The Plague at This Moment Here in my Neighborhood

A Spring Sunset Two Days Ago 

Here in the Midwest. 

Beauty Must be Shared.

 

For the first time in months, I have hope that we might eventually move beyond the restrictions and ramifications of the plague year. As of today, all four members of my family have been fully vaccinated and the appropriate waiting time has elapsed for full efficacy of our antibodies. The CDC has said walking outside without masks is okay.  Orders for goods are up significantly as are orders for services.  Business inventories are way up meaning they being pent up demand will be loosed shortly.

 

Still, I have one friend who has been hospitalized for weeks and will be hospitalized for weeks more with Covid-19.  Also, I have neighbors who have been recently diagnosed with Covid and at least one of them was hospitalized. Thirdly, in a local news forum there is one person who is railing on saying things were never really that bad, we didn’t need to shut down and implying that anyone who bought into to the lockdowns and masking are snowflakes.  Obviously, the writer would have liked to have called us libtard pussies but knows his neighbors would not tolerate such nonsense.

 

Statistics have shown Americans in the last year have turned our lives inward.  We bought furniture both indoor and outdoor.  We bought appliances. (Guilty plea entered on my part, our stove and dryer both died and have now been replaced). We remodeled.  (Another guilty plea, I repainted the living room and bought a leather couch to refresh the space.) We exercised.  We watched streamed music performances. We read. E-book checkouts from online library services surged 122%.

 

We reconnected.  For months Francie and I have been talking to longtime friends via a once monthly Zoom gathering.  These are people who are far flung around the country. The experience has been a soul lightening blessing.  I have learned of the distant travels and daily lives of folks that should have never dropped off my radar.  I am sure I am not alone.  When I look at the groups that have formed on that evil application Facebook, or that have been reinvigorated during this time, it is clear we have been reminded how important others are to our lives.  When you are essentially locked away for a year you really do think about the people who have mattered in your life.

 

We got philosophical and turned our focus toward the meaning of life and toward our own fragile hold on mortality. Just scan back through your own e-mails and postings over this year and I bet you see threads of faith or existentialism or stoicism. When the world has shut down and when simply exchanging a good morning greeting with a neighbor unmasked and too close could lead to your death, you clearly are forced to think about life and its meaning.

 

The plague is slowly ebbing.  We, according to the medical experts (and I trust them more than I trust politicians) need more people to get vaccinated to get to herd immunity. Still, we are moving in the right direction. We can sit in a room with people who are vaccinated without wearing masks.  With appropriate procedures it is far safer to enter a retails venue than it was six months ago. Risk has not been eliminated but it grows smaller ever day.

 

So, will some long-term changes linger following all this we have been through? If I am an indicator, I think so.  I will continue to utilize curbside pickup for so long as my grocery orders over $35 dollar are delivered without charge or markup to the trunk of my car.  My online shopping for everything from TV antennas to box springs will continue unabated.  And I don’t just use Amazon although it gets the lion’s share of my business. My hope is that the Zoom meetings with old friends stay a regular part of my monthly life. I also hope that I will be able to keep up my exercise regimen and my reading uptick.

 

The world has changed.  Life has changed. Hopefully we humans have lost some of our hubris as regards our relationship with the natural order of things here on earth. We are not the biggest toughest things on this planet when a tiny virus can stop the world for months. Maybe we have thought just a bit about the obligations we owe to one another in keeping our communal health and safety at the front of our minds.

 

Oh, and on a personal note it looks the European Union will be letting fully vaccinated Americans in come midsummer.  I have already begun making reservations for fall travel. The walls of my 2000 square foot cell are not going to be a constraint to me living my life much longer.

 

Hopeful.  Forward looking.  This is where things stand in the pandemic in my neighborhood.  I hope the same came be said for how the world is where you live. We get through this working  together.

