Brief Reflection: South Florida
Day 30 of our self-isolation here at the Bean abode and although our household has been apart from everyone else physically in our Palm Beach County community, we feel as though we’re close to so many others given the collective circumstance we’re all experiencing during this COVID-19 global pandemic.
The first time I wrote on this subject of Covid-19 and most U.S. students’ lives being drastically changed we were having a full moon here —last week we had another full moon, and so life continues for the planet even while it seems it’s in an uncomfortable stasis.
Looking Around
Based on what I read in the news and social media coupled with communication between family and friends, it seems we are all in a fog of recognition that a great deal of change to our behavior has occurred in most everyone’s lives in the last several weeks in our American Republic.
Our social media feeds include random posts of photos to help distract, memes for medicinal laughter, media links to help educate, invitations to gather virtually—and then sometimes, for some of us like myself, we end up turning off our phones and other electronic devices to just take a break from it all.
Right Now: April 15, 2020
It’s Wednesday, “hump day”, the day that most workers during the week would herald as one to push on through and afterwards enjoy the “downhill” slide to the end of the work week. Today Wednesday is the day that most parents and caregivers woke up and could hardly see straight or move their broken bodies to keep up with the frenetic pace that their little ones (or even teenage ones) began this day with–ah, to be young again.
As a homeschooling mother of three children: respectively aged 11, 9, and 5 years old, I would like to take a quick moment to tell you that if you are a parent/caregiver to any child(ren) during this time and are having to deal with having them home when usually they would be at school: You. Are. Amazing! Please, give yourself grace and hug them as much as you can every day. This is a temporary period and there will come a day when the old routines will return.
Truly, there is no playbook for what is happening these past few weeks, and no matter if you have a background in education or have kids at home for your own curriculum or virtual school anyway— this collective arrangement is completely new to us all. It’s an overwhelming, bittersweet blessing in some ways and we cannot judge each other for however we manage our homes over the matter.
It’s Tax Day too. Good thing there’s an extension for those who haven’t filed yet!
Trying to Look Ahead
Our nation is united in a state of suspended grief and continuous exhaustion. We’re all trying to find our new normal after altering our habits. It’s said that it takes humans about 30 days to break a habit and about 30 days to make new ones—so here we are.
Unfortunately, as the coronavirus fatigue wears on, our federal and state elected officials are having a challenging time with how to coordinate efforts to help our healthcare and first responder workers along with trying to balance the adverse effects on our economy as a whole.
There is article after article citing the difficulties that American families are facing economically, mentally, and the long-term effects expected for our children. How can we as parents/caregivers see straight some days as we collectively squint ahead on what our new normal routines will be going forward?
There is a feeling of helplessness that can take hold and yet thankfully we can take stock of our immediate surrounding as well as our greater community to see if there is anything we can do to help. Obviously, staying put has been most helpful in areas trying to “flatten the curve” as we’ve all learned—but we need to be more active and there are ways we can do more with all the 21st century tools we have.
No Time for Politics and Yet It’s Time for Politics
For those of you reading that know me, I have worked for congressional Republicans on Capitol Hill in the past. For my last paying job before I gave birth to my first child, I was honored to serve as a political appointee in the George W. Bush administration as a worker for Secretary Henry Paulson’s office. Watching from afar the respective Obama and now Trump administrations has been a rollercoaster ride for folks like me who were once part of the inner-workings of our federal government.
I’ve often defended both Democrats and Republicans in the various federal offices because I trust that many mean well for our nation, even if I don’t necessarily agree with their political stances. Then there are moments like this Covid-19 global pandemic that serve to fleece all those in elected positions of power and reveal who among us are the compassionate leaders and who are the consistently inconsistent ones that voters need to re-examine closely should they run again.
Joe Biden is the presumptive nominee for the Democratic party in the run for President of the United States this year. Both Senator Bernie Sanders and former President Barack Obama have come out publicly to endorse him in the past week or two (hard to keep up during coronavirus timeline).
I have made tentative predictions in the past when it comes to presidential elections and although they’ve not been popular ones with some of my Republican counterparts, they’ve stemmed from my assessment of where the American public seems to be emotionally.
Where are Americans now emotionally-speaking?
