Category: History

Hoping For the Best

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

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When I was a teen there was a song that advocated living for today. The whole idea was to set aside worries and enjoy the moment. It was a kind of rebellious chant against the work ethic that seemed to be driving our country into a state of anxiety and materialism. Many young people, myself included, began to question the way things had always been done and wonder if there were possibilities that might create a more equitable and prosperous life for everyone, not just the power elites.

Of course there was nothing really new about youthful indulgence into utopian thinking. It’s something that has characterized teens and twenty somethings for centuries. Some of the most revolutionary and profound ideas in history came from young people who had grown weary of the status quo. So too did I envision a world free of prejudice, poverty and artificial hierarchies. I was more than ready to rebel against the lack of freedoms and opportunities for minorities, women and the poor. In some ways my generation lit the fires that evoked change for the better but as so often happens we became distracted and burdened by the responsibilities of life. Soon enough we were the people over thirty whom we had distrusted. Like so many before us we settled into the rat race and focused on our families and our occupations. We had little time for philosophizing or inventing new ways of doing things.

Now my generation is old and only tenuously maintaining a hold on the power to influence. Yes, our president is from my age group and so is his presumed opponent for the job, but it is apparent that a younger group will soon enough be taking over the reins. In the meantime most of the folks my age have retired from work and are spending much deserved moments enjoying however many years they may have left on this earth. With more time to consider such topics we sometimes ponder our accomplishments and worry that perhaps we might have done more to leave a kinder more promising legacy to our children and grandchildren. After all, what is really the purpose of our day to day existence if not to make a difference?

The last twenty years have been plagued by terror, wars, economic turmoil, extremes of climate and the emergence of hate groups that had been long festering underground. We are as divided as a nation as we were in the sixties and seventies of my youth. Perhaps we are even beginning to understand how life was for our great grandparents who found themselves engaged in a civil war. It has been challenging to watch the deterioration of our relationships that is often fueled by the very people who should be bringing us together. It is particularly sad for those of us who invested so much energy into the idea of making our country an inviting place for everyone regardless of who they might be. Now without warning we are dealing with what may well be the most damaging moment of our history.

Covid-19 has further accented our rifts and made it more clear than ever that we have issues that are still to be resolved. As I sit inside my home at the age of seventy one I grieve for the world, but most implicitly for my nation. I can see that we are not united at all and that our differences seem to be widening rather than mending. We are too much guided by fear and basic needs to work for a self actualized version of our nation. Because we want quick fixes we appear to be placing bandaids on our wounds rather than attempting to understand and heal the root causes of our problems.

When we only react rather than create rational plans we are bound to overlook the pitfalls of our decisions. I feel certain that the vast majority of people want what is best for everyone but in our hour of uncertainty we appear to be allowing those who are the loudest and most aggressive to determine our fates. Instead of putting the best medical and business minds together we are pitting them with one another as though we can’t be safe from the ravages of Covid-19 while also keeping our economy moving as robustly as possible. It has become a them against us free for all in which we witness people hoarding and scrambling for crumbs, all while taunting and insulting anyone who disagrees with whatever they happen to believe.

I have seen this kind of behavior before. It was very much a sign of the times during my youth. Then it was called the generation gap. It meant choosing sides between those who served in Vietnam and those who were against the war. It involved a pretense of fairness when certain races were segregated from the freedoms that the rest of us enjoyed. It kept women from thriving in engineering schools or colleges of architecture. Anyone who disagreed with the status quo of the country was told to “love it, or leave it.” It was not the romanticized era to which so many want to return.

We made some progress for many people but we became weary of the fight. We let down our guard and became self satisfied while new difficulties emerged. Our children and grandchildren kept warning us that there was till much work to be done but we only laughed at their intensity and reminded them that we all feel that way for a time and then get over it. Now I see that getting over it can be a dangerous thing. It leaves us unready and vulnerable when we do not work together to build and repair the foundations of our nation. We revert to partisan thinking and the hateful ways engendered by fear.

I am worried but not so much for me anymore. I am fearful of what my children and grandchildren will have to endure because we appear to be so incapable of setting aside our differences in a time of need. I am worried because so many are unwilling to sacrifice to get us all through of our difficulties. I worry when I see protestors threatening with guns. I worry when I hear insulting and racist comments fall so easily from people’s tongues. I worry because I see fear and ignorance and politics guiding decisions.

