Search Results for: bingo night at the mansion

It was roughly one year ago that the country was deep into a lockdown, and the dimensions of Covid-19 became apparent to me.

I knew our world was about to change; I knew my life was about to change.

I see and feel better days ahead; I already see calming and healing signs. The politicians will do their thing; the people will do their thing.

I am eager to return to a full and meaningful life, which is a joyous thing to me.

I wanted to take a few minutes to think and write about what I miss about pre-pandemic life and what it revealed to me.

Millions of people have suffered more than I did and lost much more than I lost. But we suffered too, of course, as did everyone reading this.

I am also thinking about whether the pandemic has changed me.

The things I lost were personal, temporal, and mostly cultural.

I did not get sick.

Many of my friends did, especially those in New York and other cities. Five or six died. I often hear people in my town ask one another contemptuously and skeptically if they know anyone who actually died.

This constant rumble that masks are an attack on freedom and the pandemic itself a hoax. Somehow, science, something we were taught to revere,  has fallen into disrepute.

Of course, many people died – at least a half million.

This cold talk of hoaxes – widespread in America today -hurts me in a personal way when I hear it. Oh yes, I say, a lot of people have died. But I only say that to myself.

I don’t argue my views with strangers.

On a higher level than me, the pandemic laid bare the country’s worst and ugliest political and social divisions.

At first, all of us – even the then President – were mesmerized by Covid-19 and how it threatened to overwhelm our hospital and public health system. I remember those awful briefings.

The chance to come together as one great community crumbled under the weight of immoral leaders, argument, lies, fear, and suffering.

Speaking of briefings, Andrew Cuomo started the pandemic as a hero and truth-teller, but he got too close to the sun, as heroes in America tend to do. He fell from hero to goat.

If he were a Trumpist, he could tough it out with lies. But it doesn’t work that way in the real world, and it shouldn’t.

That’s sad.  He did a great job. He helped me greatly to understand the pandemic and my responsibilities in dealing with it.

I am not sure why Donald Trump’s deadly and even horrifying indifference to the pandemic  – I wonder how many lives he cost – is brushed off by his many supporters and Cuomo’s very real dishonesty regarding the deaths in New York nursing homes matters so much, and rightly so.

If one is a scandal, isn’t the other?   

I miss the idea of truth and accountability.  We used to agree that lying was wrong. We seem to be forgetting what truth and wrong are. That saddens me.

Once it became clear that the pandemic was mostly striking down older people and minorities, and immigrants, the white polis that has dominated our country for many years seemed to turn away from it and dismiss it as a political or media hysteria.

Scientists say tens of thousands of helpless people died hard because of that.

The rich got only richer, and this became just another chapter in the oldest story in the world – the rich screwing the poor and getting rich off of their sweat and blood.

There are a lot worse things than socialism.

The contempt for science and suffering fit perfectly into a country bitterly divided – the white working-class versus the new America.

We have become a selfish country; we worry only about ourselves. We take responsibility for nothing.

Along with insurrection, ignoring disease and moral responsibility suddenly became patriotic, a defense of the Constitution.

This all fit perfectly into our then President’s agenda – the truth is lies and lies are truth The pandemic became just another poisonous political opportunity for the left and the right to tear at one another, just like the Texas power catastrophe already is.

I miss the truth.

I was sorry to see so many Christians defile the meaning of Christ for money and political power. Just when we needed his message the most, many abandoned it.

Joe Biden seems to be getting a handle on the pandemic, day by day, step by step, and I can’t help but being hopeful about that, not only for the obvious reasons but because the pandemic ended up playing to neatly into President Trump’s mad genius for cynicism, division, and indifference to human suffering.

The easiest license to obtain in America was a license to hate, lie and ignore the needy.

The pandemic made many people ill, but it made the whole country sick in the soul.