We are united in fatigue. We’re fatigued from the constant bickering between congressional Democrats and the Trump administration from the moment he was sworn in as President of the United States. We’re fatigued from the media’s energies and tax-payers’ money spent on investigating hacking from foreign sources like Russia when it comes to how our 2016 presidential election played out. We’re fatigued from the conspiracy theories that the Earth may actually be flat and that former President Bill Clinton had an active friendship with now-deceased Jeffrey Epstein. Finally, 2019 closed with impeachment hearings and votes by the U.S. House of Representatives and a drawn-out affair in the Senate that yielded no true outcome in President Trump’s “impeachment”. All while Covid-19 had likely already reached our American shores and sickened many without knowing what it was.
If Joe Biden wins this upcoming fall over President Trump, it will be most likely attributed to how tired the American psyche is as a collective and particularly because of who Biden agrees to have surround him in governance beginning with his selection of a running mate—preferably a female for his Vice President selection. While I grant that I’m biased as a woman myself, I don’t believe that women need to run the world entirely, rather that a balance in governance must be struck. 100 years ago, this August we’ll recognize when our federal government said women can vote (but that unfortunately didn’t include women of color). We need both men and women, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents…we need everyone to find a way to balance having constructive debates and at the same time keep our states and nation as a whole moving forward with productive compromises to thrive and grow as the United States of America.
Divided by Dysfunction
There’s no point in my writing about what we’ve all been witnessing as the Covid-19 crisis has unfolded in the last month or so here. Most of us have had much more time to read, research, and simply watch press conferences daily from all sorts of sources.
My prayer and hope as a private citizen today is that we can overcome our division by dysfunction and continue to work toward a better future for our nation and to leave a legacy that our next generation can build on.
In the meantime, I wish good health to anyone reading or a safe recovery to anyone still battling this virus or any other illness for that matter. May we all find ways to make the most of this bittersweet “Pause of 2020” due to the Covid-19 crisis and be able to move forward filled with hope for better days instead of fearing days ahead.
R.V.S. Bean
Some of my past related blog shorts:
https://ceoofthehome.net/2016/11/01/united-we-vote-and-slump-clinton-or-trump/
https://ceoofthehome.net/2016/03/16/fog-lifting-america-may-be-ready-for-trump-or-not/
Mass Shootings Again: We Still Love, Don’t We?
Welcome to Friday, August 9, 2019.
This has been a tough week for our nation’s attitude as reflected in social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter following the high-profile mass shootings that occurred in Ohio and Texas this past weekend.
As with anything that happens in our human society here in the United States of America, the ripple effects of events that reverberate through our populous can manifest in either very positive manners or, unfortunately, in the nastiest ways.
I have an interactive story to share with you if you’re still reading this that is related to what’s happening in our country when it comes to everyday interactions. Imagine what it must be like if the following happened to you:
You’re a middle-aged Caucasian man, handsome in features, and having to board a flight to attend to a family situation out-of-state. As you enter the departing plane, you sit down in the middle seat of a row containing three seats in your designated row, there is an older woman already sitting to your right.
A couple minutes after you’ve gotten seated, to your left comes a young man who is wearing a “Buttigieg 2020” t-shirt and he nods a greeting toward you and the lady next to you as he sits down. You shift as is customary to allow your new seat-mate to have enough room as he buckles his lap-belt. The woman to your right also shifts, but in an agitated manner after having bent down and looked to the left to see this passenger.
As everyone is settling in on the plane, the woman to your right becomes physically animated with her hand gestures and begins to engage you in conversation. Maybe “conversation” is an exaggeration as she seems to be speaking to you without having introduced herself or even asked you what’s your name. Her voice’s volume has raised as she starts with: “You know what, these liberals are just getting out of control. They are bringing this nation down and causing all these holes in our society. This is just crazy, how can we operate our democracy with these gays and such that are destroying the moral fabric of our nation? All the homosexuals and Jews just need to be rounded up and shot. They wonder why these massacres are occurring, we need to start with the problems and eliminate them, right?”
You are ingesting this “conversation”, these words strung together with a combination of rusty, barbed wire and battery acid spraying all over your face when clearly the recipient is not truly addressing yourself but the young man that is wearing the 2020 presidential bid by Buttigieg.
Normally, you are able to let moments like this go and ignore the person spewing such rhetoric…but today is not that day. You are a gay man and this lady just told you that she believes that you and all your “kind” along with others she’s labeled as unfit should be rounded up and eliminated from physical existence on this Earth.
