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 #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 #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 #28: Will write for tips

Update: I have taken down my Patreon page as of April 2021. If you'd like to support my work, you can check out more recent posts at Surely Joy's current site, where you'll find a tip jar. Thank you for valuing creativity and the written word.

It's Friday morning, and word has arrived that our First Couple have confirmed cases of coronavirus. Could this year possibly get any weirder? 

It seems like a month ago already, before this latest news and before the raucous debate, but I actually turned down a job this week. After a summer coming up short in my search for work, I was glad to finally have a job offer, especially with the CARES Act federal unemployment assistance long gone and my state unemployment pay ending soon. But something didn't feel right. 

I would have had work for about five weeks this winter, monitoring tests in school classrooms--a job I did a few years ago, too, but that was before COVID. Would the work even happen, with most schools still closed? Then there were the logistical hoops I'd be jumping through to take and keep the job: fingerprinting at a time when it's nearly impossible, weekly COVID tests, heavy-duty PPE requirements. All for a short-term, minimum wage gig with no benefits. 

I finally realized that I'd applied for the job out of fear--of making my rent, of ever working for a wage again. I wound up turning it down out of hope for something better.

Of course, it's a marker of privilege that I can do this. Plenty of people are taking whatever work they can to make ends meet from week to week, despite the threat of a disease that's disproportionately affecting working-class Americans. Many people don't have savings to use in an emergency, never mind during a few lean months. I have savings I can dip into if I need to (and I’ll need to).

Most of all, though, I realized that I want to focus on doing what I do best (and what I'd done my entire adult life until most of my work vanished in March): make a living with words. For seven months, I've been writing these pandemic postcards--essentially a weekly column--to try and make sense of these times, but I have been writing them for free. Not so long ago, before Craigslist and social media decimated local journalism, someone with my background could land a job writing a column or human-interest stories. Those opportunities are rare these days, yet I know I ought to be paid for at least some of my writing. 

That's why--although Surely Joy will remain free (and ad-free)--I've decided to set up a page on Patreon where, for $3 a month, you can let me know my work has value to you. I know this may be a big ask at a time when we are all being asked to contribute to the usual member-supported media outlets plus maintain subscriptions to major journalism organizations that are doing critical work--but if you have $3 a month to spare to support my experiment in crowd-funded punditry, I'll be grateful.

The $3-a-month tier is my "You like me" level. Pledges of this amount can really add up in my small-footprint micro-economy, and I will write at least one patrons-only post each month at Patreon for folks who pledge that amount. (Here's a sample.)

People who pledge $9 a month ("You really like me") will also get access to some behind-the-scenes peeks at my notebooks and work in progress (like this). And because I sense that some of my readers would love to pursue a more joyful, intentional life, I offer the "You want to be like me" tier, which is $27 a month. For that level of support, I will be your personal creativity coach. We'll talk at least once a quarter about how you'd like to live more fearlessly and creatively. I'll encourage and question and inspire you (and you will do the same for me). 

Surely Joy will never be all I do, and that’s OK. I love to interview people and write feature stories; I just finished my first one since March, an article for 3rd Act magazine about how musicians are weathering the pandemic. I like to edit and I have some possibilities in that area. I fervently hope to be working back at the ballpark next year. It’s a seasonal, minimum wage job, too, but I enjoy the fans and the people I work with.

But the writing I do here feels important--to me and, I know, to some of you. We are in historic times, and I am trying my best to make some sense of them while also lifting up my original reason for this blog: the practice of living a simple, beautiful life and of pursuing joy, described by Brother David Steindl-Rast as "the happiness that doesn't depend on what happens." Joy is more essential than ever as we work hard to make real the world we imagine. And today, we might even permit ourselves a bit of schadenfreude while wishing the Trumps a speedy recovery. Or not.    

Thanks for reading this far, and for considering a pledge. It is an honor to write for you. Let's continue to navigate these strange times together.

