Philip Caputo's Blog, page 6

JOURNAL OF A PLAGUE YEAR #9

We left Patagonia at 8:30 a.m.yesterday, on a four-to-five day drive back to Connecticut. By the time we arrived at our first night’s destination, Tucumcari, New Mexico, we learned that Arizona had set a record for new cases of the Covid19 virus. Texas and Florida also had that distinction, while 15 other states reported an upward trend in positive cases. But not to worry! Vice President Mike Pence painted a rosy picture, in an oped in the Wall Street Journal, stating that the increases were largely due to increased testing — a misstatement, according to public health officials. Apparently, this declaration of victory was in preparation for the President’s forthcoming rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Nineteen-thousand people will be crammed shoulder to shoulder in an indoor stadium. Masks will be available for those who want them, but I’ll bet few will. Their cult leader won’t be wearing one.

I guess that the public, in general, is taking Pence at his word. On yesterday’s’ 590-mile journey, we saw far more people not wearing masks or practicing social distancing than those who were. Today, pushing on from Tucumcari to Springfield, Missouri (650 mi), the thin herd of masked social distancers grew even thinner as we proceeded through the Texas panhandle and Oklahoma — the heart of MAGA country — until we reached Springfield. Our motel here had posted signs and floor stickers requesting guests to maintain a six-foot span between them and others; the desk clerks and staff courteously wore masks, but most guests had naked faces. 

My conclusion: Many Americans, possibly most, have become childish, self-indulgent, undisciplined, and unwilling to face reality even when it’s killing tens of thousands of their fellow citizens. 

Leslie and I took precautions, donning masks when we stopped at gas stations and at our lodging places. We sanitized surfaces in our rooms, avoided crowding into elevators, and ordered no-contact or pickup dinners. I’m not touting our virtue , merely pointing out that some fundamental precautions are all that’s necessary to mitigate the deadly effects of this plague.

It was a wonderful drive, across the vast spaces of the southwest, from the Whetstone Mountains in Arizona, to the White Sands National Monument in New Mexico, and from there northward on U.S. 54 through basin and range landscapes as inspirational as you’ll find anywhere in the country. That highway brought us to I-40, which led to I-44. Together, those two interstates follow the route of the fabled Route 66 —the “Mother Road” in John Steinbeck’s memorable phrase. There are a couple of Route 66 museums along the way, with photographs of dispossessed Okies heading for California in Model T’s, or mid-century travelers at the wheels of Oldsmobiles and Chevrolets sporting tailfins and chrome bumpers. I recalled driving 66 from its start in Chicago to its end in Santa Monica in late 1964, a recollection that made me feel like a historical figure who has outlived his time.

Speeding along on Interstates mile after mile, random thoughts pop into the mind. I ran one past Leslie, apropos of today’s social and racial turmoil. Why not revive the draft, but without confining it to the military? Call it Compulsory National Service for every American ages 18 to 26. No exceptions, no deferments allowed, and both sexes would be required to register. A draftee would be allowed to choose the military if he or she chose, but other options would be available: Americorps, the Peace Corps, or a 21st-century version of the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps, serving in National Parks, on public lands, or on infrastructure improvement projects. Americans of all races and classes would work side by side, and, one hopes, learn to respect each other as human beings. I’m thinking of my own time in the Marine Corps, when a Harvard grad might find himself in the same barracks as a kid who never finished high school; they would have to cooperate to accomplish a task. Or when a white kid from the suburbs (as I was then) would march and sweat alongside a black kid from the inner city. The draft was a great engine of social equality, and taught that you owed something to your country.

Leslie began to point out some difficulties — what about the man or woman who wants to go to medical school, for example — but she generally thought it a good idea.

Tomorrow, we’ll set off again on I-44, pick up I-70 in St. Louis, and proceed another 600+ miles to Columbus, Ohio. Our English Setter, Luna, appears to be enjoying the trip, but I can’t be sure: she spends most of it dozing in her kennel in the back of our overloaded 4Runner. 

