Communique

I wake up in the night, feeling warm with a dry throat and wonder if I have the virus.  I dismiss it and go back to sleep. But, there are more cases now than ever.  The normal that one might want to achieve seems farther and farther away.  We are at an extended existential moment.  The future is unknown. I suppose this is more realistic-- thinking one knows the future is an illusion, and yet culture, our culture plants the seeds and creates the markers for this illusion that the future is secure, corollary, one is safe and immortal, this against all evidence.  I suppose my surprise at how strong ideology is, some who are able to deny the science of the virus, is not that different then this culturally propagated belief, the future is known and secure. The pandemic brings this belief into question and we can call it existentialism.  No, the future is not known, so get over it.  Life is a fragile gift, we don’t know what happens tomorrow.  Many people, and cultures have live

I can't breath Reflecting on the horrendous scene in Minneapolis, “I can’t breath”.  I think of the disproportionate number of people of color who get sick and die from Covid-19.  I think of the respirators pushing oxygen into the lungs of people who are horrible sick.  “I can’t breathe” and I think of the lack of good health care in the Inter-cities and among the rural poor in the United States.  Before the pandemic this was just normal.  With people in the streets there is hope for a new normal. Still, I am seventy-one years old and this racial hatred has been present my whole life.  I have seen its many manifestations, a numbing number of means of disadvantaging the other.  I have seen how it has been used for political gain.  Everywhere I have lived, it lives, North, South and West.  When I took the white supremacy in Oregon course I felt overwhelmed by the relentless discrimination, it has so many heads.  I don’t know if it can be changed, it has been so persistent; it