151. Lewis and Clark

There are lots of things that have happened throughout history, many of them being unpleasant. All of them have brought us to this moment right now, and, of course, that is a good place even with its terrifying emotions and its pleasant emotions. One of those historical events that has put me here at this point is the Lewis and Clark expedition, the Corps of Discovery.                                                                            

All through childhood I knew about these two great explorers because I live right in that part of Idaho where they journeyed. They and their crew were the first Americans to traverse the continent and cross the continental divide to make it to the Pacific. They were commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson and because of that willingness to explore the unknown expanses of the northern Great Plains, the northern Rockies and the Pacific Northwest I am living in this part of what is now the United States. The whole discovery is a connection of peoples from the King of France who gave a good deal to the United States with the Louisiana Purchase to the willing explorers, the friendliness of the indigenous peoples, to those of us living here in the present. Of course they were all human beings as are we. We are filled with complexity and because of that, not everything from what we do works out for the best just like that journey of discovery. It is the existential crisis of being human but it is also what got us to where we are. I very much appreciate the struggles that Lewis and Clark endured, the sense of responsibility that they carried and the huge gift they gave their posterity, one of which is me.                              

Among the Corps were such people that legends are made of. There was the French Charbonneau and his Shoshone wife, Sacajawea who was born in what is now Idaho and graces her name to several things in this state. The man York, who was enslaved by William Clark, probably experienced the greatest freedom of his life in those two years of exploration. Others in the Corps returned out west later to gain fame as the mountain men. And the journalists themselves, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark themselves, left us amazing drawings during their time fording great rivers, crossing the divide of the continent with all its struggles, spending a dreary damp winter on the shores of the Pacific, meeting with the many amazing tribes of indigenous people who befriended them, and then returning all that distance back to the little outpost of St. Louis. All of these men and one woman formed an indelible relationship with one another and the land that has enriched these United States and the peoples of the northern states of the west.                                                                                                        

I have such admiration for the foundations of our country, in spite of all it’s heartache, and the great men and women seeking independence and freedom with all their baggage of wrongly preconceived ideas. In spite of all their flaws they created this country out of pain and struggle and they left their unfinished work for us to continue to be “We, the people of the United States…” I am overwhelmed by pride and admiration for these amazing people of the Corps of Discovery.

Wear Your Mask

This is what a child on ECMO looks like: my son at three and a half.

             

About 18 and a half years ago our youngest son got some childhood virus, Roseola, as kids will. He was three and a half and had never really been very sick before. At first, he didn’t seem to get too sick from this one either, but we now know that it takes him much longer to recover from viruses than the rest of us because his cells go into an energy deficit due to what we now know he has, mitochondrial disease. After about a week of just being tired, but no longer sick, he began to revert in his walking patterns, using furniture to hold himself up. He ate continuously, sat around and did very little even falling asleep at the table in the middle of eating, and within a couple of weeks he had gone from a little over forty pounds to another ten pounds in weight gain. Remember, he was just over three years old. We became frantic, taking him to our doctor every day as he began to struggle with breathing. He had blood tests, a terrifying MRI from which he struggled to wake (as mito patients will do from the wrong anesthetic), and finally our doctor sent us to Seattle Children’s Hospital, where at the end of the weekend he grew even more sick to the point of both lungs succumbing to complete diffuse hemorrhaging. That Sunday night and into the very early hours of Monday he was, with our permission, put on a ventilator and then ECMO (extra corporeal membrane oxygenator), a heart lung bypass machine used to oxygenate the blood in absence of working lungs. Our son was drowning in his own blood because of an energy deficit and organ shut down caused by a virus that for most is typically benign. He was on ECMO for a week and the ventilator for two weeks and we stayed in the hospital for three months, bringing him home with a jog stroller and orders for tons of rehabilitative therapy to get him to eat and walk on his own.

Now, during this COVID-19 pandemic we are becoming more and more wary of people, knowing full well that we can not bring this disease home to our son. Wen this all began I thought it seemed a bit overblown since there was no evidence of the disease in our very rural area. We have typically been vigilant against other known viruses such as Lyme Disease and West Nile Virus just using insect repellent and avoiding buggy areas, but we have not enclosed our son in a bubble because we believe in living a full life. Now that everything has been shut down and people are tired of going half a year without vacations, normal shopping, movies, school, etc. the disease has made it here, as I discovered by possibly being exposed in my quest to start our school year responsibly. People here have had no evidence of the severity of the disease and they no longer have the capacity to take it seriously. I cannot be one of those people. I must take all viruses seriously in my home, even as we have always resisted living in a bubble. My son endured another bout of illness, probably contracted on an airplane, and again was hospitalized when he was in the third grade and we had returned from a summer vacation in Europe. This second bout seriously made us rethink how we expose him to the outside world, yet he has continued to live his life as an active member of our community, constantly raising awareness of mitochondrial disease.

