Susan Corso's Blog — iAmpersand

Day 43 Squanderlust; or, Bigger Isn’t Always Better

Here’s as good an international analysis as any I’ve read: “As the calamity unfolds, President Trump and state governors are arguing not only over what to do, but also over who has the authority to do it. Mr. Trump has fomented protests against the safety measures urged by scientific advisers, misrepresented facts about the virus and the government response nearly daily, and this week used the virus to cut off the issuing of green cards to people seeking to immigrate to the United States.”In the words of Dominique Moïsi, a senior adviser at the Institut Montaigne, a Paris think tank, “America has not done badly—it has done exceptionally badly.” Contrast this with the level-headed leadership of Angela Merkel speaking to the German Parliament, “Let us not squander what we have achieved.”

PandemicSusan CorsoApril 23, 2020metaphysics, coronavirus, COVID-19, plague

Day 42 Neither Here Nor There; or, The Cost of Attention

Epidemiologists are now saying that the first death from this particular coronavirus was in Santa Cruz, California on February 6th, not on February 29th in Seattle, as we’d all been told. That was 73 days ago. Not even a full business quarter. The Times Coronavirus Live Updates goes on: “In a little over two months, the economy would grind to a halt, nearly the entire country and much of the world would be ordered to shelter at home and life would be transformed for nearly the entire planet. In that time, more than 40,000 Americans have died, part of a global toll of 172,000—a number that most likely vastly underestimates the true count.” Viruses are like that.

PandemicSusan CorsoApril 22, 2020metaphysics, coronavirus, COVID-19, Janus, Earth Day

Day 41 Exposing Our Flaws; or, The Reward of Patience is ...

I’ve heard it said that as people get older, they become more of what they are. Because of the unmistakable fragility that has been revealed over and over again during The Trump Pandemic, I am inclined to believe that the exact same truism is true of both structures and infrastructures. I don’t exactly need to proof-text it for you, but here are a few examples. The Small Business Loan Relief program ran out of money—partly because large, corporate restaurant chains scooped disproportionate amounts of the fund. They have teams of attorneys and staff to deal with the paperwork, and long-term credit relationships with banks. Generally speaking, Mom and Pop do not. More than 22 million people have applied for Unemployment Insurance since the stay-at-home orders began. State governments have stripped state unemployment offices down to the bare minimum. They can’t process normal claim numbers. Certainly, not abnormal ones either. Don’t get me started on the abysmal interface between state and federal unemployment systems.

PandemicSusan CorsoApril 21, 2020metaphysics, coronavirus, COVID-19, patience, St. Augustine, quackery

Day 40 Forty Days and Forty Nights; or, As Long As It Takes

A Letter to the Editor author wrote in this morning’s Times, “I hear nothing but wishful thinking from the president.” Carrie Fisher did a one-woman show years ago; she called it Wishful Drinking—it seems more apt. The author went on, “As best as I can determine, and despite the president’s hollow boasts, testing in this country is a cruel joke. Without widespread testing, I am staying put and my money is staying in my wallet.” I’ve been writing these essays for forty days straight. I will continue to write them as I am so guided. I very much appreciate the notes, and even some contributions, I receive in return. Keep them coming please. Today seemed like a significant day to me.

Day 39 Small is the New Big; or, A Journey of a Thousand Miles

I’m no runner. Never have been. Not b’shert, meant to be. But I do know the difference between a sprint and a marathon. A sprint is an as-fast-as-you-can one-shot—for a brief spell. A marathon is about stamina—staying the course over 26.2188 miles. I know people who have trained for several marathons and nary a one of them began their training by running 26.2 and change miles on Day One. They build up to it. Various news articles this morning seemed to beat the drum of an underlying theme that no one is naming directly yet. Small is the new big.

PandemicSusan CorsoApril 19, 2020metaphysics, coronavirus, COVID-19, marathon, sprint, Tao for Now

Day 38 Pre-Existing Conditions; or, Coronovirus Trumps All

“When Queen Elizabeth II of Britain turns 94 on Tuesday, it will be the first time in her nearly seven-decade reign that her birthday will not be marked by a gun salute—another longstanding ritual lost to the coronavirus.” Lost? Or ... changed? Mind you, at her insistence. “Dr. Frederique Vallieres, the director of Trinity College’s Center for Global Health, said that the 9 percent of people who opposed taking a vaccine included both ideological ‘anti-vaxxers’ and people with underlying health conditions that would either prevent them from taking such vaccines or make them reluctant to do so.” Ideology? Or ... sheer cussedness for the principle of the thing?

Day 37 Calling the Shots; or, The Coronavirus Quilt

I’m with David D. Turner whose Letter to the Editor appeared in yesterday’s Times. Here’s the whole thing. Recalling the AIDS Era “To the Editor: “Re “Few Unscathed by Toll of Virus Across the City” (front page, April 3):“Thank you for your article on New Yorkers’ inexorably widening webs of contacts being scythed by the novel coronavirus. As a gay man of a certain age for whom the current pandemic is a second plague, I read your reporting with nauseating déjà vu. “I don’t mean to sound churlish; my heart breaks for every lost soul, each life interrupted. But daily briefings from the president and the governor, an initial $2 trillion rescue package, a coordinated international effort toward a vaccine, fast-tracked double-blind trials exploring the efficacy of existing drugs? Where was the all-hands-on-deck posture when it was just those who lived on the margins or whom a goodly portion of polite society reviled who were being felled?

