Happy Old Year

December 31, 2020December 30, 2020Michael 2 Comments

Thirty days ago I issued a challenge. That sounds pushy. Let’s say 30 days ago I made a suggestion and intimated I would do it too. “It” was recall one positive, happy thing that happened this year each day during December. The purpose was to demonstrate that although 2020 might not be the poster year for The Best of Times, it is far from The Worst of Times.

Did you? Were you able to recall a mere 30 happy memories of all your recollections from this year’s 366 days? I did and I was. The only change I made from my proposed plan was instead of starting the day with a happy memory, I wrapped up my day with the positive reminiscence. I was thus able to share it with my friend every night. To being able to tell somebody else about the positives of the year animated those memories and kept the memory machine in tune for the following day’s offering. Another happy side effect of holding my pluses until day’s end was that it gave me the entire day to decide which memory I was most interested in sharing that day. Yes, by the second week I found myself in the unanticipated although hoped for position of having multiple merry memories.

This year was one nobody expected regardless of what your Facebook friends tell you. They nor anybody else, except perhaps a handful of world class immunologists saw this year’s great pandemic coming. That same group of friends, unless they also doubled as meteorologic oceanographers likely didn’t expect 46 storms across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. (Thirty for the Atlantic, its most active recorded season and 16 in the Pacific, its least active.) Even the most studied sociologists couldn’t have predicted protests in every state and many nations against over a dozen different issues and conditions. Yes, this year was filled with misfortune. Still, there were the fortunes of 2020. The difference is that the majority of the good times were held individually although if individuals got together and pooled their happy times that would be a powerfully positive pack of people.

I hope you spent December recalling the good of 2020. Spending the month knowing at least some part every day would be a spent thinking happy thoughts may be the most positive memory I’ll have of 2020. And a significant challenge for 2021!

2020 In a Word, or Three

December 28, 2020Michael Leave a comment

Ah, were getting close to the New Year. The way people have been saying they can’t wait for this year to be over you would think there is an expiration date on “the virus.” I put that in quotes because that seems to be how most people are looking at it. At least that seems to be how American people are looking at it and at most other news of the year. A character, a reference, a headline. It didn’t matter how complex a matter was, all of 2020 was a slogan. Health, welfare, politics, social justice, social injustice – all were condensed into a few words, small enough and simple enough to read as a headline, fit on a protest sign, or look spiffy behind a hashtag. Every cause must have hired a PR rep to ensure its message got across to the people without all the distracting stats, explanations, and sometimes facts.

Would you like proof?

Let’s start with the election, that solemn activity undertaken with thought and due consideration for all issues. If yard signs were any indication of the thought that was taken this year we are in big trouble. We could have chosen between “Keep America Great” or “Build Back Better.” What does either mean! But this is not unusual. Spiffy easy to remember slogans are a staple with elections. “I Like Ike” and “All The way With LBJ” didn’t rate very high on the infometer either. What was unusual this year was the trite sloganeering continued, er continues. It morphed from “Get Out and Vote” to “Your Vote Matters” to “Count Every Vote” to “Count Every Legal Vote” to “Stop The Steal.” Duh. Well, “You Can’t Fix Stupid but You Can Vote it Out.”

Protests lend themselves to spiffy slogans. They have to be short enough to fit on a sign in letters big enough to be legible when captured by the news cameras and catchy enough to be remembered after the cameras leave. “Silence Is Violence” is a great example. The pity is how many people did not know the origin of the phrase or its original context. Then it was confounded when the same movements adopted the “Muted” campaign. Think about that.

Lack of context could not stop a good protest throughout the year. We were intent on ensuring others knew we knew that various things mattered, that many peoples names needed said, that just about every ethic group was strong and that we should make America a variety of things again. We wanted to “Defund the Police” but still “Back the Blue,” and we let the world know our demands included “No Justice No Peace” then telling ourselves “Whatever It Takes.”

Neither could lack of facts stop a good protest. Marchers across America on Columbus Day carried signs to “Make America Native Again” or “Columbus Didn’t Discover America, He Invaded It” oblivious to the fact that Columbus never made it to any part of mainland North America on any of his four voyages.

