Moving On to Happy Days

I have been very distressed by various threads I have read, some in which I have commented and responses to some of which I have initiated since I returned to Facebook at Easter Time. I should say, I am more distressed than usual. Disagreement with the prevailing opinion means being labelled "stupid" or "uncaring". I don't think I am either. But it is of no moment. I was sitting outside in the warm afternoon sun, thinking, attempting to pray. And then it occurred to me.



I have an opportunity here and I have been fighting the problem. In these times of home confinement I can stop resisting what has been offered, essentially a life of retreat, not the running away kind, but the spiritual kind. And if ever or whenever the time of official "stay in place" ends, hopefully I will have developed a new pattern that is no longer jarred by the babel of daily life.



It remains to be seen, of course. I am very weak as all created beings are.

But, I shall take one step at a time. I begin by returning, once again, to my father's stories. I happened to be going through a cupboard and ran across my binders full of them, along with a variety of other memorabilia which, if I do not record them here, will end up in a dumpster after I am gone, my being the end of this line of our family.  That is what is important. His personal history is history worthwhile.

So, here is a one pager from my late father.

HAPPY DAYS

A lot depends on when an event took place.  In the autumn of my years, some happenings long ago that seemed of supreme memorability become pale and forgettable in retrospect.  Still, there are some memories so epiphanic in scope that they still engender a tingle or two.

I left the confines of an autocratic parochial school and entered the public school system in the last year of the elementary stages.  Actually, I did not leave their confines. One might say I was expelled.

The precipitating cause of my ejection was a "Waterman" fountain pen.  It was mind, a treasured item in those historic days before the "ball point" variety of these banal days of superfluity.

As proof of my ownership, I painstakingly carved my initials at both ends of the pen.  It was stolen nonetheless. 

One day, during a test, I saw the item in the grubby hands of Spiros Tryforos, the scion of the owner of a chain of flower shops. When he refused to return my property to me, I beat him severely. This caused Spiro Tryforos, Sr. to enlist the intervention of our Principal, who was also the venerable pastor of our flock, in the name of justice.

I received several whacks with a wicker rod, and was told not to return to school unless I was accompanied by my father.

It would have been foolhardy to bring my father into this dispute.  The patriarchs of this community never disagreed on matters of discipline.  I brought my mother.

Mother did not speak Greek, but on this occasion, she berated the Principal and the flower vendor, who was also in attendance, with sufficient English articulation to cow them both.

"How dare you beat my child!" she expostulated. 

She then asked for a refund of unused tuition and said that I would not return to a school where the leaders were barbarians, I thought the word "barbarian" apt in that it is of Greek origin and used as a caustic negative to those who were not Greek.

It was one of the happiest days of my life.  

Easter in the Time of Coronavirus

I admit it. I am not feeling it. It is Easter. The commemoration of the day the Lord rose after the ignominy of crucifixion by we who do not deserve Him. 

Yesterday was a pretty day after several of rain. It is a rain that California needs, so I am grateful for that, even though my terrace is corroding and one of the companies that was to come and look at it cancelled because of the modern plague. But today it is back to weatherly gloom.

I attempted to get on line for my parish Easter celebration, both last night for the Vigil, and this morning for the main empty Church Mass, but the live feed kept freezing and my internal disposition was turning to impatience and anger from plain old discontent and utter distrust of my own society.

I will find a Mass to watch later. It doesn't matter when I go, after all. Watch the thought that follows next. . . .it is the Devil cavorting around--it doesn't matter if I go, as I cannot go in the first place. What was once holy obligation according to the history of the Church from and after 2000 years ago, such that people met in the catacombs to celebrate the Eucharist, to receive the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord, (in the face of certain death)  is no more, at least for the always extended duration of whatever history will describe this set of events to be. All I  can think with ever rising rage is how readily the Bishops found no other way to serve the faithful than to close it all up because the secular world said it was a must. (But kudos to the priests who sought ways to do what their leaders failed to do).  I know. I hear the objections. But. . . .But. . . .you don't care about who dies. I am not going to argue. Here is my question back to you. Do you care about the millions of lives (example, the over six million who have lost their jobs) that are being destroyed by the reflexive closing of the entire society? And we are talking literal death here as well. If a person loses a job, there is no support for the family, there is less food, there is loss of home and hearth. There is despair. There is death. One can care and disagree about the solutions. Of course, you and I aren't in a position to advocate. We are merely prohibited and restricted and required to accept what is proffered, in all its contradictory glory.

As you can see, my thoughts are all over the place. Anyway, I took my mandated mask, made in China, as that was all I could get on line, and went out to the local supermarket.

