Well...lets start that over again, shall we?
Wow four pages of entry deleted with a glitch in the computer. A ghost in the machine. What I want to know is...what button did I push to make all of that just disappear? Like poof!-Gone!
Sigh....
Well here we go. I started this blog as a diary for the travels my family has taken over the years, starting with our sabbatical to Northern Spain in 2012 (see previous posts). I then quite effectively I would say shared our daily schedule of our trip to China in 2015, three weeks in three cities in the country of China. I can honestly say, at risk of being tailed or followed or gaining a big fat unctious virus on my computer that I am glad I went to China, the people were lovely, but China itself is an unsettling place. There is a pall over the entire nation. I felt constantly like the views we were seeing and the stories we were being told were falsehoods.
To this day whenever I am outside working in the garden or going for a walk and I see a dragonfly I am reminded....the ONLY wildlife we ever saw in any city or countryside was either bugs or dragonflies. We never heard birds. We never saw birds at the seashore, seagulls were not to be found, and the only fish we ever saw were fat globolous koi fish, technocolored neon and dragon-faced. And planted, of course. Yes we saw fishermen, but the amount of debris and floating trash their fishing lines had to negotiate were depressing. All with the background of bulking massive boats and ships being constructed in huge shipyards. In every capable body of water.
So I can honestly say...with all of the experiences and all of the interesting things we saw in the Mysterious Orient...I don't really need to go back. Maybe it was the rampant case of C-diff or ectoplasmic diarrhea that I experienced...having to be within a few feet of a bathroom for the last ten days of any trip can color your experience-or that it took nearly six months to recover.
Or the fact that my eardrum shattered when I boarded our flight from Los Angeles to Denver. The air pressure on the China flight never seemed to correct itself, and as a result when I was on our short flight from LA to Denver I had a throbbing pain travwel the length of my left jaw and explode out of my left ear. Incredible pain and quite a bit of blood. Thankfully the gentleman who was seated to my right was a grandfather and he said he's used to seeing blood, and he and my other seatmate called the flight attendant over to take care of me. A hot towel compress later and I was able to survive the rest of my travel. The ear nose and throat doctor who saw me the following day dislodged a canal of clotted blood out of my ear, and I could instantly hear again.
So no, it is not on my list of places I need to return to again. But Spain and now Kenya?
Kenya I will have to return.
Kenya is in my heart for the rest of my life. I am forever grateful.
So yes I am going to finally recall the splendor and the beauty that is Kenya, and with the help of my cameras I can recall our trip.
If you wonder about the delay in writing about our journey well....the end of 2019 and then subsequently 2020 has basically kicked my ass.
So maybe a return to Africa is needed.
Ernest Hemingway said it best
"All I wanted to do was go back to Africa. We had not left it yet but when I would wake at night I would lie listening, homesick for it already".
Monday, June 22, 2020
Sunday, March 29, 2020
Little shocks
Are you like me and trying to remember what Life was all about prior to Coronavirus?
I remember meeting a friend for lunch on Feb 26th and we were just starting to talk about it. And it has been like a thousand little shocks since then.
The first one was when my eldest, Doe, who is now a nurse in a Level II hospital in Southern Colorado said that they were being told to start reusing masks. This was in February.
Scenes of rooms that are sealed off from the rest of the hospital. Ventilators being strained. Patients without beds. Trying to comfort a young newly graduated nurse who was thrown into quite possibly the biggest crisis she will ever have to face in her career? What do you say?
I remarked to Beloved this afternoon as we were walking outside to our local grocery store, one of a few stores in the shopping mall, that this felt like Spain in 2012. Storefronts empty or vacant, and no one out walking around during the day. It was at times eerie.
If you are like me you've been having your own series of aftershocks. Someone you know caught it. Someone you loved died from it.
We have had a strenuous 2020. It all began with the deterioration of my father-in-law's health and the subsequent death of him in March. His funeral was in his hometown, the one he lived in for 50-some years, raised a family in and buried a wife in. His wife's service was a bountiful presentation of friends young and old who were invited to come up to the dais and speak a few loving words about his bride.
His memorial consisted of only his sons, grandchildren and a daughter-in-law. No one in his community, his collection of life-long friends, was allowed to attend. One of his dearest friends sat in his car at the funeral home parking lot, and Beloved and his family were allowed to stand outside of his car and talk to this man and his wife. Mourning with six feet apart.
