North of Sixty

Dunkirk NY – We are now existing within the perfect shitstorm. Three elements have forcefully combined to turn an entire culture and nation into a distressed and dysfunctional mess. What we will become once we extricate ourselves from the ruins of the pandemic is anyone’s guess, but one thing is for certain: we will not be the same as we were.

Element #1 of this shitstorm is the novel coronavirus itself – SARS-CoV-2. It produces the disease known as COVID-19. There is little to be gained here in writing about this virus, as there are reams and reams of digital copy out there. It is a force of nature, with no concern at all about the human condition other than its attempt to replicate itself in its next host. Its absolute power lies in its complete indiscretion about who it infects, and the fact that we have no known defense against it.

Element #2 is a corrupt, inefficient government run by incompetent oligarchs who care nothing about the human beings placed in their care. The sheer size and scope of the incompetence is beyond anything one could imagine. We can only hope against hope that this shitstorm does not bring the whole apparatus crumbling to the ground. We are governed by people who will not hesitate to sacrifice human lives at the altar of their egos, power, and wealth. Of the few things you can count on these days, you can assuredly count on that.

Element #3 is a culture that emphasizes individual choice and liberty over the common welfare and safety. We are not the same society that fought WW2. Asking modern-day Americans to act in the common good, when throughout their whole lives they have been taught to value their personal freedoms and achieve their personal goals, is asking for a miracle. It is not surprising that people are hoarding supplies or traveling from hotspots to second homes. The virus is attacking us exactly where we are weakest as a society, and exposing the cultural rifts that will come to haunt us in the future. To be sure, the media is doing its best to tell stories of self-sacrifice and courage, but this is a virus that does not care if you sing on rooftops. The more the infection and death toll rises, the more you can be sure people will take action in their personal self-interest and survival.

What the wreckage from this shitstorm will lead to, I have no idea. Being an optimistic realist, my initial reaction is that the best we can hope for right now is for the virus to burn itself out and leave as little death in its wake as possible. I am uncertain we will be able to get in front of it until we get a respite from it. The human toll has been, and will be, pretty significant, but I am equally concerned about the economic toll. The fight over the aid package in the Senate tells me that the economic toll on human lives will be just as great over time as the biological toll. The struggle will be between those who want a society that protects the weakest among us against those who want to maintain their positions of power and privilege. Brace yourselves for a vicious fight. -twl

Dunkirk NY – Today is the first day that has really exhausted me mentally. It’s cold and wet outside, and it seems that following the news today was a harbinger of a coming week that will be worse than last week.

I have established something of a routine at this point, which is helpful but not completely satisfying. The morning is always coffee and the news. I do not watch television news, preferring to read available sources on the web. Occasionally I will listen to public radio, but I’ve found that I absorb news better when I can read selectively rather than being bombarded by media voices. Breakfast and showering and dressing follow. This can take me anywhere from 10:30 to 11:30 AM depending on how much I read.

The afternoon is spend doing whatever odd tasks or business needs to be handled. Mostly this includes answering emails, following up on a bill or two, but nothing too demanding. Not having work from a job has certainly reduced this part of my life substantially. If I choose to write, I can do it now or after my walk, which I take anywhere between 1-3 PM. There are days when I might substitute all this time with a recorded sporting event, either cricket or baseball. Yesterday, for example, I watched the Yankees lose the 2001 World Series to the Diamondbacks all over again.

Anywhere between 5-7 PM is dinner time. If my wife needs help with preparing the meal I pitch in, otherwise I let her alone in the kitchen because cooking is how she fills her time. I do all the cleaning up after dinner.

Evenings are the hardest. I am not by nature someone who enjoys consuming media. I don’t like TV or movies, which of course is the main source of entertainment for most people. I’m not a board game or computer game fan. I like cards, but mostly poker. My wife, on the other hand, is much the opposite. So I spend time most evenings now watching some sort of show. We’ve almost caught up on all of Star Trek: Discovery, and are following Star Trek:Picard as well. I go back to some older shows like Cheers and Peter Gunn (last year in Washington I watched in sequence all the Monty Python shows). I’m trying to like media more, but I am just unaccustomed to sitting passively in front of a TV set. It feels wrong all the time.

As the situation gets worse, planning will become more complicated, and I can’t help but wonder when it will become impossible. There are times when I stare out the window, expectantly waiting for the marauding hordes to descend. What I see in the news and what I see outside my window are two very separate realities, and I wonder when they will eventually meet. While I have taken steps so far to get through the next few weeks, I wonder what steps I should be taking to get through the next few months. And with a completely dysfunctional federal government, the difficulty becomes far worse and much more unstable.

