Rita Hartley

“Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” John F. Kennedy

This familiar quote from JFK, the 35^th US president, is worth contemplating in these tumultuous times (and might also be great advice for the 45^th US president*, but then again, he is a self-professed “stable genius”, knowing more about “Wall Street, taxes, trade, steelworkers, politicians, renewables, drones” etc, etc than anyone, so, if there was ever a guy who didn’t need to ask a single solitary question . . .)

You watch enough people march in the streets, locally and globally, for the freedom to NOT wear a mask, hoisting signs like “MY FREEDOM DOESN’T END WHERE YOUR FEAR BEGINS”, and you could get to thinking about human rights. I feel a mask protects you from me (although I did read recently there’s proof you get protection from it too) so I figure I’m kind of doing you a favour, protecting you in case I have coronavirus and don’t know. You refuse to wear a mask yet want to be in public places where masks are mandated? So . . . you don’t care about my health? Oh yeah, slap-myself-in-the-face emoji. As the sign says: it’s my “FEAR” you don’t care about!

I guess this is where/how human rights get tricky. I feel I have the right to protect my health and you feel you have the right to “FREEDOM”. But, surely freedom comes with some responsibility?

That GINORMOUS word, with it’s SIX friggin’ syllables! Oh man, it used to weight me down. Back in the day, when I had three young children and a full time job? Responsibilities made my TO DO list as vast as space. Until! I took a course in which the instructor flipped the word on me.

“Stop thinking of them as responsibilities,” he said, “and start thinking of them as your ‘ability to respond’.”

Wow! An Oprah “ah ha moment”, right there. How empowering is that? We all do have varying abilities – and gifts and strengths and so on – that enable us to respond appropriately to demands of home, work, community, country.

So, living in countries like Canada or the US, one does have the right to freedom, but there are several responsibilities that accompany that freedom, like for instance, obeying the law, paying taxes, and being community-minded. In Canada, “protecting and enjoying our heritage and environment” is another – a good one to be reminded of in this time of climate crisis. In the US, supporting and defending the constitution is also on the list, which confirms that the “guy-who-didn’t-need-to-ask-a-single-solitary-question” is sorely lacking in the ability to respond.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights as set out in Article 1 by the UN in 1948 states: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

Oh that second sentence: “reason and conscience”, “spirit of brotherhood”. Maybe we’ve lost something over the last 70something years? Or the UN made a GINORMOUS assumption?

In an article for vision.org a quote by Mary Ann Glendon, from 1991, points out a possible quandary: “Converging with the language of psychotherapy, rights talk encourages our all-too-human tendency to place the self at the center of our moral universe.”

Ah. And there’s this biggie: humans are heterotrophs. This is a new word for me, I’ve been dying to use it! What exactly is a heterotroph you ask, if you’re inclined, unlike some, to ask questions? Oxford dictionary: “an organism deriving its nutritional requirements from complex organic substances”. Meaning? Humans – and other heterotrophs – cannot live on sunshine and water alone. It’s a dog-eat-dog world. Eat or be eaten.

We’re consumers, for cripesakes, working hard at consuming every living thing Mother Earth has to offer!

I learned the word “heterotroph” from Robin Wall Kimmerer, the author of Braiding Sweetgrass, a book I highly recommend. She talks a lot about another word, “reciprocity”, which is the practice of exchanging things for mutual benefit. Kimmerer, with her indigenous background, observes nature from an all-inclusive perspective. Trees, along with many plants and animals, were here for a long time before humans came along, so they actually know more than us. What can they teach us? How do we show them respect? How do we give back?

Okay, so I’ve strayed a tad from the topic at hand, which was mask wearing during a pandemic. But what I’m trying to get at is that rights and responsibility are two sides of the same coin. We should not have one without the other. Being born human should give us many rights that seem self-evident, but what if we flipped it, thought seriously about what we can give back – to others, to Mother Earth and all the bounty she generously provides – for the sheer privilege of spending time on a beautiful blue planet?

If a majority of humans don’t start, soon, giving back, showing gratitude? I fear Mother Earth will say, “So glad to be rid of those ungrateful humans. They may have been born free, but wow! Expensive experiment.”

“Politics, these days, is no occupation for an educated man, a man of character. Ignorance and total lousiness are better (…) A demagogue must be neither an educated nor an honest man; he has to be an ignoramus and a rogue.” from the ancient Greek comedy The Knights, by Aristophanes

Aristophanes was born in 450 bce, so this begs the question, will we ever learn?

Ok, agreed. The current President* (45) did get a degree in economics, but according to author Michael Wolff (Siege, Fire And Fury) his college transcripts “are apparently terrible” and “this was a guy that was obviously not interested in school and possibly never read a book in his life.” Twitter, with its 280-character limit, has proven time and again and late into the cold dark night to be the perfect platform for such a man. Perhaps aides should tweet 45’s briefings to him; he’d be more likely to read them.

Would you describe 45 as “a man of character”?!?! Puh-lease! The shallowest of dives quickly debunks that conspiracy theory.

A demagogue? Defined thus: “a political leader who seeks support by appealing to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people rather than by using rational arguments.”

