Some warmth in the cold

 

   It was in the 50s – not as cold as some recent mornings have been but still butt-cold, as a friend used to say and I still like saying, here in sunny So. Cal.  I was out a bit early – around 9 – and I was out in my van with an attendant delivering Christmas goodies before my weekly marketing. 

   Then, there he was, on the corner, a young boy, ahead of his mother and a smaller child.  He was skipping around, perhaps delighted that he was allowed to go on his own for even a little bit and also no doubt excited that it wouldn’t be long before Santa was coming.  But what was most striking was what the kid was wearing – a skimpy orange t-shirt and what looked like camo shorts.  And I’m talking short shorts, like cut-offs.  What more, as we drove closer with the heater blasting in the van, we saw he wasn’t wearing shoes.  Clearly, he had dressed himself that morning and had even less sense than the college kids here, no doubt from colder climes, who wander around campus on wet, drizzly, January days in t-shirts and shorts.  At least they’re not in daisy dukes! 

   Soon enough, the mother was catching up to him, and it looked like she was giving him a talking-to. You think? 

   “What the Hell are you thinking?” my attendant said, imagining what the mom was saying.  “You go back to the house and get some shoes on!  And some decent pants on while you’re at it!  Now!  Before you catch your death of cold!”

   My attendant and I had a good laugh, both at the boy’s reckless joy and at the insanity of the situation, as we drove on, reminded that cheer is sometimes found in surprising, small things – one of the messages of this season. This light and hope, in a time of darkness when things seem hopeless, is what I wrote about in my latest Claremont Courier column, published on Friday, which follows. 

           MEMORIES, HOPE AS ANOTHER CHALLENGING YEAR ENDS

   “John – you remember me?”

   I looked up.  It was a surprising question.  At least not one I was expecting.

   I was going along my own business, waiting at the cash register at the Kiwannis Club pop-up See’s candy holiday store, getting some Christmas shopping done.  (Actually, I went in to buy a box for myself and decided to get some gifts – sort of like, one for me, four for you.  I was also pleased that I was there early in the season, unlike when I went last year, only to find the store shuttered, with the candy sold out.  And who doesn’t like See’s?)

   Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised that the man at the cash register recognized me and wondered if I recognized him.  After all, the Kiwannis Club is full of long-time Claremonters, and, to say the least, I have been around for a while. 

   I looked at the man and saw a broad forehead with kind, almost twinkling eyes, topped with a neat layer of white hair.  I wanted to recognize him – I really did, feeling like this was a quiz, and I was failing – but I didn’t. 

   “Does this help?” he asked, removing his mask.  There, to go with those kind eyes, were red cheeks and a broad, open smile.  He looked like a youthful, trim, clean-shaven Santa, but I was pretty sure that’s not who this guy was.  Something was familiar, very vaguely familiar, but – nope – I was bombing. 

   With almost a chuckle, he said.  “It’s Mr.  Patterson.  From El Roble?”

   Of course! I should have known! (Isn’t this what always happens?)   It was Ralph Patterson, who taught the marine biology class I took when I was at El Roble Jr. High. Also, didn’t he go on to be an administrator at the school district?  And – hello! – there was a big hint, with “Ralph” sewn on the front of the apron he was wearing. 

   I laughed.  Of course, it was Ralph Patterson.  I remembered enjoying marine biology more than I thought I would.  He was a good teacher. 

   We agreed that it was nice to see each other after so many years – 40, at least - and wish each other happy holidays. I left the store smiling with a bag full of quality See’s candies, satisfied that I had checked some people off my shopping list and also scoring a box to enjoy myself.  I also left bathed in memories, mostly warm, of El Roble. 

   Mr.  Patterson’s class, I recalled, was a door or two down from the room where we disabled students were based for the first time at the junior high school that year with Anita Hughes, who came with us from Danbury School.  Leonard Gaylord was the principal then and had been the principal at Danbury – this was when it was a school – during some of my years there, where he read Tom Sawyer with a few of us. 

   I also remembered my English teacher, Carol Schowalter, the legendary Ms. S, who was and is hated and loved by thousands of us who had her – hated for how much work she assigned and how hard she was, loved for how much she cared for us and instilled in us the invaluable value of discipline and hard work.  I remembered visiting her often in her classroom in later years, when she called herself an old lady, and meeting her widowed friend Mel, who she was thrilled to marry a few (too few) years before she died.  I also remembered literally carrying a typewriter on my lap as a rode to and from her class in my wheelchair. 

   Sweet, indeed. 

*

   It was a spectacular Fall day, clear and with leaves falling around Little Bridges on the Pomona College campus.  It was also quite warm but not unbearable.  A perfect day for an outdoor concert. 

