Pestilence

In honor of National Poetry Month.

Pestilence

First, the news of deaths in China.

Bat meat, they say.

Gatherings here disappear, but not before I wonder

if I will lose any friends.

Pestilence spreads with travelers everywhere.

Countries close borders, though viruses do not respect borders.

Invisible specter, lurking just where we least expect it.

I forget that I am sequestered,

tell a friend to come over, remember we can’t do that.

Fever and congestion cause worry.

I spend my days inside

worrying that today will be my last.

Walk outside every day.

All of this waiting.

The news gets worse.

No symptoms in its stealth phase, then

a mushroom cloud of sick needing hospitals

and morgues.

Scarcities rule the market, our government hoards resources,

doctors and nurses begin to fall.

I notice how many things I touch when I go out.

The news gets worse.

Businesses shutter, workers have no income,

A quiet settles over cities. 

Essential businesses still open 

begin to lose workers.

The news is all-COVID all the time.

Home-made masks are better than nothing.

The news gets worse.

We begin to mourn those whom we have lost.

Musicians, athletes, ordinary people who work in public.

I stare down the existential questions.

Why am I here? What is the purpose of my life?

Answers come in the solitude.

Granddaughters run fevers, send me to my knees.

The news is mixed.

Tweny million people have lost their jobs.

With their jobs, their health care.

The nation has rallied.

We share food, meet in cyberspace.

Drive by shootings are replaced by 

drive by birthday parties.

The news gets better.

A drop-off in new cases in New York City,

people healing from the disease.

A light at the end of the tunnel.

Hope that people will go back to work 

begins to spread.

China lifts its travel ban.

The news gets better.

Other countries are going back to work.

Spring flowers promise a future

with beauty and heavenly scents.

Vaccines begin to appear in labs.

Store shelves fill again.

Government checks arrive in homes.

The news gets better.

Governors coordinate plans

in the absence of federal guidance.

Happy homemade videos counterbalance

network news negativity.

The world breathes a sigh of relief.

It will end.

Unexpected Massive Suffering

Since my last post on February 13, the world climate has changed. A massive pandemic is ravaging our population and we are powerless to stop it. We are doing our best to provide health care for each other, but among the general population, people could not imagine an epidemic. It had been a century since the general population had suffered like this. We should have known from AIDS or ebola or even SARS, but it had to be severe enough to get our attention. Even this month, there are people who are out celebrating their freedom to gather, which hurts our herd immunity. While it is exciting to be a writer during a plague, it is stressful, too. My children are grown and do not need me any more, but they get very angry at any hint that I am not trying to survive.

My thoughts have wandered to the poorest of the poor, the refugees. After leaving a home where their lives were full of poverty or violence, they find themselves unwanted by any country. Living in crowded tent villages, they are now to undergo an illness that kills 3.4% of those who are affected by the “superspreader.” Without clean water, how are they to wash their hands? Without medical care, will their mortality rate be higher?

The character of our country is at stake here. Will we learn from this humbling experience and collaborate with scientists and doctors around the world? Or will we choose the “every man for himself” individualism that pits state against state and country against country? 

Our emotions are ruling the day. Confined to our houses, we vacillate between feeling safe, worrying about our health, worrying about our relatives and friends, and worrying about money. Keeping busy was always a strength of mine, but now even that is not enough. Thankfully, we have technology that allows us to communicate visually as well as in writing. Various people are posting songs, reading sonnets, and offering encouragement online. People are donating food to hospital workers, money for protective gear, and homemade face masks to nursing homes. Let us use this time to search ourselves for the strength of character to weather the illness and the economic chaos it has created. We have never needed each other more.

Our Social Climate

We hear so much today about conspiracies involving evil people, I felt I had to write about my experiences with people who have gone out of their way to be kind to others.

For starters, I live in a multicultural neighborhood with a lot of immigrants from many countries (China, Jordan, Poland, Russia, India.) I also have one family of Muslims living in four of the townhouses in my development and a Jewish neighbor who is one of my best friends. She told me a few  years ago that she had been diagnosed with cancer. She has had it three times, but this was the second time, I believe. One of our Muslim neighbors told her to ask for help if she ever needed it. They said their religion requires them to help others. 

Marcie herself helped me avoid a job loss with her skills in human resources.

When I moved to be near my parents, I had no job and no money. The first gift I remember was a member of my church giving me frozen chicken breasts to help feed my children. 