Rational arguments anyone? How about these irrational samples from a recent Trump rally:

*“You know, our doctors get more money if somebody dies from COVID. You know that, right? I mean, our doctors are very smart people – so what they do is they say, ‘I’m sorry, but, you know, everybody dies of COVID.’”

Fact Check, from Politifact: “Doctors and coroners fill out death certificates according to established rules and face legal penalties for falsification. Hospitals must prove to Washington that patients tested positive for the virus, and their doctors gain nothing from a COVID-19 diagnosis. There is no evidence that official death counts over report the reach of the disease.”

*“If these corrupt forces succeed in electing Joe Biden, Washington will see to it that another outsider never becomes president again. It’ll never happen again, and nobody has done in three and a half years, nobody, no administration, no president, what we’ve done and what we’ve accomplished, and it’s not even challenged.”

What “corrupt forces”? How will Washington see to it “another outsider never becomes president”? What, specifically, have you “done” and “accomplished”?

*“I don’t take my orders from the media, or as I affectionately call them the fake news media.” Then, on and on, “fake”, “more fake”, “corrupt”, “fake” is “not strong enough”, and so on and so forth.

Lesley Stahl of CBS, who 45 recently walked out of an interview on, says he once admitted that he bashes the press to “demean” and “discredit” reporters so that the public will not believe “negative stories” about him. Also note that, control – and discrediting – the media is one of at least 14 handy tools in the fascist’s toolbox, along with rampant sexism (anti-abortion, homophobic), protection of corporate power, and disdain of human rights, intellectuals and the arts.

*“All Democrat governors, you, Michigan, North Carolina, they’re all Democrat governors and they’re probably doing it because they want to affect the election. They’re probably doing it, by November 4^th they’ll announce, ‘We’ve decided to open up Pennsylvania.’”

Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania aren’t locked up. And with coronavirus still a major threat in the US and throughout the world? I think it’s pretty safe to expect that “COVID COVID COVID” discussions and restrictions will continue past November 4^th.

*“There’ll be no weddings, no Thanksgivings, no Christmas, no Easters, no Fourth of Julys. There’ll be nothing.”

Did Biden and the Democratic party run on a platform of cancelling EVERY SOCIAL GATHERING AMERICANS HAVE EVER ENJOYED FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIFE?

Hmmm. So, yeah, 45 is just a poor little demagogue with fascist tendencies. Someone to be pitied because those mean old Democrats and the fake news lamestream media keep picking on him! Whah! And after showing the American public, over and over again, his true colours – various shades of black – for the last three and half years? He’s secured approximately 50% of the vote. So there you have it folks, and you can pass it down to half your kiddies: bullying, lying, cheating, and stealing pay off!

Says Van Jones, CNN host, author and lawyer: “The political victory still may come. But I think for people who saw babies being snatched away from their mothers at the border, people sending their kids into schools where the n-word is now being used against them, for people seeing this wave of intolerance, they wanted a moral victory tonight. We wanted to see a repudiation of this direction for the country. And the fact that it’s this close I think is – it hurts. It just hurts.”

Covid fatigue anyone? Or, as my six-year-old granddaughter said months ago, when being reminded to social distance, “I know, I know. Coronavirus, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”

We’ve all got ‘em: the coronavirus blahs. The good news? A cost-saving thang? I don’t need Botox! My upper lip is permanently swollen (and chapped) from mask-wearing. And I don’t even wear one that much; I feel immensely sorry for those who must.

I have a friend who just finished a year of expensive invisalign tooth straightening. And now, thanks to the mask? Well, pretty much the only one who sees her perfectly aligned teeth is her husband.

Lipstick expenditures are way down though, huh ladies? Or do you continue to forget? Put it on to go out? Take it off again to put the mask on once you get there?

More good news? That mask is gonna keep your face nice and toasty in the winter, right?

Hmmm. The cooler weather is taking us inside, where we don’t feel safe, so to stay connected seems we’re back Zooming again. But, let’s just stay connected to each other and not drift off, fantasizing, and connect to . . . ahem, personal body parts like Jeffrey Toobin! My husband B calls it, “Zoomin’ with Toobin”. Oh geez. If you’re unfamiliar with the matter, you could Google it while that option is still available (Google was sued by the US government recently for their monopoly powers).

But, truly guys, it’s one thing when a person falls from grace and you’re ambivalent about that person, or you can’t stand them, right? I like(d) Toobin! He is (was?) highly intelligent and accomplished: a US lawyer, writer for the New Yorker, analyst for CNN, author of books for cripes’ sake! Alas, not intelligent enough to keep it in his pants while on a Zoom work call. As Heather Mallick writes in thestar.com, “On Twitter, good men are issuing pleas. ‘It is the easiest thing in the world to keep your junk in your pants. Don’t be a #MeToobin.’”

And just like that, as Confucius might say, man who allow little head to think for big head become big dickhead.

Bringing it back to masks, what do you think of anti-maskers? Perhaps you agree with them? Personally, I’ve been surprised by the huge protests over masks, in cities throughout the world. Locally, there’s been several incidents on transit services where people have become enraged about having to wear one. I say, if you don’t want to wear one, don’t go where they’re mandated. I mean, sure, they are annoying and suffocating, but we humans are so resilient, eh? You can adjust pretty quickly if you let yourself.

