Pandemic postcard #37: 'We are still here'

Eight miles west of Highway 101, I had a decision to make: Continue straight to La Push on Washington 110 or turn right to Mora. I had a reservation at the Mora Campground near Rialto Beach, but check-in was many hours off, so I thought I'd spend the morning at Second Beach near La Push. As I neared the intersection, I saw the choice had been made for me: The temporary road sign flashed "QUILEUTE RESERVATION CLOSED."

Good for them, I thought.

As the pandemic took hold last spring, tribal governments up and down Washington's coast closed their lands to visitors. When summer came and the spread of the virus slowed, many adjacent areas in Olympic National Park opened to stir-crazy Americans seeking outdoor relief from isolation. I saw license plates from all over at Rialto Beach and cars parked a half-mile down Mora Road. But just across the Quileute River, its eponymous tribal nation remained off-limits to outsiders, as did the Makah reservation at the northwestern tip of the contiguous United States and the Quinault Indian Nation in southwestern Washington.

I applaud tribal nations for doing whatever they can to keep the coronavirus at bay, especially given the long history of indigenous people dying from diseases brought by outsiders and the high COVID-19 toll some Indian nations are facing in 2020. The closures are a reminder that the 574 tribal nations in the United States are sovereign and have the right to self-determination as well as the right to receive benefits from the federal government.

At least most of them do. Here in Seattle, we live on the unceded land of the Duwamish people. Our city was named for Duwamish Chief Si'ahl, who famously said, "The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know: all things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected." 

The Duwamish are a federally recognized tribe under the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott, but they are not currently on the list of federally acknowledged tribes. According to the Duwamish website, in 1978, the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs basically amended the treaty by adding seven new rules with which the Duwamish must comply to receive land, benefits, and services. The case has been under review by the Interior Department's Board of Indian Appeals for more than five years. 

Meanwhile, despite being in the heart of one of the wealthiest areas in the United States, many Duwamish people cannot access health services, nor can the tribe profit from tourism and gaming, as so many others do. (Seattle is surrounded by high-end resorts run by the Snoqualmie, Puyallup, Suquamish, and other neighboring tribes.) Even if the Duwamish prevail, I'm not sure how likely I'd be to hit a future casino. But along with more than 10,500 other people--half of whom have signed up in 2020--I've decided it's time to pay a small, symbolic amount of rent to the Duwamish people in recognition of the centuries they've spent caring for the land where I live today.

In last Sunday's online service, my minister Rev. Beth Chronister advocated for Real Rent Duwamish, and she also acknowledged that our physical building is on Duwamish land. I am part of a faith tradition that is grappling like never before with our nation's history of settler colonialism and enslavement. But Rev. Beth cautioned us against absolving ourselves with what theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called "cheap grace." We can pay token rent and say a land acknowledgment and call it good, or we can go deeper, into real relationship and covenant with each other. 

I can think of two ways beyond church that I will try to do this. Early in my freelance writing career, I authored two guidebooks that explored the Oregon Trail and the Lewis and Clark Trail. I know I tried my best--given my body of knowledge in the 1990s--to offer a nuanced view of how the United States expanded westward, yet I am sure I fell fall short. As I get future opportunities to write about history, I will do better.

Second, I recommit to living as lightly as I can. I retain a small footprint by American standards, dwelling in 400 square feet, yet like Henry David Thoreau, I need to leave my cabin now and then. I usually go on foot, but I have a car, and I occasionally use it to visit nature that's not within walking distance. A paradox, I know. So when I go into the woods and walk beside the waters, I want to be as mindful as I can of what I find there. "We rarely care for that we cannot name," says British writer Robert Macfarlane, who has worked with artist Jackie Morris and musicians to re-animate lost words from the natural world, just as many Americans seek to authentically connect with indigenous wisdom.  

This is not wisdom from the past. Its practitioners are here now, seeking the right to harvest salmon and protect their water from oil spills. As best I can as a 21st century urban creature of comfort, I want to know plants by their names and birds by their songs. I want to invoke spirits and spells and "sing the things I see," perhaps gaining a tiny fraction of the knowledge possessed by the people who have lived here for millennia and who still live here today. I honor their wisdom and would be grateful for a small measure of it, if I am worthy. Spirit of life, let me be worthy of these gifts, and let us share them widely.

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Pandemic postcard #36: Thanks for the memories

This week's post comes a little early as we usher in this strange holiday season. I wish you all as happy a Thanksgiving as your current circumstances allow.

In 2010, I reflected on the most memorable Thanksgivings I'd had so far and was surprised to realize they'd all been in my 20s. What a difference 10 years makes. Today, I can easily remember how I spent  every single Thanksgiving from the past decade. This feels good at a time of life when my memory is supposed to be fading. 

It's 2011, the first of several in a string of Thanksgivings spent in San Francisco with my brother Jeff and his partner Kevin, both skilled and loving cooks. Such good food, such good company. On Friday, Jeff and Kevin treat Bruce and Natalie and me to a visit to the California Academy of Sciences. A butterfly briefly rests on Kevin's hand. He is the butterfly whisperer.

2012. I have lived in the Bay Area for seven months, decamping there from Idaho just after Dad died. The job I've moved here for is a disappointment, but I absolutely love California: the light, the people, the diversity. I am living a long-held dream of not needing to own a car, but I rent one to fetch Natalie at Humboldt State for her Thanksgiving break. We join Jeff and Kevin and Bruce for another memorable meal. 

Thanksgiving morning 2013. I am at the Oakland airport, nearly giddy with anticipation at seeing Tom for the first time in a few weeks. We share Thanksgiving with Jeff and Kevin and sleep at their place, since my Oakland apartment is packed up. The next morning, Tom and I pick up a small rental truck, meet a packing crew, and get on the road to Seattle, where I've rented an apartment to be closer to my love.

2014. It's just Tom and me this year. We take a morning train to Centralia, WA, and enjoy a leisurely midday dinner at McMenamins' Olympic Club, where the buffet is spread out over several pool tables. We retire to our room upstairs and take a long nap. It is a perfect day. 

Tom and I get two Thanksgivings in 2015. The first is in the Denver suburbs on Sunday, with Tom's brother Marty and his family and a bunch of people from the bar Marty owns. Tom plays his dad's old banjo. On Tuesday, Tom and I board Amtrak's California Zephyr at Denver's Union Station and ride over the Rockies for Thanksgiving #2, with Jeff and Kevin plus Natalie, who has flown down from Boise. 

Thanksgiving 2016 comes a few weeks after Tom's stem cell transplant, and it's just the two of us celebrating at Swedish Hospital. Considering that he had almost died from engraftment syndrome four days before the holiday, Tom is doing much better. I dial up Paul Simon ("These are the days of miracles and wonders ...") and Arlo Guthrie on Spotify, we eat the not-too-bad-for-hospital-food Thanksgiving dinner, and we are grateful. 

