Word reached me yesterday that Covid-19 has broken out at the assisted living facility where I was staying up until a month ago, and they have told me I am not to return under any circumstances, not even to retrieve my belongings.
Earlier, on March 1st, I'd given notice on my rent-controlled apartment in San Francisco, so that is no longer an option for me either.
The brutal truth is I am now a man without a home. I'm a Corona-V refugee. Of course, I am also very lucky because I have family willing to take me in for now, but neither they nor I ever intended for me to be the guest who comes but never leaves.
My independence has been stolen by a virus and I have nowhere to escape that reality, not even in my imagination.
***
My six-year-old granddaughter created a new holiday yesterday. It is known as "Star Day." She said the idea "just came into my mind" and so soon her mother was baking star-shaped cookies and planning festivities. We were all to go out in the front yard after dark, eat the cookies, and look at the sky. The kids would be doing this under blankets.
So we did that very thing, and we all saw the sliver of the moon in the Western sky, as well as Venus, a few bright stars and a satellite crawling across the darkness on its loop around the earth.
The others could make out some of the constellations. I saw an airplane far overhead, silent as it progressed on its route.
Inside, my granddaughter pointed out that on the coaster under my water glass was the drawing of a star. It was of a starfish, just like the ones I used to collect on Florida's white beaches decades ago.
***
I really miss watching sports. One of the benefits of retirement was going to be an unlimited ability to watch baseball, football, basketball, soccer, hockey and other competitions on TV. I would be trading commentary with my friends and managing my fantasy sports teams.
The joy of fantasy sports for someone like me is two-fold. One, the pure statistical poetry of the experience. Sports generate stats; stats generate stories. This is true in many realms other than sports, of course (economics, health and politics are examples) so the journalist in me appreciates that aspect. But fantasy sports is also a way to immerse yourself in a broader swath of the athletic spectacle beyond rooting for your own favorite team.
Every player is potentially on your fantasy team, even if in reality he plays for your actual favorite team's rival. This equalizes things and deepens your appreciation of talent free from passion.
***
The problem with reality is that it has limits. There are parameters that confine the contours of experience.
Whereas in fantasy, in dreams, in your imagination there are no limits. You can get lost in possibilities that are as vast as the universe. This was running through my mind as I was squinting at the sky on Star Night, trying to make out the shapes of distant worlds.
My father, who loved to brag about his only son, used to tell people I had remarkable eyesight. I could see things other people couldn't see, he claimed, and he ascribed this supposed skill to my favorite food -- carrots.
I guess I was similar to a rabbit in that way and, given how many times I reproduced children (six) perhaps in other ways as well. Though I've never been able to hop.
But my loving father was indulging in fantastic thinking about my eyesight. He often did this in other ways, exaggerating my athletic skills or my academic achievements.
He seemed to overlook the fact that I was mainly a lonely, sickly boy who identified more with Robert Louis Stevenson than Babe Ruth.
I lost my Dad when he was 82. I was 52. By that point I'd long since grown accepting of his admiring comments and I'd also accepted that he would never really know me as I thought myself to be. But I also loved him just the way he was and it was very difficult to kiss him goodbye. It turns out that it's hard to lose someone who considered you their hero.
***
So much is on my mind this night that I can't sleep. What is to become of me? Where will I go? Will I ever get my personal journals back? Will this unfinished memoir remain suspended in time, never to find an audience?
Will all of this story-telling even have mattered?
Given my profession and my nature, I soak myself in the news like other people soak themselves in a bath. Other people's soaks are healthier than mine. But if I were to write a headline for the current Corona-V news cycle, it would be "Let Them Eat Bleach."
Or mumble to my television, "Its okay, sir, you can go back to watching Fox & Friends now."
My daughter and grandson were watching a PBS documentary late last night on the debate over whether we are descended from a race that visited this planet in ancient times. This is not a crackpot theory; virtually every ancient human culture preserved stories and depictions suggesting that aliens seeded life here during their visits from outer space.
Even the Old Testament gets into the act.
In the 1960s, there was a revival of sorts on this celestial question ignited by the Russian author Immanuel Velikovsky and his 1950 book "Worlds in Collision." His theories have largely been discounted by scholars, but of course conventional thinking in the academy is one of its persistent faults.
I'm in no position to endorse Velikovsky's thinking but I think I'll order his book for my grandson anyway.
Somewhere among my formerly vast collection of books was an tattered copy of "Worlds in Collision." But all of those books (save for a box or so) have been recycled out among the community of people who still love to read.
That's something I miss -- reading. It was always going to be a big part of my retirement and I had more than a several books lined up for that purpose. But I can read only with great difficulty now. until my "non-essential" surgeries get rescheduled.
One thing about aging that young people rarely perceive is that there is an awareness that ultimately comes to dominate your consciousness in your later years. You can feel it in your joints, in your muscles (should any be left) and way down in your bones
And that awareness is that you can never go back.
-30-
Saturday, April 25, 2020
Friday, April 24, 2020
The Suspended Sentence
A favorite time of mine is the last hour before dawn. The earliest hints of the new day include a light that is mostly imagined, and some very specific sounds, like the muffled groan of a passenger jet lifting itself as quietly as possible out of the sleeping Bay Area to points east, west, north and south.