Maybe I’m too much of a follower – a “sheep” the anti-maskers would call me – but, I figure in a health crisis like this we should appeal to the most vulnerable, the most freaked out by it. And, it seems masks, along with social distancing, do work. Watching CBC news the other night, it was estimated mask-wearing in Canada is in the 80% range, while in the US, due to a lack of good federal leadership, it’s in the 60% range. A quick look at the stats shows that the infection and death rates in the US continue to be alarmingly high, while ours, although trending up now in some areas due to the change of seasons and increased activity, remain low.

Masked up and chatting with Jazzercise friends after class about anti-maskers, while also lamenting new restrictions that mean we’re reduced to 10 people/class, we agreed that, mentally, some people are just plain fed up. We are all fed up with this pandemic, but unfortunately it’s not fed up with us yet. Quick research (Google, still there? Ah, yes.) into the Spanish flu shows it lasted from February 1918 to April 1920. More than two years! But we’re more advanced right? Medically, technologically? Vaccines are being rushed through. But it’s looking like next spring, summer and will a vast majority of the population take them?

To show how far we’ve come in 100 years, here’s a recent Macleans’ magazine headline: “Sick president. Global pandemic. Racial injustice. Welcome to the U.S. election . . . of 1920.” Wow.

Don’t despair; I have more good news. Got a car? You can still go for a drive. And if you’re with your bubble or alone? You don’t need to mask up! Another Jazzercise friend did just that, embarking on an interesting adventure.

“Since I can’t travel to Europe,” she said, “I’ve been taking day trips to SWO (Southwestern Ontario) towns with European names.” On Facebook she posted her beautiful pics, resplendent in fall colours, from towns like Paris, Scotland and Copenhagen.

“While I was out exploring I sought out trails and conservation areas,” she added. “And also made sure to buy local – from an orchard, a cheese farm, markets, a couple of bakeries, a craft brewery, roadside stands, etc.”

So, depending on your point of view? You can rail against restrictions . . . or delight in the smell of the roses in your own backyard (where you don’t have to wear a mask! Lol.)

Hang in there! Be creative. We (kind of) know how to deal with this illness. Masks and social distancing and lots and lots of hand washing/sanitizer (oh, the red, raw hands!) do work. We’re probably in for a long, cold, dark winter (insert frozen blue gritted-teeth emoji here) but we can do this! Right?!

And as the days shorten and cool, perhaps it’s important to recall this quote from Alfred Wainwright: “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing.”

Don’t worry if your job is small,
And your rewards are few.
Remember that the mighty oak,
Was once a nut like you.
Anonymous

The thing about writing a blog during these tumultuous times –about these tumultuous times – is that by the time it’s done and, as the saying goes, in the can? It is done and should be chucked across the room and into the waste can! Three points!

What I finished last night and planned to post this morning fails to mention that 45 was diagnosed with coronavirus.

Unless you’re currently living atop Mt. Everest, you know by now the US president* has IT, so let’s connect the dots: he’s the 45^thpresident, hence the moniker 45. Perhaps, like me, you’re really tired of hearing his name? Barack Obama, explaining why he and Michelle stopped naming him way back, prior to his election even, was quoted this way in an article for The Atlantic: “He seems to do a good job mentioning his own name. So, I figure, you know, I will let him do his advertising for him(self).”

The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah, delights in calling him 45. Noah is from South Africa where 4-5 is slang for penis. If the shoe fits . . . but journalist Graydon Carter did describe “he-who-shall-not-be-named” (what my sister-in-law calls him) years ago as a “short-fingered vulgarian”. Lol.

Anyhoo, this blog is about nuts and if you happened to watch the “sh*tshow” (CNN’s Dana Bash called it!) of a recent not-so-presidential debate AND are now coming to terms with pandemic-denying-lying-non-mask-wearing 45’s diagnosis, then you can feel pretty darn good about not being nuts like him.

The nuts I want to talk about? The ones inside our brain. For instance, there’s the amygdala, so named due to their almond shape. They’re actually amygdalae, as there’s two of them, sitting at the base of the brain, one on each hemisphere.

If you caught any of the sh*tshow, what you could say happened to 45 (and seems ongoing) was an “amygdala hijack”, described by verywellmind.com as “the fight-or-flight response that takes place when you are faced with a perceived threat”. Fear, anxiety, aggression and anger kick it off, releasing hormones that prepare the body to fight or run.

We’ve talked about this in the blog before, how if, like way back in the good ol’ days, a sabre-tooth tiger is stalking you, this system is superb for the preservation of life. In modern times though? Did 45 have someone to physically fight or run from? (Trevor Noah did suggest in his assessment of the sh*tshow perhaps they should have just duked it out.)

Regardless, minus a physical threat, 45 sweated buckets (maybe a sign of illness?), interrupted at least 128 times in 90 minutes (according to slate.com), raised his voice and generally looked and acted like someone under threat by a sabre-tooth tiger. Despite what you may think of him, I’m sure we’d all agree that Joe Biden is more loyal old blonde Lab than ferocious tiger, huh?

To use Biden’s phrasing, “here’s the deal”:  while the almonds are great for saving us from threat, it’s unhealthy – for mind and body – to keep them constantly activated. You may recall times in your life when you’ve succumbed to an amygdala hijack and overreacted to a situation, then regretted it later. Don’t beat yourself up: the almonds are powerful, disabling the newer, more rational areas of the brain – the frontal lobes – that can talk you down. Two ways, according to healthline.com, you can raise your emotions from these base, powerful, negative ones?

