wearing a mask although a great distance toward resolving the coronavirus pandemic Why then is it such a flashpoint? Why does it generate such resistance? What about that doing to others thing that the faithful assert is so very important? if both people in a conversation wearing a mask reduce the risk of infection by 70% what’s the issue with putting the mask on in public?
In the distance I hear the church bells ringing calling the faithful to prayer. As I walk through the leafy cathedrals of the Sunday morning, I offer my prayers for those who need healing, for those who need vision, for those needing compassion and understanding. I appeal for love and mercy.
Oh, the photo above shows that sometimes being a determined individualist does you no good, leaving you twisted and gnarled. It also shows that in such a state you are of no use to your community and you undermine the integrity of those around you.
Trust me, I would never wish a cancer diagnosis on anyone. When a person in a white coat comes to you and says, “Mr. Todd, I am afraid I have some bad news, you have cancer,” the world comes off the rails. You sweat, your stomach fills with acid, the room zooms around you and you start thinking about things like God and the kids and I don’t want to die. Then you are numb like someone has hit you square on the front of your brow with a two by four. You lurch from moment to moment and if you are like me you sleep is just absolutely destroyed. At 3 a.m. you are questioning everything while laying upon sheets soaked in your copious sweat.
This phase is terror level one. There are other levels of terror, like when you are laid out on the gurney with the saline drip in and people are saying things like, “We will take good care of you.” No matter how you stack it up you know that when you come out of that operating room you are going to hurt. You don’t know if it will go well and if they will get it all. Maybe, you call this terror level two.
Assuming all went well you suffer for a long, long time as the cuts and incisions heal up. You take lots of Tylenol and you wonder if you will ever go back to work. And then you get ready for the follow up visit with your physician a month post-surgery and your nerves are on edge, what will the doctor say? This is kind of terror lite. When the doctor nods and says we think we caught it all, this level fades. Trust me it doesn’t disappear; it just recedes into the background.
Later, (in my case six months later) you have to do a follow up. You may have to do blood work. You may have to do MRIs or PET scans or other imaging. The folks that bring you in have their poker faces on. Those poker faces stay on the whole time you are talking to the techs from when you enter the room until you put your clothing back on and walk out the door.
As the time passes from the actual testing until you have your follow up conversations with your doctor you create timelines. My most recent timeline was this. “Okay, so they did the imaging on a Friday afternoon. The radiologist probably won’t look at the images until Monday. Okay, after the radiologist looks at it on Monday the drafting of the report will take until Tuesday. My doc and his staff won’t see this until at least midday Tuesday, so it won’t post to the web portal until Wednesday. So, I can just push the panic back until Wednesday morning.”
Monday afternoon comes and suddenly, a long-distance number that you know belongs to your doctor’s office starts ringing on your smartphone at 5:20 p.m. Your stomach drops and your testicles move up into your chest. A little bit of sweat is forming on your hands and forehead and you slide the bar over on the touchpad and you say weakly, “Hello”. This is terror dulled but it is as real as it was in the first conversation where the doctor was sorry but …cancer.
Your breath escapes and you have to gasp a little bit to respond when the nurse says, “Is that you Mr. Todd.” And you jumble up your words as you say you are guessing the test results are back. Then the nurse says, the MRI was unremarkable, there is no sign of cancer. You sit quietly thanking God, trying to get a centering breath, trying to understand. The nurse asks if you are still there and you acknowledge that you are and you thank her and silently you feel a weight just drop off.
For a moment there is just the slightest bit of giddiness. But having had cancer before you know that giddiness is not warranted. Respectful joy is what is called for. You let those good results turn the valve that lets your soul calm just a wee bit. You physically feel your tense muscles unwind and go lax. A few moments of elation can be countenanced.
Having had cancer before you know that this is not the end. There will be six-month checkups for years. There will be a constant self-monitoring, wondering if every anomaly of physical sensation is a clue of a recurrence. There might be vile medicines and further painful procedures.
Then you think of every person you have known and loved that has suffered from this horrible group of diseases. You contemplate your luck at not having to undergo some of the treatments they have had to endure. You think about those you know and who mean so much to you that are still fighting. You think of those that have passed.
