Archive: Opinions

Last week Thoughts turned out much better than originally conceived. My inability to use email to transmit it to our esteemed editor seemed an insurmountable obstacle. I don't own a computer or iPhone and I'm normally content to use a library, computer and a jitterbug phone. Right. Dan came up with an ingenious solution utilizing artificial intelligence transcription. No, the artificial does not apply to my musings, but it's antithesis, "organic intelligence" certainly applies to Dan. I'm hoping for lightning to strike again this week.

Oh no. My mailbox has a postcard that says president Trump's coronavirus guidelines for America. Oh, please! If it didn't have the CDC's common sense guidelines on the back, I would have expected "Doctor Donald's Magical Elixir and Patented Cure" on the front. Whose idea was it to put the Chest Thumper in Chief's imprimatur on this national mailing? Someone please save us all from this Looney Tunes madness, I ask.

I will admit to periods of dark, brooding and mild depression during this almost lockdown. Of course my travels are limited, but I must admit that I must feel more free than some, some perhaps many, of my fellow citizens. I cannot imagine what it might be like to be a parent at home with small or even teenage children, nor can I long contemplate what it might be like as an elderly resident of a retirement home or just an elderly resident. Even those in isolation, whether voluntary or otherwise.

And in those dark moments, I feel intense gratitude to be able to write for publication and especially to not be concerned about finances. I will be forever grateful for my part-time employer as well as the tip of the hat to the Social Security Administration. Reading that Russia's Putin has put a tax on approximately more than half of Russia's retirement savings gives me pause. Eventually we will pay, too, for this monster, so people of our lives and the economy, but for now I thought I would pass on a few notes to ponder, hoping they will generate some cerebral talk about our current common situation.

Alain de Botton writes in last week's Financial Times Weekend Edition that we have an intriguing way to deal with our temporary isolated lives. He suggests "travels on my sofa" as a way to explore our memories.

To wit:

"To return to travels we have already taken the idea of making a big deal of revisiting a journey in memories sounds a little strange or simply sad. This is an enormous pity. We are careless curators of our own pasts.

Regular immersion in our travel memories could be a critical part of what can sustain and console us and not least is perhaps the cheapest and most flexible form of entertainment."

de Botton points out that we need nothing technical for these reveries of a past trip and travel. We don't need a camera because we have one beyond our eyes between our ears and it is always "on". Huge chunks of experience are still there in our heads, intact and vivid, just waiting for us to ask ourselves leading questions such as "Where did we go after we landed?" and "What was the first breakfast like?" I have found this little exercise in memory to be enormously satisfying and a real diversion from the inner angst that creeps in my soul as I deal with the semi-isolation and rampant thoughts of human and political disaster that threatened, but which are overdone, vanquished by memories of past trips and travels.

I suggest you try it and travel with a friend at a socially acceptable distance of a mere six feet.

And I would be remiss this week if I did not point out that my eulogy last week for the founder of Trader Joe's, has evidently borne fruit. TJ's is apparently aiming to move to Ithaca.

Finally, well, wouldn't it be cool if there was a silent auction parentheses (or raffle) to be the first patron on the door at their grand opening? Oh, those who demonstrated against southwest development back in the early part of the century or have the vestige of a "Stop Walmart" bumper sticker would be ineligible for the drawing.

I've more thoughts, some practical, some spiritual, as we all experience it from different parts of our individual trenches. We're not through this yet, and much more is to come. Remember "organic intelligence" as we move into another week, be well, take care of each other. Thanks for reading.