Living in coronavirusworld 105: Unfinished work

7/7

Melba's, Harlem

Our New York City  Commissioners from the Presbyterian General Assembly meet to share our experiences. With two missing. There is a solid sense of frustration at the outcome. And that serious, if unintentional,  harm was done to Black women and girls. We conclude by continuing the discussion towards what could be done to call the Assembly back into session. Later the day, we hear from our only Black commissioner, a young woman. Her emotions kept her from participating. She  speaks of her anger, shame and disgust during the last session when the effort to get the action for Black women and girls was turned down twice.  While her mother and grandmother are watching. And the pain of generations continues unabated.   I let her know we are not willing to let this go. Sadly, the assembly thought would be over won’t let go, its work is not finished.  

It’s finally time to get my Covid-19 test at a local hospital clinic. It takes two hours of waiting in line to get in.  A tent with multiple stations is set up on the sidewalk in front of the clinic for the testing. No big deal but that swab up the nose is annoying. 

There is a Zoom surprise farewell party for a colleague of over 40 years. Wants to not retire in the Louisville (national church) office. I so understand that. The risk he’s taking. Having  agency in your going is worth the risk.

During this coronavirustime I have become a real fan of the National Theatre of London. (Available through live streaming). Their programming is a mix of the classical and contemporary. And during this lockdown and time of uprising they’ve had a special focus on experience of postcolonial Black britons. The Official Barbershop Chronicles framed lives through the lens of six African barbershops and one  African diaspora London shop. All watching the same international football game. Small Island focused on the experiences of Jamaican RAF pilots who fought for Britain in integrated forces during World War II only to move to London and find prejudice and discrimination. Finally, this week’s offering is Les Blancs, the last play written by Lorraine Hansbury. I confess to knowing little of Ms. Hansbury’s work beyond “Raisin in the sun…” This playwright, dying much too young at 35, believed that struggles for freedom in colonial Africa and the United States are the same struggle and inextricably linked. Unfinished work when she died, it was completed by her husband Robert Nemiroff. Rejected by frightened critics in 1970 for its by any means necessary conclusion.  Ms. Hansbury’s interest in in the intersectionality makes this not only a valuable but arguably an essential resource in determining what we must be  doing now. https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/nt-at-home )

Living in coronavirusworld 92: Election Day

6/23

I did

Malcom and Dr. King

at Wadleigh

Election day. Even in a pandemic, we vote. I walk around the corner and go to my polling place, Wadleigh High School, where the daily  free food distribution is.  I notice that two new  portraits have bene added to the  lobby. One with Malcom X and Dr. King and the other with two women I can’t identify.  I go to the gym and find my place and cast my vote for Bernie Sanders  and the delegates who are pledged to him. Even though Joe Biden has secured the nomination, it is neverthelesss important to sends delegates to influence the platform to be as progressive as possible. I  pick up some food and head home. 

Most of the day is spent working on strategy for the Presbyterian General Assembly and planning  for my concert. I take my daily walk through Morningside and enjoy the heat and sun. I’m in a bit of work cave or tunnel right now.

I’m worried about Seattle and it’s “autonomous zone.” Two shootings over the weekend seem to have forced the authority’s hand. The shootings upset me. Even though Washington is an open carry state, I don’t understand why they allow guns inside the zone. But then, how would they enforce a ban? Like Occupy, have they so quickly discovered original sin?  Now the city wants to clear the zone and the occupiers don't want to leave until their demands are met. It worries me. 

And I don’t understand what’s going on with protestors and the statues. They seem to have become true iconoclasts. Out of solidarity, I generally try not to criticize protests. But pulling down union soldiers who fought slavery, pulling down Gandhi? Trevor Noah on the Daily Show said he was afraid to stand still at a cross walk. I don’t get it. It’s too early to have reached the French Revolution stage. And I continue to not even be sure who’s doing what for what reason.  The disappearance of truth, even fact from our society  is disturbing.

And several governors seem to have decided to screw it and just not worry about how many people die than do what’s necessary to protect public health. Hospitals, critical care units are reaching capacity. 

