“We’ll take it one day at a time.”
~~ what my dad would say during the months of my mom’s illness and what we are all doing in our current global challenges, although sometimes it is hour by hour instead of day by day
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When I wrote about covid-19 over the weekend, I assumed that things would continue to change.
I was correct.
Today, I learned the following:
Who knows what tomorrow will bring?
(I will try to make my next post be about something cheerier.)
When daughter T was working in Clinton, Missouri, we visited the local museum. The collection was very eclectic with unexpected things around every corner.
One of the exhibits was a barbed wire collection. I hadn’t realized there were so many different styles.
Having grown up in rural areas, both my spouse B and I were familiar with barbed wire fences. B had grown up maintaining a barbed wire fence around the pasture. I grew up with a barbed wire fence that ran along the edge of the reservoir behind my house.
Both of those were meant for protection. It saddens me to think of barbed wire being used to keep people away, though. It especially hurts to think of people who are fleeing war and violence being encountered with barbed wire and other barriers. Instead of finding protection, they find exclusion.
Barbed wire fences never seem to have gates.
*****
Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “wire.” Join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2020/03/13/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-march-14-2020/
2019-2020 SoCS Badge by Shelley!
https://www.quaintrevival.com/
As we are all dealing with COVID-19 in some way, I wanted to share a topical poem with you.
Anne Harding Woodworth is an accomplished poet who I met through the Smith College Alumnae Chorus. We have sung together for several concerts, including three performances of Mozart Requiem on tour in Sicily. This poem brilliantly references the Requiem in the context of an audience-less performance held recently due to COVID-19 caution.
The site where it appears is New Verse News, which publishes poems on current topics of interest. I appreciate that they make it possible for poets to publish work about recent or ongoing situations without having to wait months for journal publications.
You can find “Mozart Requiem Streamed in a Time of COVID-19” here: https://newversenews.blogspot.com/2020/03/mozart-requiem-streamed-in-time-of.html
“One who wants to leave behind a gift”
~~~ Otto Rank’s definition of the artist
*****
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Over these last days, we have been hearing a lot in the media about Katherine Johnson, who recently died at the age of 101.
She was one of the women portrayed in the film Hidden Figures. She worked for NASA (the US space agency) as a human computer. Before the advent of the digital age, being a computer was a job, not a piece of equipment, and Katherine Johnson and her colleagues were the ones doing the computations involved to figure out trajectories for missions for satellites and manned spacecraft.
The women in Katherine Johnson’s computation department were, like her, African-American. And they were all women. Men, predominantly if not exclusively, worked in other departments where they were considered professional and paid more. The women who worked as human computers were not considered as professional by the government standards in place at the time and earned much less.
Katherine was a very accomplished mathematician. Her skills were noticed and she had the opportunity to work with the professional men on the first attempts to put astronauts into orbit. The work was going on in Virginia, which, at that time still had segregation laws in effect. One of the scenes in the movie that drove home what this meant was showing Katherine running across swaths of the NASA campus to get back to the building in which she had originally worked in order to use the “colored women” bathroom. She was eventually allowed to use a restroom close to her new workspace, but it was a stark reminder to me that this kind of discrimination was so overt during my lifetime.
Katherine encountered lots of sexist and racist discrimination, but persevered and triumphed. John Glenn trusted her work so much that he would not board his capsule for the first attempt at going into orbit by a US astronaut until she had personally verified all the figures.
After a long and distinguished career at NASA, Katherine Johnson was honored in a number of ways. There were NASA buildings named in her honor. President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is the highest civilian honor in the country. At the time of the Hidden Figures movie, she appeared on stage with the stars of the film during the award season.
I’m grateful that her story has received more notice so that she is no longer a “hidden figure” but an inspiration to new generations of women and of people of color to reach for the stars in their own lives, despite the racist and sexist attitudes that still, unfortunately, plague us.
Rest in peace, Katherine Johnson.
*****
Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “figure.” Join us! Find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2020/03/06/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-march-7-2020
2019-2020 SoCS Badge by Shelley! https://www.quaintrevival.com/
On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert does a recurring skit, now a best-selling book, called Midnight Confessions, in which he “confesses” to his audience with the disclaimer that he isn’t sure these things are really sins but that he does “feel bad about them.” While Stephen and his writers are famously funny, I am not, so my JC’s Confessions will be somewhat more serious reflections, but they will be things that I feel bad about. Stephen’s audience always forgives him at the end of the segment; I’m not expecting that – and these aren’t really sins – but comments are always welcome.
~ JC
I don’t feel like a musician anymore.
I started playing piano at seven. I began studying organ as a preteen and was the organist of my rural Catholic church at fourteen. I majored in music at Smith College, where organ was my main instrument, I played often at chapel, I sang in choirs, learned that I could compose, and was named the Presser Scholar in my senior year.
After I graduated, married B, and moved to the Binghamton NY area, I continued with church music until I took a few years away when my children were young. Realizing that it wouldn’t work for our family for B and I to never have a common day off, I volunteered with the music ministry at my church, accompanying the youth and junior choirs and subbing when our music director needed to be away. When tendon problems in my elbow eventually made it impossible for me to play for very long at a time, our music director would play and I would conduct.
When our parish disintegrated in 2005 and my church music volunteering evaporated, except for occasional special celebrations, I still had my long-time affiliation with University Chorus to keep me musically active. After the retirement of our long-time director, though, University Chorus, which used to sing a major concert every semester, has cut back to only singing at one concert a year, at most. This academic year, we have not met at all and I am not sure we will ever re-convene. Due to uncertainty and personal scheduling complications, I haven’t been able to join another group.
