Uncharted territory

Like most (not all) guys I’ll drive around in circles before I stop to ask for directions. Drives my better half crazy (unintended benefit?). Unlike a lot of younger fellows, I still prefer a physical paper map in my hands to get my bearings rather than the sweet melodious voice of Miss Google telling me in no uncertain terms that I just passed my turn. Still, I routinely find myself physically and metaphorically in uncharted waters and when I do I turn to past experience to guide me. Not just my own experience but the collective experience of the past that is perhaps the best definition of wisdom. As attributed (perhaps incorrectly) to Mark Twain, “History may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes”.

Like most of you, I’m hoping for the best in the situation we find ourselves in today. Looking for that silver lining, grasping at any sign of good news, whatever ray of sunshine I can find. Of course, there’s that other adage we perhaps should not forget - “The darkest hour is just before the dawn” (attributed to an English historian by the name of Thomas Fuller in 1650; hmmm, pretty smart for way back then). Many experts, and yes, even our President who seems perennially late to this party, are telling us that the next couple of weeks may see the peak of deaths from the Corona Virus. They say that ‘best case’ may see as many as 240,000 of our friends, family, coworkers, and community members succumb to this horrific pandemic.

If the numbers of expected deaths don’t get your attention then the economic turmoil probably will. You may be working from home or heaven forbid have been furloughed or laid off. Bills still come due and stimulus package aside it will be increasingly difficult for millions of American families to make ends meet. Landlords and mortgage lenders may (or may not) be temporarily forgiving but sooner or later they will demand payment for what they are rightfully owed. When that day inevitably comes hopefully we’ll all be in a far better place than where we are now.

California and Seattle, Washington are reporting a slowing in the deaths from COVID-19. The pandemic seems to have run its course in its source country to the point where, according to a Denver Post article, the market where the virus originated has now been deemed safe enough to reopen. In this country that place might somehow have been memorialized given the staggering woe it has inflicted on the world, but our Chinese friends seem more pragmatic in their approach.

Still, the news shows footage of folks ignoring stay at home and social distancing mandates. One pastor of a mega-church was even arrested back east for continuing to hold standing-room only worship services. Talk about putting your faith in God...

Perhaps our elected leaders might have acted
sooner and wiser if they had watched this...

So, if all this doesn’t give you pause and make you acknowledge the seriousness of what we are facing, then I suggest you take an hour from your day and watch an episode of The PBS American Experience series that shows how America handled a very similar (eerily similar) pandemic 102 years ago. It originally aired several years ago and I appreciate that it wasn’t produced as a reaction to today’s crisis. Because of that, it hits closer to home than many of the specials being shown that are an immediate reaction to current events. Whatever lessons we learn (or fail to learn) from today’s pandemic are learned again simply because we forget to heed what has already been experienced by those who have come before. Be warned, the program will make you sit up and take notice. If it doesn’t, well, there’s that mega-church back east where you can put all your faith.