• Reasoning. Engage the frontal lobes to think the situation through, review options, and choose a rational response.
• Meditation. Relax body and mind through meditation or deep breathing, altering the brain’s focus. (You may have noticed Biden doing this throughout the sh*tshow, lowering his head, closing his eyes, breathing.)

Also within our brain? There’s the pineal gland, so-named because it resembles a tiny pine cone (which, as you may or may not have considered, houses nuts). It sits toward the back of the brain, and if you’re familiar with Fibonacci’s constant – a mathematical sequence that repeats over and over in nature – you’ll be excited to learn that if you follow the golden ratio along the circumference of the brain, the spiral ends at the exact point of the pineal gland. Wow!

Seventeenth-century philosopher and scientist Rene Descarte called the pineal gland “the principal seat of the soul”. I’ve been reading Becoming Supernatural by Dr. Joe Dispenza, in which he denotes an entire chapter to this little nugget. It gets pretty complicated, but here it is in a nutshell, pun intended. Ha ha.

If you meditate well enough, pulling energy up from your lower chakras, or lower spine, and into the brain, specifically the pineal gland, which acts like an antenna? You can improve your health while also tapping into the unified field (quantum physics) to experience life beyond the senses, beyond the material. While that may sound crazy, Dr. Dispenza has studied this at length; he has the brain scans, case studies and personal experience to back it up.

As humans, I feel it is our responsibility on Earth to continuously grow, learn, expand. Current global events are so scary and unstable they threaten to pull us down, pull us apart. Don’t succumb! Resist. Keep rising up. Overpower the almonds by engaging your frontal lobes. Try to activate that wee pine cone planted deep within your brain. Trust in the divine unknown. Now more than ever, the world requires us to be mighty, like the oak.

“In understanding oneself, we understand others; in feeling compassion for oneself, we feel compassion for others.”
Andy Puddicombe, Headspace

It seems simple enough. I mean, you spend 24/7 with yourself. Therefore, you should be an expert on you, right?

Well, yes . . . and no. According to psychological studies, it turns out we’re super good at gauging our emotional stability. But with observable traits, like appearance, or things like introverted/extroverted-ness? Others can clearly see those with their own eyes. And with evaluative traits, like intelligence, creativity? According to Adam Grant writing in The Atlantic article “People Don’t Actually Know Themselves Very Well”, “you just can’t be trusted”.

Why? Because most of us want desired qualities, like intelligence and creativity. And most of us want to be seen as unbiased too. But, because we’re so damn close to the action? Our perspective is distorted.

Writes Steve Ayan for scientificamerican.com in “10 Things You Don’t Know About Yourself”, “(Princeton University psychologist Emily) Pronin argues that we are primed to mask our own biases. As a result, our self-image has little to do with our actions. For example, we may be absolutely convinced that we are empathetic and generous, but still walk past a homeless person on a cold day.”

While I agree it’s challenging to see our own biases, I’m not sure this is the best example. Perhaps you’re running late and truly have no change/cash? Or you gave to this person earlier in the day? Or, like what happened to one of my friends, you bought him a sweet (and expensive) pair of gloves for his red, raw hands a week ago and he threw them back at you, said, “I don’t want these!” Perhaps the gloves would’ve made him a less sympathetic character on the cold city street? Or he just wanted cashola for drugs?

And so, for generosity, I say pick meaningful causes to you and contribute what you can. For many, philanthropy is something that comes at a later stage in life, when finances are fairly stable and one understands the responsibility of giving back, the potential lifting of the heart it can provide. I have a friend in fundraising who shared a story about a wealthy donor who she worked with over the years, eventually tailoring his giving to his personality and lifestyle, and how much he blossomed through this process.

Quite likely, she saw things in him he could not see in himself. Getting back to Grant in The Atlantic piece, he points out, “Chances are, your coworkers are better at rating some parts of your personality than you are.”

Grant goes on to say that “sixteen rigorous studies of thousands of people at work” back this up. “As a social scientist,” he says, “if I want to get a read on your personality, I could ask you to fill out a survey on how stable, dependable, friendly, outgoing, and curious you are. But I would be much better off asking your coworkers to rate you on those same traits: They’re often more than twice as accurate. They can see things that you can’t or won’t.”

“(M)ore than twice as accurate”? Wow. What a bunch of liars we are!

What to do about this? Well, if you have coworkers? You could give them a survey? And then grow some really thick skin if you agree to accept honesty?

I think it’s just good to know, don’t you? That we kid ourselves from time to time? So, why waste energy on defensiveness? Maybe it helps explain why others say daft things about themselves, like, “I’m a stable genius.” Activities like mindfulness meditation and journaling can help, as thoughts can be observed with some distance and without judgment. Accepting oneself as a malleable being is helpful too, as that’s what we’re all here for, right? To adapt, change, learn, grow?

I recently read a great observation by Keith Boag, writing for the CBC on Trump in “The Great Divider”, about “the human temptation to believe what’s most convenient”. I regard it as a warning, a reason to stay diligent about the self, to stay curious, to keep digging.