That same airplane, taking off a few hours later, would have roared unapologetically as it climbed more steeply through the same airspace, maybe clear, maybe foggy. But that won't be happening today; that plane is already gone.
Besides, at this early hour, that's still part of the future. Here, something new is stirring -- a brand new day is stretching and shaking off the stiffness of the night.
This day, as it turns out, is a Friday, which I only discovered late yesterday courtesy of a neighbor's random comment. I'd spent yesterday convinced that it was Friday, but it wasn't as I'd supposed.
A group of my daughter's friends and neighbors had gathered outside, sitting on chairs in a wide circle toasting yesterday away. At 7 PM, we hailed the first responders and health-care workers who man the front lines of this war.
Media reports and clueless politicians have started suggesting that the worst is over.
I fear the worst is far from over.
As I came back inside, since I'd already lived Friday though it hadn't started yet, my thoughts veered inevitably toward the future.
The one thing we all hold in common is that we are suspended in time. This must be what it feels like when you are given a jail sentence or what happens to a baseball player when he tests positive for steroids. "You're suspended without pay until 2021."
Most of us didn't knowingly take steroids but maybe we were living on them anyway.
My own small life is literally on suspension. Down in my abandoned apartment in Millbrae, my effects lay scattered, awaiting my return, which will never happen. A box of journals spills out half its guts on the floor next to a coffee table covered with notices, bills, tax files and scribbled notes. The journals outside of the box are the ones I've reread recently; the others have not been opened in 10, 20, 30, 40, or 50 years.
All kinds of secrets inhabit those pages, though I feel oddly disconnected from them now. Those belonged to a man who was moving carelessly through the world. He didn't give the passing of time much of a thought.
That was then. Now, everything in me aches. I'm creaky like the tin man without his oil can. I wonder when Dorothy is going to show up. And who the hell is Dorothy anyway?
The lady from the eye surgeon's office called to say my second eye operation has been delayed until late summer, "if then." The first one never happened, but I guess, formally, we're now onto the second one. All I know is I can't see anything clearly any longer.
But it was a reminder that there still is a health-care system somewhere out there and I'm apparently a part of it, though it feels very much out of my reach. Everyone I know if afraid to get sick, afraid to go to a hospital. Women are having babies at home. Others, if they get ill, choose to go untreated. No wants to call a doctor.
Who my own doctors actually are also is a question. Since I was in the process of moving out of San Francisco, and my old doctors were retiring, I was in the process of finding new care-givers when this all came down.
Years ago I knew a man who was a bit older than me who had recently retired. Over coffee one morning, he told me that on most weekdays he would still rise early, get ready, and take the train downtown. H'd go to the same coffee shop where he'd always get a takeout, but now he'd order one to stay.
After reading the morning paper, left behind by a stranger, he'd return home, off for the rest of the day.
***
I swear I'll never figure out what Facebook is about. Maybe I'll ask one of my friends who used to work there, but they seem pretty secretive about it. I do know this much: Sometimes, when you are writing or watching the news or a movie streaming on your laptop, a loud pinging sound echoes through your headphones.
It's Facebook calling: "Hi David. You have a new friend request." Or, "Hi David, someone has reacted to your post." Or, "Hi David, you have a new notification."
It's like when someone talks during your visit to a movie theatre (the one that is closed now). It's a reminder that much of our lives we live out as a fantasy, while actually we are sitting in a darkened room filled with strangers. Facebook must have my best interests in mind because it refuses to allow me to sink, uninterrupted, into one of those dangerous worlds of fantasy any longer.
***
Unemployment surges toward Depression-era levels. The stories my grandparents told are revisiting me now. Food-chain disruptions are common; I wonder how many urban people even knew what a food chain was until recently?
About 17 years ago, when I was a visiting professor at Stanford, I accepted an invitation to be a guest editor for the summer from a magazine called Business 2.0. The first day I went there the staff sat in a big circle and we went around speaking about what we thought the biggest issues were at that time.
I remember exactly what I said; it was neither creative nor original. "The biggest issues of our time are globalization and technology." I also mumbled something about climate change
I suppose I should have been more dramatic. "We're living on steroids. And one day we're going to get a suspended sentence. The good news is we'll be able to serve it at home."
-30-
That same airplane, taking off a few hours later, would have roared unapologetically as it climbed more steeply through the same airspace, maybe clear, maybe foggy. But that won't be happening today; that plane is already gone.
Besides, at this early hour, that's still part of the future. Here, something new is stirring -- a brand new day is stretching and shaking off the stiffness of the night.
This day, as it turns out, is a Friday, which I only discovered late yesterday courtesy of a neighbor's random comment. I'd spent yesterday convinced that it was Friday, but it wasn't as I'd supposed.
A group of my daughter's friends and neighbors had gathered outside, sitting on chairs in a wide circle toasting yesterday away. At 7 PM, we hailed the first responders and health-care workers who man the front lines of this war.
Media reports and clueless politicians have started suggesting that the worst is over.
I fear the worst is far from over.