It continues...graduations being threatened, proms being cancelled, social distancing and Zoom and Facetiming with loved ones. Thousands upon thousands of people losing their jobs. Getting laid off. Restaurants closing. Its all little shocks. Or rather Big Shocks if you are personally impacted.
I had one of those today.
I've been feeling pretty 'proud' of myself, not panicking the way that I did on 9/11/01 or prior to that the Columbine shooting in 1999. I think probably because those instances were violence against us as humans, committed by other humans who did not want to do anything except destroy the American way of Life. The status quo. Also my own family was quite younger, and I've had time to negotiate a world with metal detectors at school entrances and taking off my shoes at the airport. It seems par for the course now to immediately not trust anyone.
This...virus... doesn't feel as personal to me. It doesn't seem like a direct attack, although some pundits might claim that China was behind this whoops, got ourselves a leak here, but the literature I've been reading tells me that it couldn't have possibly come from a laboratory, because it was animal in origin, and animal-to-human transmission wasn't being considered.
Sadly though, cases of sick humans transmitting the virus to their dogs and cats is becoming more prevalent.
But today was different. In the beginning of March I was one of those shoppers in the aisles of every supermarket, scraping every known canned vegetable I could find, never more than a quantity of 4 mind you. I do not hoard. Would I use canned potatoes? Do I use regular potatoes? Then yes I would I probably use canned potatoes. I was able to do all of this while Beloved was with his father, which is probably a good thing, seeing as he would be commenting on the quantities of bottled water or the boxes of mashed potato mix (again-potatoes). E'ventually I felt like the shelf-stocking in our (unnamed room of storage) was complete and I could stop running to the store daily to face more empty shelves more blue tape lines on the floors and fewer people I knew. THAT on top of the forthcoming death of my children's only known grandfather, and my daughter literally working on the front lines of this virus? And then the racks of empty shelves...that started to turn into a despondence I did not think I would easily get out of.
Standing in front of the canned goods section while a younger mom is reading the ingredients list of a dairy-free packaged milk product. Her expression? Sheer panic. Like she literally could not grasp what was going on in front of her. I felt like I needed to say or do something to help her anxiety. But sometimes people just want to be left alone.
Beloved and I walked to our local small organic foods market near our neighborhood. We didn't really need anything, and didn't really want to go in anywhere, we just wanted to basically get out of the house. See how things were faring.
And if we could find a can of baking powder, buy that too.
The store was empty, but not stark empty. All the lights were still on there were fewer employees and stockboys but the shelves were being maintained well. I had a chat with the checker and he was encouraging me to come to the store on Tues at 9 am to get toilet paper. But to expect me to only get one package.
I turned to leave and there at the exit to the store was a table with a young man standing behind it. The sign said "Dirty Carts" and there was a stack of used cleaning towels and rags and bottles of bleach'd cleanser at the ready.
That was my little shock for the day. In my 50 years on this Earth, Ive seen a lot. A lot. But a young man with a spray bottle disinfecting carts after they had been used-"Dirtied"-that was a new one. Now not only were we infectious and dangerous and a risk to the elderly and infirm, we were also 'Dirty'.
I appreciate the candor. No really I do. I appreciate the honesty and the discipline and the safety measures we are all taking to keep ourselves healthy.
But I've never seen a station for dirty carts in my life. And that was my shock.
As were walking out Beloved said "I want to know who it is in our town that has all the toilet paper? Is there someone in town whose entire basement is full of toilet paper?"
And would I be willing to rat them out? Would I call the police on a neighbor who had a basement full of toilet paper? I couldn't do it. Larimer County is asking residents to call on businesses who are not following basic safe distancing practices during this quarantine. I just can't do it. It feels dirty.
I remember meeting a friend for lunch on Feb 26th and we were just starting to talk about it. And it has been like a thousand little shocks since then.
The first one was when my eldest, Doe, who is now a nurse in a Level II hospital in Southern Colorado said that they were being told to start reusing masks. This was in February.
Scenes of rooms that are sealed off from the rest of the hospital. Ventilators being strained. Patients without beds. Trying to comfort a young newly graduated nurse who was thrown into quite possibly the biggest crisis she will ever have to face in her career? What do you say?
I remarked to Beloved this afternoon as we were walking outside to our local grocery store, one of a few stores in the shopping mall, that this felt like Spain in 2012. Storefronts empty or vacant, and no one out walking around during the day. It was at times eerie.
