Politics and other awkward stuff

We’re ‘on the road again’ and it’s a VERY bumpy ride.

Boy, has this place changed, Toto! These days America seems as unfamiliar as Oz — and just as surreal. We’ve seen characters with no brain, heart or courage in abundance but enough about politics. We’ve certainly been in twisty, scary situations before. In fact, history is full of times the red, white and blue was as divided as the Hatfields and McCoys, complete with messy family food fights. This time, though, the food is too expensive to throw around and the mess has invaded almost every portion of society.

It’s been said the crazy that began with a gilded escalator didn’t divide America – it revealed it. Racism, greed and xenophobia are hardly new; they’ve just become more butt naked than we’ve ever seen them. And hate and resentment only grows larger. Did we think political paranoia left the building when Joe McCarthy did? Ha! We might have been a teeny bit convinced that we made big time improvements in womens’ rights and sexual choice tolerance, but apparently not enough. When the highest court in the land tote their own biases, political leanings and religious beliefs into their decision making, we can’t hold anything as permanent.

Now, ‘fear of the ‘other’ is stoked daily, as you wait. ICE has become the Gestapo of choice and ‘the masked man’ is hardly a hero Lone Ranger. Thugs, mercenaries, men with simmering grudges roam the streets whisking students, kids, mothers into unmarked vans, some never to be seen again. Though every culture has gone through their own purgatory of prejudice and alienation when they arrive on our shores, today that Lady in the Harbor, hides her face in shame.

Everything about America has been big – buildings, landscapes, cars, business – and dreams. To many now, their dreams are as elusive as that Yellow Brick Road. Few things in life are linear and history isn’t neat. Over the decades we’ve seen slavery, riots, scandals, assassinations, world wars and cold wars. We’ve struggled with healthcare, financial reform, racial strife, taxes and political mayhem. There’s little we haven’t seen. Yet, when elections were over, protests were heard, amendments enacted, we usually returned to business as usual. No matter how politics, cultural roots or societal platforms differed, we united as AMERICA, not a polarized land of misfit toys. We didn’t dread sitting with one another on Thanksgiving because the political divide was hotter than the turkey!

So, here we are, poised on the brink in an encore of dysfunction, retribution and chaos. We’ve already seen this movie and know what awaits at the end of this Yellow Brick Road. Farmers and consumers alike are already at the mercy of tariff wars, hoping to be bailed out again by the American taxpayer for greed their cattle and soybeans pay the price for. Automation and AI, not ‘the other’, changes the business landscape, yet mass deportations tosses out refugees who’ve done the harvest work, the building and gardening, jobs Americans pass by. Thomas Jefferson’s media, voice of the people, has become a hated target for speaking truth to power. Both entities and individuals have already been put on notice for their ‘fake news’ and been called ‘piggy’ and ‘nasty’ women. Though coal will never again be king, workers are ripe for black lung again as protections have been stripped away. So much of the country remains in their happy myths where climate is not rapidly changing our world as we know it. All the while, vile tweets have replaced fireside chats disguised as ‘TRUTH’.

Those who lived through September 11, our 21st century Pearl Harbor, remember how we walked as one through the aftermath. We gained strength from national pride and a flag that somehow survived the rubble. That flag has now been co-opted by those who claim to be the only ‘patriots’ while toting AR-15s to protect themselves against ‘the other’ half of America. A historical part of the White House itself, has been torn down to make way for a glitzy, Marie Antoinette ballroom funded by billionaire bros who’ve staked our government.

In the worst of times, swamp creatures proliferate. The Birther Movement and Tea Party, wrapped in red, white and blue, were a neat smokescreen for racism inflamed by the election of America’s first black president. How DARE we? That should have been a Paul Revere warning of unthinkable things to come. In bizarro Oz, there’s no middle ground. If we didn’t get it before, the pseudo orange Wizard laid it out nice and neat on his first Inauguration Day. In a soap opera speech called ‘American Carnage’, fiery rhetoric painted a picture of hellfire scented with the rotted smell of fear of the ‘other’. What’s followed since has been scarily reminiscent of a hellish pestilence that infected a country across the pond 50 years ago.