As I came back inside, since I'd already lived Friday though it hadn't started yet, my thoughts veered inevitably toward the future.
The one thing we all hold in common is that we are suspended in time. This must be what it feels like when you are given a jail sentence or what happens to a baseball player when he tests positive for steroids. "You're suspended without pay until 2021."
Most of us didn't knowingly take steroids but maybe we were living on them anyway.
My own small life is literally on suspension. Down in my abandoned apartment in Millbrae, my effects lay scattered, awaiting my return, which will never happen. A box of journals spills out half its guts on the floor next to a coffee table covered with notices, bills, tax files and scribbled notes. The journals outside of the box are the ones I've reread recently; the others have not been opened in 10, 20, 30, 40, or 50 years.
All kinds of secrets inhabit those pages, though I feel oddly disconnected from them now. Those belonged to a man who was moving carelessly through the world. He didn't give the passing of time much of a thought.
That was then. Now, everything in me aches. I'm creaky like the tin man without his oil can. I wonder when Dorothy is going to show up. And who the hell is Dorothy anyway?
The lady from the eye surgeon's office called to say my second eye operation has been delayed until late summer, "if then." The first one never happened, but I guess, formally, we're now onto the second one. All I know is I can't see anything clearly any longer.
But it was a reminder that there still is a health-care system somewhere out there and I'm apparently a part of it, though it feels very much out of my reach. Everyone I know if afraid to get sick, afraid to go to a hospital. Women are having babies at home. Others, if they get ill, choose to go untreated. No wants to call a doctor.
Who my own doctors actually are also is a question. Since I was in the process of moving out of San Francisco, and my old doctors were retiring, I was in the process of finding new care-givers when this all came down.
Years ago I knew a man who was a bit older than me who had recently retired. Over coffee one morning, he told me that on most weekdays he would still rise early, get ready, and take the train downtown. H'd go to the same coffee shop where he'd always get a takeout, but now he'd order one to stay.
After reading the morning paper, left behind by a stranger, he'd return home, off for the rest of the day.
***
I swear I'll never figure out what Facebook is about. Maybe I'll ask one of my friends who used to work there, but they seem pretty secretive about it. I do know this much: Sometimes, when you are writing or watching the news or a movie streaming on your laptop, a loud pinging sound echoes through your headphones.
It's Facebook calling: "Hi David. You have a new friend request." Or, "Hi David, someone has reacted to your post." Or, "Hi David, you have a new notification."
It's like when someone talks during your visit to a movie theatre (the one that is closed now). It's a reminder that much of our lives we live out as a fantasy, while actually we are sitting in a darkened room filled with strangers. Facebook must have my best interests in mind because it refuses to allow me to sink, uninterrupted, into one of those dangerous worlds of fantasy any longer.
***
Unemployment surges toward Depression-era levels. The stories my grandparents told are revisiting me now. Food-chain disruptions are common; I wonder how many urban people even knew what a food chain was until recently?
About 17 years ago, when I was a visiting professor at Stanford, I accepted an invitation to be a guest editor for the summer from a magazine called Business 2.0. The first day I went there the staff sat in a big circle and we went around speaking about what we thought the biggest issues were at that time.
I remember exactly what I said; it was neither creative nor original. "The biggest issues of our time are globalization and technology." I also mumbled something about climate change
I suppose I should have been more dramatic. "We're living on steroids. And one day we're going to get a suspended sentence. The good news is we'll be able to serve it at home."
-30-
Thursday, April 23, 2020
Nostalgia for the Edge
It's become clear that this country's political leaders have essentially failed to meet the frightful challenge of COVID-19:
* Some governors want to reopen their state economies, against the recommendations of public health officials. More infections and deaths would inevitably occur.
* Months into the pandemic, there still is no coordinated national strategy for dealing with it. A severe shortage of masks and PPE plagues health care providers in some hot spots.
* Sizable portions of the public don't understand what is happening. They express their anger in protests, but they don't know who to blame.
* The President contradicts his top public health advisors, then backtracks. He is clearly confused about what to do.
* The Democrats are not helping matters by launching partisan attacks in an election year when unity of our government institutions is desperately needed.
* The science continues to roll in indicating COVID-19 has been around for longer than previously thought. It has been reported that intelligence agencies warned about the pandemic long before action was taken.
Without thinking, most Americans will cast blame for all of this according to their political orientations, which are as hardened as the arteries of an ill person. So for the rest of us, how are we to proceed with our disrupted lives in this context? We know the smartest thing is to continue sheltering-in-place, having food and supplies delivered, and maintaining social distance. These are inherently apolitical decisions.
***
I got to visit my beloved San Francisco yesterday evening for the first time in way over a month. I don't remember the last time I was there. Six or eight weeks may not sound like a lot, but under our current state of affairs, time has slowed down, sped up and virtually disappeared. It seems as if there is no time anymore.
As we neared our destination in Glen Park last night, a familiar thick wave of white fog replaced the blue sky and orange sun.
Along with the fog, a wave of nostalgia washed over me as we drove through the streets and neighborhoods I've gotten to know so well over the past 50 years. Without prompting, memories from this block or that block reasserted themselves.
