Sylvia's Journal

Now we have two storms going on – a Nor’eastern, luckily without snow but not the kind of weather for a walk. And then there is the COVID-19 storm that is raging everywhere and in particular inside our government. The reports from Washington are dismal. I can only hope that now many more people regret who they voted for in 2016 and that they vote for someone else in November. I also hope that all the states organize themselves well for mail-in-voting.

In our small Cape Ann community some residents are calling for closing the bridges so no more viruses can get in. Maybe we are in for some stricter rules about movement, like in Spain, Italy and France, where you have to ask permission to get out or in and get a sturdy fine if you do not play by the rules.

My friends S+P who are in France, where they have a small resort, are not allowed to drive through Belgium to get home to the Netherlands – the roads are physically blocked for all traffic except those with the right ‘attestation,’ or trucks. If it comes to that here in our country of rugged individualists there will be trouble. In that case I can only hope that the folks who bristle at the constraints on their freedom see someone suffer nearby, and finally get it.

And so, in the midst of those two storms I try to stick to my routine. If I am successful I have a Routini when the cocktail hour arrives – it’s a nice break from the stresses and screen time of the day. For cocktails there is now a choice of three types of Martinis (in addition to the real ones). In the beginning, when we were still making fun of quarantining, the joke went around of the Quarantini, made with a dash of Purell. No longer a joke my favorite is now the Routini. It is made with Flexibility, an ingredient we are stockpiling now, has some Comfort (not the Southern kind), a dash of Gratefulness & Appreciation, and something to absorb whatever negative thoughts passed my mind. And then there is the weekly Zoomtini where we hang out with friends, it’s a BYOB event at our virtual house.

When one of our sons-in-law first came to our house and saw the inside of our refrigerator he commented on what he saw: ‘it’s all condiments!’ This particular son-in-law did not like condiments – never had mustard or catchup on his hotdog or hamburger, hated the idea of relish and such. He has changed over the years, partially because I make lots of mustard at Christmas time for family and friends. He has received those for decades and I have seen him put the mustard on something.

I thought about this when I opened our refrigerator this morning: he would sure have exclaimed that it contained nothing but condiments. And he would have been right, it’s now mostly populated mostly by condiments, pickles, relishes, simmering sauces, chutneys, glazes, mayonnaise and a few poorly looking vegetables.

We are trying not to go to the store as we have successfully kept the outside world out and are infection free. We plan to stay so. Not knowing where the virus is hanging out, we prefer to stay put where we are.

As a result we are slowly depleting our supplies of fresh food. At first, we planned our meals using an app in which we store our favorite recipes. It has a meal planning calendar and generates a shopping list.  But some of our favorite meals (like Sag Paneer) have ingredients that are no longer in the house. At first, we did go to a store (over a week ago), then we sent out an order for pickup (6 days ago) and now we have abandoned the meal planner altogether because it forces us to go get the needed stuff from outside and with it comes a complicated disinfecting routine.  We will just look at what is in the pantry and what’s in the refrigerator/freezer. Then it will be mix and match. We should be good for awhile longer.

I have solved the milk problem by ordering a large can of Nido, Nestle’s milk powder that is ubiquitous in developing countries. Axel was surprised (why didn’t you get something that is local, cheaper and doesn’t need shipping?). I must admit it was an entirely irrational buy, driven by emotions and associations. As soon as I saw the image of the product, my mind was flooded with images of that can on my kitchen counter in  Yemen, Lebanon, Senegal. And with those images came all these memories of those adventures. Good old times!

Replenishing our dwindling egg supply is more of a problem because our local hatchery owners are infected. They have a refrigerator outside the chicken barn where you can help yourself and leave the money. But the refrigerator is closed now, no more fresh eggs. And so, we hope that we can drive to Tessa and Steve who live in New Hampshire. They have chickens and thus eggs. It may be a nice outing for this weekend – that is, if such is still allowed. Watching Spain and Italy and France, that freedom may soon be gone too. We wonder how such limitations will go over in New Hampshire, a state that has as its motto ‘Live Free or Die!’ This now means something entirely different than it did before.

A month ago, the fault lines between the have and have-nots were already beginning to show and this produced a highly infectious cocktail: people who do not have a doctor because they don’t have health insurance or who have a job without benefits, gig workers, they all kept working – we will never know how many infections were passed on like that. 

