This morning I read part of a story in the NYT of a grandmother on the way to the hospital, dying in the arms of her grand daughter after receiving her diagnosis of covid-19.  This was a Florida story illustrating the difficulties of testing, and the consequences of back up of lab results, in the pandemic riven state.  The story was a reminder that there is no lyrical, beautiful death from this disease.  Every death from the virus is a violent horror, full stop.

I am gratified to find a current copy of Adbusters Magazine.  It is a Canadian publication, on the rack at Barnes & Noble.  It is expensive at $14.95.  The content which makes exuberant use of graphics to coincide with words of social commentary makes the magazine worthwhile for me. I pass on some excerpts from this current issue.

Finally, some photo’s of the sun setting behind the western horizon of Lake Michigan.  We toasted the sunset, for it’s beauty, and our good fortune to be present as witnesses.  The pandemic which we face, is clearly a sunset of sorts for our country.  It is the ending of an era, a day to which we will not return when this is over.  I know that we face an opportunity for a better day ahead, a new day for more equality for all Americans, a day of genuine welcome for immigrants (are we not all immigrants), and a day when we will act to make things right for Black people, and for American Indians who have been methodically defrauded as a matter of past policy.

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This was the
American landscape
That lay open to the virus:
in the countryside, decaying communities in revolt
against the modern world; on social media, mutual hatred
and endless vituperation among different camps; in the
economy, a large and growing gap between triumphant
capital and beleaguered labor; in Washington, an empty
government led by a con man and his intellectually
bankrupt party; around the country, a mood of cynical
exhaustion, with no vision of a shared identity or future.

— George Packer

The old world
is dying, and the
new world
struggles to be born:
now is the
time of monsters.

— Antonio Gramsci

The pandemic is very quickly
teaching us what’s important:

health,
love,
food,
a safe and comfortable home,
creativity and learning,
connectedness,
and being able to get out into
nature.

Shouldn’t those things be the pillars around which our
societies are organized?

— resilience.org