Covid #InAmerica + goats + nature

We are so many months into this pandemic, and the relentless pressure and loss of it all weigh. On me, on many. On most? I suppose it depends on where you live, what you choose to believe, who you have lost, and what meaning you put into life, community, “freedom,” and duty.

I suspect you all know where I come down on this, but in the meantime, I spent a meaningful few hours on the Mall last Friday with my friend M in service of a local artist’s installation regarding Covid in America and the scale of what we’ve surrendered.

Some of you definitely saw this exhibit; others read about it. I couldn’t fathom its impact until I was there. I had volunteered to transcribe online submissions from people who wished to honor their loved ones. M and I sat at a Cosco table, armed with fresh Sharpies, white flags on metal stems, and printed cards to copy onto them. The volunteer to my left lost her brother to Covid last year; other volunteers didn’t share, at least to me, but some had helped for many days, and if I’ve learned anything at 45, it’s to never assume you know what someone is struggling with, processing, or feeling.

After more than an hour of transcription, M and I offered to tend plots of already-planted flags. Part of me hated to leave the writing tent: there was something so powerful and important about bearing witness to grieving people’s testimonies. By writing their final tribute, we, too, honored the dead they mourned.

But carefully, tenderly straightening flags felt almost like tidying a graveyard. Watch your step, provide honor where honor is due, memorialize.

While we were there, the artist, Suzanne Firstenberg, changed the number board to reflect the updated official death toll: 700,327. I mean, the sadness-rage cocktail became a frothy, shaken mess laced with ice chips. New Zealand’s count was like 14 (see tiny patch in above photo). This could have been different, the numbers could have been infinitely lower, perhaps we’d be done with this masking, distancing shit by now.

But no! ‘Murica. SMDH.

I am so glad M and I volunteered, but at the same time, it was a sad cap to a shitty week. A poo bonus, if you will.

Now, I am in WV. I drove out Monday morning after getting the boys off to school and finagling a childcare logistics schedule that any mother could do while sleeping but which would likely boggle the mind of most men. Because there are no longer llamas here, our pastures are overgrown and in need of serious mowing. I have spent many hours trimming, but this is beyond the scope of one woman and her motorized weed whacker. I priced brush-hogging it before asking about renting a herd of goats. Goats are half the cost.

And, goats are the answer. They are darling, friendly, make amusing sounds, require no gas, need to eat, love to eat, and poop liberally which amends our rocky “soil” in fabulously beneficial ways. Sixteen arrived Monday around noon, and I have loved every minute since. Well, I have loved everything except smelling the billy who is the sweetest animal but who smells so foul that it cannot be articulated. He is as if an ancient fraternity-house carpet, sodden with years of spilled beers, decided to start asking others to pee on it with abandon. And never washed. Holy shit.

Anyway, I love them, and it is so healing to be here by myself, including without Nutmeg and Ruthie, and to have no schedule and no one to feed or talk to other than the animals. To garden until I can hardly move another muscle. To order mulch and sifted soil. To eat a donut. To indulge the barn cats. To think and simply be. To acquire a Neighbor Account at Tractor Supply Co.

This is Romeo. He is my boyfriend.

Romeo from the back, omg. ;)

Losses

A teenager at one of my sons’ schools died yesterday. He had been at school the day before. I did not know him. I cannot stop thinking about him or his family. That after all these months into the pandemic, they are suffering a loss greater than anyone should ever bear, in the “best” of times. I look at my own teenager, who is finding his place in the world. It is hard for him sometimes. I remember how profoundly uncomfortable I felt in high school; it was hard. On the surface, both my son and I have/had everything. But the surface is not where real life stews or is experienced; well, not for most of us, I dare say.

I have no idea what happened to this boy, but I know that he was loved by family and friends, that he was valued, that his loss will quake daily in the lives of those who remain.

I have what seems to me, a large number of friends who have lost children. This is a terrible, wrecking awareness. I don’t know what it means. One was killed in a terrorist attack, one seized in utero until she died and had to be delivered, two died suddenly as toddlers from what seemed like the flu, another of a cellular disorder with which she was born. None were older than twelve. All were loved, wholly and forever.

