Look at that! My wife went to Target today and bought me three six-packs of diet Snapple (peach flavor). Boy, was I ever happy.

Tonight for supper, I made some spaghetti I brought back from Italy (it tastes noticeably better), dressed with asparagus tips I cooked down in olive oil, onion, and lots of garlic. It was delicious.

As a family, we sang and said a Reader’s Vespers service. Then Lucas and I retired to the TV room to watch Amadeus. And those were the day’s highlight.

Over to you good people.

From Queens, New York:

Thanks for the Pandemic updates. Reading the stories from your readers has been cathartic and encouraging. Which is why I didn’t plan on adding my two cents, in part, because I’m at the front end of the US’s story and it almost seemed cruel to talk about something that I know is coming their way. Why make things worse for them? Today, however, I’ve reached a point where I just need to express what many of us in New York are feeling, in an attempt to focus those who are refusing to face reality.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve witnessed, on one hand, a liberal friend whose rabid hatred of Trump is so all-consuming that every Instagram post spirals further and further into Dr. Strangelove hysteria, as if Trump created the virus, utterly oblivious to the heartache coming to his safe suburban cul-de-sac. On the flip side, my sister tells me about her Facebook friend who posted a video apparently “proving” the virus is a Democrat hoax and saying that Elmhurst Hospital in Queens is empty. She shared this information a day after my 22 year-old son returned from his first day of work at Elmhurst–the supposed empty hospital–as an emergency civilian employee hired by the city to help the overwhelmed hospital staff. He went to the hospital expecting his job to include clerical stuff, phone calls, basic admin. Upon arrival, however, he was told that because of a dearth of workers, he would be part of the morgue detail, moving dead bodies out to the refrigerated trucks. 22 years old, civilian, no training. (He’s trying to get reassigned.) If these plebeians think Elmhurst Hospital is empty, they should feel free to work in my son’s stead. Without a mask. He said it was chaotic and definitely not empty. I drove by the hospital this morning at 8am. There was already a line of sick people standing 20 feet apart, waiting to enter the tent where they get tested before admittance (if they’re bad enough).

It feels like so many people are consumed with their myopic tribal cult-like mantras that they are making things much worse for the rest of us. And it’s pretty bad right now. We’re finishing only week three of lock-down and my elderly neighbor Jack has died, my teenager’s classmate Jose found his dad dead on the floor Monday morning, our neighbor lost a 28 year-old asthmatic friend today, George from two doors down went out in an ambulance and we still can’t get word of his condition, and our son watched the National Guard carry another neighbor out in a body bag yesterday. In one day I’ve gotten prayer requests for James, a husband and father of three teens, on a ventilator with organ failure; Cara and Barbara, two mothers in their 60’s fighting the virus at home with coughs and temps of 104; Adam, in his 30’s, rushed to the hospital from the excruciating pain of breathing what felt like lungs full of broken glass; two young nurses fresh out of school terrified as their first job is working the Covid floors; and a family trying to figure out how to work in ICU and come home to their extended family without spreading the disease. Instead of Amber Alerts on my phone, I am regularly getting alerts calling for any certified medical professionals to volunteer their services. My friend is an anesthesiologist in the ICU of one of the city’s largest hospitals. They have 5 times the number of intubated patients than usual. They have emptied all the operating rooms and the ER and have turned them into ICU beds for ventilator beds. She expects it to get worse for at least another week. This is one hospital but they’re all like that. If you have a heart attack, appendicitis, car accident, stroke, allergic reaction, or any of the myriad problems that typically put a person in the ER, don’t go to the hospital. Maybe the ship in the Hudson will take you once they get through the paperwork.

