Sunday, April 5, 2020

Love in the time of Covid-19

I searched my mind and the cabin for 

someting I could use for a mask. This is
the best I could come up with. The face 
covering was tucked and zippered into the
 earflap of this hat I bought on impulse at 
REI.  It's stretchy, so snug. What do you
 think?
As the time grows closer to leave the East Pole for the year, I've been doing a lot of thinking about how the world has changed since I came out here in early December. Of course the biggest thing is the Covid - 19 business. I listen carefully to what people say on the news or on reliable internet sites and I think I have a handle on how to act in the new world. One part of it demands quite a change in attitude for most people and myself in particular. When there have been mobile diseases in the past I think most of us, and me for sure, have overlooked consideration for the other guy. I think we mostly protected ourselves and while maybe paying lip service to our own fault in spreading the flu, I doubt most people give that much thought as they get their flu shots and go about their business. This time the emphasis is on spreading the disease to the other guy as much as it is an attempt to protect ourselves.
Being isolated in the woods like this, I haven't had to deal with it either way. I've only spent any time with two people out here and that was more than three weeks ago and no symptoms. I did make a couple of shopping trips and tried to be careful. I didn't notice many people wearing masks or gloves but I did notice people attempting to keep some distance from others. Those were more than two weeks ago. Still nothing.
Now, looking ahead, I am what they call elderly at the age of 77 so I am considered susceptible even though I am in excellent health and after a winter out here in some of the best physical shape of my life. My doctor calls me a fine specimen. But I suppose I have to consider age susceptibility. I never get the flu, and least haven't for more years than I can remember so I don't bother with the shot. And, for the most part living alone and seldom going out in public except for food and mail I don't feel much danger as long as I take some measure of preparation.
But it's about those others, the ones who face greater danger than I do and I think I am going to go mask and gloves more for them than for me. For example I have a friend who is now enduring treatment for a serious form of cancer and that means chemo. And, chemo means a compromised immune system. He wrote on facebook the other day that he had to go to a store for food. He went early in the morning and encountered only a few others in the store. But, among as I recall maybe 20 others, only one wore a mask and one other wore gloves. He wrote in anger. Maybe all those people feel strong enough to go without protection my friend rightfully so thought those people were taking chances with his life too. The inconsiderate were actually threatening people more likely to be infected.
Then there's the case of my friend Joe May.
Joe May is one of the toughest and most interesting people anyone could hope to meet. He grew up on the tugboats and ore ships of the Great Lakes. He fought as a young Marine in Korea. After coming to Alaska he won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and ran the Yukon Quest, another thousand-mile race. He went on to sail the big oceans with his wife for several years before returning to Alaska and taking up residence in a place called Trapper Creek, a widespread community of cabins more than 100 miles north of Anchorage. 
He has faced so many dangers and so many hardships in his adventures even he can't remember them all and he has faced them with a scholar's attitude and subtle down home humor. He might tell you how he packed his sled for a trip in Greenland, along the way explaining Mawson's mistake when he and his crew almost died in Antarctica in the early part of the last century. When asked to write about sled dogs he went back to their roots in Siberia long before any of them set a paw on North American soil. Along the way he has met some pretty tough challenges and one way or another survived them all.
Now, Joe at the age of 84, is facing a danger and a difficulty over which he has no control. Like most of us who are aging he endures some serious health problems, but takes them with good humor. Then this Corona virus came along and it's something out of our reach. We older folks have been designated as particularly susceptible to the virus and we're told that we need to take extra care about interactions with other people no matter how tough we think we are. Living as isolated as we do, that shouldn't be difficult unless others don't adhere to the same social distancing rules. 
They endanger all of us but if the health officials are to be believed they are a particular danger to the aging. Here we are in Alaska with its low population and living away from the busier centers where we may be less susceptible but it only takes one careless person to reach out and touch us; still we see people in pictures crowding beaches, supposedly religious leaders still holding services for thousands of people with no regard to the dangers they present to themselves and others. And as Joe points out in a message he sent a neighbor, even our friends ignore the warnings. Joe sent me the following today:
            I made a trip out into the neighborhood today and was stunned. People were standing around, nose to nose in casual conversations or asshole to elbow in the store. I wore a mask and gloves and was stared at like some sort of freak.
            At first I was depressed and then got angry. If these fools want to kill themselves and each other, well, that's their business...but I get resentful when they put Sandra and myself at risk. I want to live long enough for some fishing this summer. All it will take is one infected person out there to turn this place into a Brevig Mission kind of Petri dish. Be careful.
Joe
So as I contemplate moving from this neighborhood to that other one, I have all this to consider about how to function in this brave new world. I know one thing, I plan to be much more conscious of that other person I come in contact with and do what I can to protect them from me. And I can only hope others will show me the same consideration.

1 comment:

  1. While we've mostly been staying home, and we're working from home, a couple of trips to the hospital and pharmacy have put me on the road. It is disconcerting to hear people say they don't really care what happens to a bunch of old people—our deaths will save on social security and Medicare costs. I'm turning 72 shortly, but there are still things I want to do, and I'll never live long enough to draw out anywhere as much as I've contributed! Get over it!

    ReplyDelete

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Memorable quotations

The best way to know you are having an adventure is when you wish you were home talking about it." — a mechanic on the Alaska State Ferry System. Or as in my own case planning how I will be writing it on this blog.