I do not know what to make of these tragic horrors. I have tried to just listen and feed and record and sit. It is a bare minimum, but I haven’t known what else to do. I mean, is there anything? I know that it is something, means something, to show up, to bear witness. I am repeatedly appalled by all who run away instead of toward. But perhaps that is more an indictment of how we allow grief to be expressed in this country, what is appropriate, what is not. We smile and curate and please and make comfortable, and that is a shame, an affront, and a disservice in all too many circumstances.

Many times, often, life is ugly. It is cancer and blood and death and loss. It is divorce and infidelity and poverty and want. It is hunger, violence, desperation, and drought. It is loneliness, fear, and simply wanting someone to ask and then really listen, without interruption, without judgement, without deflection. It is young women performing superhuman athletic feats being abused by their sport’s “best team doctor,” winning gold medal after gold medal, but suffering in the dark quiet of silence and secret until they learn that the FBI has betrayed them and so their only recourse for justice is to sit, more publicly than should be humanly expected, in front of Congress to relay horrific stories of non-consensual vaginal penetration and molestation so that maybe someone will finally mete out some goddamn justice.

Today, a friend had an MRI to see if any of her sixteen brain tumors have shrunk in the face of a daily pill that costs nearly $600. She’s well into her second month of this, she is on Medicaid, and she must take these pills because cancer wrecked her spine, requiring a vertebral replacement and subsequent fusion, rendering her ineligible for chemo until her back has healed. I have not heard from her since just before the MRI. She was terrified; I pushed her to do the scan because information is power, or something like that. We must know if these pills are helping.

My dad is still recovering from his recent surgery, my teenager is navigating a huge high school that he interacted with last year from our basement, and I feel unmoored. Each morning, I help both boys with their hair. This, I can do. I love that they ask, and I feel tethered (though rushed) in those moments when I hoist myself up onto my bathroom counter so that I can have enough height on them to see their heads and help with parts, hair drying, man buns, and product application.

It feels heavy, and hard, this experience of living on a pendulum between youth trauma and older-folks trauma, of trying to be present in each day while realizing all the bad shit that lurks around the corner. That darkness isn’t myth or nightmare; it’s real and experienced, and to not honor that reality seems like the most hideous of invalidations. If you are lucky to have not experienced such things, either be gracious or be quiet.

I drove to WV this morning after dropping Jack off and packing Ol’s sleepover bag for a night at my parents’, a bar mitzvah, and a sleepover with friends. The entire drive was a cacophonous musical of wailing cats and clanging trampoline parts. When I arrived safely, I swallowed gratefully and thought about my freshman roommate, Rosemary, and her advice: “ Sometimes, Emmy, you just have to put on your face and get out there.” That advice has proven so wise and beneficial so many times over the past 25 years. Thank you, Rose.

So, I put on my face and met with an amazing Jack of all trades who is going to fell dead trees for us and also rent us goats to mow the pastures. He wasn’t feeling well so suggested we wear masks, and I was so thankful because that is not the norm here, and then we enjoyed time just roaming the land and talking about fences and baby goats and fainting goats and nasty billy goats, and a castrated man goat named Rambo.

And then I hoed and weeded and planted and mulched and cooked and petted and painted, and then my big boy arrived, with his best friend and darling Tom. And we are here for the weekend, and everyone is laughing and full, and, for a moment, the awfulness recedes.

Texas as Gilead; more states will follow

I know you all know the depth of my fury and disgust right now. I am absolutely apoplectic, incandescent, shivering, and nauseous with rage. Not only are women in Texas being mistreated in hideously misogynistic, paternalistic ways, not only do most women have NO idea they’re pregnant at six weeks, Texas makes no exception for women seeking abortion after rape or incest.

The state is also offering $10,000 bounties to those who identify and turn in those who they think may have attempted to seek abortion. Not that it is anyone’s damn business, but some are seeking abortion because they have been raped by their father or brother or cousin or grandfather. Some are seeking abortion because they were raped by a stranger, a lover, or an abuser. In all cases, the woman no longer has any choice in what to do with the result of the incestuous, violent act: she must carry the baby to term unless she can figure out that she’s pregnant in the blink of an eye. What if she has a miscarriage? How does she prove she didn’t try to abort? Why should she have to? This is grotesque misogyny, y’all. Evil cruelty that is so far beyond the pale that I struggle to articulate it.

