Saturday, May 23, 2020

Road-Tripping to Nowhere

Over this past night, my dreams or daydreams centered on taking a train ride through the Central Valley of California.

For those who don't live in the Golden State, one way to visualize it is as three north-to-south strips: the coast, the valley and the mountains.

I've been to all the cities and most of the towns along the coast from Oregon to Mexico. I've been all over the Sierra too, but I've never done much cruising down the center of the state.

There are lots of cities there: BakersfieldDelanoTulareVisaliaKingsburgSelmaFresnoMaderaMercedTurlockModestoMantecaStocktonSacramentoYuba City, and Chico. Not to mention Lodi, the 132nd largest city in the state, where I actually did get stuck one time.

The only city in the valley I can claim any serious knowledge of is Sacramento, our state capital, where some of my kids lived for a while.

As for the rest of those places, the best I can say is I've passed through a few of them.

If I were actually to take such a trip, of course, residents would advise me not to do so in the summer; it's too hot out there.

Anyway, these days with Covid-19, most likely the trains are empty, and the towns pretty quiet. Those residents who can flee do so by traveling east to the hills or west to the ocean beaches.

***

There are topics it's best not to venture into lest the water get too deep, and those include politics, religion and which flavor of coffee bean tastes the best.

As a long-time journalist, I know these things. In that context, I should clarify why I would launch a pointed verbal assault on someone like Trump, because as a journalist I am neutral; every politician is equally suspect in my eyes. So why single him out yesterday?

First, I'm sure he is a charming fellow and I'd like to meet him in case there are any random medals of dishonor hanging around waiting for a recipient. But I take issue with him or anyone who uses thinly veiled code to play on the subconscious racial fears of white Americans. Politicizing border walls and voter fraud or the living conditions in Baltimore isn't honest debate of issues or ideas. It is manipulation.

I know the readers who stop by this page come from both the right and the left, and I love them all. The last thing I would ever do is to tell anyone how to vote, other to suggest that we all vote our conscience according to our deepest principles. 

So when I criticize Trump for racist baiting, I'm not taking the side of Democrats, liberals or the "never-Trumpers" whoever they are. I'm standing up for one of my core beliefs -- that racism is the ugliest thing about America and you're either part of the solution or you are part of the problem.

My other beef with Trump regards the press. As a long-time press critic, I know as well as anyone the failings of my colleagues (and myself) and I've often spoken out about them. But claiming that the "media" is out to get you belies naiveté or an evil purpose.

There is no monolithic "media"; rather in the private sector there corporate-owned global corporations with agendas like Fox, MSNBC and CNN. Then there are all of the individual reporters and editors who work in those institutions.

I don't defend the companies, I defend the journalists. Big difference.

There's also public media like NPR, PBS and CPB. I've criticized them on occasion, too, but I stand with the journalists who work there.

Much of my career has focused not on politics but on environmental issues. I wonder what would happen if the whole battle to defeat Covid-19 boiled down to two highly partisan folks, one right, one left. And if the only way they could win this battle would be to abandon their positions and join in common purpose.

Given the current state of our politics, I wouldn't bet against the virus.

***

Feedback from readers here is welcome. Those who note I don't employ traditional structural conventions are spot-on. For me, writing is like driving a car is to one of my friends who moved into a new state  recently. He's just getting to know it, and on Saturdays he sets out for points unknown...

Who knows what will happen along the way?

That reminds me of the time I was driving west from the Sierra on a Sunday afternoon. It was the end of a holiday weekend. (This was before GPS or Mondays being designated part of holiday breaks.) Seeking to escape the brutal traffic on the main route, I slipped off onto one of the little roads that were mere numberless squibbles on my old torn roadmap.

Inevitably I got lost and that was my one visit to Lodi so far.

