Tag Archives: Covid-19

HAS THE WORLD CHANGED?

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A Homeless Man asks a question with his pants down, but can anyone really answer?

Gawd, now I know I’m back in my beloved but gone-to-hell Seattle. While changing buses at Northgate Way & Aurora Avenue on my way home from a long trip to North Carolina, I came upon a homeless man of about 40 years old who also happened to be Black and bearded. He stood on the edge of the curb on the west side of Aurora next to the crosswalk, cupped his hands up to both sides of his face, and bellowed out into traffic:

“HAS THE WORLD CHANGED? HAS THE WORLD CHANGED?”

“WELL, HAS IT?” was my automatic response tho only in my mind.

My second response was the temptation to shout at him to pull his damn pants up, but that was before I listened to him.

Then he rhythmically pulls down his dirty gray sweat pants and shows his naked ass to the whole wide world and then swings his cock up and out across the way like the neck and head of a goose jerking forth from a lake. It looked large and waxy in the harsh, September sunshine. Pulls his pants back up with this tip of his penis perched upon his waistband like a damn peacock peeking out. Damn, I looked away, away, AWAY!, but, OH GAWD was too late as it all happened in a flurry of seconds as the crossing lights hadn’t changed yet. Couldn’t unsee this mess. Felt transfixed, no, crucified, crucified! Felt crucified by the clarity of his call and response during the middle of our long, apocalyptic slide into Armageddon. Continue reading →

Life in the Time of COVID-19: A Broken Journal

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Notes from the Beginnings of the Apocalypse

Thursday 9 January 2020
There’s much to say and write down as existential dread grips the beginnings of this new year. Therefore, silence. Silence was my first language. Silence was The First Language.

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200,000 Dead Already: COVID-19 versus the Spanish Flu

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Think about it, people

Conditions in the United States of America are on track to allow deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic to surpass those from the Spanish flu outbreak. The Spanish influenza pandemic is often held up as metric of comparison against the current pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. Think about it, people: an estimated 400,000 Americans dead in one year from COVID-19 versus 675,000 Americans dead from the Spanish flu across four waves in three years. Continue reading →

Did the Spanish Flu cause the Great Depression?

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Covid-19 is causing a severe recession after an economic boom built upon a foundation left shaky by the Great Recession. Similarly, did the influenza pandemic of WW1 lay the groundwork for the Great Depression after the even-shakier Roarin’ 20s boom? What’s next now? And what can we learn?

Construction booms in Seattle, the once Emerald City now known as the City of Cranes. Yet high rates of homelessness left over from the Great Recession and the Occupy revolts has led to a dead-end of cynicism, apathy, and despair ravaged by an opioid epidemic. The increase in employment masks over the high number of jobs considered dead-end, part-time, low-wage, reduced benefits, or regions scarred by stagnant economies and dead industries. So many barriers to progress! Even in a boom city! Foto by the Author, Monday 2 April 2018.

Was the “Spanish flu,” a disease pandemic whose awful memory was shoved aside by the Roaring 20s, a so-called Invisible Hand? A negative, indeed a “dead” invisible hand of capitalism at that? What lessons are relevant for us today as the new coronavirus recession arrives so soon after the Great Recession? If history does tend to repeat itself, then it helps to remember what’s often forgotten.

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