Mural at Olympic View Elementary School, Seattle

Pandemic postcard #25: The next right thing

It's funny how books and ideas show up at the right time. I've been doing a lot of camping this summer, mainly because it's the one kind of travel that feels low-risk during the pandemic--until this week of hellfire, that is--and also because it is cheap and it gives me lots of distraction-free time to read. For a recent trip out to the Olympic Peninsula, I brought along Plan B, one of Anne Lamott's collections of essays about faith that had been on my bookshelf a long time. I thought I remembered picking it out of a Little Free Library, but a receipt buried in its pages revealed that I actually bought it at National Airport in Washington, DC, on March 19, 2008, when I would've been on my way home from a national bloggers' conference. 

A dozen years doesn't seem so long in the course of a lifetime, but at this point, 2008 feels like many lifetimes ago. By 2008, I had been heavily involved in politics for much of that decade, thus the invitation for the all-expenses-paid weekend of training for progressive bloggers. I gladly took the trip, but I was actually trying to back away from politics at that time, turning my attention toward a three-quarter-time contract job with a favorite client that had hired me to extend the then-still-new tools of blogging and social media to communities doing important small-d democracy work. It felt like I was living a calling. I was as happy as I have ever been in my professional life.

 

Yet within a few months, I'd pivoted back into politics. An opportunity had arisen with my state Democratic Party for a job I'd sought a few years earlier. We were on the cusp of electing the first Black president and maybe Idaho's first Democratic member of Congress in many years, too. It felt like the right decision at the right time. Although the job turned out to be heartbreaking on many levels, I don't regret taking it. I did some good work and I was able to share the historic 2009 inaugural with my daughter and some dear friends. Still, I wonder what might have happened had I stayed on the contract gig with my all-time favorite client.

Fast-forward to 2020. Once it became clear that most of my pre-pandemic freelance work was gone, I began looking for a full-time job, focusing on things that could feel like career capstones, or at least really good fits for me. By late July, I was demoralized: I'd come close on a few opportunities, but rejection is hard, and I was ready to give it a rest. Then I saw one more possibility--from my long-ago favorite client, for a lightly advertised job that seemed as if it had been written with me in mind. I applied and immediately got an interview. I was sure it was meant to be.

But after a few weeks passed with no news, I learned that the job had gone to a Black man, a talented young writer. And honestly, that is how it should be. The organization's central focus is on helping communities face up to racism--something which, although I have a heart for the work, I have no lived experience. (Of course, I know that better in 2020 than I ever have before.) I was crushed, but I understand that things usually happen--or don't--for a reason. I was ready to move to New England for this job, for one thing, and maybe that simply wasn't supposed to happen because I love the Northwest and my family is on this side of the country. 

Now it's September, and I've given up trying to find full-time work, at least for the time being. Too many people are looking, and I am older than most of them. But I am too young to retire, so I have to find ways to make ends meet--likely some combination of freelance and seasonal work, which is what I've done much of my working life, anyway. 

This brings me back to Lamott's book. As best I can tell, I read part of it on my cross-country flight, then forgot about it for 12 years. Still, it had survived many moves and lots of serious book-winnowing missions, so I was keeping it for a reason. Plan B finally found its way into my tote bag last month and I read most of it in one afternoon while camped near the Strait of San Juan de Fuca.

 

Early in the book, Lamott explains how, two years after her mother had died, she still hadn't scattered her ashes because she was mad at her mom and keeping her remains stashed in the closet seemed like fitting punishment. She was also deep in grief about the turn our country had taken since September 11, 2001, especially the unfounded decision to make war on Iraq. Then one Sunday, Lamott's pastor preached about how, in a time of war,  

... now was not the time to figure everything out--for instance who was to blame. It was not the time to get a new plan together and try to push it through. It was the time to be still, to center ourselves, to trust what we'd always trusted in ... 

Lamott writes how, taking these words to heart, she was able to quiet herself and her harsh, scary, "thinky thoughts." She took long walks. She sat in prayer and meditation. Then she found a photo of her mom that she hadn't seen for a while, and she just knew: It was time, and "scattering her ashes was the next right thing."

Those four words. "The next right thing." It feels impossible in this moment to know what awaits us with the election and its aftermath, or when COVID-19 will be over, or the trajectory that climate havoc will take. Long-term plans feel impossible; there are too many x-factors. But as individuals, we can know the next right thing, whether it's something small, like working to get out the vote or checking in on a loved one, or embarking on some really big change we've truly thought through a while. Intuition is not impulse.