I have always been both fascinated and inspired by a story about the great depression in my city of Houston. Unlike other places the banks here never closed. As the tale goes the movers and shakers of the city met with Jesse Jones in the Rice Hotel and they agreed that instead of working in competition with one another they would join forces to make certain that nobody would have to go out of business. While times were nonetheless tough they indeed managed to keep most of the commerce working if only in a lesser form of itself. It was the understanding that saving as many people as possible was better than attempting to emerge as a single victor that kept the Houston economy working better than in most locales.

My daily prayer is that we will find a way to emulate cooperation and send a loud message to those who would have us fight among ourselves. We can emerge with cuts and scrapes or we can risk being mortally wounded. The difference will be determined by how willing we are to work together. I hope we find a way to make that happen.

We Can’t Keep Looking Away

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

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I have a grandson who is a runner. Seeing him gracefully striding around a track is a thing of beauty, the ultimate vision of human endurance and grace. He has a particular racing style that reminds me of a gazelle and I never tire of watching him in action.

This would have been a record breaking year for him but sadly after only a few track meets the season ended when schools were closed due to the virus. He has continued to run each day nonetheless. Those moments when he is able to feel the wind on his face and achieve a feeling of being totally in sync with the world have been good for him. They allow him to forget about the troubles we are facing if only for a few minutes each day.

I thought of my grandson when I first heard of the killing of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia by two men claiming to have taken him down under suspicion of being a thief on the run. When I eventually saw the video of Ahmaud in his last moments I was stunned. I saw his jogger’s stride before he encountered his attackers. This was not the furtive motion of someone evading capture. It was most certainly the pace of a seasoned runner who was pursuing a most innocent pastime. He must have been terrified as he realized what was happening and he struggled unsuccessfully to get away from the danger. Watching the film is exceedingly difficult and heart wrenching but we cannot look away from it because it holds a truth that we must face.

Of course there is a difference between my grandson and Ahmaud that is striking. Ahmaud was a black man while my grandson has blonde hair and blue eyes. Ahmaud had a lovely smile that lit up his face, but those vigilantes who became judge, jury and executioner without even a consideration of evidence would never have seen his sweetness. The color of his skin and the fact that he was running was all they needed to know.

Sadly they got away with their crime for a time. Law enforcement accepted their story and seemingly decided the case was closed. Ahmaud might have been just another casualty of racism, the victim of a lynching, had not his mother continued to question the circumstances surrounding her son’s death. Eventually videos of the scene that had been filmed by passersby emerged providing an unavoidable clarity for determining what had actually happened. Over seventy days later the two men were arrested.

My daughter says that she does not worry when my grandson runs in the neighborhood. He is a good boy and almost everyone knows him, but she understands that if she and he were black she would be terrified each time that he set out from home with his track shoes. We still have far too many in our country who seem to believe that color, not character defines people. They are suspicious of anyone who does not fit the stereotypes of their minds and sadly too many among us excuse their flawed thinking. It is easier to look away when people spew their hate and sometimes even our leaders attempt to cover the ugliness of such actions by insisting that those who spread their foul beliefs are really just good people who are frustrated or feeling left out.

As humans we often feel so uncomfortable confronting truth. When athletes kneel during the National Anthem to shed light on the racism that still exists we tend to ignore or insult them. On the whole we are unwilling to admit that there is a double standard that lurks beneath the veneer of our society. Groups among us will become enraged when a white hairdresser is jailed for flaunting restrictions during our pandemic, but they can’t see the reasoning behind the Black Lives Matter movement. If groups of minorities protest it is often called a riot but if gun toting white men scream in the faces of state troopers because they do not want to be restricted by pandemic rules even our president applauds them for fighting against tyranny. Then those same folds scratch their heads in wonder when any minority feels beset upon.

I’ve been having a difficult time maintaining my usual optimism for the past couple of weeks. I am witnessing a level of anger and ugliness that I have not seen since my high school and college days when we were engaged in a struggle to end segregation and a war in Vietnam that had gone so very wrong. It was a frightening time during which the curtain that had been hiding the rot that festered in our nation was drawn wide open. A schism rocked the country and we all found ourselves either choosing sides or averting our glances and joining the silent majority. When the dust finally settled we were eager to just go back to a more normal state, but far too much had simply been swept under the rug where it has been sitting ever since becoming foul. Somehow our nation’s biggest mistakes have never been properly faced and rectified. We are still too afraid to admit that while we have freed the people whose ancestors were wrongfully enslaved and even given them the rights that we take for granted they are still struggling to be free from judgement and persecution. We have yet to adequately call out the racism that exists in corners of our society and because of that it only tends to grow.