Now a new fault line is emerging, separating the caring from the scammers. I know that there are more caring people than scammers, but the scammers are flooding the stage as there are more opportunities than ever before to separate people from their money. They are pretending to be Medicare and asking for personal information (I had such a call and reported it immediately, though it took me a bit to realize it). They have a range of possibilities to talk anxious, weary and fearful people into doing things that will cost them. 

Scammers also now have a large pool of unemployed people to recruit from and to do their bidding, make the scam calls. I am sure there are now many people who cannot be picky about paid work however unethical.  I don’t think the friendly lady who makes the scam call will partake in the financial windfall if the call is successful.

Scammers are also finding ways to get in the way of the people who care, or worse, right into their faces. Zoom has a series of actions in their COVID-19 resource center to avoid getting ‘zoom-bombed.’  It’s a new term I just learned from my daughter. I witnessed such a Zoom bomb yesterday during a DEVEX webinar with African leaders speaking about matters of importance to funders and members of the American NGO community. Within minutes of the start of the webinar the chat and Q+A boxes were flooded with hateful racist vitriol of an intensity that harkened back to the slavery days. It was so distracting that it kept me from writing questions and comments or reading those from other listeners. Eventually the organizers pushed the infiltrators out, but the text of their writing stayed and each time you opened the chat or Q+A box the words were there, right in front of you.

There were already a lot of angry people in the US who felt left out, I imagine that the ranks of those have swelled, especially when people find out who gets the government checks and who does not. Exceptions to the government handouts are emerging and the process of getting the check are confusing and complicated, especially to people who don’t usually file a tax return because their income is so low. Apparently now, in order to get the check, they need to do so. Imagine how that is going to work.  What a contradiction: government promising swift action!

For those of us who are in place of privilege, at first there was some elation about the new normal: finally, you can bring your dog to work, kids happy to see more of mom, no need to commute, no need to dress up, etc. 

But now, the grimness of what we are in the middle of, is coming into full view, especially with what is happening in Africa and Asia. If the US is predicting about 200,000 more death, that is 198,000 more than we already have, then what about Africa, where the number of infected people is only now becoming visible?

I am coaching someone who lives in an African country that is now in total lockdown. No doubt, more of such drastic measures will be taken across the continent. Public and private transportation has come to a halt. If you are delivering critical services (which my coachee’s project does – serving people with HIV) you need forms that allow you to be on the road. That process may have been fairly easy to implement in France (just download a form, print it and fill it in).

Those who have a computer, a printer and an internet connection at home, may be able to handle this.  As I follow the thread of consequences of the lockdowns in Africa I fear people whose lives depend on consistent delivery of drugs, for whatever condition, will either not be able to come to the place where they get their drugs, or the drugs won’t make it to those places as the entire supply chain is compromised. 

Here in the US we are given numbers and graphs that count only COVID19 deaths, which are still relatively minor compared to other causes of death. I fear that these other causes of death, especially in the underserved countries of the world, will start to rise astronomically as basic services become less and less accessible due to missing drugs, equipment, sick service providers and a lack of transport options.

The coronavirus has changed my perspective on the other scary viruses that have surfaced in recent years, infections that now seem so much easier to prevent: you won’t get infected with HIV if you don’t have unprotected sex; you won’t get Ebola if you don’t touch a sick person’s body fluids. These behavior changes now seems so much easier to manage, even though we didn’t think so at the time.

Through my volunteer work with EthicalCoach I am drawn into the world of team coaching. Although intellectually I do understand the distinctions between training, process facilitation, teambuilding, team mentoring and team coaching, listening to very experienced team coaches I am (virtually) hanging out with these days recognize I have much to learn from doing it (the team coaching).

This morning we had a team coach community meeting with some 44 people attending from, among others, South Africa, UK, Holland and the US. Through this forum I am meeting, albeit virtually, several Dutch coaches – a very active European coaching club I didn’t know existed.

It was only a month ago I was talking with a team in a nearby municipal government about engaging with team coaching – I was so excited about this. It would have been my first chance at real team coaching, with the possibility of doing this virtually or face to face. 