As I finished this post, I read a new piece in The Atlantic that blames America's poor pandemic response on failures of intuition, comparing our situation to that of ants following one another into a death spiral. I want to make clear that when I talk about the power of intuition, I'm talking about how we can use it on a personal level--not as a guide for public policy, where science and reason must prevail. But in our own lives, I know we can be guided by intuition--on following that invisible thread, those few feet of headlights you need to make your way home, even when you can't see where you're going. (Thank you, William E. Stafford and E.L. Doctorow.) 

In some ways, this has been the hardest week of the pandemic for me. The news of the world is unrelenting, and mostly grim. Smoke-choked air means I can't even enjoy a long daily walk, which has been the one constant in my life since March. Of course, that is a small inconvenience compared to the loss of life and homes up and down the West Coast. My heart goes out to the people working on the fire lines and in the fields. May they be safe. 

Let the rains come soon, and justice, too. Meanwhile, I will try to remember that rest is fuel--and sometimes it is definitely the next right thing.

P.S. To those of you who get Surely Joy via email (thank you!): Please check out the web version of this post--click on the headline--for Loosen Loosen Baby by Aly Halpert, a musical meditation that has been pure soul balm for me since I first heard it at church earlier this year. I like to sing along. I've also included a beautiful video from Leon Bridges that was featured at our congregation's vespers service just a few nights ago.

 

Aly Halpert · Loosen Loosen

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 #18: Beacons in the dark

Have you been able to see Comet NEOWISE? It is visible in the Northern Hemisphere for a while longer, rising in the evening sky and coming closest to Earth on July 23. I haven't seen it yet; I was up before dawn trying to catch a glimpse last weekend, when it was close to the horizon, but city lights and hills precluded a view. (A rising Venus was amazing, though!)

I'll never forget seeing Comet Hale-Bopp in the spring of 1997 on a drive home from Salt Lake City to Twin Falls, Idaho. Motoring north through dark high desert skies on Interstate 15, then Interstate 84, I had the comet in my view for several hours, nearly the whole way home. That evening ranks with the 2017 total solar eclipse as one of the great natural phenomena I've experienced. How fitting is it that Comet NEOWISE seemingly came out of nowhere in late March, becoming visible to NASA scientists during the first pandemic surge? We need all the bright lights we can find in these dark times, and I hope to see this new comet sometime next week.

As I mentioned in last week's post, I've been "at camp" this week. It's all been online, of course, but it has been wonderful to reconnect with my Eliot friends, even over Zoom. We've been hearing timeless tales of many cultures from talented storyteller Will Hornyak. We've had a talent show, games, (including a fun offline scavenger hunt), TED Talks, worship services, small-group discussions, and much more. I will be sad to see it end. I may even sign up for the August camp, which I've never attended--but I continue to have lots of time on my hands. (More on that below.)

Camp meant a lot of screen time, but I've managed to spend this entire week away from social media, and I took in only a bit of news each day. I'll be sad to see that end, too, but as Will related in one of his programs, a vision quest can't go on forever. Ultimately, people need to return to their daily lives. Of course, this is something we're all wrestling with now. As people go back to their routines of in-person socializing, many people are getting sick and sickening others. It's an unsteady dance we're doing, and it seems we'll be doing it for another year or so, until a widespread vaccine is available. I know this is especially hard on families, as well as on people experiencing homelessness and people with little social contact of any kind.

Will told a story this week about two villages. (You can watch an earlier performance of it below.)  A natural disaster had brought the villages to the brink of war, but with imagination and creativity--and some wise grandmothers--the villagers solved their problem without bloodshed. As Will says, we need new steps, new dances, new songs, and new stories in times like these. Stories can break the spells we weave around ourselves, the narratives that sometimes keep us feeling like change is impossible.

With the end of July nigh, I am among the millions of Americans who face the end of enhanced unemployment benefits next week. Although I've freelanced much of my life, I'd love to find a full-time job that I can dig in and do until it's time to retire. I applied for one in late May that would've been perfect for me, finally learning just this week that although my resume made it through several "cuts," I will not be a finalist. I know it is no easy task to find work in one's late 50s, but I still believe something good will emerge in due time. I'll keep looking for the beacons in the dark, and I will try to be one, too. My superpower is helping people tell their stories, after all, and there's a big need for that these days.