For me, it upended my life in benign, sad, and challenging ways. I couldn’t go to Bishop Maginn High School with Zinnia after March. My friendships with these amazing refugee children survived but more weakly and indirectly.

I haven’t been allowed into the Mansion since last March. I’ve been able to help Bishop Maginn and the Mansion thanks to the Army Of Good, which stayed on mission.

We have been creative. We learned to help from a distance. We did help, and we are helping – every day.

I miss reading to the residents, hearing their stories, asking them what they need, checking out their tattered shoes and thin blankets; I miss our meditation classes and hearing them tell their stories. We miss our bingo games, and Maria misses her art classes.

I miss them struggling so painfully and valiantly with life on the very edge of life. I miss saying goodbye when they leave or die.

I miss going to the movies a lot. I love movies and movie theaters and theater popcorn.

I watched in sympathy as so many women – especially mothers – bore the brunt of so much disruption and responsibility. I can’t remember when it was easy to be a woman; I’m sure it never was. This past year was tough.

Watching movies at home is not the same. Tonight we watched several old Three Stooges movies, but they were not funny.

I get lonely sometimes, I don’t have many friends, but I am a social creature, and I like to talk to people.

In many ways, the pandemic is about staying away from people, especially if you have two chronic illnesses and are over 70 years old.

I’ve been warned a dozen times not to let my guard down, as it could be fatal. That realization has been harder for Maria than for me.

Masks offer a different perspective when not wearing one could kill people like me. I don’t wish to kill anyone else or make them sick.

I still arrange Mansion lunches from Jean’s Place, but I can’t go to the restaurant to eat anymore; when I pick up food, I still do; I come in masked, pay quickly leave. I miss it. Kelsie left, but we never got to say goodbye.

I had two or three people I talked with regularly on the phone and appreciated that but those friendships didn’t seem to hold up under pandemic rules – Zooming, Facetime, social distanced walks in the woods.

Maria responded more easily to the pandemic than I did.

She has made some wonderful friends, and their friendships have deepened and grown and flowered. They always find ways to talk to one another.

I can’t truthfully say mine have. I did try.

I have always been alone for much of my life; in some ways, it is the most comfortable space for me. I get lonely at times, but I never feel loneliness. There is so much happening in my life.

My love and commitment to the blog have deepened. I love writing more than ever.

I am at a good pace after the pandemic year. I have never loved my life more or felt better about the meaning of that. The pandemic is a teacher. Love thy neighbor is much more than a commandment.

I am getting comfortable with myself and accepting of my life.

People are home more and have time to read. I have much more time to read.  And time to write.

I got more than a million and a half new readers on the blog during the pandemic year. It looks like almost all of them are hanging around. That is pretty cool.

My love for and from Maria has deepened; I think I might have gone a little mad if not for Maria; my heart jumps every single time I see her.

We have only grown closer and more appreciative of our love together.

We support one another in every possible way. That makes all the difference.

Tomorrow we are sending in the forms that begin our becoming Animal Wildlife Rehabilitators; the process will take a couple of months. We are excited about this new chapter in our lives. I will write about it, believe me.

Maria’s art has never been richer, deeper, or more beautiful. All this death and suffering and conflict opens a creative person up.

I miss long dinners with interesting people.

I miss walking in town with my dog. I miss browsing in a book store instead of ordering books on the phone and picking them up in a basket on the street.

In Zinnia, I have the sweet and easy companion I wanted, she is the right dog for me now, and I love her dearly.

I very much miss going out to restaurants, this was something Maria and I did three or four times a week, and love to do at the end of a workday at home.

We both miss going to events where there are other people – restaurants, concerts, museums, cities.

My love for nature and animals has increased sharply.

We just ordered two new chickens this morning. The less life there is around us, the more life there is on the farm.

How lucky I am to be living on a farm during this pandemic. So much teeming and real-life all around me every time I step outside.

On March 11, I get my first vaccine shot, the beginning of the first liberation phase.

