Pandemic Journal #2

I set up this title, Pandemic Journal #2, weeks and weeks ago. I thought these uniquely dystopian times should be documented in some personal way. Then, weeks passed. Six months passed. I made up some songs, a couple of poems, cooked a lot, planted a garden, researched stuff, harvested a garden, walked in the woods, talked with people I love, kept my distance. Outside of my little world, the situation worsened.

In April 2019, a year before Covid-19 descended upon us, I said this in a post called Emergencies, Evangelicals & Saluting the Troops:

Imagine an asteroid or small planet hitting the earth, causing widespread tidal waves stories high. Would people be brought together? Would they compete? Care for each other? Would government be a help to people, or would leaders take advantage of the chaos to achieve maximum wealth accumulation and control?

A worldwide plague wasn't on my list of disaster scenarios. I probably had too much faith in modern medicine, having grown up in the days when diseases like polio and smallpox were defeated. Plagues were for Dark Ages, or at least pre smart phone. But then, there is still no cure for cancer, and it's fair to say cancer is an epidemic. Everybody has been touched by cancer in some way. Now, it seems certain, due to lack of leadership and a bewildering absence of community cohesion, Covid-19 will affect virtually everyone before it's contained, whenever that may be. We all will know someone who contracted Covid-19, just like cancer.

Since I do live in Springfield, Missouri, which I sometimes refer to as Pleasantville, the expected response from community leaders is . . . to dodge accountability. Follow the governor, CDC, County Health, all of which are, in turn, following their best instincts to avoid accountability? The only leader in the entire community, one who is at least attempting to fill the void, is a hospital CEO. The bodies are accumulating, folks. I'm sure he's being serreptitiously thanked by the aforementioned cowards, who eagerly sought leadership roles they weren't capable of filling. To them I can only offer a heartfelt Fuck You!, as they contort themselves to accommodate a non-existent balance between science and political/religious delusion. 

Thanks to the absolutely clueless moral & ethical black hole that is Donald Trump, the ornate facade covering American exceptionalism and the Republican Party has been unceremoniously ripped away like a bandage covering gangrenous flesh. Americans, still using a strange electoral system bent to favor former slave owners, somehow elected an international patsy, useful to international crime bosses for money laundering and fraud. He is now commander-in-chief of the greatest military power and largest economy on earth. This while being manipulated by these same crime bosses, who are much smarter and wealthier sociopaths than DT. They seek unchallenged world domination. It's very much like a bad James Bond movie, where we're all extras with no control over script edits.

I don't watch doomsday movies as a rule, but images from "Melancholia" (2011), where the Earth was threatened by a rogue planet, keep bubbling into my dreams and consciousness.

As Melancholia approaches Earth, no leaders rise to the occasion. Nobody rallies the people together. News reports casually deny any danger. Resume your normal life. It will disappear. Meanwhile, disaster capitalists plot their strategies, because that's what they do. Is it realistic how existentially vacant life had become for these characters? One still aggressively plans a clever ad campaign. Another, who knows the Earth is doomed, releases his stable of beautiful thoroughbreds to graze on a nearby golf course.

[Spoiler: Earth was blown to bits in a white hot moment of interplanetary impact. Everybody perishes. All life on Earth was erased within seconds, along with any human record that it had ever existed. The screen goes dark. After a pause, movie credits scroll.]

As a fractured society divided by greed, competing culture religions and almost comical misinformation campaigns, it seems we grapple with alternating currents of human frailty and resilience during the Great Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020. There is no script, no scrolling line of credits to assure us it's fiction. Because it's not. We witness, together and separately, the outrageous and relentless unraveling of the greatest civilization in human history. 

But there is hope. Right? Of course there is. There has to be.

It may sound absolutely heretical to say out loud, especially as a resident of Pleasantville, but Covid-19 may be this country's last best hope for systemic change. Covid-19 has exposed our collective wounds for all to see. An election may treat a few symptoms. At least it's a rallying point. At best, it may be the start of a new healing regimen. The rest is on us.

Ordinary Tale #1 24Sept2020

 Ordinary Tale

September 24, 2020

Aldi today, guy reaches by me for milk, no mask.

Me: Well, aren't you special!

What?

No mask

I don't wear one

Incredibly inconsiderate of you

If you look at the science . . .