Thanks for reading. I'm going to spend some more time away from screens next week--to go camping, look for the comet, and hopefully see my daughter (who lives 500 miles away) for the first time in 2020. I'll be back with another dispatch in two weeks. Until then, be well...and be the light.

 

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.

Pandemic postcard #8: Freedom from choice

One thing that defines Americans is we love choices. The COVID-19 pandemic is testing that characteristic, and the test is playing out in mundane and profound ways in which we attempt to have it as many ways as we can, because that's who we are.

One obvious example: I dislike wearing a mask because, yes, I'm an American who chafes at being told what to do and because even a snug-fitting one fogs up my glasses. So I compromise. I wear a neck scarf on early morning walks through deserted streets where I rarely get close to anyone; that way, I have a face covering handy if I need it. And when I go to any enclosed public place or walk on a crowded sidewalk, of course I wear a mask. I do it as an act of solidarity as well as one of protection. My mask protects you; your mask protects me. It seems like it's going to be that way for a while, so we may as well get used to it.

Although freedom of choice and an abundance of options are the American way, the pandemic is giving us time to practice having fewer choices or even no choice--a theme explored in this week's episode of the Hidden Brain podcast. Psychologist Sheena Iyengar describes cultural differences in how people perceive choice. One study she did involved parents of children born with a rare brain disease. In France, doctors routinely remove such babies from life support, sparing parents the decision. In the United States, parents are asked to choose. Most American parents do opt to let their babies die rather than let them linger without brain function, but--unlike the French parents--they remain wracked with guilt and more "what-if's."

Certainly, many families are now experiencing the agony of seeing loved ones suffer in isolation. Many have to decide whether to let a beloved person go, often with no goodbyes. (For the record, I've had an awesome life and I have no interest in going on a ventilator or any other extreme means of keeping myself alive.)

Many choices are far less stark, but they can still feel fraught. Most of my freelance editorial work is gone, so naturally I am inclined to fret about what I will do once the special COVID-19 unemployment pay runs out in late July. But the fact is I may not have a whole lot of choice as an older adult in a compressed job market, and---blessed with some savings, no debt, and a simple lifestyle--I feel myself finding some peace with that.

There's freedom in not being defined nor limited by past choices, and perhaps in surrendering to fate and the freedom of not having so many options. What new ways will emerge to make ourselves useful?

P.S. You've likely seen this bedtime story-from-the-future video by now, but if not, enjoy. Also, if you need help getting back to sleep some night, here's a link to the lovely "spiritual book club" installment of On Being, in which Krista Tippett and Devendra Banhart share their mutual love of When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön.

Pandemic postcard #7: May we give thanks

I have two friends, Joe and Kevin, part of a group of Ohio University alumni who reconstituted online once the Internet ramped up about a decade after we graduated. Credit for that goes to another friend, Meg, who started a list serv to loosely knit us all together. We were people who--one way or another--hung out at OU's student union, whether it was working on student government, the school newspaper, the campus radio station, the events board...or tending bar at the Frontier Room campus pub.

Ah, the Frontier Room in May. This time of year, it would be empty, because everyone would be outside on the patio, enjoying the Appalachian spring. If you got there early, you could grab a seat on the brick walls on the corner of Union and College streets, hailing friends passing below who hadn't managed to leave their class schedule blank after 3 p.m. The Frontier Room was less than a hundred steps from The Post, where I spent most of my non-class time, but I am pretty sure I whiled away at least as many hours at the bar as I did at the office. They were good times, and I made lifelong friends.

I didn't know Kevin and Joe well while we were in school, and I can count on one hand the number of times we've seen each other in person since then. But each has enriched my online life in a significant way. Let me explain.

Back in 2013, when Kevin was awaiting a kidney transplant, he started making a Facebook post the first day of each month, always starting "Rabbit rabbit rabbit" for good luck and then sharing an update from his life. The posts "were just meant to help me recalibrate during the last years of dialysis, but I'm grateful others get something from them," he tells me. Kevin always includes some words of encouragement and, once in a while, a gentle admonition. Today, he asked us all to please wear our masks. "Millions like me have a compromised immune system," he wrote. "I've beat cancer twice, please don't kill me with your sneeze. Thanks." He ends each of these monthly posts with these words, "No day but today," from the finale of Rent.

