$2 trillion stimulus approved

© 2019 Hector Viveros Lee

Wash your hands

WASH YOUR HANDS

Dori McKnight

We are humans relearning to wash our hands.
Washing our hands is an act of love
Washing our hands is an act of care
Washing our hands is an act that puts the hypervigilant body at ease
Washing our hands helps us return to ourselves by washing away what does not serve

Wash your hands
like you are washing the only teacup left that your great grandmother carried across the ocean, like you are washing the hair of a beloved who is dying, like you are washing the feet of Grace Lee Boggs, Beyonce, Jesus, your auntie, Audre Lorde, Mary Oliver- you get the picture.
Like this water is poured from a jug your best friend just carried for three miles from the spring they had to climb a mountain to reach.
Like water is a precious resource
made from time and miracle

Wash your hands and cough into your elbow, they say.
Rest more, stay home, drink water, have some soup, they say.
To which I would add: burn some plants your ancestors burned when there was fear in the air,
Boil some aromatic leaves in a pot on your stove until your windows steam up.
Open your windows
Eat a piece of garlic every day. Tie a clove around your neck.
Breathe.

My friends, it is always true, these things.
It has already been time.
It is always true that we should move with care and intention, asking
Do you want to bump elbows instead? with everyone we meet.
It is always true that people are living with one lung, with immune systems that don’t work so well, or perhaps work too hard, fighting against themselves. It is already true that people are hoarding the things that the most vulnerable need.
It is already time that we might want to fly on airplanes less and not go to work when we are sick.
It is already time that we might want to know who in our neighborhood has cancer, who has a new baby, who is old, with children in another state, who has extra water, who has a root cellar, who is a nurse, who has a garden full of elecampane and nettles.
It is already time that temporarily non-disabled people think about people living with chronic illness and disabled folks, that young people think about old people.
It is already time to stop using synthetic fragrances to not smell like bodies, to pretend like we’re all not dying. It is already time to remember that those scents make so many of us sick.
It is already time to not take it personally when someone doesn’t want to hug you.
It is already time to slow down and feel how scared we are. 

We are already afraid, we are already living in the time of fires.

When fear arises,
and it will,
let it wash over your whole body instead of staying curled up tight in your shoulders.
If your heart tightens,
contract
and expand.
science says: compassion strengthens the immune system
We already know that, but capitalism gives us amnesia
and tricks us into thinking it’s the thing that protect us
but it’s the way we hold the thing.
The way we do the thing.

Those of us who have forgotten amuletic traditions,
we turn to hoarding hand sanitizer and masks.
we find someone to blame.
we think that will help.
want to blame something?
Blame capitalism. Blame patriarchy. Blame white supremacy. 

It is already time to remember to hang garlic on our doors
to dip our handkerchiefs in thyme tea
to rub salt on our feet
to pray the rosary, kiss the mezuzah, cleanse with an egg.
In the middle of the night,
when you wake up with terror in your belly,
it is time to think about stardust and geological time
redwoods and dance parties and mushrooms remediating toxic soil.
it is time
to care for one another
to pray over water
to wash away fear
every time we wash our hands

creative commons

 

Kindness eases change.

Kindness eases change. Love quiets fear. And a sweet and powerful Positive obsession Blunts pain, Diverts rage, And engages each of us In the greatest, The most intense Of our chosen struggles.

--Octavia E. Butler

Social Distance may make tempers short

© 2019 Hector Viveros Lee

Pandemic

Pandemic

Lynn Ungar

What if you thought of it

as the Jews consider the Sabbath —

the most sacred of times?

Cease from travel.

Cease from buying and selling.

Give up, just for now,

on trying to make the world

different than it is.

Sing. Pray. Touch only those

to whom you commit your life.

Center down.

And when your body has become still,

reach out with your heart.

Know that we are connected

in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.

(You could hardly deny it now.)

Know that our lives

are in one another’s hands.

(Surely, that has come clear.)

Do not reach out your hands.

Reach out your heart.

Reach out your words.

Reach out all the tendrils

of compassion that move, invisibly,

where we cannot touch.

Promise this world your love —

for better or for worse,

in sickness and in health,

so long as we all shall live.

Perhaps the World Ends Here

Perhaps the World Ends Here

Joy Harjo

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

Is Covid-19 the tragedy we have been waiting for?

