Coronavirus Journal: Routines amidst despair

Cello practices continue. Today, in the garage, to the fresh air.

I've been working from home for nearly four years now, and I've never been terribly great at establishing a routine.

I'm great at meeting work deadlines. But other things -- getting out of the house, going to the gym -- I've been hit-or-miss. I always mean to get a little bit better ... tomorrow.

Now we're all at home almost all of the time, and a few routines would probably be good. For my health. My mental health. For my son and wife. Right now, though, I'm doing a worse-than-usual job.

Mostly, I can do my assigned work. And other than that, I've been spending hours each day watching social media, watching the tragedy unfold slowly and in real time.

I haven't read much, despite buying some new books. I haven't walked outside much at all. Mostly, it all takes energy devoted to witnessing the world break down. I am sleeping more deeply now than I have in years, and it takes a real fight to get awake in the morning.

But I'm trying to fight my tendency to go into a ball. For the sake of my son. For the sake of my wife.

So I've got one routine established. I'm playing one game of chess with my son each day.

Yesterday, he beat me for the first time ever. It made me happy. Life goes on.

I hope.

For more from the Coronavirus Journal, click here.

Coronavirus Journal: Is this the end?

After a year off Facebook, I broke down and went back.
Social distancing is tough for me.

So far, I'm lucky: I write a regular column for The Week, and -- for now anyway -- they're still using my services. I saw a story today that said one in five Americans had already lost their jobs or seen hours reduced because of the coronavirus crisis.

I'm lucky to still have work. But I also have to think about my work a bit differently. I've never wanted to be a hack -- I've worked hard to avoid it -- but we are at a historical moment. To have such a platform is a privilege. To "mail it in" would be sin. Especially if one considers: What if the end of my life is coming soon? The end of my career? What will my final contributions be? How will I want to be remembered?

Last night, I wrote a column. 800 words roughly. Sent it to my editors. Then I realized it was inadquate to the moment, focused on small-bore politicking instead of the big concerns that face us all.

So I withdrew the column, and wrote a whole new column. It was about something important.

I'm glad I did.

Coronavirus Journal: Thoughts and Prayers

My son has insisted we start daily family yoga for the
duration of the lockdown. He's a bit of a showoff.

I'm not much of a praying man. My theological beliefs are fuzzy, at best, and I have long believed in Huckleberry Finn's maxim: "You can't pray a lie."

But for the last couple of weeks, as it has become apparent that coronavirus would upend our lives, I've become a praying man again.

This is tricky, because I've never wanted to treat God -- or whatever name you have for whatever force there might be in the universe -- as Santa Claus. "Dear God, give me this thing that I want," seems both pointless and selfish. I want to be healthy and not lose my livelihood during this time. But so do a lot of people who have, or are about to, lose either their health or their livelihood. I'm not sure that God, to the extent God exists, works that way.

But here's the thing: I'm not in control of what's about to happen.

And now, a timely reminder from Louise Erdrich

"It seemed to Thomas, as they sat in the sinking radiance, shucking bits of shell from the meat, dropping the nuts into a dishpan, that he should hold onto this. Whatever was said, he should hold on to. Whatever gestures his father made, hold on to. The peculiar aliveness of things struck by the late afternoon sunlight -- hold on to it."

The Night Watchman, pages 66-67 

Coronavirus Journal: Togetherness

T and J wait for the water to boil. She is teaching
him to make macaroni and cheese. He is going to learn
a lot of self-sufficiency in the coming weeks.

When President Trump was elected, J and I hosted a brunch for crestfallen friends the following Saturday. The idea was to affirm that though a terrible thing had happened -- and I will not apologize for that sense, nor do I think we were overreacting -- we still had each other, we still had community, we were still together.

Now a new crisis has arrived, and if the medical authorities are correct, the worst thing I could do to comfort my friends at this point would be to bring them all together.

 Isolation, it seems, is the only thing that can save us.

 Or most of us.

 Except: It won't.

Yes, it will help slow the spread of the virus -- and for that reason, we're obeying the "social distancing" requirements to the extent possible -- but it also creates two new problems: Isolation, and loss of livelihoods.

We are social creatures. I've seen videos of people in Italian neighborhoods standing on their balconies, entertaining each other with music. Here in Kansas, we don't live that close to our neighbors -- enough to separate ourselves and yet still be in that kind of face-to-face contact with each other -- but I suspect we'll find ways to fight through the isolation. For many of us, this might be the greatest-ever era to be quarantined: We can still talk to each other on the phone, or video chat, or simply snark at each other and post updates on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

 I'm a bit more worried about all the people I know who work in a service economy. I know of one catering service here in town that just laid off its part-time staff because all its bookings for the next two months have dried up -- it's a beloved local business that will find it challenging to survive. My local bookstore has responded to events by offering to deliver books for free to customers -- they'll drop the package off outside your front door, let you know they've arrived, and walk away. Hopefully, some businesses will survive by using that kind of creativity.