Like me, Joe walks every day. (Actually, Joe says he has only missed two days of walking since 2010. I am in awe.) Joe averaged over five miles a day last year, and every morning on his return, he posts on Facebook. He gives the weather report from Central Ohio, logs the first six selections from his music shuffle playlist, and ends each post with the words "We Can Stop It." Joe says that when he began adding that coda about a year ago, the phrase referred to gun violence, "but it does apply to COVID-19 and about anything else that we have the ability to stop."

As I've written before, Facebook has been a lifeline for many of us in these new times, but I really appreciate Kevin and Joe for their years of steadfastness, so I just wanted to let them know. If someone in your life has made a difference for you during these tough times, or anytime, be sure to tell them.

It's the little things, people. Sometimes they're not so little.

I'll conclude this post with one of the tunes from Joe's May 1 morning shuffle. Take us out, Howard Jones ...

Pandemic postcard #4: Too much to think

TGIF. It is Friday, right? It's after noon and I am still in my PJs. I was online all morning, mostly scrolling through my social feeds, though I also managed some serious reading. At some point, hopefully as soon as I post this, I'll get dressed, wash the windows for the first time this spring, go for a long walk, and try to make something more of this day.

If there's ever been a time to practice compassion for ourselves and others, it is now, as the days stretch into weeks and the weeks stretch into months, with no clear answers ahead. Like many of you, I have harbored some ambitious plans for this period of isolation. Mostly, I'd love to read more, but my eyes can only read e-books for so long; I miss going to the library for physical books. I miss ballgames and seeing people and going to the movies. So I waste a lot of time reading random stuff online, doing social media, and trying not to should on myself.

There will be no sudden resurrection this year, and no miracles, and yet we can plan to easter this weekend--yes, Easter as a verb in the face of death and uncertainty. As the Rev. Scott Alexander once preached, "Easter is a decision to live with hope -- fully, recklessly, courageously -- even in the face of death and despair itself."  I haven't been able to locate his original sermon on the topic, but here's one he gave last year in the same spirit (and I may tune in for his sermon this Sunday to hear what he has to say on the topic of Easter in the time of pandemic).

I would love to be more productive and proactive and useful during this time, but other than a few volunteer shifts at the food bank and a few feeble attempts at finding paid work, I don't seem to have it in me. (I can't even fathom how parents and their children are managing. My blessings and admiration to all families.) I will use my weekly news and social media sabbath starting tonight to at least try to tap into my inner reserves of solitude (as opposed to loneliness) and creativity.

Maybe I will consider what would happen if I extended my weekend sabbath into next week, placing myself beyond the news and the endless stream of social media connection that is a lifeline, to be sure, but is also so much chatter and clatter. My absence and silence would mean nothing to the world; it could mean a great deal to me.

When despair for the world grows in me ... well, take it away, Wendell Berry

Pandemic postcard #3: Reality sets in

Hello again. How are you this first Friday of April? Wasn't it interesting that April Fool's pranks seemed in short supply this year? We definitely need moments of levity, but foolishness seems out of order in these very weighty times.

For me, this was the week when the reality of the pandemic--and its accompanying economic crisis--really hit home. As I write this, the world COVID-19 case total has passed one million and people are dying at an alarming rate. I was especially sad to learn we have lost songwriter Adam Schlesinger, whose smart work with Fountains of Wayne and snappy title tune for That Thing You Do! have brought me lots of joy over the years. If I need a smile, as I did when I got this news, I need only watch this scene of a band hearing its song on the radio for the first time. Talk about joy. Thank you, Adam. (And please hang in there, John Prine.)

I mentioned last week that a longtime magazine client of mine had abruptly shut down. This week, I confirmed the not-unexpected news that my top editorial client--another travel company--has no work for me for the foreseeable future. I haven't yet joined the official jobless roll; my state's jobless benefits site says it hopes to have information on how self-employed people can apply by mid-April. Meanwhile, I plan to start volunteering at my local food bank next week. They really need help and I have too much time on my hands. They are having people work six feet apart, and you can only volunteer one week at a time to limit any possible exposure to COVID-19. It feels a little risky, but I am healthy and it is a way I can be useful.