A decline in polarization.
by Peter T. Coleman

The extraordinary shock(s) to our system that the coronavirus pandemic is bringing has the potential to break America out of the 50-plus year pattern of escalating political and cultural polarization we have been trapped in, and help us to change course toward greater national solidarity and functionality. It might sound idealistic, but there are two reasons to think it can happen.

The first is the “common enemy” scenario, in which people begin to look past their differences when faced with a shared external threat. COVID-19 is presenting us with a formidable enemy that will not distinguish between reds and blues, and might provide us with fusion-like energy and a singularity of purpose to help us reset and regroup. During the Blitz, the 56-day Nazi bombing campaign against the Britain, Winston Churchill’s cabinet was amazed and heartened to witness the ascendance of human goodness—altruism, compassion and generosity of spirit and action.

The second reason is the “political shock wave” scenario. Studies have shown that strong, enduring relational patterns often become more susceptible to change after some type of major shock destabilizes them. This doesn’t necessarily happen right away, but a study of 850 enduring inter-state conflicts that occurred between 1816 to 1992 found that more than 75 percent of them ended within 10 years of a major destabilizing shock. Societal shocks can break different ways, making things better or worse. But given our current levels of tension, this scenario suggests that now is the time to begin to promote more constructive patterns in our cultural and political discourse. The time for change is clearly ripening. (Politico, March 19, 2020)

In Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, the title protagonists fall in love but they each belong to long-standing enemy families, the Capulets and the Montagues, respectively. The tension in the tragedy is between of the lovers’ between their new found love for each other and their loyalty to their respective families. In the drama, the youths encounter supporters and detractors of their relationship and they navigate how to be together. In their efforts to deceive their families, they tragically die. It is their death that brings an end to the feud between the families.  The loss of their respective children opens a way for the Montagues and the Capulets to make peace with each other.

Looking at the deep political divide in the US which we have been in for at least 30 years, I have often wondered what tragedy would be necessary before we can put away our differences to find common ground. I thought perhaps a war, or some catastrophe. We are now in the midst of an epidemic that is impacting the entire world. It is an invisible enemy and we are severely hampered by insufficient testing, who is a carrier and no vaccine. In the meantime, we will have to shelter in place, as our economy takes a nose dive and the infections continue to surge. Perhaps this the tragedy that will bring us together.  

Lockdown

Lockdown

Br Richard Hendrick, OFM Cap.

Yes there is fear.

Yes there is isolation.

Yes there is panic buying.

Yes there is sickness.

Yes there is even death.

But,

They say that in Wuhan after so many years of noise

You can hear the birds again.

They say that after just a few weeks of quiet

The sky is no longer thick with fumes

But blue and grey and clear.

They say that in the streets of Assisi

People are singing to each other

across the empty squares,

keeping their windows open

so that those who are alone

may hear the sounds of family around them.

They say that a hotel in the West of Ireland

Is offering free meals and delivery to the housebound.

Today a young woman I know

is busy spreading fliers with her number

through the neighbourhood

So that the elders may have someone to call on.

Today Churches, Synagogues, Mosques and Temples

are preparing to welcome

and shelter the homeless, the sick, the weary

All over the world people are slowing down and reflecting

All over the world people are looking at their neighbours in a new way

All over the world people are waking up to a new reality

To how big we really are.

To how little control we really have.

To what really matters.

To Love.

So we pray and we remember that

Yes there is fear.

But there does not have to be hate.

Yes there is isolation.

But there does not have to be loneliness.

Yes there is panic buying.

But there does not have to be meanness.

Yes there is sickness.

But there does not have to be disease of the soul

Yes there is even death.

But there can always be a rebirth of love.

Wake to the choices you make as to how to live now.

Today, breathe.

Listen, behind the factory noises of your panic

The birds are singing again

The sky is clearing,

Spring is coming,

And we are always encompassed by Love.

Open the windows of your soul

And though you may not be able

to touch across the empty square,

Sing

Est. 1991

© 2019 Hector Viveros Lee

 Happy birthday Mariah!

St. Patrick

Christ be with me, Christ within me
Christ behind me, Christ before me
Christ beside me, Christ to win me
Christ to comfort me and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger
Christ in hearts of all that love me
Christ in mouth of friend or stranger.

-St. Patrick 

Remembering my grandfather, Jesus, whose birthday is today.