2017. I don't have specific memories of this holiday--my most recent one in San Francisco--apart from the warm embrace of family, of building a collaborative playlist, and of gathering around the table for another amazing meal. Of course, we watch Love Actually afterward. This will be Tom's last Thanksgiving. We don't know that yet, but after the wild ride of Thanksgiving Week 2016, I don't take anything for granted.  

2018. It's a weird year. Tom has been gone four four months. Kevin and Natalie both work in the plant-care field and Thanksgiving season means poinsettia distribution. We decide to make it easy on Natalie this year and meet at a rented Airbnb near Boise to mark an early Thanksgiving. I spend the actual holiday handing out food and socks at the Union Gospel Mission in downtown Seattle. 

2019. I have plans to see Natalie in Boise just before Christmas, my extended family in Chicago on December 24 and 25 (for the first time in decades), and Jeff and Kevin in San Francisco for New Year's, so I'm at loose ends on Thanksgiving Day. I consider a solo trip somewhere, but I stay home and make myself a simple dinner. I'm OK company, but I'm grateful that I'll be with family for Thanksgiving 2020. 

2020. Except I won't. And neither will most of you.  

Sigh. And yet, and yet. This past decade has shown me that a rich storehouse of memories and an attitude of gratitude can serve us well in times of loss. Meister Eckhart said, "If the only prayer you say in your life is thank you, that would suffice." And a day before he died, Tom mused to me, "Maybe just being grateful and happy is enough. So thank you." 

I'll leave it at that for now. I am grateful for shared Thanksgivings past, I look forward to making more memories in person with my beloveds in the 2020s, and I wish the same for us all. 

P.S. If you are new to Surely Joy, or even if you're not, you may want to revisit my post from this week in 2018, when I wrote, "This is a season of living while we wait to resume life." Those words, true for me in 2018, are true for us all this year. There will be better days--and yet these are the days we'll remember. 

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Pandemic postcard #35: Hindsight and foresight

You're packing a suitcase for a place none of us has been, 

A place that has to be believed to be seen ... Walk On, U2 

"Understanding the pandemic this week requires grasping two thoughts at once," Robinson Meyer wrote yesterday at The Atlantic. "First, the United States has never been closer to defeating the pandemic. Second, some of the country's most agonizing days still lie ahead."

We do seem to be at a pivot point. Clearly, we have several very dark months ahead, especially if the outgoing administration continues to impede an orderly transition of power, and if people gather over the holidays with the virus surging. At the same time, the good vaccine news of the past two weeks signals that by next spring, our long-sought "new normal" should finally arrive.  

How will we be different, as people and as a society? I revisited my first pandemic journal the other day--I'm now on volume three--and found what I'd written at the end of it, in mid-May, in the form of a letter to myself next May. 

Of "the things I'd love to see made manifest," one will happen for sure: We will "have a new president and leaders who are actively planning to manage future crises in a more proactive way." But I thought a vaccine wouldn't be "nearing production for widespread availability" until next summer, and we seem likely to beat that timetable now. The results of the upcoming Georgia special election will likely determine whether my prediction of health care for all--maybe via an Affordable Care Act expansion-- will happen in 2021. But thank goodness that the Supreme Court, even with its two-thirds conservative majority, doesn't seem inclined to overturn the ACA as we emerge from the greatest public health crisis in a century. 

Alas, as I write this, schools that had reopened are shutting again, and it seems unlikely that many will remain open this winter. But there's certainly hope that by spring, in-person learning may be happening anew. I'm not sure what to make of my prediction that kids might only go to class every other day; I guess that is for social distancing, and it may be happening in some places. Ever-shifting schedules seem like a hardship on families. Then again, many parents may be splitting their work time between home and office, so maybe it could work. And let's all have more art and music supplies!

Some more mixed news: Greenhouse gas emissions are down largely due to COVID, though this year's bad wildfires mean emissions aren't down as far as they could have been. And with car sales on the rise and people shunning transit, long-term progress could be marginal. We must find the will to make progress toward a healthier planet without the devastation of a pandemic. 

As for my vision of a life where "rest, creativity, community, and connection are paramount" and where work is less central to our lives, that still seems like a dream worth hanging onto, and one that we might be a little closer to than I'd imagined in May, before the murder of George Floyd. That horrific event and its cataclysmic aftermath launched a reckoning that continues to reverberate as we ponder our individual lives and our collective destinies. Why are we here if not to love life and love one another?   

This Thanksgiving season, I am thankful that we may soon be emerging from one of the darkest chapters of history. I love this quote from Pema Chodron: "Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know." In hindsight, we've all learned a lot this year, and with foresight, we may put some of it to good use.

Pandemic postcard #33: Loving the half-full of it

My sweetheart spent most of his adult life as a proud teetotaler. When asked about his aversion to booze, Tom would describe how he'd had too much to drink one night as a young man, and while it wasn't the first time, he decided it would be the last. Yet sometime in his last few years, he bought a bunch of drinkware and stashed it in the back of our bedroom closet.

Months after he died in 2018, I was still deep into the long work of sifting through Tom's stuff: dozens upon dozens of boxes of old receipts and legal papers, shelves full of compact discs (he'd made a living first in radio, then in choosing music for businesses), and bags stuffed full of promotional items, trinkets, and tchotchkes. When Tom discovered something he liked--be it a Justin Trudeau bobblehead, home plate-shaped doormat, "Enjoying My Coffee" bumper sticker, or a movie about the criminally forgotten songwriter Doc Pomus--he'd order it in bulk, keep one for himself, and give the extras as gifts, except sometimes he’d forget about them. 

That’s how I came to find the six “half-full" glasses. Designed for the eternal optimist, only the top half of the glass could be filled--the bottom half was sealed off--so it would automatically be at least half full. I wrapped up the glasses as Tom’s last gifts to us, and when Tom's children and their mother and her husband and my daughter and I gathered on Christmas morning, we drank a toast in Tom's memory.

It's been a half-full week for America. After two years and $14 billion spent, the 2020 U.S. presidential elections has essentially ended in a draw, and there's a 50 percent chance you are disappointed by the results. We've now been more or less evenly divided for decades and there's little indication how--or when--we'll break the deadlock in Washington, D.C., never mind between the blue metros and the red retros.   

For many of us, our thirst remains unslaked. We'd dreamed so long of a resounding rebuke to the mean, fear-mongering, self-centered bully who has held the presidency these past four years. Amid this year's reckoning over racism, we were sure tens of millions of Americans would turn out as never before to vote for love and justice, and we did. But anxiety and dread were on the ballot, too, and their appeal was just as powerful to folks who may be feeling more half-empty right now.