The weight of loss and low-level anticipatory fear is increasing with each day. The panic is gone. Now it’s just dread. Will I get it? Did I get it? Was I asymptomatic but infected someone who died from it? When I get it, will it be a headache and slight cough? Will I be in such pain I wish I was dead? Will I be intubated but die from organ failure anyway? Will I make it through three weeks of ventilation but have significant long-term and possible permanent damage to my body or my brain? These are the options. To see people cavalierly telling us we’re being fooled or we just need to be strong or get rid of Trump and Samaritans Purse or be our best selves or whatever empty rot that the average activist/influencer is spreading is absolutely demoralizing for those of us drowning in death. And don’t get me started on the elite New Yorkers, safe in their doorman buildings, 6 and 7-figure jobs intact, arguing that Samaritans Purse should be run out of town because a “person on the margins” might not feel safe. The utter disregard for the people who might now have a chance at a bed and continued life is beyond me. Jonathan Merritt should be ashamed of himself. Without those additional beds, they will be sent home with only an inhaler like Jose’s (now dead) dad when he tried to get admitted. If you look at the map of the zip-codes hit hardest by the virus, it ain’t Park Slope or the Upper Westside. The neighborhoods with the highest concentration are where the real persons on the margins live. It’s unconscionable that these activists choose this dire moment to cram their agenda down dying people’s throats. We do not need this intellectually lazy, vapid blather from people who cannot see what’s right in front of them.

So this is where I am. The night before Palm Sunday. As a Christian, I know not to put my faith in princes. I know where my future lies. So I’m working God’s word into my every fiber and remembering to Whom I belong. And He’s giving me courage and peace. But boy, it’s not easy, with these careless proclamations and insipid claims of expertise polluting the airways. Stop. Please just stop. And get ready. Because it’s coming your way.

From northwest Ohio:

We are in northwest Ohio, south of Toledo. Thanks to reading you and your letters from Wyoming Doc, we were well prepared with food, medicine and other supplies and it came as no surprise when everything began closing down. I will echo what others from Ohio have reported about how impressive Gov. Mike DeWine and Dr. Amy Acton have been in their leadership. It seemed like an overreaction for many at the time but most have come around quickly in the past three weeks.

It is an odd feeling walking around our suburban neighborhood, where everything seems normal on the surface but there is an underlying level of tension to all interactions. Our neighbor across the street will be 95 years old on Tuesday, was a veteran in WWII and has outlived two wives. We asked him (from safely across the street) if he had seen anything like this in his lifetime, and he responded “No, not ever.”

My husband is a school psychologist, so he is working from home now but is still responsible for meeting state deadlines and ensuring special education students are well served by their school district, so he is regularly having virtual meetings and writing reports. I work for our local library, which is currently closed, but staff are expected to be utilizing Continuing Education resources in the meantime. Our staff are also providing virtual services such as Children’s Storytime and “Chat with a Reference Librarian.” Thankfully our family is fine financially as we are both still being paid for the near future. Our Mennonite church is in the process of figuring out how to meet online- last week all participants such as Scripture readers, piano player, children’s time speaker and Pastor all used Zoom to piece together the routine of a regular service. I tend to lean Luddite towards technology, and over the past few months tech for me has simultaneously become an indispensable lifeline and also been exposed for a thin facsimile of real human encounters.

Our children are in their first year at the local Catholic school where they had recently begun to adjust and make some friends (4th, 3rd, and 1st grades). Schooling from home is less “homeschooling” than it is coordinating with teachers online to make sure kids finish all pre-arranged assignments. Our oldest just had her 10th birthday yesterday and she was very disappointed that she could not have any friends or family over to celebrate. I think we managed to have a good birthday for her, the main difference being that Grandma and Grandpa and aunts/uncles/cousins got to watch her blow out candles over Zoom. We have tried to walk the fine line between making our kids aware of the seriousness of the situation and trying to make the time at home as peaceful and meaningful as possible.