Prayer in times of Covid-19

"Lord of all creation, we ask for
your blessing over all our families and loved ones,
send forth your holy angels,
that we may be spared of this illness.
Send forth your grace of healing and deliverance
for those afflicted by this illness.
Hear the prayers of those who are vulnerable,
strengthen them and help them to trust in the power of your love."

National Emergency Declared

© 2019 Hector Viveros Lee

It's a blessing

In order to celebrate Gwendolin’s 50^th birthday, she invited friends and family to a gathering in Spring Valley, NY (Rockland County, NY). During that time, Hurricane Irene was to batter the Bahamas and I didn’t think it would come up to the Northeast or impact me personally. I arrived in Newark on Thursday, August 25 to partly cloudy skies but Friday, the day of the party, where we chatted and ate and danced, was gorgeously sunny. But even then, the news began to trickle in that the Eastern seaboard would get a pounding; Hurricane Irene would arrive on Sunday. While North Carolina was under evacuation orders, the authorities were evaluating the evacuation of New Jersey, Long Island and Manhattan. 

During the party, I got a call on my cell that my flight, scheduled to leave at 6:30 on Saturday, had been cancelled. I began worry. I had plans to go to NYC to help my friend, Johnny O out. What about lodging? The rental car? What about food? And my first day of class of grad school in Berkeley? It would all have to wait. So instead of enjoying the rest of the time at the party, I was contending with options on how to get back, return to my scheduled life and fulfill all the obligations I had promised. That night when I got to my hotel, I called my airline and was put on hold until 5 a.m. before they answered. All flights from EWR, JFK, LGA were cancelled: the next available flights would not be until Tuesday at the earliest.

On Thursday, after a medical appointment I went to Rainbow to get some peppercorns. Upon entering the self-service displays of food (nut butters, olives, cooking oil, fermented pastes, etc.) were closed with a sign indicating that they were to be closed until further notice due to the Covid-19. As I looked for a couple more items I noticed that long lines of patrons were stock piling provisions into the grocery baskets. I saw a friend who because of family illness told me she hadn’t had time shop with a basket filled to the rim. I smiled motioning to my little bag of peppercorns, “Did I not get the memo?”

On Friday after work, I went to Trader Joe’s to get a few items, and the store looked ransacked: no greens, no bread, no milk or eggs, no chips, no pastas or canned foods, or bananas. Saturday, there was a long line just to get in to Trader Joes. While an Oval Office address proclaimed new actions like the closing travel of non-nationals from Europe, I did not see the need to store away dry good, canned foods and toilet paper. I was told, that this was in case we were quarantined and could not get out. It was as it was the end of the world. All I got was chocolates, ginger beer, and three bananas—priorities.

What no more coffee or samples?

This is the line just to get inside.

This is the line in Safeway

 I had come to a birthday celebration and now those plans to get back to my life were interrupted. Sensing my anxiety, Frau Mechtild, Gwendolin’s mother, told me, “It is a blessing.”

I came to see that the Hurricane was a blessing. Suddenly there were some twenty individuals who were stranded together. We would eat the leftovers from the reception and hung out in Gwedolin’s home as the storm raged outside. I am sure Gwendolin did not expect that she’d have guests two days after the party. But she regaled in it. She was so happy to have people, young and old, in her home—the birthday party was extended. It was as when St. Scholastica barraged heaven with prayers so her brother, St. Benedict, would stay the night at her monastery. A storm ensued and her brother had to stay the night to the delight of the nun.

Covid-19 impacts

• No gatherings of 100 or more people in San Francisco. Following that directive, St. Agnes cancelled the 10:30 Mass for March 15, but left the other three intact.
• SFUSD: Closed all schools March 16-27. Los Angeles USD, Parlier USD, Sanger USD, Fresno USD closed for 4 weeks.
• SF Archdiocese: closed all schools. The Fresno Diocese closed all Catholic schools and has cancelled ALL masses beginning March 16 to March 29^th.
• SF Public Libraries closed and changed into Child care centers.
• All museums closed. SFMOMA, DeYoung, Legion of Honor, Asian Art Museum, Oakland Museum of California
• Disneyland and Disneyworld are closed.
• NBA, NHA, and NCAA have cancelled their games.
• Dow Jones stocks decline 20% on March 12, 2020; initiating a bear market putting an end of an 11 year expansion of growth
• March 13, 2020, National Emergency Declassed.
• Non-nationals from Europe are barred from entering the US for 30 days.
• The countries of Italy, Spain and France are on lock down
• The State of Illinois will shut down bars and restaurants.