No! Don't need that bullshit today

So tired

George Wallace Comes to Springfield - 13 Sept 1968

On Thursday, September 12, 1968, George Wallace and his third-party campaign for president arrived in Springfield to hold a rally on the public square in front of Heer's department store. Just a few months earlier, civil rights leader Martin Luther King and leading democratic presidential candidate, Bobby Kennedy, had been murdered. Until 2020, 1968 had been the most dangerous and turbulent year of my life. 

In September 1968, the most important election of my young life was less than two months away. Voting age was 21 at the time, and I was a 17 year-old senior in high school. But I was already a political junkie living in a totally apolitical family. (Maybe it was that 4th grade report on Thomas Jefferson, have no idea.)

The 1968 election would be the first presidential election after the Voting Rights Act (1965), so there was a glimmer of hope on the horizon through the despair of living through the killings of MLK & RFK. 

I was also very concerned for my own personal well-being. Older friends had already been drafted and sent to Vietnam for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to die for their country for no apparent reason, the first war in a pattern that has continued almost uninterrupted to this day. Like one of my living heroes, Mohammed Ali, had said a year earlier, I had "no quarrel with those Viet Cong."

The fact that George Wallace, avowed racist, hate monger, the man who literally blocked an entrance to black students attempting to enroll at his state university, would come to my town was both a source of dark curiosity and disgust. How would he be received here? Would there be protesters? My friend, Kevin, and I made sure there would be at least two. We found a piece of leftover white cardboard and fashioned a sign using red magic marker that simply read: "Racist!".

I'm pretty sure we skipped school that Thursday. That's a fair guess because, by senior year, I considered attendance optional. We were making our own civics lesson and arrived early to get a spot close to the flatbed trailer stage. We were relieved to see other protesters, but a few dozen protesters were eventually drowned out by a throng that police chief, Sam Robards, estimated to be between 12,000-15,000. It was the largest political crowd he had seen on the square in his 33 years on the force, according to the Springfield Daily News report. 

(At this time, Springfield had both morning and evening editions. Daily News was a.m. News-Leader was evening edition. At least three reporters and a photographer covered the event.)

Police, sheriff's deputies, state patrol and secret service were visible throughout the square and on top of buildings. Reporting of the event was somewhat carefully worded by 1968 Springfield standards. Here's one account beneath a large photo:

"The jaunty candidate from Alabama rapped out his message in fiery bursts, punctuated by cheers and yells. A country band had the crowd warmed into a foot stomping hand-clapping mood . . . Pretty Wallace Girls carrying plastic buckets moved among the people collecting money for the campaign."

Wallace began his speech with a tried and true demagogue/populist message that now, 52 years later, is all too familiar. Daily News:

"Wallace was wildly cheered by the crowd for his jabs against newsmen, professors, pseudo-intellectuals and bureaucrats." He also spoke of "ultra-liberals" seeking to desegregate schools and "kowtow to anarchists who roam the streets". He continued, "If it weren't for these firemen and policemen, we wouldn't be here today - you or I - we might well have been mugged or gunned down."

The newspaper report also acknowledged protesters, who raised signs reading "Racist", "Wallace Hates", "One Hitler Was Enough".

And there was this: "Black students, calling themselves Afro-Americans, mostly from Southwest Missouri State College, felt otherwise about Wallace. About 33 Negroes showed up with signs and sentiment opposing the candidate," the Daily News reported. They marched in peaceful demonstration. A spokesman said, "We recognize Mr. Wallace's freedom of speech. We also recognize our right of assembly. We are here to . . voice our discontent and opposition at the presence of a man whose racist platform is detrimental to humanity and would jeopardize the safety and security of this community and nation."

Black protesters in attendance noted that they were not a part of the local NAACP, which had decided not to have a contingent at the rally. One young Black woman said, "As elder members of this community, they (NAACP) let us down. We are here to voice our protest and to try to get rid of some of the apathy in Springfield. Springfieldians think we are happy with the way things are. We are not."

One woman, most assuredly white because she required no descriptors, offered support for Wallace because he was "a good Christian man". Racism and white Christianity have been dating a long time it appears. 

On election day, Wallace received only 12% of Greene County votes, a number matched by Missouri. Richard Nixon won the county by 20%, the state by 1%.

Nixon eventually won the election, of course, a solid electoral college win but only 500,000 more votes than Hubert Humphrey, a representational disconnect that continues to undermine voters. Wallace received over 9 million votes and won Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi, as the south made a huge shift away from the democratic party following the Civil Rights Act (1964), Voting Rights Act (1965) and the Fair Housing Act, which had passed the day before Wallace arrived in Springfield.