We’ve divided into cultural camps; true patriots or ‘elites’, snowflakes or deplorables, racists or bleeding hearts. Yoo hoo – newsflash! No matter how anyone insists they are the ‘Real’ Americans, unless you or your ancestors were those dumped onto bleak reservations — you’re not. If the original native peoples erected a wall at Jamestown or Plymouth Rock to keep out pesky immigrants, there might not have been an America, folks! Then again, seeing how we dissed the people who took US in, maybe squatters rights work after all.

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Politics and other awkward stuff

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

January 4, 2025January 4, 2025 Copy Chick

Ah, mirrors. Can’t do with ‘em; can’t do without ‘em. Sometimes they’re pretty darn handy to take a close look at that bump on our chin, roots growing in or a tooth that’s been bugging you. But mirrors also show a little more than we’d like as well, since
since they don’t lie (unfortunately). We can’t say that for a lot of other things today, right?

Media is a little like a mirror, at least when it’s done right. Mirrors are designed to be true, not magic. Sometimes they show more than we want to see but, then it’s not a mirror’s job to blindly assure anyone they are “the fairest one of all”. A mirror’s job is to reflect what’s real, not a prettied up version. They reflect who we are, in all our human frailities.

I hardly love mirrors yet, my vanity (sounds cringe worthy) table sits in front of my bedroom window lest I get any ‘whoa, THAT’S a surprise’ when I leave the house. I guess I just like to know what I’m ‘facing’, no pun intended, which is pretty much the same reason I watch news, read blog posts or watch trusted news stations. Ya
just gotta know what’s going on.

We have to uphold a free press and freedom of speech because, in the end, lies and misinformation are no match for the truth. Barack Obama

Like a mirror, the news is only your enemy if what you see or hear isn’t true, not if it just isn’t what you want it to be. Even when they don’t agree with what we believe or want, facts aren’t any less true — unless they aren’t facts. My mother used to say, ‘the truth hurts’ and sometimes it does. I tell my peeps to always tell me the truth, even if I don’t
like it. I mean, who else will tell you if you have a poppy seed in my teeth or new ‘do’ does absolutely nothing for yo

Yes, the truth can hurt — but it can also heal. It can make us think, incite us to act, and at the very least, trip some changes in the way we view things. My husband began his professional life as a reporter and had a lifelong ‘thing’ about real news vs ‘news-ertainment’, something Fox mainlines in. Watching a nightly newscast, he’d riff constantly on the need for true reporting. He had great respect for newspapers,
especially all those with Pulitzer packed histories and for reporters who did due diligence and reported with integrity.

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Politics and other awkward stuff

A Woman’s Place is in the House . . . The Peoples House.

July 23, 2024October 20, 2024 Copy Chick

Forget rocking the cradle. It’s way beyond time that women rocked the system — and the Oval.

30406368 © Alex Grichenko | Dreamstime.com

Play like a girl. Can it be that we’re finally serious about putting a woman in the Oval? Two hundred twenty seven years since good ol’ George Washington was president, it’s seems only right that we finally seat a woman in Maison Blanc. We pride ourselves on being an enlightened country with an advanced culture, yet other mainstream countries have boasted women leaders for decades. Where have ours been?

Sure, after years of struggling, we finally have had women candidates, a woman Speaker of the House and women in SCOTUS, but the welcome mat has been askew. The ERA amendment, a critical step towards equality, still has not been ratified. Even when it finally is, will it erase the mindset of ingrained patriarchy? I doubt it. Decades of bias and attacks on gender have never been never felt by male counterparts who assumed leadership roles as their anointed right. Yet, however educated and supremely capable, women have never seemed to make it to the Resolute desk.

We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly. Margaret Atwood

Helen of Troy. Indira Gandhi. Golda Meir. Margaret Thatcher. These iron maidens didn’t exactly epitomize warm and fuzzy. They brought their A-game, exactly what their countries needed in their time. They led their countries to war within a male hierarchy, conforming to values that allowed them to lead in the first place. Angela Merkel of Germany, New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, Finland’s Sanna Marin and the European Union’s Christine Lagarde knew how it’s done because they, too, had to overcome gender bias. And, like Nancy Pelosi, even at 80, they had to outmen men – in heels.