Humility follows reflection. You got lucky. You had aggressive providers to watch over you. The ball broke you way in finding your path to the right surgeon at the right hospital. Dumb luck or divine intervention, either way you had nothing material to do with the outcome. You didn’t work your way to here. You have simply received a blessing. Humility is what is called for, humble is what I am. With that humility comes the peace of a relieved mind.
Last year just about this time, it was within a few days either way of today’s date, I was diagnosed with renal cancer in my left kidney.After multiple consultations with several physicians I committed to having the surgery done at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor.The operation when performed was deemed a success. Just a side note, I have been a slab of meat on the physician’s table one time too many. Try and avoid the experience if you can.
Having endured a partial nephrectomy, and calculating my odds given two bouts of cancer, I decided to retire in January of 2020. There was a plan, a real plan, to be in Europe for the largest part of this year. Human beings plan to their hearts content, life intervenes. In my case Covid-19 intervened. The trip was first moved then cancelled. We’ll see what the world looks like in three months before making further plans.
Given my surgery was on October 1, 2019 I would have been up for my six-month post-op MRI on April 1, 2020. Because the plan was to be in Portugal on that date, the doctor okayed a delay in conducting the test until June 2020. When the trip fell apart there really was no reason to move up the test. April was right in the middle of the first wave of the coronavirus. Who wanted to be near any medical facility in April? Not me. Nope. No sir.
Just like last year at this time I had all my follow-up medical appointments bunched together. Last year the CAT scan that discovered the tumor occurred after my very last routine visit with my doctors. This year over the course of seven days I have had six medical encounters set. Five of them have jumped to tele-med visits. The only one that could not be conducted with a dual video feed was the MRI. I decided I would just suck it up and go to the hospital on the date set, June 19th. My wife Francie would come along and would sit in the car. They won’t let you leave without a responsible adult if you are sedated in any manner.
The process was a little daunting.
Now understand I have had MRIs before. Sometimes I can handle them and, on some occasions, I flip out and have a panic attack. I mean I don’t go batshit crazy but I start pressing that little button and I repeat that mantra, “Get me out of here, get me out of here.” Because of this I requested twilight sedation. Because of the use of Vercid as the sedating agent, I had to be at the hospital early, an hour early. We departed East Lansing with about 10 minutes of wiggle room. The plan was to be at the hospital at 10 am for an 11 am procedure.
Well, 10 minutes of wiggle room would have been fine except for the fact that 1000 feet beyond the first Brighton exit traffic came to a complete gridlock standstill. A hurried call was placed to the U of M Oncology Radiology department. A very kind voice told me that my wiggle room ended at 10:20 because of the use of the Vercid. Sitting there just past Exit 145 it seemed very unlikely I would have my MRI that day.
Well luck was with us, a couple of kind motorists allowed us to go from the far-left lane over to the far-right lane and to the access road to US-23 and Ann Arbor. As we passed along the road, we could see no reason for the gridlock. But the southbound route was following freely. We got to the door of the MRI facility at 10:05.
From the security guard at the door into the hospital to the techs talking to be as I was prone on the MRI table, everyone was wearing masks. Comfortingly were the repeated questions asked about my health status. 97% of the process was touchless. Only when they put the IV to administer the contrast agent and the Vercid in did I touch anyone. At that moment the folks prodding me were wearing gloves.
Ann Arbor is different. When I got into the MRI room and got situated, they offered me headphones because of the noise involved. They told me what the default playlist was. Yawn, no. I asked if they had a Grateful Dead playlist. Absolutely was the response. So, there I was in in the gapping jaws of the whirring tube, blissed out by two milligrams of Vercid listening to the Grateful Dead. I did get yelled at because I did breathe in and hold my breath at the right time. Hey I was deep into the Dead’s greatest hits, I got confused. After the fact the staff told me that about 1 in 10 men ask for the Grateful Dead playlist. Chuckle.
From start to finish, cleanliness and propriety was the watchword. I was impressed that the staff from the security guards to the MRI techs kept their masks on. It was good to see that other patients were wearing masks and using hand sanitizer. Covid 19 has made this a different world. Thankfully some people are willing to acknowledge this fact and live appropriately.
