Black Lives Matter

The fact that Black lives matter even needs to be said breaks my heart. With gratitude to Touré for stating things better than I could, I want to rerun my blog post from March 2012 after Trayvon Martin was murdered. My position in this struggle is complicated because I am not Black, yet I am no mere ally. I am the wife of a Black man and the mother of Black sons and a Black daughter. Blood of my blood. Beloved of my heart. I fear for the safety of my immediate family as they go out into the world every day in this racist country. My husband spent a weekend in jail in his youth for “dirty license plates,” or, as commonly called in the Black community, DWB (driving while Black). This man, to whom I have pledged my soul, could have died right then for one mistaken movement, one eye roll, one unfortunate word; and I would never have met him, married him, bore his children, spent 42 years loving him and being held in his love in return. I am more than an ally. I am the wife and mother of Black men. I claim that. I live inside it. Grant me the right to speak the truth of my narrative. Without further preface, here is a revised version of my blog post from eight years ago. A blink of an eye. Has anything changed in that time? Tell me, what can I find to give me hope?

March 25, 2012

One day in 1996, I received a phone call while at work from my friend S., who lived about 45-minutes-drive from town in our rural community. S., who is part Black and part Native, was in a panic because her son, R., who was 20 at the time, had called to tell her he had been arrested for “making an unsafe maneuver on his bicycle.” She begged me to go to the jail to make sure R. wasn’t mistreated or injured before she could get into town. She was terrified he would be beaten. Or worse. When she called, I was about to leave work to pick up my boys (ages 8 and 4) from daycare. I promised her that as soon as I had my boys I would go to the jail.

As I drove over to retrieve my own Black sons, it dawned on me that I would have to explain to them why R., who often babysat them, was in jail. And to explain that, I would have to explain why the police arrested him on a false charge. And to explain that, I would have to break the news to my children that the police were not always your friendly neighborhood helper if you happened to be a Black boy (or a Black man). And if I did that, it meant that their dad and I would have to have the talk with them, the talk that I hadn’t expected to have with them until they were much older. How could we explain to such young boys that they were less safe than their white peers, and why? How could we explain the precautions that Black young men must take to attempt to stay safe in America? They were so young, so trustful.

We later learned that R. had crossed the street on his bike in the middle of a block instead of at the corner. A police car immediately bore down on him. R. was in front of the house where he rented a room from our friend J. and he was terrified when the police pursued him. He panicked. He threw his bike on the front lawn and ran into the house. Within moments, a half a dozen police officers forcibly entered J.’s house, with a police dog and weapons drawn, threw R. on the floor, cuffed him, and accused him of resisting arrest. Meanwhile J. (who was physically restrained in her own home by officers) was screaming at the officers that they had no legal right to enter her house without a warrant. Later, when the dust cleared, the city offered to drop all charges against R. if he agreed not to sue them. R. wanted to put the whole awful experience behind him and he took the deal. S. didn’t want him to have a criminal record and the agreement would ensure that his record remained clean so she didn’t protest either. The police department should not have walked away from that filth unscathed, but I understand why R. and S. made the choices they made. Not everyone is a hero.

I remember this story today because of Trayvon Martin. The most insightful, moving, and useful words that I have read in the wake of the murder of this Black child in Florida were written by Touré for Time Magazine in an article entitled “How to Talk to Black Boys about Trayvon Martin.” It is a healing and honest discourse. You can read Touré’s full list of talking points here in the Time archives. Allow me to share some of Touré’s words because they touched me so deeply as the parent of Black children. He provides excellent advice to Black young men regarding how to respond in potentially life-threatening situations. Here is an excerpt from Touré:

It's unlikely but possible that you could get killed today. Or any day. I'm sorry, but that's the truth. Black maleness is a potentially fatal condition. I tell you that not to scare you but because knowing that could save your life. There are people who will look at you and see a villain or a criminal or something fearsome. It's possible they may act on their prejudice and insecurity. Being black could turn an ordinary situation into a life-or-death moment even if you're doing nothing wrong.

There is nothing wrong with you. You're amazing. I love you. When I look at you, I see a complex human being with awesome potential, but some others will look at you and see a thug--even if their only evidence is your skin. Their racism relates to larger anxieties and problems in America that you didn't create. When someone is racist toward you--either because they've profiled you or spit some slur or whatever--they are saying they have a problem. They are not speaking about you. They're speaking about themselves and their deficiencies.