“No one understands that foible, or uses it more effectively, than Trump. Essential to his exploitation of racial tension is his understanding that people will believe what they want to believe about others so that they can believe what they want to believe about themselves.”

Don’t assume (recall the last blog, Road To Hell– “ass” “u” “me”) you’re not biased. Educate yourself on the history and experiences of minorities in your community, country and throughout the world. Ask questions when you can and listen to the answers. Observe your thoughts.

Jennifer Eberhardt, who specializes in bias training, writes in Biased, “The promise of bias training is not to magically wipe out prejudice but to make us aware of how our minds work and how knee-jerk choices can be driven by stereotypes that cloud what we see and perceive.”

Reject the us vs them trap. We are all one. Human. We need each other. To fight a pandemic, a major climate crisis. Not each other.

“We judge ourselves by our intentions, we judge others by their actions.”

This quote has been attributed to various people, but I first heard it from my husband B. He found it in a fortune cookie years ago and keeps it attached to his computer monitor at work as a reminder. While at first blush it seems to lack fortune-telling quality, your lack of adherence to its wisdom could affect your future by drowning you in a bowl of rancid alphabet soup with other people from time to time.

Maybe you’re okay with rancid alphabet soup? Or maybe you don’t notice – the stench, the chaos? Me? When I find myself in that stinking, confusing mess? My mind locks on the many times I’ve effed up in the past, all the times I was 100% sure I was right, but no, now look dammit! Let’s check off the list:

Jumping to conclusions without a full investigation? Check.
Possible condescension in tone? Check.
Anger about the issue removing empathy for the other? Check.

As a comment on reddit.com puts it: “When we make a mistake, we allow ourselves the excuse ‘but I meant well’. When others make mistakes, we assume they’re just f**ktards.”

Hmmm: “we assume”. How many times have we been reminded that that friggin word makes an “ass” out of “u” and “me”, and yet? We still assume. Well, I still often do. Have you managed to get that one under control?

And here we find ourselves, all 7.8 billion of us on the planet, with our myriad backgrounds, colours and languages, dealing with responses to various major crises – a pandemic, a reckoning on race, a pending economic downturn, climate change – along with the minor crises of just being alive on planet Earth – severe weather, blown brakes on my rusted out jalopy, bright pink lipstick on the inside of my mask, again! – and it’s hard to cope, right? Are you finding it hard to cope and that everyone’s fuse is just a little shorter? Or, am I just making excuses for myself?

The noise out there is LOUD.

Politicians, bickering and lying. But, hasn’t this always been the case? Don’t they have to lie, you know, for our own good? Are they lying more?

And there’s so much “fake news”. Did it not exist before? Didn’t it used to be called “propaganda”? Or, is that somehow different?

And the “conspiracy theories”?! But, they existed before. Look at all the ones on JFK’s death – it was a “mob hit”, it was “umbrella man”, the “government did it”. Is it because social media spreads them further, faster now?

Anyway, what was I getting at? Am I worried I’m on the road to Hell because sometimes I forget B’s fortune cookie advice? Perhaps I should get a copy of it, attach it to my computer?

B says, “Well, at least you’re not doubling down. You’re admitting that you were wrong, right?”

And being wrong (yet again) makes me think of the Fonz from Happy Days. (You’d think I’d have more, that all of those childhood hours I spent in front of a TV would reap reams of details from various shows. No. This one bit of this one episode I do remember.) If you ever watched the show you’ll recall that the Fonz had way too big of an ego to be wrong. But the cast and events throughout the half-hour (including commercial breaks to refill the chip bowl) showed the Fonz that he’d indeed been indisputably wrong. (It’s a thing you may fantasize about in real life, cornering your opponent, saying just the right thing at just the right time to make your very valid point. But, as you know, it NEVER happens this way.)

And the Fonz goes, “I was wrrr, I was wrrr, I was wrrr.” I don’t know how many “wrrr”’s it takes before he actually says “wrong”, but it’s a memorable scene. It made me appreciate the Fonz even more, you know? Because, as hard as it was, he did admit it.

Some people can’t say, “I was wrong.” But in our dealings with them? We must remember their intentions are likely good. And if they’re just paving their own personal road to Hell? Their choice, not yours.

Everyone wants to be good at growing something, yes? Or is it just me? Surely we all have a green thumb – latent or glowing – as Science Daily boasts evidence of human trial plant cultivation from as long as 23,000 years ago. It’s in our DNA to want to grow things!

I have friends, a couple (I’d say Dutch, which they are, but that would be stereo-typing, right, and we’re trying not to do that anymore, but why is it that some Dutch people are so very hard-working, and so damn good at gardening?) whose gardens are so inviting and lush that when a neighbour recently got a first peak into their backyard he couldn’t help but burst out with something like, “Holy Garden of Eden!”

Orchids? Not a problem for her, the stunning blooms just keep coming, as if magical. Grass? For him? It’s truly like the thickest, richest emerald carpet over the most expensive underlay on the planet. Crabgrass would not even think about spreading its ugly, crabby self down amid that kind of beauty. First off? It would have a hard time gaining purchase due to the zillion-thread-count-nature of the healthy green blades. Secondly? It would have like a half-second life span. He’d attack immediately with whatever kind of weaponry a grass expert uses in this type of battle.