San Francisco is my adopted home or maybe it adopted me. Arriving at the age of 24, I was searching for a life, just like so many others who migrated to the coast then and still do now.
It's a city where if you are lucky you may find an identity that eluded you elsewhere. Even today, with absurdly high rents and costly services, there is a certain magic in the air blowing in from the Pacific. San Francisco is an edge city, perched on a peninsula way out at the end of a continent, far from the cities in the East that dominate the foolish spectacle that passes as the state of our public affairs.
You can pick up similar traces of this magic in other edge cities -- Perth, Seattle, Key West, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Gatineau, Dublin, Brugge and Helsinki, among others.
Last night, we were in the city that adopted me to deliver food supplies to family members. I got to see my youngest grandchild for the first time in months -- she is 18 months old and surprised me by calling me the name she had somehow learned by the time she was one -- Grandpa.
I smiled at her and called her name across six feet's distance. All I could think of is I want to survive to a much older age than this one and get to know her as she grows up.
***
As I lay in bed in the darkness around 4 AM this morning, it became clear to me that I would write about wistfulness today. The origins of the word nostalgia -- Greek, Latin, German -- give it the layers of meaning that resonate when we employ it.
English is such a complex language, benefitting from so many cross-fertilizations from other languages, that with a little work we can achieve a rare precision of meaning in a world of ambiguity. Indeed some languages thrive on ambiguity, which has its own beauty, allowing for nuanced interpretations according to one's preferences and predilections.
Yet nostalgia also implies a longing for the past when now the past is basically the day before yesterday, you know, when we could hug a friend on the street, sip coffee in a cafe while reading a book, romance one another over candles and wine.
When all of a sudden that was swept away by the tsunami of COVID-19, the world of possibilities for us started to shrink.
I've read several articles about how elderly people are experiencing this epidemic lately. Perhaps it is odd that these patients often present very different symptoms from those of younger people.
Some of those symptoms reportedly include disorientation, weakness, loss of appetite, difficulty walking, and a propensity to fall and get injured.
Then again, perhaps it is not so odd. Many elderly people live in specialized care facilities where, these days they are confined to their rooms and are bereft of any physical contact.
Not too long ago I was in that situation. What I recall was a profound sense of disorientation, weakness, loss of appetite, difficulty walking, and a propensity to fall and get injured.
So which disease did I have then -- COVID-19 or the ravages of isolation?
-30-
* Some governors want to reopen their state economies, against the recommendations of public health officials. More infections and deaths would inevitably occur.
* Months into the pandemic, there still is no coordinated national strategy for dealing with it. A severe shortage of masks and PPE plagues health care providers in some hot spots.
* Sizable portions of the public don't understand what is happening. They express their anger in protests, but they don't know who to blame.
* The President contradicts his top public health advisors, then backtracks. He is clearly confused about what to do.
* The Democrats are not helping matters by launching partisan attacks in an election year when unity of our government institutions is desperately needed.
* The science continues to roll in indicating COVID-19 has been around for longer than previously thought. It has been reported that intelligence agencies warned about the pandemic long before action was taken.
Without thinking, most Americans will cast blame for all of this according to their political orientations, which are as hardened as the arteries of an ill person. So for the rest of us, how are we to proceed with our disrupted lives in this context? We know the smartest thing is to continue sheltering-in-place, having food and supplies delivered, and maintaining social distance. These are inherently apolitical decisions.
***
I got to visit my beloved San Francisco yesterday evening for the first time in way over a month. I don't remember the last time I was there. Six or eight weeks may not sound like a lot, but under our current state of affairs, time has slowed down, sped up and virtually disappeared. It seems as if there is no time anymore.
As we neared our destination in Glen Park last night, a familiar thick wave of white fog replaced the blue sky and orange sun.
Along with the fog, a wave of nostalgia washed over me as we drove through the streets and neighborhoods I've gotten to know so well over the past 50 years. Without prompting, memories from this block or that block reasserted themselves.
San Francisco is my adopted home or maybe it adopted me. Arriving at the age of 24, I was searching for a life, just like so many others who migrated to the coast then and still do now.
It's a city where if you are lucky you may find an identity that eluded you elsewhere. Even today, with absurdly high rents and costly services, there is a certain magic in the air blowing in from the Pacific. San Francisco is an edge city, perched on a peninsula way out at the end of a continent, far from the cities in the East that dominate the foolish spectacle that passes as the state of our public affairs.
You can pick up similar traces of this magic in other edge cities -- Perth, Seattle, Key West, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Gatineau, Dublin, Brugge and Helsinki, among others.
Last night, we were in the city that adopted me to deliver food supplies to family members. I got to see my youngest grandchild for the first time in months -- she is 18 months old and surprised me by calling me the name she had somehow learned by the time she was one -- Grandpa.
I smiled at her and called her name across six feet's distance. All I could think of is I want to survive to a much older age than this one and get to know her as she grows up.
***
As I lay in bed in the darkness around 4 AM this morning, it became clear to me that I would write about wistfulness today. The origins of the word nostalgia -- Greek, Latin, German -- give it the layers of meaning that resonate when we employ it.