"The man from the magazine
Said I was on my way
Somewhere I lost connections
Ran out of songs to play
I came into town, a one night stand
Looks like my plans fell through
Oh Lord stuck in Lodi again"


-- CCR

-30-

Friday, May 22, 2020

Our Secret Rendezvous

It isn't the extraordinary things -- the breakthroughs, the awards, the dream vacations. It isn't even the special moments we knew we were falling in love.

Those are our memories and they remain intact, as vivid as ever.

Rather it is the ordinary things that we did almost without thinking that have been stolen from us. This came to me as I rode in a car through my old neighborhood one day on the way to the neurologist.

There was that one special cluster of wisteria under a tree. A lone hummingbird usually was hovering among the flowers as I passed. I'd stop and it often rose to greet me, face to face. It became our secret rendezvous.

There was the house that always seemed to be under construction. A large truck was parked in the driveway; the workers went in and out of the site through an opening where the garage door used to be. I'd always stop to chat with them.


"Buenos dias hombres. ¿Cómo es el trabajo?"
"Hola tio. Lamento que nuestro camión esté en tu camino. Usa tu bastón!"

There was the cafe where I used to order tuna melts. Now I was getting close to the office. There were the benches where my work friends who smoked would gather on breaks.

I love people who smoke. They remind me of my Dad.

There is the corner where I turned to get to the office. Every morning at 9:25 sharp, the UPS delivery truck arrived. Also at 9:25 every morning, I arrived.

As I swiped my ID badge to enter the front door, other colleagues would often be arriving. I enjoyed holding the door open for them.

Hours later, I would reverse my route and return home.

It was all so simple, so thoughtless; it's just how I passed my days.

But on this particular day, I was just passing through. My EMT son had set up the appointment for me as I was still too weak and frail from my illnesses to perform any but the most basic of tasks. I'd developed the idea that I was an onion and it was quite an elaborate identity, with layers and layers of complexity. 

I asked my son on our way to the neurologist if I should tell her about the onion. He said, "No, Dad, let's save that one for another day." At the meeting the doctor administered the cognition test -- the same one they gave me at the hospital many times.

My score, she reported, was 100 percent. I kept the onion deal to myself.

She explained that I'd had a stroke and that I had symptoms, including tremors, consistent with Parkinsonism. That is why my hospital doctor had prescribed carbidopa levodopa.

I loved the sound of that drug, carbidopa levodopa. I used to play with the nurses when they brought it to me. "Can you say that quickly six straight times?"


"Carbidopa levodopa carbidopa levodopa carbidopa levodopa carbidopa levodopa carbidopa levodopa carbidopa levodopa."

They all could do it and they looked really lovely to me, the women and the men, as they spoke that poetry. Most of them wore a far-away expression as they did it.

***

That particular day, as it happens, was the last time I drove along that route. So it was the end for the wisteria, the hummingbird, the workers, the benches, the smokers, the UPS truck and my ID badge.

It was not the end of the carbidopa levodopa.

There are millions of people like me who have been missing the things we used to do, however mundane, due to this disruption. For us, it is not only a time of remembering but also a time of reinventing our lives.

Now I walk through a new neighborhood, with wisteria, hummingbirds and different people than I'd greet before. It's pleasant; I'm fine.

But I'm one of the lucky ones, with family, resources and the recent return of my health. The disproportionate pain inflicted by Covid-19 is to the poor, to minorities. This tells us nothing about Covid-19, but volumes about the nature of our society.

Decades of activism by my generation have sliced away a small portion of the poverty and racism we discovered in our youth, but much work remains. That there are people in my country who pretend to care about these realities but support politicians who demonize the poor and minorities through cruel fantasies like "massive voter fraud," which is a lie, saddens me.

That there are people who think that it doesn't matter that a man in power repeatedly used his money and access to sexually abuse women saddens me.

That there are people who support a coward, an obvious bully, a man who abuses other people from behind his shield of bodyguards, saddens me.

That there are people who don't care that such a man attacks my colleagues in the press who are only doing their jobs saddens me very deeply.