That Thanksgiving, I received a free basket of food and the person who had created it put a Christmas hand towel on top. That act of thoughtfulness stayed with me all these years (31) and I now collect Christmas decorations for those in our community who live in poverty.

There have been so many others through the years, I will limit this to just a few to illustrate my point. In November, I traveled to Queens, NY to see my daughter. We saw a woman trip and fall on the cobblestone street. My daughter pointed out that a dozen people stopped to help her, and said that people in New York are always helping each other. I have noticed since then that our natural inclination is to help each other. Giving directions to someone who is lost, helping a person with a technology problem, making quilts for charities, pouches for kangaroos injured in fires, providing clothing for immigrants with little or none. It is human to assist others when we can. We do not have less when we give to others. When we share, we all have enough.

I recently drove from St. Petersburg, Florida to my home near Chicago. I made it halfway between Chattanooga and Nashville the first day. It was a small town named Kimball, Tennessee. I woke up at 3:00 AM in a panic attack thinking about dicey situations I had driven through, like high-speed intervals between two trucks with a crazy lane-changer going in and out wherever there was space. I didn’t get back to sleep until 4 or 5, then woke up at 6:15. I decided to try to drive the rest of the way home if possible, no pressure. I did, in fact, make it home by supper time but had forgotten the bag with my technology in the hotel. The hotel owner is sending my computer, and I am so grateful I don’t have to change all my passwords. I couldn’t afford a new computer easily either. So I am grateful for honest people and am sending him a reward, and to the housecleaner. 

I had also lost my debit card that day. When I tried to look at my online banking, there was a problem with my browser. The bank had two people helping me for at least 20 minutes. They were patient and kind and I finally got things working.

I will get preachy here, so forgive me. People are good! The best part of our social interactions was the confirmation of my belief that we are all here to help each other, and that the wisest people know this.

1) Social Climate Research, Bennett, J. B., https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9780470479216.corpsy0885, accessed 1/31/2020.

Let's Talk About Climate

“Climate means the usual condition of the temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, and other meteorological elements in an area of the Earth's surface for a long time. In simple terms climate is the average condition for about thirty years.” (Google easy definition)
I have chosen climate for the theme of the year because I want to learn more about it and because I think it is time to begin a thorough discussion about the many types of climate that determine our actions.

We are affected by what is going on around us from the time we are born. Since I am a baby-boomer, that is the demographic I identify with the most, but feel free to comment about the climate that has affected you. There are basically two different meanings that refer to climate, the one listed above and also the cultural climate. I’m going to start learning about the first definition and see if I get to the second kind.

 Several years ago I took a class online about climate which was handled by a Canadian university. As with many things, I have no idea where that is (on the Web). It was fascinating and went into global climate patterns. I learned that a certain portion of the polar ice caps melts every year, adding fresh water to our oceans. This water circulates around the planet, warming some parts of our land and cooling others. I had never thought about the fact that ice is fresh water and the oceans are salty. I certainly learned other ideas but that one effect on our climate has stayed with me. What happens when too much fresh water enters our oceans? What happens if the oceans warm and create more precipitation? I would love to take another class because I seem to need deadlines to accomplish learning that takes effort.

 Another word that is often used in conjunction with climate is sustainability. Once again, Google says: the ability to be maintained at a certain rate or level, also, avoidance of the depletion of natural resources in order to maintain an ecological balance. In Europe, several years ago, everyone was going into the field. They will be light years ahead of other countries who have not yet realized there are real opportunities in the field.

 Wikipedia says climate is affected by “temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, and precipitation. In a broader sense, climate is the state of the components of the climate system, which includes the ocean and ice on Earth.[1]"

Latitude, terrain and altitude also play large roles, as do bodies of water. Although New York City and Chicago are on similar latitudes, the ocean gives New York milder winters, a fact I learned in person when my daughter moved there.

 There are systems of classification of climate, fields of study, such as paleoclimatology, and climate models to simulate what is happening globally. There is a scary chart on the Wikipedia page that shows a steady rise in world temperature over 140 years. Finally, there is a list of 15 related topics and 57 footnotes if you want more information. I will be spending time on the wiki page for the next few weeks. If you are interesting in learning more about the climates all over the world, please follow along this year.

 1) Google, https://www.google.com/, accessed 1/9/20
 2) Planton, Serge (France; editor) (2013). "Annex III. Glossary: IPCC – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change" (PDF). IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. p. 1450. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-05-24. Retrieved 25 July 2016. This is a direct copy of the Wikipedia footnote. I hope it’s not plagiarism to use it.