   Which is exactly what we got as the Pomona College Band, lead by the stalwart and welcoming Graydon Beeks, played on the steps of Little Bridges.  This was a break from the concerts indoors, with the iPads set up outside for filling out health attestation forms.  For one concert, the college orchestra played in the cavernous Bridges Auditorium, spread out on its enormous stage, and where entering was like going through a T.S.A line, requiring the health attestation plus proof of COVID vaccination.  At the college choir concert later, the choir was spread out over the entire ground floor of Little Bridges, with the audience, except those in wheelchairs, in the balcony.  At this outdoor concert, masks were still mandated. 

   The band played a piece that wasn’t on the program.  Mr.  Beeks explained it was a small section of a large-scale work by former band leader William Blanchard which included the choir and premiered in Bridges Auditorium during World War II and which was a plea for peace.

   When the concert ended with a march, I found myself feeling downright patriotic sitting there in my mask, doing my part in this pandemic, in contrast to those who wave the flag and claim that they stand for freedom as they rant and rail against and refuse mask-wearing and vaccines, common-sense measures to get us all out of this hell. 

  *

    At the other colleges, meanwhile, all concerts were being held outdoors.  Okay, but how would this work when it got cold?  And perhaps wet?  People may be fine with sitting there in masks – but not shivering and exposed to whatever elements. 

   So it was probably inevitable when the December concerts were held in Garrison Theater. 

   When the theater manager welcomed the audience before the choir concert, he said it was the first indoor concert there in twenty months.  Twenty months.  I found myself with a lump in my throat. 

   We are living in historic times, historic, hard, strange, sometimes wonderful times.

Pieces of Fall

 

   On my way to meeting every Sunday morning, driven in my van, I go by a block that is lined with gingko trees.  This block has always been a real treat in the Fall, when the gingko leaves turn brilliant gold and flutter to the ground. 

   It seems to me that the leaves are late in turning this year (another sign of climate change?). It has only been on recent Sundays that the leaves have begun to ever so gradually turn from dark green to pale green to pale gold to brighter and brighter gold – and Fall is just about over.  A few trees have begun to relinquish leaves, while many others are stubbornly refusing to let their leaves go, as they put on an exquisitely slow changeling show.  Perhaps in two or three weeks, now that the weather has finally cooled, they will finally relent, and, one Sunday, the ground will be carpeted in gold – a nice Christmas or New Year’s treat. 

   To my frustration, Fall, my favorite time of year, has also been stalled for me. For much of it, I wasn’t able to go out on my own, as I have loved doing these last couple years.  In fact, I wasn’t able to all Spring and Summer. 

   Early in the year, I found that my one functioning arm – the left – was getting weaker and sometimes giving out or freezing up.  Things came to a head when I was out on a warm – but perhaps not warm enough – day in February and my arm gave out blocks from home and I barely made it back home, with cars honking at me, etc – very scary. 

   I knew I had to do something.  I decided to go all in and get a set-up that I had seen before, that allowed me to drive with my head.  If I was that disabled, I may as well get what I need to live fully as someone that disabled.  It didn’t make sense to try to live like I was less disabled.  So I went back to Casa Colina Hospital, the local rehab hospital, and they helped me get what’s called a head array, which enables me to drive my wheelchair by pressing my head against pads. 

   Yes, this is huge, and I should have been really, really excited about it – and, really, I am.  Yes, I should have written about it.  But it turned out to be an exercise in frustration, with many delays at the hospital (for one thing, why didn’t it have the equipment on hand?) and then waiting for the insurance approval.  By the time I got it in late October instead of perhaps late July, it was hard not to be bitter. 

   Anyway, I have really enjoyed having the head array, at least until it has finally gotten chilly here, and the best thing about it is that I don’t have to use it.  I can still use my joystick.  I was worried about having to use the head array all the time, which would have been a steep learning curve and difficult in tight and not-so-tight indoor spaces, but, no, I can just use it when I need it, when I get too cold, when my arm gets too tired. Until this recent cold snap, when it’s just too cold for me to go out on my own (unlike before my spinal surgery, when the cold didn’t stop me), I have been finding that I am fine using my joystick when I’m out on my own, even when it’s a bit cooler (above 70), likely because I know I have the head array if I need it. To be clear and perfectly frank, I’m not crazy about the head array – it’s is clunky and takes too much mental effort than I care to give and is one more high-tech thing that can, I fear, easily break down – but it’s nice to know that I have it.

   It was frustrating that I couldn’t do this until late October.  I was really looking forward to strolling around this Fall - again, my favorite time of the year – seeing the changing leaves. And it’s too bad I can’t – yet - get to the gingko block or other areas in Claremont with wonderful Fall foliage, even with having the head array (and, again, unlike before my spinal surgery, when it was something I would pass on my many outings in my chair).