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JOURNAL OF A PLAGUE YEAR #8

I ran into a friend, Robin Baxter, yesterday morning as he was walking his dog and I was getting set to walk mine. He asked when Leslie and I were leaving Arizona for Connecticut, and I told him Tuesday, adding that it looked like we were getting out just in time. The state escaped the worst of the pandemic in March, April, and the first half of May; but since Governor Ducey lifted restrictions on May 15, Covid19 cases have risen like the temperature in the desert (when it can go from 45 to 95 degrees in two hours). “Yeah, it was only matter of time before Arizona caught up to,..” Robin began, and paused for a second…”well, to Arizona.” A cryptic comment easily decrypted by anyone who has lived here for more than a few months. Eager for political as well as for other reasons to avert disaster in the state’s economy, mindful of his constituents’ ethos of rugged individualism, Ducey (known to his detractors as Governor Dufus) dithered before imposing measures to mitigate the spread of the virus, took almost no steps to enforce them, and then compounded those errors by relaxing them too early. Many — too many — Arizona citizens, equally eager for a return to normality, chafing at what they regarded as limits to their liberty, took that to mean that the worst was behind them and stopped practicing social distancing and wearing masks in shops, stores, and state parks. The result: confirmed cases have rocketed to 29,852 as of this morning, an increase of 1,412 from the previous day. In the same 24-hour period, deaths rose by 32, from 1,065 to 1,095; and hospitals have reported that their ICU beds are at 80 percent capacity, triggering emergency responses.

Not that Arizona is unique — sharp spikes are occurring in other states like California, Utah, and Texas, which set hospitalization records this week — more than 2,000 a day for three days straight. In the nation as a whole, there are now 2,079,199 confirmed cases and 115,665 deaths — the highest in the world. If the current death rate — 800 people a day —  holds through the summer, the U.S. will have lost 200,000 lives by Labor Day. Reflect on that statistic for a moment, and imagine a war in which we suffer 200,000 killed in action in six months. That’s roughly half what we lost in four years during the Second World War.

No one can predict what effect the massive street protests in the past two weeks will have on the virus’s spread. I can’t help but think, even though most demonstrators were wearing masks, that it won’t be insignificant. Arguments that police brutality toward African-Americans also constitute a public health crisis struck me as a bit strained, a kind of mirror-image of arguments by right-wing protestors that lockdowns constituted an economic crisis that justified taking to the streets. Moreover, it’s been shown that African-Americans suffer more infections and deaths from the virus than whites; so if the rallies continue, as planned, do not be surprised if more black Americans get sick and possibly die from Covid 19. I anticipate the responses that statement will get from readers of this blog. I am not indifferent to issues like police brutality and racism, I was as outraged and disgusted as anyone by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis; and having taken part in a demonstration myself, I would be a hypocrite to suggest that protestors should stay home in the name of preserving public health. Racism is America’s original sin, it’s a social and cultural virus, and it’s likely that massive street rallies like those we’ve seen are an essential first step toward its containment and eventual eradication.

But let’s not kid ourselves that it won’t come at a cost. Let’s not kid ourselves that we aren’t making a choice between evils. Lockdowns help control the physical contagion, but cause enormous economic pain; relieving the economic pain causes the contagion to spread. Ain’t nothing free in the land of the free. It should go without saying that we would not be facing such conundrums had the initial response to Covid19 been orderly, rational, and coherent, had the Trump administration and its cult followers not dismissed it as a left-wing plot to undermine his re-election, or as a phenomenon that would soon, in the President’s words, vanish “like a miracle.” The contagion would have struck us no matter who was in the White House; but, as countries like South Korea and Germany have shown, it would not have exacted so terrible a toll.  The Age of Miracles passed a long, long time ago.

