Covid Collection Archives - Page 2 of 3

January 9, 2021October 20, 2021

2021: The Year of Apprehension

*Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com – In remembrance of New Years Eves past*

The COVID-19 pandemic, the battered democracy, the turbulence of racial and economic struggles – this is definitely the Year of Apprehension. We’ll probably all survive. Even if a lot of people continue to suffer and die and need our attention.

Given the difficulty of looking ahead, I dug into the archives for a look back. New Year blogs – and a bunch of New Year stories that pre-date the era of the blog – turn out to offer many bright spots and a little reassurance.

New Year’s 2000 – That one was fun. Remember the Y2K problem? The Millennium Bug? Computers everywhere, unequipped to deal with this new digit coming after 1999, would be crashing and burning and taking us all down with them? My husband and I actually attended a somewhat subdued New Year’s Eve dinner party at which one of the other guests was an official of a global engineering company which will remain un-named. He spent the evening with an ostentatious black box at hand – during dinner he did get it off the table and into his lap – because of mysterious dangers that might need his immediate attention at the stroke of midnight. We followed that stroke across time zones. Our highest moments of hilarity were speculating about exactly what that black box was going to do to us all when he pushed his magic button; our engineer friend was not amused. The covid bug does make the Y2K bug seem quaint.

When New Year’s 2009 arrived I was heavy into brain exercise, having become a participant in a brain health study not long before. That piece reflected on the proliferation of brain health studies – New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the University of Texas’ Center for Vital Longevity to name two – specifically targeting the aging population. The resultant general recommendation was for everyone to plunge into word games and math games and we’d all be fine. Having still never found the time to get into games of any sort, I guess my brain just continues to muddle along.

In 2010, as the year turned, I was still preoccupied with brain stuff: esoteric questions (and some more fancy studies) about the passage of time. It was a sort of “Where in the heck did ten years go?” rumination. Considering the fact that the past year has seemed at least thirty years long, this perspective also makes past issues seem quaint.

For many of the in between years I included a favorite poem, just because poetry seems a good way to start a new year. So for these troubled times I offer the first and last few verses of Ian Frazier’s priceless holiday poem “Greetings, Friends!” in the December 28 issue – back in that old year – of The New Yorker.

Friends one and all! Let us unmute,

Excite the timbrel and the lute,

Make merry with our pots and pan

(The hour is seven, so we can),

Shout from the balcony or lawn

For joy at what will soon be gone,

And praises sing for what is here:

The end to this undreamt-of year!

Frazier goes on for 70+ poignant and hilarious lines, rhyming in friends and neighbors and people we know of or wish we knew; and finally winds up thus:

Let gladness rise, despite, despite;

“Love one another” routs the night,

And kindness is a folding chair

We carry with us everywhere.

In depth of winter, prospects brighten;

Mighty streams of light will lighten

The miles ahead, and goodness reign –

Once more, the angels’ grand refrain!

Thanks, Ian Frazier, and everyone who helped us though the old year with reminders that grace and humor still abound.

Happy New Year, and welcome, 2021!

This essay also appears on Medium.com

Covid Collection/General interest

December 28, 2020October 7, 2021

How to Stay Sane in 2021

by Fran Johns

“Everything is not either all bad or all good,” observed my friend Oli. “There’s a little bit of good in things that are bad, and a little bit of bad in things that are good.”

This was after a discussion of how COVID-19 is affecting the entire country, in ways almost too numerous to face. Oli tends to get deeply involved in conversations of these sorts.

“For example, take pollution,” he said. “Since we’ve been staying home more, pollution has fallen dramatically.” Other observations were possibly less significant, but still to the point: “Noses aren’t as cold as they used to be, thanks to mask-wearing.”

Oli is seven years old.

This issue is way beyond “Out of the mouths of babes . . .” Surviving the weeks and months ahead – vaccine or no vaccine – is going to take a good bit of creative effort. As someone who has not seen her family for well over a year, who has had moments of panic and nights of insomnia over exposure to the virus – real or imagined – and who suffers from hug-deprivation to a major extent, I do not look forward to more months and months of masking, distancing and observing every precaution 24 hours a day. Because I live in a senior housing facility I will probably be an early recipient of the vaccine, but little will change other than perhaps feeling a little personally safer. Too much remains unknown, too many people will continue to sicken and die well into the (otherwise surely happier) new year, but these vestiges of the old year need to hang out with us until a new normal evolves in the new one.

So how to get through it with our sanity?

I think Oli is onto something. Finding ways to counter the sadness, the feelings of isolation and desolation, the sheer continuing disorientation of the months ahead might just be easier if it’s possible to discern a little good within the bad – while minimizing the bad that clouds the good.

