The Times They Are A'Changin'

 

My twelve year old granddaughter and I are several generations apart. She begs for Roblox gift cards and spends her days in worlds of her own creation. She’s boujee and frenetic and carefree. She dances and throws her arms with abandon. And she wears Mom jeans.

            My teen years in the 70s, with its free love and marijuana smoke hanging heavy over concert venues while cops just winked at us as we toked, was just as carefree, but thankfully Mom jean free. AC/DC sang about wet patches on seats, Fleetwood Mac’s Gold Dust Woman addressed drugs, Rush sang about dystopian futures, Ted Nugent growled about Wang Dang Sweet Poontang, and REO Speedwagon sang about a barely legal teenage girl. We sang loudly and didn't give one thought to what the lyrics meant. It was only decades later that I realized what these songs were really about.

            Then the 80s exploded and sexual lyrics became even more overt (or maybe I was just noticing more). Women started singing about sex right along with the men. Madonna sang about being like a virgin and Pat Benatar challenged men to hit her with their best shot, and Joan Jett owned her Bad Reputation. There was sweet romance with Heart and clean good fun with the Go Gos.  We were Footloose looking over our shoulder for that Man Eater or those Betty Davis Eyes while Simple Minds reminded us, “Don’t Forget About Me.”  The Police glorified stalking with Every Step You Take and we sang along at the top of our lungs. Boy George moaned, Do You Really Want to Hurt Me and we felt the pangs of broken romance to the core of our young wounded hearts. While this music was blossoming and booming I was in my early twenties, just starting my life with a clean slate and a fresh optimistic view of the future and of my role in the world.  

            That was almost forty years ago. I’m now a bit jaded and suspicious and careful. My heart has been broken so many times it has deep fissure cracks in it and I don’t trust as easily as I once did. I walk in a mine field in a society molded by social media that has us grappling with politics and religion and justice and equality and truth. A world where science isn’t real, families are divided, a pandemic has killed over five million people worldwide in a little over a year and a half, cops kill young black men with impunity, disillusioned fear soaked people storm our Capitol building in D.C to overturn an election, people attack flight attendants on planes, conspiracy theories leave us reeling, and we’re split into our own insular communities that internet algorithms have created. A Brave New World.  

        I still listen to 80s music so I can re-live a time when worries were fewer and the future was secure with hard work and hope. Meanwhile, my aforementioned twelve year old granddaughter skips down the road on our walk to the store singing loudly,  “I always feel like somebody’s watching me!” a song released in 1984 by one hit wonder band Rockwell. 1984, the year I became a mom for the first time and my rose colored glasses began to slip.  "Yes, baby," I want to tell my granddaughter as she skips gleefully, “they are watching you. So be very careful, but meanwhile dance, dance, dance! And don’t listen to W.A.P until you’re old enough to understand it."                                                                                                                            

Insanity: AIDS vs Covid Response

 

I’m re-reading the book “And the Band Played On” by Randy Shilts about the AIDS crises in the 1980s and it’s bringing back memories of that time. It’s also showing me that we haven’t learned much, which is why the Covid response has been so scattered and ineffective.

            When AIDS hit San Francisco in the early 80s, there was a movement to shut down the bathhouses because risky sexual behaviors in the bathhouses were spreading AIDS.  The owners of the bathhouses didn’t want them closed down because they’d go broke, so they put money above public health and instituted a movement to keep the bathhouses open regardless of the health implications. There was a clear cut divide in the gay community concerning this issue. One side wanted to pretend that nothing was happening and to keep living their lives as if there wasn’t a deadly new virus worming its way into the community. Then there was the other side that was looking into the future at the long term consequences of keeping bathhouses open as AIDS exploded and starting killing off many talented, loving, productive good people. Then there was the straight community who listened to Jerry Falwell and couldn’t be bothered with the issue because "AIDS is a lethal judgment of God on the sin of homosexuality and it is also the judgement of God on America for endorsing this vulgar, perverted and reprobate lifestyle" (Falwell, 1987).  Blood banks didn’t want to cause undue alarm and hurt their profits, so the blood bank lobby pushed back against testing donors by hiding behind a false concern of how testing donors would impact the gay community (which was a real concern during the homophobic 80s). Blood banks didn’t care about the gay community though. They cared about profit. So for love of profit masquerading as “my rights,” outraged morality, and blind ignorance, there have been over 700,000 AIDS related deaths since the early 80s.