During this quarantine, I’ve become a real fan of the National Theatre in London. Their excellent Frankenstein, Streetcar Named Desire , Official Barbershop Chronicles and Small Island have all been quite good. They mix classics and contemporary, but even more so, given the current global response to black lives, are streaming productions that explore post-colonial racism in England. Last night I watched Small Island, their dramatization of Andrea Levy’s prize winning novel. While quite complex in terms of relationships, it goes right to the heart of the issue by following lives of Jamaicans who fought for England in the Second Word War. The integration of British troops as opposed to segregated American forces gives them a false impression of what they  will find in immigration. The dream of a “golden life” quickly meets harsh reality. Getting a deeper understanding of the global reach of this Black Lives moment is valuable. 

Living in coronavirusworod 48: Empire, power, ambition

5/9

Morningside egret

Colder. Especially in the shade.But the sun is out. In Morningside Park, we continue to be fascinated by nature in a way that we were not before. The egret, the turtles and the feral cat become characters in my daily drama as I check on their whereabouts and activities. I like the turtles and their prehistoric amphibian nature between the he world underwater and our own.  In Native American mythology the turtles’ upper shell is the vault of  heaven and the lower  shell the earth.  Two months ago, I would not have been writing about turtles.  My walking partner prefers the egret with its s curve neck and bathing ritual. 

Aa we walk our circuit around the Meer, through the Conservatory gardens and back, we talk about the DOE. 

Central Park starling

How it turned out the all the business about ZOOM's compromised security and checking out alternative platforms was just part of a tactic in the negotiations  between ZOOM and the DOE. ZOOM has now created a special platform just for New York City schools.  We can’t give more than a passing notice to the proliferating stories about “plandemic” suggesting it’s all a plot and statements that the death tolls are being inflated and the president essentially endorsing the wildest provocative speculation of the internet as reasons to “reopen” then economy. She is “confused” by her friend’s analysis that there is little difference between the Democrats and Republicans in handling’s the key economic issues exposed by the coronavirus. True enough.  BUT the fact is that Hilary, probably even McCaIn, would have left us with thousands fewer deaths in this crisis.  That counts  for something. We can’t think about these things too much. Just enough to be informed. Not so much as to fall into despair. 

Even small coughs are suspicious now and I try to stifle what I feel/hope is just spring allergies. 

My Saturday chores take to standing in one  line at the drug store and another  at the grocery store and carrying the grocers home over my shoulder n a Steeler bag. 

On Fredrick Douglass, an African-American motorcycle club fills the street with a pipes  roaring procession, one bike after the other.. Six feet? Well, I guess….

I watch the National Theatre of London’s production of Antony and Cleopatra starring Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okenedo.  As always, I see relevance to our current situation. That’s what makes Shakespeare Shakespeare. It is among other things, a reflection on empire and ambition  and power.  I find myself thinking about living under occupation and realizing in many ways we are experiencing that reality. Every aspect of our lives is dominated by an alien force outside of our control. Freedom of movement and assembly curtailed. And the cost of ignoring orders can be death, either from the virus or other humans. Global lockdown. The sun never sets on the Covid19 empire.

And I listen  to a podcast that explains how diabolical this virus is, capable of mutation and self preservation. Only starving it stops it. And certainly our voracious unchecked consumption has open end the path for the virus to find us. 

And then the Saturday Night 45th Season Finale.  The "at home" show finished with a video called "Dreams". featuring Cecily Strong. (my favorite because she's ben in my audience a few times at Bar 9.) It's not perfect kind of quirky and even includes some clever "nightmares" as different cast members dream of their actual life in our city. All accompanied by DeBussy's Claire de Lune. By the time it finished, I was sobbing, missing what has always been and is not. That's what it is...imperfect, quirky, sometimes a bit nightmarish i ways we can laugh about....but ours. 

                                                              "Dreams"

It's time  for the day to end, knowing once again sleep will not come  easy. 