Now that the country wishes to return to school, now that I have missed two weddings for important people in my life, now that I have to evaluate what I am going to do this year as my final year of teaching I will be physically distanced and I will wear a mask and shield. I will cause my students grief when they poo poo my vigilance. And I don’t want to be vigilant only for my own family, but for others as well. Remember that I lived for three and a half years blissfully ignorant that anyone in my family was so vulnerable to seemingly invisible opponents. I know that so many of us are unwittingly vulnerable to this very real disease and I wish to protect those people as well. So I implore you all to wear your masks when you are with others outside of your immediate circle. Protect yourself. Protect us all.

150. Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes

“Jack Sprat could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean

And so betwixt them both, you see, they licked the platter clean.”

           

These random little rhymes were taught us from infancy. Sometimes we learned them from parents singing to us, sometimes we learned them from teachers at school, and sometimes we never really learned them until we got older and read a few books. There are zillions (or seemingly so) of them but we, here in America, got most of our nursery rhymes from a very clever, real person living in colonial Massachusetts (which explains references to pound, pence and London Towne in distinctly American rhymes) having been born in England. In reality she is a conglomerate of mothers of the Goose name in Boston and she is sometimes credited with being a woman named Mary Goose. I don’t know much about her, but I’m a cemetery fanatic but once upon a time I encountered her grave in the cemetery next to the Boston Commons.

            Sometimes I find an odd comfort in those old nursery rhymes, “Wee Willie Winkle runs through the town in his nightgown…” They come from a place of safety in our minds from long ago and, more importantly, they are the reassurance of our ancestors from ages back letting us know we would be okay. Who knew that there were fad diets even in the 1600’s? Mother Goose as she aptly wrote of it in Jack Sprat (if indeed that is one of her rhymes…) And here we are renaming old diets with things like the Paleo Diet or the Atkins Diet or whatever. It’s either a no fat or no lean diet, isn’t it?

            I would venture to guess that more English-speaking people quote Mother Goose than the Bible or William Shakespeare. Maybe I’m giving her too much credit. So what if she was just a collector of folk verse? I am pretty sure she made up a few of her own and those were collected, then redone for new children and originally penned by dear old Mother Goose? She’s as much a fairy tale as her rhymes.

            Even here as I write in the summer sun and notice a spider, I can’t help but think of Little Miss Muffet on her tuffet breakfasting on curds and whey (I’m not a fan of whey, but curds are wonderful). “Along came a spider and sat down beside her and frightened Miss Muffett away.” Like Miss Muffet, I’m not a fan of spiders but I’m a more modern American, so when I see a spider I just smash it.

            I find it easy to slide back into childhood with one of those little rhymes, and also an imaginary earlier time of innocence where little pigs go to market and stay home and eat roast beef (!) and cry whee whee all the way home. All periods of life have had difficulties, yet when the plague raged we inherited “Ring Around the Rosie,” so now while we’re being plagued by a new virus I find myself returning to the age old comfort of Mother Goose rhymes and the snippets of another age that was also tough, yet mothers and fathers still loved and comforted their children, and now we, their grandchildren still love and comfort our children with the same rhymes. Funny how comforting our children comforts us. Funny how we think so many things are new, yet really they are simply reiterations of the past. Funny how that is comforting.

            “Little Jack Horner sat in a corner eating his Christmas Pie. He put in his thumb and pulled out a plum and said, ‘My, what a good boy am I.’” While most of us don’t have plums in our Christmas pies, its fun to think of it, isn’t it?

149. American Chain Restaurants

            There are certain things that everyone uses out of convenience but they might grumble a little bit about it. For me that’s chain restaurants. Sometimes I grumble about them not being healthy enough. But, of course, that’s not always true because there are plenty of choices. In reality, the consistency of American chain restaurants is great comfort. I love the fact that I can pick up a sub sandwich with some chips and an icy cold drink and picnic it on the spur of the moment. I don’t have to go into a chain restaurant and pore over a menu asking questions of the waiter because I already know what to order before I even open the door. Of course that’s not always what I want, but when I want easy comfort an American chain restaurant is there to fill that role.

