Weekend Update: Getting Through It

“Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”

R.I.P John Lewis, activist and member of Congress (1940-2020)


Amidst strangely hopeful news for the future, another week of the ominous present.  But we got through it.

Another week of the same headline repeated every day: record number of Covid 19 infections, hospitalizations, deaths, in this state and that, and in the United States as a whole, doleful country.

"The painful economic lockdowns imposed in March gave the country time to flatten the epidemiological curve and contain the virus. But that window of opportunity, which came at great economic cost, is quickly slamming shut. Health experts say all signs point to a deadly summer and fall unless government leaders implement a much more robust national strategy." wrote Reid Wilson way back on July 12.

Obviously there is not going to be any robust national strategy out of Washington, and so the suffering and death and economic and psycho-social suffering will continue.  The best that can be hoped for is that the worst attempts to further damage constructive response will be blocked, and the people will deal with it, with leadership from wherever they find it--governors, mayors, community public health, Dr. Fauci newly freed to go back on national television to at least suggest guidelines for a common response.  But with hospitals stressed, and certain cities lining up refrigerated trucks, the potential for a firestorm of societal chaos by fall is still alive.

This week Paul Krugman among others warned of the upcoming end of the covid crisis rescue package's support for expanded unemployment benefits, which has effectively supported the US economy.  Congress has yet to act to extend it because Republicans have been balking. The national economy for the next years hangs in the balance, as do the lives of millions.  This is only one of the areas where Congress--meaning the Republican majority in the Senate-- needs to act if a deep and stubborn recession is to be avoided.  Some suspect that the most consciously evil man in America, Senate majority leader McConnell, wants that economic damage if it will hurt a Biden administration.   But I'm confident that if anyone can maneuver a deal, it's Nancy Pelosi, still the most impressive Democrat of them all.

The administration is trying to force schools to reopen, including in-person college classes, but their threat to withdraw funding from public schools turns out to be empty, and their policy to force colleges to offer classes or see their foreign students returned to their home countries has been ruled illegal by courts.  Still, it a heartbreaking mess, with no harmless choices.

Late in the week the news emerged of the administration's attempt to stir up trouble in Portland, Oregon with Homegrown Hitler's secret police kidnapping people off the street in what someone described as "stop and frisk meets Guantanamo." It seems to be a strategy of fomenting the violence that Trump claims is happening as Black Lives Matter demonstrations continue.  Apparently Homeland Security has joined ICE as Trump's Gestapo, although their outfits have been described as available on E-Bay.

Mary Trump sold a million books (literally) and made the media rounds this week, notably on Rachel Maddow.  For those who don't see the point of learning even more of what we already know about the madman, Dahlia Lithwick in Slate offers this:

  At bottom, Too Much and Never Enough may be the first book that stipulates, in its first pages, that the president is irreparably damaged, and then turns a clinician’s lens on the rest of us, the voters, the enablers, the flatterers, the hangers-on, and the worshippers. It is here that Mary Trump’s book makes perhaps the most enduring contribution to the teetering piles of books that have offered too little too late, even while telling us that which we already knew. Because Mary Trump begins from the assumption that other analysis tends to end with: Donald Trump is lethally dangerous, stunningly incoherent, and pathologically incapable of caring about anyone but himself. So, what Mary Trump wants to know is: What the hell is wrong with everyone around him? As she writes in her prologue, “there’s been very little effort to understand not only why he became what he is but how he’s consistently failed up despite his glaring lack of fitness.”

Later Lithwick summarizes Mary Trump's point: "Trump’s superpower isn’t great vision or great leadership but rather that he is so tiny. Taking him on for transactional purposes may seem like not that big a deal at first, but the moment you put him in your pocket, you become his slave. It is impossible to escape his orbit without having to admit a spectacular failure in moral and strategic judgment, which almost no one can stomach."

Those needing to escape from the relentless bad news should not look to shelter on the deceptively innocuous Weather Channel, let alone Weather Underground, which predicts a very hot summer for most of the US, followed by a warmer than usual fall.

Weather depends on climate, longterm and shortlived phenomena.  But this past week scientists concluded that this summer's Arctic heat (temperature passed 100F at the Arctic Circle) was "essentially impossible" without the climate crisis.

Another round of polls show further deterioration for the Re-Elect the Apprentice Dictator campaign, while that campaign itself is in turmoil.  The recently fired campaign manager is reportedly being investigated by the campaign for skimming a little too much off the top of campaign money that by rights should be going to Trump hotels and businesses, massive corruption in plain sight, the hallmark of this administration.

It is in this context of very possible if not probable Democratic victories in winning the White House and both houses of Congress in the upcoming 2020 elections that Joe Biden's climate crisis plan announced this past week achieves significance.

In an article entitled Joe Biden Is Campaigning On The Green New Deal, Minus the Crazy, Slate's Jordan Weissmann writes that Biden has adopted the key differences of the Green New Deal from previous Democratic policy proposals on the climate crisis:

"In the past, Democrats have wanted to reduce emissions through market-oriented mechanisms like a carbon tax or cap and trade... Green New Dealers have taken a different, less market-focused approach, combining clean power mandates that would force a shift away from carbon, massive government spending and industrial policy designed to create jobs, and a strong emphasis on environmental justice for communities hardest hit by pollution. Instead of putting a price on CO2 and letting capitalism do its magic, the new generation of climate hawks want to force power companies and other emitters to abandon fossil fuels while using the federal purse to put people to work and reinvent the American economy."

Biden proposes a program aimed at a clean energy grid by 2035, and zero carbon emissions overall by 2050.  He proposes spending $2 trillion over four years, and to previous proposals he adds "a “made-in-America” economic plan that would use gobs of government procurement and R&D funding to build up domestic sectors like renewable batteries and electric vehicles (there’s your industrial policy). And the campaign has outlined an extensive proposal to “secure environmental justice” by directing 40 percent of its climate spending to disadvantaged communities."  

Which is something like political genius on several levels.  It has the potential to give the nation a common purpose and commitment, beginning with another feature of the proposal (adapted, as several of these are, from Washington Governor Jay Inslee's platform during his brief but now very influential presidential candidacy): a "Civilian Climate Corps that would work on restoration and resilience projects, a direct nod to Franklin Roosevelt’s original New Deal-era Civilian Conservation Corps."  Besides mobilizing young idealists to do this increasingly necessary work, it means this program is addressing both the causes and effects of the climate crisis.

So I allowed myself to feel a little hope--that is, a focus for enacting hope through action.  I may live long enough to see a Civilian Climate Corps do effective work.  But even if the rest of the program is enacted, it won't pay off for long after I'm gone (except for health effects, especially in poor and minority communities, which is not nothing.)  But even if it turns out to be too late, knowing that we finally gave it our best try is worth something.