Meanwhile, I have also opened an online bookstore through Bookshop.org, a new venture that just launched in January, primarily as a way for small independent bricks-and-mortar bookstores to have a website, but also for authors and other lit lovers to buy and sell books. I have named my shop The Optimist, and its featured selections are books that I have personally enjoyed over the years--"timeless books and books for these times,"as I put it. I'm also featuring some of my photography on its pages. So if you are looking for a good read, please have a look. Your purchase will help me weather these tough times and it will benefit indie bookstores across the U.S., too.

Here are a few other things that got me through this week:

Long walks, as always. I average four miles a day.

Plenty of sleep

Lots of time to read (and spending a little less of it on the news and social media)

Mariners classics baseball, often accompanied by a solo game of Bananagrams

A concert-from-home by Josh Ritter

Online church each Sunday

Watching the classic movie Groundhog Day (An aside: It's only been a month or so, but I miss movies in the theater.)

I mentioned above that reality hit home this week, but here's something else we all know: As bad as this pandemic is right now, we will get through it. Stay safe, be well, and be kind. See you next Friday.

Another kind of food pantry. Pinehurst, Seattle, March 2020

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.

I am a teacher!

One of the things I love about travel is how it helps me be creative and solve problems as they arise. Sometimes, I’ve had to decode a mysterious European lock or appliance, or find well-hidden light switches. Once, I had to use an impromptu game of charades to locate a late-night pharmacy. 

In my 12 days (so far) in Guadalajara, I’ve had many moments of thinking I’ve finally gotten in over my head. I am in a big, intense, unfamiliar city (Mexico’s second largest). Last week, I joined a beginner immersive Spanish class a week after it had started, and it was muy stressful, especially since I had a cold and wasn’t sleeping well. This week, I have begun a four-week course in Teaching English as a Foreign Language, and I am by far the oldest person in my class. (There was one other “mature” student in our cohort, but he bailed out today, on Day 3.) Amazingly, you teach your first class on the third day. That was today. 

For my first class, I had to help the students review future passive tense, which I rarely use myself. I had to look it up to remember what it means. To top it off, I had to do lesson plans today for my first two classes since the second is at 8 a.m. tomorrow.

It’s been an anxious week. But now I feel like, OK, I’ve got this. 

Mr. Ruiz, a really popular and good teacher, observed my first class, the one on future perfect, for an intermediate-level class of young adults. The theme was outer space, and over the course of the class, the students needed to decide who among them would be sent back to Earth. I’d written a lesson plan for a class of seven students, but when I arrived,  there were only five, so I had to adapt on the fly—and I did. 

In the first part of the class, I had the students talk about the positives and negatives of being an astronaut. Risk was one factor they cited, and I was able to tell them the sad story of the Challenger—as well as introduce the word “quarantine,” an experience the early astronauts had upon their return to Earth, and a concept in the news again now with the coronavirus. 

Next, I had the students talk in two groups to justify their jobs. As they talked, I had an idea to hold a secret ballot among the whole group, since it was so small. All five voted to jettison the psychologist rather than the engineer or the captain— so I got to teach the word unanimous! It was interesting to see how the class became a blend of activities I’d planned and spontaneous actions. 

At my review session, Mr. Ruiz asked how I’d rate myself and I said about a 6. “Why so low?” he asked. I mainly felt like I had plenty of room to improve. So I was a little surprised but very happy when he gave me a score of 9 out of 10! He was very complimentary of my classroom management, board use, demeanor, my low TTT (teacher talk time)—even my handwriting! One of my students, Cynthia, said it was a great class, which Mr. Ruiz said is the best compliment you can get. 

Mr. Ruiz noted that my future scores will go up and down since some classes are harder than others. His main piece of advice was that I could rely on students in a higher-level class to explain even more—to paraphrase instructions instead of simply reading them, for example. 

So my first class is behind me—and by lunchtime tomorrow, I will have taught another, and then about a dozen more over the next three weeks. I have no idea what I might do with my TEFL credential, or where I will wind up using it. But even with just one day of teaching behind me, I feel newly confident that this was a good idea. I will do something good with this new skill, something to help people achieve their goals—and something to give my own life new purpose and meaning.