Instead? Crabgrass seeds blow on down south to my place.

Now, some of you may boast you have the best crabgrass in town – last year a Jazzercise member told me, “If it weren’t for crabgrass I’d have no lawn at all” – but I’m pretty confident of my crop here. So much so, that when I thought I saw it sprouting, in abundant ugliness in early spring, in an area on the front lawn where the previous fall I’d put down several bags of soil and overflowing handfuls of turf builder dense shade mix, I made a big decision.

I told my husband B about it. “Well. I’ve decided!”

“Hmm-mm?” he said, happily poking about on his computer, rearranging numbers on spreadsheets. And perhaps? Here’s the thing: if he helped me, like my gardening friends . . . could we also have a Holy Garden of Eden in our backyard instead of a Holy Garden of Weeds?

“I’ve decided,” I confessed. “I really really like crabgrass!”

“Yeah?”

“It’s just so beautiful. And abundant. And easy to grow! And also . . . green.”

“Okay.”

But here’s another thing: there’s a big difference between deciding to like crabgrass and actually liking crabgrass. Once Sgt Major Crabgrass gets her soldiers trained and ready for combat? Those Green Berets march all over every square inch of your lawn, soaking up rain, sun, digging incredible trenches – good for ongoing muscle-building – all in an effort to fight a war that is . . . well, let’s face it. The battlefield is your lawn.

Want the battle to be somewhere else? Well, you’ve got a battle on your hands, don’t you? And knees. You have to be willing (and able) to get down and personally annihilate every single Green Beret. (There could be a spray, but it will annihilate you too.) But wait! That’s not all! You have to also be willing (and able), according to my emerald-green-carpet-growing friend, to immediately get thyself to a garden store and get copious bags of soil and grass seed to fill all those gaping holes – it was a battlefield, after all – you’ve gouged in your pathetically poor excuse for a lawn. Otherwise? Well, the myriad Green Berets will jump back to attention before you can say Holy Field of Crabgrass.

Crabgrass, antlerservices.com: “This grass if left unchecked will produce hundreds of seeds per plant, growing each summer and dying in the fall. A single plant will look like a large crab (truth!) by the end of the summer with as many as 125,000 seeds (horror-face emoji).”

No one ever said growing emerald green carpet would be easy. Crabgrass? Those Green Berets are trained, strong and able, always awaiting marching orders. Low on seeds? Come on over, I have buckets full.

Masking for a friend.

LOL and haha.

We need to laugh more, huh? It’s hard to laugh with a mask on, yes? You risk passing out. It’s also hard to laugh while witnessing the coronavirus disaster south of us, knowing from our Canadian experience that, with a proper and serious response? It didn’t have to be this bad!

OMG! On a day when the US hit another single day record for new cases – 67,417 – the President* was more intent on blaming China for sending a “plague” and campaigning from the Rose Garden (a serious, but typical for this guy, breach of protocol). Empathy? Fuhgetaboutit. All that’s in 45’s bag-o-tricks? Blame, denial, lies. Oh, and self aggrandizement.

For laughs? How about the Trump administration’s insistence that the only reason coronavirus case numbers are up is because of the phenomenal amount of testing the US is doing? My favourite fb meme in response to this is a woman, highly pregnant, saying, “If only I didn’t take that pregnancy test . . .”

I want to do what the President* does, assign blame (to him) for the horrific mess the US is in, but what good does it do? It’s painfully obvious he’s in over his head, has been from day one. He’s doing what he does best: con, verb, from the Oxford dictionary: persuade (someone) to do or believe something, typically by use of deception.

This “profile of a liar” is interesting, from The Confidence Game by Maria Konnikova:

“He does not answer questions, or gives evasive answers; he speaks nonsense, rubs the great toe along the ground, and shivers; his face is discolored; he rubs the roots of his hair with his fingers.”

Sound like someone you’ve been hearing, seeing way too much lately? Well, it’s from 900 BCE, so either liars haven’t changed much in almost 3,000 years or someone back then was real good at predicting the future.

It might be helpful for all of us to read The Confidence Game right now, as it “takes us into the world of the con to examine not only why we believe in confidence artists but how our sense of truth can be manipulated by those around us”. A good future political prophylactic.

That’s the tricky thing about a democratic society, eh? Sometimes people don’t know what’s good for them and they elect Mickey Mouse, because of his TV ratings, his spritely manner, his ears perhaps. When they could have had . . . John Kasich.

Kasich, a Republican, was the last candidate standing against 45’s bid for the presidency. And he has tons of political experience! He was governor of Ohio from 2011 to 2019. He was a member of the US House of Representatives from 1983 to 2001. And, also unlike 45, he writes (and reads) books. Here’s a helpful one for the times, published by Kasich last year: It’s Up To Us.

It is up to us. We can look to our leaders for guidance, for inspiration, but if and when they fail us? It’s time for a grassroots revolution. I guess, kind of like what’s happened with the racial unrest movement that began in the US with George Floyd’s death, then expanded worldwide. As Dave Chapelle pointed out in his Netflix special 8:46, “This is the streets talking for themselves!” It’s up to us to make a difference.