Finally, it's two weeks before the date Joe Biden gave for announcing his vice-presidential choice.  A lot of names, including new names, have puffed up in the media, with little credibility, and even less understanding than me of the political liabilities of certain otherwise worthy choices.   Right now however I'd guess that the top two possibilities are Sen. Kamala Harris and former Obama aide Susan Rice, with Sen. Warren falling back a notch.  Again, though, it's Kamala.

North Coast: To Whom It Should Concern

California is breaking records for the highest numbers of new Covid-19 infections, including on occasion national records.  Many if not most of these new infections are among those in their 20s, and most are in southern California.

Humboldt County has so far controlled outbreaks, and has maintained one of the safest counties in the state. Notably there have been very few instances of community spread in the past month or so. All of our infections appear to be coming from outside.

Nevertheless, Humboldt State University is about to import at least one thousand students into this community, most in the age group now rife with super-spreaders, and many from southern California.

This despite the fact that the CSU system has decreed virtual classes for the fall semester, and their presence is not necessary. Or would not be, had HSU not sought and obtained permission for some in-person classes, reportedly the only campus in the system to do so.

Particularly and obviously now, importing these students presents dangers to this community. There is more evidence that masks and physical distancing in this age group will be ignored than there is that they might be observed.

Bringing these students together here is a danger to them and to university staff. Dangers to the community include stresses on medical resources, including campus medical resources, which elsewhere are proving to be inadequate at best.

Community spread of Covid-19 poses risks as well for essential institutions and businesses that the total population, and seniors in particular, depend upon. The city of Arcata, where Humboldt State is located, is particularly vulnerable due to its small population and workforce.

Nevertheless, HSU will theoretically reap the financial benefits of housing many of these students, while others presumably house themselves in the community.

This action by HSU is irresponsible as well as dangerous.

Heat Attack

A heat dome is forming over much of the continental US, bringing high temperatures and high humidity for possibly a prolonged period.  In some parts of the country triple digit temperatures alone will flirt with danger.  Even without this soon-not-to-be extraordinary event, it's been a hot summer already in many places. Pittsburgh has experienced 9 days with temps of 90F or above, and it's barely mid-July, when the old standard was highs in the mid-80s.  The hot days used to be mostly in August and early September.  So now much of the country deals with excessive heat on top of the covid crisis, with vulnerable communities also facing hurricanes and wildfires.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden announced his climate plan which addresses global heating and the causes of the climate crisis by building in a commitment to a non-carbon electrical grid by 2035, and a carbon neutral economy by 2050, while juicing the economy and attending to racial and economic disparities that have left minority and poor communities with higher air and water pollution, and therefore more incidences of environmentally related conditions and illnesses, like asthma and cancers.

The Washington Football Team

I've been calling them the Washington Football Team for at least 20 years.  Now they've finally dumped their racist obscenity of a name, but they haven't announced a new one.  So more or less officially they are at this moment the Washington Football Team.

A new name is a new opportunity, especially for expressing some imagination.  Some of the names that spring immediately to mind are unlikely I suppose: the Washington Bureaucrats, the Washington Beltway, the Lobbyists, the Washington Windbags.  Or if they want to change colors, the Washington Greenbacks.

The betting money is on some close variation of traditional football names like the Redtails (the Tuskegee Airmen's World War II outfit) or the Warriors.  The Washington Warriors is practically a default at this point, though it arguably doesn't distance them from Native American connotations quite enough.  But it's an English word with a variety of referents.  It's just a dull choice, and I say that as an NBA Golden State Warriors fan.

A better choice it seems to me would to emulate the WNBA pattern, and go big and a bit abstract.  The Washington Mystics are the WNBA champions, and the league contains teams named Dream, Sky, Sun and Storm.  Why not take a page from the New York team's approach, the Liberty?  How about the Washington Freedom, or the Washington Independence?  The major league baseball team went in that direction as the Washington Nationals.

Of course they will have a problem figuring out a logo to go with it.  The New York Liberty uses the Statue of for its logo--Lady Liberty being among the few non-controversial monuments anywhere in America.  The Washington Football Team could use the Washington Monument or the Lincoln Memorial, but that's a risk these days.

But emulating the WNBA style is probably too girly--and too imaginative--for the NFL.  The Washington Team should take its time deciding anyway, because the chances of a season this year are slim.  The NBA bubble is already bursting, as key players go down and the championship seems like it will go to the team that best avoids infection.  If they actually play this year at all.  I'm still not counting on it.

Poetry Monday: The Kingfisher

The Kingfisher

The kingfisher rises out of the black wave
like a blue flower, in his beak
he carries a silver leaf.  I think this is
the prettiest world--so long as you don't mind
a little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life
that doesn't have its splash of happiness?
 There are more fish than there are leaves
on a thousand trees, and anyway the kingfisher
wasn't born to think about it, or anything else.
 When the wave snaps shut over his blue head, the water
remains water--hunger is the only story
he has ever heard in his life that he could believe.
 I don't say he's right.  Neither
do I say he's wrong.  Religiously he swallows the silver leaf
with its broken red river, and with a rough and easy cry
 I couldn't rouse out of my thoughtful body
if my life depended on it, he swings back
over the bright sea to do the same thing, to do it
 (as I long to do something, anything) perfectly.


--Mary Oliver
from her book, Owls and Other Fantasies (2003),
a birthday gift from my sister Kathy.

Mary Oliver
1935-2019

History of My Reading: Summer Reading 1968

My summer of 1968 functionally began with the murder of Senator Robert Kennedy in early June, and ended with the police riot in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention in late August.  In between these iconic indicators of the contextual chaos, I traveled: to Iowa City, Chicago, Galesburg, Greensburg (PA), Boulder (CO), Libertyville (IL) and Hamilton, Ontario--some of these several times.

I flew, drove, rode trains and buses, and hitchhiked.  I was simultaneously trying to arrange my attendance at the Iowa Writers Workshop and its financing in the fall, while dealing with draft boards, doctors and draft counselors.  I was certain to be called for a draft physical soon, which made any other plans as well as my future highly uncertain.

And almost incidentally, I was also completing two independent studies, my last courses at Knox College, in an effort to obtain more credits towards an elusive BA degree. One of them was fiction writing for Robin Metz.  The other--which I'd completely forgotten about until recently reviewing letters from that summer--was a paper on Thoreau for Doug Wilson.  So in all that fraught and frenetic summer, the still point in my churning world was Walden Pond.

I must have done most of the reading and writing in midsummer, when I was back home in Greensburg. While not exactly Walden, it was relatively quiet, and I had hours of solitude.

