Frank is Emptiness

May 2nd, 2020

There is such a thing as sacred space.

What do I mean by that? I guess I had better define the term.

To me, “sacred space” is anywhere humans allow themselves to come closer to the Other. The “Other” can be Jesus or the Buddha or the Tao or whatever. For my own convenience, I am going define this undefinable thing as “God”. So, a sacred place for me is any place where I open myself up to experience God.

Let me say upfront that I am not necessarily talking about churches or synagogues or mosques or temples. Some of these buildings truly are sacred, but not all of them. A site is not holy simply because a priest or imam or rabbi or shaman blessed it in some arcane ritual. The ceremony might confirm the fact that the spot is already sacred in some way, but a person cannot make a place holy. It doesn’t work like that.

A certain location is not always holy for all individuals. One person can encounter God up close and personal in an ashram. Another person might find the Divine in a Walmart check out line. Who can say? Moses talked to God in the Burning Bush in the desert. Buddha became enlightened under the Bodhi Tree. It’s different for everyone. That being said, I think that there are certain locations on the earth where it seems easier to access God.

I’ve been to a few.

San Stefano, Assisi, Italy

The home of St. Francis radiates peace and beauty. Karin and I were there with our kids back in the summer of 1998. We got there by train late in the evening, and had supper at the Ristorante degli Orti just before they closed. Actually, we got to the restaurant after they closed, but they still let us inside. A couple old women in black were sitting at a side table counting up the day’s receipts. They looked at Karin, me, and the three tired children with compassion, and they found somebody to serve us. We were fed well with pasta and love.

The next day we wandered around the town. Assisi is built on the side of a steep hill, so two lane streets turn into one lane streets, which turn into alleys, which turn into staircases. Along one of these winding, twisting side streets was the medieval church of San Stefano. Next to the chapel was an enclosed garden. The garden had a gate, and the gate had a sign. Written on the sign, in several languages, it said:

“If you think it will do you good, come inside.”

We did. Inside the garden was a picnic table, shaded by a large tree. A nun and a laywoman greeted us enthusiastically and offered us glasses of ice water with lemon slices. It was a hot morning, so we all drank deeply. Then we rested in the shade and spoke with the women. They asked us where we were from, and how we were. They were in no hurry, and neither were we.

God was with us in that garden.

Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem

One might think that Jerusalem is packed full of holy places. Maybe it is. I visited there in December of 1983, and I thought some of the sites were overrated. The one structure that impressed me was the Dome of the Rock. I was in Jerusalem a long time ago, back when things weren’t quite so crazy. In those days, non-Muslims were allowed into the shrine. It was well worth seeing.

I couldn’t stop gazing at the inside of the dome. The interior was covered with an intricate pattern of mosaics. The geometry was such that I had the illusion that the dome was moving upwards and away from me. I felt an involuntary sense of wonder because the dome seemed to ascending to heaven, and I was going along for the ride. It was like being part of the story of the Prophet Muhammed.

Mary House, Catholic Worker, Manhattan, NYC, USA

Mary House is easy to miss. It is a nondescript address on a nondescript street. The windows are covered with a metal grill. We had to press a buzzer to get anybody’s attention from inside the place. A street person came to the door and invited us to enter. The interior of the Catholic Worker House is rough. Every wall could use a coat of paint.  We arrived just as lunch was wrapping up. People are busy there. There are always more hungry folks to feed, more of the nearly naked to clothe, and more homeless persons to shelter. That hasn’t changed since Dorothy Day ran the operation many years ago.

However, we were warmly welcomed. Carmen stopped what he was doing to show us around. We saw their small chapel. We saw Dorothy’s old office. We saw where they work and work and work. Love doesn’t take a break at Mary House.

If there is any place on earth where people really try to live the Beatitudes, it’s at Mary House. God bless them all.

Nipponzan Myohoji Dojo, Bainbridge Island, Washington, USA

The Buddhist temple is tiny, built in a Japanese style, and surrounded by massive cedars and Douglas firs. The back of the temple is home of a high altar, covered in scarlet and gold. There is a large portrait of Nichidatsu Fujii, the founder of this particular order, prominently displayed among the food offerings and flowers. Of course, the altar contains a variety of buddhas and bodhisattvas.

