Freedom and Responsibility

Photo courtesy of Tampa Bay Times

Exhibit #1:

A young Latina in Florida is addressing the local council regarding the mandate to wear a mask when leaving the house.  She berates the council members.  She says they will be arrested soon for following the Devil’s law.  She accuses them of being insane.  They will not escape the wrath of God.  It is all a deep state conspiracy, somehow related to the rolling out of 5G cell phone networks.  She says social distancing of six feet between two people at all times is military protocol, and she is having none of it.

Exhibit #2:

A middle-aged White woman is screaming obscenities and flailing around inside a Trader Joe’s Market in North Hollywood, a suburb of Los Angeles.  The manager and several employees are trying to calm her down, but her rant continues.  She turns to leave the market but stops when she sees she is being filmed with a cell phone camera by another customer.  She says it is she who has a breathing problem and therefore cannot wear the mask.  She claims she has permission to shop without a mask.  She threatens legal action.  Then, she turns and storms out.

Exhibit #3:

A second, somewhat younger White woman has a basket full of grocery items.  She begins throwing each item from her cart around the store.  No employees approach her.  Her tantrum continues until her cart is empty and her items litter the floor in every direction.  She turns and storms out, screaming and threating anyone she sees.

Many of these encounters, especially over wearing masks, come down to the person saying that wearing a mask violates personal freedom.  It does not.  Wearing a mask offers some protection from the spread of COVID-19.

Social media posts for several restaurants in Los Angeles ask that patrons to these newly reopened establishments refrain from berating and insulting, and in one case, assaulting, the employees for following safety protocols put in place by Los Angeles County, the governor and the mayor.  All of these encounters occur while the employees are trying to serve the customers.  The employees must wear full masks and plexi-glass shields to prevent customers and themselves from infection, yet the customers respond with verbal and physical abuse.

All of these people, screaming and flailing around like toddlers, claim their rights are being violated.  Yes, being forced to wear a mask is not comfortable but it slows the spread of the disease.  Where are these “my rights, my body” people when we talk about abortion, or the freedom to express ourselves as LGBTQ citizens?  What about the freedom to be Black and walk home from the grocery store without facing physical violence and death at the hands of law enforcement who have sworn to protect us?  If we are asking for personal freedom, it must be for all of us.  Poverty, racial hatred, lack of opportunity for education—those are causes worth fighting for that affect every American.  Screaming and stomping one’s feet over wearing a mask to prevent transmission of a deadly virus—get over it.

No one is exempt from COVID-19 infection.  Our careless, gratuitous, gluttonous, sickening need for instant gratification only raises our chance of infection.  There is no cure, no vaccine, no pharmaceutical that prevents COVID-19 or mitigates its virulent and deadly rampage.  Not real, you say?  Hoax, you say?  There are 126,000 plus Americans who would disagree if they could speak.  Unfortunately, they are dead of COVID-19 and can only testify with their absence.

Freedom demands responsibility.  Being part of humanity demands we see ourselves as connected, inextricably, with each other.  Democracy, as the ancient Greeks who invented it remind us, is a team sport.  And as the cliché goes, there is no “I” in team.

In short, WEAR THE DAMN MASK!!!

Those ubiquitous signs:  “We are in this together.”  “We’ll get through this together.”  We have no choice but to get through this together.  There is no personal freedom without the responsibility to give others the same freedoms.  We must rely on each other AND protect one another.

It is our humanity that we have lost in all of this.  Violence, rights, self-determination, political theater, self-aggrandizement, narcissism, lies, lies, lies—it is all wrapped up in this now.  We must sort it out and return to decency and ethical human behavior.

Take responsibility for yourself and others:  put on the mask.  It really is that simple.

Coffee Grounds, Tea Leaves and Crystal Balls

Two things seem abundantly clear right now about the future:  Donald Trump will not be elected for a second term, and COVID-19 will be with us well into 2021.