What if it's the cops who are making you feel threatened? Well, then you need to retreat. I don't mean run away. I mean don't resist. Now is not the time to fight the power. Make sure they can see your hands, follow all instructions, don't say anything, keep your cool. Your goal is to defuse things, no matter how insulted you are. We'll get revenge later. In the moment, play possum. Say sir. They may be behaving unjustly, but their lives aren't in danger. Yours is. If you survive, you will be able to tell your lawyer what happened. If you don't …

Never forget:  As far as we can tell, Trayvon did nothing wrong and still lost his life. You could be a Trayvon. Any of us could.

I have often wondered if Emmett Till’s mother had a 1950s version of the talk with him before he left Chicago and went to visit her people in Mississippi in 1955. If she didn’t, how she must have wished that she had. If she did, why did he forget her words? If only something she said had stuck in his mind and prevented him from risking and losing his life at the age of 14 for the foolish act of whistling at a white woman, the wife of a white supremacist. His gruesome and brutal death was a significant event in the advancement of the civil rights movement. But if you were to ask me, to ask any mother, to choose between having my sons make history and having them alive and well, you can guess what we would choose. I have asked my children to read Touré’s words. His advice could possibly save their lives sometime. I wish it were otherwise, but we have chosen to live in America, choose it again every day. My husband’s ancestors did not have that choice, and the legacy of that crime will not go away.

Father's Day Reprise

In 2012, I posted the following blog about my father on Father's Day. A lot has changed in eight years, with both of us slower than we were in 2012 and the world going all to hell. But for those of you who have stuck with me and still read, I want to repost this blog entry. Dad is still with me at 91. Lucky me.

Here's the 2012 blog:

When I started my blog a few years back, Dad requested that I respect his privacy and not talk about him on it. I have mentioned him from time to time, but I have consciously left him out of most of my musings. Today he will have to suffer being the subject of my blog entry of the week. After all, he’s 83 years old, and although he’s going strong, I treasure every Father’s Day that I still have him around. If I want to take a minute to appreciate my dad, then I will. I think he can handle it.

One of the greatest gifts that Dad has given to me, his only daughter, is the ability to have a positive attitude. I have received this from him as a result of genetics, of having a get-up-and-go Daddy as a girl growing up, and of watching how he continues to maintain his positive approach as he has aged.

Life is not easy; and it becomes more and more difficult as the years go by and we must assimilate the inevitable challenges, losses, and disappointments that accompany aging. Loved ones pass on. Our bodies don’t work so well anymore. We must reconcile ourselves with the differences between the life we imagined for ourselves in our youth and the life we actually lived and are living. Dad has never been one to dwell on the negative. He wakes up every morning ready for an adventure and eager for a new discovery. He works at not letting things get him down. He looks for the good in other people, delights in the wonders of the natural world, makes opportunities to enjoy the creative efforts of others (in art, writing, song, dance, etc.), uses his extraordinary gift of mathematical ability to contribute to the advancement of his field of inquiry, and generally explores the world. He loves to travel, to meet new people and try new things. He is always hungry to learn. The entire world is his playground. Nothing is beyond the potential realm of his vastly inquisitive mind.

Although I may not be quite as adventurous as my globetrotting father, I share his enthusiasm for life and his desire to make good use of my time here, not to squander my gifts or fail to notice the miracles of everyday. Having a positive attitude has made me resilient. I have been able to cope with worries great and small, obstacles, those losses and disappointments I mentioned already. It is my positive attitude that has made it possible for me to persevere as a writer, recover again and again from rejection, and eventually achieve publication. I try not to have regrets. I try not to hold grudges. I try to let go of anxiety, frustrations, and anger. I try to appreciate the beauty and the wonder. I try to be creative, to find humor, to act from love, and to listen to others when they speak their truest selves.

In some ways, my most fundamental philosophy about life, my way of being in the world, came to me through Dad. I believe that our purpose as human beings is to promote positive energy and that when we engage in positive acts, acts of kindness and compassion, acts of creativity and preservation, we have a positive impact on the universe. Through the gift of a positive attitude, Dad has given me abundant joy. What greater gift from a dad to his daughter? Happy Father’s Day, Dad. Love you.

