Living in cornavirusworld 60: I shall be released

5/21

North of the Meer

When at the edge of my awareness I catch a story about lone children being deported or immigrants with covid19 being sent back to their countries of origin or packed together in detention centers, when I half hear them and go on with my life, maybe I know what it’s like to a be a German in the late 30’s/early 40’s, these half heard stories about what’s happening to Jews….

I worry about the  characters sitting on lawn chairs between the deli and the liquor store, no social distance, maybe one mask, passing joints and bottles…

Spend most of my day getting ready for my “showcase.”

Lockdown showcase #2

Making sure I’ve got all the tech issues squared away. Working with the lighting. All what my boys would call “bootleg.”

Walk through the north end of the Park. Along the shore of the Meer. 

at the Meer

Some people playing paddle ball. Some reading. Some just sitting in the sun. I stop at Maxwell’s for a margarita. Stop at the  empty “show” court at the King houses. 

the "show" court

 And make my way home.

One more street memorial....

too many memorials

Finish setting up. Open up for Steve and Lizzie. Go over the details. Then open up for the public. Live streaming link on Facebook works!  (https://www.facebook.com/robert.l.brashear/videos/10158101976508361/) Friends arrive. My boys arrive. All three of us performers have songs that relate to the virus. Steve has been writing a song a day. I’d like to be  done with my  “Don’t roll that way” song, but the President keeps giving  me new verses. I feel good about having produced a good night of music. We end the show with Dylan’s “ I shall be released.”  A prayer, a fervent hope....

                                                  "I shall be released"

I end the day by watching “The Death of Stalin,” Ianucci’s darkly comic telling of the struggle for power following Stalins death. Fascinating to see one of my favorite actors Steve Buscemi, playing Nikita Kruschev, who I remember from childhood ….the kitchen debate with Nixon, the famous shoe incident, the face off with Kennedy over Cuba when we all thought for a few days we might die in a nuclear holocaust. Fascinating to reflect on the combination of terror and love inspired by Stalin’s seemingly random brutal rule. Equally interesting was a character like Molotov, ready to confess or to offer up his own wife. I have read that true believers would confess over their own sense of  real or imagined guilt over what they had done. Maybe some day in the future some of today's elected officials will look back and wonder how they agreed with, or silently went along with policies  as tens of thousands died unnecessarily while truth and science was denied for the sake of political expediency. May it be so.      

                                                                   Death of Stalin                                                                                   

Living in coronavirusworld 39: May Day

5/1

The Harlem Meer

May Day

I wake to the news that my friend Tracy (Tre) and the nurses rose early  to join the Amazon workers in an action on Staten Island demanding safety measures, sick leave and adequate compensation. That’s the kind of news that makes my heart sing. They need more than our pots and pans and cheers. They need real material  responses. Lives are at stake.

Following a mass shooting in Nova Scotia, Canada has banned military style  weapons for the general public. Sigh. I long to live in rational country where lives are taken seriously. No one needs assault weapons for hunting. Or marching on state capitals.

It is a stunningly beautiful day. It strikes me as a paradox to have such beauty in the midst of an omnipresent pandemic. 

I am happy that my work with the Presbyterian Health Education and Welfare Association is beginning to bear fruit. We have brought together constituencies of four networks of workers who are on the frontlines of the crisis. Our Facebook “group” page has grown to over 100. (New members welcome...https://www.facebook.com/groups/phewa/) We are now ready to meet. Virtually . We want to respond to the fact that our church has decided to hold its national meeting virtually this summer and restrict business to “institutional” matters. It is important  to us that in the midst of this crisis, our church give serious theological analysis and reflection to the reality that is confronting us and even guidance was to how we should respond. This crisis is big enough to force radical change to our meeting. We are not going to Baltimore, a city much maligned by the current administration long before the virus. As Covid19 has disproportionately impacted the African American community, what has its impact  been  on Baltimore, the city we will not visit? This moment demands exegesis. It demands action. There is also the concern that this form of Assembly not become a model for the future. Our denomination has always had as its hallmark a horizontal polity where elected delegates from around the country have the ultimate power.  That is who we are. We cannot allow the virus to compromise that essential tenet of our identity.  

As Mary Gautier sang in Mercy Now:

My church and my country could use a little mercy now

As they sink into a poisoned pit it's going to take forever to climb out

They carry the weight of the faithful who follow them down.

I love my church and country, they could use some mercy now. 

                                                                Mary Gautier, "MercyNow"

 I have a good conversation with my middle son. We talk about many  things. I say that in my experience, when I'm depressed is no time to deal with big life issues. Like the other day when it was cold and wet and raw and not another human around in a post apocalayptic empty landscape and I felt so alone, no family or loved one sharing my quarantine. Not the time for that conversation. Get up, make your bed, do you work, make some bread, come back tomorrow. 

I walk into the park. The Falun Gong people are back again. I walk the Meer, enjoying it’s stillness and beauty. When I reach 5th Avenue, I head north and am happy to find the bar I had previously found open is open again. Carefully marked out six feet spaces for standing.

An oasis

A couple of open tables. An off duty NYPD officer keeping watch. Music from a pod. Damn, it feels almost normal. I have to stop. I pull-up my bandana and approach the bar. There’s a plastic shield  between the bar and the server. She greets me warmly. I order my summer drink, a gin and tonic. Tell her it feels like an oasis.  We’re trying to be a sanctuary, she says. I take my drink slowly. I want this to last.  

Gin and tonic

By the time I get home, I’m feeling pretty good. A good concert last night. The sun. PHEWA. My son. And an open bar. It’s okay.

Tonight’s Open Mic another international gathering with folks from Baltimore and Kazakhstan and Tadzhikistan and New York City. Folk singers and rock singers and Central Asian pop singers and a comedian couple with a two year old in the bed room. 

After the Open Mic, I hear something like a party outside. I check. But it’s just four neighbors, sharing a word on a warm night. Eddie reports that Mt. Neboh Baptist across the street has lost 14 members. Leon says, You got to keep livin your life. The government aint gonna be helping  us through. We got to share that love with  one another. That’s how we do. How we always do. We’re gonna get through this . Together.

We’ve made it through another day in coronavirus world. 

May Day.