The temple is quiet, except for twice a day, when people come to drum and chant. At all other times the place is cool and dark. It smells from decades of burning incense. It is one of the most peaceful places I have ever experienced. I have always felt at home there. I belong there.

A nameless sweat lodge on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, Montana, USA

The sweat lodge was a cloth/skin-covered dome inside of an old garage on the rez. Outside the garage were the frozen Montana plains. Inside the garage it was warm. Inside the sweat lodge it was hot. I was in there with several other men, all of us nearly naked. Almost all of the guys were Native Americans, most of them locals from Fort Belknap. There is no place darker than the inside of a sweat lodge. There are very few places that are steamier. There were only disembodied voices, chanting and speaking in tongues, praying to the Creator. It was like being in a tent with ghosts, or maybe like being in a tent with God. Scary crazy, and totally worth it.

Retreat House in the Chama River Valley near Abiquiu, New Mexico, USA

Vigils (the first morning prayer) start at 4:00 AM at the Monastery of Christ in the Desert. It is a relatively short walk from the retreat house to the church. Karin and I took a flashlight with us. It was a moonless night. We walked along the gravel road that led to the chapel.

I stopped to look at the sky. The river valley and the surrounding mountains were blacker than black. I craned my neck to see the stars. The sky itself was ebony pierced with frozen white flames. The Milky Way flowed across the heavens like a torn, glowing river.

I couldn’t look away, but it hurt to gaze at the sky. It was beautiful in an overwhelming way. I was utterly amazed.

Wonder and awe.

Stonehenge, England

I was there in 1983. I went to see Stonehenge during the day, and I remember flying near it at night in an Army helicopter. Huge monoliths in a circle. It’s a place full of secrets, and those secrets predate history. The site is utterly pagan. It’s a holy place, and mysterious. It is mysterious in the sense that it can’t ever really be understood. It just is.

 

 

 

 

 

April 29th, 2020

“And there’s always retrospect (when you’re looking back)
To light a clearer path
Every five years or so I look back on my life
And I have a good laugh
You start at the top (start at the top)
Go full circle round
Catch a breeze
Take a spill
But ending up where I started again
Makes me want to stand still

Up on the watershed
Standing at the fork in the road
You can stand there and agonize
‘Til your agony’s your heaviest load
You’ll never fly as the crow flies
Get used to a country mile
When you’re learning to face
The path at your pace
Every choice is worth your while”

from “Watershed” by the Indigo Girls

Hans called yesterday.

He had just finished working a twenty-hour shift. He sounded dead tired. I could hear him popping open a Lime-a-rita as he talked on the phone. He bitched about work for a while. He had been pumping concrete at one job site for almost twelve hours straight. The mixer company wasn’t sending him trucks fast enough to keep up with the work. Hans wound up waiting for mud to pour, and that just made a difficult job harder. Hans had to do another pump job once the first one was done. He was dragging ass by the time he got home.

Somehow the conversation shifted over to Hans’ time in Iraq. That happens quite often when we talk. I guess Hans figures that he can tell me things and I will know what he means. Most of the time I do understand. Maybe it is because we both served in the military. The Army is our common ground, even though he was in combat and I never was.

He said, “Yeah, Dad, the Army was okay. I mean the wartime Army; not the Army we had after we got back from Iraq, with all the rules and nonsense. When we were in Iraq, we kicked some ass!”

I replied, “Well, that is what you were there for.”

Hans said, “Yeah, we were kind of wild in Iraq. Then we got back to Fort Hood, and it was all different. I knew it was time to get out when the Army started getting rid of the sergeants I liked. One of them got a DUI, and they just cut him loose. I could tell it was time to move on.”

He went on, “You know, I have been trying to get in touch with some of the guys I knew back then. I hooked up with a lieutenant that was in the other platoon. He was a cool, laid back kind of guy. He was the officer we had to talk to when we wanted to get a motorcycle.

I told the lieutenant what I was doing now. You know, I told him how I was driving this big truck and pumping concrete. He told me that he knew I would do good when I got out of the Army. He said that he could tell just by how I carried myself and how I acted around him.

Yeah, he was a good guy, not like those West Point lieutenants. You know what I mean, Dad? You were one of them.”