You snap, inside yourself, like a wooden stick during a cold winter’s day in a dry climate—your temper just snaps in half with a CRACK as you respond to this woman sitting to your right (still don’t know her name): “You know, you’re right, we should start with eliminating those who are so close-minded and harsh in judgement”.
The lady looks intently into your light blue eyes that are undoubtedly sparkling with pain and disdain simultaneously and she nods toward you saying, “Why, yes, that’s a good start. I agree.”
To which you quip back, “Because, you know, I’m one of those gays that you mention should be rounded up and shot. So I would appreciate if you just leave me alone now and refrain from speaking to me again.” You shift your body to the left as you use your U-shaped travel pillow to allow yourself some rest. Silence ensues. Did the Buttigieg guy hear all of this? Does it matter?
This story doesn’t stop here.
You attend to the family business for a couple of days. It’s time to leave now and board another flight back to your home city.
This has been a rough passage of trip, you don’t care for air travel as it is. You’re ready for your Tito’s Vodka and soda as you board this home-bound flight.
You have a window seat in a two-seat row. After seating yourself, soon thereafter your seat-mate who is a black woman dressed in a beautiful magenta skirt suit comes to sit to your left. Again, as is customary, you shift appropriately so the lady has enough room to situate herself as the plane settles into take-off mode.
The drink cart time has come as the flight is now at a cruising altitude. When the stewardess comes to take your row’s order you ask for your long-awaited “Tito’s” and are given an alternative vodka selection and asked whether that will work.
At this very moment, the lady to your left starts to speak loudly in a Jamaican accent at what seems to be either you or at the stewardess: “Oh no, I’m not sitting here with this guy drinking!”
Reminder that you’re a good 54 years young and know that you can do whatever you want as a gay man in the USA who has completed a tough trip and just needs to decompress in peace. As if on cue and responding to this truth, the stewardess doesn’t acknowledge what this seat-mate of yours just said, only asks, “Would you still like the vodka sir?”.
“Ah yes, I’ll take two bottles please,” you respond immediately. You proceed to ask for two cups of ice to boot. The lady next to you continues to rail on about, “Oh no, I am NOT going to sit with him as he drinks!” No one is paying attention to her, including yourself who really just wants to avoid another verbal altercation and numb the pain of the last few days.
Resolute not to engage at this point, you toward the window and sipping your liquid therapy at this moment. Your seat-mate harrumphs and pulls out her iPad and begins to tappity-tap on it. This actually calms you as you’re grateful that it seems she’s now distracted and no longer calling you out as if you’re some town drunkard hell-bent on corrupting the entire airplane full of weary travelers.
Being such close quarters, your seat-mate is engaged in a game on her digital device that’s large enough that you can read what she’s doing. It’s a Bible verse/theme game. She visibly gets stumped and is uneasily moving around in her seat as she’s trying to figure out the answer.
Perhaps against your better judgement you lean in and whisper to her, “Job”…she glances at you with both a look of horror and incredulous surprise asking, “What?”. You repeat, “Job, the answer is Job. Try it”. She puts it in and immediately is gratified with positive reinforcement that she got it right. No thanks from her but then again, this is a fluke, right?
This type of scenario repeats itself several times over the course of an hour into the flight, you’re giving her answers like “Ecclesiastes” and “Gospel of Matthew”. By the end of it all, this Jamaican lady is astounded at your knowledge of the Christian Bible and says to you, “I misjudged you, keep reading the Word of God, you’re doing amazing.”
To that you simply say with a gentle tone and soft smile, “Thanks, I accept your apology”.
Soon you fall asleep, putting a pause on the button of your life that seems to be full of these moments of late—mass judgements and angry people all emboldened to express their feelings whether it be online in social media platforms or while traveling in a metal tube in the sky to complete strangers.
Note: This story scenario is based on a true story as retold to me and others by a man named “Joseph”. I’m withholding his true name and position for protection but I’m indebted to him for giving me a window into what it can be like to be in a certain segment of our society and how painful and detrimental it can be for all involved when interactions such as these arise.
Politics and religions aside, I pray we can find that we all trust in Love and proceed forward in this nation with the mindset that there is much more that binds us together in unison than what drives us apart.
R.V.S.B.