And so here we are, pretty much where we started, except the kinder candidate has apparently prevailed in the presidential contest. Given all that Joe Biden has endured in his life, it's little surprise that he's bearing this time of uncertainty with patience and calm, and that is what our battered country needs now and over the next four years. While we will not fully realize the changes many of us would like in these divided times, at least our nation can rejoin the world community and make progress on the margins at home, especially for the most marginalized.

At a post-election vespers service the other night, my minister told the story of a couple in the church he served early in his career. Long unable to have children of their own, they finally became parents, but their daughter was born with developmental disabilities. They chose to love her and raise her as if she were perfectly and fully human, and so she surpassed the life expectancy and limits she'd been dealt. Likewise, my husband spent his last decade living with multiple myeloma, yet Tom's glass was always at least half full, and often spilling over the brim as he threw himself into passion projects like launching a community radio station in the last years of his life and embracing a new romance despite previous disappointments.  

Half of America feels wounded over the election results, while the other half are saying "meh," but it doesn’t have to be that way. In this time of mingled disappointments, as we continue to deal with COVID-19 and a faltering economy, may we choose to see possibility over peril, lift repair over despair, and--knowing the infinite promise of this country--declare an end to our hostilities. Together, let's raise a glass to freedom and love the half-full out of this broken, beloved nation.  

 

Pandemic postcard #32: In search of a clean slate

Last week, I promised a story about what I was doing on November 9, 2016. I'm pretty sure that whatever happens next week, it won't be any weirder than what I lived through four years ago, both because this year's election may take a long time beyond Tuesday night to resolve and because Tom had his stem cell transplant the morning after the last election.

 

The 2012 election was one of only a few in my adult life that I wasn't working in either a newsroom or for a campaign on election night. I felt at loose ends and nervous about the results, so I went to a movie. I was one of a handful of people who attended a showing of Argo at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland. I stopped in the restroom afterward and heard two women sharing the news that President Obama had won re-election.  

 

When someone gets a stem cell transplant, their immune system is wiped clean and they are home-bound for many months afterward, so Tom and I thought a movie date night sounded like the best way to spend election night 2016, too. We were staying at a hotel near the hospital, and we walked a few blocks to see Moonlight. The night held lots of promise: We’d had a Black president for eight years and we’d soon have a woman in that role. Love and demographic destiny seemed ascendant in America, and Tom would have a new lease on life the next morning.   

 

I knew something was amiss when we left the theater and walked toward a bar on the next corner. Several people were crying on the sidewalk outside, big-screen TVs flickering in the windows behind them, swaths of red slashing across the maps. Despite being far behind in the polls, Donald Trump had won several key states where balloting had already closed. Yet the night was still relatively young for those of us on the West Coast. Things could change. 

 

When we got back to the hotel, I tucked Tom into bed so he could get a good night’s sleep. I stayed awake a few more hours and saw more states—and ultimately the election—called for Trump. Dazed, I climbed into bed and slept badly before waking Tom for our pre-dawn appointment with the transplantation team.  It was a strange morning for everyone, but it was also a relief to have something to take our minds off the news, at least for a few hours. And for Tom, this was the first day of the rest of his life, however long that might be. We still had that fact to celebrate.

 

Six months post transplant

Tom's stem cells gave him about 15 months of remission before the cancer came back in early 2018. Running out of options, we began a clinical drug trial that didn’t go well, one that saw Tom in and out of the hospital for blood transfusions and other interventions. In June of that year, we got married on Tom’s 62nd birthday, our family crowding into the hospital room to wish us well. It was another day of possibility and within days, Tom’s doctor sent us home for a brief honeymoon.

 

It was a risky gift, with Tom’s white blood cell counts still low, yet it was one we embraced. On the fourth night at home, after Tom collapsed twice while trying to get to the bathroom, I knew the honeymoon was over. He died in the hospital two days later, but not before his children and their mother had a chance to visit with him on what would be his last night on Earth. We'd hoped to go home with hospice care the next day, but that was not to be.  


 

I miss Tom every day.  I have no idea what he would have made of what we’ve endured as a nation in 2020, and I am especially grateful that his final months did not come amid COVID-19. But I understand that his brother, who lives in a swing state and usually votes Republican, will vote for the Democrat this time. “This one is for Tom,” he has been saying, and this gives me hope. All of us alive in 2020 have seen our ability to bear the unthinkable bend to the breaking point—and when it comes to discarding old opinions and habits that no longer serve us, breaking free is an act of courage. 

 

There will be no election night movie for me this year; I'll be working for my county elections office as a drop-box attendant. Your vote is your voice, so if you haven't yet made your voice heard, please do that by Tuesday. 

 

Visualize what it will be like to have a clean slate for our nation. I'll see you on the other side.    

Pandemic postcard #31: Waiting to exhale

My phone ring tone has been the same for a very long time, "Right Here, Right Now," the upbeat 1990 song celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall and authoritarian regimes in Europe. I've lately thought about changing it since there definitely are other places I'd rather be than in the middle--is this the middle?!--of a pandemic and a bonkers election season. But then there's the line that keeps giving me hope, the one about "watching the world wake up from history ..." 

 

We are on a cusp of a new dawning. You can feel it, right? (You've already voted, by mail or in person with early voting, yes?) America has occasionally flirted with a meaningful reckoning over the kind of country we want to be, but we've never quite made the commitment. But this year, amid the manifold crises of 2020, it feels like Decision Day is finally here.  

 

Of course, Decision Day will take a while. Folks have been voting for a few weeks, and we may not know the results until well into November. Meanwhile, I want to know: What do you plan to do on November 4 and beyond, regardless of the election results? I asked this question on Facebook the other day. A few folks answered with notions of day drinking, shopping for flights out of the U.S., and watching riots on TV. I sympathize with the long-simmering stress that those replies belie.

A little escape, for a day or a week or more, was a common theme. Meg and Joan, who've been especially active this campaign season, say they plan to finally take a day off. Frances says she'll either be glued to the TV, "or I might be in the mountains for the day breathing deeply knowing politics and the virus are not there." Eileen reports that she'll be on her first vacation in several years, newly retired Joanne is on a personal retreat exploring a possible relocation, and Elaine mentions the possibility of "a COVID-cautious trip to see friends and family."  

 

Some folks admit they may be adrift, uncertain what they will do, which is such an understandable response given the vast emotional energy we've put into surviving four exhausting seasons of The Trump Show. Others mention the importance of routine. Carol, a doctor, will continue to heal the sick. Felicia will keep up pro bono legal aid work to help small businesses navigate the pandemic "and a recession that is likely to get worse before it gets better regardless of election outcomes." As he has every day since 2013, Joe will get up early and take a music-fueled walk (and knowing Joe, with every step, he'll be thinking about what he can do next to help his friends and his community).