I am no prognosticator but there are clear indicators.  Trump is well behind Biden in the polls.  He does not have a plan for what he wants to tackle in a second term.  He cares more about protecting statuary than flesh and blood Americans, including those in his own base who risked illness and death for his vacuous pep rallies.  He is being savaged by Democrats and Republicans across the country—The Lincoln Project continues to lay open Trump’s many sins and failures, and they are Republicans!

Trump has angered Americans and his example of poor leadership and bullying, his unhinged and racist behavior, his total ineptitude and incompetence, has put our country and its people at risk both from threats abroad and the coronavirus at home.  He has blood on his hands.  He stands idly by while Russia pays bounties on dead American soldiers in Afghanistan.  COVID-19 cases are now on the rise again, and his cadre of Republican lemmings face growing anger in their home states as the crisis wave approaches.  The pandemic of stupidity over wearing masks and closing beaches means we are in for a rough few weeks as cases and the death toll soar.

At this point, is it even clear that Trump will make it to election day as a candidate?  Faced with the growing evidence of a coming humiliating defeat, he may just decide to drop out.  If he cannot win, he may take his toys and go home.  If he abdicates from his campaign, look for Pence to move to the top spot of the ticket with possibly Tom Cotton (R-Ark) as his vice president.  Certainly, that would be another disaster.  If Trump cannot bully his way into a second term in the bully pulpit, anything is possible.

The COVID-19 threat simply will not go away any time soon.  Vaccines are a year or more away.  There are no therapeutics or pharmaceuticals to mitigate the rate of infection and death.  The economy has collapsed and unemployment is rising.  When Hannity asked Trump last week on Fox News what were his plans for a second term, none of these crises were mentioned.  He rambled on and on again, prosecuting old hurts and slights.  This narcissist cannot even summon the human decency to express empathy with those who are sick and dying.

It is clear in the growing number of cases that we reopened too soon.  There are a number of concerns that seemed to require we do something—especially in regards to small businesses and the economy—but this isn’t it.  People have to be healthy and free from fear of contagion to really rejuvenate the economy and reopen for business.  With Trump, he believes that if he says it must happen, no one should question him.  Dictators and totalitarian governments work that way:  nullify the free press and freedom of speech, and then no one questions the lies.  We reopened too soon, and from the start, there was no plan of defense, no czar to coordinate the response on a federal level, no one designated person to speak truth to the people.  Instead, we got the circus of Trump “briefings” every day.  And nothing has changed in this so-called “second wave.”

All the talk this week about reopening schools is also premature.  In fact, this is a crisis in the making.  We can hang shower curtains between bar stools, put plexi-glass between diners in a restaurant, and wash down cash registers and check-out stands in markets, but this will be difficult to do consistently in a classroom to keep students safe.  None of the proposed solutions seem to fully address the risk.  Some students in class on different days, hand sanitizers at the door, masks at all times—this is going to be stressful and distracting for teachers and students.

Teaching classes online has its own set of difficulties, as we have seen.  Not everyone has internet at home.  It is difficult to keep everyone on point and focused, both with young and with more mature students.  How do we reach out with services to support classroom instruction when they are not on campus?  Lots of unanswered questions in this area.

Add all of this to the idiocy of some Americans who scream and stamp their feet because they must wear a mask, and we have a perfect storm of incompetence, ignorance and infection.

This year, 2020, will continue to be one fraught with danger and uncertainty.  Somehow, we must take a breath, assess where we are, and do the difficult work to effect change in the way we live and the way we go forward into the future.  Our lives depend on it.

The Book Lovers' Anthology

“Seated in my library at night, and looking on the silent faces of my books, I am occasionally visited by a strange sense of the supernatural.  They are not collections of printed pages, they are ghosts.  I take one down and it speaks with me in a tongue not now heard on earth, and of men and things of which it alone possesses knowledge.  I call myself a solitary, but sometimes I think I misapply the term.  No man sees more company than I do.  I travel with mightier cohorts around me than ever did Timour or Genghis Khan on their fiery marches.  I am a sovereign in my library, but it is the dead, not the living, that attend my levees.”