Hans laughed.

“I told him, “Yeah, I know.”

Hans laughed again, “The West Point guys, they thought they knew it all. I was the designated driver for one of them. Good God! That was something. We were taking small arms fire, and he was looking up what to do from a book!”

He went on, “I guess it didn’t help him with me asking him all the time, ‘What do I do now, LT? What do I do now?’ I don’t think he liked that.”

“Probably not.”

Hans chuckled, “If I had been that lieutenant, I would have just told our boys to fire up those fuckers with the 50 cal. I couldn’t believe that he was looking up the rules of engagement. Those West Point guys, they had to do everything by the book.”

“That I believe.”

I thought for a moment about emails I occasionally get from some of my West Point classmates. I never really understand why they bother to send them to me. The messages always seem to turn sentimental and strangely nostalgic. People use the emails to reminisce about events that I can’t or won’t remember. We graduated forty years ago, for Christ sake. I miss some of the people I knew back then, but I don’t miss the institution. I get the distinct impression that some of my classmates are stuck in 1980. I have trouble with that, but maybe that was their watershed.

Then Hans said, “When I was over there, I just wanted to keep from getting shot. I did anyway, once or twice. I got some shrapnel from a bullet in my shoulder blade. The doc told me that the metal might work its way out. I don’t think so; not from the bone. The body armor helped a lot.”

“That’s good.”

Hans thought for a moment and said, “I think they had worse diseases in Iraq than this corona virus.”

“I don’t doubt that.”

Hans took a drag off his cancer stick and said, “While I was there, I got dysentery. I know how I got it too. The thing is: that chicken I ate from the street vendor was the best I ever had. They must be immune to these things over there.”

“Maybe.”

“You know how the Army treated the dysentery? They gave us a laxative. They wanted to flush it out of our systems. I spent a couple days sitting in the conex, next to the porta-john, just waiting for the next chance to shit.”

“Nice.”

“Yeah.”

There was a pause, and then Hans said, “I miss those days.”

I replied, “I miss flying helicopters. I dream about that at night. I don’t miss the Army, but I miss flying. I guess I’m glad that I joined up, but I am even gladder that I left.”

Hans said, “Yeah, I hear you. I miss being in tanks.”

I thought some more. I got out of the Army in 1986. I haven’t flown since then, but it is part of me. It always will be. Hans came back from Iraq in 2012. That experience will always be a part of him.

We were both remembering when we were younger, and we stood up on the watershed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

April 24th, 2020

The protesters are in Madison, railing against Governor Evers’ policies concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. Currently, Evers has the state shut down until May 26th. That is a long time. The Republicans in the Wisconsin legislature are suing Evers to block his stay-at-home rules. Wisconsin’s chamber of commerce wants to open businesses by May 4th. The protesters want everything to be opened right now. 

It’s kind of a mess.

Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce want to open businesses completely in the less densely populated parts of the state. Those regions show little or no signs of infection by the corona virus. The majority of the virus problems are in Wisconsin’s urban areas. So, is it a good idea to open up the economy in certain parts of the state, but not in others? Maybe, but it reminds me of something from years ago.

Back in the early 1980’s, I was stationed with the Army at Fort Rucker, Alabama. It didn’t get any deeper in the South than that. I lived in a apartment off-post in a town called Enterprise. Enterprise is famous for the Boll Weevil Monument. The monument commemorates the boll weevil plague that destroyed the cotton crops of the South. The destruction of the cotton economy forced farmers to diversify their crops. When I was living in Alabama, the farmers were growing peanuts, okra, and kudzu (mostly kudzu). Anyway, the monument is a large statue of a woman holding a hideous insect above her head. That should give you an idea of what Enterprise was like.

Enterprise was the largest city within the borders of Coffee County. At that time, Coffee County was dry. No alcohol. Period. Now, Fort Rucker, being the property of the federal government, did not have to abide by the rules of Coffee County. So people could drink at Fort Rucker, and they did, often to excess. Because of a lack of housing on the post, many of the soldiers, like myself, lived in Enterprise. We drank heavily on post, and then we drove back to our homes. When I wanted to buy booze, I went to the liquor store on Fort Rucker (the Class VI Store), and took the forbidden beverages back to my apartment in the trunk of my car.