English is such a complex language, benefitting from so many cross-fertilizations from other languages, that with a little work we can achieve a rare precision of meaning in a world of ambiguity. Indeed some languages thrive on ambiguity, which has its own beauty, allowing for nuanced interpretations according to one's preferences and predilections.
Yet nostalgia also implies a longing for the past when now the past is basically the day before yesterday, you know, when we could hug a friend on the street, sip coffee in a cafe while reading a book, romance one another over candles and wine.
When all of a sudden that was swept away by the tsunami of COVID-19, the world of possibilities for us started to shrink.
I've read several articles about how elderly people are experiencing this epidemic lately. Perhaps it is odd that these patients often present very different symptoms from those of younger people.
Some of those symptoms reportedly include disorientation, weakness, loss of appetite, difficulty walking, and a propensity to fall and get injured.
Then again, perhaps it is not so odd. Many elderly people live in specialized care facilities where, these days they are confined to their rooms and are bereft of any physical contact.
Not too long ago I was in that situation. What I recall was a profound sense of disorientation, weakness, loss of appetite, difficulty walking, and a propensity to fall and get injured.
So which disease did I have then -- COVID-19 or the ravages of isolation?
-30-
Wednesday, April 22, 2020
Pandemics Without End
My option for getting a handle on this period was to visit Wikipedia's "list of epidemics" page. Pandemics and plagues are detailed all the way back to 1200 B.C. There are scores of them. Maybe, I think, we have to forget about them to enjoy the in-between times.
Take one example -- the HIV/AIDS pandemic that felled 32 million people worldwide not so long ago. Here in San Francisco and many other places, we felt its excruciating toll day by day. Ambulances and medical examiner trucks would pull up to the houses of neighbors (I was living in the Castro District at the time), while friends and family stood outside, sobbing, waving their loved one a final goodbye.
Take one example -- the HIV/AIDS pandemic that felled 32 million people worldwide not so long ago. Here in San Francisco and many other places, we felt its excruciating toll day by day. Ambulances and medical examiner trucks would pull up to the houses of neighbors (I was living in the Castro District at the time), while friends and family stood outside, sobbing, waving their loved one a final goodbye.
The emergency lights didn't flash and the sirens didn't wail.
When a disease such as COVID-19 strikes, everyone is reminded, at least temporarily, that our bodies are both fragile and tough. Fragile enough that a tiny creature can render us powerless to continue our normal activities; tough enough that most of us will overcome this plague and persist.
And what shall we persist in doing with our lives?
A friend of mine who grew up overseas once ever so gently suggested to me, "Every single American, no matter what his or her situation, is rich relative to the rest of the world's people."
Perhaps true, but what does our relative wealth mean in practical terms?
***
Why shelter in place, some ask. Because the virus that is our present enemy lingers just there, at our doorstep, waiting to come in. It may be an unwanted guest but it is there nonetheless.
We can stay home, wear masks and gloves, wash our hands repeatedly, sanitize the boxes delivered to our doorsteps, and let those boxes rest as the virus particles on their surfaces wither and die. Many of us are doing just that, cautiously progressing into our new lifestyle of shopping online, relying on (very low-paid) delivery people, sanitizing their deliveries, and sustaining life as we know it under new circumstances.
If we follow these precautions, the virus reveals itself to be a weak enemy, unable to defeat our defenses. It floats harmlessly away like the words of a very bad poem. Well, bad poems are not entirely harmless; every one leaves a bit of collateral damage in its wake, as does every dead virus.
Then again, some (perhaps most) people cannot tolerate being confined to their home, or at least they think they cannot. So they venture out to stores, for example. Some walk their dogs or jog by. Some meet up, maintaining a safe distance, sharing life's little details as we always have done.
Others feel angry and frustrated, so they wave flags and protest. But who, exactly, is there to protest against?
***
When I was a boy, growing up in Michigan, I was a writer and a story-teller. I had an audience of one and that guy was a rather harsh critic. As I stare at him now, old and grizzled in the mirror, all I can do is wonder why.
As a girlfriend told me once during a trying period in our relationship, "You always want me to tell you a story but I don't do that. That is *your* thing, not mine."
Every journalist learns on the job that there are as many ways to see the world as there are people. In the Afghanistan I knew in the late 1960s, there was almost no literacy. Perhaps 10 percent of the population could read or write. But every village had a scribe -- if you wanted to send a message to someone in another town, you dictated it to the scribe and he took care of it for you.
On the other end, a scribe in the village receiving the message took it to the intended recipient and read it to him. (Women were largely excluded from this type of interaction.)
Though most could not read or write, everyone could tell stories, and man, did they have a lot of stories. Many of them sounded like scriptures to me, tales repeated down through the centuries as received wisdom. In fact, they sounded a lot like the chapters in the Old Testament.
Many of these stories and myths involved Muhammad (spoken with the accent on the last syllable). As it turns out, scholars can't even agree whether he existed.
If he did not actually live, he certainly led a more influential non-life that virtually anyone who did. He's right up there with Moses, Jesus and the Buddha.