As I was walking I thought of something a friend of mind often says about life. Don't know that it is theologically sound, in fact, I am pretty sure it isn't, but it is an understandable emotional default, one that I am feeling today, well at least so far, today. "Too much Good Friday; not enough Easter Sunday". 

I am getting lots of Easter greetings on my phone. I hope that later in the day I will be able to muster the will to send greetings back. Right now, not so much. In fact, right now, I feel a lot more like Mary Magdalene at the Tomb. These are moments when I understand Peter's denial, and even Judas' betrayal with complete clarity.

It was starting to drizzle when I went out. I didn't wear the mask until I got closer to the store. Up to getting to the corner I had seen one car, and one person walking, so I wasn't feeling too much like a criminal. Once I got to the corner, I put the thing on, and as usual found breathing difficult as I took back in my warm exhalations. "Don't think about that too much!" I said to myself.  And for the first time in years, because it would make a spectacular mess, I am not applying lipstick!

There was a small line. Everyone was pleasant. That was nice. I now have supplies. I felt the urgent need to have Hot Cross Buns, perhaps because they spoke of normalcy. But now, looking back, those Hot Cross Buns reminded me of something, and maybe as the day wears on and I find a Mass to watch, as I will after I make this entry, will turn this mood around.

There is that Cross again! So, here's the thing. I think this is theological. Christ indeed has risen! But the Cross is the ever-present road to our Resurrection following after His. What has changed from before and after the Crucifixion and Death? The reality of Resurrection. My feelings are irrelevant to reality. I must endure those feelings, as I cannot control them, but persistence in faith, despite the feelings, despite the jaunty efforts of the Devil, is the solution. Will I not stay with Him?

I sense the contradictions in my writing. I am betwixt and between in belief and unbelief.

Lord, I believe, help my unbelief! This is what today I must recite over and over.

He went into the depths of human depravity and reconciled with us. Surely I can bear my disordered feelings du jour. The alternative is separation from God. I would do anything to avoid an eternal bad day.

Just hold on. Look! He is there, just behind us.

And the Phobic Shall Inherit the Earth. And the "Experts".

Dr. Anthony Fauci seems like a nice man. The other nice experts who have pronounced inconsistently from January to date have somehow become our society's gods. They speak the word, well, many words, and our local and federal governments impose a series of proscriptions and prohibitions on the citizenry. Our input is not welcome. Actually, our input is irrelevant. Objection is not welcome either. Actually, objection is roundly rebuffed. Shut up. Wear your mask. Stay at home until we figure out whether it is forever or not. And until no one dies ever again from the virus. 

It is what it is. Being herded by other human beings is nothing new. But there is a silver lining.

From CNBC.com (and other news outlets) we have this on April 9, 2020.

"Dr. Fauci says handshaking needs to stop even when pandemic ends--other experts agree".  

Wait. There is more.  

"Speaking on the Wall Street Journal podcast on Tuesday, Fauci said Americans will have to 'gradually come back' from this pandemic and won't be able to jump back into their regular lives' with both feet.  The 'new normal' he says, will include 'compulsive had-washing and the other is the end of handshaking.'"

I hope Dr. Fauci and the other experts will remind people not to spit on the streets, throw their trash out of car windows, and in the case of our homeless, who are still on the streets while the rest of us are confined, defecating. But I digress.

The good news. Those of us who used to be considered, let's say, "odd" for shying away from human touch at greater or lesser degrees, we turn out to have been right all along. The experts have confirmed it. 

I don't know that I would be considered phobic about touch, but I was raised in a nuclear family that did  not hug, or kiss. Over the years, people were amused at my reluctance. As I have gotten older, I may not have extended my hand or initiate a hug, but if presented with the inevitability, I conceded to the couple of seconds of greeting. At Mass, where we were all compelled by progressive faith to exchange handshakes at the Sign of Peace, I did my part, always happy when some priests simply waved or bowed. Too many handshakes, far and wide,  I have found were wet. Let me say it. It always creeped me out. 

Thanks to Dr. Fauci and the other experts who are leading us, the compulsive hand washer, or the avoidant hand shaker, have been proven right. What was mental aberration yesterday is wisdom today. We are free, even compelled, not to touch. That is a freedom I am happy to give up. The rest of our freedoms, not so much. But that is a rant for another day.