Choices, always choices. On a beautiful late spring morning, no clouds in the sky, light falling so warm from the east, one must make serious decisions. Among them is this. Do I just sit here and sip my coffee and wait for the day to grow warm, or do I continue with the path I have been following lately energetically walking to try and reclaim some healthful vigor? Given I have an MRI coming up tomorrow to see if I remain cancer free, the walk is the optimal choice.
Breakfast eaten and coffee consumed I dress. There is a hat. It is a sunny day. Original Six proclaims the chapeau showing my affinity for hockey. But there is more than just a hat I need to grab. Given the pandemic, I need to pick out a mask to wear. For the most part it will not be covering my mouth as I travel about. However, if a runner passes close, by or if someone is forced into my pathway for whatever reason and looks as if they will crash my two-meter bubble, up goes the mask. Depending on when exactly I head out will decide if I wear my Ray-Bans or not. On a day where the high will be in the upper 80s and the temperature now is 56, a light shirt that can be removed and stuffed into my satchel is a sensible choice.
Dressed appropriately, at least by my standards, I took a fifty plus minute walk onto the campus of Michigan State University. My visit to my alma mater’s grounds was motivated by a desire not to be repeating again and again the same routes. One must work to avoid pandemic boredom burnout. As I took this walk, I snapped a number of pictures with my iPhone. When I finished the walk and was seated at the table on my porch, I posted some of images on my Facebook feed. What I posted didn’t really capture what was in my mind as I took these shots. So, let me run through what was in my head as I decided what to photograph.
Two photos from Forest Avenue, East Lansing, start out the set. The first is a long shot looking down Forest Avenue heading south. This image was captured close to Forest’s point of origin at Northlawn Avenue. Secondly there is a photo of a of a vividly colored garden.
Have no doubt I love this one block of Forest. At this point the road is basically an alley. A number of houses on the adjacent road to the west have garages that empty onto Forest. A sidewalk could not be fitted on this stretch. No curbs are to be found the grass lawns overlapping the thin asphalt band. Above this particular block for almost its entire distance is a canopy of deciduous trees that are tall and broad leafed. This first block of Forest is the coolest block of my whole walk, the trees giving off so much oxygen.
Like I said this block of Forest is basically and alley and alleys have fascinated me since I lived in Ocean City, NJ. Back in the mid 1970s I rode the alleys of OC to and from work. There was an entirely different life that opened out onto the alleys. Back then OC was a town of single-family homes for most of the length of the barrier island. In the postage stamp back yards facing the alley, between the parking spot for the family car and the next lot line, people did all sorts of kitsch decorating. I remember one dwelling that had a six-foot-tall faux light house that had channel marker lights affixed to it glowing green and red and a fountain at its base. Some very comfy chairs surrounded this and there was a grill off to the side. Everyone had their own little piece of heaven facing those alleys.
At least one family on Forest has created their own heaven. When you head down Forest you come upon a wonderfully well-tended garden. Throughout the summer the garden is vibrant filled with a veritable rainbow of different colored flowers. Clearly the owners have curated this garden with love and care. The mere existence of this garden makes Forest a more welcoming place for everyone who lives on that block. This is the kind of thing I used to love as a teen as I tooled up and down those alleys of Ocean City.
The next photo was of a runner. At seven a.m. when I start my walks there are very few people out. The dearth of people on the sidewalks and roads during the early hours of the day is why I go out then. I am older. I have health concerns. Me, I don’t want to be dodging people who believe that Covid-19 is a hoax and that masks are for pussys. Most of the folks I see clearly show an awareness to social distance. Most have a mask that they pull up if for some reason they have to draw closer than six fees to another person. Such dedication to exercise and to keeping others safe makes me feel a camaraderie with these seven o’clock runners and joggers and cliques of walkers.