With my last steady musical commitment gone, I don’t feel that I am still a musician, which leaves an empty space in my identity. In a period of my life when there has been so much loss, losing that piece of myself is especially difficult because music has long served as a vehicle to express emotion and to find community and comfort.
I don’t know if I will ever recover the musician part of my identity. Theoretically, I could be singing on my own every day and working on sight reading so that I would be ready to audition if there is an opportunity, but it feels too futile, not helped by the fact that I am a very anxious and not particularly good auditioner.
It is likely that I will sing again with the Smith Alumnae Chorus, either on campus or on tour, but those choral experiences would only be a few days a year. Not an identity-affirming amount of time.
Maybe what I should say is that, for many years, I was a musician.
There is a major disconnect between the president of the United States and public health regarding covid-19, the form of coronavirus that is causing illness and death around the world and which may soon cross the line to become a pandemic.
From its start in China, there are now major outbreaks in Japan, South Korea, Italy, and Iran, with cases in lots of countries in both hemispheres. Some of the countries have tested thousands of people, ramped up medical care, imposed quarantines, even closing schools for weeks as was just announced in Japan in the last few days.
Meanwhile, the United States has only tested a few hundred people. There are under a hundred confirmed cases, but most likely there are more cases that only had mild symptoms or no symptoms. This is dangerous because those people can spread the virus unknowingly.
Ordinary Americans have been watching the news of the spread of covid-19, first in China and then into other countries. Some doctors and public health specialists were speaking in the media about the epidemic – and preparedness and cases in the US. Earlier this week, some federal government officials who work in agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had spoken publicly about the virus in the United States.
The stock market in the United States went down – a lot – this week, the steepest decline since the financial crisis of 2008. This finally got the president’s attention and there was an evening news conference about the virus in the US. Unfortunately, the president made mistakes in his remarks, including saying there were only 15 cases in the US when there were actually 60 confirmed cases. He also put the vice-president in charge of the US efforts against the virus, which is disconcerting because, as governor of Indiana, he botched an early intervention effort against HIV. It’s also disconcerting that all communication from the federal government has to be approved by him first, including public statements by Dr. Anthony Fauci, longtime director of the infectious disease department for the country.
Late this week, there was the announcement of the first covid-19 case that couldn’t be traced to someone who had contracted it abroad. This is an important development because it could mean that there would be community spread here in the US, which would also bring the world closer to declaring a pandemic. It’s scary because it brings to mind the flu pandemic of 1918, which infected millions worldwide and had a mortality rate of almost two percent. Early statistics from China show that covid-19 has a mortality rate of a little over two percent, which is beyond the ability of even large modern health systems to combat. There would be shortages of needed equipment like respirators and of appropriate hospital facilities that can isolate the patients so that no one catches the virus in the hospital.
Yesterday evening, I was watching a news station. Several times throughout the evening, the stories they were covering were interrupted by news of several new confirmed cases in different locations that appeared to be the result of community spread, instead of direct transmission from abroad or from being in the household of someone who contracted it abroad. This bring some communities in the US close to needing to impose states of emergency and doing things like prohibiting public gatherings, including school and work and church.
The most chilling thing for me was that, at the same time, the president was speaking to a rally in South Carolina, telling them that covid-19 in the US was a hoax perpetrated by Democrats.
This is disconcerting and irresponsible and shows how disconnected the president is from the reality that the country is facing.
To be clear, I am not a paranoid person regarding disease. I’m not running around in a mask and gloves in fear of covid-19. I am, however, vigilantly watching the public health news and, as recommended, making plans for possible cases and restrictions on travel and being out in public in my region.
While I hope and pray for safety and good health around the world, I want to be prepared to stay as safe as possible if this epidemic does become a pandemic. In the US, I hope that people will make sure that the information they get comes from a reliable source.
Sadly, our president is not a reliable source.
*****
Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is base the post on a word that contains “ect”. Join us! Find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2020/02/28/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-feb-29-2020/
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“You owe the world
Not the other way around”
~~~ Jenny Holzer
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When my granddaughter ABC was living with us, we sang a lot of songs with her, but one of her favorites was “Old McDonald”.
I would often sing it to her when we were trying to get her to sleep. Using it for that purpose, I would try to sing as many verses as possible, and would extend each verse by singing the animals sounds backward in succession.
This was a challenge when you were doing 15 verses or so. In order to keep things, well, in order, I would group the animals and then remember the order within each subgroup.
I’d start with barnyard animals, cows first because she had a book where Old McDonald had a cow. (It was a board book, so only cows.) Then, horse, sheep, pig, sometimes goat, ending with dog and cat, which could be pets or work animals.
Next, I would go on to fowl. Chicken, duck, goose, turkey, sometimes chicks and doves.
E-I-E-I-O!
Then, I would go on to animals that could be wild animals or ones that were part of the farm. Frogs, bees, and sometimes animals that don’t make sounds, like rabbits. (FYI: rabbits go hop, hop here and hop, hop there.)
I could sing continuously for about fifteen minutes, which was usually enough for ABC to drift off to sleep. I’d sometimes back out of the room and close the door still singing.
Ending very quietly e-i-e-i-o…
ABC, who is now living in London, is now heavily into dinosaurs and making what she thinks are dinosaur sounds.
I don’t think Old McDonald had one of those…
E-I-E-I-O!
*****
Please join us for Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturdays! This week’s prompt was animal sounds. You can find more info here.
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Joanne Corey 