I now realize that a surviving manuscript I previously thought was for my Emerson/Thoreau course in my junior year must be a rough draft of that summer of '68 paper.  It consists of an introduction and three sections: "Utility As Purification," "Towards an Ecology of Feeling" and "What the Body Thought."  The first section was based mostly on Walden; the following sections on Thoreau's journals--or mostly the journal entries contained in the selection H.D. Thoreau: A Writer's Journal by Laurence Stapleton.

So that summer I re-read Walden and the Stapleton book, if not more.  I apparently began by noting page numbers of journal entries of interest, then marked which ones I would use in the paper. I marked a half dozen references to sound and music, though I didn't use any in the draft I have.

My introduction shows a continuing influence of  my spring reading on philosophy of science, not mandated by any classes but in response to two of the science courses I took (supposedly for non-majors), one in which I got an F and the other an A.  There were also references to the Two Cultures debate from the very beginning of my Knox years.

The relationship of art and science, or more particularly intellect and feeling, as methods of ascertaining reality in Thoreau's exploratory writing was the general topic. "Reason is that faculty which is quite fond of producing reasons," I wrote. But intellect infused with feeling was Thoreau's solution.  Feeling came from the physical (the body's) response to the physical (nature.) Yet feeling was also formed and informed by the mind, by thought.  I'm immediately reminded  now of the work of Jung, James Hillman and others I came upon later, in which intellect and feeling, body and mind, are among the orchestrated elements of the human soul.

Looking at this draft now without the academic fuzz, I see some 1960s concerns, such as revolt against the conventional and the trivial, and against meaning defined by money, as well as countering the cold rationalism that justified the Vietnam War. These included pressing personal concerns, particularly the prospect of a life about to be wasted on the inessential and the ignominious. ("Woe be to the generation that lets any higher faculty in its midst go unemployed," Thoreau wrote.)  I quoted in particular a journal entry that Thoreau wrote on a December night, after he made a fire and "endeavored to return to myself....I wished to ally myself to the powers that rule the universe.  I wished to dive into some deep stream of thoughtful and devoted life..."

In the midst of a highly political year, in which issues of great pith and moment seemed to require group action and engagement,  I was attracted to "live, ah! as far away as a man can think."  To the relative isolation and solitude, the living deliberately of Walden.  And it would turn out that I fled from one of these opposites to the other for the rest of my life.

But what I didn't write about is also interesting.  The Stapleton book is titled "A Writer's Journal," and so it contains Thoreau's thoughts on the practices and purposes of writing, something of particular interest to me, especially at that time. The book itself impressed me enough that years later, when I thought I'd lost my copy, I found a more recent edition (and then the old one turned up.)  But that summer, I also looked to another book for guidance, or at least solace.

After finishing my independent studies I returned to Galesburg and Iowa City in July, and then flew off on a borrowed half-fare card to Boulder to join Joni, who was taking classes at the University of Colorado campus there.  (I must have flown from Iowa City because I remember a short flight in Iowa with so few passengers that I saw one of the young stewardesses--as they were then called-- watching the sunset from a cabin window.)

My digs for those weeks were a couple of rooms on the first floor of an otherwise unoccupied house still under construction, located conveniently next door to Joni's apartment. (She'd charmed the builder, who was also her landlord, into allowing this.) There I set up my typewriter and tried to write, though I often reverted to reading the book that had been a kind of Bible since my senior year: Richard Ellman's biography titled James Joyce.

Joyce was not much of a naturalist, but "silence, exile and cunning" and his absolute devotion to his work were not terribly far from Thoreau.  Joyce's example was enlarging, focusing and also eventually toxic.  But I kept reading largely because Ellmann's biography is so well written.  (It became the model for literary biographies, at least for awhile.)  And at age 22, the romance of it overwhelmed less salutary aspects.  With my own identity as a writer unmoored, it was a kind of anchor.

I remember other books of a literary nature I read in those years, but only one other I associate with that summer, and I'm not even sure the association has exact basis in reality.  But I'm pretty sure it was that summer that I read Kurt Vonnegut's novel, Mother Night.

Slaughterhouse Five and Vonnegut's rocketing fame were still months in the future, but I'd been hearing about him my senior year from Robin Metz, who was at one time his student at the Iowa Workshop.  Such is Vonnegut's enormous presence in that period that it's a bit startling to be reminded that he became instantly ubiquitous only in the early 1970s, beginning in 1969. His influence--particularly as an anti-war novelist and spokesperson--seems to blow back into 1968 and 67. So when I associate reading Vonnegut's short stories in the collection Canary in the Cat House with my senior year residence on First Street, it may or may not be accurate.

But I'm a little more confident that I read Robin Metz's own hardback copy of Mother Night when I stayed at his house on Broad Street in Galesburg for a time or two during that summer.  It was a compulsive, riveting, powerful reading experience.  Its roots in popular literature were clear, but its voice and point of view were unique.  I looked forward with anticipation to his "big book" rumored to be coming out the following year.

I returned to Chicago in August in time to visit Bill Thompson in Libertyville, and (with Mike Shain) drive him and his new wife to Hamilton, Ontario, where he would attend graduate school and, not incidentally, be safe from the draft.  Why I did not take the Canada option remains a mystery to me, though it probably had something to do with my incompetence at even conceiving of how to survive. Yet it seems now that had I given it seven minutes of consecutive thought, I should have seen it as the best of my alternatives.  But thinking clearly about any of this, and not being overwhelmed by conflicting emotions, was not easy to come by.

Instead I returned to Libertyville with Bill's father's car and trailer, saw the police riot on TV, went to Chicago as described elsewhere.  Then eventually to Iowa City and the famous Iowa Writers Workshop.  However, as it turned out, briefly.

Poetry Monday: News from the 16th Century

They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild and do not remember
That sometime they put themself in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range,
Busily seeking with a continual change.

Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise
Twenty times better; but once in special,
In thin array after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small;
Therewithall sweetly did me kiss
And softly said, ‘Dear heart, how like you this?’

It was no dream: I lay broad waking.
But all is turned thorough my gentleness
Into a strange fashion of forsaking;
And I have leave to go of her goodness,
And she also, to use newfangleness.
But since that I so kindly am served
I would fain know what she hath deserved.

Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)

Photo: Natalie Dormer as Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII, rumored to have been a mistress of Sir Thomas Wyatt.

I've written elsewhere about my first college poetry class, where I learned the basics of reading poems (the sentences, the phrases, the narrative, if any) and of analyzing them (historical period, type of poem, meter, diction, literal meaning and symbolism, etc.)   Mr. Spanos spent what felt like weeks on this widely anthologized poem from the 16th century by Sir Thomas Wyatt.  I'm sure the sheer repetition of reading and hearing these lines-- individual lines, particular words--in that class, partly accounts for how memorable this poem remains for me.  But there's more to it than that.