This site, over the past few months, has featured brief glimpses into the struggles of aging, the pleasures of city walks, the art of communicating while masked, San Francisco city life and California wildfires, and one of the many great losses of 2020: Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Looking back, there’s one common thread: good was always found alongside the bad.

RBG’s legacy is wide and lasting. Amid the horrors of the wildfires there were extraordinary acts of kindness. Masks can’t keep strangers from interacting with eye-messages. Outdoor dining might just become a permanent fixture across the U.S. as it’s long been elsewhere: think Parisian sidewalks. Even among the sequestered elderly, friends and laughter make life livable. And most recently, with the remarkable convergence of Jupiter and Saturn just before the solstice, there was proof that no amount of stress on earth can eliminate the wonder of the universe.

Thanks for noticing, Oli.

Happy New Year to us all.

This essay also appears on Medium.com

Covid Collection/General interest/Health/seniors

December 2, 2020October 7, 2021

Talking With Eyes 101

by Fran Johns

I am a hopelessly public social being. The annoying kind who says Hi there! and Good Morning! to every passerby on the sidewalk or the park trail. Who stops perfect strangers pushing strollers to comment on cute toddlers in puffy snowsuits. At random moments I’ve been known to walk up to frazzled moms in grocery stores whose small boys are demolishing the place and say, “One day he’ll be 26 and he’ll send you flowers for no reason at all, and you’ll know it was all worth it.”

So now, along with all the rest of you, I am silenced. Who can toss out a muffled Hi there! before the passerby has long passed? Masked strangers in their faces have to be pretty scary for toddlers in strollers. Increasingly isolated from friends and family by the coronavirus itself, we’re getting more isolated from our fellow masked humans by the day.

In the interest of brotherhood and sisterhood, I offer the following solutions:

The raised eyebrow hand salute. Starting about a yard or so from the passerby, raise both eyebrows simultaneously with the hand nearest the passerby, palm out. Works every time. Nobody even opens his or her mouth (risking the escape of those scary droplets) but you’ve acknowledged your fellow human, and your eyes have done the Hi there thing.

The eye-laugh. Trust me on this. The eye-laugh says Hi there, friend! If you actually (silently) laugh behind your mask, your eyes get friendly. Passing humans see a friendly passing human, which encourages us all to believe there is still humanity and friendliness in the world.

The open-eyed head tilt. If you don’t feel like laughing, you can try opening your eyes wide and tilting your head toward the passerby. This is the most abbreviated of Hi there!s. But interestingly enough, it often evokes an eye-laugh from a passing stranger.

Thanks to the ubiquity of Zoom gatherings, our colleagues and pods – friends & family & such as qualify for frequent contact – still recognize the bottom halves of our faces. The rest of humankind, though, are consigned to eye contact alone for now. When we’ll all be able to wander around unmasked again is an open question that only the very brave or very foolish are likely to try answering.

Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex summed it up nicely in an op ed published recently by the New York Times: “We are adjusting to a new normal where faces are concealed by masks, but it’s forcing us to look into one another’s eyes – sometimes filled with warmth, other times with tears. For the first time, in a long time, as human beings, we are really seeing one another.

Covid Collection/General interest

November 13, 2020October 27, 2021

Living While Boarded Up

by Fran Johns

There was dancing in the streets all over San Francisco on November 7^th. I was walking in the Presidio, trying not to get wiped out by flying cyclists whizzing downhill shouting Biden/Harriss!!! It’s been pretty much party mode ever since.

But downtown — and in a few other areas — preparations had long been made for the mayhem that wasn’t. It would be hard not to agree with business owners who boarded up. Protests following the George Floyd killing and racial unrest at other times in recent months brought out the bad guys along with the earnest. There was widespread, costly looting. I live not far from a BevMo store that looked as if someone had tossed a large bomb through the front door. So if I owned a business I would have boarded up too.

Following the election of Joe Biden which was finally declared on Saturday, November 7th, though, there was only dancing. And since then, it’s fascinating to see signs of how life goes on around (and behind and in front of) the plywood. This is a quick Plywood City tour.

Some businesses behind the plywood have gone under and won’t be back. But others are bravely carrying on. At Louis Vuitton — there are people out there still buying $3,000 handbags? — a polite security guard at the door carefully limited the number of shoppers entering. And inside (the polite security guard let me peek) shoppers and staff kept their masks on and distances measured.

Local billboard creativity has definitely peaked. On some of the plywood sheets there were phone numbers to call or — frequently — “We’re Open!” messages pointing to the plywood door.