I’d like our country to see for itself, in this critical moment in time, what we would look like with a woman in charge. Could this country possibly do worse than the previous Potus’ appalling tidal wave of incompetence? Yet, blatant, outrageous accusations are unleashed with abandon when a woman has the audacity to claim the same positions men have taken for granted through the centuries. Minutes after our first female VP was named, the Facebook and Twitter universe was on fire with vile gender and racial attacks. Now that the same woman has been handed the baton to actually run for President, I can’t imagine the vitriol that will erupt. Wait, yes I can.

More than 50 years ago, tiny Sri Lanka was the first to break the political gender barrier; India followed a few years later. The UN reported that, as of September 2022, 30 women were serving as Heads of State and/or Government in 29 countries. While those countries thrived under their leadership — none of them are in the Americas. The fact that we, as an educated superpower have still not achieved that designation, is in itself cause for collective head scratching!

In business, there are still many more leadership seats where glass ceilings are neatly intact. Apparently, the idea of women as true equals seems as surreal as aliens landing in NYC. While it’s true we are hardly the only place in the world where patriarchy rules, we should be committed to putting equality, in all dimensions, on the menu. Even in my own little world, I saw lines drawn within the advertising agency my husband and I jointly owned and partnered. I created and ran the business, was its creative director, social media and promotion maven; my husband was the PR counsel. Yet, I had to constantly remind clients, who insisted on talking to ‘the owner, the boss’, that I was that person, too. Even in small business, it seems hard for people to accept that the person in charge isn’t a ‘he’.

Some leaders are born women. Geraldine Ferraro

If women did man the Oval (no pun intended), perhaps infant and mother mortality wouldn’t number among the highest in the civilized world. Maybe we’d think twice about 1% of the population having wallets equaling the worth of 3.6 billion people. Women, who represent 80% of consumers, might better address sustainability, safe food technologies and affordable pharmaceuticals. A mom Potus might be more concerned about climate change that may very well end the world as we know it for our children. And women have a particular dislike of guns killing those kids in classrooms.

Every man on this planet was born of and nurtured by a woman. “Men can boast about occupying top slots in history’s long list of conquering ‘heroes’, bloodthirsty tyrants, and genocidal thugs.” said Steven Pinker of Harvard University. “Women have been and will be a pacifying force. Traditional war is a man’s game.” Amen.

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Politics and other awkward stuff

Make America . . .

July 9, 2024July 30, 2024 Copy Chick

“America is back”. The opening line of a commercial, I had to wonder, “Really? Where was it?”

As far as I can tell, America hasn’t taken a trip anywhere, though it has meandered a bit. These last years, the country’s been pulled in every direction. Like Gumby, it’s been stretched to its limits. With just months left before the elections, I wouldn’t blame the country if it tried to hide until the worst is over. But then, what is the worst? To be sure, we’ve certainly seen a whole lot of bad behavior but I suspect there’s a lot more backstage. If America was a kid, it would have been grounded for days. But when there are millions of them, who’ve been busy setting little fires everywhere, the only place to go – is the voting booth.

To anyone who thinks otherwise, America belongs to EVERYONE. Sorry to break it to all the self-anointed ‘true Americans’ but you are far from the only people with dibs on this land. The original inhabitants found out the hard way that even real authenticity couldn’t save them. When the new guys (English refugees otherwise known as Pilgrims) pulled up, those early indigenous people helped the newbies survive the first brutal seasons. What they got for their trouble was a tee shirt and a ticket to never neverlands of the new landlords’ choosing. Never say we don’t know how to make reservations!

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it.

Mark Twain

For 248 years, America’s been stepping away, and coming back. We’ve been to war, to the moon and to the polls. We’ve raised the flag, our voices, our fists, and a plethora of guns. We’ve seen the best and worst of times. We fled a monarchy, started a republic and today, we’re doing a dangerous dance between them both. The resurgent rise in both populism and nationalism could easily pull the fire alarm. All I can hope is that we remember how that all worked across the pond out 50 years ago.
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Politics and other awkward stuff

When A Shining City — Goes Dark.