What comes next is a photo of a legal clinic sign. Al Storrs and I went to law school together. He was a tall gregarious black man with a grin that just wouldn’t quit. Throughout our time at law school we got along. We hung out. We drank beers together and went to parties. Al’s interest was tax, he was drawn to it with great fascination. Me, always the uber liberal, I took all the constitutional law I could. We were following different paths but we found a friendship. I remember nights drinking at parties with Al and just having a great time talking about everything and anything,
The fact that the clinic exists means that Al died way too young. I think about Al and how unfair life can be taking a person so vibrant from life so early. I always grow a bit melancholy as I pass this sign. Life is too short; we get too few sunsets. We don’t get enough time just shooting the breeze and drinking some decent beers.
The next three photos are of the north end of Michigan State University’s north end of campus. The first is a monument pre-1955 that references Michigan State College. (It looks like a monument that was created in the 1930s as part of a WPA project.) The other two are an exterior shot of Beaumont Tower and of a stained-glass window in the tower.
That monument at the Abbot entrance to the campus is one of the first things I remember about Michigan. In early summer 1968 maybe, could have been a year or two either way, we were travelling to Whitehall to visit the Jorgensens. These were long term friends of my father. As we rode through East Lansing, it was sunset/twilight. Grand River Avenue was dense with trees, I believe the median was filled with Elm trees. From the Union to the point where Michigan Avenues splits off the trees, the light, the ivy and the bricks made Michigan State look like everything a university should be, especially with Beaumont Tower in the distance. My exposure to that summer scene of MSU’s oldest buildings virtually cemented my attendance at the school.
When I lived on campus, more particularly when I lived in Mayo Hall the chiming of the hours by Beaumont Tower marked my day’s progression. When I was a student I would often walk past Beaumont as I headed to the river. Being a child of the ocean, I needed water to still my mind. I needed to feel the flow of life the Red Cedar captured. So many days in sun, snow, ice and heat I would cross the bridges by the library or by the Administration Building and I would just stop and watch the water. Ripples and cataracts, trees swaying and birds singing, these can bring peace to a troubled soul no matter what the trouble is.
The turtles statue reminds me of the phrase my oldest son is fond of, “It is turtles, all the way down”. Turtles all the way down is a way of stating the epistemological problem of infinite regress. The question, “You say that the world rests on a turtle? What does that turtle stand on?” The answer, “Another turtle and then another turtle. It is turtles, all the way down.” Stated most simply If you claim a fact exists based on the existence of another fact, then you have to prove the other fact, and then the fact that is the second fact is based on ad infinitum. Yeah that is what I experience on my daily walk.
My pandemic days have an order to them. Bet yours have acquired a pattern too. As to my routines I have set out that story before, no need to revisit that story. But of all the things I do and experience in a day the two moments I love most are the golden hours right after sunrise and right before sundown.
I never miss the morning hour. I am usually up about 6:15 and am preparing my breakfast. By 7 a.m. I am walking. Not a great number of people out at that hour so I pretty much know who I will see. Everybody is social distancing at that hour. In recent days I have pushed that morning walk to at least two miles. To make it interesting I have been varying my route. I have been walking into town. No real problem with running into many other people, only the construction workers are out then.
Sometimes, late in the day I get caught up in other things, chores, notes, whatever. When I am working on something that is tedious it is possible to forget that these are the longest days of the year. Today the sun came up at 5:59 a.m. and will set in three minutes at 9:18 p.m. Darkness will not be here until ten.
Even when I am caught up in things like folding laundry, there are cues to tell me this is precious time. I mean this is the time we get for those days in December when it is dark at 8 a.m. and dark at 5 p.m. Sometimes the promise of the golden hour creeps into you consciousness with a light through a blind glowing golden and telling you to get outside and savor these special hours. The smell of freshly mown lawns and the pink light fading into deep blue await if you simply go outside.
Natural life has its patterns just as my day has its patterns. Accept them and welcome them. You only get a finite number of these hours. There are only so many sunsets in a lifetime.
Cool morning. Looking at the weather the temperature here at almost 10 a.m. is 54 degrees F. Little cool. When I started my walk, it was 48. Mid-June and I can see freezing from here. The sun is out and it is marvelous. 2.5 miles at a at 3.5 mph clip took me past the joys of spring in bloom.