   But, then again, I was able to go out strolling in the blacks around my house nearly every day for a good month. Not only that, I have made it a point when I’m on these outings (and also when I’m being driven around town in my van – to and from meeting, for example) to be aware of and to enjoy the Fall colors that have been on view even in this limited range and time.  This is, after all, the “city of trees and Ph.D’s,” founded by people who came from New England and decided that this town would have trees and Fall colors that reminded them of home, even among the swaying palms and desert vistas of sunny So. Cal.   

   This Fall, like the pandemic, has been a reminder that, sort of like those founders of Claremont and its first college, Pomona, you strive for what you want but also make the best of what you find yourself with.

The good in a bad time

 

   I’m not sure if many of us realize how significant, how momentous these last 18 or so months have been.  Do many people see this pandemic as an unprecedented time, a period that will go down in history, perhaps more than the Spanish flu epidemic of 1919?  Or has it just been a time of inconvenience, when we couldn’t go out much and have to wear stupid masks? 

   Surely this attitude was perpetuated by Donald Trump in his disasterous leadership as president at the onset of this crisis, treating it as a bothersome inconvenience, which has ended up with it being much worse – lasting much longer, with many more deaths – than it could have been. 

   In any case, the pandemic presented us with challenges and hard lessons, some of which are leading to better things.  I explored this in my latest Claremont Courier column, which was published a couple Fridays ago. 

           AFTER A TIME OF QUIET, A TIME TO REACH OUT

   I have pandemic guilt. 

   Or do I?

   Over the last 20 months or so – yes, we’ve been at this life-turned-upside-down slog together, as we’ve kept hearing, for nearly two years – I’ve heard and read countless stories about what people have been doing, have accomplished, during the pandemic. 

   Apparently, folks, at least those who trusted science and followed the health officials’ advice, got busy while holed up at home.  They didn’t sit around playing tiddly-winks or doing nothing or just watching Netflix.  Although plenty did watch Netflix, at least on the side, while doing something else.

   Some did things, more often than not new things, to pass the time, while others used the time for things, projects, that they had been meaning to do, things that they had wanted to do but never found the time to do.  Now they had the time. 

   According to reports in the first two or three months that COVID-19 kept us at home, some tried out sourdough starters and also learned to perfect pies and delicate pastries.  Some embarked on long-dreamed-of home improvement projects and some taught themselves another language or how to quilt.  Some wrote the novel they always thought of writing, some painted cards and mailed them to friends with thoughtful notes, and some wrote songs, made music videos, recorded albums. 

   I kept seeing these stories about all the things people were getting done, were accomplishing, during the pandemic. It was a bit like reading that Mozart completed something like five symphonies and a couple operas while he was a teenager. 

   It was hard not to feel like a slouch, like I was downright lazy, like I was wasting all this extra time that we had on our hands.  It was hard not to feel guilty for not making good use of this time, for not being incredibly productive during this period away from our normal, too-busy lives, as forced and as unwanted as it was.

   That there has also been thousands and thousands of people getting sick and so many of them dying, dying awful deaths alone in crowded hospitals, hasn’t helped.  

   But, then again, while I didn’t take on a grand project, while I didn’t spend this down time writing the great American novel, I wasn’t doing nothing.  I was getting work done, important work on myself that I needed to get done. 

   The strange fact is that, in some sense, the pandemic didn’t interrupt what I saw as my normal, too-busy life.  That had happened three years earlier when I had spinal surgery, which saved my life but left me far more disabled than I had already been. What was interrupted for me by the COVID lock-down was getting back to my life or, rather, a new life. 

   Right as I was getting into the swing of things, into the life that I was now to have, to find, to develop, I found myself back stuck at home, back in a state of convalescence. 

   Except, this time, I wasn’t alone.  I wasn’t the only one stuck at home, in a state of limbo, if not convalescence.  We were all suddenly set back, having to stop and put our lives on hold and try to make new sense of it. 

   “Welcome back!” proclaim the signs on the restaurants in the Village now offering indoor dining again.  As if we have been away on a long journey. 

   Which we have.  It may not have been a vacation, a fun road trip, a nice, relaxing getaway, but it was definitely a time away, a time apart, an adventure of sorts in which we started anew or saw things anew or learned the hard way to do so. 

   Now we find ourselves finding our way in a strange, wonderful world where going to a concert at the colleges is an absolute joy but is a bit like going through security at an airport in order to attend, having to show photo I.D and proof of vaccination in addition to having to fill out a health attestation form saying that one doesn’t have COVID symptoms and haven’t been exposed to any. 