 

 

 

 

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JOURNAL OF A PLAGUE YEAR # 8

I ran into a friend, Robin Baxter, yesterday morning as he was walking his dog and I was getting set to walk mine. He asked when Leslie and I were leaving Arizona for Connecticut, and I told him Tuesday, adding that it looked like we were getting out just in time. The state escaped the worst of the pandemic in March, April, and the first half of May; but since Governor Ducey lifted restrictions on May 15, Covid19 cases have risen like the temperature in the desert (when it can go from 45 to 95 degrees in two hours). “Yeah, it was only matter of time before Arizona caught up to,..” Robin began, and paused for a second…”well, to Arizona.” A cryptic comment easily decrypted by anyone who has lived here for more than a few months. Eager for political as well as for other reasons to avert disaster in the state’s economy, mindful of his constituents’ ethos of rugged individualism, Ducey (known to his detractors as Governor Dufus) dithered before imposing measures to mitigate the spread of the virus, took almost no steps to enforce them, and then compounded those errors by relaxing them too early. Many — too many — Arizona citizens, equally eager for a return to normality, chafing at what they regarded as limits to their liberty, took that to mean that the worst was behind them and stopped practicing social distancing and wearing masks in shops, stores, and state parks. The result: confirmed cases have rocketed to 29,852 as of this morning, an increase of 1,412 from the previous day. In the same 24-hour period, deaths rose by 32, from 1,065 to 1,095; and hospitals have reported that their ICU beds are at 80 percent capacity, triggering emergency responses.

Not that Arizona is unique — sharp spikes are occurring in other states like California, Utah, and Texas, which set hospitalization records this week — more than 2,000 a day for three days straight. In the nation as a whole, there are now 2,079,199 confirmed cases and 115,665 deaths — the highest in the world. If the current death rate — 800 people a day —  holds through the summer, the U.S. will have lost 200,000 lives by Labor Day. Reflect on that statistic for a moment, and imagine a war in which we suffer 200,000 killed in action in six months. That’s roughly half what we lost in four years during the Second World War.

No one can predict what effect the massive street protests in the past two weeks will have on the virus’s spread. I can’t help but think, even though most demonstrators were wearing masks, that it won’t be insignificant. Arguments that police brutality toward African-Americans also constitute a public health crisis struck me as a bit strained, a kind of mirror-image of arguments by right-wing protestors that lockdowns constituted an economic crisis that justified taking to the streets. Moreover, it’s been shown that African-Americans suffer more infections and deaths from the virus than whites; so if the rallies continue, as planned, do not be surprised if more black Americans get sick and possibly die from Covid 19. I anticipate the responses that statement will get from readers of this blog. I am not indifferent to issues like police brutality and racism, I was as outraged and disgusted as anyone by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis; and having taken part in a demonstration myself, I would be a hypocrite to suggest that protestors should stay home in the name of preserving public health. Racism is America’s original sin, it’s a social and cultural virus, and it’s likely that massive street rallies like those we’ve seen are an essential first step toward its containment and eventual eradication.

But let’s not kid ourselves that it won’t come at a cost. Let’s not kid ourselves that we aren’t making a choice between evils. Lockdowns help control the physical contagion, but cause enormous economic pain; relieving the economic pain causes the contagion to spread. Ain’t nothing free in the land of the free. It should go without saying that we would not be facing such conundrums had the initial response to Covid19 been orderly, rational, and coherent, had the Trump administration and its cult followers not dismissed it as a left-wing plot to undermine his re-election, or as a phenomenon that would soon, in the President’s words, vanish “like a miracle.” The contagion would have struck us no matter who was in the White House; but, as countries like South Korea and Germany have shown, it would not have exacted so terrible a toll.  The Age of Miracles passed a long, long time ago.