On mornings when I cannot handle the battles that must be addressed, the need to really put racism in the past, the need to defeat Covid 19 and the political fray for the White House, I can always find a single flower to focus my attention on. This morning the flower was a delicate shade of pink. The bloom was fragile and wispy. Amazing isn’t it that nature in its infinite way can create delicate and fragile life? On the other hand, it gave the world us, humanity. Right now, that is not looking like nature is taking a W for that one.
I believe in meditation in the sense that it frees one’s mind from the chains of the day to day. Taking a walk, observing a flower in detail, breathing in a rhythmic way, all of these can clear the mind and let us look at the day anew. Take a moment each day to clear your thoughts with beauty and peace. Then tackle the things you can.
I’m heading out on my morning walk. Kind of a late start, 7:45 a.m. I’m following the route I used to take to work. ‘Tis really a joy not having any anxiety about what time I will get in. The lack of that pressure makes this walk today a great deal more pleasurable.
I feel rested as I start out on this path. The temperature last night dropped into the 50sF. it was the kind of sleeping weather where you could just hunker down with a bit of blanket and feel comfortable. Lying there in the cool quiet night there were no weird dreams, no restlessness due to heat or humidity. I just slept like a rock. It felt really, really good.
Coming up on the first hill of the walk. Feels good I have my legs pumping and my arms swinging. Everywhere, and I mean everywhere, there are a bazillion plants in bloom. We Michiganders love our plants. I debated whether I should go back and change the last sentence and say flowering plants. However, we here in the Great Lakes State are fans of all kinds of greenery, not just the showy flowers.
I listened to my favorite podcasts before I set out this morning. I ended up cogitating on the word cratered. In the course of two different podcast I heard the word applied to the financial markets yesterday (down over 5% 1,800 points) and as to the approval ratings of a politician who had recently spewed something vile.
I understood what they were trying to communicate, that being that the approval rate or that the level of activity had taken such a dive as to be analogous to an object falling from a great distance and then striking the earth’s hard surface thus leaving a crater. Prior to the last month I really haven’t heard this word in so frequent a level of usage. Is there some kind of buy monthly flyer that goes out to broadcasters which says use these words in your headlines this month? I mean a few months ago the buzzword was woke. Maybe cratered is among the approved words to be using. Language is fun. It is always shifting. I had to look up the popular distinction between Karen’s and Becky’s yesterday.
While we are on language as I predicted people are changing to divert our focus from the cooccurring problems of police brutality and systemic racism in America. There are people who are just shunting aside the Black Lives Matter narrative and focusing on the Defund the Police tagline. In essence they are saying we will put a pin in the racism problem and come back to it. Yeah, no. We have done that too many times before.
What is being done is that a certain group is ignoring the need to address racism and they are twisting the narrative relative to American policing. They are attempting to move the focus on the police from a concept that would imply removing the broad ranging, and in many cases unwarranted, officer immunity and offloading a variety of functions to social workers to one summed up in this tagline, If you are against funding the police then you are in favor of enabling and emboldening criminals. Nayh.
Nobody wants police to disappear. What we clearly want are trained officers to respond when someone has broken into our home with a weapon. But we also want to end the macho and insensitive treatment of people who don’t look like those people who populate law enforcement’s ranks. Just because we don’t want the police to be surveilling us 24/7 with Amazon and IBM software and categorizing us and potential perpetrators of future crime, doesn’t mean that we don’t want well trained men and women maintaining order and protecting all our lives and property.
Moving from the status quo is hard. But the tact of demonizing those who want change, change that is needed, isn’t helpful except for a very cynical group of people trying to consolidate political power. Just because we want change in a system of policing that recent events have shown has unnecessarily violent tendencies and racist underpinning, does not mean we want evildoers controlling our streets. This is not an either/or situation. We want change that is beneficial to our society as a whole and to the black population of America in specific.
Sitting outside. A cup of decaf sits to the left of the computer. A black iPhone sits to the right. The light dances upon the table where I am pounded these words into sentences. Already I have two miles plus of walking under my belt. Breakfast is done and all the dishes are washed. Still-Always, the birdsongs. Also, the news from last night has been ingested from podcasts and the newsfeeds on my phone and iPad.