Masked: Communication Fail for Those of Us Who Read Lips

Now that everyone in the world is wearing a face covering, I have become completely Deaf. Well, not everyone in the world. The selfish and ignorant people don’t bother with protection. But I don’t let those people come close enough to me to understand what they would say anyway because I have not the least desire to hear it. Already 80% Deaf, I depend on reading lips to help me make sense of what people say. When I can’t see a person’s lips, I find it extremely difficult to understand. I don’t have an 80% loss when I wear my hearing aids, but I still struggle. Hearing aids help but they also distort. For someone like me, with a severe hearing loss (including 100% loss in the upper range), hearing aids can only do so much. They don’t restore ordinary hearing and they certainly don’t bring my hearing back to 100%. In recent years, I have discovered how important it is for me to read lips to supplement the sounds that reach my brain. I hear a lot better when I can see a person’s face. It’s not just the lips. It’s also the expression. This is a fundamental element of Deaf culture that hearing people don’t readily understand.

American Sign Language (ASL) is about more than just making signs with the hands. It’s also about facial expression and body movement. It’s a beautifully demonstrative language through which Deaf and signing people say a great deal with their hands, faces, and bodies. Therefore, communicating in ASL while wearing a face mask is not as simple as it may seem. Seeing facial expressions gives communication essential nuance and context. For instance, the sign for “I understand” is the same as for “I don’t understand” and the way to tell the difference is the facial expression that goes along with it. Even when fluent signers wear face masks, they may find it challenging to correctly understand one another. And signed conversation loses a great deal of depth and meaning once half the face is no longer visible.

While I am not fluent in ASL, I can understand quite a bit of signing if the signer goes slowly and helps me out when I get lost. I’m an intermediate signer. I can make myself understood better than I can understand. I find this an interesting twist on learning a language. I have tried to learn French and Spanish, and at one time in my life I could converse adequately in both; but no longer, since I have not used these languages in years. I remember that when I was learning these languages I could understand others speaking them better than I could speak them myself. ASL is the opposite. I can make myself understood fairly well. And if I come up blank I can fingerspell a word and be shown the sign. On the other hand, when I watch others signing (particularly fluent signers), I don’t recognize all the signs and it goes by too quickly for me to understand. Most of my Deaf and fluently signing friends are wonderfully patient with me and I appreciate it.   

My point here is that not only do those of us with limited hearing who read lips find it challenging to understand people in face masks, but also Deaf people completely fluent in ASL find it challenging. We depend a great deal on visual cues to read the world.

My husband is very patient and very good about helping me understand, but he’s only human and does fall short. For instance, he sometimes sits down on the edge of the bed on his side and, as he prepares to retire for the night, taking off his slippers and such, he talks to me. I, of course, understand nothing since he is facing away from me. I remind him by saying, “You’re talking to a wall.” (Meaning the wall of the bedroom.) And he replies, “I sure am.” When I can’t see his face then I can’t understand him. But if he were to wear a face mask with a window in it then he could help interpret for me in the new crazy world in which we live. He interprets for me out in the world all the time with tremendous generosity. So I bought him a face mask with a window. It’s very cool.

Unfortunately for people like me, wearing face masks is here to stay for some time to come. So when I discovered that face masks with windows in them had become available, I searched suppliers, and I bought face masks with windows in them on Etsy for $7 each. I have seen them on sale for much more money elsewhere – someone is always out to make a buck on a good idea and consumer need. That’s capitalism. I go out once a week to buy food, so I don’t have much occasion to show off my windowed face mask. But I wore it to the store and the cashiers expressed interest in it and one of them even said she was going to buy one. I wear it in case I run into someone I know who is hard of hearing like me and also so that people will notice and hopefully ask me about it so I can educate them. All healthcare professionals should wear masks with windows. That would be the thoughtful and practical thing to do. In fact, I believe that even hearing people rely on lip reading and facial expression far more than they realize.

I have not seen anyone else in my community wearing a face mask with a window. When I am out and about I have two options. The first is to simply not understand. This happens more often than not. The other option is to tell people I can’t understand and then remove myself to at least five feet from them if they are willing to pull their mask down and repeat what they said. (While I still wear my mask.) I have no quarrel with them if they don’t feel comfortable unmasking. That is a completely valid choice. But I still can’t understand them if their mouth is covered.