I took advantage of the pandemic to address my body and health: two very successful heart procedures and one very successful prostate procedure.

One was serious; two were optional. I am healthier and more comfortable than before.

Oddly, I came through all of these procedures well; it slid down an icy hill in my new car that almost did me the worst harm. But it was all right.

I have an alternative view of life’s challenges. Obstacles and crises are an opportunity to connect to the light; they let the light in.

I believe the light is coming, to my country, to my life, to my farm.  The Kabbalah says the light comes only from God.

I can’t promise it, but I feel it coming. Faith, to me, believes that tomorrow can be better than today.

Today was better than yesterday. Friday was better than Thursday.

I got an unexpected call on my cell phone today, it was Sylvie, my good friend at the Mansion, she was moved to another facility last week.

Because of the virus, I couldn’t see her to say goodbye.

I love Sylvie and was afraid I wouldn’t see her again.

We had a very special connection.

I was surprised when she called me today and told me where she was and said she needed stamps and envelopes – some things never change.

I don’t know how the got my number, but I do know Sylvie has an iron will and I’m glad she found a way to get in touch with me.

I don’t think my life would be the same if I weren’t buying paper, stamps, and envelopes for Sylvie. “Jon,” she said in her way, “I need stamps right away.”

That was all she said. I think it really doesn’t matter to her where she lives.

She told me where she was and said she would be happy to continue getting mail from her friends and Pen Pals: Sylvie B, Room 31, the Fort Hudson Nursing Center, 319 Upper Broadway, Ft. Edward, N.Y., 12828.

On Monday, I’ll get her the stamps and envelopes she likes and overnight them to her. There is hell to pay if Sylvie doesn’t have her writing materials. I’ll send some pens just in case.

Sylvie traveled all through Europe after World War II with her father, who was an American diplomat. She broke down several times when she was young and was institutionalized, and has lived in institutions ever since.

She fell in love twice, but both men died. She wouldn’t play bingo because one of them loved the game and played with her. Sylvie is devoutly religious, she is a Jehovah’s Witness and she invited me to hear her sing one night at her place of worship.

Sylvie also talked of her beloved dog, who ran away in the mountains of Austria and never came back. She heard his howls every night, but never saw him again.

She had a very hard life, but I have never heard her complain or feel sorry for herself. She has a loving family and is close to them. She is intelligent and almost ruthlessly honest.

We came to know and love one another.

The Mansion privacy rules – Hippa – are strict.

I would never ask them where she was or how to get in touch with her, and they would never tell me. When someone leaves, I never expect to hear from them again. They just vanish.

And I rarely visit former residents even if I know where they are – I need to protect myself against burnout and taking on more than I can handle well.

Sylvia is tough and resourceful, I vaguely remember giving her my cell number when she asked for it a year ago.

Sylvie saves everything, although she lost many of the stamps I gave her, and most of the hats.

She would love to get your letters, but I wouldn’t recommend buying her stamps – they simply disappear. I have a system, I’ll get them to her aide or someone in the office, and they will hand them out to her.

I’ll take care of that and see she gets what she needs.

I don’t even want to tally the number of stamps I bought her that mysteriously disappeared. We found hundreds of them in a desk drawer one day when she asked for help in finding them.

But she had enough to write lots of letters. Sylvie is an original. She is very happy in her new home, the aides are wonderful, she said the room is large and comfortable.

Sylvie doesn’t really make a lot of friends,  and she doesn’t look back, something we share.

She loves warm hats for the winter – no symbols or images for religious reasons – and she loves getting letters.

I always screened her letters she asked me to mail, she had a habit of writing checks to people and corporations, that has been taken care of.

She said it was okay for me to give out her new address and encourage people to write her. She has a lot of friends she has never met.  And she does write back.

I won’t be able to see Sylvie for a long time, if ever. But I don’t really need to. We’ll stay in touch.