Wallace ran again in 1972, this time as a democrat, but was shot during a primary election rally in Maryland. He was paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life. The day after being shot, he won primary victories in Maryland and Michigan. 

Difficult Times, Difficult Decisions

 

Okay, let's start by saying that every decision, even how to approach a visit to the grocery store, is more difficult during these days of community spread. And we've been reminded of this innumerable times by civic leaders, real leaders and those posing as such. These are hard decisions. So hard. Nobody can dispute that.

If we've learned anything, we know there is no easy out when dealing with a highly contagious virus. Political posturing is lost on Covid-19. But by magnifying the difficulty of a decision, we also construct a hedge for making the wrong decision. It becomes exponentially more important to make every effort to turn a difficult decision-making process into the right decision.

Some wrong decisions are minimal, i.e. installing a "learning initiative" that doesn't work and is nearly impossible to implement. Nobody dies. Good teachers can ignore it effectively enough to still teach well. Other wrong decisions, i.e., the Iraq War, leads to hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, and ongoing wars that kill and maim young people for generations.

If nothing else, can we agree that difficult decisions regarding the health, safety and the potential for suffering and death should be a top priority to get right the first time? 

Leaders often emerge during trying times, and not always from expected sources. A CEO at one of Springfield's big hospitals, for example, has been an amazing source of information and encouragement for the community. City Council overcame a virtual congregation of weirdos and miscreants, all spouting strange ideas about personal freedoms and demonic influences, before finally making the difficult decision to enact a mask ordinance. 

Unfortunately, other civic leaders have equivocated, cited tilted surveys and attempted to find a non-existent sweet spot between medical science and political crackpottery, always a precursor to a terrible decision. In my opinion, this is what Springfield's school leaders have done.

We all know by now, public schools have become the magical balm for every societal affliction, be it poverty, nutritional deficiencies, lack of health care, or lack of affordable childcare. The existing political/economic system that exponentially multiplies all these deficiencies is seldom, if ever, held accountable. It's a wicked chain reaction that is dumped on administrators, teachers and staff to work through. 
(And let's not even talk about how schools are "scored" as educational institutions amid this malaise.)

Here's the deal. Nobody on Springfield's school board signed up for a leadership role during a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic that has afflicted millions of American and caused over 170,000 deaths (and counting). This is far beyond their customary role as cheerleaders for their superintendent's amazing educational schematics: to make Springfield Schools the envy of Nixa or Ozark or Willard or some other district that is nothing at all like Springfield.

When faced with approving a plan to address how to reach/teach 24,000 students during a pandemic, a majority of the school board deferred to their superintendent to come up with a plan. He created a huge committee of 70+ (ever been a member of a huge committee?), ran a plan by them. Approved. No need for a vote from the school board, the superintendent said. We've got this.

A couple of members, the newest and oldest serving member, registered their surprise at not being involved in perhaps the most important decision the school board has had to make since forever. "I find it odd," said one member. "Me, too," said another. The superintendent, who also doubles as board president, explained dismissively that reopening plans are not considered policy and are therefore not within the school board's purview.

Last week, a group of courageous secondary teachers penned a letter to the superintendent citing guidelines from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO), which indicate that the rate of Covid infection in Springfield at this moment is too high for a safe opening of schools. The teachers cited a WHO report that says positive test results should be no higher than 5%. Springfield/Greene County infection rate of those tested is now at 15%. 

For educational leaders who constantly study and refer to data, best practices, etc., reviewing these particular metrics must have seemed like a buzzkill. The district response was nothing more than a meticulously worded kiss-off:

"Feedback from families, employees, and community members is especially important to SPS. We welcome engagement and are committed to reflecting upon it, incorporating feedback into our decision-making whenever possible, to benefit all those we serve."

I'll conclude by imploring the school board to somehow work around being marginalized by your superintendent and ask some questions during tomorrow's board meeting (8/18/2020, 5:30 p.m.). Maybe some questions about process, procedures, contingencies, staffing, transparency to staff and community would be in order. Is there a threshold regarding rate of infection and/or death related to school opening?

The community needs hard questions to be asked from their elected representatives on the school board precisely because these decisions are hard. This is not the time to outsource decision-making. Lives are at stake.

