Notes From A Bear's Journey

   Several of my friends are conservative, a term used as a general description and not as a negative political divide; that said those same friends do use the term "liberal" in that political sense, as if casting a label on an entire group as easily as a curse or plague.  And while my friends are savvy enough to not follow the medical opinions of Trump such as taking hydroxychloroquine (which suppresses your immune system) or swallowing or injecting Lysol (a disinfectant which even the company quickly warned against using in such a manner), they likely agree with 75% of more of what Trump says or blurts out, right or wrong.  I am pretty much the opposite.  As I mentioned to one friend who was emphasizing some of the issues he had with China's perceived global intentions, I quoted him this observation from the London Review of Books : True conservatives, as distinct from those merely wedded to the religion of the stock market, welcomed the prospect of a shakeou...

   This has certainly been a strange time with emphasis on that one word, time.  Staying at home, not physically visiting or touching others, not getting out, we now have time to do all those things that we wanted to do, or at least that we thought that we wanted to do.  First up, the organization and the meals and the realization that what kids are learning in school is way beyond what we learned at their ages (Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?* now being fully questioned by us, the "adults" who are supposed to know this stuff).  Then came the cleaning and polishing and down-sizing of closets and pans and lo and behold, we found that our enthusiasm for that only lasted for a couple of weeks.  Before long, after we had scanned the bookshelf and the television for the umpteenth time, we began to get antsy, and worried, and lonely...and now we had to face ourselves.  Jill Lapore wrote in The New Yorker :  In 2017 and 2018, the former U.S. Surgeon G...

   My wife and I tend to enjoy foreign mystery series, mostly British and Nordic, their seemingly make-up free actors adding a bit more realism into the plots; the acting is generally top notch and the stories often proving a labyrinth of alleys and deadends to navigate: Line of Duty, Shetland, La Casa de Papal, Keeping Faith, Bron, The Killing, Dicte, Hidden, Silk, Happy Valley...as you can gather, we've watched a few.  Generally, these shows for the most part maintain their tight writing and plots for at least a few seasons before losing a tiny bit of their muster, as if showing how difficult it is to remain at the top.  Reflect back on series or artists or albums you've heard and likely there aren't that many that stay with you, even if the shows are in their 4th season or an artist has released her fifth album.  It's much the same in our everyday life, how we tend to not pay much attention to another viewpoint the way a detective or an attorney would, even i...

  When an earthquake rolled through our city last week, it did more than shake buildings; it shook people from their reverie.  What followed were nearly 200 aftershocks, although less than 5 of those were noticeable, slight adjustments in the fault lines proving as unpredictable as lightning in their direction and intensity.  Just as in California or the Philippines or Naples, scientists warned that "the big one" was still to come and people huddled down for a day or two, then emerged like gophers, poked their heads out and self-assuredly told themselves...nah.  That was close but it wasn't really going to happen, not for a long while yet; time to get back to work.  And despite our lockdowns and our stay-at-home orders, one can almost feel that shift beginning to happen again, that overload of news, that asking of when we can "get back to normal."  New vocabulary is entering our lexicon...social distancing, flatten the curve, boomer remover, 201k's.  A...

    Some of you may or may not have read about the stimulus bills making their way through countries such as Australia, parts of the EU and the U.S.  Here (in the U.S.) it took a bit of wrangling for government officials to realize that work stoppages were happening faster than the spread of the virus.  Quarantines were closing down restaurants and schools, gyms and gathering places, and people were suddenly home and without work.  Checks and payments were grinding to a halt and cash-in-hand was needed since (among other bills) state and federal taxes were coming due (the Internal Revenue Service or IRS recently extended the deadline to July...so far, the states have not budged).  So Congress, in a bit of back and forth (bail out the corporations or the workers?) finally agreed to vote on a stimulus bill to aid those without work and that's where the problems really began.  As it turned out, despite a few Senators and Representatives testing positive f...

  My friend mentioned to me that what with all that is happening in today's world, it may be a good time to re-boot.  Social distancing is forcing the issue.  One older member of a congregation told his preacher, "I've been social distancing for over a decade;" something which the preacher said was done with humor on the outside but reflected a deep hurt within.  To step back from our daily routines of heading out the door whether for work or school or the gym or shopping, we now have to wonder just how much have we paid attention to those people right in front of us?  Our children or parents or friends or partner.  "I see you," sounds great in a movie's tagline but as with that elderly man attending service, does that other person "feel" seen?   The respected author and oncologist, Dr. Siddartha Mukherjee * wrote a piece in The New Yorker about the corona virus, who's getting infected and how it may be time to not only look at what's ...

Electron microscope image of Covid-19 (round blue objects)  emerging from the surface of cells cultured in the lab on  March 12th from a U.S. patient.  SARS-CoV-2 is the virus  that causes COVID-19.  Photo: NIH/AFP/Getty Images    The Covid-19 virus is now beginning its second circling of our planet as travelers return home (if and when they can) and some countries begin to bracing for the possibility of another round of not knowing what to expect.  And in the midst of all of their (and your) worries comes news from every form of media...radio and television specials, internet posts and podcasts devoted entirely to the "latest," and even companies updating their policies and pratices.   And even as the number of people infected grows the number of people in the U.S. who consider Covid-19 a real threat continues to drop (said a poll taken last week by NPR :  Just about 56% of Americans consider the coronavirus a "real threat,"...