Musings in a Time of Crisis IV

The fury of the virus illustrates the folly of war.

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres

March 23, 2020

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I have been thinking about the United Nations Secretary General's call to put down firearms and cease fighting throughout the world to help stop the spread of Coronavirus/COVID-19. Consider that: humans warring against each other even while so many elsewhere, those on the front lines, the scientists and health care professionals, are working themselves to exhaustion to stop the spread of a virus that is devastating countries like Italy and may soon explode in the United States. North Korea is still sending off rockets. Americans are still being killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Hostile nations remain hostile. Pompeo trades barbs with Khamenei. Who, Guterres asks, is tending to the needs of the most vulnerable among us: the already sick, those experiencing homelessness, women, children (especially those held in ICE cages at the U.S. border with Mexico), those over 65 residing in assisted living places, people with disabilities, refugees, asylees, and the displaced, the incarcerated? Who cares about protecting them? If we don't, who will?

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Here in the U.S., our Congress needs a time-out, an appeal from all Americans to cease-fire, to get past its deadlock. To do what's right. To cooperate and collaborate to save lives, not ensure each other's job or wealth. And when this pandemic resolves, all Americans need to ask these questions: Who am I? What is my responsibility? What might I do to help heal this broken country? Where and how do I begin?

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News media are replete with photos of people not practicing recommended social distancing. Too many are gathering in large groups, using public transportation, insisting on their "right" to be out. What is it these people do not understand? If they cannot follow medical professionals' advice to stay home to save their own and others' lives, who is it they will listen to?

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This from PLOTUS: "We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself. At the end of the 15 day period, we will make a decision as to which way we want to go!" Pardon me for not quoting this in all caps, the way he tweeted it. For the first time in all the years I've been on Twitter, I stopped posting my finds on poetry and art to challenge him. I called him out for his lies and incompetence, the confusion he's created, his inability to get out of the way of experts such as Anthony Fauci. What I did doesn't and won't change a thing but at least I spoke up. It is when we answer with silence only that we should most be concerned.

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It is said that the pandemic we're experiencing now will be one if not the "defining" event for the younger generations. My own: Vietnam (I wrote to soldiers in my brother's company), 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan, the Cuban Missile Crisis; the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.; the March on Washington, the burning of Washington; the 2017 Women's March on Washington; every Newtown; the birth of my son, the sudden death of my father at my home, my beloved brother's death at 59 from cancer; being able to write poetry again and to love again following my conquering of a profound depression; finding faith and hope in a community I thought I'd lost.

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I was born in November 1952. I have never known what it might be like to pick up a morning newspaper, turn on a radio, catch the latest happenings online and learn that everywhere the world is at peace and the birds are singing, the way they do most mornings now, when our streets are empty and we are sheltering in place.