Atheist

Atheist

A small ant,

halting across an expanse

of lighted keyboard

blacking out parts of letters,

oblivious to search results

for anything, everything, nothing

strolls across Delete, Backspace and

spells out + - P O L O

before disappearing,

doesn't think I exist.

Miasmic Pentameter

Miasmic Pentameter
(A Pandemic Poem)

Grocery store especially grim today
Toilet paper gone, no flour

People are baking and shitting
Like no other time in history

A crabby ass lady hums a dark psalm
Scouring soup label like scripture

Finding no quick redemption
She settles for low sodium

Pandemic Journal

March 20, 2020

Last night, I discovered what turned out to be a poor lost soul hiding in my garage. Here I was stuck at home like so many people, trying to adjust to life during a serious pandemic, and feeling slightly edgy with no visible provocation. Just a week earlier a policeman had been shot and killed a half mile away from my house, the first on-duty SPD death since 1932. People, not really knowing how to prepare, have decided that hoarding toilet paper eases their fear, like we're turning into Venezuela or something. At the very least, a lot of people are being forced to take a moment, a day, a week, a month for some serious self-assessment, ready or not.

I put down the book I was reading, Love in the Time of Cholera (I know), and ventured outside to close the garage doors, as I always do before heading off to bed. The garage is a separate building behind the house that has a small upstairs for storage. The upstairs is where our two indoor/outdoor cats hang out. It's not the best smelling place, but it's become their favorite spot for extensive napping.

The first thing I noticed as I approached the garage was that my newly installed motion-sensor lights did not come on. I found this mildly disturbing, as they were still new enough for me to muster a bit of consumer satisfaction each time they illuminated the dark spaces. Odd. I waved my hands around like an idiot. Nothing. Was that a cat rustling around upstairs? Then, I noticed that the sensor lights had been unplugged. I quickly plugged them in and went back into the house.

"Hey, did you unplug the garage light?" I asked my adult daughter, stuck at home with her dad during a pandemic while on hiatus from seasonal work out west.

"What? No. Why?"
"I think somebody may be upstairs in the garage."
"What?"

I returned to the garage and grabbed a baseball bat from a game tub by the door that contains frisbees, basketballs, old ball gloves. Turns out it was a wiffle ball bat, which wouldn't offer much defense, especially if the garage invader were armed. My mind raced. I stood quietly, wiffle bat in hand, until I heard a slight rustling sound above me. One of the cats, Louie Lamour, intently listened at my feet, tail fluffed. He knew something. I felt that unmistakable metalic rush of adrenaline. Somebody was up there, and I was poised to stun them into submission with blows from a plastic bat.

"Dude," I yelled. "I know you're up there, and you need to come down," I hadn't really thought about what to say. "If you aren't out of this garage in one-minute, I am calling the cops. Come down and leave. Now!" Silence. Then, he finally spoke just as I turned to go back inside.

"Can you help me? I need help," he answered in a feeble sounding voice. I was surprised the voice was higher pitched. I had pictured an older homeless person, or a generic, grizzled bad guy of some sort. Wasn't sure what to expect, really.

"No, I cannot help you," I yelled back. "Come down and maybe you can get some help. Come out of the garage now." No response. So, I went inside, called 911 and stayed on the line. While talking with dispatch, I saw him finally come out and begin walking tentatively, shakily toward my backdoor, arms outstretched as if to show he wasn't armed.

He was a tall, skinny kid with a buzz cut, wearing dirty, torn jeans. His face was in shadows. At that moment at least three police cars arrived. They had already been called due to reports of gun shots apparently. The kid didn't attempt to run. The officers approached carefully, calmly talking to him. At least one officer had his gun drawn. Within minutes, there were five officers surrounding the kid, and they persuaded him to sit down in one of my patio chairs by the umbrella table. Lights were on him, and I could finally see his face.

Over the next couple of hours, a group of four or five attending officers listened to a series of implausible tall tales and tried to figure out where they should take him. A couple of officers left for other calls. The kid was frisked, and police found a small knife, a pack of Newport cigarettes and a small amount of cash in his pockets. He told them his phone was still upstairs in the garage. He was trying to find a place to charge it. I went up to the cat haven with the officer to look around. There is absolutely nothing of value up there. They eventually found the phone.

His first story was that he was being chased by people with knives. Then, it was that his mother had kicked him out of the house. "Wait, okay. I'll be honest," he prefaced each tale. He refused to tell them his name and was overly concerned that the officers knew that he was "of age" to have his Newports. Of course, he wasn't.