And that takes us back to “the virus.” For almost the entire year a CoViD story was front and center on your favorite news source. We learned how to “Wash Your Hands” even if we didn’t know why we did it that way. We included “Flatten the Curve” in as many conversations as we could then we switched to “Business on Top, Pajamas on the Bottom” when it became clear that curve was tougher than we expected. If we did find ourselves in an intelligent conversation about CoViD and how to deal with it yet still uncertain of how to deal with it, we could fake our way through by looking thoughtful then declaring, “Corona, It’s Not Just a Beer Anymore!” Any attempt to break quarantine was met with “[Fill in the blank] IS Essential” and if that argument failed we turned to “Quarantine the Virus, Not the Constitution.” Apparently logic was what ended up in quarantine.

I will be glad to see 2020 come to an end but not because I think we will finally have put the issues of 2020 to bed. No, I’ll be happy to see it end because then I can finally stop having to listen to people say “I can’t wait for 2020 to end!”

Boy I can’t wait for 2020 to end!

Merry Christmas 2020 Style

December 24, 2020December 23, 2020Michael Leave a comment

Jesus, forgive us for being so distracted on your birthday. Much of the world seems to think we are in the midst of a great suffering. Oh, we’ve had some difficulties this year but nothing that compares with what You will suffer in 30 some odd years.

Everybody wants to concentrate on the bad things that happened and forget You gave us some good times buried in the troubles. Some people have learned to cook and bake. Some have learned to paint or sculpt. A few took up writing. Other people rediscovered books, movies, and puzzles. Through the power of electronics families got closer even as they could not travel to see each other. Those same families discovered eating together could be an event even if the meals were prepared by fancy restaurants or simple diners and delivered or picked up. And we’ve learned who the indispensable really are.

In that You are in the forgiveness business please try to understand that tomorrow while we should be celebrating Your big day, many of us will be complaining about something beyond our control although we won’t admit anything can possibly be beyond our control. We’ll probably stop for a few minutes before we eat, after we toast a Happy Holidays! to everybody we can think of, somebody at the table will mutter a prayer of thanks for the food before them.

Please don’t take too great an exception at that. There are some of us that pray a more often than that though probably not often enough, certainly not often enough but we do try. We really do.

And with than in mind, allow me to say for the rest of us down here, Happy Birthday. Merry Christmas. Many happy returns.

Amen.

Let It Snow

December 17, 2020December 16, 2020Michael Leave a comment

2020 has been a pretty unusual year, virtually. We have all adapted to some pretty unusual circumstances, virtually. And we have had some measure of success in carrying on with our lives, virtually. We are working virtually, worshipping virtually, entertaining virtually, schooling virtually, and yesterday a brand new foray, virtually.

Western Pennsylvania does not do well with snow. I don’t know why. Ski resorts do well but otherwise most people panic at the suggestion there may be a white coating covering their spaces. When the weather nerds forecasted twelve hours of nonstop snow with an accumulation of up to 9 inches of the stuff, not a jug of milk, loaf of bread, or roll of toilet paper was safe on its shelf down at the local market. (See here if I lost you with that one.) One thing Western Pennsylvanians do well on snowy days is “snow days.” Schools, work, and other semi-essential components of life just shut down, or a less dramatic response issue a “delayed opening” or “early dismissal” order. So it wasn’t unexpected with a forecast of snow starting to accumulate in the late morning hours that local school districts would consider an early dismissal. And in fact one did. And with that we entered a new dimension, virtually.

A suburban Pittsburgh district declared an early dismissal for Wednesday due to the impending inclement weather. But the district is on remote learning. It was as far as I have been able to ascertain, the first virtual snow day on record.

It gets better. Not sarcastic better. Seriously better. This was actually a sort of planned “virtual snow day” evidence by the touching letter the district superintendent sent to all the parents Tuesday evening. In it she asked all instruction to stop at 11am and everyone to “let go of the stress and worry of school.”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we all had the opportunity to just let go of stress, to start being happy, to enjoy what we have. Oh wait, we do! It shouldn’t take a snow storm to create happy memories. Two weeks ago I semi-issued a semi-challenge to recall one happy memory from 2020 each day in December as we close in on the end of this virtually unhappy year. I have been and I have been saving them so I when I think nothing good ever happens I can tangibly point to a year’s worth of good in one nobody wants to remember.