I noted that recently, the mantra of these Coronavirus times, which had been "social distancing" has morphed into "physical distancing". I suppose someone in the Orwellian word smithing business realized that they didn't want socializing to end, only the touching part of socializing in the public square. To be social doesn't require, someone must have realized, physical proximity. It can all be done on line. We can have our religions, our family gatherings, on line and on our big screens. And this way, we can be assured that the experts and our leaders, like Mr. DeBlasio in New York, or Mr. Garcetti in Los Angeles will have access to our homes and minds. It's all very Farenheit 451. Nice.

Thank you Mr. Fauci. Your advice coincides here with my natural tendency. I shall, henceforth, bow, and smile to those I greet. I might even observe the six feet physical distancing "rule" for the rest of my life. 

To be a phobic (wherever you are on the bell curve) will be to be politically correct. Until someone is offended, then the debate will begin anew. 

The Selective Compassion of the Mainstream Media

When I was in college at a time when there were still only three main networks, I read a book, the cover of which is pictured above. "News From Nowhere".  I can't remember if I was assigned to read it or I picked it up on my own. Probably, it was the former reason. The thesis was that what was on the news, governed, and directed by corporate goals and necessity (largely I would think financial) was not to inform the populace but to stir them up, to cause excitement, so that the viewer would continue to view. Reality was not a value. I saw examples of the validity of the thesis when I worked as an intern at a local news channel WOR, in New York. I went out on a couple of stories, both in the Bronx. One was about a hospital in danger of closing. We got to the site. There were a few people mingling, unhappy with the possibility of the loss of the hospital. There was one child, in a stroller. The camera lens focused on the child. To watch the story, edited from the mass of film taken, was to stir the heart about the heartless minions of corporate greed. Another story was at Bronx Community College. There was some sort of takeover of a building. When we got there, the kids were playing frisbee and eating lunch. Once the news were there, the protests began, or resumed with the concomitant shouting appropriate to activism.

These weren't big stories, and the stakes weren't terribly large. But I remember thinking that the editing process and the reporter's charged words changed the essence of what the consumer would see. The facts would be muddled, and the tone and tenor of the event and its consequences were made dire.

I can tell you that some 47 years ago, the book and my small experience had profound effects on me. With the explosion of technology, cable, the internet, digital everything, the goal of the mainstream media has not changed, while truth and reality have been turned utterly on their heads, along with the mental health of many American viewers.

I thought that the media had reached its nadir with the Kavanaugh hearings. But there is always a little lower human nature can go.

The media posits great care of Americans who have died (possibly, there is news, if one can believe, that the CDC told hospitals to label deaths coronavirus related even if they aren't sure of it) from the coronavirus, and the health of those who may be infected. They label right wing anyone who might say a word about the economy being trashed every time "Breaking News" is presented, even though it is the average American suffering most from the busting economy--another group for whom they pronounce great concern. I think I heard CNN's ratings went up during this last month, when before, unlike the economy in February, it was in the dumps. Life is good for the reporters who did not lose their jobs, except of course for the ones like the FOX reporter who dared to suggest that the coronavirus crisis was being manipulated into another episode of the nearly four year long "impeach Trump" show. It doesn't mean anything, I suppose, that Ms. Pelosi and friends are seeking to create some new governmental group to investigate how Mr. Trump has handled the virus containment process.  Anyway, Fox is not immune from the "if it bleeds, it leads" mentality, and watching the bottom line rather than support for the marketplace of ideas. And as to Mr. Trump, his a lot of death comment doesn't help. Anyway here's a number. 

Approximately 40 million American adults — roughly 18% of the population — have an anxiety disorder, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. Safety, health and finances seemed to be the greatest sources of anxiety, according to the APA poll.

And, depression? Another 16 million, about 6 percent of the population. So nearly a quarter of Americans struggle with a condition that one could say might be exacerbated by the never ending speculations, projections, models of worst case scenarios thrown at them from the exponentially increasing news desks and news sites. And just as happened with the SARS outbreak years ago, when the coverage was increasing but was by no means like it is today, people began to feel suicidal. 

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/covid-19-is-likely-to-lead-to-an-increase-in-suicides/

If the media is all about drama and excitement, like it was 47 years ago, like it was I suppose back in 1898 when "Remember the Maine!" was all the rage (but when all there was were newspapers) then I guess the anxious, the depressed and the suicidal are out of luck. The media can't be expected to care, unless it means great ratings and oodles of money. And they complain about the 1 percent. 

And then, add in ye old social media. I haven't read any posts on my page for the last nearly 40 days, though I have posted this blog and the odd article.  Nor can I still watch the news channels. I do read articles, left and right, and possibly in the middle (even what is in the middle is debated information these days) and I have to know when it is safe to go out again after all? But when I left that forum it was Lord of the Flies for adults. 