At some locations, the irony was painful. One nonprofit (not that far from the Louis Vuitton store, actually) which was created to help the homeless covered its plywood with optimistic messaging. But it managed to offer a likely spot for one down-on-his-luck guy to construct a resting place at the same time.

Still, high above the boarded-up storefronts and sheltered-in-place citizenry, somebody remembered to hoist the flag.

Covid Collection/General interest

November 2, 2020October 7, 2021

Dining Out in San Francisco, 2020

by Fran Johns

San Franciscans are big on dining out – lunching out, breakfasting out, drinking out, all things gustatory and convivial. So COVID has not been fun. But bars and restaurants have discovered a happy workaround, and the city seems equally happy to assist.

In virtually every corner of San Francisco, outdoor tables have sprung up. They hug the storefronts on the sidewalk, they cluster on hillsides with propped-up legs to keep dishes from sliding to the pavement. They spill into the street where parking spots vanish in their wake, and if anybody’s complaining I haven’t heard about it.

Officially, they are “Parklets,” at least the ones with sidewalls that create more or less permanent booths. Several I’ve seen have not received Parklet status, so they are set up every afternoon and taken down at closing time – a new job for wait staff that may drive them nuts, but at least it means there are customers to wait on.

Actually, there seem to be a LOT of customers. My strictly anecdotal assessment of outdoor dining in a dozen different neighborhoods is that about half – mostly those in fairly upscale areas – are crazy-busy at mealtimes and happy hours. Along the sketchier streets vacancies are commonplace and it’s not unknown to see a dozing non-customer taking advantage of a comfy place to sit.

Even though San Francisco weather does lend itself to al fresco dining for much of the year, we do get those occasional yicky days. Many parklet spots are wind-protected and ready for cold (giant heaters between tables) or rain (Please. It’s been so dangerously dry for so long in California that most citizens would welcome soggy hamburgers.) Paris, which is more than a few dining outdoor generations ahead of us, seems to take it own changes of weather in stride.

Newcomers to streetside dining sometimes have to learn the tricks of it all the hard way. For instance, one may spot a shady, well-secluded table on a busy thoroughfare and happily settle in, only to have the large truck that had been quietly parked at the curb pull away without so much as a polite nod – leaving you exposed to the thrum of traffic and acutely aware of why everybody else had chosen the more crowded together tables around the corner. It’s also useful to consider, when making reservations, which side of Fillmore Street, say, gets the blazing sun between 11 and 4; there’s only so much protection against California sunshine.

San Franciscans are still taking COVID protection seriously. Masks stay on until everyone’s served, tables are reasonably distanced and most parklets have dividers between customers that actually enhance the feeling of intimate dining.

Is this the New Normal? Who knows. Every day it gets a little harder to remember what the Old Normal felt like. But the New might eventually work its permanent way into the hearts and streets of San Francisco.

This essay also appears on Medium.com

Covid Collection/General interest

October 23, 2020October 7, 2021

Anne Lamott Hates COVID-19

by Fran Johns

Probably most of us hate COVID-19. But when it comes to identifying the reasons why, Anne Lamott can condense them into a few very well chosen words. In this season of poorly chosen words – face masks represent “a culture of silence, slavery, and social death,” or carefully chosen no-words, if you watched the Amy Coney Barrett hearings – Lamott’s words have the effect of a lemon verbena air spray.

“I miss the recognizable world,” she says. “the casual warmth of the old world. I used to hug and kiss everyone, and you can’t hug and kiss anyone when you’re standing in your little circle. I miss hugging and kissing everyone. It was so carbonating, and uplifting.”

Maybe that’s it? We are all just finally uncarbonated.

“I miss skin,” Lamott says. “People’s necks to burrow in. I miss people.” May we all please have someone’s neck to burrow into soon.

I first met Anne Lamott when she was leading a writers workshop at Book Passage in Marin in 1993, finishing up work on Bird by Bird, arguably the first book to propel her toward becoming a Household Name writer beloved by uncounted millions. But this was pre-fame. I’d been a newspaper & magazine writer forever. My new, Final husband The Great Encourager brought a small ad into the kitchen one night and said, “You ought to try fiction. This workshop could help. And you’ll love Annie.” Which was an understatement.

“I miss the beloved community of my church,” Lamott says. Many of us have beloved communities – faith communities, book groups, yoga classes, those places where we burrowed into someone’s neck, or touched someone’s hand as we settled in. If we are lucky we have a bunch of them. But they’ve all gone virtual and we can’t reach out and touch anyone.