So, in the words or my new favorite educator, go make a snow angel, build a fort, or bake cookies. Take time for you and your family and enjoy the wonders of this season. Although I would argue that every season holds wonders.

Please don’t wait for a snow day to let go of stress and worry.

That One Thing

November 30, 2020November 29, 2020Michael 5 Comments

As we enter December “Hooray, 2020 is almost over!” is moving to the top of everybody’s mental “Things to Be Thankful For” list. Should it be? The calendar is a few short weeks away from turning the big page to 2021, how much will be new in the New Year?

Come New Year’s Eve people will take part in the traditional announcing of their New Year’s Resolutions wishing for a fresh start to the fresh year in a positive frame of mind. With the concentration of negative news and events this year has given us, one day of wishing may not be enough. So here is the challenge: each day of December find one thing from 2020 that was a positive for you and resolve to repeat whatever actions you took then to make that happen again in 2021. Surely this can’t be done you say! How can anybody find 31 positive things that happened in 2020? Well, for one thing, it isn’t 1520.

By 1520 fifty-six million people, that’s 56,000,000 people, perished worldwide in the great smallpox pandemic. By comparison, so far in 2020 only 1.5 million have succumbed to CoViD-19. That is still a lot of people and the current pandemic will not end when the current year expires. Comparing again to the smallpox pandemic, that wave actually began in 1518 with few deaths. Assisted by increased travel for trade and exploration, the variola virus easily made its way around the world with devastating effects, initiating the eventual loss of 40% of the Aztec empire population, over 8 million people, just 2 years later.

PlusBal That was then, now is now. What good came out of 2020 for you other than being born 5 centuries later than your counterpart from 1520? Perhaps it was a new friendship you started with someone who was once “just a neighbor” when you found yourself spending more time on your front porch rather than at work and began trading tales of things you’d rather be doing. Perhaps it was a newfound hobby born of necessity like baking or of boredom like painting. These are the positives of 2020 that can become the resolutions for a better 2021. Talk to my neighbors more than a grunted “uh” is passing. Learn a new bread recipe and bake a loaf each month even if I can find plenty of bread on the store’s shelf. Read a book that has nothing to do with work, school, or that on-line book club I got roped into last April. Play a game of Clue without wishing I had the candlestick in the dining room RIGHT NOW! Buy a spin bike and work out at home with all the money I saved not paying for the gym membership I never used or even wanted to use until I couldn’t.

So … every day for the next thirty-one begin each day remembering one thing, just one thing that was good, that was a positive for you, that happened this year. In fact, just do 30. Take Christmas off. I will not be surprised that by New Year’s Eve you will have gone from struggling to remember one positive thing every morning to rattling off 30 new positive things each morning! Then you can start 2021 with the resolve that next year you will do it all over again – just the way you did this year.

Giving Thanks, 2020 Style

November 25, 2020November 26, 2020Michael 6 Comments

I want to wish all my friends an early Happy Thanksgiving, here in the US, and across the world. Every nation has some time during the year sort of celebration of gratitude when we give thanks for what we have. Here we picked late November. I suppose it works out well as a practice for the big meal coming up next month. Anyway, here’s my take on the very first American Thanksgiving which we know wasn’t late November, didn’t include turkey and cranberry sauce, and probably didn’t have any sweet pies for dessert. Never one to let the facts stand in the way of a good story though, we soldier on as if it’s always been this way. There has always been a reason to give thanks. There was in 1621, and believe it or not, there is in 2020 too. Happy Thanksgiving, and enjoy!

Across the United States people are preparing for Thanksgiving. Unlike previous years, this Thanksgiving appears on the surface to be fuller of doubt than gratitude. The CoViD-19 pandemic is raging causing major health issues and fueling uncertainty over the best way to mitigate its spread. Politicians are ranting, adding to divisiveness at a time when we should be celebrating, and mimicking the comradery it took to survive in the time of the earliest Thanksgivings. When past years’ preparations took place mostly in the country’s kitchens, this year’s preparations could be in the hands of tech support for video conferencing apps.