Before I became a free agent, I had considered building up a local coaching business that would focus on helping municipal governments (paid or volunteer staff) be better at what they do, deal better with conflict, tensions, and improving their listening and inquiry skills.  Government dynamics are actually quite similar around the world. In most places I have worked with public officials I have seen very little real listening and a lot of exhortations (telling, advice giving, an addiction to being right). A few of my former colleagues have landed in local government positions (state and town) and have told me the dynamics are not all that different from the dynamics of local government in Nigeria for example.

But, among all the other things it has done, the coronavirus has also upended my adventure into the new territory of team coaching. Budgets are being redone. Whatever small budget there was is now redeployed to deal with more urgent stuff.  

I do think there is now a need, may be more than ever, for coaching, and team coaching in particular, to become a critical service that needs to stay open for business.

Numbers are now in the news every day and people are paying attention, even our president. Those of us working in the field of global health have invested countless hours to convey the importance of data to track what’s going on, whether interventions made a difference, to spot outbreaks, the effect of mitigation, and to shape policy and strategy.

Here are how my numbers are trending:

• Weight (slowly trending up)
• Steps (sharp trend down)
• Trips to the grocery store (down to negligible)
• Minutes meditated (up)
• Minutes played Wordfeud with my friend A, in Dutch and English (up)
• Audiobooks listened to (up, entirely due to Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series and Louise Penny’s Detective Inspector Gamache series)
• Bike miles on the stationary bike (up)
• Bike miles on the real bike (down)
• Retirement funds (down)
• Screen time (up)
• Income (down)
• Hugs with grandchildren (0)
• Virtual hugs with grandchildren (up)
• Zoom sessions attended (up)
• Check-ins with loved ones (up)
• Number of minutes playing the violin (up)
• Pages of the Sunday New York Times read (up)
• Strands braided for the staircase runner (up)
• Average time for one strand (reduced from weeks to one evening)
• Attempts to start knitting two socks at the same time from the toes down (5)
• Attempts to start knitting two socks from the other end (2)
• Number of unused cars in our driveway (2)
• Miles driven in our unused cars (negligible)
• Frequent flyer miles (sharp down)
• Malaria pills taken (0)
• Cups of coffee (about the same)
• Cookies baked (up from close to zero – see also weight, above)

It’s interesting to play with someone who cannot read music – it is as if Axel and I come to a piece of music through two very different doors. I use words like ‘rests,’ and beats (and use a metronome), but Axel plays the guitar looking for letters that correspond to chords, that he can do fast or slow as he pleases, and keeping time on his own, not having to wait for a fiddle to lead or catch up or give him his cues. Synchronizing my fiddle tune with his chords is turning to be a challenge. Thanks to my meditation teacher who talks about kindness and gratitude, I am cool about our attempts at marital harmony. I figure that if we try to practice at least 10 to 15 minutes each that, we should be able to produce something that maybe nice to listen to, once we can all come out of the woodwork.

We have been back from DC for over 2 weeks. Although our kids, at the time, had a better sense of how irresponsible we were, something we realized later, I am happy to say that we neither contaminated anyone in DC nor were we contaminated. Now it’s up to what we let into our house.

I remember some time ago (pre-COVID19) mentioning to Axel that the good thing about getting older was that weeks went by faster. Having made the final arrangements for our 40^th wedding anniversary months and months before the actual event (April 24), I liked it that the weeks went by so fast – soon we’d all be in Holland celebrating. We would have left in 2 weeks. Instead I am now trying to figure out how to get my miles and some of the hefty cancellation fees back. I remain happy about time passing so quickly – I see spring, then summer on the horizon, and hopefully the end of virulence of COVID19 so we can hug our kids and grandkids again.  

We are remaining socially distanced while also remaining virtually close. I am finding myself checking in with people who I had not communicated with for some time, and more frequently contacting those I am close to. Now we have our Friday night cocktail Zoom session with friends in town who we can’t visit anymore. Axel calls them Zoomtails, BYOB. And so, we sit in front of our screens, toasting the various adult beverages we have just poured ourselves, eating our own snacks (not without offering them to each other – everyone saying, “no thanks, I prefer my own snacks!”) We don’t talk that much about the virus or our government anymore. It’s mostly chitchat like before.