I’m grateful we are in touch and that I can keep supplying her with stamps and envelopes. Thanks for writing her and being a Pen Pal. The address is Sylvie B, Fort Hudson Nursing Center, Room 31,  319 Upper Broadway, Ft. Edward, N.Y., 12828.

“Genius is a crisis that joins the buried self, for certain moments, to our daily mind.” — William Butler Yeats.

It’s fitting, I think, that the Chinese use two brush strokes for the word “crisis.” One stroke stands for danger—the other for opportunity. In a crisis, said John Kennedy, be aware of the danger, but recognize the opportunity.

I don’t feel divided from my country today. I think we are one thing right now, the left and the right seem to shrink in the face of reality.

We’re about to get a once in a lifetime opportunity to learn what it is we need, how much we can change, what governments are meant for,  how much empathy do we have for one another?

I have the opportunity to be calm and patient, to take a longer view, to sort through a tsunami of data and hysteria to pick out the kernels of truth and reason, to take some deep breaths and gauge what I am really about.

If you believe what they say about older people, I might get the opportunity to learn a lot more.

So what is the edge, our boundary? Hunter  Thompson wrote that “there is no honest way to explain that because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.”

Sometimes, if you watch too much of the news, it feels like we might be going over the edge. But I don’t think so. I think we are far from the edge. Slaves in America and Jews in Poland were on the edge.

The Chinese brush strokes story has a lot of truth. Lots of danger, but I don’t want to forget to spot the opportunity.

I embrace the opportunity to sort through the hype and hysteria and figure out the truth.

Eckhart Tolle wrote than when faced with a radical crisis, an individual will either perish or become extinct or rise above it’s limitations and take a great leap.

I’m not ready to die; I am always looking for a leap.

I think of our trip to the zoo last Sunday as the borderline day, the last day before the new normal, the day a virus entered all of our lives and changed them, beyond the imagination of any of us just a few days or weeks ago.

It was so innocent a day, really a beautiful Spring day with my wife, daughter, granddaughter, and some penguins and seals and monkeys. It seems like it was a thousand years ago. We sat on benches, listened to the sea lions, laughed and loved one another.

And what a storm was hiding on the other side of Sunday. We had no idea.

We went to the zoo to meet my penguin and Maria’s hissing cockroach. Nobody was wearing a mask, no one had thought of canceling our pre-arranged visit, a Valentine’s Day gift from each of us to the other.

Nobody talked about the virus; nobody mentioned the virus.

Even today, four days later, such a trip seems unimaginable, a visit to another time and place. Baseball was about to begin, so were basketball tournaments, so were a thousand concerts, gatherings, meetings, vacations, and business trips.

Everything in our lives seems to be shutting down, getting suspended or postponed, all out of science, and that eerie hackneyed term we hear so often, “an abundance of caution.”

Presidents get exposed to the virus, candidates get to debate in empty halls, baseball stadiums are empty.

I guess our only choice is to listen to them.

My daughter’s boss in New York told her to stay home for a few weeks. My granddaughter’s school closed down for a month. Broadway shows closed their doors; stand-up comics had no audiences.

We may have waited a bit too long, but we are all on it now, all of us holding our breath, sucking it in, counting on our fingers and in our minds the number of days to normalcy, or perhaps the new normalcy.

We seem a brave people, really, sucking it up and turning to a new and perhaps temporary way of life.

We are used to getting lied to now. Still, suddenly, it seems that the lies don’t work anymore, the truth is gliding relentlessly towards us like a thick and mournful fog, it is surrounding us, enveloping us, we feel it on our skin and in our souls.

That trip to the zoo was then, this is now, a new and different and eerily unnatural world. I confess I was smug about living up here in the country, the virus seemed like an urban catastrophe, we don’t get many travelers from overseas here, why would it come here,  how would it get here?

But it is here. In Saratoga, Bennington, Queensbury. At the Walgreen’s tonight, crowds of people looking for hand sanitizers. There are none.