How does this apply to the current state of affairs in my state? Well, I live about ten minutes from the Racine County line. If, for some reason, Racine County was able to open all the way up, but Milwaukee County, where I reside, could not, then it is very likely that I would simply drive a few miles south to do whatever I wanted to do in Racine County. For instance, if I can’t take my wife out for dinner in our county, I could take her to a restaurant in Racine. I would not be the only person doing this sort of thing. Basing the stay-at-home rules on a local level guarantees that people will travel and mix with folks from other parts of the state. It is a perfect way to spread the virus to places that so far seem to be unaffected. I see this as being a problem.

Then there is the question of what businesses open and under what conditions. I am betting that the very last businesses to open will be the bars. Why is that? Think about it. I will give you an example.

I don’t usually go to taverns. However, I used to go to Frank’s Power Plant in Bay View when my friends from the Dead Morticians played a gig. The Dead Morticians played horror punk, a dark and twisted sub-genre of heavy metal. It is an acquired taste. They did not play often, but I tried to listen to them whenever they did.

Frank’s Power Plant was a dingy bar with a rather eclectic clientele. It was a tiny place, and always crowded. It appealed to me in a quirky, subversive sort of way. On the nights when the heavy metal enthusiasts were there to hear the bands play, the bar was packed. The volume of the noise in the tavern was at eardrum-bursting decibels, and people were wedged in tight near the musicians. There was no stage. I remember standing within a foot of Ian, the lead guitarist.

Heavy metal aficionados are an unruly lot, even when sober. Generally, they do not remain sober for very long. There is a tendency for the spectators to yell and cheer, and get pretty wild. The music makes some people want to strangle puppies. The odds that one of the customers, after several drinks, might suddenly decide to French kiss another guest are relatively high. These people would never follow CDC guidelines, even if they could. If it reopens, this bar will most likely be an alcohol-fueled petri dish for the virus.

Frank’s Power Plant is not the only tavern that would have great difficulties meeting government health requirements in this pandemic. I can think of very few bars that are big enough and open enough to keep the necessary distances between customers. Many of these establishments will never reopen. This may dismay some of the protesters currently wandering around the state capitol. They have been driven from their natural habitats. They can no longer sit on their regular bar stools, and it is likely that they never will again.

 

 

 

April 22nd, 2020

As I was taking my third walk of the day, I heard a noise coming from behind me on Oakwood Road. It was a loud, rhythmic, clunking sound. I turned to look, and I saw a beat up Honda Civic closing in on me. A young man was driving it, and he had his four-way flashers on. He was doing probably 25 mph.

The front tire on the driver’s side was completely shredded. Strips of black rubber clung to the rim and flapped crazily as the wheel rotated. With every rotation the rim hit the asphalt and left a small gouge. It was painful to watch the metal wheel hammer on the pavement.

I thought to myself, as he started to pass me, “For the love of God, pull over!” I have had blowouts in the past, and even I know better than to just keep rolling. This man was in the process of totally trashing the front end of his car. He was going to have much more than just a flat tire to worry about.

The guy had obviously been driving like this for a while, and he fully intended to keep going. I saw him go past me, and I watched as his lights faded into the distance. I could hear the sound of the bouncing wheel even after he was out of sight.

This incident makes me think of the COVID-19 crisis. Actually, almost everything makes me think about COVID-19. It’s just that the pandemic is a bit like a huge blown out tire, and the U.S. is the tired, old Civic. Yeah, I know that this is a wretched analogy, but our health system, our economy, and our civil rights are all shredded. So, maybe we have three flats. As a nation, we have at least pulled over to the curb to look at the damage. We know that we need to fix the problem before we move on. Unfortunately, we don’t have a spare, and we aren’t willing to wait for one. We want to get somewhere in a hurry, and we are going there, even if the vehicle (the United States) is undrivable once we arrive.

We are going to ride the rim.

Maybe we will get lucky. Maybe we will find a vaccine (i.e. spare tire) really soon. Maybe we won’t destroy our political and economic struts and tie rods.

Or maybe we will wind up stuck on the side of a deserted highway, and have to abandon the car. I guess we could empty out the glove compartment and remove the plates.