Thanksgiving 2020 will be markedly different from any other Thanksgiving in any of our lifetimes, but perhaps not too different from the Thanksgivings of the 1620s. Tradition holds the first “Thanksgiving” was held in 1621 in Plymouth Colony by the English colonists and the Wampanoag People in celebration of the colonists’ gratitude for surviving their first year there. Almost exactly 400 years ago, on November 19, 1620 the Mayflower neared Cape Cod. Two days later the Mayflower Compact, establishing the first self-governing colony in the New World was signed. That did not mean the Pilgrims were ready to build a statehouse and hold a Governor’s Ball. After over two months at sea, they had not yet landed, although land was in sight. Landfall at today’s Provincetown Harbor did not come until December 11 after having set sail from Plymouth England almost 3 full months earlier on September 16, 1620. Remarkably the little vessel made it across the Atlantic Ocean with all souls save one alive, just a lot of seasickness, scurvy, hunger and thirst. It wasn’t until they landed that things got really hard.

Over their first winter in the new colony, forty-five of the original 102 who set sail died, most from what is accepted now to have been leptospirosis, a zoonotic bacterial disease that for many exhibits only mild discomfort such as headache or muscle pain. Had they remained in the Old World they might not have fared better as the numbers of cases of tuberculosis and typhus were increasing in England and a reemergence of the black plague was working its way across northern Africa. Most of Europe was experiencing economic hardship and in some areas outright collapse as wars waged over exploration rights to New World in the west and supply line interruptions as the Ottoman Empire marched in the east. Though the colonists were far from the Old World and its problems, the New World presented its own.

The Mayflower colonists landed already at a disadvantage. They set foot on solid ground soon to be covered in snow. Their seafaring diet was heavily salt laden necessary for the food to last the three month voyage, weakening their muscles sorely needed to construct shelter before they succumbed to the elements. Most of the shelter erected in early winter was destroyed by fire and the colonists moved back onto the ship until spring. Those who survived the winter prepared land for plantings that was likely infested with the leptospira left behind in the urine of the local black rats, setting themselves up for a second wave of the deadly disease.

It wasn’t all bad news. In March of 1621 the colonists met the Wampanoag and signed a pact of coexistence about six weeks later. About that time the Fortune arrived with additional settlers and both ships returned with their crews to England, leaving the colonists (who the crewmembers were certain would starve) and their new treaty partners to survive alone. Survive they did and we continue today the tradition we are told began 399 years ago to give thanks for all we have.

Sometime between then and now, without know it, Charles Dickens may have summarized best why those early settlers would have been thankful and why today we should be even in such seemingly ungrateful times. “Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”

Like the earliest Thanksgiving revelers we are now also experiencing a possible second wave or more likely the resurgence of the wave that never left of a pandemic zoonotic infection, already weakened by a deadly first go-round with the disease. Just as in those times the distress extends beyond our corner of the world and we welcome reinforcement against the virus, today in the form of a vaccine. Also like those settlers had, there are strangers willing to help us now. They are the pharmaceutical chemists working on treatments and cures, epidemiologists developing the vaccines, and the anonymous volunteers participating in the vaccine trials. Closer to home there are others who are keeping radio and television stations and newspapers and other media outlets up and running to keep you informed. Closer still are the people stocking your supermarkets and pharmacies, staffing the police and fire stations, working the ambulances and emergency medical services, and working in hospitals and medical offices keeping you fed, safe and healthy, and there are the clergy, the priests, rabbis, ministers and other clerics maintaining all the houses of worship to serve your spiritual needs. And then there are you! The collective you, the strangers to somebody else, helping those you pass on the street or wait behind in line helping your neighbors. You are the helpful stranger mostly staying home unless you have to be out and then washing your hands, keeping your distance, and wearing your mask

When we reflect on our present blessings these strangers are certainly among them. Borrowing from another English writer, C. S. Lewis who told us, “Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present,” I speak for the masses when I say we are grateful for all you have done, and we love to see you are still helping today!