As a former secondary teacher, I knew this kid. Not this individual kid, of course, but so many boys like him who were part of a second generation of lost boys in our town. Lost boys raised, loosely speaking, by lost parents, who depend on grandparents, teachers, counselors and social workers to provide at least an introduction to what might be "normal". In this case, the police were attempting to take that role, and they were exercising a great deal of patience in gently nudging him toward the reality of his current situation. If nothing else, this incident provided some real time insights into their daily work.

It turns out this kid, who, of course, was given a biblical name by invisible parents, lived with grandparents maybe a half mile away behind the Christian bowling alley. His grandfather had reported him as missing, as he had done many times before, and officers eventually learned his name and called grandpa. As officers attempted to load him in a squad car to take home, it became apparent that he couldn't walk and was getting sick. Eventually, an ambulance arrived, along with the grandfather, and he was taken to Cox Hospital for possible overdose. Grandpa told officers some Percocet was missing from the medicine cabinet. It was after midnight before everybody was gone.

Of course, all this happened under the pall of a worldwide pandemic that is all too quickly changing the way we view almost everything. I found myself wondering why the police who had frisked, propped up and, for a couple of hours stood well within a foot or two of this young man, were not wearing gloves or taking any apparent precautions.

And I thought to myself, well, this kid probably didn't fit the profile of a study abroad student just returned from Italy or China, and I was pretty damn sure he was not among those who defied health warnings to worship at the suburban mega-church down the highway (two positive cases so far). Just the same, I kept myself at a distance, as I was trying to train myself to do even with friends and relatives.

We live in exceptional times, trying times for sure. Lost boys like this probably aren't infected with the virus yet. But by now we should all know that it will be the lost people, the forgotten people at the low end of the social order who will eventually suffer most from this pandemic. It's just a matter of time. And I'm trying not to feel guilty that I didn't help this poor lost boy more than I did.

Street Light

Kit laid on her back on a picnic table in hopes of catching the media shower, as she had done so many times as a girl. A spot for deep thoughts. The table rested on a slab of patio just beyond a sliding glass door that separated her from Mom and Dad, who were glued to cable news in the dining room. There had been another bombing. Maybe a shooting. Kit hadn't listen for details.

She knew her parents were watching interviews with bewildered neighbors (can't believe it happened here), crime scene videos with flashing emergency vehicles, conflicting rumors. Tomorrow they'd watch heart wrenching victim profiles (she was the light of our lives) and, of course, the killer profile (angry, heavily armed white guy).

She could hear the excited voices of droning doom from her parents' network of choice - the one that stoked fear, patriotism, faith in Jesus, and was sponsored mainly by pharmaceutical companies suggesting a multitude ailments that lurk in their future. Fear brought to you by more fear.

Kit was straining to see meteors beyond the blue glare of the new streetlight in the far corner of the yard. Goddam streetlight, she muttered.

The streetlight had been installed, pole and all, over winter break soon after a string of house break-ins and shootings in the neighborhood. This was Dad's tireless explanation to neighbors or anyone who had the misfortune of stepping out onto the patio after dark. The fact that the break-ins and shootings occurred miles away on the west side of town was irrelevant. There were shootings in the news. Mom was scared. So, Dad put up a goddam street light in the alley.

Planes flew by but no meteors. There was a time when you could spot satellites moving across the sky, probably the same satellites that beamed the television signals that made Mom fearful, she thought. A vicious cycle. Not tonight. No satellites, no meteor shower. The more fearful we become, the less we are able to see in the natural world. File under Picnic Table Deep Thoughts, she smirked. Probably the last.

A distant flash of lightning briefly lit up the southern sky. Kit started counting. A thousand one, a thousand two all the way to ten. Nothing. No thunder, probably a summer thunderstorm a hundred miles away in north Arkansas, beyond the blinding lights of Branson.

Branson, Missouri. Christian Las Vegas with no gambling or showgirls, but similarly filled with poor hotel workers, underpaid musicians and washed up celebrities, so washed up you had never even heard of them in the first place. Her parents' favorite date night, Branson. Drawn to light like moths.

There would be no meteor shower tonight, maybe never again unless somebody shoots out that goddam light, she thought to herself. Mom would freak, would just make things worse. She knew finding her own place was the next big thing after school, somewhere where she could see the stars again.