"You can't promote principled anti-corruption without pissing off corrupt people." — George Kent

"If only the British had held on to the airports, the whole thing might have gone differently for us." — Mick Jagger

"You can do anything as long as you don't scare the horses." — a mother's favorite saying recalled by a friend

A poem is an egg with a horse inside” — anonymous fourth grader

“My children will likely turn my picture to the wall but what the hell, you only get old once." — Joe May

“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” — Ernest Hemingway

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth. Kurt Vonnegut

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a cheque, if you cashed the cheque and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”Stephen King

The thing about ignorance is, you don't have to remain ignorant. — me again"

"It was like the aftermath of an orgasm with the wrong partner." – David Lagercrants “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”

Why worry about dying, you aren't going to live to regret it.

Never debate with someone who gets ink by the barrel" — George Hayes, former Alaska Attorney General who died recently

My dear Mr. Frost: two roads never diverge in a yellow wood. Three roads meet there. — @Shakespeare on Twitter

Normal is how somebody else thinks you should act.

"The mark of a great shiphandler is never getting into situations that require great shiphandling," Adm. Ernest King, USN

Me: Does the restaurant have cute waitresses?

My friend Gail: All waitresses are cute when you're hungry.

I'm not a writer, but sometimes I push around words to see what happens. – Scott Berry

I realized today how many of my stories start out "years ago." What's next? Once upon a time?"

“The rivers of Alaska are strewn with the bones of men who made but one mistake” - Fred McGarry, a Nushagak Trapper

Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stared at walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing. – Meg Chittenden

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. – Franz Kafka

We are all immortal until the one day we are not. – me again

If the muse is late, start without her – Peter S. Beagle

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain Actually you could do the same thing with the word "really" as in "really cold."

If you are looking for an experience that will temper your vanity, this is it. There's no one to impress when you're alone on the trap line. – Michael Carey quoting his father's journal

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. – Benjamin Franklin

It’s nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of. – Shirley Hazzard

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence -- Bertrand Russell

You know that I always just wanted to have a small ship to take stuff from a place that had a lot of that stuff to a place that did not have a lot of that stuff and so prosper.—Jackie Faber, “The Wake of the Lorelei Lee”

If you attack the arguer instead of the argument, you lose both

If an insurance company won’t pay for damages caused by an “act of God,” shouldn’t it then have to prove the existence of God? – I said that

I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. – Eugene O’Neill

German General to Swiss General: “You have only 500,000 men in your army; what would you do if I invaded with 1 million men?”

Swiss General: “Well, I suppose every one of my soldiers would need to fire twice.”

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.—Gloria Steinem

Exceed your bandwidth—sign on the wall of the maintenance shop at the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center

One thing I do know, if you keep at it, you usually wind up getting something done.—Patricia Monaghan

Do you want to know what kind of person makes the best reporter? I’ll tell you. A borderline sociopath. Someone smart, inquisitive, stubborn, disorganized, chaotic, and in a perpetual state of simmering rage at the failings of the world.—Brett Arends

It is a very simple mind that only knows how to spell a word one way.—Andrew Jackson

3:30 is too late or too early to do anything—Rene Descartes

Everything is okay when it’s 50-below as long as everything is okay. – an Alaskan in Tom Walker’s “The Seventymile Kid”

You can have your own opinion but you can’t have your own science.—commenter arguing on a story about polar bears and global warming

He looks at three ex wives as a good start—TV police drama

Talkeetna: A friendly little drinking town with a climbing problem.—a handmade bumper sticker

“You’re either into the wall or into the show”—Marco Andretti on giving it all to qualify last at the 2011 Indy 500

Makeup is not for the faint of heart—the makeup guerrilla

“I’m going to relax in a very adult manner.”—Danica Patrick after sweating it out and qualifying half an hour before Andretti

“Asking Congress to come back is like asking a mugger to come back because he forgot your wallet.”—a roundtable participant on Fox of all places

As Republicans go further back in the conception process to define when life actually begins, I am beginning to think the eventual definition will be life begins in the beer I was drinking when I met her.—me again

Hunting is a “critical element for the long-term conservation of wood bison.”—a state department of Fish and Game official explaining why the state would not go along with a federal plan to reintroduce wood bison in Alaska because the agreement did not specifically allow hunting

Each day do something that won’t compute – anon

I can’t belive I still have to protest this shit – a sign carriend by an elderly woman at an Occupy demonstration

Life should be a little nuts or else it’s just a bunch of Thursdays strung together—Kevin Costner as Beau Burroughs in “Rumor has it”

You’re just a wanker whipping up fear —Irish President Michael D. Higgins to a tea party radio announcer

Being president doesn’t change who you are; it reveals who you are—Michelle Obama

Sports malaprops

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"… there's a fearlessment about him …"

"He's got to have the lead if he's going to win this race." "

"Kansas has always had the ability to score with the basketball."

"NFL to put computer chips in balls." Oh, that's gotta hurt.

"Now that you're in the finals you have to run the race that's going to get you on the podium."

"It's very important for both sides that they stay on their feet."

This is why you get to hate sportscasters. Kansas beats Texas for the first time since 1938. So the pundits open their segment with the question "let's talk about what went wrong." Wrong? Kansas WON a football game! That's what went RIGHT!

"I brought out the thermostat to show you how cold it is here." Points to a thermometer reading zero in Minneapolis.

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Cliches so embedded in sportscasters' minds they can't help themselves: "Minnesota fell from the ranks of the undefeated today." What ranks? They were the only undefeated team left.

A good one: A 5'10" player went up and caught a pass off a defensive back over six feet tall. The quote? "He's got some hops."

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