Lately a new habit has crept into my behavior. When I am out and conversing with others in face masks, I catch myself signing while talking, even though the people to whom I am talking don’t know ASL. It’s the way my mind seems to process this situation. Do I subconsciously (and falsely) assume that if I sign while I speak then they will do the same back? My closest Deaf friend says that I am starting to feel ASL in my body when I communicate. I hope he’s right because that would be cool; like the ASL equivalent of dreaming in a foreign language as proficiency progresses. I used to be a fairly unintuitive person. But since going Deaf, I read body language and facial cues so much more that I seem to have strengthened my intuition muscle and I notice a great deal of unspoken communication.

Transitioning from a hearing person to a Deaf person this far into my life offers me a fascinating journey into a new land. These days, living in a world of masked people, that journey has taken some truly unanticipated turns. As ever, life happens. I guess until it doesn’t. I’m grateful it’s still happening to me so far, whether I can hear it or not.

Sheltered In Place

Like many other people confined to our homes at this time, I want to use my time wisely. So I decided to learn to play the bagpipes. I’m not musical, but how hard can bagpipes be? I’m taking lessons on YouTube. I don’t actually have any pipes to practice on so I’ve been practicing using the cat. My husband has gone back to learning the trombone after giving that a rest for several years. The police stopped by last night to see if we need to be tested for the virus since the neighbors reported that we sound like we’re in pain. On the contrary, our lungs are fine. You could scarcely think of an instrument that requires more lung power than a bagpipe or a trombone.

People have come up with creative if not productive uses for their time locked in the house. My neighbor planted her vegetable garden weeks too early so she has to continuously cover and uncover the tender plants as we keep having killing frosts, but it keeps her busy. My father is reading the Encyclopedia Britannica because he actually owns a full set and he can’t get out to the library. (I think his edition still says Pluto is a planet.) My husband is working his way through every movie Bogart ever made, including the 1955 comedy We’re No Angels and the 1938 hillbilly musical Swing Your Lady, purported to be the worst film Bogey ever acted in. My daughter and I made soup together on a screenchat and plan to do more cooking in the future. Many afternoons I read a story to my grandson before his nap, much to the apparent delight of his baby brother who hollers and waves his arms in excitement when I make silly voices and show the pictures.

I’m shipping care packages to my family. I have a FedEx account so they come right to my door to pick up outgoing boxes. I told my daughter in L.A. that I want to send her some magazines and a couple of books and she asked me to throw some toilet paper into the box. I sent the grandchildren books, beanbags, and Tinker toys. I’ll send pastries and thriller novels to Dad (the Encyclopedia Britannica is not particularly suspenseful). I plan to send pesto and olives to my children. I put this food up last summer thinking to share it and now it’s on me and my husband to consume it before the garden bursts forth again this summer. I wish I could FedEx frozen peaches but once they defrost they make for a rather sorry package. The peach trees in my yard are flowering and I haven’t made nearly enough of a dent in last year’s bounty. Oh well. I can think of a worse fate than an overabundance of peaches.

My younger son and his girlfriend built a fort out of furniture and blankets in their living room. They go inside to read, listen to music, and watch movies on the computer. They gave me a tour of it on Zoom. We used to build forts like that when he was a little boy. It looks so cozy that I wish I could go to his house and sleep in the fort. He is spending a lot of his corona-shut-in time making music, not the bagpipe or trombone variety; more like the synth variety. He describes his music as “house music,” which I imagine is exactly the best kind of music to make while shut inside the house. Two producers in Europe have put out vinyl albums of his work, so apparently he knows what he’s doing.