 

 

 

April 20th, 2020

Karin was on the computer, looking at posts from her Ravelry group. Ravelry is an international knitter’s society. The gang somehow reminds me of the Freemasons, except that the women members are all armed with needles.

I came to Karin with a book in hand. I told her,

“I got this in the mail today.”

Karin squinted at the title, and said, “Generation of Swine? What kind of book is that?”

“It’s from Hunter S. Thompson. He’s the guy who wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”

Karin laughed. “Oh, then it’s about crazy people.”

“Uh, yeah.”

She smiled at me. “You like crazy.”

I shrugged and said, “Well, yes, I am attracted to it.”

Karin went back to looking at a knitting pattern from some lady in New Zealand.

The full title of the book is: Generation of Swine; Gonzo Papers, Volume 2; Tales of Shame and Degradation in the ’80’s.

Seriously, who can pass up a book with a title like that?

I need a road trip bad. The destination doesn’t even matter. I just need a shot of crazy.

This is not to say that there is an insufficient amount of craziness here. Oh no, we have plenty of that. It’s just that a person becomes accustomed to local forms of madness. The homegrown types of insanity start to look normal. One forgets how profoundly twisted the neighborhood really is.

That is where a road trip helps. It is always good to view craziness with fresh eyes. Shock and awe. Drive a couple hundred miles and witness new varieties of lunacy. Take a look a look around and go,

“What the hell is this shit?”

Where to go? Actually, any place will do, but I know of some locations that are better than others for observing weirdness. Let me think of a few…

New Orleans. Yes, oh yes. I went there for the first time as a chaperon on our youngest son’s 8th grade class trip. I was in charge of Stefan and eleven of his barely adolescent classmates. It was in 2008, just three years after Katrina. Half of the city was still desolate. The 9th Ward looked like a setting for “The Walking Dead”. The French Quarter vibrated with strangeness: Harley riders, blues musicians, homeless folks, hustlers of all sorts, voodoo fortune tellers, lap dancers, and twelve wide-eyed eight graders from Milwaukee. Some streets were lined with expensive homes that had enclosed gardens like those on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa. In the heart of the French Quarter, which is the heart of New Orleans, was the Cathedral of St. Louis. I went to Mass there and wept.

Manhattan. An entire city on meth. A place where nothing ever stops. People start clubbing at midnight. Or at least they did before COVID-19. The Port Authority Bus Terminal has uniformed soldiers with automatic weapons guarding it. Mary House, the center of the Catholic Worker Movement, is the same street as the national headquarters for Hells Angels. Times Square has enough flashing lights to induce an epileptic seizure. I spent a day in Manhattan with Karin. Jules and Rose gave us the tour. We saw a herd of skateboarders cruising down the center of 9th Avenue. We lunched in a Soviet-style, subterranean, Ukrainian restaurant. The streets were a roiling, surging sea of humanity, which is unfortunately currently at ebb tide. One day was enough to put me into sensory overload.

Las Vegas. Mostly thieves and knaves, but entertaining ones. Vegas exists to separate the rubes from their wallets. Donald Trump has a gold hotel there for some reason. I have bad memories from Vegas. Most of those memories have to do with a short, but interesting, stay in the Clark County Detention Center in the spring of 2017. It’s amazing what a person can learn in fourteen hours, especially if those fourteen hours are spent in jail. I met a variety of outcasts and deviants, and those were just the cops. The CCDC is in downtown Las Vegas, right next to the Gold Nugget Casino. Two very different worlds in extremely close proximity. I didn’t do much sightseeing in Vegas. I was eager to leave Nevada.

Crazy. The possibilities are endless.

 

 

 

 

 

 

April 17th, 2020

Thirty-eight years ago, I was assigned as a section leader in the 173rd Aviation Company in Hanau, West Germany. I was an Army lieutenant back then. I made friends with the company safety officer, whose name I can no longer remember. I do remember having a conversation with the safety guy about OERs (Officer Efficiency Reports). Every year, every military officer got an OER from his or her superior. Part of the OER process required the officer being reviewed to explain in detail what they had accomplished during the last year. Often, it was hard to come up with anything extraordinary. Sometimes, it was hard to think of anything at all. I complained to my friend that I was just trying to do my job, and I really didn’t know what write down for my boss.