 

 

 

 

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JOURNAL OF A PLAGUE YEAR #7

You can feel removed from the tumult convulsing the country in this small Arizona town, nestled in a valley between the Santa Rita and Patagonia mountains, about 60 miles southeast of Tucson and 18 miles north of the Mexican border. No hordes of protestors surging down its quiet streets, no police battalions firing tear gas and swinging billy clubs; no ambulances rushing pandemic victims to hospitals. So I was surprised to learn yesterday that EMTs had evacuated a woman, sick with pneumonia and the Covid19 virus, from her house, a block over from ours. A friend who is a town councilman phoned to tell me that the she had contracted the disease from her elderly mother, who had died of the virus — Patagonia’s first death in the pandemic. The town marshal interviewed the woman in the hospital, attempting to trace identities of people with whom she’d been in contact, starting with her son and daughter, both in their early 30s. She said, I was told, that she was estranged from her daughter and that her mentally-retarded son did not live with her. Apparently, there was reason to disbelieve her. The word got out, and local stores and shops have barred the daughter from entering, while the son has been confined to a house with a mental health counselor. A poignant sight yesterday was the marshal’s patrol car, parked in front of the house with its roof lights flashing. I learned later that he and the counselor were trying to explain to the man that he had to be quarantined and why.

Arizona emerged from its none-to-stringent lockdown a little more than two weeks ago, and began a phased re-opening, with recommendations on social distancing, wearing masks, and other measures, all of which have been ignored as much as they’ve been followed. As honored in the breach as in the observance, to paraphrase from Hamlet. That’s my impression from observing customers in Safeway, Wal-Mart, Lowe’s, HomeDepot, etc. Half were wearing masks, half not; half obeyed the one-way signs in the aisles, half didn’t; but most did follow the 6-foot social distancing stickers in the checkout lanes. The state’s reopening has resulted in the predicted spike in diagnosed cases: 618 new cases and 23 deaths recorded today, bringing Arizona’s total to, respectively, to 28,296 with 1,070 deaths. I came across a sobering statistic in a London newspaper yesterday: people my age are 10,000 times more likely than teenagers  to die of Covid19.

We’re planning to return to our Connecticut place on the 16th, and should arrive there on the 20th. We’ll be carrying  our own  food and water, plenty of hand sanitizer, and paper towels to wipe down fixtures in motel rooms. A 2,500-mile drive across Pandemic Land should be an experience — one that, it is to be hoped, will turn out well.

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JOURNAL OF A PLAGUE YEAR # 7

You can feel removed from the tumult convulsing the country in this small Arizona town, nestled in a valley between the Santa Rita and Patagonia mountains, about 60 miles southeast of Tucson and 18 miles north of the Mexican border. No hordes of protestors surging down its quiet streets, no police battalions firing tear gas and swinging billy clubs; no ambulances rushing pandemic victims to hospitals. So I was surprised to learn yesterday that EMTs had evacuated a woman, sick with pneumonia and the Covid19 virus, from her house, a block over from ours. A friend who is a town councilman phoned to tell me that the she had contracted the disease from her elderly mother, who had died of the virus — Patagonia’s first death in the pandemic. The town marshal interviewed the woman in the hospital, attempting to trace identities of people with whom she’d been in contact, starting with her son and daughter, both in their early 30s. She said, I was told, that she was estranged from her daughter and that her mentally-retarded son did not live with her. Apparently, there was reason to disbelieve her. The word got out, and local stores and shops have barred the daughter from entering, while the son has been confined to a house with a mental health counselor. A poignant sight yesterday was the marshal’s patrol car, parked in front of the house with its roof lights flashing. I learned later that he and the counselor were trying to explain to the man that he had to be quarantined and why.

Arizona emerged from its none-to-stringent lockdown a little more than two weeks ago, and began a phased re-opening, with recommendations on social distancing, wearing masks, and other measures, all of which have been ignored as much as they’ve been followed. As honored in the breach as in the observance, to paraphrase from Hamlet. That’s my impression from observing customers in Safeway, Wal-Mart, Lowe’s, HomeDepot, etc. Half were wearing masks, half not; half obeyed the one-way signs in the aisles, half didn’t; but most did follow the 6-foot social distancing stickers in the checkout lanes. The state’s reopening has resulted in the predicted spike in diagnosed cases: 618 new cases and 23 deaths recorded today, bringing Arizona’s total to, respectively, to 28,296 with 1,070 deaths. I came across a sobering statistic in a London newspaper yesterday: people my age are 10,000 times more likely than teenagers  to die of Covid19.

