Coronavirus: "Play with fads, work with trends and live by principles"

NY Week 9 and the talk has turned to re-entry.  I don't know about you, but I am just getting used to managed retreat.  I have great new hobbies and so many things happening in the zoom-o-sphere that I can enjoy!  There's a huge national med school graduation with all the people who play doctors on TV, a production of "King Lear" by Theater of War, and UofO Digital Campus which is growing everyday.  So I'm set for a while -- no matter, re-entry is coming.

But re-entry to what?  Going "back" is a fiction, as we know that much has changed, including each of us.  The naming buffs will surely get on that, although I'm still waiting to learn what to call the first decade of the century -- "oughts" seems not to have caught on.  Let's call it "not-back" for the moment.

The main characteristic of not-back, as far as I can tell, is uncertainty and this is just not attractive.  There is nobody in the whole world who knows what's next.  That's always been true, but the relatively slow pace of change has allowed us to think that we knew what was next.  So what can help us feel our way forward?

I had the good fortune to serve on the National Board of the American Institute of Architects with Futurist David Zach.  He never talked about the future as "a thing."  He always presented wildly evocative pictures and talked about "might," as in, what might happen.  He has pointed out that we should "play with fads, work with trends and live by principles."  Here's how he defined those terms. 

Fads are "all about being in the moment."  Baking is a fad of this moment, and a very pleasant one, at that.  [I made shortbread cookies last night--Mark Bittman's recipe, but next time I'm trying Melissa Clark.]  

Trends are about movement -- "they are like the current that moves the boat."  Trends are very important for the future, because they are enduring and leave their mark.  We can, with attention, discern trends, which can serve us like channel guides.  A trend in this moment is for new diseases to arise because of human abuse of the ecosystem.  This is a trend that will continue and might accelerate.  

"Principles," Zach noted, "are about the eternal. Things that don't change, shouldn't change, can't change." [He loves to be silly, so he quotes Groucho Marx on this point: "Those are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others."]  Principles, therefore, are like the stars, the constants of our navigation.  "Respect for all living beings" is a principle that we can use in planning for a future that is just and sustainable.  

In the Zachian future, we enjoy fads, forecast trends and stand by our principles.  We do this, for the most part, in small increments of time -- this moment, this day -- because we can manage what's in front of us.  I think this is powerful advice for moving forward.  

Coronavirus: "Don't put off 'til tomorrow what you can do today"

How many times did my parents suggest that I attend to today's chores today?  Millions.  I was and remain a procrastinator, but that sneaky sort of person, always busy and so seemingly perfectly justified that I can't get it all done.  Of course, I'm busy with the work I like, while the work I dislike languishes on my desk.

This has caught up with me. That my washing machine was not functioning properly didn't matter for long time because I could take the clothes around the corner to laundromat.  Now I'm caught in my house -- I mean safely sheltering in place -- with a washing machine that has to be coaxed to do its job.  And you would think I've learned my lesson, but no, there's still work I don't want to do and that isn't getting done as promptly as it should.

I raise this issue here because it seems to me that pretty much everybody in the world is facing this problem. We have to change the way we live to avoid mass extinction, possibly including our own species, and it is actually something we can't put off.  I read in The New York Times about a study of the risks we face from climate change.  If we hit the fateful increase of two degrees centigrade, we could face a sudden catastrophic loss of species that form our ecosystem, possibly including our own.  Reporting on a study that appeared in the scientific journal Nature, the Times article said:

The study predicted that large swaths of ecosystems would falter in waves, creating sudden die-offs that would be catastrophic not only for wildlife, but for the humans who depend on [them].

"For a long time things can seem OK and then suddenly they're not," said Alex L. Pigot, a scientist at University College London and one of the study's authors. "Then, it's too late to do anything about it because you've already fallen over this cliff edge."

This is my experience of tolerating a dysfunctional washing machine.  It was fine until suddenly it wasn't and I couldn't do anything to fix it.  While the problem of my washing machine is not threatening my life, our collective threat to the world-as-we-know-it is a threat to you and me and all seven billion of us humans and gadzillions of other living beings.

The coronavirus that we're grappling with is a both a warning of troubles to come and a roadmap for the changes we can make and what will happen if we do.  In this short time of human retreat. BBC reported, animals have started to embrace more parts of the world and the skies and waters have become clear.  Our changes have had a rapid and positive impact on the state of the ecosystem.

I have learned how optional much of the busy-ness of my life was and that I could make do with much, much less. Yesterday I planned to record a lesson on making brownies for the University of Orange Digital Campus.  When I pulled out the box, I found it contained only one egg.  I thought, "There has to be a substitute for eggs on the internet."  I found that the small amount of applesauce in my frig was a perfect replacement for the other egg.  The brownies were not quite the same, but they proved the point that I could make do with what I had.

In this regard, one of the greatest things that's happened to me is that Amazon Prime is not one day delivery.  In fact, who knows how many days Amazon will be.  That leaves plenty of time to look around and find alternatives.  The other great thing is that conferences and conventions are canceled and I don't have to fly here and there.  I can sit in my house and join meetings by Zoom.  That frees up time to spend watching the happy animals frolicking in my backyard.  The squirrels in particular are getting so fat because they don't have to scurry off every time people come!