            There’s no doubt that it’s a little disconcerting to drive the streets of a European city to find a KFC crammed into an old Tudor building, but after a few days of mushy peas, dried out roast dinners and cold “jacket potatoes” (we Yanks call them baked) or soggy schnitzel, a nice crispy chicken leg with a biscuit and honey and a coke with ice is a real treat. It just seems wrong that when you order a coke and specify that you would like ice, the waiter returns with a warm coke and a single, rapidly melting ice cube. So, yes, I think a KFC in Zurich seems wrong but I’m not going to complain about that coke at TGI Friday’s in Bristol when they set a proper icy coke in front of me with a slice of lemon. And, yes, of course, I appreciate the quaint pubs and the restaurants of Europe, but sometimes it’s just nice to have a moment on the Grand Canal to collect yourself and get over the fact that you would have saved five bucks at the pizza place had you ordered a bottle of wine instead of said coke that was warm without ice. No, I wouldn’t go to Pizza Hut in Rome and I really don’t think they should have them there, but it must not just be Americans looking that comfort in knowing what’s at an American chain restaurant. And I confess to having stopped by a Burger King in Oxford after maneuvering my way around a zillion international touring teenagers to get a nice icy coke that had no guarantee of a free refill, always bemoaning the fact that they didn’t offer root beer.

            I realize that American food is too packaged, too everywhere sometimes, but I also realize that there is great comfort in a nice biscuit with sausage gravy that you can’t really seem to find anywhere outside of North America, because who would eat gravy on their Oreos? (Biscuit in British English is that American hard dry cookie sort of thing.) And the comfort of knowing exactly what you are getting is what the American chain restaurant offers. I may be the first to grumble about the McDonald’s in Exeter’s city centre being a crowded mess, but I might also wait twenty minutes at lunch time to order my kids a Quarter Pounder with fries at that same crowded McDonald’s while wondering how such a place could ever be considered fast food.

            It’s no different here at home. When I don’t know what they serve at Mabel’s diner in Detroit and my other option is Burger King when I’ve been craving a grilled burger, the choice is obvious. I’ll try Mabel’s when I’m not tired, when I’m ready to experiment, when Burger King sounds too ordinary. But I’m so thankful for the American chain restaurant for its comfort and knowing what I will get.

148. Salt Water Taffy

            Summertime is the time of year when Americans go on vacation. This year is different because we need to shelter in place to stop the spread of the Corona virus so fewer people are taking those trips. Of course, we are Americans and it is built into our national character to bristle at someone (God forbid, the government!) telling us what to do, so people who haven’t seen the devastation of this virus—the people who don’t believe in science, the people who have to see it to believe it, the doubting Thomases, the people who think it’s the flu, the people who believe you are a liberal wuss if you wear a mask—seem to be going out and spreading the devastation of their disbelief to the masses as the numbers and death tolls increase. But, lest I digress too much, it is vacation time in America. One of the best parts of a vacation for me is indulging my sweet tooth and I don’t eat salt water taffy many other times than summer vacation.

            Since I won’t be taking any vacations this year aside from some daytrips and maybe an overnight camp out (where I am alone) I guess I’m just going to have to imagine walking a boardwalk in Seaside, or even Sherman Avenue in Coeur d’Alene, and stopping in a candy store where they make fudge, serve ice cream and pull salt water taffy. I love a nice chocolate taffy, soft and wrapped in wax paper. Fresh huckleberry or blueberry is also a luxurious escape from everything but heaven. People are milling about on the streets of that mountain town where the heat is dry and short lived of a summer afternoon. Sunglassed mothers are pushing chubby little babies in strollers while their bearded, tank topped husbands are walking beside them holding the hands of an older child gazing into the windows of a sweet shop. At this point my indulgence runs toward the soft taffy with just a little black spot in the center. Licorice is the flavor I can buy that will be mine. The kids won’t walk off with more than one of those before realizing it’s not for them. Or maybe a spicy cinnamon starburst center. How do they get those designs so perfectly centered in those little candies?

            I can see the machines stretching and pulling the taffy reminding me of winters as a child when family and friends would gather for a taffy pull. It makes you forget the sunglasses you’ve perched on top of your head and you enter another world. Maybe now you’re out in an Adirondack chair in a hayfield at the base of one of the Green or White Mountains of New England enjoying the breeze of an afternoon as you indulge in a little maple gem of a taffy you just purchased at some little shop with a quaint name like Sleepy Hollow or something like that. Their flavors in that sweet, chewy stickiness can take you anywhere in this country of ours without really needing to go any further than your back porch. Do you feel that relentless sun in the heaviness of humidity from a thunderstorm as you try to gain relief by putting your feet in the warm bathtub of the Gulf of Mexico? The only possible relief is that little Key Lime taffy to get away from the oppression of a Florida summer.

