“Here for It – or, how to save your soul in America” by R. Eric Thomas – Covid19 #4

Ballantine Books, 264 pages, 2020. (That’s EARLY 2020, before the pandemic.)

In the text, R. Eric Thomas tells us he wanted this book to be called Casual Nigger but EVERYBODY (editor, agent, who?) went nuts. Hence, the less controversial Here for It. Here for what? Life, actually. Thomas battled depression and struggled mightily to “find himself”. In these essays, he lets us in on his battles, small and large.

The title, of course, is on the cover, and I find the cover image alarming. On a pink background, a “black” man’s hand is tossing confetti. Fine! But the hand is deformed. I know hands. The thumb joint is WAY out of line. Injury? Age? Is it painful? Does Thomas know the hand is damaged? Was the choice intentional? My hands (both, regrettably) are less obviously deformed, but cause pain daily. But I digress…

R E Thomas is funny. Goodness knows, a funny sociopolitical commentator is a real find! He’s a wise guy. Sociologically, he’s “intersectional”, expressing African American, LGBTQ and Christian identities. Here for It is autobiographical. He was born in Baltimore and spent decades in Philadelphia.

I was particularly interested Thomas’s college years at Columbia University and University of Maryland (Baltimore Campus).

Toward the end of the book, in a Chapter entitled “The Past Smelled Terrible”, Thomas waxes both prophetic and patriotic. HOW DID HE KNOW WHAT WAS COMING??

“I can’t help but think constantly about the end of the world…Listen. Here’s my living will, okay? I have no desire to survive the apocalypse…if the post-apocalypse comes about because of a massive plague or something, I have no useful medical or scientific skills…I would like to be Patient 15. Maybe Patient 20. No higher than 50. I don’t want to be Patient Zero, because then everyone would blame me, which is rude…I just want to go early, while they’re still doing nice tributes to the victims on television and I can get my own grave plot.”

WTF? Did Thomas know something? Where is he now? I hope he’s riding out the pandemic someplace comfortable. (I started to say “safe and comfortable”. No place is “safe”.) I grabbed this book from my public library on March 11, just before the big shutdown. I knew enough to grab extra books, maybe a dozen. Good luck, Eric!

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“Real Simple” magazine, before and after. Covid19 #3

About 10 days into my voluntary “quarantine”, a magazine arrived in my mailbox. I take only a few print magazines… I like “Real Simple” for its recipes and it’s crisp, colorful layout. Often I feel like the lifestyle it portrays isn’t “mine”, too stark… But what I pondered this month is that this “April” issue clearly comes from “before”. Full of cheerful, friendly articles about spring cleaning and freezer organization.

You know, before “all this”. Before the pandemic and shutdown. Before “social distancing” and “shelter in place”. How will we refer to “before”?

• The Age of Innocence?
• Back then?
• The old normal?
• The bad or good old days?

Some writers refer to our current status as “The Pause”. They hope something good will come out of it.

I remember, in 2001, the arrival of my first piece of mail that reflected the post 9/11 reality, the “Nation” magazine cover showing a very simple, stylized graphic of the two burning towers. I felt a dark sense of finality. I’m never going to get away from this…

News cycles spin faster now, and are far more internet dependent. There wasn’t one image to jar me into a new reality, although the cascade of events late on March 11 came close – NBA season suspended, Presidential travel ban, press conference… March 11 was my personal turning point. I wrote in my personal journal “This is an emergency.”

The next time “Real Simple” arrives in my mailbox, it will be different. (In fact, it will never be the same. The website has already morphed.) All of us are “coping”, dealing with changes we never expected. The dangers of an epidemic have caused anxiety to skyrocket, and maybe depression, too. There are plenty of sages who remind us to look for the advantages in our situation. Sometimes I can find them… sometimes not.

Personal History – Epidemics in my Life – COVID19 #1

I was (sort of) born during an epidemic. I was born in 1949. According to an article I found, polio (infantile paralysis) was rife in the 1950s, and there were 60,000 cases in the United States in 1952. Three thousand victims died. How many more were left unable to walk and dependent on wheel chairs, crutches, etc?

One of my earliest memories was the arrival at my home of school aged children for tutoring by my mother. These were polio victims on the road to recovery. Some wore leg braces. My mother’s job was to help them catch up on their school work. She enjoyed teaching them. I was supposed to stay quiet and out of the way.

In 1955, Jonas Salk introduced a vaccine and thousands of children became “Polio Pioneers”, the first large group to be vaccinated. My sister, three years older than me, was vaccinated at school. I was too young for that cohort. My parents were worried. They arranged (somehow) for me to get the shot from a physician married to a friend of my mother. I was driven to his house one evening for the injection.

So polio was not an issue in my life after age 6! Very fortunate, since we lived near a lovely public park with an enticing pool. I would happily have played there all day, every day. Over time, I spent MANY summer days there, eventually joining the swim team, marinating in the chlorinated water and earning money for college working as a lifeguard. Once in a while, my mother would remark that it could have been different. That we could have stayed home all summer, fearing polio. Perish the thought!

Our public schools operated on a schedule that was supposed to “break up epidemics”. Instead of a long Easter break, we got a week off at the end of February and another week-long break eight weeks after that. Sometimes it didn’t work. I remember concerns over Rubella, aka German measles, which led to high absenteeism when I was in middle school. I never caught it, but thought I must surely have had a subclinical case. Nope. Decades later, when I told my OBG I wanted to start a family, I was tested and found to lack immunity. I accepted vaccination before trying to get pregnant. I remember controversies (1981?) over County Public Health testing employees for immune status and requiring vaccination of employees who worked with the public.

Growing up, I seemed not the get influenza when it was epidemic. I had at least two cases, one around 1961 and another in the summer of 1969. One year in college, I was wandering, dazed, through endless registration lines when my path was blocked by a person with a clipboard, demanding to know if I was allergic to chickens or eggs. Startled, I denied any allergy. Bang! Shot in the arm. An early influenza vaccine!

I suppose many of us are using our time in COVID19 “social distancing” quarantine to ponder our health histories and how they might have been different without various medical advances. I’m so glad my children have been spared at least five diseases from which I faced risk.