 

Warm Spring Breeze on Holy Saturday

 3 April 2021

 

Early April arrived when we were all looking back at winter. Today’s spring sunshine so warm and golden makes aging bones feel so very good. This spring afternoon on the northern tier just feels so bright. Dogs with ears flapping behind hang their heads out the windows of speeding minivans and jeeps. Bassett hound tongues loll out of the sides of their mouths as they unabashedly love the ride.

 

Clean clear air moves so very slightly. Standing out in shirt sleeves you feel warm. Voices can be heard from nearby rising and falling in no discernable pattern. Many voices are being carried on the slightest of breezes. These are sounds from the before times. These blending voices are reminiscent of the what used to be.  Hope they have all be vaccinated, hope they are all distanced, and hope they are all masked. These voices mark a change not only of season but of heart and experience.

 

Glances either way up and down the street reveal concerned homeowners taking advantage of the day. People are bending over picking up fallen moss-stained branches. Brown bags make crinkly sounds as twigs and sticks and rotting leaves are pushed in and down to await pickup by a municipal truck.  This first spate of yardwork in the spring is a joy because just like the voices it feels of hope.

 

Today is Holy Saturday.  Per that book the crypt was quiet and still occupied on this day.  Like a chrysalis produces a beautiful butterfly tradition holds that the stone and hewn rock incubated and then released great hope, great joy. Let a warm spring day provide us the promise of joys to come.  You must believe in spring.  You simply must.

Feast of Fools

1972-2021

 

Me, I am not much one for April Fool’s Day falderal.  April Fool’s jokes can range from innocuous and oft not funny Dad jokes to lame puns to elaborate and sometimes just downright damn malicious set-ups.  Really it isn’t that I lack the fun gene, I just don’t like it when people get embarrassed or shamed in the name of “fun”. As individuals we have enough mortification arising from stuff we purposefully do on our own behalf that we don’t need to have it added to by tricksters to provide cheap laughter for others.

 

No, I am not anti-fun. Of all the pranks over the years the ones I enjoyed the most were literary coming from a magazine called “Audio”.  Their April edition would come out in mid-March.  Invariably it would include a review from their special assignment’s editor Sloof Lirpa.  I vaguely remember one article touting a turntable mounted on a half-ton of volcanic rock to reduce vibrations in the playback experience. The article would include charts and graphs and purported lab tests showing the value of a half-ton of rock being placed in a living room in making sure a Ramone’s record sounded accurate.  Well, I thought it was funny and benign.

 

Ah the Feast of Fools thing. In April 1972 I was bouncing around Europe with my high school class mates sneaking beers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Unbeknownst to me the Good Old’ Grateful Dead was trekking the continent bringing anarchy to country after country. If our paths had crossed my life might have very different.  In their booklet accompanying the three LP set chronicling that mysterious adventure of Jerry, Bob and the band they referred to the first as the Feast of Fools.  I liked it.  Each April Fool’s Day I am drawn to remember both of those points of reference.  The trip and the Grateful Dead were both transformative elements in my life. (Oh, the Feast of Fools was a real thing, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_of_Fools ).

 

This morning I am remembering rolling into some German city on the tour bus that smelled like diesel fuel after a rain.  Out the window of the bus was a rainbow that just kind of said this was day something special. That streaming blend of colors lifted my spirits immensely and refreshed my desire to experience all I could on that quick jaunt to a foreign world. To this day I can remember the clean smell of the air as we disembarked from the bus.  The whole world seemed new.  The whole world seemed possible.

 

In this the start of the second year of the plague I am hoping as I hear reports of increased positivity rates and increased hospitalizations that this our collective bus will turn a corner and we will see a rainbow. My hope is that we move into a place where we are doing the right things, getting the jab and continuing to wear the masks until we see the curves of infection and hospitalization dive toward zero. We can do it.  I know we can and I believe we will. This is not a time for fools.  This is not a time for jokes.

 

Today the April Fool’s joke came by way of mother nature.  Last week we were in the high 60s and even touched 70 on one day.  Today there are both temperatures in the 20s and snow on the ground.  April is a very cruel month.

 

Here is your moment of musical clarity.  China Cat Sunflower just bursts with transformative rainbow power.