Alexander Smith, Dreamthorp

Of all the grand libraries of history and the world, at the top must be ranked the Bodleian at Oxford University.  So it was with great pleasure that we come to a compendium celebrating the written word published by that great institution and entitled, The Book Lovers’ Anthology:  A Compendium of Writing about Books, Readers & Libraries (Bodleian Library, 2014).

The selections here mainly draw from the nineteenth century and before, and weigh heavily on the side of western European writers, but it is well worth the investment to peruse the gathering of poetry and prose that populate the pages.  Could there be a second volume of more modern stuff, or a gathering of multicultural texts?  There could be a series of books on the subject, and it is fitting that the Bodleian be given stewardship given its long and storied history.

The institution began as a set of rooms devoted to a small number of volumes.  Sir Thomas Bodley, a scholar, refurbished the library and began soliciting books from across England.  Bodley felt called to do this work and considered it even more important than his years serving the Commonwealth.  The library officially opened in 1602.

At one point, a deal was struck with the Stationers’ Company of London to place a copy of every book published in England on the shelves of the Bodleian, and the collection began to grow exponentially.  The Copyright Act of 1842 solidified the agreement with the Stationers’ Company going forward, and the staff began soliciting books from around the globe.

The staff and patrons had to suffer the elements in the cold winters.  No fires were to be kindled in the library for fear of destroying the collection, so scholars bundled up to use the library and stay warm.  There are reports of several freezing to death over the years until engineers installed a hot water heating system.

In 1909, the first bookstore, the largest of its kind, was installed in the basement and opened to the public.  The store was the first to use compact shelving.  By 1925, librarian Sir Arthur Cowley warned that the Bodleian was running out of space.  The rooms also lacked light other than what came in the windows during daylight hours.  Of course, in winter, this limited the library’s hours of operation, so in 1929, electric lights were installed.  The library also continued to build and add space to house collections, and the entire enterprise was connected by pneumatic tubes and a mechanical conveyor to move books and manuscripts around the complex to supply onsite scholars.

The remodeled Bodleian was reopened in 1946 by King George VI, but in the middle of the ceremony, the key broke in the lock, and officials had to literally break into the building to continue the dedication.  The broken key remains on display in the library.

Today, the library still struggles to accommodate all the books and manuscripts deposited there.  In 2010, a storage facility was opened in Swindon containing 154 miles of additional shelving to house 8.4 million volumes.

As for The Book Lovers’ Anthology, here are some of the more interesting in the compendium:

“All books are divisible into two classes,” writes John Ruskin in Sesame and Lilies,  “the books of the hour and the books of all time.  Mark this distinction—it is not one of quality only.  It is not merely the bad book that does not last, and the good one that does.  It is a distinction of species.  There are good books for the hours, and good ones for all time; bad books for the hour, and bad ones for all time.”

Francis Bacon writes in Apophthegmes that Alonso of Aragon was wont to say, in commendation of Age, that Age appeared to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.”  Bacon goes on to write elsewhere in the book that “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested…” and further, that Reading maketh a full man.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the few Americans to cross the ocean to be included in this book, cites three practical rules for reading:  “1.  Never read any book that is not a year old.  2.  Never read any but famed books.  3.  Never read any but what you like…”

Isaac Watts in Logic writes, “If the books which you read are your own, mark with a pen or pencil the most considerable things in them which you desire to remember.  Then you may read that book the second time over with half the trouble, by your eye running over the paragraphs which your pencil has noted.  It is but a very weak objection against this practice to say, ‘I shall spoil my book’; for I persuade myself that you did not buy it as a bookseller, to sell it again for gain, but as a scholar, to improve your mind by it; and if the mind be improved, your advantage is abundant, though your book yields less money to your executors.”

Keeper of the Flame

“In plain truth, I exist more among the dead than the living, and think more about them, and, perhaps, feel more about them.”

