A friend recently sent a link to a Michelle Goldberg column titled “We Should All Know Less About Each Other.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/01/opinion/facebook-social-media-problems.html

Goldberg was writing about knowing each other “online” and quoted heavily from a study by a Duke University professor and colleagues who paid Twitter users who identified as either Democrats or Republicans to follow particular Twitter accounts for a month.  Participants didn’t know it but Democrats were assigned to follow a bot account that retweeted messages from prominent Republican politicians and thinkers while Republicans followed a bot account that retweeted Democrats.

The team wondered if getting people to engage online with ideas they wouldn’t otherwise encounter might moderate their views.  The opposite happened.  Republicans became more conservative, Democrats more liberal.

Goldberg ended her most excellent column, “we might be able to tolerate each other more if we heard from each other less.”

Her column reminded me of a recent experience in my life.  I took two small oil paintings to a local framer to see what he would charge to frame them.  A friend had recommended him and warned me that he is a very trump Republican. Before going to his workshop I had spent the previous three hours with good friends having lively conversations, drinking great coffee, and eating delicious blackberry coffee cake.  In addition, since Dec. 4, 2020 I have been sitting with Gil Fronsdal, an amazing Buddhist teacher, Monday through Friday.  He leads guided meditations from 7-7:30 a.m., followed by a 15-minute Dharma talk.  For the last few months his emphasis has been on taking our practice into the world, offering everyone we encounter kindness, respect, and compassion.

So, in a fabulously good mood and knowing what to expect, I drove to the framer’s studio.  I had rehearsed a statement, “I don’t discuss politics or religion, ever,” and practiced smiling as I said it.  I parked behind his delivery van and noted his bumper stickers (Everything WOKE Turns To Shit, and Make American Great Again).

His three Russell Terriers announced me and he came to the door to welcome me (I’d made an appointment).  I went into his shop and while he looked at the paintings and chose some material for me to look at I observed the large signed Trump photograph on the wall along with numerous examples of his work.  We discussed what I wanted for framing, he showed me several options, made suggestions I liked and once we agreed on styles and colors he wrote an invoice, then walked me outside.  He asked me if I would like some fresh tomatoes and of course I said yes, but turned down the offer of zucchini.  He told me how he makes lasagna using sliced zucchini for noodles.  I noticed that he had planted zinnias along the side of the house facing the driveway and felt a wave of compassion for this man who was offering beauty to the world in a small way.

Our conversation was general. Several years ago, he left Sacramento where he had lived and done framing for 30 years, he should have left sooner, nearly lost his house.  His three dogs are all rescues and I heard a little bit of their stories.  He didn’t offer any political opinion and I offered no openings.

Had I met him online, seen his workshop with the photo of Trump, seen the sentiments on his bumper stickers, I would have thought unpleasant things about him and would never have taken work to him.  I would have actively disliked him.

I’m not very involved with social media.  Not on Facebook but I do have an Instagram account, mostly to post photos of trees, sunrises and sunsets, book recommendations, pictures of my cats.  I have in the past posted the occasional sharply worded political opinion and after reading Goldberg’s column I decided I won’t do that again.  My account is private and I have only 40 followers, several of them fellow amateur photographers I met online during the photography class we took together.  They are from all over, one in England.

I have a blog with a very small following.  I get a few comments which I must moderate, and nine out of ten are Russian bots.  Really!  A circumstance I share with all WordPress bloggers.

I think about the man who is framing my pictures frequently.  We will never be friends, break bread together, or probably even ever see each other outside his shop.  And, we are not enemies.  I like him and I think he likes me.

That wouldn’t happen online.

Dana Houle wrote on Twitter (which I read via Balloon Juice, my favorite blog and the first thing I read every morning of my life), “Longterm for my kids and for the world nothing matters more than climate change.  But for this moment, nothing will matter more for my life & my children’s lives than this,”  Breaking news NYT–F.D.A. regulators said the Pfizer vaccine’s benefits outweigh its risks for 5- to 11-year-olds.