 

Everyone knows that no matter what happens, there will still be plenty of work to do, as activists and humans. Nonprofit executive Rene has a staff meeting planned for 9:30 a.m. November 4 "to help us remember EITHER WAY that much, if not all, of the work we do will carry on." Dennis says he'll continue to advocate for the world he wants to see for his children and brand-new grandchild. "First though I will hug and play with that little boy and be comforted and inspired by his smiles," he adds. That answer made me smile, as did Nathan's, who notes he'll be celebrating his daughter's first birthday the day after the election and working to protect the election results. 

 

Fellow longtime blogger Tom says he'll continue to metaphorically chop wood and carry water. Kristen has been volunteering to monitor election irregularities and misinformation, and Katherine will start a new discussion group the week after the election, pairing chapters from the book Becoming Better Grownups: Rediscovering What Matters and Remembering How to Fly with episodes of On Being With Krista Tippett. (Of course I am signing up for that.)  

Theresa and Diana and David plan to continue to cultivate joy through cooking and music. Rebecca will seek balance through caring for family, "doing what is in front of me to do," and "finding energy in intentional interactions and the random encounters I experience with people ... I have to hold on to my belief that what weaves us together is stronger than what would pull us apart."

I say amen to all of this.

 

As for me, here's how I envision how my November 4 will look: I'll wake up and spend no more than a half-hour getting the latest news. (I'll set a timer.) I'll write in my journal. I'll take a long walk and spend some time near Puget Sound. I plan to avoid the news for most of the day, but I'll check in for an update by late afternoon, and I'll attend a webinar on advancing the National Popular Vote. Night will come early, and I'll end the day at an online vespers service with my faith community. Beyond November 4, I'll continue working to write the change I want to see in the world, here at Surely Joy and also through a revival of my circa 2010 project, Write the Change. 

 

It won't be long now. In a few weeks, we will know whether a majority of Americans have collectively decided to reject division and build beloved community. We are waiting to exhale and yearning to breathe free, yet the reality is things are going to be messy for a while. 

 

The biggest task ahead of us may be making sure that no one gets left behind: definitely not the people of color who have been waiting far too patiently for this time, and also not the white people who may be hurting because they've lost a false idol. Few people are irredeemable, and almost everyone deserves a lifeline. It is time for us all to thrive, time for us all to joyfully wake up from history.

 

Next week, I'll share a story about what I was doing the day after the last election. No matter what happens in 2020, it won't be any weirder than what I experienced in 2016. Until then, be well and remember: rest is fuel.   

 

Pandemic postcard #30: Repair > despair

The name I chose for this blog in 2014 has given me pause many times over the past few years. Henry David Thoreau insisted that "surely joy is the condition of life," and I still believe that to be true. Yet in 2020, another perspective on joy has been far more resonant for me: Brother David Steindl-Rast's affirmation that joy is "the happiness that doesn't depend on what happens." 

 

I will be digging deep into this latter idea over the next few weeks. Next week, I want to explore--with your help--what you plan to do to pursue joy (or at least equilibrium) in the days and weeks after the election, especially since it may take a while to see a definitive resolution. This week, I want to lift up the idea of repair. 

 

These are not easy times for people who believe in justice, fairness, and equity. Just this week, we've seen confirmation that the Supreme Court has become wholly politicized, both in the speedy nomination and anticipated party-line vote to seat a new justice and in the current court's ruling that allows a premature halt to the 2020 Census. These are decisions that will erase people, endanger health, and enrich corporate America. 

 

There is abundant cause for despair, which is exactly why we need to believe instead in repair as the greater good--the higher power--that will pull us through these next few months. Hope is a muscle. Here are a few examples of repair as hope in action: 

Voting is a mighty act of repair. While the agents of despair would like to keep poor people and folks of color from exercising this basic right, the angels of repair are doing whatever they can to encourage everyone to vote--and to safeguard those votes. The Solutions Journalism Network is tracking good-news stories about the election, such as how the nonpartisan Poll Hero Project has recruited tens of thousands of young Americans to be poll workers amid the pandemic that has kept many older poll-working veterans home. 

 

Tomorrow, volunteers with the Vote Forward project will mail 15 million hand-written letters to fellow Americans who vote infrequently, urging them to make the effort this year. We are seeing indications of a truly massive turnout.   

 

Last Monday, we marked Indigenous Peoples Day. Just as 2020 has been a year of heightened awareness of systemic racism dating back 400 years, it's also been a year of more fully recognizing how our founders displaced the people who were here first. We can't remake the past, but we can acknowledge the full history of where we live--and we can also consider paying rent to recognize and honor this connection. I made a donation to Real Rent Duwamish this week, and I will make it a goal to begin small, symbolic monthly rent payments by next October. 

 

Earlier this year, as the pandemic began to unfold, the federal government basically told the states and local governments that "you're on your own." It's one thing for progressive coastal states to step up and act in such times, but I was inspired by this program from The Harwood Institute highlighting how two red-state communities--Clark County, Kentucky, and Jackson, Mississippi--took that edict to heart and worked to be sure their citizens were safe, fed, and housed. "Now is not the time to go to the corner and hoard resources," said Von Gordon of the William Winter Institute in Jackson. "Hope has really emerged in people continuing to show up" and "be authentic about their fears and the challenges," added Beth Willett Jones of the Greater Clark Foundation. 

 

Finally, as a society, we must continue to recognize the reality that America was built and is still being sustained with the physical labor of people who were literally enslaved (in centuries past) or who are working essential jobs for insufficient pay to this day. We can do many things to help repair this, from supporting microbusinesses owned by marginalized people and ethical small businesses that do right by their employees to electing people who will fight for livable wages, robust benefits, student loan debt relief, and strong safety nets. 

 

Many of us have been working very hard this year to raise our own awareness and advocate for changes we want to see. I said earlier in this post that I want to hear what you plan to do on Nov. 4 and beyond to give voice to your values (and also, frankly, to take care of yourself and your loved ones as winter descends). Please share in the comments or send me an email; the best address for that is sidewalk206 at gmail dot com. I look forward to hearing from you, and I'll share some of your thoughts in next week's post.

 

Pandemic postcard #29: Turning into my dad

Today is my father's birthday, and if all goes well, my brother and his husband and I will be toasting Dad's memory on a San Francisco beach, not far from where we scattered his ashes. Dad has been gone almost a decade, but--as I wrote a few weeks ago--my parents' memories have been strong with me this fall. I miss them both as much as I ever have, and I think I may be turning into my dad.

I know that many women worry they'll turn into their mother, but that was never going to happen for me. Like many mothers and daughters do, we clashed during my adolescence, and I was just starting to know and appreciate Mom as a fellow adult when she died at age 62. By then, I'd been away from home for eight years.   

Dad was also 62 when Mom died. That's the same age my husband, Tom, was when he died in 2018, and the same age my stepchildrens' maternal grandfather was when he passed on. I'm just a few years shy of that mark, and as 62 looms ever closer, it hurts to be "losing" a year the way we are in 2020. 