Since I am not a religious scholar, I'll not endorse or reject any academic theory about Muhammad; I just know him through the oral traditions of rural Afghanistan, where he is not only a living prophet but the central character in many a story.
I've written a little bit here and there about my time in Afghanistan; I was young and it forged deep impressions on my developing identity. One enduring lesson: Never underestimate the power of faith.
***
The boy, the young man, the career journalist, the old man. Every step of the way, bad poems have cropped up in my consciousness. I try to discard the worst of these and preserve what is left.
In cooking this is called reduction. Journalists call it editing. I'll call it what will be left after the virus is gone.
-30-
Tuesday, April 21, 2020
Oil, Alcohol, and Norimaki
There have been many gyrations in the oil markets over the decades; for example, I co-authored a story that became a feature film in the 1980s based on the premise that an extreme concentration of "petrodollars" in the Middle East could destabilize the global economy.
The movie was released but the premise never became reality, fortunately. Meanwhile, many a fortune has been acquired from exploiting oil reserves in many parts of the world, including the U.S.
So what exactly is oil?
It's a fossil fuel that is formed out of the vast quantities of tiny plants and animals like algae and zooplankton when they die and fall to the bottom of the ocean. There, trapped under sand and mud, they transform into oil.
It is strange that the price of oil this week has fallen below zero, but alas, supply and demand are having their way with the substance. It seems that nobody wants the stuff these days, so maybe you should erect a giant tank on your property and acquire some of the excess oil for sale later on, when it once again comes under demand.
Or hope that they'll start paying you to fill your car with gasoline soon.
At the same time, in an unrelated matter, a new study reveals that some 42 percent of U.S. workers sheltering in place are drinking alcohol of the job now. Perhaps that is not such a good idea.
So what is alcohol?
It's that stuff that gets formed when yeast breaks down, or ferments, the sugars in various foods. It's quite good at getting a person who imbibes it drunk. I've often wondered whether a drunken man's sperm weaves in and out on its treacherous route to a woman's Fallopian tubes.
I didn't erect an oil tank or drink on the job this morning, but I did order some norimaki crackers. .
But what exactly is a norimaki cracker? It is a type of bite-sized Japanese cracker made from glutinous rice and flavored with soy sauce. They come in various sizes and shapes and often are wrapped in dried seaweed.
I love to eat these crackers as snacks, and thus ordered a bunch for my grandchildren to try.
***
As the days go by, Americans in various places are violating social distance guidelines and gathering in groups to protest those guidelines. They are carrying signs and waving American flags.
Are we to conclude that in their view it is un-American to shelter in place just because of a silly little virus? Yes, that is what we are to conclude.
***
All of these substances I'm obsessing about today share a common feature: they are dead. Oil is formed from dead creatures. Alcohol the same. The seaweed in norimaki is certainly by most definitions quite dead.
Yet in their own ways they all serve the living.
If I were a savvy investor, which I am not, I wouldn't invest my precious, swindling resources in oil, alcohol or norimaki crackers. Other have long since cornered those markets.
But I might consider investing in Covid-19. Now there is a commodity that would seem to have a bright future, especially among those who gather in large groups to protest its predations. Like the naval fleet clustered at Pearl Harbor at the dawn on World War II, these groups present our enemy with the perfect target.
-30-
The movie was released but the premise never became reality, fortunately. Meanwhile, many a fortune has been acquired from exploiting oil reserves in many parts of the world, including the U.S.
So what exactly is oil?
It's a fossil fuel that is formed out of the vast quantities of tiny plants and animals like algae and zooplankton when they die and fall to the bottom of the ocean. There, trapped under sand and mud, they transform into oil.
It is strange that the price of oil this week has fallen below zero, but alas, supply and demand are having their way with the substance. It seems that nobody wants the stuff these days, so maybe you should erect a giant tank on your property and acquire some of the excess oil for sale later on, when it once again comes under demand.
Or hope that they'll start paying you to fill your car with gasoline soon.
At the same time, in an unrelated matter, a new study reveals that some 42 percent of U.S. workers sheltering in place are drinking alcohol of the job now. Perhaps that is not such a good idea.
So what is alcohol?
It's that stuff that gets formed when yeast breaks down, or ferments, the sugars in various foods. It's quite good at getting a person who imbibes it drunk. I've often wondered whether a drunken man's sperm weaves in and out on its treacherous route to a woman's Fallopian tubes.
I didn't erect an oil tank or drink on the job this morning, but I did order some norimaki crackers. .
But what exactly is a norimaki cracker? It is a type of bite-sized Japanese cracker made from glutinous rice and flavored with soy sauce. They come in various sizes and shapes and often are wrapped in dried seaweed.
I love to eat these crackers as snacks, and thus ordered a bunch for my grandchildren to try.
***
As the days go by, Americans in various places are violating social distance guidelines and gathering in groups to protest those guidelines. They are carrying signs and waving American flags.
Are we to conclude that in their view it is un-American to shelter in place just because of a silly little virus? Yes, that is what we are to conclude.
***
All of these substances I'm obsessing about today share a common feature: they are dead. Oil is formed from dead creatures. Alcohol the same. The seaweed in norimaki is certainly by most definitions quite dead.
