Coronavirus: The Equinox

Tuesday, September 22, 2020, was the fall equinox. On that day, headlines announced that 200,000 people had died from Covid-19 in the US. This occurred on the heels of the September 18th death of jurist Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which was a loss of a great woman but also the precipitant for national crisis about the vacant Supreme Court seat. No question but President Donald Trump would rush through a conservative judge to create a long-lasting conservative majority on the court. Loss and dread left me, for one, very depressed. It did not feel like equal amounts of light and dark. 

In the week since the equinox, I've struggle out of that emotional hole. It was a miraculous community event that brought the sun. The HUUB, at First UU in Orange, hosted an event to promote the census. Young dancers from Concepts in Choreography, who sometimes practice in our parking lot, came by and started to dance to Jersey club. At about the same time, the Guatemalan community next door started its folkloric festival with dancers in fabulous costumes. There was a fence in between the two -- Charlie Wirene, managing director of the HUUB, made me day when he said, "We just have to take out a fence pole and open it up." 

Since then, openings have piled up. Something about this hour which is calling community together. A moving piece in the New York Times made that point about a community in Oregon devastated by Covid-19 and then by wildfire. Despite the terrible losses, the community was pulling together. Restaurants, for example, were planning how to provide meals for months for those in need.  As one teenager said, 

“You just really see your community light up for you,” said Estefania Ortiz, 17, a high school senior who is Ms. Alexia’s cousin. “I keep telling my teachers — it’s a small community with a big heart.”

The equinox showed me the troubles of the world.  But there is more: there are fenceposts we might remove so that we can pull together to get through this.  

Kiss me, I'm Scottish???!!!!!

Ancestry.com wrote to say that they had updated the results of my DNA tests and they had new information to share with me.  I went to the website and was shocked to see that I was no longer part Irish, but rather 26% Scottish.  I have been part Irish all my life, as well as part Native American.  The first go-round Ancestry said that, no, I had no Native American DNA per their results.  Shocking.  But this time I'm no longer Irish -- I'm Scottish?????!!!!.  As my daughter Molly and niece Jaden had also learned about being part Scottish, we spent some time exploring our heritage, at least the obvious parts: Mel Gibson as William Wallace, Sean Connery as Sean Connery, Sam Heughan as Jamie Fraser and nameless attractive people in handsome plaids.  More will be revealed.  Time to work on my shortbread.

9.11.2001: 19 Years Later

I was on a panel today with architect/planner Mark Barksdale, who opened his remarks by recounting his experience of looking at the hole in the side of the Tower, knowing from his training that the building would collapse, and being helpless to stop it. He felt sick when he heard that people had been told to shelter in place rather than flee. His vivid image of the wounded Tower made me think of the many wounds to the social fabric of our nation. I often wonder these days if our society will collapse, and so do many other people. 

I was heartened by listening to Reverend William Barber II. Toby Horn, a college classmate, sent me a link to a Facebook Live event, Rev. Barber II chatting by phone with Andy Shallal of Washington, DC's Busboys and Poets Bookstore. Rev. Barber said to Andy, "We must vote this November. We must have people in office who will fight for the poor, the low-wealth and all who are oppressed and marginalized. And after we vote, we will insist that they do the right thing. Forward together, not one step back." This possibility filled me with joy.

And I also took heart from the University of Orange weekly newsletter, which told the story of NYC RECOVERS, a project my colleagues and I started after 9.11. Reading about the project reminded me of all we learned in tending to the social and emotional recovery of New York City, and most particularly the tasks of groups, which we named: Remember, Respect, Learn and Connect. 

Life is, after all, a conversation with the world in which we try to name the problems, try to remember when we've faced them before and then try to remember what worked. We can get lost in this process, and that's what friends are for. One of my friends, Doug Farrand, has spent the past five months reminding me that, back in March, I said we needed to turn on the love to get through this moment. His repetition of my advice is slowly sinking in.  This photo of a rock in Highbridge Park, which was the last slide I showed on the panel, captures this sentiment. Remember, Respect, Learn and Connect -- and TURN ON THE LOVE.  

What I have to say about Main Streets

Yesterday I got to celebrate the publication of my new book, Main Street: How a City's Heart Connects Us All.  It was a great party, aptly outlined by architect/artist Carol Hsuing, who designed the book's cover.  

I loved that Andy Merrifield, who wrote the foreword, called in from Cambridge, England, Michel Cantal-Dupart, to whom the book is dedicated, called in from Paris, and Hirofumi Minami, who invented the stroll-and-scroll method I used, got up early in the morning to call in from Japan.  

So many great friends and colleagues showed up -- as I noticed 121 people were in the Zoom at one point, I can't even begin to name them all!  

And we had extraordinary moments, like listening to Winston Nelson play a Bach arrangement he had made. Michael Lally read two of his poems he allowed me to reprint in the book, as well as tinkling the ivories to Thelonius Monk's "Easy Street," which Andy said was the book's anthem.  

A special part of the evening was giving "Might and Main" Awards to people who have contributed so much to making and maintaining America's Main Streets. It was a real pleasure that Mayor Barry W. Conaway joined us to receive the award for "Best Main Street" on behalf of his city. Tony Gonzalez received the "Best Spirit Animal" award on behalf of himself and the CLIMB team.  Winston Nelson accepted the award to the Ebenezer Gospel Choir for "Best Gospel Choir in the Circle." Peter Walsh accepted the "Love my 'Hood" award on behalf of Coogan's Restaurant, and pledged to fight for Main Streets and small businesses everywhere. While Robert Sember was not accepting the award to Johannesburg's Baked on Grant for "Best Poached Eggs on Rye Toast," he agreed that they were amazing.  

