Just another man with a husband

 

   “His husband, who is also a medical assistant, drives for Lyft at night.”

   The story in the Los Angeles Times recently was about how public clinics, which provide health services to those who are poor and can’t afford health insurance, are having trouble hiring and keeping staff, because they are underfunded and can’t pay as much as bigger, better funded hospitals.  The medical assistant referred to in the quote here also works at a public clinic and also has a second job, teaching at a school for medical assistants.  Without adequate staffing, these clinics can’t provide the services that their clients rely on and desperately need. 

   This was an article about a pretty mundane, if urgent, even alarming, topic.  But there’s something here that isn’t so mundane.  Or, more to the point, is – happily - getting to be mundane.

   Note that the quote is about “his husband.”

   Yes, this is a gay man.  Not only that, but a gay man who is married to a man, who has a husband.

   But, not only is the article not only not about this man being gay and married to a man – far from it – it doesn’t make any mention of it.  Other than this “his husband.”

   I find this happening more and more.  I’ll be reading along, and suddenly “his husband” or “her wife” will pop up.  Just like I’m reading about “her husband” or “his wife.” This happens with the Los Angeles Times and also the small Claremont Courier, my hometown paper that I contribute to from time to time.  I imagine that it’s also the case in probably at least most big-city papers.  I wonder if is now in the AP Style Book. 

   This is a long way from seven years ago when, in the Obergefell v. Hodges case, the Supreme Court ruled gay marriage to be constitutional  in 2015, when a man marrying a man, a woman marrying a woman, was newsworthy, was noteworthy, something to loudly cheer or loudly condemn. Heck, I remember when a man being gay or a woman being a lesbian was news, if not big news. 

   Now “his husband” and “her wife” is no news, chopped liver.  No big whup.

   Mundane.  And happily so.  

The masked and the unmasked

 

“We need to make sure we don’t stigmatize people wearing masks. People should have that right to wear masks or not when there’s no mandate,” Dr. Kim-Farley, an UCLA epidemiologist and infectious-disease expert, said.

   If only it was as simple as this quote from Sunday’s Los Angeles Times. 

   I’ve been writing about being confused and disturbed about mask mandates being relaxed even as people are still getting COVID and plenty are dying of it.  Yes, cases are down, but medical experts still urge caution and talk of new variants, including Deltacron, a merging of the last two. 

   Yes, I want to be safe and not get COVID but am now not really sure how to do so.  But I realized that there’s something else that is bothering me: I don’t like some people being okayed not to wear masks and others being told that they should wear them but don’t have to. 

   On top of being confusing, I don’t like how this is dividing us even more and what my now wearing a mask may or may not mean. 

   From day one, wearing or not wearing a mask meant something.  For a while, I wore a mask because I believe in science and didn’t want to be seen as supporting Trump.  There was a time when I was worried that if I didn’t mask up, people would think I wouldn’t get the vaccine when I had in fact been vaccinated.  Now, people might think I’m paranoid when I wear a mask. 

   See how murky, how twisted this all gets? 

   I shouldn’t care what people think about my wearing a mask.  But the thing is that I think about whether or not others are wearing a mask.  I find myself wondering why that person isn’t masked and that person is.  Is that person who is not wearing a mask a Q-anon follower who believes that COVID is a hoax and that vaccines are a way for the government to track us, or are they simply vaccinated?  Is that elderly person masked because they aren’t vaccinated or because they’re really cautious like I am?    

   It is so easy to judge each other.  This is what bothers me about this no man’s land where it’s okay that some wear masks and others  don’t. Whether consciously or subconsciously, we’re all looking at each other, at if we’re masked or not, and wondering why, wondering what those others are thinking.  We’re judging each other still if not all the more. Being able to not or to wear masks is further dividing us. 

   Perhaps I’m being overly sensitive, making a mountain out of a mole hill.  And I’m not advocating that we should all stay masked indefinitely.  Then again, do you think that someone who doesn’t like being told by the government to be vaccinated will go along with a recommendation from the government to wear a mask? 

   It doesn’t make sense – and doesn’t feel safe. 

Pandemic or not?

 

   I’m just about ready to go around the bend, as we used to say.  I don’t know what to make of this pandemic and the messaging about it, and it’s driving me crazy. 

   As I mentioned in my last post, mask mandates are being lifted like there’s no tomorrow (maybe literally!). Meanwhile, although COVID cases are falling dramatically, thousands are still being hospitalized and are dying – even a few who are vaccinated and boosted – and there is an Omicron variant that’s even more contagious. 

   Please!  Am I the only one this doesn’t make sense to?  Or is it just really the case that keeping cash flowing is more important than keeping people alive? 

   Whatever the case, this is definitely a time for stepping out carefully – at least for those of us who are careful. As we dip our toes in the water, so to speak, it’s also a time to reflect on perhaps being more vulnerable, maybe more fragile than we think.  I explored this in a recent Claremont Courier column.

           VENTURING OUT INTO OUR NEW WORLD ONE STEP AT A TIME

   This was our second go-around.  Our second chance, so to say. 

   Not that we had gotten anything wrong the first time around. 

   Last summer, after more than a year of being apart, of isolation, meeting only on Zoom, sequestered in our little on-screen squares, we finally met in-person. COVID seemed to be in retreat, and vaccines were widely available, so we felt safe having in-person meetings. 

    We were still being super careful.  After all, the Delta variant was something of concern.  As we kept hearing, we weren’t out of the woods yet. So we wore our masks, and we had our chairs several feet apart.

   In fact, at first we met outdoors, under a large oak tree. With our chairs moved out there, it felt like we were camping.  It felt like an old-time revival, a revival after a dormant time. 