My friend shook his head. Then the safety officer told me that in a way I was lucky. He said that I could always find something that I had done: flown X number of missions, trained Y number of pilots, passed Z number of inspections. My friend explained to me that I could always show that I had made something happen. He, on the other hand, had to show that his efforts had prevented something. In his job he had to somehow convince his boss that he had kept something bad from happening. He had to provide a negative proof.

I think about that now with the corona virus crisis in full swing. Our governor in Wisconsin, Tony Evers, just extended the “safer-at-home” rules until May 26th. A lot of people are very unhappy about this. I know I’m not happy. There is already a political backlash on its way. There is a growing sentiment that we don’t need all these rules any more, and that we instead need to get people moving and working again.

Governor Evers, like many other governors is in an unenviable position. He can talk all he wants about how the social distancing and the business/school shutdowns have saved lives. He can tell the residents of Wisconsin repeatedly how the lockdown is stopping the disease from spreading. However, Evers is in a the same situation as my friend, the safety officer. Evers cannot prove that his rules have stopped the disease or saved lives. He cannot point to any particular group of people in the state and say, “You’re alive today because we are following these rules.”

The people who are angry about the extended lockdown can clearly see the downside of the “safer-at-home” policy. Some of them know that they are now unemployed. Some of them know that they cannot go to church. Some of them know that they cannot travel when and where they like. Some of them know that their kids are not getting a school education. These drawbacks are obvious and indisputable.

The advantages of Evers’ policies are not.

This is not the governor’s fault. We, as a people, simply don’t know enough about the virus. We don’t have enough testing to know who is infected, we don’t know how best to track it, and we don’t know how many people will fall ill and/or die. We don’t have a vaccine. There is no cure. We don’t have a clue.

It is very possible that Governor Evers is overreacting, but how can he know for sure? To a certain extent he is guessing, and that is all anyone can do right now. He is erring on the side of caution.

I don’t know if that is the right thing to do. All I know is that I am glad that I don’t have his job.

 

 

 

April 15th, 2020

“There is no zero-harm choice here. Both of these decisions will lead to harm for individuals, whether that’s dramatic economic harm or whether it’s loss of life. But it’s always the American government’s position to say, in the choice between the loss of our way of life as Americans and the loss of life of American lives, we have to always choose the latter.” – Trey Hollingsworth, Republican Congressman from Indiana

Wow.

Representative Hollingsworth’s quote about the re-opening of the U.S. has made me think. Mostly, it has made me ask questions, few of which seem to have clear answers.

First, what does the Congressman mean by “our way of life as Americans”? Is his way of life the same as mine? Is my lifestyle (comfortably retired) the same as that of a Syrian refugee family I know? Is the way of life of this refugee family the same as that of my combat veteran son living down in Texas? There are as many different American lifestyles as there are Americans. Who is Hollingsworth talking about? What does he see as the most important aspects of “our way of life”?

The Congressman has also stated that the answer to our current crisis is “unequivocally to get Americans back to work, to get Americans back to their businesses.” Okay, so this implies that “our way of life” is primarily defined by economics. It apparently revolves around money. Personally, I would be happy to see the nation’s economy humming again, so that my retirement fund would rise up from the depths. I am sure that the seventeen million recently fired people in this country would like to be back at work, so they can pay their bills. Economic prosperity is a big deal, but does that also mean that our way of life only consists of insatiable consumerism? Does our lifestyle require unsustainable growth? Is the American way of life solely based on a sort of heroic materialism?

The American way of life also seems to hinge on personal freedom (or, extreme individualism, depending on your perspective). The Bill of Rights has not been doing very well during the last few weeks. Do individual rights trump (no pun intended) the common good? Does our way of life mean that we have unlimited Freedom of Assembly and Freedom of Religion? Americans love to fight for their rights, but we seldom talk about our responsibilities toward our fellow citizens. I have heard people say that they have a right to take the chance of exposing themselves to the COVID-19 infection if they choose. Maybe they do. But do they have the right to expose other people to that same infection? Where do my rights end, and where do yours begin?