We read it partly in historical context.  In poetry, its rhyme scheme is the relatively new "rhyme royal," popularized by Chaucer, one of Wyatt's models.  It is as well a prominent example of iambic pentameter, which became the meter most often used in English language poetry, possibly because it's a natural reflection of spoken English and English sentences.

In social history, its context is Tudor court life and the courtly love tradition.  I've forgotten what Mr. Spanos claimed it says on this subject, so I've lost one sense of the poem.  But it still makes sense anyway, for how it expresses a recurrent situation: that is, if it were a country music tune, it would be "another somebody done somebody wrong song."  Though its expression remains a good deal more elegant.

Fickleness, betrayal, and a lover's bitterness at being rejected for the very qualities that were once so attractive--very lively topics for undergraduates, as well as before college years and for long after.

Mr. Spanos inveighed against reading poems just to latch on to some feeling, without knowing what they actually say.  But I--and probably we--read poems that way anyway, at least partly.   So even though I learned that the lines "But all is turned thorough my gentleness/ Into a strange fashion of forsaking" have a specific historical meaning (something to do with "gentleness" in the sense of "gentry"), the meaning that seemed specific to my life that first occurred to me is the one that still remains.  

Similarly, the lines "and now they range,/Busily seeking with a continual change" had a particular historical meaning as well as a particular function in the poem's narrative or argument, according to Mr. Spanos.  But they remain broadly suggestive as well as a bit mysterious, reflecting what is simply true: people respond to literature as it touches feelings, observations, events, persons and even places in their own lives.  Go to any bookstore reading and hear audience questions and comments.  It's just true.  Some poets as well as fictionists, moviemakers and even actors acknowledge that the meaning of their works is at least largely in the receiver, not only in the intentions or references of the maker.

The contemporary power of the language in this poem suggests some of the mystery of poetry.  For one thing, these are not the actual words that Wyatt used--they are at best the modern spellings.  Wyatt's first verse was actually:

They fle from me that sometyme did me seke
With naked fote stalking in my chambre.
I have sene theim gentill, tame, and meke
That nowe are wyld and do not remembre
That sometyme they put theimself in daunger
To take bred at my hand; and nowe they raunge
Besely seking with a continuell chaunge.

The different spelling suggests the very different sounds, and therefore the rhythms within the lines.  The music is different, and yet the music of the modern version is one of its strongest attractions.  Many word choices, which may have seemed standard at the time (who knows, really?) now are unusual enough to make for striking and memorable combinations, even though we know what they mean ( It was no dream: I lay broad waking.)  Even the most unusual word (the Chaucerian "newfangleness") survived long enough (with slight variation) to be broadly understandable, if a bit old fashioned.

The first part of the poem in particular employs the metaphor of an animal on the hunt, though "stalking" has a different resonance now.  As undergrads our favorite lines of course were:
In thin array after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small;
Therewithall sweetly did me kiss
And softly said, ‘Dear heart, how like you this?’

And it must be said that as evoking this situation, these lines have rarely been equaled.   Perhaps that's why this poem by the ambassador and politician close to the crown, Sir Thomas Wyatt, was not published under his name in his lifetime.

July 4th Weekend Update: Dangers and Memories

This will be a fateful weekend for the United States of America--perhaps the most fateful 4th of July weekend since the first one.

Will its citizens heed the clear danger, or will many replicate the foolhardiness of Memorial Day weekend which--the experts concur--began this explosive surge of covid cases?

Will the current phenomenon of the Entitled Tourist-- Karens and Kens in shorts-- continue to arrogantly flout mask-wearing and other norms of civilized conduct in the covid crisis, as they have locally in Trinidad and tragically in Myrtle Beach, with its ongoing and exported outbreak?  Will Floridians show more restraint and common sense that their governor?

Tank positioned at Lincoln Memorial for Trump's DC 4th

This weekend was designed by the Trump campaign to be a federal government-paid extravaganza of triumph and Keep American Great symbolism for Trump, with elaborate, ominously militaristic and (especially given the context) obscenely expensive celebrations in Washington and then Mount Rushmore, where the danger of wildfire from fireworks mounts the danger of a wildfire of infections.  Will Washingtonians reject all this, heed common sense and their mayor and stay home?  Will the stands be empty in South Dakota?

Governors who opened too soon and too fast, and tragically joined the Carnival Barker in Chief in giving the impression that things were safe, are abruptly trying to prevent the crowds in bars and parties that lit the flames of the current out of control epidemic.  States and even some national Republicans are being scared straight on the subject of masks.

The official celebrations will be telling, but it may be some time before we know about behavior across the country, because there will inevitably be enough examples of suicidal and murderous goings-on to inspire click-bait stories.  Given the large percentages of Americans who say they support public health, wear masks and see the covid crisis as dangerous, it seems remarkable that we're seeing such a large outbreak.

Things are going to be bad enough--catastrophically bad--even without a new explosion of infections from this weekend.  Individual states and the country as a whole are breaking records for infections every day now, hospitals in several states are already overwhelmed.  But this weekend will determine how much worse--apocalyptically worse-- it could get.

Testing has largely broken down in many states as well, and there are pockets of resistance to contact tracing.  The testing problems are the fault of the federal government, as are the shortages of equipment--problems from the spring which were never adequately addressed, in an epic and humiliating American failure.

The problems with compliance and the resistance to masks and contact tracing however are more directly the failures and responsibility of individual Americans, as well as the lunatic politics that Republicans largely embrace, when they aren't fomenting them.

Theoretically, many businesses should be able to remain open and employ people, provided everyone plays by the rules of masks and physical distancing.  But that hasn't been happening to the degree necessary, so in this current surge, things are going to stop again.

The NBA wants to finish its season in a protected bubble in Orlando, but that plan is starting to look like a Disney fantasy.  Players are testing positive to the extent that one team--the New Jersey Nets--has lost all of its stars and pretty much its starting lineup.  That team has gone from a favorite for a playoff spot to almost no chance.  It's likely only a matter of time before the whole thing gets cancelled.  Ditto the baseball season.  Ditto the NFL season.

The Republican National Convention is scheduled for Jacksonville, Florida, in a state vying for the worst current outbreak. Jacksonville is now mandating masks indoors. The big acceptance speech in a crowded enclosure with thousands of shouting devotees of the cult--that's not going to happen either.

Former presidential candidate and Trump surrogate Herman Cain attended the Tulsa rally.  He's in the hospital with covid.  VP Pence postponed a campaign trip to Arizona when his Secret Service protection advance team tested positive. That's all going to keep happening.

Meanwhile, another bad week for Trump--so bad that rumors grow that he'll drop out of the 2020 race, or even resign the presidency.  Anything's possible these days, but neither is likely unless severe depression overcomes monumental narcissism.