   When Fall came and the weather got cooler, we decided it was okay to meet inside.  The Delta variant was still concerning, but we wore our masks and sat apart and celebrated taking another step toward the way things used to be. We made sure there was plenty of ventilation and didn’t have coffee and snacks.  Things weren’t back to normal, but we were doing everything right and even made plans for a Christmas party. 

   Then there was the Omicron variant, and it looked like it could be even more of a problem.  We weren’t sure, so we moved the party outside.  Luckily, it was a nice day, not that cold. 

   But there was a definite chill – something was wrong again – with COVID cases soaring more than ever.  It turned out that was our last in-person gathering, and we were back isolated in our Zoom boxes. 

   At least we had Zoom – right? 

   Still, it was definitely not the same – we were all so over Zoom – and we were glad that, just two months later, the Omicron variant was proving to be not so bad, with COVID cases going down as fast as they had gone up, and we were back to meeting in-person. Even if we were masked and seating apart and holding off on the coffee and cookies. 

   This was a step forward.  Or really two steps forward after a step back.  Either way, it was something to celebrate, something we now find worth celebrating.    

   Who knew we would ever be celebrating getting together in-person?  Not with friends we haven’t seen in years or at a family reunion, but with our friends in town or even down the street that we see every week or every few days or perhaps every day in normal times. 

   There it is again.  We keep talking about normalcy, about normal times.  But these aren’t normal times. 

   Indeed, these are strange times. And not just because we find ourselves celebrating getting together in-person. 

   These are strange, confusing times, full of mixed messages.  These are days when the Super Bowl was held in a full stadium and a parade was held for the victorious Rams and concert venues like the Hollywood Bowl are planning full schedules even as we are told to be ever so careful, to be vigilant.  We are encouraged to go out and enjoy a movie or an exhibit, to eat out at our favorite restaurants, when, although the numbers are certainly down, thousands are ending up in the hospital and significant numbers are dying with COVID.  Yes, many of us are vaccinated and boosted, but we all know someone who has been vaccinated and boosted and still got COVID, and there are still millions who aren’t vaccinated. Some of us are barely getting out of our house, masked up and keeping our distance when we do venture out, while others are out and about, unmasked and crowded in, like nothing unusual was going on, like “Pandemic? What pandemic?”

   So we venture out, carefully – or perhaps not so carefully – celebrating that we can do so, celebrating that we can be with each other IRL, “in real life,” as strange or now not so strange as that sounds. 

   Just as we ventured out last month, carefully, to find our lives changed after a night of horrific wind.  Almost all of us experienced power outages – unusual enough in Claremont (they always happened in other places) – but some were without power for two or three days.  It was bad enough that I was out of power for an hour and a half – I rely on electricity for some medical equipment and am seeing about getting a generator.  I can’t imagine not having power for a whole weekend! 

   And who could have imagined that, when we did venture out after that scary night, we would see so much damage? My yard was a mess – luckily no real damage except for a broken string of lights – but I kept hearing that was nothing.  I went out two or three days after the wind storm to see the aftermath for myself, and, yep, the unimaginable was real.  College Avenue was still closed, with huge trees being cut, and Memorial Park was all but in ruins.  When I saw the big pine blocking Eighth Street, that was enough. 

   I got the picture, and it was bad.

   Our world, our Claremont, had changed.  Whether or not it was from climate change – it’s argued the wind storm was a byproduct - we were no longer insulated from such change.  Could it be that the “city of trees and Ph.Ds” will be more just the city of Ph.Ds and not so much the city of trees?  At least for a while, until whatever replacement trees grow? 

   (I was amazed that the Los Angeles Times had so little coverage of

the wind storm and its aftermath.  And, sure, we are a small town in a wide area that was affected, but how about a story about how a community known and loved for its trees deals with the loss of many significant trees?)     

    We also find ourselves still mired in drought, definitely as a result of climate change.  There was a glimmer of hope that things might be changing after a remarkably wet October and December, but January and February, which should be the wettest months, have been “troublingly dry,” according to reports, and it looks like, barring a March miracle, we’re in for another long, dry year and hot summer.  Perhaps the recent news that this mega-drought in the Western U.S is the longest is 1200 years – no typo! – shouldn’t be all that surprising. 

   And so we venture out into this world of risks we now find ourselves in, with determination but also with great care.  When it comes to COVID, at least, maybe – hopefully – this second time – or will it be the third time? – will be the charm.

In sickness (and disability) and in health

 

   Here in California, mask mandates have been eased as COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths have gone down.  One health expert was recently quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying that “this will allow healthy people to go with their lives.”

   As if we disabled folks don’t have lives to go on with. 

   This is yet another case of the dismissal of the disabled, of the marginalization of disabled people. It’s not that we people with disabilities are unhealthy or sick, but we may as well be.   

   Yes, COVID cases are falling dramatically, at least here in California, but millions are still getting sick and thousands are still being hospitalized and dying.  Contrary to what is being pronounced, this pandemic isn’t over.  It may well become endemic, but not yet.  Besides, we keep hearing about new, more dangerous variants that may be lurking. 

   In any case, it’s still all too easy to get the virus, even with vaccines and a booster, and while many Omicron cases aren’t that bad, many of us with disabilities, myself included, don’t want to take a chance and find out how we will be effected.  I don’t know if my disability will make it harder for me to deal with COVID, and I don’t want to find out the hard way.  And I certainly don’t want to end up in the hospital, where they might be too busy and tired to be patient with my special needs. 

   As I have written about before, the disabled are often seen as the ill are seen: what no one wants to be, if not flat-out avoided.  Yes, there are now more rights and access for the disabled, but these are special rights and access that no one wants to have to have.  Disability, if not the disabled, is still a pariah. 

   Saying that healthy people can now get on with their lives, even as COVID is still being easily spread, is just the latest proof of this casual discarding of the disabled.