Hollingsworth talked about “the loss of life of American lives” as being something that is acceptable in the service of preserving “our way of life”, whatever that means. That notion makes me squirm a bit. If COVID-19 vistims die, will their deaths somehow save the lives of people who are suffering greatly in the lockdown? When talking about “loss of life”, is the Congressman talking about the loss of his life, or maybe the lives of his family members? It really matters to me whose lives are expendable. Does he expect that certain people will volunteer to die for the cause? Who are we willing to sacrifice on the altar of capitalism?

I wonder if our way of life as Americans is really worth saving.

 

 

 

 

April 12th, 2020

It’s a grey and cloudy Easter morning. Karin is in bed. so is the girl we love. The dogs asleep, so I will let them lie.

Karin started making prepations for Easter yesterday. She is dyeing boiled eggs. Karin uses natural dyes for the egg colors (e.g. onion peels for a soft brown hue). She baked braided Easter bread. It looks a lot like challah. She also baked a chocolate coffee cake from scratch.

At some point this morning, three of us will have breakfast together. I suspect that will be the extent of our Easter celebration.

Karin watched the livestream broadcast of the Easter Vigil Mass from the Cathedral of St. John last night. I went to bed. I could have watched the Mass with Karin, but it would have only been a source of frustration to me. The Easter Vigil is a liturgy that should touch all of the human senses. It is not something that a person simply observes. At the Vigil, a participant smells the aromatic smoke from the burning incense, she tastes the bread and the wine, he hears the chanting and the tinkle of the bells, she sees in the darkness of the church all the candles being lit from the flame of the original Easter candle, and he feels the warmth of human company. To me, watching the service is worse than nothing. It seems like voyeurism.

Someone cries out, “Rejoice.”

I’m not good with joy. Frankly, I don’t understand it. I certainly don’t comprehend it in the context of Easter. Not today.

Someone cries out, “Jesus is risen from the dead!” And, your point is…

Easter only makes sense if Jesus is God, and if God loves and cares about humans. All humans, as individuals. I fully accept the idea that there is a God, and that this deity is omnipotent and all-knowing. I have no problem with Jesus being resurrected. However, I find it extraordinarily difficult to believe that He/She/It gives a damn about me or anybody else.

I close my eyes, and often I see the face of a young woman who is lying on a concrete floor. The face is smeared with blood, and she is unconscious. This is a very recent image seared into my memory. When I see it, I can taste the fear and sorrow. I feel lost. I feel that the young woman, the one I love, is abandoned.

Some cries out, “God loves you!” Really…?

David Wolpe, in his book, The Healer of Shattered Hearts, tells a story about the Chasidic rabbi, Levi Yitzak of Bereditchev. It goes like this:

“Right before the Kol Nidre service, the opening service of the Day of Atonement, he stood before the ark as the sun was about to set. For a long time he stood, silent, still, as the evening approached. Noticing that the time to begin prayer was upon them, his students and disciples became uncomfortable, worrying that the rabbi would begin too late. At the last possible moment he spoke.

‘Dear God,’ he said, ‘we come before You this year, as we do every year, to ask Your forgiveness. But in this past year I have caused no death. I have brought no plagues upon the world, no earthquakes, no floods. I have made no women widows, no children orphans. God, you have done these things, not me! Perhaps You should be asking forgiveness from me.’

The great Rabbi paused, and continued in a softer voice, ‘But, since You are God, and I am only Levi Yitzhak, Yisgadal v’yishadah sh’mei rabah (May his great Name be exalted and sanctified), and he began the service.”

Now is the time to pray.

 

 

 

 

 

 

April 10th, 2020

I read the news. It’s a disgusting habit, a true vice. It’s like being hooked on political pornography. I read the latest report about COVID-19 crisis with utter dismay, and then I then eagerly read another one. I try to ignore the obvious lies coming from our Federal government, but I get caught up in the surrounding noise and confusion. Nobody is really in charge, and nobody seems to know what will happen next. Many of our leaders are just making this shit up as they go. I think of one leader in particular.

That one leader is bound and determined to get the national economy running full bore as soon as possible. He wants everything to go back to normal. I think most people want that. The question is: What is “normal” going to look like? It’s not going to look anything like it did back in February. We will have a “new normal”, and that might be pretty weird.