            We’ve heard the same “my rights” arguments about closing establishments and wearing masks in public since March 2020. Money over public health. “My rights’ over public health. I thought we’d be able to put that thinking behind us by learning from the mistakes that were made during the AIDS crises, and that we would be mature and responsible and concentrate on the health issues and not the “my rights” issues, but sadly I was wrong.  When a government doesn’t take responsibility for a health crises and give needed assistance to the people and the economy, we break under the non-responses. Our elected leaders have to take the lead, and the sitting U.S presidents during the start of the AIDS crises and the Covid pandemic did not lead.

             When we don’t embrace the fact that we have a societal obligation to one another and that no person is an island unto themselves, we’ll keep fucking up our responses to major epidemics and pandemics. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Reagan and Trump both took the wrong page out of the playbook. I only hope future administrations that deal with the next pandemic (and there will be another one) burn that page and that people start seeing this country as a collective of people whose behaviors impact one another and not separate islands of “my rights.”

 

As of this writing there have been 513,821 U.S Covid deaths, and still counting...

My Country 'Tis of Thee

 

This day is a new start for me and my country, Americans and non-Americans alike. A day of renewed hope, a day to repair the many principles and norms that were broken over the past four years, a day to reassess, to rededicate ourselves to the principles of what it means to be an American, what it means to be a country, a democracy. After four years of being dragged daily through hate, uncertainty, and temper tantrums, today couldn’t come soon enough. We are bruised and battered, but we are not down and out. 45 did not destroy us. What he did was expose white supremacy and hate in all its forms. He showed us what lurks in the souls of men (and women) and now as we move forward it is not our job to excuse or ignore that white supremacy and hate, but to defeat it with common sense love, compassion and strength. There can be no healing without justice and accountability.

             Like roaches that scuttled out of the dark crevices during 45’s administration, we must squash the hate and division with our boot heel and make certain that never again are they allowed to threaten our democracy and our forefathers’ vision for this country. We must be better. We must not ever again allow division of our country based on color, race, religion, sexual orientation, or sexual identity. Every one of us, rather we live on the shores of Oregon,  the rich lands of California, the sprawling Midwest plains, the heat and music drenched south, or in our glittering cities on the hills, is an American, and as such it is our responsibility to safeguard what we have been gifted and never ever allow another four years to happen like we just lived through.

            It is time to break the chains that corporate America has on working Americans because those Americans: the truck drivers, the military, the teachers, the fast food workers, the nurses, the lawn care crews, the factory workers are what keep this country functioning. This nation was not founded for corporations, but for the people. By the people, for the people. And right now people are struggling to keep a roof over their heads, access healthcare, and buy food. People are losing their homes. Climate change is a world emergency. Covid has decimated the foundations of our economy. The United States has more homeless children than any other developed nation on earth. The house is on fire and if we don’t put out that fire right now, this nation will fall to ash. But today I have a renewed hope. We can do better. We must do better.

            Education costs, housing, health care, food, have all outstripped wages. My hope is that a Biden administration will address these economic issues and more. I know that the problems can’t be fixed in four years, but we now have a spring board to create legislation and laws that will benefit the working class and not just the ones who hold the power and the money. Climate change, inequality, injustices for people of color, low wages, for-profit healthcare, and Covid-19 response are issues that won’t just go away on their own. WE have to help fix them. And we can’t become complacent again. WE cannot ever again say that our one vote doesn’t matter, because each and every vote DOES matter.  Stay involved, continue to hold our elected officials accountable, be the voice you want to hear. We came far too close to our voices being silenced by the voices of hate and division. Stay alert, but be compassionate. As President Biden said today, “Our better angels have always prevailed.” Let them prevail now.