Yet in their own ways they all serve the living.
If I were a savvy investor, which I am not, I wouldn't invest my precious, swindling resources in oil, alcohol or norimaki crackers. Other have long since cornered those markets.
But I might consider investing in Covid-19. Now there is a commodity that would seem to have a bright future, especially among those who gather in large groups to protest its predations. Like the naval fleet clustered at Pearl Harbor at the dawn on World War II, these groups present our enemy with the perfect target.
-30-
Monday, April 20, 2020
As We Boomers Keep Booming
Demographers love to label generations. Apparently a new one arrives every 18 years or so. Mine is called the Baby Boomers. There is some difference among sources as to when the first Boomers started arriving but it is generally identified as the mid-1940s when our parents were reunited after the end of World War II.
The cohort contains people born up through 1964.
I've long held my own theory about us Boomers. It starts with the facts: As we entered the school systems in our towns and cities, we broke everything we encountered. There were never enough desks, chairs, or educational supplies for us, starting with kindergarten.
Instead, we had standing-room-only and sharing as alternatives while our desperate teachers waited for the reinforcements to arrive.
A similar trend greeted us as we became adults. Partially due to the cultural shift we were spearheading, we were not a good fit into the existing job markets. We were rebellious, idealistic, ambitious for social change. We were angry at the social injustices we saw around us.
So we created our own institutions.
In the business sector I chose, journalism, many of the founders of the institutions where I worked were led by Boomers. Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone, was both in 1946. Louis Rossetto, Wired, 1949. David Talbot, Salon, 1951. Richard Gingras, Google News, 1952. Lowell Bergman, CIR, CBS, etc., 1945.
I arrived in 1947.
Hell, even Donald Trump is a Baby Boomer (1946).
Those of us in the older slice of the Baby Boom generation not only tended to create new institutions; we also led them for years. Most of our employees were younger Boomers, much like our younger sisters and brothers.
We brought a new attitude to these institutions we created. The dress and work style tended to be casual, the decision-making at least initially was collectivist. We didn't like hierarchies, not at first. Our primary audience was composed of people very much like us.
Now many of us are growing old.
***
It's hard to escape the notion that some of the people around us may be gradually going slightly insane under the self-imposed conditions of our isolation from each other.
A friend of mine in an assisted living facility said he couldn't stand the silence and he had to do something about it. He went out of his rom, ran up and down the halls, screaming.
Afterwards, he said he felt spent. No one responded.
The other day, driving to a nearby house to drop off or pick up some supplies, we passed a strange sight. A boy, maybe 11 or 12, was running down the sidewalk wearing only a pair of underpants. He seemed ecstatic, as though he'd escaped from somewhere. Following him, some distance behind, was a muffle-aged woman, with a frantic expression as she sought to recapture him.
Was that his mother?
As we all peered through the right-side windows in the car, we felt helpless to intervene.
Social distance.
***
I'm hardly an expert at this Facebook thing. Although I've been a member since 2005 (I closed my original account and opened this one in 2006), I never posted much here. In recent years, I mainly promoted the projects my colleagues were producing at KQED -- the investigative stories that I respect so much.
When this pandemic crisis erupted, and being retired, I felt compelled to contribute some thoughts; thus, this flow of daily essays began. Again, I didn't have any clear plan in mind, and no one urged me to get involved in this.
It just sorta happened.
As a result, a sleepy page with a few hundred friends has exploded to a daily site with thousands of readers. I am grateful for the response, the feedback, the comments, shares, messages, and especially for your encouragement.
But I'm also a little shell-shocked. Soon, it is clear, we will have reached Facebook's limit of 5,000 friends. I guess the growth stops there.
Why facebook imposes this limit remains murky to me. All the advice I can find via Google is 'if you want to keep making new friends, drop some of your old ones.'
Why would I do that?
You can never have too many friends. That's me saying that.
-30-
The cohort contains people born up through 1964.
I've long held my own theory about us Boomers. It starts with the facts: As we entered the school systems in our towns and cities, we broke everything we encountered. There were never enough desks, chairs, or educational supplies for us, starting with kindergarten.
Instead, we had standing-room-only and sharing as alternatives while our desperate teachers waited for the reinforcements to arrive.
A similar trend greeted us as we became adults. Partially due to the cultural shift we were spearheading, we were not a good fit into the existing job markets. We were rebellious, idealistic, ambitious for social change. We were angry at the social injustices we saw around us.
So we created our own institutions.
In the business sector I chose, journalism, many of the founders of the institutions where I worked were led by Boomers. Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone, was both in 1946. Louis Rossetto, Wired, 1949. David Talbot, Salon, 1951. Richard Gingras, Google News, 1952. Lowell Bergman, CIR, CBS, etc., 1945.
I arrived in 1947.
Hell, even Donald Trump is a Baby Boomer (1946).
Those of us in the older slice of the Baby Boom generation not only tended to create new institutions; we also led them for years. Most of our employees were younger Boomers, much like our younger sisters and brothers.
We brought a new attitude to these institutions we created. The dress and work style tended to be casual, the decision-making at least initially was collectivist. We didn't like hierarchies, not at first. Our primary audience was composed of people very much like us.