Individually, we can read Black history, examine our responses, thoughts and attitudes about race. We can do some of the suggestions in Kasich’s book:

*be the change where you live
*love thy neighbour
*put yourself in someone else’s shoes
*examine your eternal destiny
*know that you are made special

And, as the particular areas in which we live begin to relax coronavirus restrictions? We can continue to follow the guidelines of health professionals and scientists (lordy, lordy, not the politicians, as another fb meme points out that would be like getting a colonoscopy from a plumber) so that we keep ourselves and our loved ones safe.

Coronovirus is real and still exists. For people who think it’s all a hoax, I ask:

Why would Wuhan have built a hospital in 10 days to deal with coronavirus patients?
Why would we have gotten so many stories from Italy about having to enact wartime measures to deal with critical patients?
Why would we have had to endure so many daily pressers by NY Governor Andrew Cuomo? Oh, scratch that. (Blushing.) I really did not mind at all. I’ll admit: I’m cuomosexual.

Practice safe six. Mask for a friend. As another fb meme wisely observes: “If you hate wearing a mask, you’re really not going to like the ventilator.”

Website photo: Me, masking for a friend, and realizing how great masks are  for the, ahem, older person, taking selfies!

Hindsight is 2020: learn from your mistakes. The year is certainly living up to its name, huh?

With three major crises gripping the globe – racial tensions preceded by an ongoing pandemic and the resulting economic fallout – and a fourth lurking – the climate crisis – you’re forgiven for feeling overwhelmed on where to start breaking it all down. Here’s a quick distillation of some recent discoveries I’ve made while following my own advice to Listen and Learn:

#BlackLivesMatter

On white privilege: I’ve had a number of discussions with friends and family about this term, which is best understood by knowing what it’s NOT. Cory Collins writes in “What Is White Privilege, Really?”, “White privilege is not the suggestion that white people have never struggled.” Collins groups his observations under the following:

“Power of Normal”
*flesh-coloured band-aids in the first aid kit
*a small “ethnic hair product” section in the pharmacy
*a grocery store stocked with white choices
*TV shows and books predominantly portraying whites

“Power of the Benefit of the Doubt”
*whites are less likely to be followed, questioned or searched by law enforcement
*white skin does not cause distrust for credit, financial responsibility
*whites are less likely to be presumed guilty of a crime if accused, less likely to be sentenced to death and more likely to be portrayed in a fair manner by media
*faults by whites are less likely to deny opportunity later

“Power of Accumulated Power”
This encompasses everything from wage gaps to medical care to job, education, and housing opportunities which all result in opportunities for families to pass along their wealth.

An understanding of white privilege helps us see how “systemic racism” is built right into our societies and consequently, how to focus efforts to eradicate it.

On BVE (Black Vernacular English), also known as AAVE (African American Vernacular English): I had no idea these terms existed until my daughter recently got chewed out on social media for posting a picture of herself on a SUP (stand-up paddle board) with the caption “SUP bro”. Trying to be light amid all the heaviness, she got heaviness heaped on her. I guess the complainant, a white woman, took issue with her use of the term “bro”, suggesting it was a term white people should not use. I looked it up, it’s obviously short for “brother”, and although it started out referring to African-American men? According to The Atlantic, “Today, it’s a term that refers to beer-chugging frat boys.” In feminuity.com Anisha Phillips lists some BVE sayings: lit, sis, slay, hella, straight up, on fleek, I feel you, turn up. Since I’ve no clue what “on fleek” means, I’ll pass on it, but I do say “sis”. One of my granddaughters sometimes calls her sister “sissy”, has been doing so for a long time and I think it’s the sweetest so I copy it. I’m not going to stop. Let’s agree that Black people can use the N-word, white people absolutely can’t. And if there’s a term I absentmindedly use that’s offensive to a Black person? Perhaps a Black person could let me know?

On Blackface and Jim Crow: I learned how these two are connected by listening to the podcast 1619, which I highly recommend. So it was the third installment, “The Birth of American Music”, which I thought would be just a nice light listen. American journalist and film critic Wesley Morris details how in the early 1800s, white actor Thomas D Rice overheard a Black man tending to his master’s horse: the way he sang, the way he moved. Rice slapped some black paint on his face for his next show, imagined what it would be like to be Black, sang a song about “Jumpin’ Jim Crow”, earned 12 standing ovations and . . . the minstrel show was born. Minstrel shows made fun of Blacks, made them out to be lazy and stupid, yet, possibly due to white people’s guilt over slavery? They endured for over a hundred years. And those Jim Crow laws that brutally enforced racial segregation in the Southern US in the late 19^th and early to mid 20^th centuries? Well, if you didn’t already know? Now you know where they got their name and why Blackface is so very offensive.

On white supremacy being about power: thinking about this got me thinking about the opposite of power, which is a lot of negative words – inability, incapacity, weakness, impotence. While no one wants to be seen as weak, is it necessary to have ultimate power over others? And over your environment, which is what many of my white ancestors seemed to desire. Here’s a couple of other suggestions for the opposite of power: gentleness, kindness. It’s beyond time.

#Coronavirus

On being over it: it’s not over us. The WHO reported the highest single-day global rise in cases so far on Father’s Day.

On masks: Vanity Fair headline – “If 80% of Americans Wore Masks, COVID-19 Infections Would Plummet”

On transmission: The New York Times says, “We know that being outdoors is lower risk for coronavirus transmission than being indoors.”