 More folks however are waking up to the fact that we haven't had a functioning President since 2017, and don't have one in this stunning hour of need.  But election day is too close and Congress too cowardly for any move towards a replacement, however justified.

Some fear a panic move by the Apprentice Dictator to become a real dictator, but though I've been warning against Homegrown Hitler since 2017, I am less fearful of that outcome now than I have ever been.  For me the pivotal moment was the military clearing of protesters from Lafayette Park.  Had that act received public support, and especially had the military justified its actions, then the current and oncoming chaos would be the perfect opportunity for seizing dictatorial control.

But the Park gambit failed with the public, and the highest echelons of the military backed away in horror.  Even the National Guard freaked out.  Now Trump's approval rating is sinking fast into the abyss, and more than half of registered voters in a recent poll said there were no conditions under which they would vote for him to remain in the White House.  His mystique is gone.  Stop the presses!--the Emperor is naked!

On the other hand, there is no other potential authoritarian leader--no General, no governor, not even a rabid right culture hero--with enough power or public support to stage a coup, so we're probably safe from that as well.  All in all, we're probably stuck with him until January 20.  Or Pence, which isn't much of an upgrade.

This past week we might also have been reminded of a time when we had a President.

The saga of George Floyd began when a teenager agreed to accompany a younger child to a local store.  She saw a man held down on the ground by cops, and shot the video seen and heard round the world.

Spontaneous and then organized protests across the country sounded a surprisingly responsive chord among Americans of all kinds.  Floyd's words of "I can't breathe" became a global battle cry, but it likely was the final dying call by this six foot tall black man for his dead mother that struck the universal heart.

Though the recognition of deeply embedded institutional and cultural racism and resulting changes continue at a dizzying pace, that saga left the main stage with George Floyd's funeral, and it was just before the funeral that President Obama called George's brother.  Their conversation lasted a half hour, and when it was over, said Reverend Al Sharpton, "That was the first time, I think, that the Floyd family really experienced solace since he died."

And so we are reminded of a President who shed angry tears over the deaths of children shot and killed in their classrooms, who sang "Amazing Grace" at a service honoring members of a black church killed in a hate bombing, almost precisely five years ago.  A President who visited wounded soldiers, who comforted hurricane victims, who rose to every emergency, and whose conscientious attention meant that many disasters were avoided.

So it is with high and mixed emotions that we may imagine what living through the covid crisis would have been like had it happened between 2009 and 2017.  We certainly would not be experiencing what we are now, and what no other civilized nation on Earth is experiencing.

Trump called George Floyd's brother, a brief monologue that caused only frustration and anger, not solace.  Obama offered him comfort but also hope. We're all going to need that the rest of this year.

Poetry Monday: Worn Words

The late poems are the ones
I turn to first now
following a hope that keeps
beckoning me
waiting somewhere in the lines
almost in plain sight

it is the late poems
that are made of words
that have come the whole way
they have been there

W.S. Merwin

Weekend Update: The Reckoning

The past week was remarkable for the number of polls released on the 2020 elections, and their nearly unanimous conclusions.  In one poll after another, Joe Biden was ahead by double digits nationally, as many as 14 points in several. There were some 20 polls of battleground states--and Biden was ahead in all of them (though not necessarily all of the states.)

The conventional wisdom is that polls tighten closer to election day.  The prominence now of mail-in votes is prompting the caution also that election night this year may not name a winner.  The logic of what's happening says that both of these could well be wrong.  Biden's lead may even increase.  And if so, it would be a landslide that might well yield enough "called" states that Biden will be President-elect by midnight Pacific.

And nothing less than a landslide will suffice to overcome the obstacles being placed by Republicans in the administration--particularly Barr at Justice--and in the states, including practically inviting more Russian disinformation and interference.

A landslide will turn the Senate, perhaps by a lot.  In any case, the first thing a Democratic majority will do is jettison the 60 vote threshold for lawmaking.  So even if Moscow Mitch is re-elected he won't be able to wreck things so easily anymore.

For this to happen, Americans are going to have to do more than exhibit a little buyer's remorse.  Certain voters and especially non-voters are going to have to face up and own up to their responsibility for Trump, and try to make up for it by voting this time.  These polls show signs this is starting to happen.

Events in the real world as well as polls have weakened Trump considerably, and people may be listening to the very clear message that is being provided about what 2016 placed in motion.

For instance, Ezra Klein: "Trump has spent the past three years and 158 days playing president on TV and social media. But he has not spent that time doing the job of the president. A strong economy that carried over from Barack Obama’s presidency hid Trump’s dereliction of duties. But then a crisis came, and presidential leadership was needed, and the American people saw there was no plan, and functionally no president.”

As Klein points out, all the insider accounts as well as professional external observations support this view.

Former Republican campaign operative Steve Schmidt wrote this week: “Donald Trump has been the worst president this country has ever had. And I don’t say that hyperbolically. He is. But he is a consequential president. And he has brought this country in three short years to a place of weakness that is simply unimaginable if you were pondering where we are today from the day where Barack Obama left office.

“When you listen to the President, these are the musings of an imbecile. An idiot. And I don’t use those words to name call. I use them because they are the precise words of the English language to describe his behavior. His comportment. His actions. We’ve never seen a level of incompetence, a level of ineptitude so staggering on a daily basis by anybody in the history of the country whose ever been charged with substantial responsibilities.  It’s just astonishing that this man is president of the United States."

And as others have pointed out, other Republicans aren't much better, particularly the leader of the Senate.  The result is the most destructive cult in this country since the Civil War.

This cult has inspired, accommodated and to some extent been part of violent rabid right militants who (according to the new report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies) accounted for 2/3 of the terrorist plots in America in 2018, and 90% of them in 2019. 

And it's Trump and the Republicans who are warping the lives of everyone in the country, causing fear, suffering and death.  With one or two possible exceptions, only in the US is the covid crisis so out of control. "This isn’t happening in every country around the world," Schmidt points out. "... The United States. We are the epicenter. We are the place where you’re the most likely to die from this disease. We’re the ones with the most shattered economy. And we are because of the fool that sits in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk.”

But it's not Trump alone. There are his minions, the AlwaysTrumpers and all the crazies who have latched onto his cult and used social media mob violence against those earnestly trying to save lives.  Paul Krugman: “I keep seeing statements to the effect that Americans were too impatient to stay the course, too unwilling to act responsibly. But this is deeply misleading, because it avoids confronting the essence of the problem. Americans didn’t fail the Covid-19 test; Republicans did.”  

The most recent Pew poll as well as other polls bear him out.  Apart from Republican officeholders in Washington and the states, most of those who refuse to wear masks and take other precautions are AlwaysTrumpers.  However, those who were merely variations of naive or stupid--who held and attended parties or clubbed and barhopped without masks and distancing--are likely responsible for much of the current infection.