I think I scan the news so much because I keep thinking that I will find at some point a story that will tell me we’ve turned a corner. But I know that won’t be coming soon. People keep saying things will open up in April, but I am not so sure. The scars this whole situation will leave will be jarring, like scars from having acid thrown on your face. It is one thing to surgically repair injuries after an accident, but it’s another to really gain all the previous strength back. I am not thinking in terms of months, but years.  -twl

Dunkirk NY – The hardest thing for me to come to terms with in these drastically changing times is the feeling that there are no more destinations. The one thing I tended to think about every day when I got up is “where can I go today?” Aside from taking a walk in the local park, nowhere. It’s not that I often went someplace, mind you. But the removal of even the possibility of going somewhere is now off the table.

On top of this, the feeling of being in two mindsets at once is difficult to reconcile psychologically. When I look out the window, nothing at all appears to have changed. I watched my neighbor across the street raking winter leaves from the edge of his driveway. People walk up and down the sidewalk. There seem to be no more or no less cars going up and down the street. If I were completely shut off from the news, I’d hardly know of any difference.

Looking at news reports, though, makes me understand that the outside world is blowing up in many ways. Streets in major cities are empty. Hospitals are under duress. Businesses are closed, and people do not congregate as they once did in the streets.

I sense on occasions that, on top of social distancing, I have to practice cognitive distancing by trying to separate myself from the news. But it’s hard. When I walk in the park I think of people with no way to get to the park. When I eat a meal I think of all the people that won’t be eating a meal. When I check my portfolio I think of all the people losing jobs and paychecks. My mind can’t resolve this kind of large-scale dissonance, and so cognitive distancing becomes a way of coping.

In a rather ironic way, these three years I’ve taken since retirement to withdraw and chill have served the present moment well, in that I am now quite used to spending my days with my wife at home. Apart from not having to go to the store too often (about the only task I’ve been doing on something of a regular basis), little has changed for me. But so much has drastically and suddenly changed for others. I think in the upcoming months, managing the current situation will require a thorough practicing of cognitive distancing. I can only hope the effort will not corrupt any sense of empathy for other people who are in far worse situations than I am.  -twl

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: “And this, too, shall pass away.” How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction! -A. Lincoln

Dunkirk NY – I am sheltering in place. In some ways, what I am doing is no different than what I have been doing. Apart from the hectic time between this past Thanksgiving and mid-February, during which my mother began to fall weaker and eventually pass away, my days since retirement have been spent at home, learning how to fill in time that was once filled in by my career. It had begun to seem that, with my mother’s passing, I was about to get a little more freedom and finally feel like I could break away and do all the travelling I have wanted to do since retiring.

Now that the coronavirus has hit, all those plans are on hold. I had actually booked a journey through Tennessee for late March-early April, but all those plans have since been canceled. Two non-necessary doctor visits have been canceled. The Fabulous Feast, a fundraiser for Shakespeare in Delaware Park that was supposed to be held last Saturday evening, was canceled. At the moment, I have no plans to go anywhere or do anything. What is more eerie, however, is the reality that I will not even be able to plan any plans or trips for the foreseeable future. It is not so much the day-to-day tasks of living that have changed for me. Rather, it is the sense of changes that will impact the future I seem to be most concerned about.

The Sufi expression above as related by Abraham Lincoln is one I think can easily be applied to the COVID-19 pandemic. But I think it goes even further than that. While things may indeed “pass away,” they will also change, and change profoundly. To say “This, too, shall change” may be as profound or even more profound than merely to observe that they will pass away.

I can look outside my window, and from what I can see, nothing has changed. My Social Security check appeared in my checking account today. I went for a quiet walk in my local state park, as I have been doing for a few weeks, and while nobody was around, that’s actually pretty normal for this time of year in the middle of a weekday. I have done two rounds of stock-up shopping, and was able to procure about all I needed in terms of stocking up on supplies except for powdered milk. I had even fortuitously done our quarterly wholesale food club shopping earlier in March before everything broke loose.

But I know, when I scour the internet for the latest news, that everything has changed. I touch base with my kids a bit more often to insure they are safe and healthy (so far so good). As the economy begins to totter, I see that my retirement funds lose value daily. New social protocols take the place of old ones. The gig economy, built on a house of cards, begins to throw people out of work. Everywhere, there is change.