September 22, 2022 Copy Chick

America seems to have lost its way. At the very least, it forgot its way to the fuse box. Once a beacon for democracy, the last years of batshit crazy political insanity has cause a giant power outage. Suddenly, keeping the lights on in that iconic city on the hill is in serious question.

The last years have dimmed a lot of America’s radiance. Do we shine in our ability to keep our people safe? Nope. In healthcare, we place 170^th in infant mortality, spend twice than most developed nations in medical care yet have fewer doctors and fewer hospital beds per capita. We place 125^th among nations in literacy, and have the 81^st highest murder rate, including the most guns anywhere! We’re number one in debt, in GNP, defense spending, and the economy — but only if you count the illustrious 1%.

“In my mind, it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.” Ronald Reagan’s vision of America.

Maybe we were once less than shiny but at least we were uber idealistic. We loved the IDEA that we were better than we are, special, entitled. President Reagan stated that ‘the Shining City Upon a Hill’ was a utopia, divinely bestowed by God on the worthy. The term has been used by presidents and politicians ever since to illustrate their vision of America. We’ve been led to believe that we are on a special mission from God to spread democracy throughout the world, which might be a good plan – if we could practice and hold on to it ourselves.

Though Ronald Reagan didn’t invent the lofty phrase, he did make good use of it. The poetic vision of a radiant city actually originated in a 17^th century Puritan sermon by early Boston governor, John Winthrop. His concept was not to taunt Europe with America’s greatness’ but as a na-na-na-nana refute to Catholics about Protestantism. Who knew? To them, it was less a place than an idea regarding Christianity, which morphed through the decades into ethnic exclusion, enslavement and social superiority.

“For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people will be upon us.” John Winthrop, Governor of Boston

Protectors of early democracy were also complicit their carelessness of it. Early settlers were no strangers to slavery, religious intolerance or their own conspiracies. (Do the Salem Witch Trials ring a bell?) Even as we told ourselves we believed the best in each other, we decimated the original American peoples, elbowing them to the side as we made this place our own. And of course we needed help building it, so we shipped in cargos of humans from another continent, excusing our travesty through generations as right and just. Many still do.

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Politics and other awkward stuff

Red is Not My Color

June 9, 2021June 9, 2021 Copy Chick

A timely repost of this blog since, it proves once again, that truth is stranger than fiction and that patriarchal politics is working overtime. Enacting policies meant to rob women of their autonomy, we are on the road to making yesterday’s misogynistic vision of dystopian ‘great again’.

Jazzy red cloak. Wacky white bonnet. The perfect outfit for women in jeopardy. As political climate in the realm of reproductive heats up — again, The Handmaids Tale is becoming a little too close for comfort. Margaret Atwood’s book was dystopian fiction; real life is often much, much stranger. Inspired by the sociopolitical issues of 1970 and ’80s America, as well as a little-known a 17th century woman, I’m sure Atwood never imagined it could become a playbook for current events. But for years, politically and religiously radical movements have been brewing a perfect storm.

The surreal fiction of The Handmaids Tale depicted women in reproductive slavery. They were forced to bear the children of the elite, where their scarlet cloaks and crisp bonnets underlined their subservience. Most of the unlucky women had become infertile due to environmental toxins (yikes) except for a very few, like the iconic protagonist, Offred.

Atwood wrote that “the heavy-handed theocracy of 17^th century Puritan New England, with its marked bias against women, would need only a period of social chaos to reassert itself”. Chilling? Well, grab your sweater because politics has woven its way to the bedroom once again. Legislating women’s innate rights has become less rhetoric and more budding, backwards policy. Its sanctimonious fervor has gotten teeth and bitten into state rulings, deciding, by male jury, what is best for women’s bodies.

Newsflash. Getting pregnant is generally not a solo activity. Even if you hail from Gilead, it still takes two. Perhaps men need to be reminded, before they rule on what a woman can do with her own body, how procreation works in the first place. Unfortunately, like in Gilead, women are considered responsible for whatever happens to them and men are free – to judge.

“Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance; you have to work at it.” The Handmaid’s Tale

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Politics and other awkward stuff

Groundhog day — for gun violence

May 26, 2021May 26, 2021 Copy Chick

Another day; another mass shooting. This week, San Jose was the site where a resentful, ex-employee opened fire on his coworkers, something that’s become far too common in our country. It illustrated, once again, that we never know what hides beneath the surface of anyone. We rarely notice the anger, depression, resentment, embedded racism or religious bias behind a neighborhood teen’s grin or that ‘harmless’ crank’s frown. And we seldom can predict what eventually propels a person to grab a gun and take target practice on unsuspecting other humans — until it’s too late.

You just don’t know.

From El Paso to Dayton, Newtown to Orlando, mass shootings are part of the American gun culture. In 2020 alone, 611 mass shooting events occurred in a year when a pandemic was raging. They say the flip side of anger is fear and COVID-19 certainly was a year for that. Even so, it’s hard to imagine such calculated, heinous acts of violence incited bye the scared and afraid. Yet, terrorists are definitely frightened, just not in the way you think. You see, for them the bogeyman is not something that goes bump in the night but fear of poverty, of being passed over or being unseen or unloved. It’s also the ‘tired, hungry, and poor’ bogeymen that giant green lady in the NY harbor welcomes — the ‘other’. And, because not everyone who is prejudiced, scared or feeling helpless becomes a mass shooter, mental illness if often the root cause. After all, no one who purposefully commits mass murder is in their ‘right mind’.

I’m often afraid, too, and I know I’m not alone. I’m afraid, not of immigrants but of ‘shadow’ Americans, of homies who are religious fanatics and sycophant politicians, who’ve rained hateful diatribes like confetti grenades. I’m afraid of walking into a Dairy Queen or a shopping mall to see cocky, right-to-carry assault rifles worn ‘just because’ . Or people claiming to be patriots, ‘good guys with guns’, who wave the flag with one hand, just ready to be triggered. That scares me.

I have grandsons – 5 of them. I know all about the sometimes crazy video games (though my kids keep tight rein on what the nuggets can play). But to blame mass shootings on those games is both absurd and short-sighted. When I was a kid, my brothers played with cap guns and toy rifles, pretending to be soldiers, cops or bad guys. To my knowledge, my remaining brother never grew an interest in shooting up a theater.

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Politics and other awkward stuff

A Woman’s Place is in the House. . . The Peoples House.

August 20, 2020August 20, 2020 Copy Chick

Forget rocking the cradle. It’s way beyond time that women rocked the system — and the Oval.

Play like a girl. Can it be that we’re finally serious about putting a woman in the Oval? Seriously, it’s been three hundred years, people. Don’t you think it’s about time we installed a woman in maison blanche? I admit I’ve been just a tiny bit outraged that, though women are the other half of the population, they still haven’t been able to sit behind the desk in the Oval. We still don’t have dibs on that resolute chair, but this year, VP is a really good start.

We pride ourselves on being an enlightened country, of having an advanced culture, yet other mainstream countries have boasted women leaders for decades. Where have ours been? Sure, we finally have women candidates but the welcome mat has repeatedly been left askew. The ERA amendment, a critical step towards equality, waits along with a host of other approved bills, to be passed. Yet, when it finally does, will it erase the mindset of ingrained patriarchy? I doubt it. Decades of bias and attacks on gender have never been felt by their male counterparts who’ve assumed leadership roles as their anointed right. Those who consistently vote for them apparently have never considered that the ‘hand that rocks the cradle’ would think more than twice before slamming it on the nuclear button.

We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly. Margaret Atwood

Helen of Troy. Indira Gandhi. Golda Meir. Margaret Thatcher. These iron maidens didn’t bring the warm and fuzzy. They brought their A-game, exactly what their countries needed in their time. They led their countries to war within a male hierarchy, conforming to values that allowed them to lead in the first place. Today’s Angela Merkel of Germany, New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, Finland’s Sanna Marin and the European Union’s Christine Lagarde know how it’s done because they, too, had to overcome gender bias. At times, they had to outmen the men – in heels.