As of Sunday, we are initiating a weekly ‘Dinner with Friends,’ Sunday night meal – this of course only works if you are more or less in the same time zone, in other words, the time is right for dinner – so the invitees are friends nearby. We all cook the same thing, at least that’s the plan, and then we can imagine sitting around the table as we did during the olden days.

Such is the power of imagination. Not only do people come up with great ideas for staying in touch, for keeping kids occupied, for religious meetings, dance classes, therapy sessions, and toasting to good health with friends, etc. I also suspect that many new businesses will emerge from this; and old businesses will be transformed with the discovery of the possibilities that are emerging in our greatly enlarged virtual space.

I enjoy the imagination that goes into the production of the endless stream of funny videos, the brilliant cover pages of the New Yorker and other art work that circle around the world and that make me laugh so hard.

Headspace has several courses that focus on creating images in the mind to help people stay grounded in the here and now. Sometimes I find this very difficult.

I am currently reading a historical novel about the First World War. One of the protagonists, a newly enlisted member of the British army fighting in France, receives frequent letters from his new wife in England. She describes, in excruciating detail, the fancy imaginary meal she is cooking every day for her husband. He enjoys these imaginary meals, even shares them with his mates, all the while being stuck in the muddy and cold trenches on the front line. 

In the meantime, our imagination is tested when we are used to cook a meal just so but lacking one ingredient. No longer can we step into our car and drive to the grocery store. Getting groceries is a very complicated affair these days as we need to follow what are close to surgical theater procedures to unpack the groceries. So, we have to draw on our imagination to make up for the missing parts. Luckily, we don’t have substitute tulip bulbs for onions quite yet.

When we lived in Kabul, lockdowns were common, especially after a bomb was dropped someplace or rumors circulated. We had a garden and people who cooked and cleaned for us and a good internet connection. After work was done we played scrabble,  watched a movie, I embroidered, and knitted. We had an elliptical machine upstairs and I had a yoga routine; we even had hula hoops and practiced with the man who was hired to guard us. The enemy was outside, unseen and often undetectable, only bigger than our current enemy, but a potentially lethal enemy nevertheless.

Compared to those days, our current lockdown, called by a different name, is easier to manage. It’s true we don’t have anyone cooking and cleaning for us, and getting the newspaper and mail is more complicated now, what with gloves and disinfecting anything that comes into our house from the outside. But we have a yard that is waking up from winter, we live by the ocean with its calming rhythm of the tides and waves. We can have a glass of wine whenever we want, or something stronger.

I feel incredibly lucky, blessed, privileged – no hardship for us here. But I am troubled by my inability to do anything other than giving money (selectively, in the face of overwhelming needs) for those who are homeless,  on the run, displaced, stuck in no-man’s lands and/or addicted to things they can no longer get. 

I completed a 10 day course on Headspace on appreciation – with everything so out of balance it seemed like a good course to take, but I have found it hard to meditate on this topic – if there had been an exam I would have flunked it. Not because I have nothing to appreciate. Rather, because I find it very hard to live in the here and now in these very unsettling times where disappointments over what could have been, or worry about what is ahead crowd out the ‘being here now.’

All these things we thought could only be done face to face are now being done online, including our silent meeting for worship (Quakers) and yesterday my violin lesson. The possibility only exists, of course, if you have a solid internet connection and at least a couple of devices so everyone in the household can continue to participate in the world. 

This is the new differentiator between the have and have-nots. We knew access to the internet was important but it had never been such a critical factor as it is now: for kids to continue their schooling, for workers to continue in their jobs, for consulting with medical personnel and for information from experts and authorities on what to do and not to do and where to go for assistance.

Sita is now very busy with mutual help efforts to make sure no one is left out or left behind in her local community. She has asked us to do the same in our own community and pointed us to the findhelp.org website that directs people to local organizations and agencies that can assist with needs for food, healthcare consultations, transportation, money, work, etc. 

Mutual help societies have always been important aspects of communal life in many African and Asian countries – it is heartening that in this country, known for its rugged individualism, mutual help is now surfacing everywhere. The imagine comes to mind of a small seed pushing its first little tendrils through paved over land – we paved the world over with ‘me and mine’ concerns, that are now beginning to show cracks, as the small green sprouts push upward.