The View from the Hermitage, Day 16

I decided this morning to check what the BBC had to say about the covid-19 pandemic. An article, "Coronavirus: What this crisis reveals about US - and its president," contained this paragraph:

As for the American exceptionalism on display, much of it has been of the negative kind that makes it hard not to put head in hands. The lines outside gun stores. The spike in online sales of firearms - Ammo.com has seen a 70% increase in sales. The panic buying of AR-15s. Some Christian fundamentalists have rejected the epidemiology of this pandemic. To prove there was no virus, a pastor in Arkansas boasted his parishioners were prepared to lick the floor of his church.

Based on that, we're certainly not putting our best face forward. Indeed, I have cringed at some of the things I have read about or heard about. I want to shout,"This is not us! We are not those people!" A soon as I finish shouting, though, I find myself asking, "Is this what we have become? Could we really be those people?" I have tried to stay away from politics here; I know how polarizing conversations can become. However, I also know how the world with which I am familiar has changed in the past three years. Walls, figurative and literal, have gone up in various places and between various groups. If those walls and divisions remain or, worst-case-scenario, deepen in, say, 6 years, I don't think this will be a country in which I want to live.

To restore my faith in America and Americans, I remind myself that there has also been positive American exceptionalism on display, though it may be in smaller acts that might be hard to isolate. It may not have originated in America, but Americans are jumping aboard the "Bear Hunt" train. Stuffed or plush bears and, in some communities, other animals, have been placed in windows or on porches so that children and children at heart can see how many bears or how many kinds of animals they can spot on a walk or drive. If I lived in a neighborhood of walkers and had a porch visible from the road, my large bear-friend Ursula would be in one of the Adirondack chairs on the porch with at least one friend, possibly TRex, an addition to the family at Christmas.

I read this morning about cars crowding a hospital parking lot one (last?) night. At 8:00 pm, all the drivers turned on their emergency blinkers and honked their horns to signal gratitude to the health care workers on the front line, inside the building. I have friends who are nurses, one in an emergency department, and at least two high school friends of younger son are physicians, again one in an emergency department. I think of them often and really should signal my gratitude to them in some way. Lights and horns won't work because they're spread across the country in four different states.

There are so many more positive examples. A small neighborhood grocery store here that is preparing and giving out free breakfasts and lunches every day. They try to use only locally obtained items, because farmers, bakeries, etc. need help, too. And they're looking to rent a large kitchen at a local restaurant so that they can serve more people or serve dinners in addition to the breakfasts and lunches. I have a number of friends, local and out-of-state or even international, sewing masks and/or operating room caps. A local running shop has been delivering merchandise locally so that people can keep running or walking for their physical and mental health. They've stopped that now in response to the new stay-at-home guidelines, unfortunately.

Not just closer to but right at home, older son continues to shop for us and make it possible for us, especially me, to avoid all contact even at a social distance. (I have a few things that make me high-risk or very close to that.) And he's extended this offer to our neighbors, a couple in their 80s who both have some mobility issues. I expect that there are other such arrangements here and away, in which one family member meets the needs of others who need or want to stay as isolated as possible.

I feel better having written all that. Balancing positive acts against negative ones, I think the positive ones are winning at least for now. I hope that continutes.