Lamott and I put our faith communities at the top of the list of beloveds: mine for fairly traditional, progressive, urban Calvary Presbyterian in San Francisco, hers for much smaller St Andrew Presbyterian in Marin – a remarkable assemblage of God’s people for which this writer cannot find an adequate descriptor so you’ll just have to follow the link. Several times in past years we’ve done fundraisers for St Andrew at Calvary, which have been highlights of my performance career. (Essentially, I say, “Hello, Annie. What about . . .” and she picks it up, and 30 minutes later we get a standing ovation.) Recently St Andrew was doing a little budget-boosting with a pop-up marketplace of Black Lives Matter T-shirts and totes, and I had a brilliant idea about promoting that; but like most of my brilliant ideas it was too shrimpy and too late. If you’d like to send a contribution now, though, that’ll be fine. There’s a donate button on the website.

But if you’re missing all of the same things? Is there no hope? Anyone who knows Anne Lamott knows there is hope. And joy abundant, light to overcome the darkness.

“We’re doing what we can with what still works,” Lamott says. “I am so excited to see people I know even with their masks on. You do the litany: ‘Is everybody okay? Are you voting in person?’ There is a lot of gentleness. I study this. People let other people go first, first in line; people are bringing their better selves to the arena.”

“Grace,” she adds, “is like letting other people go first.” So these are some of the things Lamott loves, things that bring joy despite everything COVID has thrown at us:

“I love church by Zoom. So many people with physical challenges couldn’t get there, and now I can see them on Zoom. I love seeing the little kids.

“I think a lot about what the virus has given us. It has slowed everybody down. Made everybody do a deep dive into who they are. Before, most of us were so confined by our busyness, so confined by the things we were good at. But now we’re saying ‘Who am I without my rituals? Who am I without racing from place to place?’”

Lamott also sees a lot of practical goodness resulting from the pandemic. “Everybody’s going into their worst drawers to clean them out,” she observes. “There’s a huge amount of free stuff on the sidewalks. We went to a free library place and came away with forty books to give to shut-ins and older people.”

And the blessings. “The opportunities for service are just huge,” Lamott notes. “Phone calls still work. There’s an awareness of what does work.”

Speaking of which, Lamott fans will be glad to know she’s not been idle. Her new book, Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage will be out in March. “Do you know that twilight is at dawn and at dusk?” (No, I actually did not.) “I learned that,” the author says with Lamott-like awe. The new book – now in the publishing phase, meaning the author can rest – promises enlightenment and inspiration.

Meanwhile, COVID-19 “can’t steal the warmth and goodwill that we have for each other,” Lamott says. She is reveling in the fall colors that underlie that warmth and goodwill, and invites us all to go anti-COVID by paying attention to those colors, listening for birds like the golden whistler currently making its brief annual visit to her backyard, heightening our awareness of the seasons.

COVID may have numbed us with isolation and inconvenience, but Lamott believes it has brought us something else. “There’s an awakening to the beauty.”

Covid Collection/General interest

July 4, 2020October 7, 2021

Covid-Chaneling Punxsutawney Phil

by Fran Johns

I think I know how Punxsutawney Phil feels. He emerges from a comfortable dark hole, looks around at the universe, makes a decision about how the future might look and returns to his comfortable dark hole.

The thing about it is, Phil only has to do this once a year. We above-ground types are being asked to do it over and over, and it can be trying for the average citizen. Meanwhile, pity the poor mayors and governors who are – in the total absence of national leadership – trying to advise us. Punxsutawney Phil has, at least, an Inner Circle (don’t look at me, this information comes straight from Phil’s Wikipedia page) to advise him about the forecast. We’ve got Anthony Fauci. But God only knows (and She has an awful lot on Her plate these days) whether science and reason will or will not be allowed the microphone.

(This space being mildly committed to avoiding overt political statements, I will skip right over the resemblances between Punxsutawney Phil and that other prominent American who sometimes pokes his head above the black hole of despotism and stupidity he inhabits, sniffs the hostile atmosphere and sinks right back into a comfy chair to watch Fox News.)

But out here in the real world. San Francisco, for instance.

California, having successfully addressed the coronavirus early on, recently proclaimed semi-liberation day. Announcements of Phase I re-openings were made. Everyone prepared to emerge from whatever dark hole of confinement he or she had been inhabiting. Then apparently way too many citizens of the Golden State threw caution (and masks, and social distancing) to the winds. Infections are running rampant, restrictions are being re-imposed, plywood that had begun to be removed is being nailed back in place. It is beyond bewildering.

So, much like Punxsutawney Phil after a lonnnng hibernation, recently I ventured out of the dark assisted-living hole I inhabit. Authorized to go for an unsupervised walk to restore my health and sanity, I set out, due uphill, for Lafayette Park high atop San Francisco. Here is how it went:

Blocks 1 and 2: Everything’s fine. But when did I get this out of shape?