My attention went right to the word”risks” and I asked (Yes, I do talk to myself and ask myself questions), “What were the risks of the polio vaccine for me, vaccinated in 1956 in the auditorium of my high school?”  I didn’t have a reaction and I don’t recall that any of my friends did either.  I do recall a cousin having polio in the late 1940s and I recall a friend in my grade who was crippled by polio, wearing a leg brace in order to walk.

I just read some history of the polio vaccine and there were reactions in some children and some deaths.  Also, in 1953, before vaccinations, there were 35,000 recorded cases of polio.  By 1957 half the population of this country had received at least one dose of the vaccine.  Like now, they were recommending three doses.

So, by 1957 approximately 86 million people had received at least on shot.  The epidemic was stopped IN THE AMERICAS a few years later.  Back then, enough Americans got shots that we stopped having cases of polio in this country.

Do not misunderstand me.  There ARE (why does WordPress not provide a way to underline? FFS) risks and for those whose children died or had reactions leaving them with long term illness or damage, the risks turned out to have tragic results.  When I imagine myself being the parent of such a child I can feel the agony, the anger, the permanent “if only I…” in my thoughts.  No one wants to be the exception and this is certainly one of those times.  And we have never had a year since when 35,000 people died of polio.

I wonder if we will ever be able to say that about COVID?

Two decades ago I went through 40 years of photographs, separating out all those of my former step-children and their father, intending to send them to his daughter if I could locate her.

I’d divorced their father, an abusive alcoholic, in 1974 and hadn’t seen his daughter, S, since.  A couple of years after the divorce I moved to Minden, Nevada, into a small rental house of my mother’s, located next door to the larger house she shared with Tom, my stepfather.

My stepson, M, would occasionally visit me in Nevada.  Ten years younger than I, he had suffered drug and alcohol problems since his teens.  When his father and I divorced he was 24 years old, immature and confused.  He was also strong and a hard worker.

When he would visit he would stay next door with my folks, helping them out with yard and house maintenance.  He ate with them and in the evening they would sit on the porch, talking, smoking, having an after dinner drink–wine for my mother, bourbon and water for the guys.

Sometimes he would stay a month, sometimes six or eight months.  He would eat and sleep well and get his color back, working outside, working hard.

Then, he would go back to Reno or California and we wouldn’t hear anything for months or a year or two.  Over a 30-year period he came back five or six times.

In 1998 we hadn’t seen M for more than a year.  My folks asked if I knew where he was, could I contact him, see if he could come out for a couple of months that summer.  I found his number in the Reno phone book but when I called, the number had been disconnected.  I phoned my former brother-in-law to see if he knew anything and was told that M had died of a drug overdose the previous October, at his mother’s house in Sparks where he’d been living, broke and out of work.

Oh, what joy, to reread a favorite book for the third time and discover it’s as good as I remembered.

Fifth Business, by Robertson Davies, was published in the 1970s, the first in a trilogy.  It follows a teacher, a sociopath and a magician, from their childhoods in a small Canadian village to their middle ages in Toronto and around the world. That does not begin to describe the richness, humor, and caring of Davies’s prose.  I read it last week and was sad to have it end.  I plan to pick up books two and three next week at the library.

I read John Steinbeck in the late 1950s, along with Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, among others. In the early 2000s I reread Steinbeck’s East of Eden, and it was so good the second time around.  I tried Hemingway shortly after but he didn’t hold up for me although I loved his books back in the 1960s.  I haven’t reread any Fitzgerald yet but a good friend tells me I should and that I will be rewarded.

Steinbeck was a brilliant story teller whose prose lit up the lives of his characters and their environment.  Hemingway, for me, has a particular style that dominates the story, although I didn’t notice that 60 years ago.  I don’t detect a style in Steinbeck’s books, only locales and characters and flow.