We’re planning to return to our Connecticut place on the 16th, and should arrive there on the 20th. We’ll be carrying  our own  food and water, plenty of hand sanitizer, and paper towels to wipe down fixtures in motel rooms. A 2,500-mile drive across Pandemic Land should be an experience — one that, it is to be hoped, will turn out well.

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JOURNAL OF A PLAGUE YEAR #6

Today, June 4, 2020, is my and Leslie’s 32d anniversary, and we spent part of it, unromantically, at a demonstration protesting the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis. Considering that Patagonia, Arizona, has  913 residents and that the temperature was flirting with 100 degrees, the  turnout was respectable — somewhere between 125 and 150 people. The protest was organized by three young women who graduated from Patagonia High School, and who were back in their hometown from college due to the COVID19 pandemic. It took place at the town bandstand, on a grassy parkway that had been a railroad in Patagonia’s wild west days as a mining and cowboy town. We were relieved to see that everyone was wearing masks and practicing social distancing, and otherwise behaving themselves; that is, exercising their constitutional right to peaceably assemble. But we also noticed that the crowd was 99.99 percent white. We saw only one black man, which wasn’t surprising because no African-Americans live here, none that I know of; but there was a disappointing absence of Mexican-Americans, who probably make up half the population.

The three organizers each said a few words, one reading from a long roster of black people who have been killed by police officers or white gunmen in the past six years, beginning with Michael Brown, shot to death in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. The names were written in multi-colored chalk on a paved apron facing the bandstand, and in the center, also chalked, was an arm with a clenched fist and the slogan, “Black Lives Matter.” Protesters were invited to add any missing names; Leslie picked up a piece of blue chalk and wrote “David McAtee,” the owner of a barbecue stand shot and killed by police in Louisville, Kentucky, during the demonstrations there on Monday.

The pastor of the Methodist church also spoke, expressing the hope that the generation represented by the young women would build a future for America better than the present built by his generation (He appeared to be a Boomer). Then the crowd dispersed, and holding up handmade signs, formed a line along Naugle Avenue, Patagonia’s main drag, which is also a state highway. They waved to passing truckers and motorists, most of whom honked their horns in solidarity. I kept an eye out for raised middle fingers but didn’t see any. That was encouraging, given that Arizona is a red state (It was one of the last states to recognize Martin Luther King Day as a national holiday).

Some thoughts: I will turn 79 on six days. My own life has spanned eras from Jim Crow to the Civil Rights Movement to the election of America’s first black President. I recall the time, in 1961, when I was driving south from Purdue University with two college classmates to take part in the annual bacchanalia in Fort Lauderdale. This being before Interstate highways, we got lost somewhere in Georgia and stopped at a gas station to ask directions. I got out of the car for a drink at the water fountain. As I was bent over, guzzling, I felt a firm tap on my shoulder and turned around to face the attendant, a man as big as a  public monument, holding the instrument with which he’d got my attention, an open-end wrench. He said, “You don’t look like no nigger to me, son,” and pointed the wrench at a sign above the fountain. It read: COLORED ONLY. Our country has come a long way since then, but as the past few years have shown, we still have a long way to go before we are fully immunized against the virus of racism, particularly the strain that targets black Americans. It arrived in 1619, with the landing in Virginia of the first slave ship from Africa.

I am not sure why Floyd’s murder touched off so huge a wave of national outrage. Perhaps the pandemic, unemployment, and racial tensions fused to form a kind of social nuclear bomb. And incidentally, the expressions of anger and frustrations have expanded far beyond urban areas to small towns. Read this story from BuzzFeed News: https: //www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehele...

Racism, of course, exists everywhere. I’ve seen it in my travels all over the world. Fear, suspicion, and hatred of “The Other” may be ingrained in human nature; but that doesn’t mean we should cease trying to eradicate it. The United States is supposed to be the one nation on Earth where everyone, regardless of his or her racial, ethnic, or religious identity, can meld into a single identity, American. Period. Full stop. I yearn for the day when we’ll stop hyphenating ourselves. That’s our great experiment, that’s the light that shines from the city on the hill. It will require more than reforms and legislation to keep it burning; it will require us all to change our hearts. And as the Methodist minister said today, that will be the work of a generation.