I think back to my childhood. When I was at Franklin Elementary School, we would have occasional fire drills. The bells would ring, the kids would momentarily freak out, and then the teacher would line us up to go outside to the playground. We would stand around until the “all clear”, and then the teacher would sweetly tell us,

“Now, class, we are going back to our room to continue working on our math assignments.”

We did. We all went back to our desks and wrestled with numbers for a while. Life went on as if nothing had happened.

I think that is what our leader imagines will happen once the crisis ends. He expects that everybody will go back to their seats and work on their assignments.

Probably not.

I also think back to my childhood and remember playing musical chairs. I hated that party game. It always seemed sadistic. When the music stopped somebody was always left standing. I see this happening in the work place once the lockdown is over. People will rush back to their seats, and some of those seats won’t be there any more. There may be new and different seats available, but many of the old, comfortable ones will be gone forever. It may be a rough transition.

Many people, especially people like me, do not change their habits easily. I have to be forced to change. Well, right now, like millions of other people, I am being forced to change the way I do things. Once I alter my habits, it is likely that they remain changed. I doubt that I will go back to doing things the old way. I will not be the only person in that situation.

By necessity many people have gone to buying products online since the lockdown began. Even curmudgeons like myself have used the Internet to make purchases. Are we going to go back to driving to retail outlets when we can easily buy things from home, and have them delivered to us? Many big box stores were teetering on the edge of bankruptcy prior to the arrival of the COVID-19 virus. Are they going to to open back up? Are those retail jobs going to come back?

I can ask the same questions about restaurants, coffee shops, and gyms. Are these places going to be profitable now that people have learned that they don’t need them?

Will the people working from home go back to their offices? Are offices, to some extent, now obsolete?

What about churches and other places of worship? Once people getting out of the habit of participating in daily or weekly services, will they go back to them?

I don’t think that we are truly aware of it yet, but there has been a seismic shift in how we function as a society. We aren’t going back to the old way of doing things. We can’t.

 

 

 

April 8th, 2020

I voted in the Wisconsin primary election yesterday. I voted for Bernie Sanders. I’m not sure why I did that. I don’t even like Bernie. I sincerely doubt that he will ever be President. I am almost certain that Biden got more votes in the primary than Sanders.

Bernie won anyway.

For months now, actually for years, people having been screaming that Sanders is a socialist (which, of course, he is). Being that he is a socialist, it seems that to many people he is clearly un-American, and that his policies would undermine the very foundations of our great country.

These folks need to take a look around them.

The Congress and the President just recently passed and implemented an economic rescue program that costs over two trillion dollars. After a week or two, they have decided that it’s not enough money, and now they want to go back to the well and draw out another 250 billion.

How does this look any different from socialism?

There are now Federal loans/grants for small businesses so that they keep employees on the books. Federal students loans are suspended through September. President Trump has said that the Federal government will pay hospitals for COVID -19 treatment. Soon millions of people will start getting checks from the Federal government to keep the economy afloat, at least for a while.

Hmmmmmm…

All of this makes Franklin Roosevelt look like Ayn Rand.

I’m not saying that these programs are wrong or unnecessary. I just find the situation to be a little ironic. The Republicans (some of them) used to be fiscal conservatives. No more. They compete with the Democrats to see who can spend money the quickest. It’s funny in a twisted sort of way.

I guess what really amuses me is that some people believe that, once the virus is under control, everything will return to “normal”. I think not. This crisis is a unique event, and there is no unringing that bell. Certainly, there will be some reaction, some push back. But it will never return to the status quo. Temporary changes often become permanent.

As an example, millions of people are now working from home. Many of these workers were toiling in offices until quite recently. Are they all going back to their cubicles when this show is done? No. Work life for many folks has radically and forever changed. How does that transformation affect things like vehicular traffic? How does affect home life? What are other ramifications?

There is definitely at least one dark side to this Brave New World. I am thinking about our basic rights as citizens. I would like to see the Bill of Rights put back into practice at some point. I miss little things like Freedom of Assembly and Freedom of Religion. I seriously wonder if those foundations of our republic are also collateral damage from this crisis.

Come November, it might not matter that much if Biden wins or if Trump wins.

Bernie already won.