We need each other, it turns out.

Even in an age of polarization and tech-driven isolation, we need human contact. And we need, frankly, human commerce. And those things are going to be tough to come by. I fear that the loss of these things might ultimately produce suffering and deaths that the virus alone can't accomplish.

There's a real tension between all of our human needs during this crisis, is what I'm saying.

That's on the large scale. On the small scale, my wife, my son and I are stuck in a small house together for the duration. We're doing to find it difficult to get away from each other. T, now 11 years old, had already spent increasing amounts of time behind a closed door, in his room.

It appears that trend will accelerate.

He announced today: "Sometimes kids need a break from parents." Right now, he's in his room.

I get it, son. I get it.

P.S. Speaking of togetherness, there will be no church services at most Lawrence congregations tomorrow. The pastor at Peace Mennonite Church today sent along a guide to worshiping from home. Seems like an important thing to preserve.

For more from the Coronavirus Journal, click here.

Coronavirus Journal: Chapter 1

In full-blown hobo mode. All I've been able to do this week is stare at Twitter,
refresh, and stare some more, until I'm too exhausted to do anything but sleep. 

I became a journalist because I wanted to see history with my own eyes.

The realization came to me in the summer of 1989, when brave Chinese students were protesting their government at Tiananmen Square, and then paid a dear price for it. Journalists from the west showed us what was happening, live, and I knew watching it on TV that were looking at a critical moment. Being a history buff already, I set my sights on being a journalist.

Well, we're living through history now. I don't have to go to China, or New York, or anyplace else to experience it. All I have to do is sit in my home, try to keep my distance from others, and hope that me and my family don't either A) become victims of the COVID-19 pandemic, or B) unwittingly pass the virus on to somebody we love and end up killing them.

Just a couple of hours ago, President Trump finally declared a national emergency, but this journal shouldn't and won't be about him. I can write about him elsewhere. Instead, it will be about life in my home and in my community over the next weeks and months as we hunker down and try to survive -- not just the virus, but the economic fallout, and the costs of "social distancing" that we're now being asked to perform in order to slow the spread of the virus. Historians will know the other stuff. We should preserve the tales of real life for them as well. This is my humble attempt.

I'm worried. I'm worried that things will never be good again. I'm worried that I'm raising my son to become an adult in a world in which thriving is impossible, that the work of survival is difficult and mean. 

I worry I'm going to die, penniless, under a bridge, unable to provide for myself or my family.

I worry a lot.

And to be fair, I worry about some of those things even when there isn't a generation-defining pandemic before us. But I worry more, now.

Remember, though, I'm lucky: I have a wife who is more optimistic and resilient than I am. I have a smart and funny child who is going to be a nuisance to keep at home until the storm clears, but that's because he's 11 years old and full of energy and we live in a small house. And for now, we can afford to live a few months even if all our income suddenly dries up. Which -- knock knock -- I hope it doesn't.

We've stockpiled some dry goods, as far as food, but J declines to go into full hoarding mode. For one thing, she says, buying up (say) all the bulk rice at the grocery store means somebody else can't have it, and that's not fair is it? So she's not just optimistic and resilient -- she operates from a place of kindness to others.

I hope we can maintain that outlook over the next few months.

We shall see.

Hindu nationalists are making a hero of Gandhi's assassin

NYT:

Indians consider Gandhi one of the fathers of their nation. But the rise of a Hindu nationalist government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has uncorked many extremist beliefs, and admiration for Gandhi’s killer, among some, has become more open. It is a sign of how much India has changed in the five and a half years since Mr. Modi took power. 

“Gandhi was a traitor,” said Pooja Shakun Pandey, who blames Gandhi for partition and who participated in a recent ceremony worshiping Mr. Godse on the anniversary of Gandhi’s assassination. “He deserved to be shot in the head.”

If your ideological or religious beliefs lead you to admire assassins, your ideological or religious beliefs are evil and and should be discarded.

Oh, and: Sound familiar?

Prominent Hindu nationalists still invoke Gandhi, but in many cases they are trying to co-opt his legacy — presenting their policies, however divisive, as congruent with his beliefs. One example: a recent citizenship law pushed by Mr. Modi’s government that, critics say, discriminates against Muslims and threatens the secular state that Gandhi had envisioned.

A lot of that going around.