The hardest part of every day for me is the afternoons. My mornings have a routine now that gets me from the time I wake up until about 1:00 PM. The time between 1-5:30 or so is challenging. The dinner routine restores balance. The evenings can be filled with some sort of media or other. So I have decided to see if I can begin to fill that afternoon slot with more writing. I would rather be travelling, but since that is out of the question, writing seems to be the best way, while sheltering at home, to fill the time. That, and perhaps a chore or two here and there (I dislike chores, but there are closets to clean and file cabinets to empty).

More writing is the change I hope to make. In writing, my aim will be to observe and document the changes I expect will happen. In the short term, none of them will, I suspect, be good. -twl

Amherst MA – Early yesterday morning my mother died. I missed her by a few hours, as I had traveled from home to Amherst when I heard her condition had seriously worsened. I was sleeping in the condo she and my father had bought in 2010, and was going to go to my brother’s house early the next morning. But she passed quietly in the night and had been removed by the funeral home by the time I woke up as my brother called me.

I’ve not much to say at this very moment. All I would like to do right now is share a photo I took of her in September 2017 during a family week at Cape Cod. She is standing on the shoreline, at the edge of land and sea, looking out across the vast horizon of the sky. It says all I need to say today.  -twl

Dunkirk NY – I’ve been alive for every Super Bowl, and I believe the only two I missed were the first and the second (I did see the Ice Bowl, so I know at least I was watching football at that age). I’ve seen all the others, although the memories for each SB are a bit spotty. But last night, I think I watched my last one. The Super Bowl has become an over-the-top disaster, and at this point there is so much overblown and over-hyped content that watching the game has become more of an effort to avoid the hype rather than enjoy a game.

The game itself was actually pretty good. I thought the teams were evenly matched, with two young and talented QBs at the helm. Kansas City staged a great comeback to win the game in the 4th quarter, and as games go, you couldn’t ask for much more. I found myself enjoying the game as it was being played. I had no particular favorite going in, and as each team grabbed the lead, I became a “fan” of that team. The final really hinged on the interceptions made by both teams that led to points. If all I had to focus on was the game, I would have said I had a good time.

Try as I might, though, I could not avoid the continual bombardment of hype and hypocrisy that are the TV commercial and so-called public service announcements. I watched none of the pre-game, none of the half-time show (choosing to gorge on some local take-out BBQ ribs and shrimp), and little of the post-game show. My attempt was to try and concentrate on the game itself. Were there not commercials between action breaks, I might have succeeded. But even with all that avoidance, the sheer weight of they hype became too much. Continue reading →

Dunkirk NY – Due to dental and doctor appointments I have a small break from taking care of my mother. One of the major things we did get accomplished was getting overnight help for her. This should take off a lot of stress from everyone, as having someone in the house from 10pm-6am will allow people to get a decent amount of sleep. This was really the major issue apart from the stroke-like symptoms. So now she has assisted coverage on an ongoing basis. This could mean that I might be on more of an on-call basis for afternoons and evenings. It might also mean that I’d be living in my parents’ condo in Amherst, which is about a 40-minute drive from my brother in W. Brookfield. That would allow for all of us to have some space instead of being crowded into his house. We are going to give this a try, and perhaps in March I might even be able to come back home for extended spells. The situation is very fluid at the moment, so everyone is sort of playing the hand as it’s dealt. The night aid starts a week from today.

It is somewhat difficult to put into words what it takes to do this kind of work. I find that the physical aspects of it are not so terribly difficult. What does wear on you is the emotional side of it all. While my routine is not all that changed (I still have to find things to do during the day, just in a different location), there is always that Sword of Damacles hanging over your head, in that any minute she might ring her assistance bell, and you have to drop everything and attend to her. Getting good solid sleep is also an issue; you’re always slightly tired. Everything in the house sort of revolves around her needs. Her needs are not that much: a change of undergarment, from bed to chair, from chair to bed, feeding, assistance to the bathroom. Her world is small and getting smaller, but even in that small world she needs help. Her sleep patterns are erratic. All of this impacts your own daily routine. Whatever you’re doing, in the back of your mind there is always the thought that the bell will ring any minute.

I have so many thoughts about the process of aging that my mind is having trouble sorting it all through. I’ve developed a sense of urgency about trying to make sure all my affairs are in order and that my planning for my own aging is as complete as I can make it. And yet, I still know that all the planning in the world can’t account for everything. But I feel I have to have all the backstops in place to handle all the inevitable losses before I can even begin to think about enjoying any gains. As always, the best approach is to take the day you have and do with it whatever needs to be done. Somehow, though, it gets more challenging to stay in the present when you can see the future ahead and even begin to make out the details.  -twl