The evening represented what I have to say about Main Streets: they are made by our collective labor, the whole tangle of Main Streets is greater than the sum of its parts, and we need them now more than ever for their powerful centripetal force, pulling us together to solve our problems.  

"We inter-are"

For weeks now I've been in the midsummer madness of my tomato vines, which want to encompass all of New Jersey. It's been terrifying and I understand why Shakespeare wrote that play. But the days are getting shorter and school is about to start. I have to turn my attention to my "to-do" list. As people who work with me know, I'm a devotee of the Planner Pad, one of those systems of productivity, guaranteeing flow from concept to product. I love products, which is why I've written over 100 papers and eight books, the latest of which, Main Street: How a City's Heart Connects Us All, comes out September 8th. 

This afternoon I was talking to Buddhist teacher Dr. Marisela Gomez, whose research team had started using Microsoft Planner, which I gather is something like my analog book. She was talking about going from buckets to tasks. "But Marisela," I asked, "is this maybe a neoliberal plot to keep us focused on little buckets instead of the big picture of what's happening to the ecosystem?" (We'd been talking earlier about the evils of neoliberalism, which is probably why I made that connection.) 

She reflected for a moment and then said, "Yes. We inter-are." She was taught by Thich Naht Hanh, who developed the expression. She had explained this phrase to me some time ago, that we do not live as isolated, atomistic individuals, but rather as an interdependent web of life. The reality is that we are not independent beings, we are interdependent beings -- "we inter-are."  In Thich Naht Hanh's calligraphy:

We talked about what an Inter-Are page might look like in a planner. I was so inspired by this way to open my frame of reference that I used the Design Sketchbook technique I learned from Dan Rothschild to make a collage about the Big Picture. I clipped some images that resonated: some graphs and text boxes from Shelterforce, and two images from the Times, one of a person picking cherries and the other of convict firefighters going to fight the raging fires in California. 

These captured for me the call from Rev Brian McLaren, one of my teachers at the Living School, that we strive to see and hear, “the other, the outsider, the outcast, the last, the least, the lost, the disgraced, the dispossessed.”

As the song, "Let there be peace on Earth," was earworming me, I added that. It makes a difference to look at the little buckets of work that lie ahead -- reading a dissertation, writing a paper, attending meetings -- with this big picture in mind. What if this were a practice -- to start my week on Sundays by looking at the stories that have passed my way and considering the Inter-Are of it all? Would I learn to hold this Big Picture without flinching, able to be a source of peace and love? Would I just veer off into escapist TV? (God, I hope not.) 

And what if all of us added an Inter-Are page to our planners? I am hoping the Dr. Gomez will invent a new planner for us, help us see that's it all more fragile than we thought, without being swamped by the truth.  

Coronavirus: Let's take it outside

Remember that old taunt? "You want a piece of me? We can take this outside." 

Guaranteed to induce most of us to back down. But now there's a new twist -- "You DON'T want a piece of me? Let's take it outside."  

People are inventing lots of new ways to take life outside. Schools are erecting tents with open sides, musicians are strolling around and performing on sidewalks and in driveways. And meetings of all kinds are assembling in parking lots with chairs carefully spaced apart. Historically, while fighting epidemics of tuberculosis, schools moved classes outside EVEN IN THE WINTER.  

The impetus for this is the clear evidence that the coronavirus is spread through the air, surely as droplets from coughing and sneezing, but likely as an invisible mist of aerosolized particles. If you remember the movie, Outbreak, in which Cuba Gooding, Jr., makes an antidote in a trailer in about a day,  you'll remember the great scene in the movie theater. An infected person sneezes, and the droplets go into the air and all over the movie theater, infecting everyone who's there. Obviously the infectious mist is invisible, so the special effects people colorized it for our fear and trembling. Now, every article I read about the invisible mist, I think of that scene. 

I, personally, don't want to go in anywhere. I have to go to the supermarket, and occasional doctor visits. That's enough. Everything else, I want to move outside. I'm considering getting a gas grill so that the great chefs of my acquaintance can cook in the backyard!

And it inspires a re-visit of the old taunt, "Coronavirus, you think you can get a piece of me? Let's take it outside!"

A bag of flour

I opened the paper this morning and saw a headline that said, "That flour that you bought could foretell our economy." That was very spooky because I had bought a bag of Maine Grains wheat flour and it was sitting right in front of me. I realized I'm a type -- the type with a yard and an oven, who has spent quarantine baking bread and growing vegetables. Disheartening, to say the least. But my ego issues, as always, were not the point. The article was trying to say that there is a way forward away from the madness of agribusiness, and part of it has to do with small mills that grind flour with local grain and local labor. King Arthur's Flour, though not so advanced as Maine Grain, has, the op/ed said, much the same spirit of small is better. I am convinced of this by no less an authority than Robert G. Wallace, who thinks that breaking away from agribusiness is key to preventing future pandemics, species extinction and other horrors. I wasn't thinking about all that when I bought the flour -- just how good the bread would taste. As to my garden, today I found a mega cucumber in my mega cucumber patch. And I will soon have more tomatoes than I ever dreamed possible in one-third of 4'x12' raised bed. Thank God for landscape architect Stephen Panasci, who is supervising my transition from theoretical to actual gardener.

My bag of Maine Grains Wheat Flour next to some produce from my garden -- including the giant cucumber I found lingering in the vines -- normal cucumbers for comparison.