Happy Turkey Day!

It would be so, so easy to lament all the bad things we’ve experienced in 2020, a year for the history and record books. As citizens of the world we’ve dealt collectively with COVID and shared the sickness and death it has wrought with the rest of humankind in every corner of the globe from Europe, to Asia, Australia and New Zealand, and yes, China. Only a few nations have not directly experienced COVID’s wrath, most of them island countries in the South Pacific (Palau, Micronesia, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Samoa for example) while Antarctica remains the only COVID-free continent on this, our little blue speck in the cosmos.

And how quickly the protests of spring and summer have faded from consciousness. There's seemingly more concern over the 5,700 fans allowed into the current incarnation of Mile High Stadium to watch the Broncos than there is for who's kneeling and for what. 

My next door neighbor, Mike, is an Intensive Care Nurse at Denver General. He's one of those front-line heroes we celebrated months ago. Remember? He's well aware there's not a lot of civic howling anymore in support of these folks who's sole job is saving the lives of others. He was telling my wife this morning as he was going to work that as bad a picture as the media paints COVID, its far, far worse. He spoke of his hospital having a hard time simply staffing the ICU because folks on the front lines are getting burned out or, yes, dying from doing their job. Fewer and fewer people are available, or willing, to step up and fill the ranks of those we all depend on to stay alive. Our Governor is now talking about allowing hospitals to turn away patients if their ICU's are at capacity while at the same time county governments are saying they won't enforce the State's mask mandate or COVID-dial restrictions.

So, do you have anything to be thankful for this Thanksgiving? I'm thankful for simply being alive after spending my own four days in intensive care back in April and watching those critical care staff try to save my life. I'm thankful for my friends and family. They really are my better angels. My family is not getting together for our traditional Thanksgiving meal and I'm thankful that they respect the sanctity of each other's life more than a day spent putting those we love in harm's way. 

Most of all perhaps, I'm thankful there is still beauty in this world and that I occasionally get to glimpse it. More than ever before in my life I find myself actively seeking it out. Sometimes - many times - its hard to find, especially in today's world. Sometimes it sneaks up on me when least expected, some days my conscious effort to seek it out is rewarded but either way its something no virus, no war or famine, no manmade catastrophe can steal from me. 

With that in mind I share with you two of my recent efforts to find some of that beauty. Both took place in the Colorado High Country that I love so much. The first is a simple walk through the little town of Twin Lakes which is nestled at the base of Independence Pass. Perhaps you've been there in the summer when the warm wind rustles through the leaves of the quaking aspen trees. This time of year, the town is nearly deserted and at first glance might seem abandoned yet its in that peaceful solitude that I most find its beauty. The second is a hidden treasure called Mushroom Gulch. Near Buena Vista, its just a couple of miles off Highway 285 yet lightyears removed from the frenetic pace and sometime ugliness of the outside world. In its own special way it offers a chance to find the peaceful serenity that only the beauty of nature can provide. In the words of Henry David Thoreau, 

"I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees."

And not least of all, I'm also thankful for you as a reader of this blog. I wish you and yours a happy and safe Thanksgiving no matter how you choose to celebrate it this year. 

A Tale of Two (or more...) Cities

The storming of the Bastille by French Painter Jean-Pierre-Louis-Laurent Houël. During his long life Houël witnessed the reign of Louis XV, the French Revolution, and the period of Napoleon's First Empire. (Wikipedia)

One of my favorite books is A Tale of Two Cities which was written in 1859 by Charles Dickens. It is a historical novel set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution and tells the story of the French Doctor Manette, his 18-year-long imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris and his release to live in London with his daughter Lucie, whom he has never met. The story is set against the conditions that led up to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. The book opens with a paragraph that could well mirror the times we are living through right now: 

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

We, you and I, are now in month nine (it seems so much longer...) of the 2020 pandemic. Literally and figuratively we are now entering "the season of darkness" having set our clocks back just a couple of weeks ago and with the COVID virus seemingly completely out of control going into the Holiday season. Whether the next few months will live up to "the winter of despair" remains to be seen.

Set against the backdrop of the French Revolution of 1789-1799 much of his stirring account takes place during the Reign of Terror, perhaps the most violent period of the revolt. From the summer of 1793 through the summer of 1794, more than 50,000 people were killed for suspected counter-revolutionary activity or so-called “crimes against liberty”. One-third of this number died under the falling blade of the guillotine. Some accounts put the number of victims actually closer to 250,000. As I write this, more than 249,000 Americans have fallen victim to our own current reign of terror for which we, as of yet, have no real cure.

Just as historians and authors look back upon the past so too will their counterparts in the future look back and study the time we are living in. It may sound cliché, but we are living history. Living through history of course means that we are feeling our way, charting our own new path through the perils of our time. No one of us has all the answers, though collectively we may have a few if we can ever reach consensus. 