Block 3: OMG, a person not wearing a mask is walking right toward me. Do I step into the traffic to avoid his germs? Should I call 911?

Block 4: See that lady walking into the apartment building a few yards to the left? She is coughing. Coughing. I summon my diminishing strength to sprint across the street before the light changes.

Block 5: Thank heavens, the park is in sight. At least all those steps at the entrance are shallow enough that I can probably still handle them. And there aren’t a whole lot of contagious-looking people hanging around. It’s important to be out in the sunshine. I need to keep that in mind.

Block 6: But here they are. CROWDS. How do I know whether that group all smushed together over there is really a family? If I take my usual uphill path, can I maintain six-foot distance from everybody? All these happy people, what’s the likelihood they are asymptomatic covid-positives? Anyway, don’t these people know about masks? The view of the Bay is spectacular.

Going home it’s all downhill.

This essay first appeared on Medium.com, interesting site I’ve been writing for these past few months. You might want to check it out too.

Covid Collection/General interest

June 26, 2020October 7, 2021

Wear a Face Mask? Oh, why bother . . .

by Fran Johns

CAN WE LAUGH — OR MAYBE SMILE — OUR WAY THROUGH THIS?

“CORONAFEST 2020!” read the ad for Mr. Trump’s Tulsa rally that floated around the internet, “Come for the Racism, Stay for the Plague!” And as a sort of postscript below: “Be sure to reserve your ICU bed and ventilator.” We’re going to hope this stays funny. Although I know the Bible says not to invoke harm upon your fellow human beings, it’s really hard not to wish a moderately severe case of covid19 on every unmasked attendee. I don’t actually want anyone to die, even if Mr. Trump would then be reducing his voter base – just get sick enough to make a point.

When did public health get hijacked by crazy politics? I live in San Francisco, where we started off the pandemic with early sheltering-in-place that kept our numbers low. But our numbers, at least those showing reported cases (3,400+) and deaths (48+) continue to rise. Some other factors are “meeting target goals,” but the list I obsessively keep has never showed a decline in cases since I started obsessing on March 26. We are slowly and cautiously re-opening around here – even geezers in my assisted living fortress now leave for non-emergency medical appointments. I have one this week that is a pleasant 10-block walk away, and you never saw anyone this excited about going to the dentist. However. A few days ago, in the balmy sunshine of Lafayette Park, people weary with staying in were practically shoulder-to-shoulder on the grass, 90% of them without mandatory-in-SF masks.

We seem to have parallel narratives: “Masks & distancing will get us through this with the least damage” – or “Oh, why bother.” The difference between this pandemic and the last is that it’s not just the crazies pushing the Oh why bother. Remember the old H1N1 swine flu a decade ago? Seems almost quaint. The country was prepared, met the virus head-on, came up with a vaccine opposed only by the crazies. To be honest, vaccine supplies fell short and were funneled to the most endangered: children, healthcare workers, pregnant women, people with pre-existing conditions. But compared to the novel coronavirus, H1N1 does look like a pussycat.

Here’s my question. Is there a way to get to the other side of this pandemic without major suffering – more overrun ERs and ICUs, upwards of 200,000 probable deaths this year – or minor discomfort? Keeping six feet away from all those people you want to hug (and many you’d settle just to high five) can sometimes seem more major than minor on the behavioral difficulty scale. But it’s doable. Masks are hot and bothersome and they fog up your glasses. I have a serious dislike of even my new overpriced mask, which I bought because it’s light and washable and theoretically doesn’t fog up my glasses. (They lied. It fogs.) Still, I’m wearing the blasted thing every time I walk out the door.

Maybe a little humor will help. Political jokes? Given where we are, you might as well laugh. Or subtle joys such as a friend suggested. “My boss drives me up the wall,” she said. “But I can look at him with straightforward eyes while I’m sticking my tongue out behind my mask.” A blog about H1N1 that I posted more than a decade ago had a conclusion that still fits, if you substitute “mask” for “vaccine.” In any event, the last line is still appropriate:

The best news of the pandemic is probably the fact that it has become fodder for stand-up comics and comedy shows. Once we start laughing at things they tend to whittle themselves down to sanity. My favorite message so far came from host Jon Daily on the Daily Show, in response to some of the craziness coming from the likes of Sean Hannity and Glen Beck. What we need, Daily suggested, is a vaccine against the vaccine, so we could have peace of mind while being vaccinated.

A little peace of mind goes a long way these days. (franjohns.net 10/25/09)

(This essay was posted earlier on Medium.com)