That there are people, many people, who buy his bullshit, saddens me, and yes, even angers me.

I didn't devote 54 years trying to practice socially responsible journalism for it to come to this.

So yes I am nostalgic, I'm wistful, I miss what I've lost. But that stroke didn't kill me. 

I still have my voice.

-30-

Thursday, May 21, 2020

The Thief Remains

We know it's a thief and that it sometimes murders. The symptoms that it is active are so numerous and vague that a person may be excused for thinking they have Covid-19 when it's really just a common cold or the flu. Or maybe it's just a malaise.

What makes it all worse is the lack of any semblance of national leadership. It's like we're in the Alamo, surrounded by an enemy army, and help is most definitely *not* on our way. Plus there is no way out of here.

Instead, back in Washington, they fight, they squabble, they call each other names. I feel like watching the news, which I'm doing less frequently, might just be a beast worth killing. And that is not a good thing for a journalist to say, even a retired one.

But this battle is not going to be won, if winning is even an option, by pointing blaming fingers at one another. Such games belong in a sandbox, and I don't mean the tech type.

***

I've been hearing from some old friends recently, which is wonderful. One of them pointed out how much worse this situation is for 21-year-olds than the senior citizen lot. He's right, of course. I have a 21-year-old and I feel terrible that she is missing out on her rightful time to be 21. At that age, you should be free to go out, party, meet new people, laugh, have fun, fall in love if you wish, explore what the world offers you as a legal adult.

Instead, our 21-year-olds are locked down with their parents. They deserve a special pass that allows them to be 21 again any time they wish in the future.

We all have stories.  Many of them will stay within our families. Others find their way into the public realm. It is in the nature of time that what happened 30, 40, 50 years ago is of interest to the younger generations today.

A steady flow of documentary producers have visited me the last few years as they seek to capture the memories of us who are still around and sentient enough to articulate those memories. Since a fair number of the people I am asked about have passed away, I never feel entirely comfortable discussing what I remember about them when it involves negative stuff.

The good stuff I recall much more clearly. Besides the bad stuff is pretty much on the record somewhere out there anyway.

***

Today one of my grandchildren had a science class that included a virtual visit with an astronaut on the Space Station. It's probably not all that bad to spend time in space while the virus rages down here below.

Every time there is a public hookup with an astronaut in the media, I'm reminded of the morbid short story called "The Morning of the Day They Did It" by E.B. White, published in the New Yorker in 1950, long before there were astronauts. It's a funny disaster scenario -- check it out.

White was one of the most influential authors of the 20th century. His "Elements of Style" is the first book I recommend to young people who want to become writers. It is a slender volume. A lot can packed into a small amount of space like that.

When my book collection was being redistributed to the community in January, my kids advised me to keep a few. Among the ones I did keep were volumes about the evolution of the English language, including White's. I love this language, its specificity and precision. It's a finely cast tool when we use it the way it means to be used.

***

Whenever I hear a Bob Dylan line, I match it against my recollections  of his biographies, including his autobiography. It is clear he knew how to identify with the thief


If there is no way out this time, what will the joker say to the thief? Probably something like  "Dude it's time to go back to that neurologist. After all, she tells better jokes than the one we're in."

-30-


Wednesday, May 20, 2020

Flying Backwards


Well, there's nothing like a pandemic to help you to identity the necessities of life. I'd never personally given butter a lot of thought before, for example, or bread. For that matter, I took eggs for granted, sugar, salt, milk -- a whole host of foods. Fruits and vegetables were definitely on my radar as critical, as was potable water. But...toilet paper? Who knew we would be the ones around for the great toilet paper pandemic.

Beyond sustenance issues, the consequences of the mass shelter-in-place experience for many of us include sorting out what our human connections mean to us. Family members might have been under-appreciated by some until they really needed someone for help. Friends too.

When it comes to friendship, many thoughts and experiences come to mind. A man (they're almost always men) who believes he doesn't need friends is deluded. Inevitably, he wakes up one day to discover the truth.