One of the things historians of the future will surely look at are all the statistics being generated in the information-overload culture of today. There is always a story to be told behind the numbers and already, just 9 months into our current predicament, there is a story to be read by simply looking at one statistic - the number of new COVID cases. If you do a Google search for COVID in your location you're likely to be given a chart, courtesy of the New York Times, that gives the number of COVID cases by day from  March to present. The numbers by themselves are of course staggering - who back in March, "...the spring of hope", would have guessed that cases in the U.S. would be upward of 11 million and that a quarter million of us would not be here this Thanksgiving to break bread with family and friends. To me though, as staggering as the numbers are, its the pattern of the charts across different locations in the U.S. that speak to how we have taken such a divided approach on how to deal with the unfolding nightmare of this newest of new viruses. 

Lets start with the chart for Colorado:

It would appear that Colorado was able to largely contain, though never eliminate, the spread of COVID-19 at least until recently. Compare the shape of our graph to another U.S. location:

Clearly what was going on in location "D" was very much different than what we lived through in Colorado. 

Let's look at another location's graph (see if you can guess by its shape where it is):

Think about why a location might see such a pattern of new cases. What was going on - what were they doing, or perhaps more importantly what were they not doing, to see new cases behave as they are reflected in location "B".

Here is a location that was perhaps as unique in its locale as any...

yet it's graph nearly mirrors that of location "B". In terms of geographical distance location "C" couldn't be further removed from location "B" so why are the two graphs so similar to each other and so dissimilar from Colorado's?

OK, you get the point; its this type of data and the behavioral questions it raises that will keep PhD candidates busy for years to come. You don't need these graphs to know that different places in the United States have had widely different responses to dealing with COVID. Some were pragmatic and scientific in their approach while others to this very day continue to downplay the seriousness of the situation. To use another historical reference, they say that Nero played his fiddle while ancient Rome burned back in the year 64. His supposed fiddling now has come to represent the epitome of acting irresponsibly in the midst of an emergency. It would appear from the graphs that some today have as much of an affinity for fiddle playing as Emperor Nero did nearly 2,000 years ago.

Here are just a couple of more to show the disparity between U.S. locations:

So, have you figured out where some of these locations are? Here are the actual locales:

A: Colorado

B: Florida

C: Hawaii

D: New York City

E: Texas

F: Utah

G: Washington D.C.

H: Washington State

I'll leave it to far greater minds than I to further extrapolate the real meanings behind the disparities in the data but I'd hazard my own guess that in the years to come some of these locations may look back on their graphs and raise the question: what could they have done differently? 

In the end, A Tale of Two Cities is a classic love story about the love two men share for a woman, and ultimately about Man's love for his fellow Man and the sacrifice some are willing to make for that Love. In that, there are lessons to be learned by all of us.

Here's hoping that the "season of Light" still awaits...

All good things...

Photo courtesy of National Park Service

All good things must come to an end, or so the saying goes. Today is Election Day in these “United” States of America and the country is as not-united as I have ever witnessed it. Stores are boarding up their windows in anticipation of civil unrest regardless of who wins. Are you as sick of all this as I am? 

I was in California at the start of this year and saw an election themed t-shirt proclaiming support for “Any Functioning Adult”. I’m not sure that’s what we’ve ended up with after a truly dismal election cycle but we clearly have a clear choice as America lurches to the polls (assuming you’re not one of the majority who have already cast their ballots prior to today.)

Did we get this?

Everyone is saying we won’t even know tonight who the winner is (perhaps the T.V. networks would have better served us if they had postponed their hours of coverage until tomorrow evening) and one side is already announcing they have a team of lawyers set to contest the results should they end up on the losing side. Yet it’s America who has really lost, regardless of who garners the magical 270 Electoral College votes this evening (actually we won't know for sure until December 14th). There’s more than enough blame to be hurled around by both sides but can anyone really argue we as a country are in a better place today? I know, I know, some would resolutely say “Yes!”, but truly they must be in the minority. 

Some wounds take a long time to heal, while some never do. Again, regardless of who “wins” tonight, the changes wrought during the last four years (be they good, bad, or indifferent in your opinion) will likely last far longer than the time they took to inflict. Love him or hate him, Mr. Trump has irrevocably changed  this country we call home and we will be living with the ripple effect for generations. It’s good that so many Americans have decided to participate in their civic duty this year. It is after all our country; it does not belong to Mr. Trump or Mr. Biden. And it is us, 300+ million strong, who in the days, months, and years to come must still decide and come to grips with what we want this “one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” to look like. I don’t think God was in line at the polling site this morning but if so, may she continue to bless America.

And may we hope that another old proverb comes true: 

"All's well that ends well."