The lucky people who can do so are working from home. Lots of people, from doctors to late night comedy hosts, are going to work in their pajama bottoms. For the first time, Trevor Noah can appear in public in a hoodie without risking getting shot. Working from home is nothing new to me. I have worked from home writing a form of creative nonfiction (narrative is narrative) as a grant writer for twenty years. I’m a bit of a recluse to begin with so my life has changed little under lockdown. I used to go out once a week to the natural foods store, four times a week to the gym, and once a week to the library. So I skip the gym and the library and voila, I’m in lockdown. (I have been exercising at home with free weights.) But now everyone is living on online chat and wants me to participate. I’m not used to all this social activity. It’s exhausting. It’s stressful. I have to check my teeth for lettuce. I did a Zoom Passover Seder with family in five states and Canada. We do a weekly cost-to-coast family Zoom. I have a weekly Zoom movie group, monthly Zoom book group, and several Zoom synagogue services and events every month. A group of friends in my local Deaf and signing community are organizing a weekly ASL Zoom. Friends near and far keep coming out of the woodwork inviting me to reconnect through screenchat, which is particularly challenging since I have math anxiety and calculating the time differences makes me break out in a cold sweat, especially between here and, say, Thailand (what day is it there?). It’s like those scary logic problems from the SAT:  “If Calvin travels West from Bangkok at 50 miles per hour and Alvin travels East from Denver at 60 miles per hour then who will be in Scotland afore ye?”

Many of my friends and relatives have retired. Others are out of work until the lockdown ends. They have time on their hands. I’m still working here, people, and I’m up to my eyeballs writing a crop of brand new federal emergency relief grants for universities trying to help their students survive this debacle (thousands of students have been left homeless and food insecure when their college closed) and for healthcare providers to convert to telehealth. Why we aren’t further along with telehealth at this point in history staggers the imagination. The fact that someone would have to risk a coronavirus exposure event to take their baby to the doctor in person for antibiotics for an ear infection defies logic.

With the rise of screenchat, I have had to make adjustments to the fact that I’m now visible to my correspondents. This comes at a time when I can’t get a professional haircut and I’m improvising with a pair of scissors. Thank goodness I have curly hair because it doesn’t show so much if I do something foolish, it just makes me look more intellectual. Interestingly, I have noticed many women have started showing their gray hair now that they can’t get it colored. I think their gray hair looks terrific. I had to upgrade my attire. I don’t have to appear highly professional, but I do have to stop looking like a back-to-the-land commune escapee. I threw out two shmata dresses that I have crawled around the house in for years. I kept one to wear when I watch movies with Ron in the evening because my cat likes to sit on me and she sheds as if she thinks it’s an Olympic sport and she’s a gold medalist. (This detracts from her practical use as a substitute set of bagpipes.)

Last month when I wrote about the coronavirus, I considered the possibility that the virus is nature’s way of slowing the destruction of the planet perpetrated by humans with the climate chaos we have wrought. As human endeavor has slowed and stopped, CO2 emissions have dropped dramatically and the air is fit to breathe again. Now, a few days ago, Pope Francis said he wonders if the coronavirus is one of nature’s responses to humans ignoring the ecological crisis we face. He went further than calling this one of nature’s responses and even speculated that it could be “the revenge of nature.” Call me boastful, but you heard it here from me first. (Do you think the pope reads my blog?) This begs the question, should I be made pope? I’d be the first Jewish pope who plays the bagpipes. Extraordinary measures for extraordinary times. The thought I want to leave you with is this:  pay attention and make a note of the things that are different from the usual that you want to keep, to continue doing, when this moment passes and you can go out of your house again. Make use of this down time to imagine what could change for the future. These could be the first days of a better world. Stay well.

Coronavirus 1, Toilet Paper 0

Contemplating our predicament with the virus crisis takes me in two directions at once. On the one hand laughter is the best medicine, so I see the humor, and on the other I recognize the coronavirus as a grave threat and take the situation completely seriously. People are dying and our daily lives have altered dramatically because of this wee beastie hopping about in the world. If you think that joking about the coronavirus is in bad taste then read no further. For those of you like myself who vacillate between horror, surprise, and hilarity, then my words are for you. Laughter strengthens the immune system. This is a fact verified by studies published by the NIH and the Mayo Clinic, among other reputable sources. And I ask you, what do you recommend to get us through this debacle if not humor? The federal government ain’t gonna do it. That snake-oil salesman in the White House eliminated the U.S. pandemic response team in 2018 and gutted the CDC budget by 80% so that it had to cut efforts to prevent and prepare for a global pandemic. His only real concerns are how to profit off this mess and whether the White House kitchen is well stocked with steak and ketchup. But I don’t really want to talk about that. I want to cultivate a positive attitude. And there’s a lot to laugh about in this situation. Forgive me.