Living in coronavirusworld 40: the wild and unnecessary diversity of created being

5/2

in the Conservatory Garden

I spend the morning doing my errands.  Standing in social distance lines at the grocery store, the Afro-French patisserie and the drug store. And the Double Dutch Coffee Shop which has just reopened. Thankfully.  In coronavirustime, the cost of fresh roasted custom ground beans is twice and change what it was before.  And Double Dutch has added toilet paper and paper towels to its menu. A volunteer group has set  up tables on 116th and a line reaches over two and a half blocks of people waiting for food.  This is only slightly longer than the constant line in front of the liquor store on Adam Clatyton Powell.  

waiting for groceries

In the pond, the turtles in an orderly file, fill every available rock space. At least two dozen of them. One reality of coronavirus world is you get to spend time contemplating things like turtles. 

turtles basking in a row

My walking partner is most taken by the white egret with its s-curve  neck and  expanse of white feathers when it opens its wings.  She follows it every spring when it returns. Is this the same one that cruises Central Park? Is it a solitary bird? Does is feel that?

the egret

I recall the PT Barnum Museum in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The signs  as soon as you enter that declare DO Not miss the egress….and right this way to the egress…urging visitors to go directly there.  Egress, of course means exit, so unsuspecting visitors, having gone directly there, find themselves out on the street having to pay again to reenter and see what they missed. There’s something quintessentially American about that, and we’re all searching for the egress from this virus or out on the street prematurely seeing a way back into our lives. 

AsI ponder the turtles, the egret, the red winged black birds in the park, I feel a sense of wonder at creation, that each of these, every one  is perfect, for what it is. (Well, maybe the platypus..). We share more of basic design than we don’t, but still there is beauty in the wild and unnecessary diversity of created being. Or hell, evolved being as it were. (Well, there is of course , the platypus…and some very strange fish..)  So much beauty in just what is.

The feral cat has returned as well. 

The feral cat is back

We talk as we walk of a wonderful sermon by Rabbi Noa Kushner at a place called the Kitchen. (Thekitchensf.org) Riffing off a wonderful midrash about Solomon and the Temple and being asleep. And how we are all asleep and it’s time to wake up. And Tara Reade and Joe Biden. Like any accusation, we need to take this seriously.   this needs to the take seriously . But. I wouldn’t put it past the Trump campaign to set Biden up.(Though I hear Trump has waxed understandingly, though come to think of it, even that…).And we talk about Michael Moore’s new movie “Planet of the Humans” with its message that predatory capitalists have hijacked so-called renewable sustainable energy movement and through it all, the sun feels warm and wonderful and the park around us is filled with life, masked and distanced as it is. 

Back home, I make a dinner of leftover Thanksgiving turkey found in the freezer.  And a baked yam,.  And stove top stuffing and gravy and cranberry sauce, And a glass of red wine. Why? I create a mini-Thanksgiving because I want to reexperience that day back in November at my sister’s house with the warmth of  family and the food and my mother  and I have no idea how long it will be until we can do that again.  Food taking on metaphoric and performative meaning. A means of reassurance. 

As Germany is reopening, they finally get around to churches. Well, now they can reopen. (Not that the crowds are all that big they big anyways…) But there can no public singing. Turns out singing casts as many or more potentially virus carrying droplets into the air as coughing. Several other countries are banning pentecostal “amens” and the exclamation for the same reason. 

The National Theatre of the UK has made available Danny Boyle’s production of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein written  by Nick Dear. (https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/nt-at-home-frankenstein) Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller take turns playing the roles of Dr. Victor Frankenstein and his creature.  While the original was among other things, a critique of science unbounded by  moral concerns, we live in a country where moral concerns are unbound by science. We could use some serious science.  Whereas Mary Shelley tells the story fort the perseptove of Victor, Dear and Boyle take it from the point of view of the creature  and come down squarely  on the “nurture” side of the old debate. Certainly the community of those othered by our cutlture, (even as Shelley felt othered and discounted) puts us at least into understanding if not identification with the creature. Both Cumberbatch and Miller won the Olivier award for best actor for their performance. Worth it.

I didn't want to leave the park. Or the day to end.