I’d like our country to see for itself, in this critical moment in time, what we would look like with a woman in charge, even second in command. Seriously, do you think this country could do worse than the current appalling tidal wave of incompetence? Yet, blatant, ridiculous untruths and accusations are unleashed with abandon when a woman has the audacity to claim the same positions as men have taken for granted through the centuries. Minutes after this potential vice president was, the Facebook and Twitter universe were on fire with vile gender and racial attacks.

We are better than that – or should be.

More than 50 years ago, tiny Sri Lanka was the first to break the political gender barrier, India followed a few years later. As of November 2019, 15 women leaders serve their countries as president, prime minister or chancellor. Shocker, but those countries are thriving — and none of them are in the Americas. Today only 56 of 146 nations have a female head of government. The fact that we still have not reached that point, is in itself cause for a collective head scratching!

In business, there are still more leadership seats where the glass ceiling is neatly intact. Apparently, the idea of women as true equals seems as surreal as aliens landing in NYC. While it’s true we are hardly the only place in the world where patriarchy rules, we should be committed to putting equality, in all dimensions, on the menu. Even in my own little world, I saw lines drawn within the advertising agency my husband and I partnered jointly. I created and ran the business, was its creative arm, social media and promotion maven; my husband was the PR counsel. Yet, I had to constantly remind clients, who insisted on talking to ‘the owner, the boss’, that I was their person. Even in small business, it seems hard for people to accept that the person in charge isn’t a ‘he’.

Some leaders are born women. Geraldine Ferraro

If women did man the Oval (no pun in, perhaps infant mortality wouldn’t number among the highest in the civilized world. Maybe we’d think twice about 1% of the population having wallets equaling the worth of 3.6 billion people. A mom Potus might be more concerned about climate change that may very well end the world as we know it for our children. And as women, who represent 80% of consumers, a female leader might better address sustainability, food technologies and pharmaceuticals.

Every man on this planet was born of and nurtured by a woman. “Men can boast about occupying top slots in history’s long list of conquering maniacs, bloodthirsty tyrants, and genocidal thugs.” said Steven Pinker of Harvard University. “Women have been and will be a pacifying force. Traditional war is a man’s game.” Amen.

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Politics and other awkward stuff

The Pandemic that Ate the World 2.0

April 27, 2020April 27, 2020 Copy Chick

Once we’ve dialed back the epidemic, what will we bring to the world it left behind?

What is ‘the good life’? Everyone defines it differently. For me, it’s pretty much every day I’m alive, can see friends, squeeze grands, talk to my kids and my wonky belly feels decent. The good life isn’t always exciting, but if we’re fortunate, we’re living the one that feels good to us. That life can seem boring, hectic, or aggravating, depending on the day and our frame of mind. Our kids drive us nuts, ditto the spouse. Jobs seem like an endless Lucy and the Chocolate Factory conveyor belt. We dream of taking that great trip that doesn’t materialize, of having more money, more time, and more of well, life. Still it’s our life and it fits us.

Just when we thought we were in control of that life, the coronavirus arrived and shook everything up like a vengeful snowglobe. Fear replaced anticipation, excitement with anxiety. Homeschooling replaced lockers and classrooms. We Netflix binged instead of going out to movies meetings, baseball practices, lunche — or visits in with grandma.

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens. . .” Ecclesiastes

This, indeed, has been a hell of a ‘season’. An epidemic from across the sea, rolled in like a tsunami, leaving a deadly season in its wake. Social distancing became the new lexicon as we desperately worked to thwart the virus’ deadly rampage by our separateness. Yet, no matter where we stand in the collective narrative of this deadly virus, we all are connected in the fight to survive it — and what happens after. That’s where yin yang comes in.

Yin yang, the symbol of crisis/opportunity, is what we’ve experienced after wars, wildfires, monster earthquakes and yes, pandemics. Incredible crises have sparked incredible heroism, sacrifice and generosity. They also create opportunities for growth and change. We can either travel through hellish journeys, bitching all the way, or find our moments, however small or elusive, for positive growth. We can get swallowed up in the sadness of a world gone incognito or use these uncertain times to evolve. We can lament our vitally changed individual worlds or discover, with gratitude, new ways to navigate them. When we look in the rear view mirror after this difficult time, we’ll also hopefully find that:

Technology can be an uber good thing. When social distancing separated us from friends, relatives and colleagues, technology enabled us to stay connected. We Zoomed our way into face to face chats with other isolated family and friends, discovering new channels of being together. We telecommuted, realizing we can be just as productive virtually. In turn, we decreased traffic, improved air quality, while increasing precious family time. Win win.

