A friend sent me a link to an article by Ed Yong, staff writer at The Atlantic.  The article by a science writer was an overview of America’s response to the pandemic; America Is Trapped in a Pandemic Spiral.  The article was nine pages of emotionally difficult reading.  I felt a sense of terror, that there is a good chance that our society will not achieve the discipline needed to control the virus.  The final short paragraph sums up the matter. 

9. The Habituation of Horror

The U.S. might stop treating the pandemic as the emergency that it is. Daily tragedy might become ambient noise. The desire for normality might render the unthinkable normal. Like poverty and racism, school shootings and police brutality, mass incarceration and sexual harassment, widespread extinctions and changing climate, COVID-19 might become yet another unacceptable thing that America comes to accept.

To read the entire article, CLICK HERE.

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There is more going on than the social dysfunction precipitated by the pandemic, and even the massive wildfires in California, Oregon and Washington state.  With two days of off and on gentle rain, trees and flowering plants in the yard are reviving.  We decided to plant five arborvitae evergreens to screen the backyard from the nearby park.  Due to the loss of the imposing old willow, a fast growing tree was needed in place of the venerable tree.  We planted the last two of the five evergreens yesterday.  The camera recorded images of the arborvitae, cheery tomatoes ripening, a late tomato blossom, ripe peppers, rose of sharon blooms, late summer hydrangea, and the first few maple leaves to show color.

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Pink Houses by John Mellencamp seemed the appropriate tune to capture my sense of living at this time in our country.  We have a number of intractable contradictions, in our land-of-the-free, the city-on-a-hill that we once thought to be a demonstration of what is possible to the rest of the world.  All of that, the freedom, the “light to the nations” part, was simply an aspiration, and not a matter of fact.  The fact is that individual Americans are no more and no less free than they can afford to be.  A person of color does not enjoy as much freedom as a white guy, especially a white guy with a gun.  Voting apparently is theatrical, rather than efficacious. “One person one vote,” except in certain states one person’s vote is worth more, — thanks to the electoral college.

Mellencamp says it well.

Pink Houses

By John Mellencamp

There’s a black man with a black cat
Livin’ in a black neighborhood
He’s got an interstate
Runnin’ through his front yard
You know he thinks that he’s got it so good
And there’s a woman in the kitchen
Cleanin’ up the evenin’ slop
And he looks at her and says, hey darlin’
I can remember when you could stop a clock

Oh, but ain’t that America
For you and me
Ain’t that America
Something to see, baby
Ain’t that America
Home of the free, yeah
Little pink houses
For you and me
Oooh, yeah
For you and me

Well, there’s a young man in a t-shirt
Listenin’ to a rockin’ rollin’ station
He’s got greasy hair, greasy smile
He says, Lord this must be my destination
‘Cause they told me when I was younger
Said boy, you’re gonna be president
But just like everything else
Those old crazy dreams
Just kinda came and went

Oh, but ain’t that America
For you and me
Ain’t that America
Something to see, baby
Ain’t that America
Home of the free, yeah
Little pink houses
For you and me
Oooh, little baby
For you and me

[Instrumental Interlude]

Well, there’s people and more people
What do they know, know, know
Go to work in some high rise
And vacation down at the Gulf of Mexico
Ooh, yeah
And there’s winners and there’s losers
But they ain’t no big deal
‘Cause the simple man, baby
Pays for thrills
The bills the pills that kill

Oh, but ain’t that America
For you and me
Ain’t that America
Something to see, baby
Ain’t that America
Home of the free, yeah
Little pink houses
For you and me
Oooh
Ooooh, yeah…