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JOURNAL OF A PLAGUE YEAR #5

THE GLORY

The Falcon 9 rocket rose with agonizing slowness from its launchpad at Cape Canaveral, then rapidly gained speed — cleaving the air like a giant spear trailing a pillar of flame. Within minutes, with two astronauts on board, it hurtled through the last traces of the upper atmosphere into empty space at close to 17,000 miles per hour; minutes later it was in orbit, soaring toward a rendezvous with the International Space Station. This was first launch of a manned, American-built rocket from American soil in 11 years, and the inaugural flight of a new era in space travel and exploration. Sitting in my leather arm chair, my laptop where it was designed to be — on my lap — I watched the mission live-streamed on NASA TV this past Saturday and thought of lines from High Flight, a poem by John MaGee Jr., a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot in World War Two: “Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth/And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.” The surly bonds of Earth are the key words. Like millions of other people in a country wracked by racism, arson and looting, afflicted by a virus that has taken 100,000 lives in three months, and suffering the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression, my spirits needed a lift. The Falcon 9 provided it.

My memory traveled back 50 years, 10 months, and 12 days to July 20, 1969, another turbulent year in American history — the SDS Weatherman riots in Chicago’s Grant Park, the Vietnam War raging on into its fourth year. An atmosphere of dread hung over the nation, a feeling that had been growing since the previous, even more turbulent year that American society was fracturing. “A broken mirror still in its frame,” was how a friend had described it. I was visiting with my parents and my paternal grandmother, Rose, to watch the Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins land on the moon. Aside from the event itself, my most vivid recollection is of my grandmother, at 75 three years younger than I am now. Born in Chicago in 1894, she had memories of a time before automobiles, radio, television, and electricity. When she uttered her first cries, the Wright Brothers’ flight was almost a decade away. Now, she beheld, beamed across 250,000 miles of outer space, a live image of Armstrong planting the first human footprint on another world. She looked beyond astonished. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “I can’t believe I’m seeing this.”

THE SHAME

There are things happening in our society, fragmenting yet again, that I can believe but don’t wish to. I don’t wish to believe that 30,000 more Americans have died in the pandemic than were killed in the Korean and Vietnam Wars combined; I don’t wish to believe that half a century after the civil rights movement achieved so much, people of color, African-Americans in particular, remain victims of poverty, discrimination, and police brutality; I don’t wish to believe the scenes I’ve watched of their justified protests being hijacked by looters, arsonists, and extremists lusting for violence and destruction. Tear gas, rubber bullets, broken glass, shops and cars aflame, chanting crowds confronted by helmeted police and National Guardsmen in gas masks — all this also evokes memories. Memories of a different kind. It looks and feels like 1968, when I was reporter covering the Democratic convention riots in the summer of that year, or when fire and smoke engulfed American cities in the spring, following the assassination of Martin Luther King. Entire blocks on the west side of of my hometown, Chicago, were gutted; I had to rescue my sister from her apartment and drive her to safety in our parents’ house in the suburbs.

The song by Credence Clearwater Revival, “Bad Moon Rising,” was appropriate theme music for that time. Don’t go out tonight, it’s bound to take your life, there’s a bad moon on the rise. To quote that venerable poet, Yogi Berra, “It’s deja vu all over again.” Well, not quite. We did not have, in 1968, a plague like the Covid19 virus; we did not have economic calamity; we did not have a President who liked to throw matches into the fuel spill of racial, class, and political divisions.

And yet, I take heart that the glory will overcome the shame. That Falcon 9 rocket gave me hope, reinforced my faith in this grand experiment we call the United States, a faith, which I pray is not illusory, that our present disunity will be healed if we only recall Benjamin Franklin’s words, spoken as the colonies declared their independence from the British crown: “We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall hang separately.”

 

 

 

 

The post JOURNAL OF A PLAGUE YEAR #5 appeared first on Philip Caputo.

