Staying Inside

Tidal Basin in the Spring Photo by Mark Tegethoff on Unsplash

`Last year, D used to bug me, “You should get out more often. Ever since you were retired, you’re stuck in front of your computer all day. You need to get a life!”

“But I do get out,” I’d protest. “I take Layla the husky for walks twice a day and chase her around the yard when she’s after the neighbor’s cat, or a squirrel, or a goose or a coon... I go shopping every Sunday. I visit the ABC store–on occasion. Now that it’s spring, I yell at the Canadian goose couple looking for love in all the wrong places–specifically the lawn–at least once or twice a day.”

“But you don’t talk to anyone–you’re always sitting here writing!”

Oh, she got me with that last bit. It seemed that D worries about my mental health, which is touching. But then she’s the extrovert in this operation, and I’m more the opposite. Not shy but I don’t see the need to talk near as much as to write. That much was true right from when we first met at the gym. Though I have to wonder: might she just want me out of the house?

But that was last year. Before Covid-19. At least now I have an excuse for staying inside. I simply had a year’s head start on the rest of the country. There’s a corny YouTube in circulation “Staying Inside” set to the tune of the Bee Gee’s hit, “Staying Alive.” A neighbor posted it on the neighborhood list serve. “Ha ha ha ha, staying inside!” I think the Gibbs brothers wrote better lyrics and way less depressing.

It’s been a year since I went live with the website. March 2019. And lots of hours spent on a computer since, I’ll admit. Although back when I was working as an architect, it wasn’t like I wasn’t using a computer most of the time. Yes, there were meetings with clients and public hearings on new projects, yelling at contractors “green side up!” and the like. [1]

Most days I’d sit facing a large monitor, mouse in one palm and keying commands with the other hand. For hours at a sitting. I’d work through lunch if I didn’t look up.

I was a firm principal, so I got an eight-by-ten office with walls. Which meant people needing to talk had to knock on my door. I hung a door handle sign with a cowboy and pistols cocked and the caption reading “Go ahead, make my day.” Probably didn’t help to build office comradery, but a former partner had bequethed the sign, and I came to appreciate the lack of distractions.

Architects as a rule are solitary creatures. Like crustaceans, slow and easy. Who wear black and have long hair and thick glasses, at most seen lurking at the coffee machine in the morning and waiting for the bars to open in the afternoon. I kid my former office mates; I was the only one who behaved like that.

In those days, I also reserved the right to sketch out my designs the old fashion way–by felt tip and bumwad–which, at the outset of a project, might last a week, a possibly month. I’d kill a roll of bumwad easy. [2] But eventually, the design would need to be put into digital format (inputted, as computer geeks prefer). In two or more years, by the time the project was an actual building people could occupy, I’d be again able to pick up a new felt tip to begin a next project.

I knew from computers, though, and the hours spent writing now only means I’m using different software.

We’re seeing a lot more people strolling/striding through the neighborhood these days. Spring brings them out, but I also suspect that being home-bound as we all are, come early afternoon everyone’s itchy to get relief. A fisherman in his flat-bottom boat drifted into the cove yesterday, and I was tempted to walk out on the deck for a conversation. The lake’s still cold for the fish to bite, so I expect his was another way to kill time without getting into a crowd. He had that deep, meditative expression fishermen get while they cast a line hither and yon.

I’m thinking about putting up a sign, “The Doctor is In” and collecting nickels like Lucy, but that would be wrong.

“These are the times that try men’s souls,” as Tom Paine wrote in a broadside, going on to describe the desperate situation of Washington’s army being chased from New York by the English in the early years of the American Revolution. At the writing, Paine was sitting with the garrison at Fort Lee across the river expecting General Howe’s momentary arrival, so his opening words were more than a writer’s rhetoric. For the rebels, things looked bad as they’d ever been, and he wanted to encourage whoever read the piece to hang in there.

Today, it seems the whole world’s human population is confronted by ‘trying times’ on top of more with a virus that has no antidote.

I’ve often quoted Sebastian Junger’s book, Tribe, but it’s worth his reassurance that in dire times humans draw together; it’s how the species has survived. Those who work closest at the care for others will help the rest of us make it through. What I find fascinating is that it took a war correspondent known for his reporting from Afghanistan, to remind us.

He writes that studies of the Blitz on Londoners in World War II–and similar obliterating bombings of German cities–proved the opposite of what the military anticipated, mainly the hoped-for collapse in the enemy populations never happened. Neither the British nor the German people broke down from the horror reigning down. Both populations, each exposed to the identical grim death, chose unity instead.

“American analysts based in England monitored the effects of the bombings [on Germany] to see if any cracks began to appear in the German resolve, and to their surprise found exactly the opposite; the more the Allies bombed, the more defiant the German population became Industrial production actually rose in Germany during the war.”

from “Tribe On Homecoming and Belonging” by Sebastian Junger.

Meaning not that the good guys (Brits) were heroes so their sacrifice was noble and the villains (Germans) deserved what they got. Neither civilian population deserved that hideousness. Though each contiguous human population facing a common calamity did so in precisely the same way–by setting aside what might have divided them so that the larger ‘tribe’ could survive.

Junger mourns our present day society, split politically down the middle, which he argues is far more dangerous to our survival as a nation than any terrorist group.

The book’s subtitle, “On Homecoming and Belonging” refers to what veterans find lacking in the society they return to. As Junger says elsewhere in the book, the irony of warfare being a cause of drawing people together isn’t lost on him. He lived through the same alienation returning from his war reporting.