Michael, a guest, mentioned that it was nice to have a decision made for us. If we had decided to extend our vacation, we would have felt guilty, perhaps irresponsible. But since this decision was an Act of God, we simply had to accept.

Lodging was found for me in a dorm nearby and being the only non-relative of this group, I could not have imagined staying with a more pleasant group of people. There was not much to do. We would have meals together, drink wine and beer, chat, take a nap, play a game, take a walk, have another meal, drink and chat some more. And this would not have happened had it not been for a hurricane that stranded us together. So as I think the impact Covid-19 is having on us, I think of Frau Mechtild’s words and look for the blessing. 

ZEPPLIN

© 2019 Hector Viveros Lee

 Happy bday Nikky!

I feel you Lance

 Bay Area actor Lance Gardner, who works at KQED as a live events producer, helps run Night of Ideas, a free event last month at the San Francisco Public Library. Photo: Jana Asenbrennerova, Special to The Chronicle

Lance Gardner achieved the Bay Area stage actor’s dream, and it wasn’t enough

Lance Gardner can play the passionate leading man who makes everything around him wilt. The actor can take characters who might seem weary and resigned to the rest of the world and light a fire behind them. He can be that weirdo bundle of energy that shoots into a play as if from outer space and unsettles the whole stage. He has the technical proficiency, the discipline, the specificity to make you remember that acting requires just as much training and rigor as playing the violin.
Now, right when he’s regularly in demand at leading Bay Area theater companies — California Shakespeare Theater and TheatreWorks, Berkeley Repertory Theatre and Marin Theatre Company — he’s left the profession to produce live events at KQED.

Lance Gardner performed regularly in Bay Area theater productions, including Berkeley Rep’s “The Good Book” with Annette O’Toole (left) Wayne Wilcox, Elijah Alexander, Shannon Tyo and Denmo Ibrahim. Photo: Alessandra Mello, Berkeley Rep 2019

Gardner, a graduate of KALW’s Audio Academy, has been on staff at KQED since November, but his new job will kick into high gear in 2021 when KQED finishes renovating its San Francisco facilities, complete with a new event space called the Commons. While Gardner and KQED said they didn’t have specifics on their plans for the space or for events that far in the future, they both see Gardner’s theatrical background as an asset.
“We’ve asked him to pitch program ideas,” says Ryan Davis, KQED’s director of live events. “He’s going to generate new content.”

As an example of what Gardner might do on the job, Davis cites “Forum,” KQED’s popular morning program, which has a live onstage component, but one that could be improved. KQED treats it “as a remote broadcast without thinking about it as an event and as an experience that’s for the stage and for the people in the room, rather than just the listeners who are captive because they turned on the radio,” Davis says. Gardner might work to create added value for audiences who show up in person.

Lance Gardner helps Dolly Chammas during Night of Ideas. Gardner’s theatrical background is viewed as an asset in his new job as an events producer for KQED. Photo: Jana Asenbrennerova, Special to The Chronicle

Gardner, 38, sees his new job as a chance to have creative control, as opposed to just a creative outlet. It’s a chance “to flex my full creative muscle,” he says. He identifies not just as an actor, but as a musician, an artist, a creator, a thinker.
This new job isn’t the first time Gardner has left acting behind.
He remembers finally committing to the profession in earnest on his 25th birthday when an audition at Cal Shakes required he take two trains and a bus in the pouring rain. In his younger years — he was born in San Jose and went to grade school in Berkeley and Cupertino — he might have decided no gig was worth that trek. But that day “was when I grew up. I didn’t give up.”

Lance Gardner kisses Annie Abrams as police officers Ron Campbell (left) and Cassidy Brown observe in “The 39 Steps” at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. Photo: Kevin Berne, TheatreWorks 2019

“I, for the most part, didn’t have many day jobs outside theater, and I needed to make money, and I believed that theater ought to be a job, ought to be a career,” he says, referencing his time spent building his acting career. “I had a basic need for food and shelter that wasn’t fulfilled by stipends and honoraria.”
So he, at times, took more lucrative gigs over the ones he thought might be the most artistically rewarding.
Then for 2½ months in 2011, just after his son started kindergarten, he went with the show “Man of Rock” to the New York Musical Theater Festival. “When I came back, (he) looked at me differently,” he says. “I could see in the eyes of my child that he wasn’t sure about what I was going to do, because I’d been gone for so long. He didn’t know if I was going to be leaving for long periods of time again. That was too much for me. I decided that I couldn’t live that kind of life, but I also knew that if I really wanted this to be a career that I needed to be traveling and working elsewhere.”
But, he says, that wasn’t “the kind of father I wanted to be.”
So Gardner quit theater and went back to school to get an emergency medical technician certification. He then rode on ambulances for 2½ years.