Now many of us are growing old.
***
It's hard to escape the notion that some of the people around us may be gradually going slightly insane under the self-imposed conditions of our isolation from each other.
A friend of mine in an assisted living facility said he couldn't stand the silence and he had to do something about it. He went out of his rom, ran up and down the halls, screaming.
Afterwards, he said he felt spent. No one responded.
The other day, driving to a nearby house to drop off or pick up some supplies, we passed a strange sight. A boy, maybe 11 or 12, was running down the sidewalk wearing only a pair of underpants. He seemed ecstatic, as though he'd escaped from somewhere. Following him, some distance behind, was a muffle-aged woman, with a frantic expression as she sought to recapture him.
Was that his mother?
As we all peered through the right-side windows in the car, we felt helpless to intervene.
Social distance.
***
I'm hardly an expert at this Facebook thing. Although I've been a member since 2005 (I closed my original account and opened this one in 2006), I never posted much here. In recent years, I mainly promoted the projects my colleagues were producing at KQED -- the investigative stories that I respect so much.
When this pandemic crisis erupted, and being retired, I felt compelled to contribute some thoughts; thus, this flow of daily essays began. Again, I didn't have any clear plan in mind, and no one urged me to get involved in this.
It just sorta happened.
As a result, a sleepy page with a few hundred friends has exploded to a daily site with thousands of readers. I am grateful for the response, the feedback, the comments, shares, messages, and especially for your encouragement.
But I'm also a little shell-shocked. Soon, it is clear, we will have reached Facebook's limit of 5,000 friends. I guess the growth stops there.
Why facebook imposes this limit remains murky to me. All the advice I can find via Google is 'if you want to keep making new friends, drop some of your old ones.'
Why would I do that?
You can never have too many friends. That's me saying that.
-30-
Sunday, April 19, 2020
The Little Thngs
Last night, just at sunset, my daughter and I took a walk around the neighborhood. The orange glow from the west provided plenty of light on our way along the winding sidewalks. Inside the houses we passed, life was being lived in all the little ways that sustain us.
Dinners were being prepared, dishes were being washed, music was being listened to. More active pursuits were happening as well -- people were eating, singing, dancing and talking.
Everyone's got questions about this Corona-V visitor that has unfortunately deposited itself in our midst. Today's New York Times, the best newspaper in America, had a story entitled
The news is mostly good, according to the author's sources. You are at very little risk of contracting this virus from your daily activities (like walking your dog), or from your clothes, shoes, hair or newspaper, unless a very ill person sneezed on you at close range.
Dinners were being prepared, dishes were being washed, music was being listened to. More active pursuits were happening as well -- people were eating, singing, dancing and talking.
Everyone's got questions about this Corona-V visitor that has unfortunately deposited itself in our midst. Today's New York Times, the best newspaper in America, had a story entitled
Is the Virus on My Clothes? My Shoes? My Hair? My Newspaper?
The news is mostly good, according to the author's sources. You are at very little risk of contracting this virus from your daily activities (like walking your dog), or from your clothes, shoes, hair or newspaper, unless a very ill person sneezed on you at close range.
Doing your laundry will handle whatever low level of Corona-V (my preferred name) you may have picked up along the way. Mostly it's a matter of aerodynamics -- your slow-moving body basically pushes the virus droplets out of the way as you circumnavigate the obstacles you encounter in the world around you.
Those droplets fall harmlessly to the ground, where they wither and die. Bye-bye Corona-V! We hardly knew 'ye and we're both better off as a result.
***
Yesterday's Times had another provocative story; that one quoted public health officials who label nursing homes and assisted living facilities as "death traps."
Not a very nice thing to say about the (mostly) stellar facilities staffed by caring professional health workers seeking to comfort and care for our vulnerable elderly. But the disproportionate percentage of Corona-V deaths occurring in such places tells its own story.
In order to stay afloat as businesses, these places need to rely on low-paid, poorly educated workers who serve meals and push wheelchairs and perform all of the other vital tasks that keep things running smoothly. They also normally live outside of the facility, meaning they come in contact with many other people.
Almost every such place all over America is under lockdown right now. The dining rooms and activity centers are shuttered; the residents are urged to stay in their rooms. Those workers I mentioned bring you your meals. They go room to room, resident to resident, three times a day.
Should they be carrying Corona-V, they become what might be called disease vectors.
***
I mentioned the little things that we all do to keep going, to get on with our daily lives. Inside each of those houses my daughter and I passed on our walk last night are the stories of lives being lived. In a conversation with one of my sisters recently, she dismissed some of her own activities -- including sewing and knitting -- as not as creative as, say, writing or singing professionally for audiences.
Are you kidding me?
What could be more creative and loving than knitting a shawl for a new baby in the family? Some of us write, some sing, some sew and some knit. Some cook, some build, some serve, some carry. Some people lend you an arm when you are having difficulty crossing a street.
Sometimes a young person, perhaps one with a different skin color than yours, rises when you enter a bus and says, "Here, sir, please take this seat."
Sometimes all it takes is a little thing like that; that and the exchange of smiles.
-30-
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