JOURNAL OF A PLAGUE YEAR # 5

THE GLORY

The Falcon 9 rocket rose with agonizing slowness from its launchpad at Cape Canaveral, then rapidly gained speed — cleaving the air like a giant spear trailing a pillar of flame. Within minutes, with two astronauts on board, it hurtled through the last traces of the upper atmosphere into empty space at close to 17,000 miles per hour; minutes later it was in orbit, soaring toward a rendezvous with the International Space Station. This was first launch of a manned, American-built rocket from American soil in 11 years, and the inaugural flight of a new era in space travel and exploration. Sitting in my leather arm chair, my laptop where it was designed to be — on my lap — I watched the mission live-streamed on NASA TV this past Saturday and thought of lines from High Flight, a poem by John MaGee Jr., a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot in World War Two: “Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth/And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.” The surly bonds of Earth are the key words. Like millions of other people in a country wracked by racism, arson and looting, afflicted by a virus that has taken 100,000 lives in three months, and suffering the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression, my spirits needed a lift. The Falcon 9 provided it.

My memory traveled back 50 years, 10 months, and 12 days to July 20, 1969, another turbulent year in American history — the SDS Weatherman riots in Chicago’s Grant Park, the Vietnam War raging on into its fourth year. An atmosphere of dread hung over the nation, a feeling that had been growing since the previous, even more turbulent year that American society was fracturing. “A broken mirror still in its frame,” was how a friend had described it. I was visiting with my parents and my paternal grandmother, Rose, to watch the Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins land on the moon. Aside from the event itself, my most vivid recollection is of my grandmother, at 75 three years younger than I am now. Born in Chicago in 1894, she had memories of a time before automobiles, radio, television, and electricity. When she uttered her first cries, the Wright Brothers’ flight was almost a decade away. Now, she beheld, beamed across 250,000 miles of outer space, a live image of Armstrong planting the first human footprint on another world. She looked beyond astonished. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “I can’t believe I’m seeing this.”

THE SHAME

There are things happening in our society, fragmenting yet again, that I can believe but don’t wish to. I don’t wish to believe that 30,000 more Americans have died in the pandemic than were killed in the Korean and Vietnam Wars combined; I don’t wish to believe that half a century after the civil rights movement achieved so much, people of color, African-Americans in particular, remain victims of poverty, discrimination, and police brutality; I don’t wish to believe the scenes I’ve watched of their justified protests being hijacked by looters, arsonists, and extremists lusting for violence and destruction. Tear gas, rubber bullets, broken glass, shops and cars aflame, chanting crowds confronted by helmeted police and National Guardsmen in gas masks — all this also evokes memories. Memories of a different kind. It looks and feels like 1968, when I was reporter covering the Democratic convention riots in the summer of that year, or when fire and smoke engulfed American cities in the spring, following the assassination of Martin Luther King. Entire blocks on the west side of of my hometown, Chicago, were gutted; I had to rescue my sister from her apartment and drive her to safety in our parents’ house in the suburbs.

The song by Credence Clearwater Revival, “Bad Moon Rising,” was appropriate theme music for that time. Don’t go out tonight, it’s bound to take your life, there’s a bad moon on the rise. To quote that venerable poet, Yogi Berra, “It’s deja vu all over again.” Well, not quite. We did not have, in 1968, a plague like the Covid19 virus; we did not have economic calamity; we did not have a President who liked to throw matches into the fuel spill of racial, class, and political divisions.

And yet, I take heart that the glory will overcome the shame. That Falcon 9 rocket gave me hope, reinforced my faith in this grand experiment we call the United States, a faith, which I pray is not illusory, that our present disunity will be healed if we only recall Benjamin Franklin’s words, spoken as the colonies declared their independence from the British crown: “We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall hang separately.”