So who to call when that cupboard is bare?

Lots of men, myself included, relied on their wives to maintain some sort of friendship circle. In practice, their wives became by far their best friends. Thank god for couples, for men and women, for men and men, for women and women and for gender neutral people with whomever they wish to be.

***

Last night, a dream: I was in the rear of a large commercial jet flying east toward New York when it became obvious somewhere around Tennessee that we were flying much too close to the ground. Hell, we were skimming the treetops out there.

After we safely landed on an empty road, I got out and became friends with the pilot. We walked around the area looking for someone who could help us figure out which direction to take off in, since the plane seemed to be fine.

Back in the rear of the plane, I found my seat but the people I was traveling with had vanished. So had the cellphone that I'd foolishly left behind.

Soon it became clear we were in trouble again. This time the situation clarified itself. We were flying backwards.

That realization woke me up. I checked and my cellphone was still there.

***

When it comes to friendships and relying on your partner as your best friend, breaking up, getting divorced, is like shock treatment for that dependency. Certainly there's a 12-step program for that problem but personally I never went through that type of rehabilitation.

Post-divorce, you have to work twice as hard because you have two households to support now. That substantially reduces your energy and time for socializing. Somewhere along the way you have a not-so-original epiphany: *You could become friends with the people you work with!*

It's amazing how much bullshit there is out there in the form of management training that dictates you can never be friends with your employees. Colleagues at your same level, yes, but not anyone who reports to you. Ever.

That dramatically under-estimates the nature of true friendship, which can easily transcend the boundaries of org charts.

Of course you cannot allow favoritism or ambition to govern your management duties. You can't give someone a favorable performance evaluation just because he or she is your friend. You can't let emotion outrank truth.

And you cannot let any of these relationships turn into a romance. If that starts to happen, some dramatic change is indicated -- fast.

But the sharing of intimacies and the trust that defines friendship should never be off the list of options for you. My rule: Friendship trumps job titles!

This can be a dangerous rule to follow, if you are an authority figure, so you have to establish limits too. As long as that professional status remains in force, self-discipline and loyalty to the mission of your employer must remain paramount.

So these kinds of friendships may indeed leave you lonely once again when you leave a job. Or they may not. Some friends don't go away just because the job did. It's most definitely a relief to not be anyone's boss any longer. Now you can just be plain friends.

***

There are so many layers of loneliness. Probably the worst is when a couple has grown to hate and resent each other but they still live together. I sincerely hope very few of those sheltering in place are suffering this fate.

Because it is not the worst thing to separate as a couple. You just may discover you can be friends better than lovers.

Even the worst -- losing someone you care about to death -- only applies to the waking hours. My parents come back to me in dreams, so do friends who have passed away, and so do my former lovers. Everybody who went away comes back in my dreams.

Since we're enduring an extended period where the bright line between sleeping time and waking time has blurred for many of us, our dreams just may have a new shot at taking over our self-awareness. And I don't mean the anxiety dreams like flying backwards or losing your cellphone. The other kind of dream.

We can miss someone, that's quite okay. Even to pine for somebody. And, yes for someone new -- from your future, that's okay too. Just go for it. Never let these kinds of dreams die.

"In dreams I walk with you. In dreams I talk to you.
In dreams you're mine...

But just before the dawn, I awake and find you gone.
I can't help it, I can't help it, if I cry...

It's too bad that all these things, Can only happen in my dreams
..." 


-- Roy Orbison

***

I should cop to the fact that I almost always edit lyrics and screenplays before I quote them. Why? As a dear friend of mine who departed in February once told me, "You can't shut off the editing button just because no one's paying you to do it."

Furthermore, it's hardly my fault when other people don't write things as clearly as I need them to be written. It's exactly like the problem when among a couple dozen students there always is one or two whose name you can't remember.

Jeremy becomes Jonathan. April becomes May. Clearly, their parents were the ones at fault here.