At first, it felt like just another nightmare on the news, another ugly stream for the cell. Not something for us to worry about.

But it did come here, and it is here. I chose to pay close attention to it, but I don’t choose to worry about it. I just don’t know what good that would do me or anybody else. Maria is worried about me, I’m “at risk,” as they like to say.

I will take good care of myself. I promised.

A pharmacist in a nearby town caught the virus from his wife, who visited Philadelphia; the American Legion Bingo down the road was canceled, a city township meeting was canceled, every school here is figuring out how to handle things if they have to close, or want to close.

All of us are listening for stories like that, gathering them, sharing them. They are our  new and universal reality.

I think it helps to be older because I’ve seen a lot of crises, a lot of panics, a lot of bungled government missteps, a lot of feckless politicians hiding the truth, a lot of mediasteria.

I know it my bones that this will pass, and sooner rather than later. And we can all talk about where we were when it happened, just like people did about John Kennedy’s assassination or 911.

They might have been slow to act this time, as governments often are, but they are on it, they are figuring it out.

For me, this is a drama like no other; I just can’t remember a time or place where everybody needed to stay away from everybody for a while. The political geeks and hangers-on call it social isolation.

It goes against history, habit, and our social nature. We Americans go places – to beaches, parks, concerts, vacations,  supermarkets, foreign countries,  games, plays.

So here it is, it is upon us,  either to be accepted or denied, like a ghost ship heading for the rocks. I go with acceptance.

Maria’s Belly Dancing Class was canceled, and who would have thought a virus that began in China could have done that? So was Disney Land, and Madison Square Garden,

Baseball Opening day the thing they call “March Madness,” and just about every convention or political rally in the country.

I think Amazon will be happy this month; people can buy whatever they want (except for Murel Anti-Sanitizer, which costs $94 a bottle on Amazon and is unavailable at any price) and shop from home.

Good news for some. Social isolation is already here.

When I went to the doctor’s this morning, everyone was wearing masks, and there were signs everywhere urging me to turn around and go home if I even had a mild cough or felt sick.

And this was the doctor’s office.

It hit me yesterday at the Mansion when I realized visitors would soon have to be barred, and at Bishop Maginn High  School when it became apparent to me that the high school might very well have to close.

How, I wonder, can I help? What will I do?

I can feel the moment coming when I am asked to stay or told to stay away or must stay away.

I feel a bit fragile about being older, so many people are urging me to stay home.

But there is another opportunity.

To study and consider what it means to be part of a community, to listen to one another, to help one another to think of one another.

Already,  some people are asking other people what they need, how they can help. We might have to go inside, but we can still step out of ourselves and our conventional wisdoms.

Neighbors are looking in the older adults who can’t get to the store.

For one of the rare times in my life – 911 was another – I feel fused into the broader community of human beings. Today, we are all taking the same thing and thinking the same thing.

We are all of a mind, wondering, shaking our heads, trading stories,  telling ourselves what we want and need to hear.

The walls of the left and the right crumble a bit each day, as people have no choice but to talk to one another and do something together. And to come to see the same thing. What are we about?

What’s behind the curtain?

I always remember to look down the road to the other side of this trauma – to where the light is.

To see that we are all human, we indeed are in all of this together. I stopped to ask a farmer how he was and if he was afraid and he shrugged, “oh, hell, he said, I’ve got to die of something.” and that was all he said about it.

Then he turned and added, “you know, I’m 82. Old people die, that’s the way it is…”

I am weary of our endless political carping, yet I also see and feel what it means to have a leader, to have a guide. I remember it from 911; it made all the difference. Heroes emerge and rise when they are needed.

I vote right now for Dr/ Anthony Fauci , one of the lead immunologists of the Centers For Disease Control, he tells the truth every day and has told the truth from the beginning.

He will surely be fired when the dust clears.