I realize that we will never be able to eradicate hatred. It is been a part of the human experience since Cain killed Abel. All across the globe one group fights with another. What we can do is call out those who flaunt their racism in the public square. We must insist that our leaders deride any person or group who discriminates and foments violence against a particular group. We have to quit categorizing individuals based on the characteristics of color or ethnicity or sexual preference or religion and we need to voice our disdain for those who do.

Our future in the coming weeks and months is uncertain but while we are rebuilding our economy we would do well to consider insisting that our leaders understand that we have grown weary of accepting a status quo that still allows stereotyping. We need to finally speak up. Looking away is no longer an option.

Lord Have Mercy

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

Great Plague of 1665

In 1665, a terrible plague began in London. By the end of the epidemic an estimated 100,000 of the 460,000 living there had died. Sadly the vast majority of them were the poor. The wealthier citizens like lawyers, businessmen and even doctors fled from the contagion into country homes much like King Charles II who left London for Hampton Court. Even Parliament suspended meetings within the city, choosing to only gather one time in Oxford.

Once an individual became sick all members of the family were quarantined by law in their home. The doors of such houses were marked with a foot long red cross with the words, “Lord, have mercy upon us” written above or below the marking. Armed watchmen then patrolled outside the home twenty four hours a day with orders to kill anyone who attempted to force his/her way either inside or outside. Burials in mass graves took place in the early morning and late afternoon hours as the disease raged through the late spring, summer and fall of 1665 and then burned itself out in the spring of 1666.

It is believed that the illness was carried by fleas on rats and dogs so efforts were made to eradicate any stray creatures. Unfortunately the crowded and unsanitary conditions in the poorer sections of town made the people in those areas more susceptible to becoming ill. The incubation period once an individual was infected was only a matter of days and the likelihood of it spreading to anyone who had been in close contact was great.

I have been reading accounts of this plague by Daniel Defoe who is better known for his story of Robinson Crusoe. In the flowery English of the era A Journal of the Plague Year provides a vivid account of the horror and fears of the people, the attempts to limit the spread of the illness by authorities, and the civil disruptions that occurred as more and more unfortunate souls became ill. In another time I might have found his memories to be quaintly interesting but given our present situation I instead find myself identifying with the concerns and confusion that the epidemic produced. It was as though the world of the citizens of London had been turned upside down as they watched death and privation overwhelm them.

I thought of my own grandfather’s accounts of a smallpox outbreak in his town at the end of the nineteenth century when he was in his teens. His father and stepmother both became ill and he was charged with their care. Guards patrolled the property to insure that nobody save the local doctor went inside the house or came out. The incident had such a profound effect on my grandfather that he told the story of his time in quarantine over and over again. In his usual style he added a bit of dark humor to his recitation that demonstrated his preferred way of coping with the isolation and concerns for his family.

Humankind has been here before. People have faced pandemics that were ultimately quite terrible and they did so without the resources that we enjoy. Nobody was driving for take out dinners but my grandfather did admit that he ordered some moonshine to be delivered for his dad. He figured that the poor man was going to die anyway so a bit of whiskey might make his father more comfortable. Other than that it was just a lonely time for my grandpa and one in which he might possibly have contracted the disease himself. Somehow that never happened but as my grandfather noted it did not mean that the contagion was not as bad as people thought.

We have a far better understanding of infectious diseases than ever before in history. We are able to unlock the DNA and RNA of the viruses and bacteria that live invisibly around us. We have modern hospitals and sanitation methods that we heretofore believed would protect us in ways that our ancestors did not have. I suppose that we have in many ways assumed that we might never be touched by the kinds of epidemics that have historically rocked civilizations We have had a kind of false pride in our modernity and accomplishments, believing that we were somehow immune from the kind of disruptions that have occurred in the past. Now we see that in many ways we were wrong.

Covid-19 has shown us the cracks in the foundations of our public health services, our economy and even our relationships with one another. If we are to find a positive take- away from this horrific situation we will need to learn from our mistakes. That will require a level of honesty that has been slowly eroding in our politically charged world. We don’t want to hide difficulties but rather find ways to expose and attack them.