It would be nice if the mainstream media just gave information as new facts developed--facts, we used to know what you were--rather than pounding at us like, well, this is what it feels like to me, "torturers". 

I do not believe that the media seeks to inform the public. I haven't believed that since I was 19. If you think that they are wonderful, objective, compassionate, well, we just have (yet) another difference of opinion--until differences of opinion are forbidden by law, rather than by mere political correctness. 

The Churches are Closed; The Pot Stores are Open. Hallelujah?

Yesterday was a beautiful day in generally empty West Hollywood, California. I had a couple of necessary errands to do, permissible and possible in accord with the quarantine, and I decided to walk the approximately 1.3 miles each way. One errand was to pick up a few groceries at Gelson's. Having done so, I began my walk back to my apartment, a bit over laden as it turned out, such that my journey required a couple of breaks along the way. I found a ledge by a storefront upon which I could perch. As I did I noticed a line of about five or six people in front of me. And pretty quickly after I sat down on the ledge, several people stood in that line until the line had reached me and another several people stood behind me, supposing I was also waiting.

I got up and walked a bit further on, having realized that the wait was for the local pot store.  The traffic on the sidewalk superseded, as you can see, the traffic on the empty road.

Ah incongruity! Or not, depending on what one considers and "essential" service to which the consumer may go and upon whom he or she may depend. The Churches in Los Angeles are closed, shuttered, kaput, at least for the future that could be anywhere from April 12 (the Easter that Mr. Trump made a goal to roars of knowing laughter) to September depending on which expert is correct about the run of the Coronavirus. Happily, there are online and other streaming type methods by which the faithful can be in spiritual communion. For the Catholic, the Eucharist, which is called the "Source and Summit" of our faith, is. . . unavailable.  Good reasons abound.

But in the balancing of interests, is the sale of pot (or alcohol, which I admit to having purchased during this siege), properly, logically, called an "essential service"?To be fair, it is the Archdiocese that closed our Church because of its response to the concerns about public health. And it is the secular government that has decided the pot stores are essential notwithstanding the public health emergency.

But these moments of cognitive dissonance make it hard to trust any authority. It makes it hard to know what is true in all of the pronouncements being lobbed at us figuratively like rockets from Gaza into Israel.

Speaking of the secular end of things. When I was walking into the Gelson's parking lot to purchase my three bags full in order to stand on the happily not very long line to enter the store, I noticed a homeless woman meandering toward the same line. As she walked, she coughed, heartily. She did  join the line, and she was not observing the six feet rule. She departed quickly, and did not cough in the brief time she was there.

I have noted in an internet search, at least according to the Los Angeles Times, that California cannot agree on a strategy regarding the many homeless who are still on the streets in this time of pandemic.

Today I read that while some experts are recommending that those who are healthy ought not wear protective masks; others are saying with equal authority that they should.

Maybe it's time for me to get back on that line. You won't believe it, but I have never tried the stuff. Except, of course, the second hand kind, which wafts when I walk and even when I am in my little condo, from one or more apartments below.

The Killing Cure

I was sitting outside on my terrace before the clouds came back again, with my tablet. I had a lot of conversations today with friends with varying thoughts about the shuttering of the society, the closing of commerce and the mandate of "social distancing" because of the Coronavirus, which perhaps not apropos of anything is more often now called in the media, Covid-19--which surely has a more catastrophic elan consistent with the terrorization that has been round the clock (what else?) media coverage.

Those who believe this particular virus warrants the shutdown of every aspect of American life (and global) life are legion. It is practically worth the life everyone says they want to save to suggest that maybe, just maybe, there is something untoward, to put it mildly, about the ruinous existence ending measures being impressed and imposed with nary a concern about the long term consequences let alone those freedoms that once defined the nation. The health of others is definitely an interest to be balanced against freedom. But what, no one seems able to explain, is different about this virus than about any number of illnesses and natural and unnatural conditions to which we human beings--who always die no matter what safeguards are proposed or implemented? Speak about numbers, in any commonsensical terms, and "experts" are invoked, who quite frankly, themselves don't agree on anything with all that expertise.

I entered a search term while I was sitting on my terrace, "The Cure is Worse than the Disease." Among the articles that came up was this one.

OPINION

Finley: The coronavirus cure is worse than the disease

Nolan Finley, The Detroit NewsPublished 4:30 p.m. ET March 22, 2020 | 

I guess I'm with him. What kind of life will we go back to, after one month, two months, or that nine months some of those "experts" are predicting? One that has put more people on the streets? One that gave up freedom of assembly and pretty much all freedom of movement with nary an objection or consultation of the citizenry?

