#newsamehope / 3.28.20
What is new in the last 24 hours?
The supply of critical equipment is getting weaponized because of political noise and nonsense.
There are plans for the US Army Corps of Engineers to turn Chicago’s McCormick Place into a 3,000 bed field hospital.
Abbott Labs designed a test that can detect virus in 5 minutes.
What is the same?
Cheese. Cheese is perfect.
My “award” at the end of kindergarten was “Best Hugger,” and that particular skill continues to lie fallow.
What is the hope?
From The Appeal: “Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker issued an executive order suspending, with few exceptions, admissions to state prisons from county jails, in an effort to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.” It’s a start. We have to keep acting for lasting reform. I find hope in the number of conversations about the health and well-being of folks who are incarcerated. Let’s keep our foot on the gas and make sure we maintain that level of concern when we’re not in the middle of a pandemic.
My dad personally thanked everyone who commented on the facebook post about his anniversary. That response and all the sweet messages from folks: hope.
We had a Zoom Q&A session for some Piven students this morning, and they showed up with ideas and energy and commitment. If teenagers can get up early on a Saturday morning to talk about making art, there’s hope.
This excerpt from Ross Gay’s collection of essays, The Book of Delights: “Among the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard anyone say came from my student Bethany, talking about her pedagogical aspirations or ethos, how she wanted to be as a teacher, and what she wanted her classroom to be: “What if we joined our wildernesses together?” Sit with that for a minute. That the body, the life, might carry a wilderness, an unexplored territory, and that yours and mine might be somewhere, somehow, meet. Might, even, join.”
Photo: Baby Redwoods. North of San Francisco. March 2018.