Yet it's likely I'll live far beyond 62, as my dad did; he was 87 when he passed away in 2012. He lived long enough to see my ill-advised first marriage end, and to see me meet a good man and marry again, and to see my brother find a loving partner, and to spend lots of time with his only grandchild when she was young. At the end of his life, he gave me the sacred experience of helping a loved one have a good death. Today, on his birthday, let me tell you a little more about my dad. 

Sparrow, #14

Byron Fanselow started out a little guy, and his nickname was "Sparrow," but he still played baseball and basketball. His high school yearbook reports that he was usually laughing. After graduation, he grew several inches, so his nickname went away--until the 1970s, when Dad (and my brother and sometimes I) became "Fonz." Thank you, Happy Days, for helping America finally learn how to say our last name.

Dad went to Illinois Tech for mechanical engineering, then he joined the Navy near the end of World War II. After that, he became a salesman--the natural job for someone with his personality. He started out selling windows and went on to rep several metal building companies in the Midwest. He was offered a transfer to San Francisco but wound up taking one to Pittsburgh instead so he and my mom would remain reasonably close to their families in Chicago, where most of my extended kin still live.

For a short time when I was in elementary school, Dad had an office in a downtown Pittsburgh high-rise, which was fun. But usually, he worked from home and on the road, calling on clients across the Mid-Atlantic states, eating lots of dinners at Howard Johnson's and racking up plenty of points at Holiday Inns. He loved to travel and he loved meeting people, and my brother and I both found careers that incorporated those things.  

Dad worked on commission, money was sometimes tight, and Mom loved to shop. She meant well; she loved to give people gifts, but she'd lose track of what she'd already bought, so we always had lots of stuff but never much extra money. Mom went to work at a fast-food place to help send me to college. That's where she had her first fall, on a slick floor at Wendy's. I took the call on the hallway phone in the dorm my freshman year at Ohio University. Mom had broken her hip, and soon after that, she got cancer, too. I doubled down at school, maxing out my course loads so I could graduate in three years.

Thankfully, Mom beat lymphoma and she and Dad were able to travel a bit. They went to Tokyo and Hawaii mostly for free with all those points from Holiday Inn. But her hip replacement hadn't healed especially well, and one day, her cane caught on the top step of the basement stairs. She fell and hit her head, and we had to let her go. Dad was heartbroken at the loss of his wife of 37 years, and I cannot imagine his grief, even after losing the love of my life. But he'd go on to live another two-and-a-half decades, most of them in a healthy, happy retirement.

You're probably wondering by now: How am I turning into my dad?

I find myself cracking really bad jokes. For example: On my camping trip to Olympic National Park this summer, I arrived at Rialto Beach first thing one morning and found three bored teenagers sitting at a picnic table, ignoring the Pacific Ocean. I tried to get them excited. "It's going to be a great sunrise!" I said. "Too bad we're on the wrong side!"

I find myself wanting to talk to everybody. I'm sure the pandemic and living alone are driving this, but when I see other humans, especially in person but even on Zoom, it's sometimes hard to contain myself. I genuinely miss people at this point. Dad was the same way. I think he was happy living alone--he never had a serious romantic relationship after Mom, that I know of, and he knew how to entertain himself. But the longer he was alone, the more he missed seeing people, and that manifested in wanting to talk a lot when he saw them.

Dad in 1993

What I most admired about my dad was his curiosity about everything. We always had plenty of books around, of course, plus stacks of newspapers and magazines. Dad had no serious lifelong hobbies other than photography, but he'd get interested in something--astronomy, astrology, CB radios, ice cream making, magic tricks, meditation, computers, physics--and he'd learn all he could (or all he cared to), then he'd move on to something else.      

Dad did get downright cranky for a while in the early 2000s, when he started watching too much Lou Dobbs on CNN and briefly, alarmingly, became rabidly anti-immigrant. Fortunately, this xenophobia didn't last long, since it clashed with his moderate politics and his liberal Christianity.

Dad ultimately developed dementia and had a rough last few years, though the course of his disease was fairly swift. The cognitive reserve theory suggests that people who spend a lifetime keeping their brain active may die faster once in the later stages of dementia, and that mercifully seemed to be true for Dad. Unfortunately, his sharp decline came at the very same time I had soul-taxing political work and a teen daughter and a marriage that was showing some strain. I'm adopted, so it's anyone's guess what my fate might be in the brain health department, but the heartache of Dad's final few years is gradually fading for me, and I am not afraid.

I am not afraid. I think that's something else I got from my parents, and something I've tried to pass on to my daughter. Love was our family's default position, and Mom and Dad showed it in their volunteer work, in their friendships and family ties, and at the ballot box. And they showed it to each other; they had a rule that they'd never go to bed holding a grudge. 

Although things are unsettled in our country right now, I believe that love and reason and liberty and justice will prevail, though perhaps not without a fight. I miss my parents, but I'm not sorry they're missing this--and I am grateful for their legacy of valuing love over fear. 

Thank you, Dad. You too, Mom. Keep sending those good vibes, for we surely need them.

My parents on their Havana honeymoon.

 

 

Pandemic postcard #26: Practicing for winter

It's been nine days since I've been outside for more than about five minutes. Six months ago, I stayed home on March 13, the day the seriousness of the pandemic really hit home in the United States. But once I knew that it was safe and even smart to continue walking outside every day amid COVID-19, I did exactly that, every morning--until the middle of last week, when the air quality here in the Northwest became too dangerous to venture outside.

The first few days of the air-quality quarantine were the worst, but as I heard more about what was happening in Oregon, I could not feel anything but gratitude for what I have: for the roof over my head, for food to eat, for breathable air inside my apartment--and for plenty of time to read, think, and learn. I've had that all year, of course, but making the best of this homebound week-and-a-half, I've leaned into it a bit more.

"I am fortunate because I have been able to spend my life in the study of the world," says Alma Whittaker, the main character in Elizabeth Gilbert's The Signature of All Things, which I read with uncharacteristic speed over just a few days this past week. Indeed, that is why I became a journalist: because I am curious about just about everything. I, too, am an avid lifelong student of the world, and while I may not be getting paid for my curiosity very often these days, I can indulge it more than ever.

Online conferences, webinars, classes, lectures, and concerts have helped me get through these past six months, and I've taken especially great advantage of them during these recent smoky days. Since last weekend, I've attended three online church services, a real-time film screening and post-movie discussion, a lecture on the presidential race, a virtual walking tour of Seattle's Denny Regrade, and a "Moth"-like program of stories about the pandemic and the fight for racial justice.

I have relished personal connection, too. A college classmate has convened a Zoom happy hour every few weeks, and it's been fun catching up with a fascinating, opinionated group of folks, even if everyone but me is in the Eastern time zone, ready to raise their glasses when it's still mid-afternoon in Seattle. I've talked with a few friends on the phone, including one whose daughter-in-law is the acting ranger on one of the hardest-hit forests in Oregon. I haven't seen anybody in person since my last shift volunteering at the food bank two weeks ago, but I don't feel as isolated as I might.

