3/21 Covid-19 Update: "Long Years apart — can make no Breach a second cannot fill"
Morning everyone,
No rage crying today. Just news, hope, owl legs, witches, and poetry.
Recommended reading (I might rename this "in case you know someone still not taking this seriously"):
"‘It will not be pretty’: State preparing to make life-or-death decisions if coronavirus overwhelms health care system" -- Seattle/King County's chief public health officer tweeted this article last night, with the advice "If you're wondering if you really need to stay home and avoid ALL non-essential contact, this should straighten you out:" Washington state and hospital officials have been meeting to consider what once was almost unthinkable — how to decide who lives and dies if, as feared, the coronavirus pandemic overwhelms the state’s health care system. “We don’t want to do it. We don’t think we should have to do it,” said Cassie Sauer, chief executive of the Washington State Hospital Association, which along with state and local health officials has been involved in refining what Sauer called a”crisis standard of care” — essentially guidelines to health care officials on who should receive treatment and who should be left to die.
"Funeral Homes Change Their Practices In Response to Coronavirus"-- Washington state officials this week banned funerals and memorial services until the end of the month, with that moratorium likely to be extended indefinitely. Burials are now "delivery only," meaning that only mortuary workers are allowed at the grave site.
"In Italy, Coronavirus Takes a Higher Toll on Men" -- The coronavirus is striking, and felling, more Italian men than women, and some experts are warning that being male may be a risk factor for the illness, just as older age is.
"Young adults under age 44 make up a big part of coronavirus hospitalizations in the US" -- Up to 20% of people hospitalized with coronavirus in the United States are young adults between ages 20 to 44, a new federal study shows. (At least I can go back to calling myself a young adult and not a "woman who works at a global health organization!!")
"Former intelligence chiefs: Trump’s removal of experts is deeply destructive to our nation’s safety" -- A bipartisan group former US intelligence chiefs, including Trump's own Director of National Intelligence and W's head of the CIA wrote: "We cannot let the covid-19 pandemic be a cover for the deeply destructive path being pursued by the Trump administration."
COVID-19 Quote of the Day:
“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also ofcompassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
― Howard Zinn
If You Need Something to Make You Smile:
Highly recommend googling "owl legs"
COVID-19 Poem of the Day:
My friend Jess recommended a new podcast series On Being has been doing called Poetry Unbound. Every Monday and Friday Pádraig Ó Tuama reads one poem. provides a short reflection/meditation on it, and then reads it again. For whatever reason I'm still incapable of listening to podcasts (I just read the transcripts), but even I listened to this one this morning.
I was on a google hangout with Jess and others last night, and at our friend Paul's recommendation, we all shared something we read, or listened to, or did that week that brought us some relief or joy. My highlight was the number of people I've heard from who I haven't been in touch with in years. There has been something so grounding and reassuring to me about that sense of connection, and that's what I was reminded of again listening to this poem this morning.
“Long Years apart — can make no
Breach a second cannot fill —
The absence of the Witch does not
Invalidate the spell —
The embers of a Thousand Years
Uncovered by the Hand
That fondled them when they were Fire
Will stir and understand —”
-Emily Dickinson
___
I bought a bouquet of tulips earlier this week, and this is somehow what they've blossomed into. They feel kind of magical to me, like maybe a witch cast a spell on them a thousand years ago. Sending love.
-Alison
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