Lance Gardner says he loves the theater but needed to move on to a profession that pays enough to make a living and support his family. Photo: Jana Asenbrennerova, Special to The Chronicle

“I loved that job. It made me a better person because I was experiencing the real world every day instead of imagining the real world every day,” he says. “I discovered that the real world is more unimaginable than any fictional world could be.” He also “learned what a bad day really is at work. In the theater, a bad day is forgetting your lines onstage or hitting a roadblock in rehearsal, but on an ambulance a bad day is somebody dying.”
That whole time, though, he had stifled his creative side. Even watching a movie made him feel “left out or spiteful.” Gardner consumed less art, but it still seeped in, even to his high-stress, life-and-death job.
“Riding around all day on an ambulance with people, there’s only so much to talk about, and a lot of people talked about the arts — about movies, about music and not so much theater, but theater, too. I realized that art was providing a service that people needed to stay afloat in their own lives. People who are dealing with these really difficult situations were looking to art in their free time.”
Hearing them “gave me permission to feel like doing that” — creating art — “was of value.”

Lance Gardner says the most he made in one year as a union member and sought-after theater actor was $29,817. Photo: Jana Asenbrennerova, Special to The Chronicle

In 2015, he took paid leave to do “Proof” at TheatreWorks. In 2016, Cal Shakes called and offered him all four shows in its summer season. At that point, he was all in again.
But theater hadn’t started paying artists a living wage in Gardner’s time away from the stage.
“The same problems arose, and I was vocal about them. I was just honest, with everybody.” He was “not pretending like what I’m being paid is adequate” in one of the most expensive regions on Earth.
Gardner shares a Facebook post he wrote last year, in which he described a local audition where it was “degrading to be asked to allow non-black directors to assess the quality of my performance of blackness, and it’s further degrading to be asked to say the word ‘n—’ in an audition when I’m the only n— in the room.” He says that experience was not an isolated one.
“I came to a point where I thought, I either have to do something else, or I have to try to make some sort of structural change, or at least start conversations that will lead to structural change.” After that one especially bad audition, “that was where I just didn’t have any more time to have that conversation.
“Theater is so collaborative and so touchy-feely and people-focused, but it’s not really people-focused, because if it were people-focused, it would focus on taking care of the person as they exist outside of the theater, not just providing them a space to do art, but paying them a living wage, giving them the time off that they need, and that doesn’t happen.”
The last time Gardner left acting, it was out of spite. This time, “I just felt like I knew what I needed in my life, and theater wasn’t providing that, and I didn’t want to get to a place of spite. I wanted to be able to give my full, loving self to theater, and I didn’t have what I needed in order to be able to do that.”

Lance Gardner will help run events such as the Night of Ideas and plan programs for a new events space at KQED’s studio, which will open in 2021. Photo: Jana Asenbrennerova, Special to The Chronicle

A lot of Gardner’s fans have lamented his departure. While he’s grateful for the appreciation in those comments, “it also frustrates me that people would ask of me to continue to do something that isn’t good for me. Part of it is that I doubt that people know how much anybody makes in the theater.”
For one show in 2018, Gardner made as little as $592 per week; the most he’s ever made per year from acting is $29,817, and this is as a union-protected, frequently cast actor.
When acting goes well, Gardner says, “It feels like you’re working toward perfection, knowing that you’re never going to get there, and that’s OK. It’s meditative. It’s a collaboration with everyone, and when it’s really working, the audience is there for the collaboration as well.”
But other times, it’s not collaborative. Sometimes, a director’s vision isn’t strong either. “That gets very frustrating,” he says, “to live inside of somebody else’s mistake.”

https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/theater/lance-gardner-achieved-the-bay-area-stage-actors-dream-and-it-wasnt-enough

• Lily Janiak Lily Janiak is The San Francisco Chronicle’s theater critic. Email: ljaniak@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LilyJaniak

21 virus cases on ship going to unknown port

© 2019 Hector Viveros Lee