So. What is it with the toilet paper? If this is the beginning of the apocalypse, or even just the beginning of a month shut inside the house (which, depending upon who is shut in with you, could be equivalent to the apocalypse), why is TP the one thing everyone desperately has to have? I read in the news that the police department in Newport, OR had to issue a statement telling people not to call 911 if they run out of TP. Lack of TP does not constitute an emergency. The run on TP reminds me how much Americans lack creativity. The last time I went to my local grocery store, the TP was gone but the shelves directly adjacent to the empty TP shelves were loaded with Kleenex. Go figure. Did I miss something? Did a dumbing-down virus already rampage through the country under the radar and silently turn everyone into an idiot? Please beam me up, Scottie. I could think of a lot of things I would like to have during a house lockdown. TP is not at the top of the list. I skipped the TP and bought a bottle of good Scotch whiskey. If this is the beginning of the apocalypse then I need a whiskey.

My cousin sent me an article about how Dems and Republicans are experiencing two different pandemics. It claimed that the Dems take it seriously and the GOP does not take it seriously, but think it is an evil Dem plot designed to undermine the Republican administration. (Biological partisan warfare?) I have to disagree with this assessment. Perhaps the Republican leaders refuse to take it seriously, but ordinary Republican people take it quite seriously. The Republican friends I have (and I must disclose that I don’t have many) take it completely seriously. My Republican neighbor kindly called me to check up on us and see if we are OK at our house. Even though we have a Bernie sign in our front yard, she told me they have plenty of TP and offered to share it with us if we need it. So, wow, we are good. My neighbor is a sweetheart and we refuse to be divided by partisan politics. No corn cobs needed in the bathroom at my house.

I suggested to my children that they subscribe to a newspaper if they are worried about running out of TP. (They read the news online while we get the New York Times Sunday paper delivered.) My husband discourages me from suggesting that anyone use newspaper because it will clog the sewage system. I’m not advocating for flushing it. That would clog the pipes. One would have to put it into a paper bag after use and put the bag in the trash eventually. Perhaps I should buy stock in roto-rooter because other people will get the idea but apply it indiscriminately because they are idiots. I heard a rumor that many newspapers are printing four blank pages in every edition for use in the bathroom. (I did not check this one out on Snopes.) Cool. I have a box of tissues on my desk, and when my husband swiped one to blow his nose, I asked him to let me have the tissue when he was done with it. (I could use the reverse side, right?) Remember Wimpy asking Popeye “Can I have that hamburger when you’re done with it?” If you’re not a Baby Boomer that joke means nothing to you. Go back to Instagram.

Because I keep joking around about all this, my daughter is worried that I’m not taking adequate precautions. She made me promise not to go out except to buy food, not even to the gym, to use hand sanitizer, and she made me promise not to eat off the floor. That seemed like a no-brainer at the time when I made the promise, but to my surprise I soon discovered that I actually do eat off the floor rather often. For instance if I drop a piece of cheese or a slice of zucchini and it doesn’t have cat hair on it then, well. Hmm. But I promised. Last night I dropped a piece of popcorn on the floor and without thinking picked it up and ate it. Now my husband is blackmailing me, threatening to tell my daughter. Mercy.

Said daughter lives in L.A., where things are getting pretty weird. Not only have people bought up all the TP and hand sanitizer, but now they are hoarding dry food (such as rice, nuts, and beans). The grocery store shelves are empty. After watching with amusement while a woman at the store attempted to ask a clerk to help her find Echinacea, which the woman could not pronounce and had to spell (reading from a computer printout), my daughter pointed out to me that a lot of people who previously had no clue what herbal and “alternative” remedies even were will now begin to learn about these helpful health resources. (Circumventing Big Pharma.) Exciting. Will humans actually evolve as a result of this debacle? One can only hope. I think the Echinacea anecdote provides evidence that everything has changed and the “old normal” has permanently disappeared in the rearview.