In your blog posts recently you have mentioned your admiration for NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his bold stand for life in this crisis, even going so far as to suggest that the Democrats should find a way to put him on the presidential ticket instead of Joe Biden. I lived in western New York State for the first 25 years of my life, and I can tell you there is a simmering resentment towards the city and the politicians who so often prioritize NYC over the rest of the state. Politically most of the state is Republican but their votes are outnumbered by NYC, so many positions state level and higher are filled by Democrats. The state has one of the higher tax rates in the nation but the peoples’ perception is that most or all of the tax money goes to help the city, leaving our rural areas economically run-down and struggling. Whether true or not, this is the belief of almost everyone I know from western NY. Then in the past few days Gov. Cuomo announced that he will be signing an executive order authorizing the National Guard to redistribute ventilators and PPE from hospitals around the state that aren’t using them. I wanted to write to tell you that this is how Cuomo will be perceived throughout the rest of the state, once again siphoning off resources from upstate to be directed to New York City and its needs and leaving our rural hospitals with less resources. To be fair, he has clarified to say he would not be “seizing” ventilators from upstate, and the intention is to replace or reimburse any redistributed equipment. Still, the damaging perception is now embedded in people’s minds, regardless of how this order is implemented.

Cuomo’s original announcement:
https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-executive-order-allowing-state
Reactions from several state officials:
https://news.wbfo.org/post/governors-ventilator-order-not-sitting-well-wny-lawmakers-hospital-leaders

Apologies for the length of this letter, and thank you for the time you spend reading and curating these. Best wishes to you and your family.

From Houston:

Like most folks, I getting used to the life of quarantine, lock downs, and social distancing. Though we could quibble over prudential courses of action in the face of this crisis, the fact that it has come upon us during Lent, should cause one to take notice and to begin thinking about some things. I know I have been.

The fact that we will not have Holy Week services this week is excruciating. Of course, we remotely link up with Mass at our Parish and make an act of Spiritual Communion. I’m grateful that we have the technology and the personal means to do this, but it is not the same. I had the great privilege of having the Mass said everyday at the school where I teach. I have to be honest and say that I took that tremendous grace for granted, some days choosing to get some extra work in for just rest in between classes. By the grace of God, I will not make that mistake again.

However, it is not all a loss. By the grace of God, a priest at our parish will hear our family’s confessions next week. When I got confirmation, I cannot begin to express the joy that I experienced.

Below is a poem, albeit it, a long one, that I recently completed regarding the virus. I am naturally a fearful and worrying sort of person, but that sort of life is a burden. Our Lord tells us to be of good cheer in the face of tribulation, for as He say’s, He has overcome the World. This poem was written with that in mind even if it is not explicit. The world is so full of His Goodness and Beauty, even in the face of suffering and trouble. Nothing can really drown the reality of this fact- no pandemic, no economic collapse, no suffering and no death. It can only be lost by those of us who have become illiterate to the Grammar of His Existence that He has written into the world. Each flower, cloud, person, memory, suffering, and joy is just but one precious syllable in the great narrative that he is composing our redemption and His Glory.

God’s best to you and yours and to all who read this blog.

Covid19

“Signs undergo a…devolution.
[For instance, a sparrow can]
disappear in the sarcophagus
of its sign. But a recovery
is possible. A sparrow
can be recovered under
the conditions of catastrophe.”
– Walker Percy
“…the overall aspect of life is
not a state of need and hunger,
but instead, wealth, bounty,
even absurd squandering… .”
-Friedrich Nietzsche
I.

The morning is still.
The sky is a steel sheet
shrouding the neighborhood.
No one is going
to work today and
the children will all
be home from school.
In the distance,
a long flight of Grackles
train the sky
in a migratory wave
of darkness.
The pitch of their screeching
fills the air.
Then they are gone,
and it is silent.
Only the sound
of the mourning dove,
and the whir
of a lone passenger jet
stir the waking air.

For a people

perpetually in motion,
an imposition of stillness,
is a sort of forced purgation.

Let him who can, accept it.

II.

From the Amazonian Basin
the Martins have returned.
They soften the sky
in airy arabesques.
Just above the willows

an egret passes,
the steadiness of its wing beat
keeping time with the breath
of hours. Cirrocumulus clouds
dab long, white rows

along the blue, canvas sky,
then melt further out
into featureless sheets,
sunlight piercing them
in thin shafts of bright,
yellowed glass.

The day continues
its retirement
in soft breezes fragrant
with orange blossoms.
The sky is still blue, but
turning to hues of twilight.