It sounds like the rain will start tonight and we may have clean air again sometime tomorrow. I look forward to walking outside and to opening my windows again.

Autumn arrives in a few days, and lately, it's always been a season of introspection for me, ahead of our long, dark, wet winters in Seattle. I know this pandemic winter won't be easy, but after the past nine days, I feel better prepared for the many months of interior life ahead.

 

Pandemic postcard #21: Summer reading report

All my life, I have dreamed of having endless time to read, and I've always figured I'd need to wait until retirement for that dream to come true. Then 2020 happened. I have had plenty of time to get lost in a book these past many months. 

Here's a selection of books I've enjoyed so far during the pandemic. All are available via The Optimist, my online independent bookstore at Bookshop.org, and if you enjoy Surely Joy, it'd mean a lot to me if you'd buy a book, any book. Your purchase will help me...and small bricks-and-mortar bookstores, too. As I write this, Bookshop.org says it has raised nearly $6 million for indie bookshops. I'm still working on my first $25. Still, every little bit helps, especially now that the CARES Act unemployment pay is gone.

So without further begging or ado ... 

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell. This book captivated me from its first pages, where Odell describes one of her favorite parks in Oakland. (I know it, too.) Odell's mission is to help us pay attention, not to the endless clatter of commerce, but to our heart and soul's delight. This is my favorite book of the year so far. 

The Art of the Wasted Day by Patricia Hampl is part memoir, part travelogue, part meditation on loss. We can't justify distant travel this summer, but we can travel via books. Hampl ranges widely in this volume, from Iron Curtain-era Eastern Europe to Montaigne's France, but I was most captivated by the trip she took closest to home on the upper stretches of the Mississippi River. Like Odell, Hampl understands the inherent value of day-dreaming and drift.

The Vanishing Half  by Brit Bennett. "I've been reading too much non-fiction this summer," I told my daughter. "I really want to read a novel." So this was a birthday gift from her to me, fitting because this is also a story about family love: in our families of origin, families of choice, and families lost and found. It's also timely with its themes of racial and gender identity.

The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea. This had been on my to-read list a long time, and it was the very first book I was able to check out of my local library once it reopened for curbside service last month. Urrea, who spent a few decades researching this satisfying historical novel, has a knack for creating big, well-drawn casts of characters. I look forward to reading the sequel to this, too, as well as The Devil's Highway, Urrea's nonfiction book about U.S.-Mexican border culture. The latter should be a good companion to something else I read earlier this summer, On the Plain of Snakes, a warts-and-all love letter to Mexico by Paul Theroux.

Old in Art School by Nell Irvin Painter. The author is best-known as an acclaimed historian (The History of White People), but she always wanted to paint, so she chased that dream into her 60s while also looking after her elderly parents, who lived 3,000 miles away. An inspiring, illuminating look at one woman disregarding ageism and racism.

The Cactus League by Emily Nemens. One of two fine baseball novels released this year, both written by women. Nemens turns an unassisted triple play with her debut, deftly wrangling multiple plot lines, indelible characters, and strong sense of place. I also enjoyed The Resisters, an anti-authoritarian tale by Gish Jen.

Becoming Wise: An Inquiry Into the Art & Mystery of Living by Krista Tippett. The On Being Project created a new position this summer, Audience Editor. I wanted it so bad, but I'm sure they've hired someone brilliant to help amplify the project's mix of thoughtful voices and practical wisdom for tumultuous times. I've been an On Being fan forever, listened to this on CD when it came out a while back, and recently revisited it via a copy in a Little Free Library.

Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad by Austin Kleon. I bought this when it came out last year, then it sat on my shelf until May. It was time...and it still is.

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chodron. Another book that merits re-reading, with short chapters that share Buddhist wisdom on how to sit with uncertainty. 

Atlas Obscura Explorer's Journal. I used this for what turned out to be Volume One of my Pandemic Journal. (I started Volume Three last week.) It's too big to use as a travel journal, but it was perfect for documenting the weird inner journey that is 2020.

Next up on my reading list ...

I've been dipping in and out of The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration for the past month. I'll finish it this weekend, and I look forward to author Isabel Wilkerson's brand-new book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.

Next up is my library book of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, another novel I've been meaning to read for a while.

I also just ordered a copy of Jailed for Freedom: A First-Person Account of the Militant Fight for Women's Rights. This little-known book by Doris Stevens is the source material for Suffragist, a new Broadway musical that was to premiere in league with this summer's centennial of the 19th Amendment. The production is delayed now, but just hearing creator Shaina Taub describe her discovery of this book was enough to make me want to read it.

Pandemic postcard #15: Turn, turn, turn ...

Tom always loved cars.

When Tom died two years ago this week, he left behind a fleet of three vehicles: a 1991 pick-up truck, a 1996 camper van, and a 2010 Prius. Tom always loved wheels of all kinds, and he had a knack for finding good deals. I'd lived without a car much of the past decade, I didn't even especially want to own a car, and all of a sudden I had three.

I had plans for the van and the truck, which I'll get to in a minute. I figured I'd keep the Prius, at least for a while--but when I went to start it a few days after Tom died, it was dead, too. I was flying to Denver the next day to see Tom's family, so I waited until I returned to call AAA. They were unable to jump the battery, so I had to have the car towed down the street to Tom's mechanic--but not until later that week, the earliest they could see it. Meanwhile, I worried and I wondered: Was this a dead 12V battery that wouldn't cost too much to replace, or was this the much more expensive hybrid battery? If it was the latter, did I want to keep the car? As it turned out, it was the 12V. The mechanic replaced it and I had him do an oil change as long as he had the car, only to learn afterward Tom had done one just 1,500 miles before. No big deal. The Prius was good to go.

At the Greenwood Car Show

Tom bought the lovingly converted Ford Aerostar camper van in the fall of 2016 shortly before he underwent a stem cell transplant to address a recurrence of multiple myeloma. He had taken a leap of faith that, come spring, we'd be able to hit the road, and we did. We took the rig to Ocean Shores, WA, a couple of times to visit our friends Marty and Cai; we went camping on Hood Canal; and we motored to Oregon to see the total solar eclipse with our friends Dale and Rebecca. Tom even ordered a special plate for the van and named it Ove. (If you understand, great. If not, this will explain. That was classic Tom.) But by the spring of 2018, Tom's brief remission had ended and he was too sick to travel.   