George Floyd has been buried. Even after the man whose death started this all was interred, there is a major rumbling and rattling of change ongoing. A wide swath of television and media personalities have been punted from jobs because people had taken screen shots of their racist posts, both current and older. Major companies have backed off allowing the police to use proprietary facial recognition software. I gather this is because they are afraid the government was compiling a database of protestors whether arrested or not. Also, there is an issue of the software not working well on blacks, Asians, women, children…well more than 50% of the population. Truly shocking is NASCAR abandoning the Confederate battle flag.
Government surveillance of protesters, well that is a not new concept. Wow though, facial recognition software, that is a new concept. Back when I was protesting the Vietnam war there were guys walking around campus demonstrations in Hawaiian shirts. Holding Pentax cameras, they attempted to photograph the protest participants in a grid. When you saw a camera swinging your direction you pulled your ball cap and sunglasses down and put your hand vertically in front of you nose. The actions of the threatened people in power don’t change, just their tools.
Apparently, the President is still having issues with white people trying to shed a long-cultured pattern of white entitlement. Even though his armed forces generals have suggested the renaming of military bases currently named for Confederate generals, people who spread bloodshed and played havoc with the very existence of our country, the renaming movement to him is a nonstarter. From reports he is resistant because of the value of tradition. However, tradition is a tricky thing. Black face and minstrel shows were traditions. It wasn’t until the 1970s the Mummers in Philadelphia jettisoned blackface. Traditions can be quite racist; tradition can be very hurtful. Some traditions just need to end.
The President is also cranky about the protests in Seattle, the protestors having set up an autonomous zone. Over his Egg McMuffins he has apparently been raging about this. He is tweeting it must be “stooped”. Once again, Mr. Trump is threatening to send in Federal troops to put the protest down. Must have been when he was busy suffering from his bone spurs, he missed all the building and park occupations against the Vietnam War. There were tent encampments in cities all over America set up in parks, peoples’ parks as they were known. Federal troops did not intervene.
Protests, every rowdy rock throwing events, are part of the long history of this nation. Just because protests are troubling and unruly, the use of Federal troops to quash protest is unwarranted. The first amendment gives the right to assembly to all Americans. Using Federal troops to stifle dissent is a major step toward authoritarian rule. The President, who has been more than happy to insist the states alone address a global pandemic-truly a national issue of health, safety and welfare, should keep his mouth shut about, and our Federal troops away from, these protests.
This post is not about the Firesign Theatre. Although there are times when I think we are all Bozos on this bus. This post is about the inability of the American populous to keep two things in their mind at once. This post is about the need to balance two valid causes of concern, two crises in America, and keep them both in our consciousness. Both the ascendancy of concern for the civil rights of black of Americans after the death of George Floyd and the need to keep awareness on Covid 19, a disease which kills 5 % of those over sixty who become infected are important and neither can be ignored.
There is a group of people in this country who are counting on the focus of the American consciousness to drift from these issues quickly. These are people who are either in the ½ %, or who are people in their pocket (think Mitch McConnell and most of the Senate). These are people like Congresspersons who voice that letting the Covid-19 pandemic rage will be a good thing. Culling the sickest of the old quickly will reduce the strain on both Social Security and Medicare. An effective swath of death in this group would really help with kicking the issues of funding these programs way down the road, long past the next elections cycle.
These folks are the people who make their money selling everything from armored personnel carriers to uniforms to group AD&D insurance to police departments. If police departments are downsized and much of their work is shifted to social workers and community activists these people lose dollars. Defunding the police will hurt their bottom line. Allowing poor whites and blacks and browns and every other variation of race and ethnic unity to work together and to compare where they have mutual interests in better health care, minimum wage protection, upgraded workplace work and safety standards and the need for access to the polling place, are definitely not in the interest of this people.