Slowly, comes the night,
the sky still blind of stars,
save for Orion’s Rigel,
gleaming brightly
like a tiny, glass bead.

It is a time of trouble.
Though around the time
the light left that star
Henry IV’s outburst left
Beckett dead at the altar.

For a people who long for
worldly and personal security
an imposition of stillness,
is to come into the twilight
of a perennial delusion.

Let him who can, renounce it.

III.

She didn’t want to come.
She wanted to stay home
and play with a friend.
She is coming to the age
where peers begin to
overshadow parents.
But she came, her silence
filling the car like a fog.
The landscape begins
to roll and she begins
taking note of the carpets
of wildflowers and the wandering
cattle in the fields.

The fog begins to lift.

Driving westward
the fields turn
in kaleidoscopic
carpets of primrose,
prairie fire, and
bluebonnets.
The clouds part,
the sunlight runs across
the prairie floor
setting it ablaze
in bright fires
of bitterweed.

The tree-ringed pond is quiet,
only passing clouds
stir its surface.
In full bloom,
a huisache leans over
the pond’s edge,
her canopy cascading over
the water.
To an uncluttered mind
she is a supple dryad
bathing, her saffron hair
singing sunlight
and fragrant with spring.

At the site of Old Baylor,
she leads her brother to
climb the oaks, bent and
gnarled from many years.
They begin to explore the
scattered old buildings.
“Daddy! Come here!”, she
shouts. She is waving to
me from the porch of the old
schoolhouse. “Can you
believe they all went to
school in one room?”
The doors are locked
but from the old porch
she peers through the
window, calling out what
she sees inside. Her hand
holds the door facing
as she looks in. Against
the old clapboard,
her hand is so new,
softly absorbing
the accumulation of years
and the echoes of ghosts.

She and I look out
from Academy Hill.
The ruins of Tryon Hall behind us,
the meadow spreads outward in
rolling waves of prairie fire,
bluebonnets and waving grass,
cresting in dappled groves
of oak and ash.
The clouds build themselves
into billowy palaces,
ephemeral structures
of light and shade
towering above the
rolling landscape
so reminiscent of
the studies of Constable.

It is a time of trouble.
But here we are.
Some to walk along the
wildflower meadows,
other to takes pictures
of bright faced children
among the bluebonnets.
Two hundred years before us,
the first Anglo’s came,
and before them, the Spanish,
but this land has seen
some form of human habitation for,
at least, nine thousand years,
paleo-tribes like the Xaraname.
They were here long before
the first stone was laid at Giza.
They are gone now,
as the others, and
as we will be, and
as those who come
after us.

For a people
perpetually in a state of agitation,
an imposition of stillness,
is what, in a more attuned time,
would be considered a form of mercy.

Let him who may, see it.

IV.

The day closes and the sky is free of clouds.
No trace of the sun save for the horizon
oozing the plasma of its descending amber.
Just above it, the sky is colorless,
then ascends in shades of pale blue.
The sky is clean glass, holding no shadow
save for the distant flight of birds.

Then further up, almost out of sight,
the moon shows a slender crescent,
faint as breath on pane of glass.
It will be a sign in the hours deepening
toward darkness. shining as warmly
as the light that beckons beneath
the door to a darkened room.

For a people afflicted with a time of trouble,
an imposition of stillness is an opportunity
to affirm something greater than
trouble is here.

Let him who knows
that he is weak,
with good cheer,
ask for the courage
to arise and to seek.

From Memphis:

Here in Memphis we are seeing a rising number of Covid 19 cases, but still not at a high level. But we had a taste of the terrible things to come when our beloved pastor, Tim Russell, died from complications of Covid 19 earlier this week. The social distancing makes it more difficult to minister to the grieving, but our choir found a way to try to provide some comfort to Tim’s widow:

Keep them coming, friends. Write to me at rod — at — amconmag — dot — com, and don’t forget to put PANDEMIC DIARIES in the subject line, and include where you’re writing from.