#newsamehope / 3.18.20

What is new in the last 24 hours?

• Ever scarier numbers. 22 people in a long-term care facility in Willowbrook. Longer timelines. The increased uncertainty that accompanies growing knowledge.

What is the same?

• The leaf blower is the most wasteful (and rudely noisy) machine. A crime against the environment.

• Sumo Citrus is the best variety of mandarin. 

• Even when there is literally nothing else to do when I accidentally wake up at 5 in the morning, no, I do not want to go for a jog.

• Children are hilarious and say things like, “Mama, give me your scarf so I can make it dirty.”

What is the hope?

• There is hope in the heartache. In making the difficult choices that separate us from partners, from parents, from grandparents, all in the name of public health. There is hope in the fact that so many people are willing to have their hearts broken a little bit each day because it makes everyone else safer.

• People are talking about the need for the structural change that would benefit everybody. We have to stay on this. Lord knows we cannot depend on Congress to do it without external pressure. Call your reps. Express your disappointment at the concessions the Dems in Congress have made already. We have to fight. 

• We’re learning more about how to be a human being each day. The good, the bad, the messy. What is essential. What is heart-opening. What we can be for each other.

Photo: Montrose Harbor, Chicago, February 2019