We trust science; politicians not so much. Desperate for information on COVID-19, our ears opened to everyone who had some. But we quickly discovered that political gain and re-election hopes can overshadow actual facts from medical professionals. Whether it’s climate change or pandemics, trust the experts.

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Copy that., Politics and other awkward stuff, View from the Shoe

The SILENT SPRING of a Pandemic

March 25, 2020March 25, 2020 Copy Chick

The world, as we know it, will change. So will we.

Change is pretty much innate to living. No matter how evolved and enlightened we think we are, nothing is more intrinsic to nature and humanity than change. From hurricanes and earthquakes to fires and pandemics, nature can transform our world in a nanosecond. We can try to control it but nature will always tell us who’s boss. The current pandemic is deadly proof that when humanity and nature collide, things will change and not in a good way. Hello, COVID-19.

Scheduling a big family reunion? Nada. An out of town vaca? Nope. Planning dinner with friends? Well, dining out – is out. Those quick little errands will have to wait, too, maybe for quite awhile. Being ‘up close and personal’ has become a little too personal – and risky. (And no one misses hugging more than an Italian girl!) We’ve entered a Rod Serling universe and we can’t just change the channel. Social distancing has become a thing, the ONLY thing that can help slow the spread of the virus and save lives. Will it eliminate risk? No, but it’s critical to lessening the upward curve, a curve that can lead to worst case scenarios.

We change jobs, houses and hairstyles but changes that create sudden empty shelves and streets, one that mandates social isolation? No, there’s nothing ‘normal’ about this kind of change. Our connected society is suddenly off balance. Schools, parks, stores, and jobs are shut down. Stocks have been in free fall. Healthcare workers are begging for beds, supplies, and critical equipment. Why wouldn’t we be upset, anxious as hell and complain about all we take for granted being put on hold? But, if we can be resilient enough to manage a few weeks sheltering in place to care for ourselves and one another, we will do more than just wade through a pandemic. We will have learned, like the Velveteen Rabbit, to be ‘real’.

A few months ago, I wrote a blog about ‘first world problems’, and while being in isolation certainly isn’t a walk in the park, for most it’s hardly ‘worst case scenario’ either. We can feel depressed and anxious when we look at our daily lives and barely recognize them. Other than missing hugging and smooching my kids, grands and friends like crazy, I may be luckier than most. Working remotely for many years was a type of training wheels for living in place. And often, after my husband’s procedures, we hunkered down for an isolated recuperation. That’s not to say, I’m also spoiled with the ability to hop in my car and run to the library, post office, and grocery when the mood or need hits. Those times will come again and when they do, I’ll consider them with different eyes.

An avid reader of the WW2 period, (go figure) helps me put a little perspective to these current times. There is little comparison to the rationing, blackouts and terrifying bomb shelter life people endured during those long years. The spirit of community, embracing uncertainty and the greater good shown in that era is an enduring example of how people ramp up in times of crisis. With fear and sacrifice as constant companions, people kept living each day, as best they possibly could. What their ‘can do’ spirit, resilience and sense of gratitude accomplished earned them the title ‘the Greatest Generation’. We’ve only experienced a drastically changed lifestyle for less than two weeks. What will future generations say about us?

When COVID-19 eventually lessens its stranglehold, the country will slowly return to a new normal. But, in some areas, the more things change the more they remain the same. The wealthiest 5%, remain at the head of the line, to be saved once again with bailouts, while the other 80% will struggle exponentially from job loss, and financial difficulties. Some will still have no healthcare, live from paycheck to paycheck, often in abject poverty. Those people will see complaints about missing happy hours, gym time or trips to the mall as alien as those of another planet. In a country divided by affluence and lack of it, political party, race and gender, this pandemic is proof illness does not discriminate; only the way we treat it.

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