I used to have a friend who had majored in American literature in the early 1960s and she considered Hemingway a standout, finding Steinbeck’s books uninteresting, not worth a reread.  And isn’t it a treat that there are many, many excellent writers providing us with an enormous selection to suit our varied tastes.  

And lest anyone think I’m a snob, I read mostly murder mysteries with the occasional Regency or romance thrown in when I have to have a happy-ever-after ending.  Thank goddess for my more well-read friends who suggest novels I might otherwise miss.

I binge-watched Season 17 of Grey’s Anatomy last week and came away with a different view of the pandemic.  For 16 months I read statistics about the numbers of sick and dying and was shocked and outraged.

I was shocked by the Administration’s lies, the theft of PPE by the Trump Family Crime Cartel, the jingoism, the favoritism toward red states and red governors.  I was saddened by the statistics about the number of deaths and by the numbers of Indigenous, Black, and Hispanic people who died.

But somehow, the numbers never really landed for me until I watched Grey’s Anatomy.  It was as though I’d been looking at a brand new coloring book, all black and white line drawings.  After watching just a few episodes the drawings started being filled in with all the shades of people of color and a few white-flesh-colored people.

After spending an hour this morning reading about the numbers of deaths by race and ethnicity I learned that half the deaths were White people, probably mostly old White people.  Let’s say 300,000 White people died.  What percentage of the White population is that?  I don’t know and I’m pretty sure it’s not a very big percentage, unlike the percentages of Indigenous, Hispanic, and Black populations who died.

We are living through an historic event, a world-wide pandemic that is disproportionately killing People of Color and the poor.  We will never know for certain how many died of COVID-19 because of faulty reporting but we know it could have been fewer and we know that being white and not poor decreased our chances of dying.

Thursday was the slaughter of the innocents at Casa Alexander. At 6 a.m. I opened the door curtains and there was my cat, Oscar, demanding entrance next to a dead baby jackrabbit, possibly my favorite wild animal. A few feet back was a dead baby mouse. At 9 a.m. I looked out and he was eating a baby wild turkey (poult). At 6 p.m. he was at the door and next to the dead mouse was a dying baby turkey, smaller than the one he ate. It died quickly, thank goddess.

I disposed of the jackrabbit (hare) immediately, throwing it over the side of the hill. Our house is cut into the side of a hill. I left the legs from Oscar’s brunch and the dead poult from the afternoon kill. The next morning the dead baby was gone as was the corpse of the jack. I almost always leave corpses and body parts because we have skunks and opossums (I don’t want to know what other critters) who carry off the carrion.

On Friday the legs were still on the patio. Late afternoon Oscar was demanding that I let him out and I nearly did. However, when I got to the door I looked out and a young skunk, probably just kicked out of the nest, was eating the baby turkey legs. I live in the budget movie version of the Wild Kingdom.

I liken my experience of living through the first part of a pandemic to spending 13 months in a minimum security prison.  Scary at first because everything was new.  I didn’t know all the rules and the risks of this abrupt new existence.  Just what I imagine the first days and weeks in any prison would be like.

A friend shopped for me, I opened boxes on the patio, congratulated myself on having a year’s supply of toilet paper on hand.  I learned to love the smell of Lysol as I wiped down everything that came into the house and wiped down everything in the car that I might touch when I had to drive.

I bought a Kindle when the library closed.  Never did learn to check out books with it but bought a few and a friend who uses Kindle exclusively loaned me many best sellers and new releases of some of our favorite authors.  I also bought books (way too many) and was able to mostly bypass Amazon by shopping with Elizabeth’s of Akron, a member of a national independent bookstore association, where the discount was almost as generous as Amazon’s.

I knew early on that this was a 100-year pandemic as I frequently saw it compared to the 1918 Spanish Influenza which killed millions worldwide.  I read John M. Barry’s book The Great Influenza so I had an idea about what was coming.  March 15 our California governor asked everyone older that 65 to self-isolate.  Having turned 80 yers old the previous month I took it seriously.

March 23 I ordered The Year of the Plague, by Defoe; The Plague, by Camus; and Masque of the Red Death, by Poe.