Don’t even get me started in this hideous ways this will impact poor women and women of color.

If she wants the child, if she doesn’t want the child, if the child is dying inside of her or will die soon after birth or will live a life beset by horrific medical challenges, she must carry the baby to term. If her inseminator doesn’t want the baby, won’t help care for the baby, may abuse the baby, doesn’t know about the baby, he’s off scott free, but she has to carry the baby to term. If she is poor or sick or lacks steady housing, if she knows Texas won’t help feed, educate, or care for her child AFTER it’s born, she must carry the baby to term. And if she tries to do anything, someone else gets $10,000. Who’s paying those? Taxpayers? The Kochs?

After Texas passed the law, SCOTUS declined to comment on it until the time to do so expired. Then, in a 5-4 decision, the smug fucks below shat upon their own Court’s 1973 ruling granting women a constitutional right to abortion. Though they, this same majority, had in April (yes, mere months ago) used an “indisputably clear” argument to block “California’s Covid-based restrictions on in-home gatherings based upon a ‘new’ interpretation of the Free Exercise Clause,” they turned around and under cover of darkness blatantly ignored the ‘indisputably clear’ fact of Roe. As UTexas law professor Steve Vladeck wrote, “When you put these rulings by the same 5-4 majority side-by-side, you see much of what’s wrong with the Texas decision: A Court untroubled by procedure went out of its way to expand religious liberty, but hid behind procedural questions to refuse to enforce a right already on the books.”

clockwise from top left: Beer, Handmaid, Smug Fuck, Gilead Leader, Wordless Idiot

The people who said we shouldn’t worry when McConnell stole a SCOTUS seat from Obama; when trump was elected; when Beer Kavanaugh was pushed through to a lifetime appointment after a sham hearing at which a woman was ignored, disrespected, and retraumatized for bravely sharing the story of her sexual assault by the man in question; when RBG died and Barbie Handmaid was shoved into her spot despite having a stunning lack of judicial experience…those people were so wrong and right now, they need to sit down and stay quiet unless they want to fight the fights that desperately need to be won by progressive, inclusive folks dedicated to equality and justice.

Our world is burning and dying, fools are ingesting horse dewormers, cancer patients and others who need medical attention are being shunted aside because of the immediate needs of desperately ill Covid patients, the vast majority of which have refused vaccination, and now women in Texas must live Under His Eye. Don’t kid yourself into thinking other red Christo-nationalist wannabe states aren’t working up their own such draconian laws now. SCOTUS had already agreed to hear Mississippi’s 15-week abortion plan later this fall, and you know Alabama and Florida are hot on their heels. I’d bet my ass Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Georgia won’t lag far behind those.

Oh wait, Florida has just announced its intentions:

Please read this article by Dahlia Lithwick, and do not even consider suggesting I calm down, not least if you are male and not completely on Team Women’s Rights. As Lithwick writes, “You only do the thing in the dead of night, without care or effort, because you believe women are so used to being gaslit that you expect them to just tolerate it. You only do the thing in the dead of night without care or effort because you genuinely believe that they’re only women, and they deserve what they get.”

I refuse to calm down or sit down in the face of such repulsive mistreatment. And Democrats, you need to do something you strategically-challenged….I can’t think of any sort of decent word to put there. Fill in the blank yourselves. Like Elizabeth McLoughlin, this is how I feel right now:

And, to stay fired up, please read Justice Sotomayor’s dissent, excerpts from which can be found in this article and this one.

If you want to donate/act, here are some incredible organizations and resources to support:

Lilithfund

West Fund (West TX)

Fund Texas Choice

Frontera Fund (in the Rio Grande area)

Jane’s Due Process

The Afiya Center (geared towards Black women)

Whole Women’s Health - TX-based

Whole Women’s Health Alliance - national with one clinic in Austin, TX

My heart hurts.