Because of Trump and his Republican cult, surviving until election day, surviving past the Inauguration in January, continues to be an iffy thing.  Towards the end of the past week, several states began throttling back on their re-opening plans.  The horrendous numbers in Florida, the terrible numbers in Arizona and Texas and southern California, are reflected elsewhere to a lesser degree.  We've even had a surge here in Humboldt--we went from 2 active cases to 20, though it appears most of the new cases are related to travel or contact with a known case.

The conventional wisdom at the moment is that the surge everywhere is among people between 20 and 40 or 50.  So hospitals in places like Arizona and Houston, Texas are frighteningly stretched, but generally the hospitalization and death rates aren't climbing as fast as infections.  So we'll see whether the pandemic itself can be controlled.  Even so, Black and Latinx communities are suffering disproportionately.

Meanwhile, the first cases of infection by people who attended the Tulsa disaster now include a local reporter. This early it's not possible to say he was infected at the rally.  Six members of Trump campaign staff and two Secret Service agents were previously reported as testing positive after being in Tulsa, though not all of them were at the rally. More staff and dozens of agents have self-sequestered.

 CNN reports that another White House staffer has more recently tested positive, and that while Trump refuses masks and disdains distancing for others, measures to protect him from the virus have been considerably scaled up though out of public view, while less care is taken for his staff.

Not This Year

from Trinidad Head a few summers ago

Obviously a lot of events have been cancelled this year, and they continue to be.  But in this case the reason varies a little.

In recent years I've made a ritual hike up the Trinidad Head on my birthday.  The next one is next week, and I've been undecided about it.  We haven't been restricted here from driving and walking where we could safely distance from others.  That's even more true in recent weeks.

One of my favorite spots over the years, taken last June on a foggy birthday.

But the trail to the top of the Head is narrow for most of its length, with a few widely spaced turnouts, usually where there are benches facing the sea.  It would be impossible along most of it to pass someone going in the opposite direction with more than a foot or two between you, and sometimes less.

But with masks and the light risk of getting much virus passing someone for a moment in the open air, I was still considering it.  Even after my car battery died again.

Until Tuesday, when I read a story in the online Lost Coast Outpost, a report of a Zoomed meeting of county supervisors and the public health officer.  All the supervisors talked about questionable activities and noticing hostility about any covid crisis restrictions.  Then there was this:

Fifth District Supervisor Steve Madrone spoke urgently about an inundation of tourists in his district. “We’re being overrun in Trinidad, literally,” he said, “by hundreds and hundreds if not thousands” of people he described as “arrogant” and defiant, refusing to wear face coverings even when asked.

“So we’re gonna see a major outbreak out of Trinidad — that’s my prediction,” Madrone said. He asked the sheriff’s office to get involved. “Frankly, we need help in Trinidad right now. It is out of control, literally. … Please, give us some daily patrols that are highly visible.”

A couple of paragraphs down, the story read: "During the public comment period, several people expressed frustration, skepticism and outright defiance toward public health measures."

These included extreme and abusive comments towards public health officials, accusing them at one point of "borderline child abuse" because of restrictions on ball games.

It is true that Humboldt County has few covid cases (though there has been a small surge this week) but nobody seems to credit public health officials with contributing to the smallness of that number.  Nationally there is such disgraceful and violent behavior towards public health officials that dedicated and experienced leaders are quitting.

Apart from the self-defeating behavior that is more and more leading to a self-created epidemic, there is that arrogance of those who refuse to take precautions, endangering others as well as themselves and their families.  The fundamental respect for others that is signaled by wearing masks is disdained, and the social contract is visibly broken.

The social contract is more specifically broken with seniors.  The cant that seems to be more and more quoted is to the effect that people have a right to take the risk of getting infected, but that those who are especially vulnerable, especially old people, "should stay the hell home."  Presumably forever.

Even more than that, masks and common sense distancing have been demonically transformed into political/cultural statements.  If I wear a mask as I pass someone, do I want to invite hostility and arrogance on an isolated trail?  Believe me, there are times when the answer is yes.  But I'd rather not go there.  In any case, there might be more danger from attitude than infection.  Both are profoundly uncomfortable.

So I won't be going to Trinidad this birthday.  I won't even be driving up there anymore (assuming I get my car fixed) because I'm a bit leery of my own anti-social tendencies.  I'll be staying the hell home, which is not hell at all, as a matter of fact.

Meanwhile, the self-induced epidemic spreads, with record hospitalizations in seven states as well as surges of new infections in many others.  And infections (like climate crisis effects by the way) are a lagging indicator, meaning that the causes are in the past.  According to Johns Hopkins’s Erik Toner, “It’s basically the same reason for all these states: It was Memorial Day.” And we've had some three weeks of post-sequestration activities since then.  It's no wonder that Dr. Fauci said Tuesday that the next two weeks will be crucial in getting control of the epidemic.

But the federal government is not only ignoring the epidemic (reportedly considering withdrawing the state of emergency officially) but the Republican candidate who holds the title of President angrily denounces anyone who recognizes it.  There happens to still be a majority in the country who do recognize it, but those numbers are slipping.

And the rest of the world is noticing that it's out of control here, and the government seems to have stopped trying to do anything about it. Accordingly, as of Tuesday, the European Union was considering banning visitors from the US to protect their own citizens.  (Canada already does that, but quietly.) That's not exactly transitioning to greatness.  That's an historic humiliation.

But perhaps this is all because nobody is smart enough to understand the advanced thinking of the very stable genius in the White House.  Evidently, when he talks about the virus he is discussing it on the quantum level.  It's a demonstrated fact that indeed on the quantum level you might have to observe a particle in order for it to exist.  Therefore, if you don't want the virus to exist, you just don't look at it.

Poetry Monday: Tracks in the Sand

Tracks in the Sand

For anyone, I am a substitute.
When you were five, kicking the leaves
for a fire, I was you, and the leaves, and the fire.

Or you watch a bomb test--how it mushrooms
over the flat--I am an atom
with the others, and mark you and am your scar.

For anyone else I take the next step
and another, become the road and the sky,
and look back where we were, those tracks in the sand.

For anything lacking--for trees, for rain,
for salvation--I am learning both sides
of the window, and standing between, turning to glass.

--William Stafford

Weekend Update: Tulsa Turndown and Covid News

"Rarely has a single campaign rally drawn as much hype as the one President Donald Trump held Saturday night at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma—a relaunch of his reelection bid that, according to the president himself, more than 1 million people had requested tickets to attend" writes Russell Berman in the Atlantic.  "Rarely has a presidential event endangered the public health of the community it was held in. And rarely has a spotty crowd made such a statement. It turns out Oklahomans might care more about their own health than the president does."

