By Morf Morford
Tacoma Daily Index
“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.” – G.K. Chesterton
We all knew that the year 2020 would be a year dense with optic metaphors.
Vision and re-visions – looking at things anew or differently – is essentially the theme of the year.
To see things differently takes time. And who among us does not have a very different view of time than we had just a few months, if not weeks, ago?
Time, in some ways, has slowed to a glacial crawl. In other ways; events, changes in policy, medical advice, economic projections, even matters of literal life and death, seem to swirl like crazed shadows across a spotlighted sky.
Love him or hate him, I think we all knew that life with Mr. Trump as president would be one adventure after another.
Unrelenting scandals, almost weekly cabinet head assignments and dismissals, thousand point swings in the stock market on a near daily basis, and yes, our once-in-a-century pandemic came as if beckoned by the fates.
So we find ourselves, virtually all of us, confined to our quarters, like children sent to our room, for a collective “time-out” to consider what we have done and should do differently.
Many things we considered important just a few months ago seem trivial, if not tedious, now. And many things we took for granted, loom large on our field of vision now. Who among us does not miss the simple privilege of going to a grocery store and easily buying almost anything we wanted? Who among us ever imagined empty store shelves at our local grocery store?
Who would have thought toilet paper would dominate conversations across the country?
Some of us are seeing a world where the urgent and the important are becoming more clearly defined, where some things, like toilet paper and face masks, take on new, unforeseeable, importance, at least for those situations that require them.
We learned that when too many of us do anything, even something benign like going on a hike or going to a park, it can create a problem, if not hazard, for others.
Restaurants, businesses, schools, parks, even some government agencies are closed. We are all on a vacation that isn’t a vacation – except for those whose work is suddenly more important than any of us imagined a few short weeks ago; grocery workers, delivery drivers and medical staff among many others.
For many of us there is no going back. The sustained closure of businesses and services will not easily be mitigated. Crucial staff have left, moved or taken other positions. Supply chains have been disrupted.
Many people in my elongated and distorted social network have taken on skills and projects they never would have considered a few months ago – like sewing, home gardening and neighborhood networking and sharing.
Many young people started by making masks and are moving on to making their own clothes.
More and more of us are, out of necessity, preparing more of our meals at home. Home baking is taking off like few of us would have thought possible.
Some of us even like what we are creating.
Whether we like the end product or not, many of us are getting in the habit of taking more responsibility for the basics of our daily lives.
Some ideas, like Universal Basic Income (UBI), seen as preposterous just a few months ago, are now becoming acceptable, if not standard policy.
Money, after all, is what keeps businesses, large and small, alive. The flow of money generates new business, investment and taxes.
Just as you could say that labor produces value, you could argue that value inspires labor.
Money has been described as “green energy”- the focal point of any economy. The more “active” it is, the more vibrant and resilient the economy is.
You could make the argument that too many economies of the world have locked away their greatest wealth instead of using it as an investment for both the future and as a bulwark against threats – like disease or natural catastrophe.
COVID-19, besides being a health issue, has highlighted fractures that have always been there – but like toilet paper – take on new significance under these most strange of circumstances.
Who gets paid? Who is “essential”? What products are likely to be hard to find when we need them?
We find ourselves asking questions few if any of us even considered just a short time ago.
We are not even half-way through 2020 yet, our vision will certainly be refocused many times again as the progresses, but no matter what we see, or see again in a new way, nothing is as it once was.
We learn, but only when we have to, who we are, what we can deal with and who our true friends are when we are put under pressure as we have been lately.
“In prosperity, our friends know us. In adversity, we know our friends” – G.K. Chesterton
And I would add to Chesterton’s statement that we only encounter our true selves – and our truest values – when we face adversity.
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Guidance on Cloth Face Coverings from the Washington State Department of Health
Camp Murray, WA — Recent information suggests that a significant portion of persons with COVID-19 may not have any symptoms, and even those who do have symptoms can transmit the infection before showing signs of illness.
The Washington State Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now recommend that people wear cloth face coverings when they are in public settings where they cannot maintain 6 feet of distance from others. This might include trips to the grocery store, pharmacy, hardware store, health clinic or similar places.
This recommendation is not a substitute for existing guidance to maintain 6-feet of physical distance from non-household members and performing frequent hand hygiene with soap and water or alcohol-based hand sanitizer. Wearing cloth face coverings will not prevent spread of COVID-19 without these other protective measures.
This is not a mandate that you must wear a face covering. It is considered an additional layer of protection.
Visit the Washington State Department of Health website for the full guidance document.