Before he passed away, knowing that I wasn't interested in keeping the van, Tom had arranged to sell it to Marty, who picked it up a few weeks before Tom died. On the very same day I'd finally had the Prius towed to the garage--it was Friday, July 13th, by the way--I got a text from Marty. He had been driving the van on the interstate at rush hour when the brakes and steering started to give out. I asked him to call me and--after he assured me he was OK--I told him it was fine if he didn't want to buy the van. Well, Marty did still want to buy the van. He said he'd get the repairs made and deduct the cost from the price he and Tom had agreed on. Marty is a good egg.

The pick-up truck was a short-bed manual transmission Toyota, somewhat beat up but still handy to have around. Tom had tried to sell it off and on, with no luck. It had become a communal vehicle for our household and that of Tom's first wife and her husband, who lived about a mile away. We traded it back and forth to haul stuff, so I was pretty sure that Grace and Jon would take the truck, and they did.

Which brings me back to the Prius.

Fast forward 18 months to early this year. I had moved from the suburbs back into Seattle, where I really don't need a car. The Prius stayed parked for weeks at a time. I walked to the grocery store every few days, buying only what I could carry. But I started camping again last summer so I thought, OK, I'll enjoy the car one more summer and then I'll see if either of my stepkids wants it.

And then the pandemic hit. And all of a sudden, I'm not riding buses anymore. I'm not walking to the grocery store as much; I shop less often, but I buy more when I do, so the car has come in handy. Pre-COVID, I preferred to fly or take a train than drive at vacation time, but now it seems road trips are the way we're going to travel for a while until we get a vaccine. I've taken two camping trips with the car this month and I see many more in my future this summer, at least. To everything, there is a season, and these days, the Prius is packed with my camping gear and my inflatable kayak, ready to escape as I get the time and inclination.

The car hit 100,000 miles this week. Its annual registration and insurance are due soon, and I will pay them. A Prius sips gas and is cheap to maintain, and I've learned that the hybrid battery may last another 50,000 miles, maybe more, before it must be replaced. At the rate I drive, that could be another decade.

This will probably be the last car I own, whether I decide I don't need it once the pandemic has passed or I decide to hang onto it as long as I keep driving. One way or another, I just wanted to say once again: Thank you, Tom.

Pandemic postcard #14: Yours forever more

My love, you would have turned 64 today. In a perfect world, you and I would be celebrating in a cottage on the Isle of Wight, "if it's not too dear," maybe after finally making that trip to Ireland that we talked about. Of course, I miss you every day, as do countless others.

Beautiful Human

A year ago, a bunch of us gathered at the ballpark to toast your memory and your birthday--the first one since you'd left us--as the Mariners beat the Royals, 8-2. Alas, there is no home game today. There isn't baseball at all, and no one is flying overseas. (I'll explain in a minute.) So I'm hopeful your family and friends will remember you by tuning into SPACE 101 (still going strong!) for a while and listening to the Mariners classic game on the radio tonight. That's what I'll be doing.

These things sound comfortable and familiar, but our world is not the one you left on June 30, 2018. For the past few months, we've all been facing down a viral threat. Some people don't even exhibit any symptoms, but others get gravely ill. Seattle was an early hot spot for this highly contagious disease. Nearly half a million people have died. Many millions have recovered.

For several months, much of the world was in some form of "lockdown," with people isolating much as we did after your stem cell transplant in 2016. No movies. No restaurants. No concerts. No sports. Millions of people lost their jobs as entire industries closed down. Many people who can do so have been working from home. Schools all went online, and some will remain that way this fall. "Stay home, stay safe" was the mantra all spring. Lately, though, many people have become frustrated or bored or angry at being told what to do, so we are slowly going back to business as usual, even though there is no cure and no vaccine for this new coronavirus. We take heart that most people who get it won't die. Life must go on. 

Still, the risks are real, especially for people in crowded factories and prisons and nursing homes, and for people who are already battling other illnesses and the people who care for them. Remember how we got married two years ago this morning on your 62nd birthday, and how we welcomed your siblings and your mom and your children into a very crowded hospital room afterward? That would be impossible today. In fact, it's possible that--had you been hospitalized in 2020 instead of 2018--you would have died alone. That is a thought I cannot bear, so although I continue to mourn losing you too soon, I am grateful you did not spend your final months in a time like we have now.

On top of this unfolding health crisis, a Minneapolis cop murdered a man named George Floyd on Memorial Day. It was just the latest incident of racist police brutality, but for some reason, this particular killing--caught on video--lit a fuse, igniting Black Lives Matter marches and vigils across the country and around the world. More than ever before, white Americans are starting to reckon with 400 years of systemic, structural racism. A small portion of Capitol Hill here in Seattle has become a staging ground for people who seek to dismantle this system. The man that most of us grudgingly call president believes they are terrorists and has threatened military action (while our mayor and governor defend the activists' constitutional rights). Meanwhile, although the skies and roads cleared for a while as people stayed home, climate havoc is another existential threat we refuse to take seriously.

Wow. That all sounds pretty grim. But I want you to know there are many reasons for hope in the myriad inspiring ways that people are facing all that besets us right now. Folks are looking after one another. People are seeing one another as fully human for the first time. People are exercising their creativity, their compassion, and their conscience in lovely, fruitful fashion. Musicians are playing concerts from home. Chefs are feeding the homeless. Teachers (and parents) are helping children learn. Healthcare workers are saints and angels and wizards and miracle workers, but you knew that.

Oh, and our trio of twenty-somethings? They, and their entire generation, are rocking the house. They're taking charge, they're calling BS, and they're not taking no for an answer. (And by the way, May graduated last week in four years flat despite losing you halfway through college and despite having her senior year disrupted by the pandemic.) You know me; as a journalist and a contemplative, I tend to favor objectivity and nuance, but I've come off the sidelines a bit, because the right side is clear. We are either on the side of dismantling racism and doing what we can to save democracy and the planet, or we're not. As Stephen Colbert famously said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

I miss you, Tom. I miss your sense of humor, your solid presence, and the fact that you lived fully until the day you died. Our time together was too short, but it equipped me in many ways to deal with what we're facing now. You'd be proud of how I traveled to Mexico earlier this year, pre-pandemic, and earned my certification to teach English as a foreign language. (I am "intrepid," you'd say, and you'd be right.) I'm looking for new work now, some way to be useful. Please know that although I am alone, I am not lonely, and on most days, I believe the best is yet to come.

Yours forever more,

Julie 

____

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Pandemic postcard #12: Fresh air for everyone

For a few days this week, life felt like normal. I heard late last week that some Washington State Park campgrounds were opening June 1 and I immediately reserved three nights this week at one of my favorites, Twanoh State Park on Hood Canal. Fresh air, beautiful views, a chance to hike and paddle and escape the news for a bit. It was all good, and I was grateful to see many families out enjoying themselves, too--at an appropriate distance, of course. Camping is perfect for that.