These are people who own television networks on both sides of the political spectrum. These are people who control wide segments of radio and newspaper outlets across the nation. They will dictate the focus of the mainstream media as we move forward in time. You can bet they will do everything in their power to move on from these stories and shift our attention and awareness from the raw issues of racially disparate treatment of urban populations by the police and from the impact of poverty in our cities. They will move the narrative away from the risks from Covid 19 to large parts of our population and refocus on how reopening the country will save our economy. Stories about a resurgence of cases will be way below the fold and most likely not in the first ten minutes of any newscast.
So, this is where we as individuals have to keep these two stories in the forefront of our minds. We need to watch what really happens to reform the clear proclivity of the police to abuse their obligation to protect the health, safety and welfare of all Americans, often opting instead for brute force, brute power exercised callously on the most visible of minorities. We have to watch what happens with regard to the spread and death toll of Covid-19. If it keeps going and we don’t contain and track it, we all will lose loved ones.
American attention and focus are easily diverted from real social problems and real issues of equal justice. Our politicians like the power of office, but few of them in either party have the stomach for understanding and addressing the problems of the largest part of the American population, those making under $59,000 a year. Remember real wages for non-supervisory workers are less than they were in the 1970s. Few of our leaders have ever experienced real racial discrimination. Few of them have ever lived in a food desert or have had to accept any kind of social assistance.
There is a small but powerful group that will want to turn our heads away from the racial bias that killed George Floyd. This same group does not want use to address the pandemic because their economic ox is being gored with the country closed. And if measures have to be taken to rework have things from airline seating to the conduct of public events such as court hearings to save the old and compromised among us, it will hurt their bottom line. And if we have to redesign and demilitarize the police and make them accountable for racially motivated acts of violence, this too will hurt their bottom line. The smoke and mirrors are coming. Don’t be diverted. Don’t turn your eyes away from the ugliness we must face.
I did find a Firesign Theatre piece totally appropriate for the pandemic. Enjoy.
Time as I start to write this is now 9:20 a.m. I have been up since a little bit after 6 a.m. The day started oddly at about 2:30 a.m. when the carbon monoxide detector went off. In that the wood stove and furnace are not in operation, I went and checked the only other source I could think of for carbon monoxide, the water heater. Our relatively new water heater seemed to be working fine and the pilot light was going. No sensor lights were blinking.
My guess as to why the alarm was set off was the occurrence of a momentary power outage. In the alternative someone bumped into it on their way to the washroom in the middle of the night. I opened my bedroom window and went back to sleep. Note I reset the alarm and it did not start chirping again. Other members of my family went out on the back porch with blankets and pillows and my meditation mat. Eventually after a couple of hours they returned to the house. Finding that I had not expired they bedded down for the night at about 4-ish. I will check on this alarm today.
Deep inside of me there is a clock set to a time that I used to have to get up at. That alarm was set more than five months ago when I used to get up and prepare for work. This internal, or should I say infernal, chiming monstrosity bells commence a ringing right at six a.m. Today I awoke no later than 6:15 on this glorious sunshine filled late spring morning. I dithered about in bed a bit. First, I checked my phone glancing at Facebook, then the national news feed, then the local news feed. At that point I got up and went down for breakfast.
As I ate my cereal and fruit, I came to the conclusion that my walking partner for my pre 8 a.m. walk was deeply cocooned in the bed and would not be joining me on the first walking outing of the day. Washing my breakfast dishes, I decided that I would go for speed on this walk. My usual walking pace per my Apple Watch is about 3 miles an hour, just under 20 minutes to the mile. Today I wanted to better that. I put my dishes away, put my shoes on and headed out.
The temperature was 57F as I headed out. I was just wearing a tee shirt. My dress was perfect for the day and for what I wanted to accomplish. I took the broadest widest sidewalks that are around me and pounded out a quicker pace. Up and down through the tree lined streets. Even with stopping for a photo or two of flowers, I clicked off my first mile in 16 minutes and 20 seconds. Quite a start. In the end I bettered my time. I came in the door at 2 miles in 32 minutes and 36 seconds.
Grabbing some coffee, I headed out to the porch to get a glass of decaffeinated ice tea. When I got there, I found the blankets and the pillows from last night. I folded them all up and put them away. I noticed my meditation mat out and realized I had not meditated in at least two weeks. Having gotten my heart pumping and having the time and the solitude I thought this might be the right moment to meditate.