Gee, did anyone suggest this might happen?  Let's see...In my Weekend Update of June 13 I wrote: "There are still the AlwaysTrumpers, the reliable one-third, but it's not clear how reliable they are anymore. We will see if they are really insane enough to crowd into covid pits to shout and spit in Tulsa, where infections are rising fast, or even in Jacksonville. What if the tickets aren't actually going like hotcakes in Tulsa, and what if Trump suddenly realizes that for an hour or more he'll be facing thousands of possibly infected people screaming at him?"

Now we know the answer to those questions.  In the battle between the Germaphobe-in-Chief vs. the Narcissist-in-Chief, the Narcissist won.  But the AlwaysTrumpers didn't show in the usual numbers-- estimates have the arena anywhere from a third to a half from the capacity of 19,000 [Update: Tulsa Fire Marshal estimates the crowd at 6,200, which is a third of capacity, or two-thirds empty.  The Trump campaign says it was 12,000.], and the overflow outdoor venue had so few attendees that speeches by Trump and Pence were cancelled.  Of course we don't know how many of those who might have attended changed their minds because of the covid crisis.  But normally people don't miss a chance to see a President, and a lot of people took a pass on this one. (The actual attendance has really nothing to do with any fake reservations made online which may have affected only the campaign's prior estimates.)

Those who did show bunched together and though some wore masks, others immediately threw away the ones they were dutifully given.  Which suggests another explanation: that the true number of diehard AlwaysTrumpers is fewer than assumed.

That business of the outdoor arena being the overflow venue is very telling. If they had that venue available, why didn't they hold the main event there?  It would have mitigated somewhat against the risk of spreading the virus.  People can make nearly as much noise outdoors as in an echoing indoor arena.  That is, if they show up, which apparently the Trump campaign believed they would.

The reason has to be that the indoor arena was an in-your-face statement that the virus and people who could contract it don't matter. Virus, what virus? Trump made fun of it in his remarks.  But the very selection of the indoor venue was a vicious statement. It is the superspreader of denial.

A lot more happened this week that added up to administration racism, corruption and the ongoing attempt to hollow out and destroy the federal government, and the states besides. Each week gets more grotesque than the last.  But in this update I'm sticking to virus news.

Global infections are at record highs, and in the US they are climbing to the highest previous point of spring.  No one doubts they will exceed prior levels. Not long ago the headline was that half the states were "re-opening." Now the headline is that at least half the states are seeing big increases in infections.

It is now generally concluded that reopening and group activities on Memorial Day weekend and after have accelerated infections and hospitalizations. It's also widely concluded that at least so far, the protests after George Floyd's murder did not contribute to greatly increasing infections, possibly because they were outdoors and the majority of protesters wore masks.

It's also clear that hot weather has done little or nothing to slow down the virus, since prominent among the virus hot spots are the hot states of Florida, Arizona, Texas, southern California and Oklahoma.

There's more consensus on risk factors.  The virus most easily transmits, current thinking goes, when people are together for hours indoors without masks and without physical distancing, especially if they are breathing harder--shouting, singing, dancing, etc.  So apart from nursing homes, crowded factory floors, and overcrowded migrant housing, as well as repeated exposure to an infected member of the household, infections have been traced back to large social activities in homes and other rooms (birthdays, funerals, weddings), and to bars and nightclubs (30 members of the national champion LSU football team were infected as a result of an evening at a nighclub.)

The new clusters of infections seem to be taking place among young people, possibly linked to those social settings, and not boding real well for reopening colleges.

Wearing a mask, a face covering, is becoming the most recommended deterrent to infection, along with physical distancing.  Catching the virus from surfaces is thought to be less likely.

Naturally people are interested in any scientific study but it's best to get beyond the headlines.  There were lots of stories last week about a study showing that blood types are a factor in severity.  But the difference turns out to be negligible.  Other factors are more important.  And while more is being learned, most of the mysteries of this mysterious virus are still, you know, mysterious.

And there is this disquieting column in the Washington Post by Erin Blakemore     about the claims made by a gerontologist and a public health expert at the CDC claiming "that ageist perceptions of seniors as helpless and expendable affect how they’re cared for, and how many of them die of covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus."

 This brief column links to the article by these doctors that outlines the problems and the possible solutions.  But I find myself staring at the two words I highlighted: helpless and expendable.  And how, consciously or not, they may go together.  As well as the assumption that seniors are both.

Nationally some 80% of covid deaths are of Americans over 65.  Here in Humboldt County it's been 100%--although I believe at least 2 if not all 4 were in their 90s.  Our numbers are too small to mean anything, but I can't help  noticing anyway that my age group--the 70s--has by far the fewest cases of known infection, only 3.  Yet the 60s had the most cases until recently, and now comes a close second to the age group with the largest number, the 30s.  With only 110 cases total since the pandemic was identified, the age group numbers vary little really--they just look different on a bar graph.  Still, if there is a reason for the 70s being the lowest I can't think what it is.  But of course I'll take it.

Juneteenth

It's Kamala

Update 6/18: Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota has withdrawn her name from consideration for Dem v.p.  She reportedly told presidential candidate Biden that he should choose a woman of color as his running mate. Senator Klobuchar repeated all this in a TV interview Thursday evening.  With Juneteenth tomorrow, it will be interesting to see if Senator Warren feels the need to do the same.  Meanwhile, a new poll finds "59% of Democratic primary voters believe having a woman of color as Joe Biden’s running mate would increase the ticket’s chances of victory."

The din of pointless stories on presidential candidate Joe Biden's choice of a vice-presidential running mate is getting louder but no more informative. Because nobody knows anything.

But if you actually listen to what Biden has said on the subject, there is at this point still only one likely choice: Senator Kamala Harris.  And I will be beyond surprised if, barring some problem in the vetting, it isn't her.

Biden has said three relevant things.  In direct response to questions about his v.p. he's said that his choice has to be ready to assume presidential responsibilities immediately, and that the person has to be "simpatico."

Biden's third relevant statement is that he hopes to be the transition to a new generation of leaders.

Senator Harris ran for President and participated in presidential debates, showing her grasp of the issues a President will face.  Since the murder of George Floyd, pundits suggest a black woman is the most likely choice.  Other black women mentioned have different and relevant experience, and only Susan Rice has actually been involved in presidential decision-making.  But experience with national issues as a senator, familiarity with the ways of the national media, visibility as a presidential candidate and the competency Senator Harris displayed in the debates all count heavily in her favor.   Someone thrust into the Presidency must have the immediate confidence of the public.  Senator Harris has a national presence, without being overexposed.

And unlike several if not all of the black women on everybody's short list, Joe Biden already knows her.  They share deep bonds through Biden's beloved son Bo.  Unless there is some massively hidden antipathy and mistrust, on this criterion alone, Senator Harris is the clear choice.