My daughter’s employer closed the office and sent everyone home to work remotely, so I suggested that she drive to our house in NorCal. I’ll have food growing in the garden in a couple of months and until then we can eat acorns if the food supply collapses. I’ve eaten acorns before. Not my favorite, but I know how to leach the acid out and make them into functional flour. We have TP for the time being (and our generous neighbor), but perhaps I should get started figuring out how to make TP out of acorns. That’s the kind of pioneering innovative spirit that has died out in America, I’m afraid. My fairly progressive rural community is home to many people who appreciate the benefits and joys of high-quality food. In our town, there has been a run on kombucha at the natural foods store (big bummer) and our local Grocery Outlet is sold out of organic kale chips (no big deal, I make my own). But we’ll never run out of goat cheese around here.

Speaking of goats. Last weekend we visited friends who live so far out in the country that they are still fighting off the virus that caused the great influenza pandemic of 1918. The coronavirus would need a helicopter, ESP, and night vision goggles to find them. We could barely find them with detailed directions, semaphore, an astrolabe, and a car. While walking from said car to their house (I use the term “house” loosely to describe the structure in which they live), I was hog-swaddled by a herd of goats hoping to eat my basket full of treats and I turned my ankle. Just my luck that the apocalypse is beginning and I can’t run. Not that I could run before I sprained my ankle, but I could at least walk faster. The swelling has gone down in the past week and the ankle doesn’t hurt, but I feel I should stay off it. It has turned several impressive shades of yellow, chartreuse, blue, and purple. Perhaps I should capitulate and buy that laser acupressure pen that I keep getting advertisements about in my email. It supposedly cures whatever ails you.

Since my aged father is cooped up in his apartment in the senior community where he lives, my brother initiated a weekly Zoom conference with all the close family so Dad can visit with everyone. That’s only for one hour out of the week, however. My son asked me if Grandpa was getting bored at home. Grandpa has never gotten bored a day in his life. He’s a brilliant mathematician. He’s creative and resourceful. He lived through the Depression. He doesn’t need a handheld electronic device to entertain himself. I told my son that while confined to his apartment, Grandpa will likely invent a new branch of mathematics (not for the first time in his life). But when I spoke to said Grandpa on Friday he informed me that he’s spending his time reading trashy thriller novels and taking long walks. Whatever. He has earned the right to stop producing. Meanwhile, my other son, the musician, and his girlfriend, who is a graphic artist, are on lockdown in their house in Oakland. Forbidden to go to work at their day jobs, they’re busy as bees. They will likely emerge with enough new musical compositions to fill a vinyl album, a gallery’s worth of art work, and several pounds of handmade paper. As for me, I’m going to start writing that sci-fi novel that has been on my mind lately. Maybe I’ll put a virus in it.

My husband sent an email to my daughter the other day to reassure her that he is complying with health recommendations. Our children are particularly worried about him because he’s a diabetic. He wrote to my daughter “We have stayed at home, though I had to go to a couple doctor appointments. I did sneak a couple of trips to the hardware store, but I didn’t lick anyone and I used hand sanitizer when I got back in the car. I even ducked when someone waved at me. Mom is really trying hard not to eat off the floor.” I appreciate him for putting in a good word for me. (That was before he saw me eat the stray piece of popcorn.)

This whole crisis gives me pause in light of climate chaos and the continued arrogant conviction by people that humans are the most important species. Humans like to think we are entitled to exploit the planet, exterminate other living beings, and disrupt the natural order without a second thought, and that Nature will not fight back. Think again, people. The coronavirus is Nature fighting back. Behold that this tiny living creature sends us the message that we are not the top species we imagine ourselves to be. We can easily be toppled. I’m beginning to think toppling humans is a clever idea and that it might be an efficient way to protect Planet Earth. But must we lose so many beautiful living human souls in the process?

It was peaceful driving to the natural foods store through empty streets in the early morning fog the other day to beat the rush. I wanted to shop when no one was about. It felt like a day of rest. Like the Sabbath. As the world slows down and comes to a near stop, we are giving Earth a rest. A cosmic Sabbath. We have reduced the carbon footprint dramatically by not flying and not driving. One has to wonder at the intelligence of this virus for finding a way to slow the destruction to the planet wrought by humans. I am beginning to think that a great many humans have less intelligence than a virus. What looks bad to humans might look good to other species. I hope Nature forgives us our trespasses and that we come out of this pandemic wiser and more aware. We have much to gain if we pay attention. Stay well.

And now you know why I chose an image of goats to go with this narrative.