Pandemic postcard #2: All in this together

Hello again, and how has your week been? I am going to write here every Friday, as I am able.

After I posted last Friday, I took a 36-hour sabbath from news and social media. It was good for my soul, and I highly recommend it. Originally, I was going to stay offline from sunset Friday through Saturday evening, but I wound up staying away through Sunday morning, when I finally logged back onto the Internet to attend church online. We need rhythms and patterns in life; we're all coming up with new ones these days, aren't we?

Another pattern for me: I have been confining my essential errands to one day a week. I've chosen Thursday, mainly because it's the day when the landscape crew arrives at my apartment complex, high-decibel power tools blazing to wrangle our lawn, trees, and hedges into submission. There's no sense trying to read, write, or think during this time, so I take that as my cue to do the necessary business of reinforcing my grocery supply--and I went to a laundromat, too, figuring it would be cleaner and safer than the unattended laundry room I share with several dozen other apartments.

After the laundry, I drove to my old neighborhood grocery store, a sprawling Fred Meyer. I usually use the self-checkout at this store, but yesterday I stocked up, buying another full two weeks' worth of food and three months' worth of craft beer. (These days, that's two six-packs for me. Everything in moderation, including one IPA a week.)  I also wanted to thank the people who are keeping the store open, so I chose an attended line. The shopper in front of me had a mask on. The cashier had gloves.

When it was my turn, the cashier and I exchanged some mild pleasantries as he started ringing up my stuff. I'd heard it was no longer OK to bring my own bags. He said it's allowable, but I'd need to bag my own groceries. Good to know, that makes sense, I said--but I was glad to have him do the bagging of this big-for-me order. I thanked him for working on the front lines. He said he was glad to do it and that he even had a permission slip in case he got stopped on his way to work--but that was unlikely, since he lives around the corner. I used to live just down the block in this neighborhood, too, I said.

No one else was waiting in line, so we chatted even as he finished my order and I paid. He mentioned that his girlfriend is working from home these days, but that she might get a job in Olympia, our state capital, at some point. Well, there are Fred Meyers down there, I said. "But by then, I hope to be a teacher," he told me. What did he want to teach? English. Oh, I said, "I just got back from Mexico. I was down there learning how to teach English as a foreign language." And so on. I'm a writer, I said. He said he is a writer, too, "even if I've never published anything except in my school magazine." Well, that counts, I told him. He thanked me for coming in. "You're welcome and thanks again," I said.

It's a wrenching time for our world, and yet we are actively choosing to connect in ways big and small, mostly via phone and text and Zoom and email and social media, but sometimes in person. I understand why people are ordering grocery and food delivery, having their shipments left on the front porch so there's no contact. But I'll go out for groceries once a week as long as I can. We are all in this together--a cliche, but it's especially true now, when we need to be apart.

I also learned this week that my most longstanding magazine client, a publisher I've written for since the 1990s, is folding. They were my second-biggest source of income last year, so it will hurt. But this news came the same day that the Senate advanced the humongous fiscal package that finally gives self-employed people some unemployment protection. I continue to believe, as the Rev. Theodore Parker once said (and Dr. King echoed) that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Still, my heart aches for my editor at the magazine.

There's plenty of pain to go around right now. I am grateful I remain healthy and that no one in my inner circle has fallen seriously ill. I am grateful for the conversations I have had this past week with my beloveds. I am grateful I can get out and walk every day. And I am grateful for you, reader. See you next Friday.

P.S. I think we need a song called "Handshake Anxiety" right about now, yes? I am proud to say my daughter is the artist. She recorded this before COVID-19 became a thing. The whole album, released a month ago, is worth a listen. Be well.
 

Pandemic postcard #1: Hope suspends eternal

Hello. How are you doing today, this first full day of spring 2020? How is your heart in these days of unknowing?

I am doing OK. This is my first post since my March 1 return from my five-week sabbatical in Mexico. It's mind-boggling to think about how life has changed since then, and how much it might change in the next three weeks.

If I'm sad, it's mostly because I have no idea when I'll be able to travel again. I had hoped to be in Boise next week to see my daughter and volunteer at the Treefort music festival, now on hold until September. I'm also wondering when I might be able to do laundry; we have seven communal laundry rooms in my complex of more than 200 apartments, and I just don't think it's a good idea to use them, so I'm washing stuff in the sink for now. I'm keeping my distance from people and keeping a two-week supply of food in case I get sick anyway.

If I'm comforted, it's because the government, after way too much dithering as this crisis grew, now seems to recognize the dire straits we are in. I am just about out of editorial work and my baseball job is on hold, so I will welcome the federal financial help that seems to be on the horizon. I'm also heartened by how we are all finding new ways to live and to be together. I'll share a few of my favorites in this post.

Like many of you, I've had a longstanding like-hate relationship with Facebook, but I've spent far more time on there over the past two weeks than I have in years. I have mixed feelings about this--I'm trying to guard against spending more than 15 minutes or so at a stretch on social media (or on news sites, for that matter). But for all its miscues, Facebook is a lifeline for many right now in this time of physical distancing. I especially enjoy people's posts about how they're spending their time in this uncertain season. Personally, I've begun sharing a short video clip from my daily walk. Seattle is abloom, and I know many people can't get out these days, so it's a tiny thing I can do to bring a little nature to anyone who needs it.



Speaking of sharing, bless the musicians. Ben Gibbard is doing a daily live stream from his home here in Seattle. It has become a daily ritual for me: to gather with 7,000 or so other people to hear him play tunes from his deep catalog with Death Cab for Cutie and the Postal Service plus some inspired covers. (As an aside, he's had a bad cough; he has been recovering from a very bad flu he had in late February that was possibly the new coronavirus, though he says he'll never know.) I also plan to stream last week's recording of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra playing its last concert (for now), featuring Beethoven's 5th and 6th symphonies. There's a lot of live music happening all over Facebook, YouTube, Zoom, and other channels. Check out your favorite artists' feeds to see what they're up to.

What else? I'm a longtime fan of The Daily from The New York Times. This week's shows have been heartbreaking and hopeful, from the interview with the Italian doctor who'd finally taken a break to spend time with his family to today's show featuring a host of entrepreneurs who are shutting their businesses for the knowable future.

It's a good time to read books. Last week, I finished The Resisters, Gish Jen's new novel about baseball as a force for good in a not-so-distant dystopia. It was the last book I was able to borrow from my Seattle Public Library branch before it closed for who knows how long. After that, I returned to The Agony and the Ecstasy, a biographical novel of Michelangelo I've been reading off and on for a few months. This hefty Irving Stone epic (the bestselling book during the week I was born) has helped put our current political and health predicaments into perspective; Michelangelo spent his entire life struggling against various popes, often facing delays of many years--as well as various plagues and wars--as he nonetheless created one of the most astonishing bodies of work the world has known.

This weekend, I plan to take a tech sabbath and a break from the news from sunset tonight until sunset Saturday. I will refrain from using the Internet, though I'll still listen to CDs on the old boombox and watch a DVD or two. I'll also bake a bit, maybe make some art, play some music, do a little spring cleaning--and of course take a long walk. It's going to be rainy and overcast in Seattle next week, so I will enjoy the warmth and the sun while it lasts. 

We will get through this. It will take time. I'd love to hear about how life has changed for you, and the different ways you are spending your days now that we are living in ways none of us expected to live just a few weeks ago.