My friend who passed in February would have backed me up on this one. In the past year, I've also lost a soccer Mom friend, a cousin and an older student who long ago helped me realize I was against the war.

That they are gone may be objectively true. But nobody edits my dreams.

-30-


Tuesday, May 19, 2020

Not Together Again

We all learned in school, then promptly forgot, that the opposite of entropy is negentropy. Falling into disorder or getting things more in order: That is the question.

Watching young children on playdates these days shows that they can easily maintain social distance while doing things in parallel. They are skilled at copying each other's moves.

Teenagers, with their hormones bursting out of control, will no doubt invent a new dance based on social distancing -- the Corona-V -- masked, weaving back and forth in exotic circles, seductively never quite coming together.

Older folks need routines too, we need our rituals. Mine include rising early, sipping coffee, wrapping myself in the shawl my mother made me, and writing these essays. As the sun comes up, the light lifts my mood and I find my tortured way to some sort of message that is more hopeful than it would have been had I published in the dark.

Yet the evidence that things are falling apart is inescapable. The President of the U.S. is self-medicating with a drug medical experts warn might be dangerous. What is *that* about? "I'm still here," he announced, which I suppose is to be considered an accomplishment.

One of the issues that worries me, actually, is the tendency of many to self-medicate under stress. People won't necessarily follow the President's example and take a dangerous prescribed drug, but there are plenty of alternatives  advertised boldly on the gated windows of every corner store.

"We sell the poisons you love and we are open!"

***

Out on the streets I never visit any longer, I used to get recognized at times. "It's Bill Clinton!" a woman said. "Hi Bernie!" a man said. What they had in common was they had been drinking. That, and that our paths crossed.

Once, in 2004, while crossing Mission Street with a girlfriend I'd not known for very long, a woman stopped us in the middle of an intersection to tell me about a major new development she was part of. She didn't want anything like a donation or for me to sign a petition; she just wanted me to know about it.

"Why does that keep happening to you?" my girlfriend asked. "It's not the first time."

"It's simple. I used to be almost famous," was my answer.

The "almost famous" schtick would have been brilliant had it been mine. But Cameron Crowe had already coined it four years earlier.

"Whatever," my GF answered. "I might as well as not even been there."

"Try hanging out with someone who actually is famous," I retorted. "That makes being invisible feel really, really good."

***

Back in the 70s, when I wrote for *Rolling Stone*, I had shoulder-length dark hair and wore plaid shirts and jeans. Just about everyone I knew wanted to visit our office at 625 Third Street. Something like 35 years after I'd last worked there, I returned as a technology blogger to interview the top local executive of a software company called Harmonix.

The company had achieved success by developing a video game called Rock Band.

The conference rooms in the place were now named after Hunter Thompson, et.al., and the company's social media manager told me they were intent on leveraging the *Rolling Stone* connection in their marketing campaigns.

Having been almost famous myself at the time in question, this strategy made sense to me. After all, romanticizing the past is fun plus a good way to make money, and a video game like that one appeals to anyone's yearning to be a star.

If only you could be a star!

Certainly life would be better. People would definitely want to have sex with you, and they'd probably also give you drugs for free. Best of all, rather than playing your guitar in front of a monitor you could do it in front of a crowd.

Did I mention that once upon a time, I was almost a star myself?

Another time, I was almost run over by a speeding car.

Both times, I got lucky. I escaped with my life.

-30-











Monday, May 18, 2020

Some write to remember...

...Some write to forget.

***

The line between what we remember and what we imagine to have happened in the past is a fine one. That line skinnifies with age. Thus, every skilled nursing facility and assisted living facility I've stayed in over the past year has a "memory care" section.

Most of the time, the door to that area is locked. When someone needs admittance, they knock loudly and an attendant comes. I've watched patients be wheeled in and heard the sound of the door locking behind them.

It's just random selection, I'm sure, but I've never seen anyone came back out.