 

 

 

 

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MEMORIAL DAY 2020

TO MY FALLEN BROTHERS:

LCPL CARROLL FANKHAUSER, 1st Battalion, 3d Marines. 8/24/65

PFC ROBERT FERNANDEZ, 1st Battalion, 3d Marines. 6/20/65

CPL BRIAN GAUTHIER, 1st Battalion, 3d Marines. 7/11/65

LCPL REYNALDO GUZMAN, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines. 1/25/66

1STLT WALTER LEVY, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines. 9/18/65

PFC CURTIS LOCKHART, 1st Battalion, 3d Marines. 7/30/65

PFC PATRICK MANNING, 1st Battalion, 3d Marines. 7/30/65

LTCOL JOSEPH MUIR, 3d Battalion, 3d Marines. 9/11/65

PFC STEVEN PAGE, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines. 1/25/66

2DLT JAMES PARMALEE, 2d Battalion, 3d Marines. 7/14/65

1STLT FRANK REASONER,3d Reconnaissance Battalion. 7/12/65

LCPL KENNETH SEISSER, 1st Battalion, 3d Marines. 7/11/65

1STLT ADAM SIMPSON, 1st Battalion, 9th Marines. 10/3/65

PFC LONNIE SNOW, 1st Battalion, 3d Marines. 7/30/65

SGT HUGH SULLIVAN, 1st Battalion, 3d Marines. 6/5/65

1STLT BRUCE WARNER, 3d Tank Battalion. 2/3/66

SGT WILLIAM WEST, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines. 3/28/66.

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JOURNAL OF A PLAGUE YEAR #4

May 18 — This weekend, we attended – if that’s the right word — a virtual memorial service for our friend Karen Wessel Marcus, who died of Covid19 two weeks ago. It was streamed live from St. James Episcopal in Scarsdale, N.Y., Karen’s church, and also the church Leslie and I were married in nearly 32 years ago. The experience was a little strange, watching and listening to the priest, the deacon, and the organist on a laptop screen from the back deck of our Arizona house, 2,500 miles away. This is how we mourn when a medieval epidemic strikes a 21st-century world. But the ceremony was beautiful and dignified, a fitting farewell to a dignified and lovely woman.

Immeasurably more fitting than the goodbyes that were bid during the Black Plague in the mid-14th century, when the dead were dragged out into the streets, picked up like trash by carters, and wheeled off to be cremated. These are dark times for our entire planet, this blue orb spinning in a solar system midway between the heart of our galaxy and its far boundaries, but the times are not as dark as they were then. Historians estimate that 25 million people, one third of Europe’s population at the time, died of the “black death” between 1347 and 1351. The plague lingered on, erupting in sporadic outbreaks for hundreds of years afterward. It swept London in 1665, killing 70,000 people in that city alone (I’ve plagiarized the title of Daniel Defoe’s 1722 account of that epidemic, Journal of A Plague Year). This is not to minimize the suffering that the families of our country’s 90,000 dead are undergoing; but it is to put the pandemic in historical perspective. And so, to return to Karen’s memorial service, I think its scriptural reading has something to say to us, has something to say especially to the huge majority who have escaped infection but are experiencing economic anxieties, in some cases facing economic ruin:

A Reading from Matthew 6:25-34

‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink,* or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?* And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God* and his* righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ‘So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

Yes, from the vantage of my comfortable old age, I realize that among small business owners who may have to close their doors forever, among the millions of unemployed who fear they won’t be able to make rent or car payments, or buy groceries, or pay their utility bills, Matthew’s exhortation may elicit bitter cries or sardonic laughter. Oh, yeah, and just when will our Heavenly Father make me whole? I’m not making a religious pitch here. I myself, and Leslie, too, would feel a lot more confident about the future and the futures of our children and grandchildren if our national leaders were to muster a coherent, coordinated effort to meet this crisis, rather than the chaotic, politically charged response they have come up with so far. Nevertheless, I believe the human race is capable of learning from the past. Much of modern hygiene and sanitation, from running water to sewage disposal to the development of vaccines, originated in response to the plagues that ravaged the world centuries ago. I believe that we will get through this trial, if we have faith in ourselves and in medical science as well as faith in God.

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