4/9
 |
| The Last ZOOM |
It’s Maundy Thursday…when Christians commemorate the Last Supper. A popular internet meme shows the Last Supper as if it were on ZOOM, each disciple in their own square.
I remember how I used to enjoy the quiet candlelit simple agape tennebrae services at Good Shepherd-Faith, our years of services at West-Park with my colleague Katherine and my first experiences with the ritual of footwashing.
So A. Philip Randolph Park is closed.
It’s not that big for one who started the first African-American union, of Pullman sleeping car porters. He was a key organizer of the 1964 March on Washington where a young Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr made his mark on the American conscience. He once said, "The idea of separatism is harkening to the past and it is undesirable even if it could be realized, because the progress of mankind has been based upon . . .social, intellectual and cultural contact." It’s a small neighborhood park. Just big enough for a few men to gather and talk about martial law and the rest of what they see coming. They are the kind of people Rev. William Barber's Poor People’s Campaign should be organizing. No gathering there now, not even the informal ad hoc encounters that make a neighborhood a neighborhood. Closed until further notice.
 |
| A. Philip Randolph Park is closed |
It’s not that big for one who started the first African-American union, of Pullman sleeping car porters. He was a key organizer of the 1964 March on Washington where a young Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr made his mark on the American conscience. He once said, "The idea of separatism is harkening to the past and it is undesirable even if it could be realized, because the progress of mankind has been based upon . . .social, intellectual and cultural contact." It’s a small neighborhood park. Just big enough for a few men to gather and talk about martial law and the rest of what they see coming. They are the kind of people Rev. William Barber's Poor People’s Campaign should be organizing. No gathering there now, not even the informal ad hoc encounters that make a neighborhood a neighborhood. Closed until further notice.
****
It’s now official that we have lost twice more the number of Americans to to the Coronavirus as to 9-11, over 6000. I need to repeat that. There is a certain numbness….
****
I keep hearing from old friends, even old girl friends, who just because I live in New York City, in the eye of the storm so to speak, want to know that I’m okay. I find that kind of comforting
****
In the midst of all these deaths, I find myself especially saddened by the loss of singer-songwriter John Prine. He was soooo good. Maybe because my voice has been compared to his?
****
At the nurse’s action, on a light pole, there was a flyer comparing the Trump-Pence reopens etc the evokes to the plan for epidemics contained in the constitution for a socialist republic of North America written by Revolutionary Communist Party Chair Bob Avakian. (https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#search/rev+com/FMfcgxwHMjpZnvkbDLpphBMBzHQhZFdG?projector=1&messagePartId=0.1) I could write a whole other essay on my history with communists, some of the best people I have ever known, but this is not that. Whatever else you might say about Avakian, he is certainly thorough in cases like this laying out what a decent, effective and efficient governmental policy related to public health and epidemics might look like. Written years before this Corona virus global pandemic just because, well, epidemics happen. They are part of our life. Certainly not like this one, but….Suffice it to say, if I had to choose between Trump and the Rev Coms, well, all power to the people. I wish there was more of their info here but there are only a pair of ardent Spartacists on the fringe.
****
I spend most of the day in tech land. Trying to learn how to host an open mic on ZOOM. My buddy Steve is helping me, since he’s got this down. Of course he thought it was Friday already, but that happens to all of us. And also trying to revive an interactive online meeting place for my long-forgotten colleagues in then Presbyterian Health Education and Welfare Association who are currently serving on the front limes of the epidemic. I inch closer, but it’s slow work. I finish my day by watching game 7 of the 1960 World Series where my hometown Pirates came back to win from the indomitable New York Yankees with a walk-of homerun in the bottom of the 9th. I was 10 years old. It allowed me to believe that anything can be possible. I’d never seen the whole game before. Comparing the game of 60 years ago to today was fascinating, not the least being it was an hour faster in all than most games today. I loved the strategic battle of wits between the Yankees “ole professor” Casey Stengel and Danny “the little Irishman” Murtaugh of the Pirates. Of course the game itself could have been scripted by a combination of Garcia - Marquez and Disney. Somewhere inside of me, Bill Mazeroski’s homer is always sailing over the left field wall into Schenley Park, Yogi Berra staring into the sky helpless and forlorn.
It's Maundy Thursday.
No comments:
Post a Comment