***

To attempt to teach other people requires a fundamental assumption: That you have something of value to impart to others.

People go through a complicated curriculum of subjects before they get certified as teachers; I'm curious whether addressing this assumption is on the agenda at the institutions that offer those certifications.

Perhaps someone will enlighten me.

There is always that blank space on any form you have to fill out about yourself that asks about your profession. Teachers can say "educator." Others may say "retired librarian." I always write "journalist."

But when I think carefully about the past half-century+, almost as much of my energy went into teaching as it did into journalism. All of it was uncertified.

It started when I was 22 in the Peace Corps, teaching Afghan students English. It started up again when I was in my 30s. Having published a bunch of stuff I was asked to teach journalism, first at U-C, Berkeley, later at Stanford and San Francisco State.

Those were the formal teaching jobs I hed, but there were many others along the way. My students ranged in age from 7 to 95. The younger ones were second-graders whose teachers asked me to visit and discuss the global environmental issues that concerned me as a journalist.

The first time I remember doing that was in 1983, when I was 36.

Later, I taught through U-C Extension. Those classes were at night and the students were noticeably less privileged than my students enrolled in the U-C and Stanford graduate school classes.

Still later, I was asked to teach memoir-writing to senior citizens through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at S.F. State and U-C. It needs to be noted that I have not to this date ever published a memoir, though I have published articles that probably fall into that category of writing.

Teaching people, most of whom were significantly older than me, was challenging. Since the goal was to encourage them to write the stories of their lives, I knew they would have to confront that basic assumption: That they had something of value to impart to others.

My technique was to start each class by asking for volunteers who would be willing to talk about their lives. As they did this, invariably and universally in my experience, the other students gave them positive feedback.

This, in turn, seemed to motivate them to take the next step -- to actually begin the process of writing it all down. A little bit each day will do. Five hundred words a day will yield 182,500 words over a year's time.

That's plenty enough for a memoir.

One of the more intriguing teaching experiences I had was to sit at a table with the third-grade boys at my children's school who were having "trouble" with math. Often this meant they would disrupt the other students by acting out. They seemed to have trouble sitting still and concentrating.

There were only a few such boys, four or five per class, and the teachers had me sit with them at a table in the rear of the classroom, while they conducted math class for the rest of the students. When I asked the teachers what I should do, the answer always was "I'm not sure. Just try to keep them quiet."

The only idea I could come up with was to start a chain story-telling circle. Typically, I would start the story ("Once in a place far from here, a group of boys...") and then ask each student to add a line. They embraced this approach enthusiastically. and most importantly, from a discipline perspective, they stayed quiet and listened to one another.

Over time, I tried to work the math concepts the teacher was conveying to the other students into our story circles. Ever meet a rhombus chased by pirates? I have.

When my youngest son was in the third grade, he pulled his chair over to our table. He hardly needed extra help in math, so I glanced at his teacher; she gave me a nod back that it was okay.

I always visited the school for this purpose on Thursday mornings. Now, with my son on the team, the story circles were getting better. He is, and was then, a gentle, sensitive person, cerebral but empathic and extremely funny in a self-deprecating way. Whoever hands out arrogance as a personality characteristic missed him on their rounds.

After completing my math counseling on those Thursdays 15 years ago, I would get in my car and head south to Palo Alto and my writing classes at Stanford. There, nobody had trouble sitting still or concentrating. Nobody disrupted the class, nobody had trouble learning. Nobody had trouble participating and nobody had trouble writing stories.

Plus they were generally better at math than I was.

***

So what am I doing here at Facebook? It's simple. After a year of severe illness, I have started to recover, enough so that I can consider what I want to do with the rest of my life.

The answer is simple: I want to start writing again, this time in a space where I can connect with an audience and get feedback.

As a writer, I am a work in progress. The feedback helps.

***

After so many references to country music, it is time to move on to other genres, including the two great influences of my youth -- Motown and rock.