Day 36 Moving Forward; or, Who Will Be Left Behind?

U.S. population today is what I put into Google. 331 million people The U.S. population today, at the start of 2020, numbers just over 331 million people What caused the inquiry was a testing statistic cited in this morning’s Times: as of two days ago, the U.S. has given a total of 3.1 million coronavirus tests. Is that really just shy of one percent? It is. In the same article, “Mr. Trump boasted of having ‘the most expansive testing system anywhere in the world.’” hind Trump’s Failure on the Virus’) have put together a carefully constructed case against the administration.”

PandemicSusan CorsoApril 16, 2020metaphysics, coronavirus, COVID-19, blindness, vulnerable, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Day 35 Cry Me A River; or, How Could They?

Ten days ago or so, The Huffington Post ran a two-word headline. THEY KNEW No one asked who. We knew. Recently, “Evidence of President Trump’s mishandling of the current Covid-19 emergency has been building steadily. Most recently, The Washington Post on April 4 (‘The U.S. was beset by denial and dysfunction as the coronavirus raged’) and The Times on April 11 (‘He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s Failure on the Virus’) have put together a carefully constructed case against the administration.”

PandemicSusan CorsoApril 16, 2020metaphysics, coronavirus, COVID-19, blindness, vulnerable, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Day 34 Convenient Ignorance; or, The Willful/Willing Debate

Once again some of the news cheers me and some of the news makes me want to cry. I can’t be alone. Pastors suing the State of California for religious discrimination—no! Do they know what they’re doing to their followers? Uh, anyone? Prisoners released from prisons and jails—yes! To go where? Crowded projects? Uh, anyone? Disproportional African-American and Latinx deaths—no! Are we focusing our care on those communities? Uh, anyone? Opinion columnist Jennifer Senior wrote a piece called “The One Kind of Distancing We Can’t Afford.” It is principally this that prompted today’s essay although I’d been dancing around it for a couple of days.

PandemicSusan CorsoApril 14, 2020metaphysics, coronavirus, COVID-19, blindness, vulnerable, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Day 33 A New Normal; or, Could Our Public Servants Grow Up Please?

At the risk of offense, I am tired of the pissing contests, boys. Actually, weary of them. Fatigued by them. Late Sunday Twitter sniping at Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of only two reliable voices to date in The Trump Pandemic, bore the hashtag time to #FireFauci. Early Saturday morning, after allegedly making the decision to close New York City schools the night before, Mayor Bill de Blasio sent the Governor a text message informing him. The Times wrote, “The episode was a glaring example of the persistent dysfunction between Mr. Cuomo and Mr. de Blasio, an often small-bore turf war that has now resurfaced during an urgent crisis in which nearly 800 New Yorkers are dying daily.”

PandemicSusan CorsoApril 13, 2020metaphysics, coronavirus, COVID-19, new normal, new, kind, sustainable

Day 32 Lux et Pax; or, Risen Indeed

My dreamtime early this morning yielded a high school football cheer I haven’t heard in almost fifty years. What do we want? A touchdown. When do we want it? Now. I hear it in the voice of Tammy, last name lost to time, who sat in front of me in French class. I’m sure you hear the cadence. It’s pretty much Cheer 101. Except, as usual, my brain did something entirely different with it. What do we want? Health & Wealth. When do we want it? Now.

PandemicSusan CorsoApril 12, 2020metaphysics, coronavirus, COVID-19, Mothers, Lux et Pas, Light, Peace, Us, Health, Wealth

Day 31 Gathering What’s Important; or, The Best Things in Life Aren’t Things

The first time I remember eating sourdough bread I was seventeen, sitting in a restaurant in San Francisco. There for eye surgery of which I was completely terrified, that fascinating, comforting taste can take me right back to Fisherman’s Wharf even now, some more than forty years later. Did you know there is a sourdough library? writes Frank Lidz in this morning’s Times. It lives eighty-seven miles southeast of Brussels, Belgium, and it’s run by Karl De Smedt.

Day 30 The Masks are Falling Off; or, Scaling the Inner Walls

Melania Trump’s picture in a face mask in The New York Times this morning was telling in marked contrast to the man she married who refuses to wear a mask because “it will look bad.” Remember Governor Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island? Outcomes, not optics. I spent over an hour yesterday on the phone with a client talking her off a metaphorical roof.

Day 29 Private is as Private Does; or, MYOB

I have asserted before, and no doubt, will again that Mary Engelbreit never lets me down. Today’s page-a-day adage is from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; / What is essential is invisible to the eye./ Now, contrast that with these scenarios please. A woman, living in Staten Island, knows that her father in Virginia has life-threatening cancer. Her heart is calling her to Virginia. Two friends call her and read her the riot act about leaving her home and putting others at risk.

Day 28 Wellness isn’t Health; or, Unlearning Helplessness in Exchange for Joy

You might know this, or you might not, but every day I post a spiritual haiku to Instagram. Here is yesterday’s: The health of the world/depends upon the health of each/one. How could it not?/ Today is United Nations World Health Day—say a prayer for the health of everyone in the world—no exceptions! Uncanny. I wrote it weeks ago. That’s how it goes for intuitives sometimes. All the more reason, then, when I read Amanda Hess’ “Health Is in Danger. Wellness Wants to Fill the Void” in The New York Times, I thought it was, quite frankly, grotesque.