Twanoh State Park day use area

Twanoh State Park's day use area was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, and I thought I might write this week about how I hope Joe Biden and Congressional candidates are thinking of a 2020s version of the Works Progress Administration to create jobs for people whose work has disappeared for good in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Then I heard about another family that went camping in my state this week. The Peninsula Daily News reports that a multiracial family of four from Spokane was harassed after they stopped to buy supplies in the community of Forks. Some yahoos apparently accused the family of being "Antifa" as they emerged from a sporting goods store. Several vehicles with armed occupants followed them and apparently cut down trees across a road to trap the family in their campsite. (Cheers to the local high school kids who fetched a chainsaw to remove the trees.) The Clallam County Sheriff's Office is investigating the incident, and the Forks Chamber of Commerce executive director apologized to the family.

I've read it said that we are in a pandemic within a pandemic. Many people have been gathering to protest the murder of George Floyd and ongoing racial violence. Others have been congregating at stores and restaurants that are opening up again. A few weeks from now, we'll know whether being in closer proximity to one another brings new spikes in COVID-19 cases. We'll also get an indication whether the present indignation that people feel over police brutality is going to last, or whether it will fade again, just as it has so many other times. But the ferocity of this near-fortnight of protests--set in relief against economic uncertainty, government ineptitude, and a growing realization of long-term inequity--may make the issue stick this time.

I want to keep living my life as best I can, and I want to remain conscious of the privilege I have as a white person. This week, that included camping and stopping at a couple of small-town businesses--and avoiding one that I know has been inhospitable to outsiders of all kinds. I hope to see more families of all kinds camping this season, especially since many longtime youth camping opportunities are on hiatus. A change of scenery and new perspectives do us all good, and camping is an affordable way to get away, even if just for a night or two, in uncertain times. It might be a long, hot summer, no matter what the thermometer reads. We need nature's cure now more than ever.

Pandemic postcard #10: Holiday in Pandemia

My church had its annual Coming of Age service last Sunday. It's one of my favorites, the culmination of a year when our ninth-graders spend a year thinking about life's big questions. Of course, the service was online, and it was still wonderful. "Joyful but realistic," one woman described it in our virtual coffee-hour gathering afterward.

From Easter and Passover and Ramadan to Mother's Day and graduation season, we've checked off nearly all the spring boxes. I love the congratulations-and-stay-strong signs honoring graduates all over my city, and it's been fun to listen to online commencement speeches by everyone from President Obama to Awkwafina to ... Donald Trump? And now it's Memorial Day Weekend, the unofficial start of summer. On Monday, when we pause to recall those who have died fighting for our country, let's remember the most recent casualties: the doctors, the nurses, the cashiers, the meat packers, the beloved grandparents.

It doesn't feel like summer. The steam heat in my apartment came on again yesterday amid a Seattle cold snap. The ballparks are empty, from the biggest stadiums to the forlorn sandlots, now given over to dogs and their people playing fetch. Concerts and sleep-away camps have been canceled. And yet ...

Italy? Mexico? Seattle!

I am not sure where or even if I might travel this summer. Except for a few recent forays to state parks open for day use, I haven't gone beyond a two-mile radius of my home. Still, it's been dawning on me anew that I live in a place that people from all over the world visit on vacation. Now that we can venture out a bit, I want to spend some time in my bigger backyard, the Emerald City. I want to wander through a nearly deserted Pike Place Market, see the murals that have popped up at Pioneer Square, and maybe hear a busker play in Georgetown. I want to spend some of my unemployment pay at local restaurants and shops in Ballard and Columbia City. And if I'm feeling really brave, maybe I can meet a friend for a socially distanced picnic or a cup of coffee, or even go to a movie once the neighborhood cinemas reopen. I would totally do that.

In many ways, the new normal is feeling pretty old. Since the pandemic is going to be with us for a while, we might as well try to have fun, safely and responsibly and with thanks to the people who are willing to serve us. We ought to be realistic ... but joyful. This is our life right now, all of it.

Pandemic postcard #9: A shelter within the shelter

I've written before about how I began 2020 with my first-ever sabbatical, five weeks in Guadalajara, Mexico, learning how to teach English as a foreign language. I arrived back in Seattle on March 1, and it wasn't long before I realized this sabbatical might be a lot longer than I had expected. As of now, there's no end in sight. I've lost my two biggest editorial clients and my part-time job at the ballpark is on hold, too.

One thing I've done with all this extra time is spend a lot of it online. That's true for most of us. I've also become much more intentional about taking a full day away from technology every week. Writer and filmmaker Tiffany Shlain has been doing this with her family for a decade. They call the weekly pause their Tech Shabbat; on a Zoom call this week, Tiffany said that during the pandemic, the practice feels like a shelter within the sheltering that we're all doing these days.

That phrase seems right to me, too. Online connection has been lovely and sustaining in many ways over the past few months, and it will be for the foreseeable future as we continue to live much of our lives online. I've enjoyed gatherings with my family, friends, and faith community; I've been in a weekly ukulele play-along group; and I've sat in on a few virtual reunions and many worthy arts events. Still, I think we're all experiencing some degree of screen fatigue. Unplugging for a full 24 hours is one way to relieve it.

I typically start my tech sabbath at sunset on Friday and sometimes extend it all the way to Sunday morning, but it's flexible. This week, I will start it before noon on Friday because I want to see some friends via Zoom on Saturday afternoon. I stay away from news and social media, but I have streamed online music. I still carry my phone-camera-pedometer on my weekend walks and sometimes take a photo or two, but I'll refrain from posting anything until I'm back online. 

Most of us have a yearning now to think about the sort of world we'd like to live in now that the ground is shifting beneath us. A weekly tech sabbath gives us that opportunity. Much as our brains need a nightly respite to process everything we experience during the day, a weekly break from screens can give our souls a chance to catch up. In her new book* 24/6, Shlain calls it "one of the most profound ways I've found to have the time and space to think about who I am, what I value, and what I can bring to the world."

I'm a believer.

Another milestone: This past week, I filled the last blank pages in volume one of my pandemic journal and began a new one. If you don't already keep a journal, you might consider doing so now. Your future self will want to remember how you made it through these days--the ups and downs and the depths--and of course, any descendants you might have and historians will value what you have to say, too. Here are some tips on how to get started.



P.S. A few housekeeping notes: This week, I'd like to thank a friend who told me he subscribes to my posts via email and finds quiet time to sit and absorb each entry. Thank you, Steve, and everyone else who subscribes. If you'd like to get Surely Joy via email, you'll find a link for that near the top right-hand corner of the page. If you're reading on a mobile device, find the "view web version" link near the bottom of your screen, and that will take you to the desktop view where the email link will be visible.

Also, the starred link above to Tiffany Shlain's book goes to my online storefront at Bookshop.org, where your purchase of that book--or any other you search for--will benefit both me and small bricks-and-mortar bookstores. I'm supporting my local bookshops and hope you will, too, but if you can throw a bit of business my way, I will be grateful.