"Last thing I remember
I was running for the door
I had to find the passage back to the place I was before
"Relax," said the night man
'We are programmed to receive
You can check-out any time you like
But you can never leave!'"


-- Eagles (Hotel California)

-30-

Sunday, May 17, 2020

Soundless Nights

It has rained again, I could hear it even though out here unless there is a strong wind, you can't hear the rain at all.

I always seem to hear it anyway.

And that's what woke me up at ~4 AM when I ate some cherries. The grandkids picked cherries yesterday at a nearby farm, a tradition in our family.

One of the clearest voices on Covid-19, one everyone should be able to trust is Sanjay Gupta, a medical doctor with a gift for explaining illnesses in ways those of us untrained in medicine can easily understand.

Here's how he describes our reaction to the virus and why it is inadequate:

"We want to kill it. Render it lifeless. But that is impossible. Why? Because this virus is not even alive. It is just a string of RNA in a fatty envelope. They are the zombies of the microbe world. Without us -- the hosts -- the virus is nothing, lacking any ability to grow, thrive or reproduce. It cannot even be cultured in a petri dish for scientific research. It can only grow in living cells, like the ones our bodies provide in abundance."

With an enemy like that, our military options would appear to be limited. If the battleground is our body, what's going to be left when the war is over? Or at least when. peace is declared.

***

A determined young woman is cultivating a community garden in the front yard here. She planted the first crops several weeks ago, but deer arrived one night to decimate the small tufts of green. For some reason, the deer left one plant untouched.

Yesterday the woman was back to erect a tall net fence around the garden. Her theory is this will deter the deer.

When I was a boy we had a garden out back that did not require a fence. There were deer nearby but they stayed in the woods.

Wild animals including deer have been increasingly emerging as pests preying on our urban and suburban gardens.

It's a simple formula: Destroy their habitat and they will destroy ours.

Two of my backyards in the city, on 28th Street and on Hampshire Street, had small pools -- one natural and one man-made. They both were home to fish. Every night, raccoons would come to try and catch the fish.

***

Story meetings inside media organizations can be fun. Reporters are typically out on the streets (though not so much these days) developing sources and observing the visible signs of change. Their job is to find out what is new.

In the story meetings, editors hear their pitches and make assignments. The the reporters go back out, get the story, come back in and publish.

That's the way it's supposed to work.

You can tell a lot about a colleague by listening to what she thinks a story is, because the best journalists don't let themselves fall into predictable patterns; they remain open to new ways of seeing the world.

This proves to be a difficult type of self-discipline to achieve. Most people seem to settle into a perspective on the world that feels comfortable and fits the facts as they see them.

It's an analysis, an ideology, a way of coping with uncertainty.

But now, with uncertainty all around, ideologies seem pointless. Can anyone explain to me what is conservative or liberal about a pandemic? And I don't mean whether this or that government response was adequate or soon enough or far-sighted enough. 

What is political about "a string of RNA in a fatty envelope?" Nothing, I would submit. It veers neither left nor to right; it doesn't favor one party over another. It cuts much deeper than that.

Are we capable of cutting deeper than that, or is the best story we can come up with is something more familiar, comfortable, self-referential?

On this topic I am doubtful. The world squabbles while that little string of RNA replicates. We are diseased within and whatever invasive techniques our doctors develop to "save" us will leave us on the other side of this pandemic still saddled with competing narratives of what we just lived through.

In one of my favorite movies that is not a romantic comedy, "In the Heat of the Night," a widow who's murdered husband had been trying to build a factory in a poor Southern town witnesses the law enforcement people charged with solving his crime fighting among themselves.

In a memorable sequence she says something more or less like this: "Why kind of people are you? What kind of place is this? My husband is dead. Someone in this town killed him. I want you to find out who. Otherwise, I will pack up my husband's engineers and leave you -- to yourselves."

When the day arrives our doctors leave us once again to ourselves, we'll need to confront that question:

What kind of place is this?

-30-