And Kamala Harris is a member of that next generation.  She looks it, she speaks it.  She is both familiar and "new," especially since she's been keeping a low profile lately.  Her choice can bring excitement to the ticket, and so can she as a campaigner.

I wrote previously that Senator Elizabeth Warren or Senator Harris were the most likely choices at this point.  Despite Senator Warren's recent visibility--and a spate of stories suggesting she is the frontrunner for v.p.--I doubt that it will be her.  She is a more divisive choice, with strong adherents who claim Biden would win easily with her, and strong detractors who say Biden would lose with her on the ticket.  If she is selected I would support that---she clearly has the skills to assume the presidency, she has a lot of minority support as well as progressive cred, and she can be a formidable campaigner.  If Biden chooses her, then he must feel that "simpatico" that has not been evident before.

But I don't think she will be the choice.  The optics seem inappropriate for 2020--two white candidates who look old.  She may come across as a partner to Biden, but she may also take too much attention away from him in the campaign.

As for other contenders, there are political consideration.  Atlanta Mayor Bottoms is also on the media's shortlist, but recent events in her city show the political dangers of picking a mayor or governor now in office, who may be embroiled in crises in the middle of a campaign.  That won't happen with the Senator from California.  (And more than incidentally, her Senate seat will remain Democratic in the short term, and very likely in the next election.  To keep Senator Warren's seat will require state legislative action and an uncertain election.)

Kamala Harris is an immediate asset.  She is young, energetic, highly articulate, and by now has actual and sometimes painful experience in a national campaign, as Biden did when he was Obama's v.p. running mate.  And they look really good together.  They've got chemistry.

Senator Harris can be tough and incisive in her words.  But she also has a winning smile--not quite Obama wattage but close--and her vocal timbre is in that range most appealing to the ear. That may seem a bit off the wall but I think it's really important.

She's not the progressive alternative that Senator Warren might be, but given Warren's movement towards the party's center as the rest of the party moves in the progressive direction, there's not much daylight between them anymore.  Given the racial realities of the moment, her nomination is itself progressive.

No one can know what she and Biden have talked about, and if there is any disagreement on policy and procedure that is serious enough to short-circuit this candidacy.  But that's highly unlikely. 2021 is going to be really new territory for everybody, in almost every way.  Biden has shown his ability to respond.  He will need to know she can, too.

There's still more than a month before Biden's deadline for announcing, so things can still change. It's not a foregone conclusion exactly, but at least in my mind, it's Kamala.

Poetry Monday: Just A Little More

Just A Little More

Just a little more
And we shall see the almond trees in blossom
The marbles shining in the sun
The sea, the curling waves.
Just a little more
Let us rise just a little higher.

--George Seferis

Giorgos (or George) Seferis was a 20th century Greek poet.  His real-world name was Georgios Seferiades, and his real world job was as a diplomat.  He represented Greece in the UK both in the 1930s and again as Ambassador from 1957 to 1962.   In 1936, he translated Eliot's The Waste Land into Greek.  As a poet he was considered both a European modernist and a continuation of Greek tradition.   He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1963.  He died in Athens in 1971.

I've come across him recently as a real-life character in Henry Miller's luminous The Colossus of Maroussi, a book-length account of Miller's months in Greece in 1939 just as World War II was beginning. It was Miller's own favorite of all the books he wrote.  Another Greek poet, George Katsimbalis is more prominently featured, but Miller is rhapsodic about Seferis as well.

Weekend Update: The Foreshortened Future

First, a public service announcement: if you don't stay home, wear the damn mask.

The future as we conceive of it is normally this vast time ahead, centuries or even eons, or at least generations or decades.

 The climate crisis that threatens the decades and centuries ahead, contracts that expanse.  Now we in the US at this moment are looking at an even more foreshortened future.

 For the unknown future of consequence is first and foremost the next 5 to 7 months.  And the question of how well and even if (as the same nation) we survive to the November election and past it, and somehow to Inauguration Day in late January takes up just about all the speculative space there is.

There are lots of individual questions, the answers to which will shape that future. Politically, the outcome of November becomes more and more likely, which is a Democratic landslide.  At this point it seems that not even the Republican effort to suppress votes will stop it.  They did their best with a scandalous and deliberate chaos in Georgia, and the nearly final results just announced show that Democrats tripled their number of votes in a primary.

Meanwhile the current administration is doing everything in its power to motivate every voting group likely to vote for Democrats to vote for their own survival in record numbers.  The administration is also making life much harder for most of the people that vote Republican.

There are still the AlwaysTrumpers, the reliable one-third, but it's not clear how reliable they are anymore.  We will see if they are really insane enough to crowd into covid pits to shout and spit in Tulsa, where infections are rising fast, or even in Jacksonville.  What if the tickets aren't actually going like hotcakes in Tulsa, and what if Trump suddenly realizes that for an hour or more he'll be facing thousands of possibly infected people screaming at him?

It seems that all that needs to happen for this electoral change is for Joe Biden to stay healthy, and the country to be intact enough to have a good enough election. And Biden's health aside,  that second condition is the real question.

Because with infections and hospitalizations rising in a growing number of places, and with the realization that the federal government is failing even more profoundly that it did a few months ago, and has never, ever organized and produced and delivered the proper equipment to medical facilities, and has never done what was necessary to make the nursing homes safe that it regulates and oversees, we are in grave danger.

Epidemics move fast, with rapid consequences.  A huge national tragedy well beyond what we've seen so far was averted this spring because the major outbreaks began in states with strong governors who recognized what had to be done, and led the shutdowns and the organization of the public health systems in their states.  But the outbreaks so far this summer are largely in states without that kind of governor.

Now even those stalwart governors are under systematic attack by Republicans, mobilizing the anger of the panicked and thoughtless.  Armed thugs outside her home shouting anti-Jewish slurs led the heroic health secretary of Ohio to resign.

Republicans are engaged in a war on reality, and we cannot afford to let them win. The virus does not care that you are sick of it, that it's had its social media moment.  It may not be viral in cyberspace, but it's still viral in real space.

Disease does not respect wishes or psychological needs, convenience or expectations or rhetoric or spin, and what may come into focus is that it does not respect state borders.  There are resulting scenarios that could threaten to disunite these United States this fall.

This is a big country with lots of moving parts, and we have a lot of excess in the economy. So there are no predictions, other than the assumption that everything holds together somehow isn't the only possible scenario.  There is reasonable doubt about this foreshortened future.

Because it is now possible--if not likely--that the US will have officially registered close to a quarter million deaths from covid by the end of the year, perhaps by election day.  By then, the national economy could be worse, maybe much worse that it is now, and the consequences growing.  And so that patch of future is blank.  That's what this week told me.