We are better educated and more knowledgeable than the unfortunate souls who suffered in the past but if our hubris prevents us from taking the necessary steps to prevent pandemics from happening on such a scale again there will most definitely be consequences. The eventual outcomes should not be about who is best or first. This should not be a competition but a convening of the best minds and ideas from all over the world. We can’t afford to turn our backs like they did in the past and leave the most vulnerable alone to deal with the problems.

  

Living From Day to Day

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

beautiful-sunset-sky-with-birds-royalty-free-image-865856136-1547059564Regardless of what may be happening with respect to the rest of the population I won’t be leaving my home to resume my normal activities anytime soon. My cautionary tendencies are screaming at me to take a wait and see approach to attempts to restart my routines once again. In spite of my own feeling that I am not one of the vulnerable ones despite my age, I happen to live with someone who has heart disease and I love him enough to make a few sacrifices to keep him safe. Besides, I have no assurances that my body would respond well to an infection of Covid-19. I may be kidding myself in thinking that I am made of steel.

Years ago my husband, my mother-in-law, and I came down with hepatitis A. They sailed through a relatively mild two week case while I spent three months sapped by the illness with my doctors wondering if I would ever become well again. I did finally overcome the infection but I spent over twelve weeks in quarantine, only leaving my home to visit my doctors. It took me many more weeks to regain my energy.

I suppose that my point is that I am not ready to take any unnecessary risks so I will continue staying home until it is very clear that the danger has passed. In the meantime I know how to keep myself busy but I will surely miss my encounters with people. I know that my writing has become a bit boring. I tend to find my inspiration by being part of the world at large. For now I am limited to watching my neighbors from my front room window and checking the pulse of humanity from posts on Facebook and news stories from journalists who don’t necessarily share my views. My borders have become smaller and smaller but I feel guilty to complain because my “prison” is filled with luxury.

Last year around this time I was in London. Perhaps the most fascinating place that I visited was the London Tower, home of Willam the Conqueror and countless monarchs which eventually became better known as a place of imprisonment and execution. I walked through cold stoney rooms where people had spent years languishing in isolation as criminals. They left intricately carved graffiti on the walls that speak of their frustration even centuries later. My temporary time of being shut off from society does not hold a candle to what they must have endured so I know that one way or another I will manage to get through this.

My head is filled with so many questions and concerns that it’s sometimes difficult for me to string words together in a coherent sentence. I am a thinker by nature but I have to be careful not to let my thoughts take me too far down a rabbit hole. I’d be much better off doing something constructive like Sir Isaac Newton who invented Calculus after he was sent home from Cambridge during a plague. I doubt that I will ever be quite that brilliant but it inspires me to use my time constructively rather than dwelling on possibilities that may or may not unfold. Perhaps I may use this time to relearn Calculus since I haven’t done anything in that realm since I was eighteen years old. I might even end up with a healthier mind.

It’s not as though I am incommunicado. I still speak with family and friends. Zoom, FaceTime, and Skype have been godsends in keeping me linked with people. I send texts and voice my feelings on Facebook. I read voraciously. The world is literally at my fingertips in one form or another. My worst days stuck inside are indeed mostly pleasant.

I found a list of books about plagues on the BBC website. I bookmarked the article that outlined the various volumes. It might be fun to take a look at some of them. I read The Plague by Albert Camus when I was in high school and recall being fascinated by it. Maybe it’s time to read it from the perspective of someone who is older, wiser, and has seen the actual ravages that a plague can inflict on the world. Maybe I can even set my mind to writing my own historical fiction book or story about Covid-19.

I sometimes wonder when I will feel safe enough to reintegrate with the life outside my home. The doctors in my family urge me not to be in a hurry to demonstrate my courage. They speak of their own worries for themselves and their children. They seem to believe that our dangers are far from being over. They are unwilling to suggest a time when it might be totally safe for me to emerge from my cocoon so I will just take things one day at a time, one week at a time, one month at a time without trying to gaze too far into the future and hopefully without letting my very vivid imagination get away from me.

The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 was horrific. Writer Katherine Porter lived through that terrifying experience and later wrote a semi-autobiographical piece about a young woman who survived the epidemic. During an interview not long before Ms. Porter died she revealed that of all the tragic events of the twentieth century it was the 1918 influenza outbreak that most affected her. In fact she spoke of never having been able to totally get over the horror of what she saw during that time.