Although my pastor made a valiant effort to keep our parish open, while abiding by the distancing rules, and the suspension of public Mass, the number of reported "cases" of the virus in my area, as of yesterday, reported with breathless urgency, required that he give up the ghost and lock the Church doors. No Mass. No Communion. No praying inside the Church, each individual assuming the risk of living in a world where one could die. Where one will surely die. I would have thought that it would be harder to separate the faithful from their practice. It turns out it is even easier than in the days of Henry VIII.

Will we be Venezuela fully and finally? But there's nothing wrong with that. Right?

Sleepless in Los Angeles during the 2020 Pandemic

It's just after two in the morning. I tried to put myself to sleep with a sentimental favorite Amazon Prime playlist, with some 20 plus songs each of which evokes some moment in time of my life. Didn't work.

I suppose it is true of anyone who has lived that he or she might say, "I've seen a lot in my time on the earth". I mean, after all, isn't that a bit of the sense you get when you hear Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g

If I remember that song, well, I have lived through pretty much all of what is in it. I was a young child when Sputnik prodded America to make the moon its goal. I was just about as young when we were doing nuclear war drills by burying our heads under our hands under skeletal desks and wooden lockers precariously affixed to walls. I was several years a pre-teen when John Kennedy was assassinated, then his murderer, Lee Harvey Oswald. I was still a pre-teen when New York had its 1965 blackout. I was just a teenager when Martin Luther King was assassinated, and Bobby Kennedy followed. All through the sixties was the fall out of the Vietnam War, and the opened window that threw the baby out with the Catholic faith the tenets of which once true, became ever so . . .flexible.
On and on it has gone through the decades, Watergate, the destruction of the World Trade Center, Iraq, Afghanistan, the recent four years of bitter partisanship, sex, emolument clause, 25th Amendment, Mueller, Impeachment. . . .

And now, this, whatever it is that has made this and every other city look like one or more episodes of the Twilight Zone. As I lay in bed I noticed something you don't get in a big city, certainly not a block off the Sunset Strip on a Saturday--dead silence. I usually get a little bit of headlights visible as a car passes even through my shades. But tonight in my tossing and turning, I notice none. That sound of silence you might only hear in a country bed and breakfast, there it is, here in Weho, California.
Extraordinary. It would be wonderful if it were not all so. . . .creepy.

I slipped on a sweatshirt because it is in the fifties tonight, and stepped just outside my condo apartment building door. I was there for something like ten minutes. Not a car came down my block. Only two people, young, moving pretty quickly as if they wanted to get home fast. "It's too quiet" I imagined them saying to one another. Some rustling in the palm trees from a slight breeze. And yes, the odd fire engine or police car siren.  As I write, having come back inside, I hear another siren breaking the otherwise dead silence.

It isn't the meditative kind of silence, alas. One tries to treat it that way, in my case, with reading, and prayer. Or break it with a few episodes of Inspector Morse. Something about the Oxford scenery is comforting, particularly if you had the pleasure of having visited there once.

My cats don't notice anything. Good for them. There is something to be said for limits to sentience.
Not sure if this is what war on one's own soil feels like--but whatever it is and whoever is causing it--for I do not believe that this is merely the result of 27,000 cases of a virus and 348 deaths (US) as troubling as is the omnipresence of death by an endless number of means and at astounding rates. (My internet stats say 151,600 deaths a day world wide, 6,316 an hour, 105 a minute, 2 a second).
Laugh though you might at my saying it, there is something darker here, and it is humanly caused by people we may know in power, and those we do not know. And since Transcendent principles are either not agreed upon or dismissed, there is nothing to keep the worst from happening.

Religious people refer to a chastisement. I guess I am one of those religious people, but I can tell you I'd rather not be in the middle of a chastisement as it seems I might well be. I very much want to meet God (hoping that he has not too much critique--good luck to me) but not as He comes upon a fiery cloud that breaks a silence like this one.

Ok, it's nearly three in the morning. I am waxing dramatic.

I am going to try to sleep, which probably means I won't sleep until I just wear myself out with thoughts of past, present, and the questionable future.

I have managed to stay away from reviewing Facebook for Lent--which methinks is pretty good considering I am looking for distractions from anxious thoughts--but I have posted these entries as I will post this one.

Lent doesn't seem like it's going to end in any kind of Easter celebration this year, at least in a Church. That's pretty disheartening. On the other hand, the actual Resurrection already took place 2000 plus years ago and He provides the Light of Hope, if only I don't allow myself to be blinded by yet another crisis in human history to which we are witness.