If you listen to him, you will understand the truth of what is happening.

He was a hero during the AIDS  epidemic as well. We will all be fine, most of us, he says, it will just take a while and ask of us that we live very differently for some time.

And perhaps another opportunity: people see that science is real, and science is essential, and so is government and so are leaders. They matter.

People might see that being alone is sacred, a sacrament, a chance to think and awaken and face the truth about ourselves—a vacation from angst and anger.

I want to say that for the first time in days, I believe our governments and leaders are moving to deal with things, it will take weeks and months- even longer –  for it all to settle.

But it will return to normal.

We are a free people, used to going where we want to do when we want to do it.

We are not free people right now, and not for a while. That is a significant change.

Perhaps one needs to be quarantined to grasp that. Every test that is met is rewarded by some growth in knowledge, the strengthening of character, or awakening into higher consciousness.

We are asked to do something most of us have never been asked to do or told to do: nothing.

In China, everybody did as they were told. And that works for some.

That has long been their story. But we are not China.

It’s a different story here. We will do what we are told because we want to, and we need to. And that is no small thing for a schizophrenic country.

There is no left or right to hide behind; the coronavirus is a fierce lover of democracy; it knows no label or ideology and just might remind us what it means to be free.

On Mondays, I think about my life and the week ahead. I am surprised to see that it’s March and glad of it. We are looking forward to being warm.

We are always so happy to get to Spring. With the warm weather come heat and ticks and grazing (no hay hauling). And Spring signals the beginning of preparations for next winter – the hay, firewood,  slate repairs, pasture treatment.

Today, the temperature will edge up into the 50’s. As the ice melts, Zinnia and I can resume or more extended and more reflective walks. Somethings are easier in Spring. The animals can feed themselves; we don’t need to haul firewood to the wood stoves every day.

And I don’t have to tiptoe around on so much ice.

The way it’s breaking down is that I do most of less physical chores – shopping, cooking, tending to badgering repair people to come and other phone work, Maria does most of the farm chores. I am accepting what I can do and can’t do.

I don’t make a drama out of it.

Every Monday, I plot some good. This week, I’ve asked Sue and Mike at Bishop Maginn High School to ask around and find three students who need books or clothes or food. To me, that’s a lovely way to seek out some small and inexpensive acts of great kindness and quietly change some lives.

I want to help them. If you wish to join in that, you can contribute via Paypal, [email protected], or by check, Jon Katz, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. I’m thinking about $300.

I’m going small and comfortable for the next few weeks; I don’t wish to wear anybody out, we are an Army Of Good, but not an Army Of Rich.

I will do my story reading at the Mansion on Tuesday, go to Bishop Maginn on Wednesday, do my Mansion Meditation Class on Thursday. Maria and I are giving up calling Bingo for a while; there is just too much going on in our lives.

Sunday, Maria and I go to the Bronx Zoo. I’ll meet up with my daughter Emma and Robin, my granddaughter. Maria and I will exchange Valentine’s Day presents there.

She will meet the hissing cockroach at the Bronx Zoo that she named after her friend Jackie, and I will get to spent 30 minutes in a room with a Penguin. It should be interesting, but I don’t know what to say to a Penguin. I guess I’ll find out.

We’re going to say over Sunday night in a funky motel we found halfway between here and the Bronx. I’m getting past the kickback from Susan Popper, still not sleeping well and am fending off the political and health alarms.

Hopefully, we can still see the cockroach and Penguin.

I’m going to pick up my training with Zinnia again, working on longer stays. We have another therapy dog test to get through before she’s official, the one she passed was an interim test, therapy dogs have to be one or two years old to be official.

Maria had a spectacular week.

She sold all of her yarn and all of her Twin Healing Tree kitchen magnets, and some of her potholders.

More (slightly larger) magnets are coming on Wednesday and will be up on her Etsy Page.

You can also follow her energy and creativity on her blog.