Looking for Fun in the Pandemic

 LOOKING FOR FUN IN THE PANDEMIC 

One of the things I hate most about the pandemic (besides the fact that it’s killed millions around the world) is that it’s made it hard for us to have fun. 

Remember the old, pre-pandemic days?  

Remember when we used to go maskless to restaurants and never think about how close we were to the others seated in the restaurant, never worried about whether they were vaccinated? Remember when we would just walk smiling into our favorite Italian restaurant, and the waitress who we’ve known for years would greet us and show us to our favorite table, and she was maskless and smiling too, and we all existed in a world where everybody was smiling and welcoming and warm.

If you went back to that restaurant today, probably everybody would be masked and anxious, and you might have to wait for a while to be seated because the restaurant is so short staffed.  Or what’s worse, the restaurant might have closed down a couple weeks ago – like my favorite restaurant just did – because people had stopped coming and COVID has taken out the staff.

And do you remember going to movie theaters and bars and libraries and museums and bowling alleys and churches?  Do you remember visiting friends?  Getting a hug when you came to their door? Sitting down on a couch with them?  Sitting so close – with no sense of social distancing – that you could actually put your hand out and pat them on the back when they said something really funny?

It’s been two years now since we first heard about the strange virus that was causing Wuhan in China to go into lockdown.  And the news hasn’t gotten better. The Delta variant and the Omicron variant have seen to that.  As of this afternoon, there have been 66.5 million cases reported in the US, and 851,000 deaths.  That’s a million more cases and a thousand deaths since yesterday when I started thinking about writing this column about fun in the pandemic.

So faced with all this bad news, what can we do to have fun in this pandemic?

I’ll tell you what I’ve discovered.  I’ve discovered that watching TV isn’t fun.  Maybe it’s different for other people, but sitting there in front of the TV and waiting to laugh at some old movie or jump up with excitement when superheroes start flying around isn't fun for me.  I’m still thinking of COVID and all the things I’d rather be doing.

What does give me fun, however, is having my family around, talking about the vacations we took in the  old days, looking at photos from a dozen years ago, playing board games with our daughter and her daughter, baking things in the kitchen, watching our 12-year old granddaughter practice her ballet moves.  

Those are the things that let me forget for a little while the mess this pandemic has created.

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My latest column for the Dziennik Zwiazkowy, the oldest Polish newspaper in America.

https://dziennikzwiazkowy.com/felietony2/w-poszukiwaniu-radosci-podczas-pandemii-looking-for-fun-in-the-pandemic/

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GODS

 Gods

1.  My God is God

My God lives in heaven and He lives here

In my heart and the hearts of those around me.

His thoughts are pure and true and gentle, 

and his truest wish is to dream of babies 

playing in water soft as white roses.

When His lips come together in a smile 

The heavens smile too and the rains say

“Goodbye, goodbye, the sun is coming”

And when He smiles men are never hungry 

and their wives have eyes as soft as roses too.

And where my God is, there are no strangers,

only brothers who will take our hands

And kiss our cheeks for luck along the road,

No matter how hard it is, no matter how long.

2.  Your God is the Devil  

He wears a broken hat and dead man’s clothes

and he comes from a place where men are hungry

and children die in the dirt waiting for dawn.

Nothing your stupid god wishes for comes true:

If he prays for peace he gets cyclones,

twisters that shred his skin like razors

and rain sorrow on all who pray to him.

If he wishes for love among brothers

he gets brothers who spit at each other,

fathers who beat their sons on their weddings days, 

daughters who flaunt their evil shoes and dresses

before their mothers and holy grandmothers.

Your god is a straw thing who fears my boot

And what I can do to him with my hands.

UNHAPPY NEW YEAR!

Unhappy New Year?

Let’s face it. 2021 was a mess.

Despite the various vaccines and the masking restrictions and the social distancing, the pandemic is still with us. More than 800,000 people have died of COVID so far here in the United States, and the numbers worldwide are even worse, almost 4.3 million deaths. And if that’s not bad enough, the Delta variant that has been raging across America has just made a new friend, the Omicron variant. And if that’s not bad enough, you can bet your bottom dollar on the fact that the Omicron variant will soon spin-off another variant and another and another.

No matter what the anti-vaxxers say, the pandemic is real, and it ain’t going away.

What also isn’t going away is climate change. 2021 saw bad weather like we haven’t seen ever. Most recently we saw those super tornadoes rip across Kentucky and Tennessee and even Illinois. They killed almost a hundred people and wrecked some towns that will never be rebuilt.

But that’s not all.

Let’s not forget the firestorms that ravaged the west coast, the typhoons in the pacific, and the temperature increases that are not only affecting us here in the US, but are changing the entire world. Ice is melting in Greenland and Iceland and north of the Arctic Circle like never before.

But that’s not all.

Right here in the United States, crime and violence are on the rise too. 2021 began with the riots in Washington, DC, and the year is ending with all of us following the school shooting that took place in Michigan recently. Both are troubling and disturbing, but what is just as troubling and disturbing is the rise of “normal” crime and violence. This is the violence and crime we read about in our newspapers and watch on our news shows everyday, the dozens of people who are murdered in cities like Chicago every week. So far this year, Chicago has seen almost 790 murders.

This bad year is coming to an end, and a new year is starting. Everywhere I go, people are greeting me with a “Happy New Year” wish. My friends and family members smile and say it over and over. “Happy New Year.”

I don’t know if they believe it or not that this New Year will be happy, but maybe like me they are hopeful that this year will not be the mess last year was.

After all, hope is our mother.

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My recent column for the great Dziennik Zwiazkowy, the oldest Polish Daily in America.