Tea was poured. Coffee was set out too in a thermal cup. A mat was positioned and ancient music was turned on and played via a portable speaker. For ten minutes I sat down and emptied my mind. My pulse dropped to 55 bpm. My sweating from the walk and the puttering about stopped. Bird song and ancient harmonies, the moment was good. This moment of peace was what a good religious service should be in my opinion, calming, cleansing, refreshing.
Sunday, a day of rest. I will not look at the news again until noon. I will sit here and enjoy my coffee. I will sit here and breathe. For a few moments we need to regroup.
And some moments require that you just turn it all off. Your soul needs a respite. You mind needs to tug at other ideas, things that exist in a space far removed from racial and class hatred, away from demagoguery, and apart from the unending breathless commentary of talking heads analyzing statements made by other talking heads. On this one fine morning you need to simply let the sun’s gorgeous light flowing in from the east fill your backyard and your mind.
On some fine mornings you have to sit back and think about things like when are you going to get that painting done and should you mow the lawn later. These are mundane day to day things, but if you carry them out with due preparation and diligence, they are a prayer, they are a meditation on some of the values of your life. On this one fine day you need to step away from the voices that spew hate and division for at least the cycle that runs from sunup to sundown. Your soul needs a time to heal.
Later, when you feel restored, you can take in, and then take on, the sorry state of the world. When you are refreshed you can speak out against the many problems involving hatred and autocracy that surround the American life. Silence for a moment does not mean you are not engaged. But we all need to rest from time to time. In the course of a day racism will not disappear. In the course of day hate speech will not be reined in. But in the course of day your soul can heal and be refreshed for the fight ahead.
Each day over the past few days I have written several paragraphs. None of them has been published. There has been so much going on that the situation has changed by the time I am ready to hit the button that posts my thoughts.
Since George Floyd’s death America has forcefully had its focus shifted to racial disparity in this country. The economics of that disparity and the policing of the dividing line between the races/between the classes has been laid open for those with eyes to see. This time it has been harder to turn away. With the pandemic ongoing people have fewer things to distract them from what occurred. You can’t just throw yourself into you job or kids’ sports and mentally say you are too busy to think about this, when those things just aren’t there to divert you.
From individual protesters to large corporations taking part in large scale awareness events, there appears to be an increased awareness of the racial economic disparities and the disparities of policing behavior between whites and minority communities in America. But as stores open up and people return to their jobs, their favorite restaurants and their summer places, will these horrible problems stay on top of our minds or fade?
People like the majority leader in the Senate and his caucus are hoping that the passion, outrage and anger fade. If it doesn’t, they might have to address some of their sacred cows like capital gains taxes and shift their focus to the vast majority of Americans who don’t own stocks and have only their minimum wage (or slightly better with no health benefits) jobs as regards proper taxing policy. Trickle-down economics has never worked for the American working poor. It is simply a lie told to distract the masses from the money grab by the top ½ %.
Police unions also hope the focus will fade. Otherwise they might have to root out the white nationalists and the broader aspects of racism in their ranks. Otherwise they will have to deal with the internal racism displayed against officers of color. Otherwise they may have to address the disparity of treatment received in active policing between races, things like stopping people for driving while black will have to end. Otherwise they will have to face a loss of immunity for improper acts of violence based on a standard imposed not just by internal police policy.
To recast a quote attributed to P.T. Barnum, nobody ever lost money by betting the American people have a short memory or the attentions span of a gnat. I don’t have great hope change will come unless there are continuing roiling protests in the streets. I don’t have great hope change will come unless you get buy in that it is to everyone’s advantage to remove institutionalized barriers to social mobility. I don’t have great hope for change unless the tired out white people in the U.S. Congress feel that they will lose power if they don’t change a system stacked in favor of the rich white population of this country.
Humid day today here in Michigan. Still, in my pandemic mode I will be making home improvements and taking long walks for my health. I will have time to read the news and will have time to think about the change we need to truly return America to its proper course. We all should be reflecting on what must happen next and how we can help foster the change that must come.