   We also find that things have been done during this fallow time, that new seeds have been found and are now being planted and nurtured.  We saw this in the new awareness of racial inequality and injustice and subsequent unprecedented protests after the horrific police killing of George Floyd – an awareness made more possible with so many of us at home with more time to see the news and to think.  There are efforts to keep these new senses and sensibilities alive, to nurture them and keep them going after the pandemic is over. 

   Things have been percolating at Claremont Change, the organization started by recent Claremont High School graduates Josue Barnes and Noah Winnock in the wake of the Floyd killing to promote diversity and justice in Claremont.  Barnes and Winnock are now leading a series of free workshops on how to detect and respond to rhetorical devices such as gaslighting and exceptionalism.  These workshops are taking place on Zoom, mostly on every other Monday evenings, and more information can be found on Claremontchange.org. 

   The local Bahais have also been busy, germinating a hope and working to make it real.  In the wake of their Zoom series of Claremont Speaks Black conversations, spurred on by the activism following the Floyd murder, featuring Black residents of Claremont sharing their experiences of being Black in Claremont, the Bahais are expanding on these dialogues in an effort to further promote diversity and justice in Claremont.  They recently lead an in-person dialogue at Blaisdell Park on how to get more people involved in the pursuit of racial equality and justice.  About two dozen people participated, and it seemed like the beginning of something good taking root.  For further information on how to get involved, contact ClaremontLSA@gmail.com. 

   Then there is the Newcomer Access Center and its effort with the Claremont Quaker meeting and others to offer housing, at least temporarily, to Afghan refugees. The NAC is a group started by Pilgrim Place residents some time ago wanting to assist those seeking asylum in this country.  With people now fleeing Afghanistan, there is now a need for this. 

   The Claremont Quakers, in conjunction with the Claremont Homeless Advocacy Program, had been hosting homeless people overnight at the meetinghouse, but that had to end when the pandemic struck.  With the space now available, the Quakers offered, when needed, to have Afghan families stay there for a few weeks at a time while they get on their feet and find more permanent housing.  The Claremont School of Theology is also helping out, with office space for the NAC as well as possible housing.  All is at the ready when an Afghan family needs shelter here.

   Indeed, after this time of quiet and isolation, there are efforts to reach out and make Claremont a more welcoming, more just place.  That’s nothing for any of us to feel guilty about.

 

Why I listen to Trump

 

   “Guns don’t kill people. Alec Baldwin kills people.”

   This is what it says on a t-shirt that Donald Trump, Jr, was selling on his website not long after Baldwin accidentally killed the cinematographer and wounded the director when he shot a gun that he was told was “cold,” not loaded with live ammunition, on the set of a film he was producing and starring in.  Never mind that it was an accident, a tragic accident. Never mind that the actor is mortified, devastated. 

   It should be no surprise that the junior Trump exploited this horrific event in a shocking, crass, cruel way to score points with his father’s rabid, red-meat-loving backers.  He may also have been sticking it to the actor who so savagely parodied Dad on Saturday Night Live while he was president. 

   Later, on Twitter, he went on to dig even further: “Spare me your fake sanctimony. The media is in full on panic mode to protect Baldwin from ANY criticism because they agree with his politics.”

   J.D Vance, the venture capitalist and memoirist (“Hillbilly Elegy”) running for the U.S senate nomination in Ohio, is one of many has added to the crass Trumpist drumbeat. “Dear @jack,” he tweeted, referring to Twitter head Jack Dorsey, “let Trump back on.  We need more Alec Baldwin tweets.”   

  The question is should we care? Should we care that this is being said, that this is going on?  I have friends who tell me I should ignore all this, that I should tune out what Trump and his followers say. 

   Yes, Trump has been banned from Twitter and Facebook, but his message is still getting out.  He is speaking at rallies and conferences, and, clearly, plenty are speaking for him online. 

   And, yes, as my friends tell me, it would be good for my mental health not to hear all this toxic, hateful, fear-driven stuff. 

   But sticking our heads in the sand isn’t the answer.  It would be nice to ignore this and go on like it’s not out there, but it’s very much out there, and ignoring it definitely won’t help. 

   For one thing, ignoring it will lead to complacency, which will end up with people not voting.  This is how Trumpists and perhaps even Trump will win elections.  We need to hear all these awful things, to pay attention to what’s happening and being said out there so that folks get mad and vote against all this. 

   Even more importantly, we need to pay attention to what’s being said, to that it’s being said, so that we can try to figure out why there is such hate and fear, why so many people are so unhappy that they latch onto this fear and hate and follow and vote for those who would actually harm them (doing away with Obamacare, making it harder to get government assistance, etc.)  and how we can work, hopefully together, so that this wasn’t the case. 

   It would be much easier to ignore this toxicity, to not do this hard work, but, as is evident in how we’ve gotten more and more polarized, more and more apart, to the point where we can’t agree on basic facts, on the truth, we do so at our peril.