By March 31 I was taking my temperature several times a day.  I knew this pandemic was bad, thought I knew the risks and what I had to do, and just hunkered down in my apartment for what I knew could be as long as 18 months.  To me, 18 months in 100 years seemed doable.

In May I told a friend that if our situation was like the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918 that the time of sickness and death would probably extend to 18 to 24 months.  She laughed at my prediction and said she was going to start calling me Cassandra.

Thanks to science and a big push from the government, backed by lots of money ($1 million of it from Dolly Parton), many lives would be saved in wealthy countries by production of vaccines in record time. On February 12 I got my first Pfizer shot and March 5 the second.  On the way home in March I picked up a Double Double and fries at In-n-Out.  Don’t tell me I don’t know how to celebrate.

And now, vaccinated and still healthy, I feel like I’ve been released to a halfway house.  Still wearing masks in public, still social distancing from most people, but the parameters have been slightly relaxed.  A couple of weeks after the second shot friends and I went to breakfast (outside) at a favorite restaurant for the first time in 13 months.  Last week I attended my first dinner party (all vaccinated old people) in 13 months.

It’s not over.  People are still getting sick with COVID-19 and still dying from it.  There are variants we don’t know much about. I won’t say my experience was easy, but probably it was much easier than what large numbers of our citizens experienced.  I didn’t have children locked in with me, I wasn’t trying to help children learn to navigate school on Zoom, I didn’t lose a job then not be able to get unemployment insurance, I didn’t face eviction or foreclosure, I did not go hungry, I did not get COVID-19, I did not have any friends or family die from it.  Plus, I’m an introvert and used to spending time at home, alone.

Maybe by Christmas we can say it’s over.

A bunch of years ago Melissa Joulwan wrote a post about New Year Resolutions that made so much sense (so why didn’t I adopt it back then?).  I printed it out and put it in a binder and never saw it again until a week ago.  I knew I was rarely succeeding with resolutions and didn’t understand.  Friends occasionally pointed out that I might want to start slower and smaller and I didn’t listen.  When I read her post last week I had an aha moment.

She wrote, “No more New Year Resolutions.

“I’m trying something different.  What if I don’t set goals but instead, simply behave like the best version of myself?

“Then I would become her.

“The best me eats clean and sleeps well and cleans house and smiles a lot.

“The best version of me knows that she’s not required to eat clean or meditate or get solid sleep.  She doesn’t have to pick up after herself, wash dishes, vacuum, dust or scoop the litter box.  There is no accounting ledger keeping track of exemplary behavior for a reward later.  There is no opportunity to earn a metaphorical gold star but I can reward myself with real heart and star stickers.  Just because I love stickers.

“The clean eating and meditation and dusting, the sound sleeping and the blog posting are the reward.  They are the thing.

“The best version of me refuses to be measured by some external yardstick.”

And then I wrote, the best version of me happily goes to bed early, wakes up refreshed, eats Wahls Paleo, cleans house, writes and takes photos, meditates every morning, is kind and funny, cooks a lot of good food, and sings out loud.  And occasionally dances like no one’s looking.

Then back to Melissa, “Not because I must.

“Because I want to.  Because that’s me.  The best me.”

Last week I designed a very ambitious routine that would make time for everything.  I made an agreement with myself that for one week I will attempt to live with the routine and make notes about what works well and fairly easily, and what needs to be modified.  No criticism or judgment, only observation.

The other agreement I made with myself is that I will start small and increase in very tiny increments.  I will do two yoga poses twice each morning.  After a week I will increase to two yoga poses done three times each morning.  I will walk 20 minutes (minimum) a day and after a month increase the time to 25 minutes a day.  The physician from whom I stole this suggestion wrote a book about starting very small and he had many stories about his patients who recovered their health after a year or so using his suggestions.

meljoulwan.com

Feel Better in 5: Your Daily Plan to Feel Great for Life, by Dr. Rangan Chatterjee