In this sudden break, I have gotten to see that the way my life was woven into the world contributed to the intolerable burden humans place on the ecosystem.  I have been forced to live more mindfully for now. but what will happen when the all-clear sounds?  The temptation will be to forget that this ever happened and to act as if my old life were acceptable.  But my old life, which depended on excess consumption of many, many things, contributed to looming catastrophe.  Better to change and avoid the cliff's edge of our species and all others!

Resisting the status quo will take backbone.  The other thing I've seen in this period is great courage, not only the sublime courage of the essential workers, but also the bravery of leaders who showed the way forward.  I am reminded of the photo of healthcare executive Bruce Greenstein who offered an elbow to Donald Trump, rather than shake his hand.  What role models these people have been!  The pathmakers of ecological respect will be the ones to watch for in the months to come.

Reverend Cynthia Bourgeault pointed out that the word "courage" comes from the French, coeur, which means "heart."  She said that it is the clarity that we get from love that gives us the strength to do what we have to do.  As one of the tasks of getting through this moment in time, my colleagues Lourdes Rodriguez, Nupur Chaudhury and I suggested that we needed to "turn on the love."  It now seems even more useful, as the more love we feel now, the more courage we'll have to turn away from the status quo towards a new way of life, in harmony with the Earth.  I put this sign on my door and in my yard to remind passersby and me of that great truth!

There's a New Mary in Town

I think that loss is a two-sided coin, with grief on one side and a gift on the other.  I’ve become so convinced of this that, at moments of loss, I acknowledge the grief and wait for the gift.  Today, I was at the funeral of Mary Robinson White, a beloved leader of my family and community, who passed away a few weeks shy of her 95^th birthday.  A death at that age is not a surprise, and we can manage it with a certain grace.  But however much time we have with our loved ones, it is never enough, and we grieve the pleasures of their company.  I kept thinking, “I’ll never get another Christmas card from Mary White” and it made my heart ache. 

At the funeral, I was listening for the gift, and here’s what I heard Reverend Onaje Crawford say:

“Mary, Mother of God, and Mary Magdalene – move over, there’s a new Mary in town!”

What was the quality that elevated Mary White to that blessed circle of women?  Mary, Mother of God, is adored for her willingness, Mary Magdalene because she had the wisdom and spiritual grace to became the apostle to the apostles.  It is not lightly that one makes such a comparison, and the comment was made laughing, but not in jest.

Mary White achieved in her life that most rare of Christian virtues: radical acceptance of every person she ever met. Her acceptance touched us all, changing us, opening our hearts to tolerance and joy. She did not preach virtue that I ever heard. She just lived it in every breath of her life. 

And so the gift is that we got to see what the world might be like if we actually – each and every one of us – followed the teaching of Jesus, to love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself. I feel so honored to have known such a Mary. 

Mary White, center in blue, on the occasion of receiving an honorary doctorate from the University of Orange.

Battle of the Benches

On April 9, 2011, a major battle was fought in Orange, NJ: the Battle of the Benches. The lawn of the historic Orange Public Library was the site of the action. Eleven competitors arrived with benches they'd made, designed to compete in a list of categories. Invention was the order of the day. The contest was tough.
I got my bench ready by going to the benchmaking workshops led by University of Orange carpentry professor, Frank Racioppi. He helped me make my simple bench. "Helped" is being generous about my part. I sanded and painted, he did the rest. Then I recruited a star teammate: Vlad Jean, master artist. When the competition heard about my successful recruitment, they knew. And they were right! We took first place in the "Orange Pride" category. Vlad brought to life the energy and hope of an historic train that put Orange on the map as early as 1832. We won lunch for four at John's Market, best Italian lunch in town. Join us!

Creating a plan for the Heart of Orange

I have been participating in a team that is developing a plan for the center of Orange, NJ, an area we nicknamed the "Heart of Orange." When I was growing up in Orange, that area was divided into an east side ghetto for black people and a west side ghetto for Italians, each equipped with a Y and a housing project. When I was a teenager, the building of Interstate 280 added a north/south divide, cutting off the more working class north side from the wealthier south. The "Heart of Orange" addresses these divides, posing the question, "Can we create ONE ORANGE?" At the end of March, Michel Cantal-Dupart came to consult with us. Cantal-Dupart, who is chair of the department of urbanism and the environment at the National Conservatory of Arts and Trades in Paris, France, pointed out the ways in which both the railroad and the highway cut the city, neither injury to the urban tissue treated in the elegant manner that would create unity in the city. Furthermore, the train, the city's trump card for the 21st century, was treated as a stepchild. He pointed to the dismal lot that greets people arriving from New York and Newark and asked us, "Is this a welcome?" Shamefacedly we all had to admit it was not. "Organize a day," he urged, "and clean the litter. Plant trees. Play music from all the world. In no time at all, this will be such a beautiful urban center that people will have a new image of Orange. They will say what a great place to go for fun!" As we worked on the Heart of Orange plan, Cantal-Dupart's words rang in our ears, reminding us to think forward into the 21st century, as we clean up of the messes left by history. We'd appreciate comments on the Heart of Orange plan. It can be found at the University of Orange website.