Living in coronavirusworld 142: over crumbs

8/18

art on 125th 

after the storm, a cafe

Any day Liliana comes to clean my house is a good day and I’ll feel fresh after.   Earlier this year she had a rough six weeks while her husband recovered from Covid19.  Now her mother is gravely ill in Guatemala. Only the Guatemala City airport is closed. And Mexico is closed to the US. She’s got to use her Guatemala passport and then fly to Mexico and then ride a bus for five hours and hopefully cross into Guatemala and get there in time. Such is travel in coronavirusworld. 

My Venezuelan friends at the  Monkey Cafe have  built their outdoor space. With his typical artistic flair, the owner has used tree branches fallen in our recent violent wind storm to build his cafe. That's the way we do in New York City. 

On 125th, new art covers plywood on vacant buildings. Including rapper Biggie Smalls in his classic king pose. 

Biggie on 125th 

The Presbytery cabinet continues to wrestle with the issue of churches straining at their bonds to reopen.  We’ve prepared a very long check list, that frankly only the  wealthiest churches can easily meet the standards. In the end, we  can’t control whether they reopen or not.  We debate whether to release a list of vendors who can provide resources for reopening when we don’t believe they should.  It turns out one of our Korean churches (one I know well) elected to reopen. A keyboard accompanist was infected by covid.  Soon the pastor was infected. Now his whole family. And others throughout the congregation. We are obviously sensitive to the fact that most of us  are white. And many of the churches that want to reopen are ethnic. But our  stated clerk, who is African American, points out how little has changed since March.   And that clergy are our essential workers who we are  are putting at risk. We must stand firm, he says. We can’t even  begin to fathom the myriad insurance and liability issues. This is not going away any time soon.      

      

Walking east on  114th by the school,  there’s a world of activity including family dinners, one card game and a covid craps game and dice shooters.  I walk to the Cantina and wait for my Tuesday tacos. I sit outside in the cool of the evening, enjoy my drink and tacos. I’m thinking about the furor in my old neighborhood, the  Upper West Side, over the presence of homeless people housed in local hotels. And the arrival of the voluntary security forces, the  Guardian Angels in their red jackets snd berets, beloved in the ’70’s, more complicated now. They are here to “help out,” their very presence a rebuke of the mayor. 

In California, there are tornadoes made of fire, firenados.  Iowa, in the middle of the country, has experienced a violent tropical hurricane and its devastation. 

By the pond, a man is throwing bread crumbs to the turtles. They are swimming to shore. Scrambling over one another. Pushing each other aside. Struggling to get to the crumbs.  I wonder how awarec of each other they are. Can they feel one another? They are scrambling still as I leave. Over crumbs.