#Schadenfreude

On wishing the US President* would just go away already: While being appalled at his Tulsa rally speech, I don’t feel the rush of pleasure I expected to feel while observing the glaring failure of the event, and his obvious disappointment over the mere 6,200 attendees. I guess that makes me . . . empathetic.

#Mindfulness

On the human negativity bias: Author Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche reminded me of this on the podcast Ten Percent Happier, referring to it as 10-finger perception. So, say we have nine qualities within us that are positive and one negative. What do we tend to focus on? The negative one, of course. It’s the same with the news, which is abundant lately with scary, negative reports. While you should know what’s going on, with the virus, the protests, and the economy, balance it out with the numerous good qualities of life – like sitting on a patio – that can still be enjoyed despite the ongoing pandemic.

“A riot is the language of the unheard.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

How’s your heart feeling? Heavy? Damaged? Broken?

Your lungs? “I can’t breathe.” A plaintive mantra for the times: coronavirus attacking the lungs, daily news attacking the psyche, police officers attacking a Black man’s throat.

Whether you’ve watched it or not (I avoid violent videos), I’m sure you’ve heard all about the 8 minutes and 46 seconds that a Minneapolis police officer spent kneeling on George Floyd’s throat, effectively snuffing out his life while three other officers looked on.

“You can’t be human and not be affected by that video,” Iowa Hawkeye head football coach Kirk Ferentz said, addressing his team recently. “I’m sure that many of you felt the same way I did – heartbroken. Frustrated. Angry.”

Heartbroken. Frustrated. Angry. Tears well up as I type these words, picturing Ferentz saying them, hearing the emotion in his voice. My husband B is from Iowa, so I’ve watched many a Hawkeye game and know Ferentz is an emotional guy. And a damn good leader, a moral one.

I had to look it up, because he’s said so little on the topic, but the President* used similar words to describe the tragedy: “It has filled Americans all over the country with horror, anger, and grief.” Here’s the thing: hearing these words from a person who sorely lacks leadership skills, has a shattered moral compass, and lies liberally and deliberately? They just don’t have the same heft.

You can’t expect comfort, advice, or a unifying message from such a man. Instead? I watched in horror, anger and grief when he had pepper spray, rubber bullets and flash grenades unleashed on peaceful protestors prior to a 7 pm curfew in Washington, DC so that he might enjoy a photo opp in front of the Church of the Presidents, where he plucked a Bible from his daughter’s $1,500 handbag and waved it around, upside-down and backwards.

I do feel we can look to our own leader, Prime Minister Trudeau, despite brownface criticisms; pictures of him dressed as Aladdin from 2001 surfaced a while back. To me? He seems like the kind of guy who likes costumes – he’s been criticized for showing off his fancy socks, got a lot of flak for the garb he wore while in India – and I can relate as I love dressing up too. But this kind of dressing up is “cultural appropriation”. While it may have been done by white people decades ago without a second thought, on this I think we’ve listened and learned. It’s perceived as mockery; it causes pain.

“It was something that I didn’t think was racist at the time,” Trudeau said. “but now I recognize it was something racist to do and I am deeply sorry.”

He did something wrong and apologized for it, something I’ve not seen his counterpart in the US ever do. Asked the other day to respond to the President*’s call for military action against protesters in the US, Trudeau was speechless for more than 20 seconds. Then? “We all watch in horror and consternation what’s going on in the United States,” he said. “It is a time to pull people together, but it is a time to listen, it is a time to learn what injustices continue despite progress over years and decades. But it is a time for us as Canadians to recognize that we too have our challenges, that Black Canadians and racialized Canadians face discrimination as a lived reality every single day. There is systemic discrimination in Canada.” You have to see it, admit it’s there, to fix it, yes?

I’m a white woman. I have no clue what it’s like to be Black. Trudeau’s white. Coach Ferentz said this to his team: “I am a white football coach. I cannot begin to imagine what it is like to be pulled over for driving while Black or to have people cross the street because they don’t want to walk alongside you.” Being white, we enjoy privileges most Black people can only dream of.

If you’re like me and you want to listen, learn, understand, I highly recommend Dan Harris’s podcast Ten Percent Happier in which he interviews author Lama Rod Owens. It’s called “An Uncomfortable (But Meaningful) Conversation About Race”. Being white, it is uncomfortable, because I want to understand, but I don’t want to hurt, don’t want to say the wrong thing. And being white in Southwestern Ontario means meeting very few Black people, but there are many other ethnic groups in the region to be considerate of.

Owens talks about what he calls Black heartbreak. “I grew up with this heavy disappointment because I was born into a system that I did not consent to,” he says. “Heavy disappointment.” That is heartbreaking isn’t it? It’s certainly something I know nothing about.

He suggests being curious, asking your friends of all stripes how they’re doing in this moment. He cautions that the intellect – a place white folks tend to go for security, escape – is not the answer, that the constant return to the body, to the feelings will help connect, point the way.

Getting back to Coach Ferentz, he pointed out, “These are painful times for our nation and community. One of the most important traits a leader can demonstrate is the ability to listen. To always have an attitude of learning.”

And we are all leaders in our own communities, families. To effect positive change? We need to listen. And learn.

Website photo: wise words from a protest sign in Des Moines, Iowa.