            You know, I think I can get to all those places I’m thinking about with a quick masked trip to the grocery store where I can find a nice bag of salt water taffy (probably from Salt Lake City) and I will be able to transport myself anywhere with just a quick taste of somewhere else. I really love a vacation in a staycation bag of salt water taffy. I’ll be saving some money this year…

147. Sharing Ideas and Information

            I am an educator who has been teaching students from the ages of eleven through adulthood for over 35 years. Of course, my profession is disseminating what I know to others but it’s also a process of learning a great deal from my students and other people. I love that and how we do it here in the US. No, I don’t really like the trained poodle hoop jumping that I have to do to get certificates or proof of training, but there is a little fun in learning shortcuts. And I love sharing ideas and learning how to do new things.

            This past year when the pandemic shut school down, I had to learn a great deal about teaching remotely. I’m 58 and have never taken any classes remotely except for a few video training courses that have more often than not seemed like time wasters—poodle hoops. As an English teacher who has always specialized in reading and reading instruction, I quickly learned that for my high school English courses I needed to be focusing on literature and writing because those are the key components of what students are expected to take away from those courses. The quickest way to get literature across to my students who might struggle with reading is to simplify how they read. So I lead them to audio books. Short cuts do not prevent you from learning, they just need to be recognized as short cuts and many of the incidentals—the emotional attachments—you would gain might be lost. Duh! How could someone who has taught for so many years not know that? I did know it, but crystalizing it to the exact skills lost through my teaching was not something I could have articulated so well before this era of remote learning. It’s another thing I’ve learned: how to articulate why face to face learning is so much better than remote learning. Nevertheless, I love that we have ways to communicate and share ideas during this time of physical distancing.

            I think that it is also true that we can learn remotely from the people of the past. Of course I think that! I teach literature. Our ancestors have so much to tell us about living. The American ideals began hundreds of years ago and they were expressly written for us to see and to emulate. The very handwriting of men and women from the past is still visible for us to see, just as are paintings and physical structures which we live in and conduct our business and gatherings. To read a journal or letter from hundreds of years ago in the very building in which it was written can carry you back to a particular time and that presence of humanity from such a long time ago is both inspiring and haunting. I love that.

            I love how ideas are exchanged and how we learn. The importance of communication and leaving record of how to do things, how people feel in certain spaces, how they have felt—all of that is so very inspiring to me. As I grow older I know that what I do now does have an impact on others. Yesterday I ran the last five miles of a fifteen-mile training run with one of my cross-country athletes who is training for and running a marathon for his senior project. I know he got the idea of doing that from me and running those last difficult miles with him is such a privilege because I know he will accomplish it. I know how he feels. Sharing that in a way that can’t be fully articulated is an honor and a joy that I feel privileged to do. How we share our ideas and our living with one another is very important. It is how we love one another.

146. Immigrants

            We are a nation of immigrants. Research shows that even the native tribes are immigrants. All of us are descended from people who had to leave their homelands for various reasons. It’s not clear why all the migration to the Americas occurred—some from climate change, some from religious persecution, some for lust of wealth, some from innovation, and some through coercion and force. What we have brought to this land is the best and worst from wherever we came and we have collected it here on a foundation of ideals and a belief in opportunity. Many have been fortunate to find those opportunities while others have been consistently denied.

            I love that we have cultural bounty all around us even in the little rural town where I live. If I drive a few miles to the north I’m on the Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation. A few miles south I am in one of two land grant university towns where (in healthier times) I can mingle with people of African, Asian, European, South and Central American, and Middle Eastern Cultures. I am aware that this is unique of such a rural area and that many of us are pocketed into regions of our own cultural identities or separated from those cultural identities. But it only takes a little effort to get out and see the various shades of America available for all of us.

            Currently immigration into the US is a problem because so many people want to come here to escape the violence and unrest in their own countries. They want to come here for all of the same reasons that our ancestors came here. Right now, we have an elected government that is far less welcoming than previous governments have been, though it would certainly be unfair to characterize any of our governments as welcoming beyond certain selective predispositions. Right now, what we are doing to prospective immigrants on our southern border is inhumane and needs to change but that will not happen until we change governments at the election. When justice does not prevail, we must fight back and I have been known to do that often simply by voicing my opinion, peacefully protesting when necessary, and voting.

            As a nation of immigrants and as the son of a long line of immigrants and as a Christian I believe in the humanity of all and I want to do all I can to promote that. So even though I am sheltering in place I will continue to support the variety of cultural identities that make up the fabric of this nation through my custom, through my profession and through my voice. I believe in the immigrant and the promise of our nation. There is no reason to have a statue in our most frequented harbor that says, “Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” if we don’t believe it.

            We just celebrated our 244^th birthday as a nation and now we are reckoning with a dark history that is over four hundred years old and continues to blot our existence. We must continue to grapple with that and rectify the wrongs while accepting the huddled masses to the shores of liberty. I know I am an idealist, but, again, as a son of immigrants and a proponent of compassion, I love this nation of immigrants and I hold to every ideal of liberty that goes along with it.