If you are like me you've been having your own series of aftershocks. Someone you know caught it. Someone you loved died from it.
We have had a strenuous 2020. It all began with the deterioration of my father-in-law's health and the subsequent death of him in March. His funeral was in his hometown, the one he lived in for 50-some years, raised a family in and buried a wife in. His wife's service was a bountiful presentation of friends young and old who were invited to come up to the dais and speak a few loving words about his bride.
His memorial consisted of only his sons, grandchildren and a daughter-in-law. No one in his community, his collection of life-long friends, was allowed to attend. One of his dearest friends sat in his car at the funeral home parking lot, and Beloved and his family were allowed to stand outside of his car and talk to this man and his wife. Mourning with six feet apart.
It continues...graduations being threatened, proms being cancelled, social distancing and Zoom and Facetiming with loved ones. Thousands upon thousands of people losing their jobs. Getting laid off. Restaurants closing. Its all little shocks. Or rather Big Shocks if you are personally impacted.
I had one of those today.
I've been feeling pretty 'proud' of myself, not panicking the way that I did on 9/11/01 or prior to that the Columbine shooting in 1999. I think probably because those instances were violence against us as humans, committed by other humans who did not want to do anything except destroy the American way of Life. The status quo. Also my own family was quite younger, and I've had time to negotiate a world with metal detectors at school entrances and taking off my shoes at the airport. It seems par for the course now to immediately not trust anyone.
This...virus... doesn't feel as personal to me. It doesn't seem like a direct attack, although some pundits might claim that China was behind this whoops, got ourselves a leak here, but the literature I've been reading tells me that it couldn't have possibly come from a laboratory, because it was animal in origin, and animal-to-human transmission wasn't being considered.
Sadly though, cases of sick humans transmitting the virus to their dogs and cats is becoming more prevalent.
But today was different. In the beginning of March I was one of those shoppers in the aisles of every supermarket, scraping every known canned vegetable I could find, never more than a quantity of 4 mind you. I do not hoard. Would I use canned potatoes? Do I use regular potatoes? Then yes I would I probably use canned potatoes. I was able to do all of this while Beloved was with his father, which is probably a good thing, seeing as he would be commenting on the quantities of bottled water or the boxes of mashed potato mix (again-potatoes). E'ventually I felt like the shelf-stocking in our (unnamed room of storage) was complete and I could stop running to the store daily to face more empty shelves more blue tape lines on the floors and fewer people I knew. THAT on top of the forthcoming death of my children's only known grandfather, and my daughter literally working on the front lines of this virus? And then the racks of empty shelves...that started to turn into a despondence I did not think I would easily get out of.
Standing in front of the canned goods section while a younger mom is reading the ingredients list of a dairy-free packaged milk product. Her expression? Sheer panic. Like she literally could not grasp what was going on in front of her. I felt like I needed to say or do something to help her anxiety. But sometimes people just want to be left alone.
Beloved and I walked to our local small organic foods market near our neighborhood. We didn't really need anything, and didn't really want to go in anywhere, we just wanted to basically get out of the house. See how things were faring.
And if we could find a can of baking powder, buy that too.
The store was empty, but not stark empty. All the lights were still on there were fewer employees and stockboys but the shelves were being maintained well. I had a chat with the checker and he was encouraging me to come to the store on Tues at 9 am to get toilet paper. But to expect me to only get one package.
I turned to leave and there at the exit to the store was a table with a young man standing behind it. The sign said "Dirty Carts" and there was a stack of used cleaning towels and rags and bottles of bleach'd cleanser at the ready.
That was my little shock for the day. In my 50 years on this Earth, Ive seen a lot. A lot. But a young man with a spray bottle disinfecting carts after they had been used-"Dirtied"-that was a new one. Now not only were we infectious and dangerous and a risk to the elderly and infirm, we were also 'Dirty'.
I appreciate the candor. No really I do. I appreciate the honesty and the discipline and the safety measures we are all taking to keep ourselves healthy.
But I've never seen a station for dirty carts in my life. And that was my shock.
As were walking out Beloved said "I want to know who it is in our town that has all the toilet paper? Is there someone in town whose entire basement is full of toilet paper?"
And would I be willing to rat them out? Would I call the police on a neighbor who had a basement full of toilet paper? I couldn't do it. Larimer County is asking residents to call on businesses who are not following basic safe distancing practices during this quarantine. I just can't do it. It feels dirty.
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