A caution pertinent to the current Covid-19 crisis is worth noting. Suggesting what the vets from our latest wars are facing in their reintegration to society Junger writes:

“Recent studies of something called ‘social resilience’ have identified resource sharing and egalitarian wealth distribution as major components of a society’s ability to recover from hardship. And societies that rank high on social resilience–such as kibbutz settlements in Israel–provide soldiers with a significantly stronger buffer against PTSD than low-resilience societies. In fact, social resilience is an even better predictor of trauma recovery than the level of resilience of the person himself.”

from Tribe, by Sebastian Junger

After the virus, what will happen to the millions the out of work in a country of safely secured billionaires? How does the country help them get back on their feet? Or better said, what will the country accept as its responsibility? Will we understand the necessity of supporting each other past the time of this immediate need, or fall back on the old ways of rolling up the windows and cranking the sound in our Land Rovers? I’m not one who believes that wealth is wrong, only that egalitarian instinct will be how the nation recovers.

Jeffrey Brown’s PBS interview with Junger–taped in 2016–gives an idea of what he’s talking about. Near the end of the interview, Brown asks, “Short of a Blitz or a 9/11–“ “Yeah, an apocalypse–” Junger interrupts. “–what do people do in their daily life?” Listen to the interview, and you’ll hear Junger’s response.

It’s frightening to realize the world is surely facing the apocalypse that will test Junger’s theory, and I hope for all our sakes that he’s right.

Reluctantly, I face the fact I’m in that category of folks called ‘vulnerable’–being older than 60 with diabetes, albeit under control. And nervous at the prospect of contracting a lung disease. Having weak lungs since an asthmatic child. In my thirties, I caught a case of viral pneumonia that wasted me for several months, so I have huge sympathy for anyone fighting this thing now.

Interestingly, however I also have a hereditary condition known as the ‘Celtic curse.’ Being a bloody Celt! as the Brits might say, my body retains excessive iron, which left untreated destroys organs such as kidneys and liver. My hematologist theorized that liver failure among the Irish poor stemmed from genetics more than from demon rum. Angela’s Ashes my ass. When I’d first visited the hematologist, he was puzzled studying my chart since I showed no overt symptoms and asked, “How on earth was it discovered?” A smart GP had me tested, actually.

Fortunately, there’s a straightforward solution–frequent blood donations–so perhaps I can help support the blood supply during the virus days by more frequent donations. It hardly requires the courage of those in the medical field who face this virulent contagion every day. But needle sticks I can deal with. Gotta go!

[1] One day, the architect and the contractor were walking the job site, and every few minutes the contractor would yell out “Green side up!”  After a few dozen of these, the architect looked over at her and asked what she meant.  She frowned, spat some tobacco juice and said “I have a new landscape crew, and I need to make sure they lay the sod down correct like.” 

[2] Bumwad - cheap white paper, also referred to as white trash in the profession—the paper not the architects—used back in the days of real men drafting over large desks with enough cigarette smoke to choke a horse.

Three in a Row

An interesting online writer I’m reading, Chris Guillebeau, advises one shouldn’t waste time during this worldwide shut down. As Raul Emanuel famously noted, “don’t let a good crisis go to waste.”

I like the title of Guillebeau’s piece: The Second Best Thing You Can Do Right Now, suggesting the first is to maintain social distance.

“Just because you aren’t a first responder doesn’t mean you don’t have something to offer the world right now. Healthcare workers are putting in the hours (and then some)—so what challenge can you take on? All of us have something to give; everyone has the chance to contribute. Don’t just count the days while we're in this state of disorder. You want to be able to look back later and say: ‘I did what I could to stay safe, and I made something that I’m proud of.’ That’s my plan, and I hope you adopt it too. Now I’m washing my hands once more and going back to work… Yours in the revolution (six feet away), Chris."

But it’s been a slow week, and so turning to Medium, I found the following three headlines all in succession:

“How Does a Married Man with Three Kids Find Time to Cheat?  Double lives might be more common than you think. 

“Husband Got High, Wife Got Killed  After eating an edible, he killed his wife in front of their children. 

“My Cheating Husband Said I Was the Only One for Him  But not until after he got into a fight with his girlfriend.” 

I suppose we all have our ways of coping in stressful times. And no, I skipped those stories–no need to read about stupid people–even Twitter has better source material.

Again, what was it Chris was saying?

Stay home. It’s not so tough, and way better than landing in the ICU. Meanwhile, you might try journaling; it’s a good way to clear out the cruft in your thinking.

1994 Was a Good Year

Back in the day, friend living in Napa suggested when we visited that we try the Hess Vineyard. We tasted (slurped) their 1994 cabernet when it was first released and loved it. ‘94 was one of the best of the decade for California reds , but I wasn’t bright enough to buy a case–nor had the cash so it hardly mattered. Returning a year or two later, we brought back at most a half dozen bottles on the plane.

Last Saturday night we stayed home for dinner, and for no good reason, I searched for the last of the ‘94 bottles. Dinner for two, a vegetarian ragout D wanted to try, and I it felt necessary to contribute more than chopping veggies. Instinctively needing a celebration of living longer than what’s coming.

Probably not top shelf by a connoisseur’s standards; it wouldn’t have been flown across the country for a White House extravaganza–and it was past time to open what the vines had produced and the vineyard folks bottled that long ago. Amazing to think grapes resting all that time can still taste so good when anymore I have only a vague memory of what my life was back then.

The cork, gently pried with an Ah So bottle opener, survived until last Saturday evening, still bearing the labor of those sunny California days—and contributing to a great evening’s meal twenty-six years later. D reminded me that was the year we were married, in addition to being a good year for wine. Indeed, and we still have one bottle left.