Covid-19, Day One Thousand Something, September 2023.

It has, once again, been more than a year since my last Covid related post. Rest assured, I’m wrapping it up. This one takes us to the end of 2021. 

I received the first dose of the vaccine on March 17, my anniversary with my former partner, and eight weeks after his death.

“Do you have any questions?” the vaccinator asked me in our little cubicle, set up like a blood drive donor screening in a ‘pop-up clinic.’ 

“Not really,” I said in a flat voice with a shrug, “just survivor guilt, I think.” 

He chuckled nervously and continued the preparation for the jumble of drug that went into my left shoulder very much the same as a flu shot.

Covid-19, Day Six Hundred Forty, December 15 2021.

This one takes us through the first ten weeks of 2021, through the 1 Year Anniversary of Rona Time.

Though I hadn’t been journaling, nearly 100,000 Americans died from Covid in January 2021 alone.

On February 10, I wrote: “It has been three weeks and still it is not yet real.

“…Finally this has touched my own bones. At long last, the gut wrenching ache of a world without funerals where you just, go back to work, has hobbled me.”

Covid-19, Day Two Hundred Sixty Six, December 5 2020.

This entry covers June. I remain in a constant effort for balance of awe in how much we have survived and overcome, and the somber resolution to not forget how horrifying this felt and was.

Engagement in organizing something (like the vigil for George Floyd) helped me feel purposeful again. Racial justice had been important to me since my late adolescence yet now there were acute, tangible needs to respond and to grieve—for those lost to racist violence, and for each other in this bleak time.

Yet it didn’t take long for hateful, threatening messages to come my way. As white supremacy is nothing if not egotistical, the first concern my fellow townspeople had was the “violent looting and rioting” they’d heard about on cable news. After a neighbor posted vague threats and directions to my home online, the situation escalated. I became preoccupied with the possibility that a bomb would appear in the mailbox, and had conversations about the risk of bricks sailing through the window. Quite a few people expressed concern for my safety, and I got the guns out of the safe. My partner stoically offered his support (though I would learn later he wished I had cancelled).

To the people who’ve stopped talking to me…

I think about you sometimes. I think about how we used to be friends, the laughter and memories we’ve had together, how much we cared for one another.

I wonder about the ultimate final straw that drove you away: was it my incessant posting and talking about social justice and oppression? The criticism of the systems we hold most dear to our white superiority? Perhaps it was my employment at a program of Planned Parenthood. Sometimes I consider for hours about my final “failure” in your eyes. And sometimes, I feel very sad.

Who else goes to reenactments AND Pride Parades?

This weekend is, like many others, a scheduling conflict for me. In any summer, the limited spare time sees at least three events competing for our attendance. At first this one, for me, stood out because of its apparent paradoxical irony; but as I thought about it, these events have more in common than I realized:

A Pride parade and a Civil War reenactment.

Hear me out.

Article One, Section Two of the U.S. Constitution

Over the past ten years, I’ve been at events with Harry Bronson, Joe Morelle, Kathy Hochul, and Andrew Cuomo. I’ve lobbied across a table from my State Senator Catharine Young, and met my-then Congressman Tom Reed on a high school trip to Washington. I’ve seen the late Louise Slaughter, my senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer speak at local events, and a handful of others at national events. This is not to brag, but to voice how normal it is to cross paths with your own elected officials, if you’re circles of engagement like that.

It hasn’t been the same way with my congressman. Since there are more than 430 members of the House of Representatives, it’s comparatively common to see them locally. Not so with Chris Collins.

Sexual Assault Awareness Month 2018: Gaslighting gets an A for effort

 

Last year, I talked about how disgusting it was that Trump, a few months into the job of the presidency and tripping over himself in the rush to defend Bill O’Reilly, had the audacity to proclaim his endorsement of “Sexual Assault Awareness Month.” A year later, it’s no less repugnant.

“WHICH LINE FOR THE FOOD STAMPS?!”

You don’t have to be a salaried research associate to know that most of the main points made to decry social assistance programs – particularly SNAP – are simply not true. People unfairly hemorrhaging aid dollars that they don’t need; people nefariously purchasing cigarettes and skittles with their entire allotment; individuals only on the program to avoid working. A simple Google search finds that most people on public assistance DO work. While fraud cases are always widely covered, they’re in the minority compared to people who desperately need this assistance. And anyone who thinks it’s an easy jaunt to buy whatever vice-related goods you want has clearly never experienced any public assistance program.

Whether exerted over a relationship or a nation, tyranny manifests in remarkably similar ways.

The most accessible analogy for the toxicity currently plaguing our nation is an abusive relationship. For the people who spend decades wondering “How did X society let X issue get that bad?” one need look no further than the dynamics of abusive relationships. “Why does so-and-so stay?”

In hindsight, it’s easy to understand. Nobody is outwardly abusive in the beginning. Hitler, Jim Jones, and the rest were not militaristic, overtly violent people during their ascension. Like a charming date, people fall (hard) for the person who meets their needs and makes them feel special. History criticizes those unable to see the subtle ropes that gradually ensnare every aspect of the victim’s life, those who ignore the severity of their situation until those ropes are used to hang them. We profess “Never Again,” and demand to remember exactly how it got this bad in order to ensure it never reoccurs.

And then we forget. Nostalgia filters out the unpleasant and we romanticize “good old days.” Excuses and justifications are made. We forget how different the forest looks when one walks among the trees.

In the early stages, the praise drowns out any voiced concerns. “Quit whining, you’re just sour grapes!” Enthusiasm and reverence, cultivated over months of promised bliss, meet the challenge of any apprehension. “He’ll drain the swamp—you’ll see!” “You just don’t know them the way I do!” The more outsiders express disdain, the more appealing our newfound champion becomes. “We’re going to be great again!” “You don’t understand; they love me!”

Another thinkpiece on Rebel Monuments

I am deeply interested in the Civil War. I consume a lot of documentaries and historical books. I portray a Union soldier as a sometime-re-enactor. I have toured six of the national battlefields so far, and one of my ancestors was wounded at Gettysburg (on the third day, my guess during the artillery barrage before Pickett’s Charge). I am interested.

It’s fantastic to find other people to discuss this important and pivotal time in American—and world—history. Stories about heroic bravery, dumb luck and masterful strategy abound; personal details and anecdotes preserved in diaries and letters connect us to the nearly three million people who fought—and the more than 500,000 who died—in the largest bloodbath our nation has ever seen.

So I was surprised as the national conversation emanated from the horrific violence in Virginia—since the white supremacists were in town to preserve a statue of Robert E. Lee, this was a teaching moment about the actual history of most Confederate monuments with national potential. It seemed like people were becoming more interested in discussing the War, and its implications regarding Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement, and even Black Lives Matter.

Yet as it turns out, most people apparently don’t care about the actual War, or about how those monuments actually got there.