Robert Southey, letter to S.T. Coleridge

In the dead of a summer night, I sit in my chair reading.  Far away, across the city, I hear the booms, hisses and sizzle of fireworks.  Shortly after, a fire engine or police vehicle screams through the night.  From a distance, the fireworks sound like a battle.  It would not be a surprise in this time and place of pandemic and civil unrest to read in tomorrow’s paper that the war has begun.

Later, I awake from a deep sleep and walk through the apartment.  In the rooms, I see shadowed figures sitting in the corner of a couch, standing in the middle of the room, lingering in the hall.  Who are these people?  I should be scared, but I am not.  I am strangely comforted, and if I turn to stare directly at them, they dissolve into cushions and furniture and corners.

“Our lives change but do not end.”  I repeat it to myself, a Catholic prayer for the dead.  A promise:  “Our lives change but do not end.”

She handed me the envelope—my father-in-law’s death certificate.  “Keep it for now.  I cannot look at it.”

The County of Los Angeles

Department of Public Health

Cause of death:  respiratory failure

Time interval between onset and death:  minutes

Cause of death:  lung cancer

Time interval between onset and death:  years.

Signed, sealed, delivered, done.  But we know it is never done.  In fact, it cannot be done, because we carry him with us.  I hear his voice in my brother-in-law’s greeting.  I see his expressions in my wife’s face as she cooks dinner.  During our late nights up reading, she will launch into a story, some bit remembered from childhood, a narrative remembrance but in the time frame of the story, the events of recent months are like a comet at the edge of the horizon, faint, ominous.  Parents never die.  Children never die.  Everyone lives forever, and no one ever grows old. Right? Right.

But then they do—they do grow old, suffer, encounter failure, cling to loving memory, and eventually die.  “Our lives change but do not end.”  We hold fast to it like a life raft.

I remember being a child and looking at my aunts and uncles and thinking they will never die.  I remember the death of grandparents—they are old and old people will die.  I can make it.  I can keep going.  Sadness, but still far and away, a distant fire.  Then?

We grow into the generation of funeral mourners.  Those we thought would never die, guess what?  They die.  We bury them.  We visit multiple graves in the cemetery on holidays now, buy flowers in bulk, remember moments.

Our lives are lived in denial of death until we can deny it no longer and we enter our mourning phase.  Then, the hardest to accept, we will be mourned.  “How do we live in a world where we are destined to die?”

“Our lives change but do not end.”  That is my final answer, I whisper to myself, imitating a tagline from a game show.  Yeah, the game of life show.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the dead.  I grapple with the idea of not being, so much so that I miss the time being now.  I gotta change my behavior, but here I am, right back where I was.

It’s a summer’s night and I should be thinking about childhood or possibilities or the distant flash of a bottle rocket.  Picnics and potential.  Joy and running and skin turning brown in the sun, tanned and healthy.  The taste on the tongue of chlorinated water.  Breathe deep the barbecue on a hot night, the gentle sound of ice cubes in a glass and low voices and laughter.  Tumbling and tumbling down.

“Someday, I’ll fly away.”

Yeah, wake me when you go.  I’ll be right here.

No, you won’t.  I may see you in my rooms, ghostly reminders of those lost, but you are gone, gone, gone.  I shout to you, “Don’t go, don’t.”

“When the shadows of this life have gone,

I’ll fly away;

Like a bird from prison bars has flown,

I’ll fly away.”

I wrote about grief once, for 147 pages.  All those pages like falling leaves in late autumn, falling without a sound, just a cascade of gentle, swaying breezes down to the dusty earth.  Winter coming soon.  I offered the best defense I know against the stabbing pain of grief:  storytelling.  In stories the dead come alive again.  We walk them back into existence.  We remember lost summers and quiet autumns, heavy rain on a January night, warm earth in spring.  I can see you again, not some shadow in an empty room, but real and alive, standing over the barbecue, laughing, with death so far away we cannot hear the distant roar.

What did I learn from all of this?

“When I die, Hallelujah, by and by,

I’ll fly away.”