We are living history even from inside our homes. The children of the future will want to know what we did and what we saw. There is something both exciting and terrifying at one and the same time. My only hope is that however each of us chooses to react to the situation we will do so with the intention of making it a bit easier for everyone else. For me that means staying put for a bit more time. 

The Mathematics of a Pandemic

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

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I had been teaching math all day long to eight youngsters ranging in age from seven to teens. One of my lessons was on statistical data and how to find different kinds of averages. I used Covid-19 as an example for my student. It was a bit of a stretch but he got the idea. We even talked about what exponents do to numbers and how data can be used to analyze situations and make predictions. It got me to thinking of how differently people are reacting the the virus and the restrictions associated with them based on where they live and sometimes even their political leanings. The truth is that many of the conclusions that people draw do not take all of the information and intervening factors into account. So forthwith is a very elementary discussion of what I believe is happening, but first I want to talk about what occured with the Spanish flu of 1918.

World War I was at an end and the troops were coming home to the United States. Since the fighting was mostly confined to Europe it was natural that the ship first came mostly to ports along the east coast. Additionally some cities like Philadelphia were initially rather lax in enforcing rules to keep down the level of contagion. As a result the highest incidence of contagion and death trended in cities in the eastern part of the country first. As the flu moved westward more stringent efforts of social distancing resulted in fewer illnesses and deaths. In other words the people learned from the mistakes of their fellow citizens in the east and profited by being more vigilant. There were still may deaths but the numbers were mitigated by the measures derived from observing the problems in the places where the flu first presented itself. 

Today we have massive numbers of people traveling across the globe with places like New York City, Seattle, and Los Angeles serving as ports of call for cruise ships and air travel. It appears that the first cases of Covid-19 in the United States were travel related, but because there initially were few attempts to change our normal activities the virus soon spread through community interactions. It took a bit more time than it should have to approach the realization that people needed to protect themselves and thereby flatten the exponential curve of contagion by staying at home.

Only a little more than three weeks ago spring break was in full swing. The Houston Rodeo was still packing in tens of thousands of people on a daily basis. My grandson went to New York City with his orchestra to perform in Carnegie Hall. Mardis Gras had attracted massive groups of people. It was already a bit too late to eliminate the suffering that now plagues many cities in the country but the heartland of middle America has been somewhat spared by finally closing down schools, businesses, churches and all unnecessary gathering. Sadly, some people have misinterpreted the slowdown of cases in those areas as an indication that the whole pandemic is nothing more than a hoax, much ado about nothing.

I’ve been looking at pie charts for the Houston area. Rather amazingly the sixty and older crowd makes up very few of the current cases. My guess is that people in that demographic hunkered down rather early for fear of catching the virus so they have mostly stayed well. I for one have been outside of my home fewer than five times for the past month. One time I accompanied my husband to Methodist Hospital for his heart surgery. On another occasion I went to get a Prolia shot for my  osteoporosis and twice I went to pickup  groceries at HEB. Aside from that I have been home watching the world go by from my windows. It’s little wonder that most of the cases in our area are younger than is typical because they often tend to be the ones who seem to think that they are safe from infection or having a serious case.

It is incredibly important that we not get overly irritated about having to stay home. We are the defense against a surge of Covid-19 as long as we follow the guidelines. If we start to get lax we will undoubtedly experience an unnecessary surge in cases that will only result in prolonging any agony that we may be feeling. I sincerely believe that each of us has a moral duty to work together to keep the numbers at a manageable level.

There are a many things that greatly disturb me, but most egregious of all are the people who insist that this whole ordeal is some vast political conspiracy designed to make our president and our country look bad. Many of these folks are refusing to stay at home even as the numbers of infected individuals grow. They don’t appear to notice that even President Trump has finally abandoned his wishful thinking that we will be back to normal by Easter Sunday. So far the facts demonstrate that the medical community has been right on target with both their predictions and their recommendations. It’s time for us to listen to the mathematics of the pandemic.

I’m as worried as anyone about what a prolonged period of isolation will do to our economic well being. I suspect hard times even once we are able to resume our normal routines. Nonetheless I keep reiterating my observation that it is rather doubtful that all the leaders of the world would be willing to trash the global economy on a whim. This is serious or as Angela Merkel said, “Es ist ernst” and we need to treat it as such. It would be even better if we might do it in a spirit of harmony. It’s the patriotic thing to do.