Tag: anti-racism

Pandemic postcard #51: Waiting my turn

Julie Fanselow

It’s sometime in April, and I’m in line outside the stadium field house that has recently opened as Seattle’s mass vaccination site. Nurses are standing by with tens of thousands of single-dose Johnson & Johnson shots newly arrived from the feds, and I hold a sliver of hope that my silver hair will confer an advantage in securing one of these coveted vaccines. I easily pass through the entrance, and my excitement builds as I near the station where volunteers are verifying eligibility.

The woman at the sign-in table glances at me, starts the paperwork and asks for my driver’s license. She frowns as she sees that, despite a mane of graying hair, I am a few months shy of my 60th birthday. A few more questions reveal that I live alone and do my non-essential work from the safety of my computer, that I am not a smoker, and that I have no serious health conditions.

Turns out I’m still not eligible for a vaccination, and it remains unclear when I will be. “Maybe by late May?” the volunteer muses. I stifle an urge to cry as I turn for the exit. I have plans to visit my daughter over Mother’s Day for only the second time in more than a year. Will I still be unable to hug her?

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I didn’t feel any vaccine envy until last Saturday, but it hit full force for me that day. First, I saw a friend’s Facebook story reveal that he’d secured a vaccine as a teacher. He’s in his 30s and teaches English as a foreign language — online. If anyone questions his eligibility, I guess he can argue that maybe he’ll get an in-person job soon. Later in the day, I learned that two family members had also received their first doses of the Moderna vaccine. Their situations merited legitimately getting the shots despite their tender ages (26 and 55), yet I still felt twinges of jealousy.

Then on Tuesday, the CDC announced that vaccinated people can now safely socialize together indoors without masks. I’ve signed up to write thank-you notes to people who take part in my church’s annual pledge drive, and within hours of the CDC announcement, the organizer sent an email inviting people to her home for an indoor note-writing party next week. As I sent my regrets, I felt another pang of loss and a preview of the limbo that we last-to-be-vaccinated folks will endure this spring as social gatherings ramp up among the protected.

It’s still the early days. As I write this, 19 percent of Americans have received at least one dose of the vaccine to fight COVID-19, and one in 10 are now fully vaccinated. I’m genuinely happy for people who are managing to get the shot, and it does look like the pace of vaccinations is quickening. But I also know that, due to my age, self employment, and lack of risk factors, I will likely be waiting a long time. It’s not always easy to make peace with that, but at least it’s a short-term situation, and certainly shorter than the year I’ve already endured.

Our priorities as a society seem clear and indisputable: vaccinate older folks and people of color, because they’ve been hit hardest by the coronavirus’s lethality. Beyond that, it gets a bit fuzzier. People under 65 with underlying health conditions need the vaccine, but that’s a wide category, subject to squishy interpretation and self identification. We need to give people the benefit of the doubt and honor those who feel they can’t wait, especially since a constellation of factors may be in play.

How about a 60-year-old with minor health issues who is caring for an aging parent? How about a 35-year-old who has been housebound for a year with an immune disorder? These seem like no-brainer situations. Get them their shots, stat. Then again, how about younger people who have mild health issues? And who is most essential in the vast category of essential workers? I’d put front-line healthcare personnel and grocery store workers at the front of the line, followed by teachers so we can open in-person learning. But hairstylists and health club employees? Maybe, but it gets murky.

I volunteer twice a week as an online English teacher, and there is no way I’d stretch that fact into a qualifying condition since I can’t catch COVID on Zoom. On the other hand, I also volunteer a few times a month at a food bank, and it was after such a stint that I received word in December that I may have been exposed to the virus. (I quarantined, and I tested negative.) I understand the food bank’s full-time staff may soon be eligible for vaccination, and they should be. But what about those of us who drop in on occasion? Although it doesn’t seem right to push us forward in the queue, I could reasonably argue that I might expect to earn a few bonus points toward eligibility via this moderately risky unpaid work. For now, though, I’d rather my shot go to the older woman volunteering beside me who hasn’t been able to get an appointment.

There are stand-by lists aimed at distributing unclaimed vaccinations so they don’t go to waste. People sign up and get alerted by text if a shot is available and they can immediately go get it. Intrigued, I checked to see if such a program is available in Seattle. It is, but only for people 65 and up. Then there’s the phenomenon of people traveling to places with fewer restrictions in order to get their shots. Alaska is one of the only four states I haven’t yet seen, and everyone 16 and older there is now eligible for the vaccine. Hmmmm … like many of us, I can work from anywhere these days … but I guess you actually need to prove that you live there. Go figure.

It’s human nature to want to give ourselves the best shot at life. Eventually, there will be enough vaccine for everyone who wants it, and it sounds like that time is now mere months away. After a year without hugs and unmasked human contact, my vaccination can’t come soon enough. But I’ll wait my turn, hoping that the people who truly need this protection are getting it the soonest. I’ll also try to remember that my place near the end of the line is the result of my relative youth, reasonably good health and no small measure of privilege and good luck — and for all these things, I am grateful.

Thank you for reading Surely Joy. You can find the first Pandemic Postcards and my earlier writings here. If you’d like to get future posts via email, look for the link on the right side of this page (or maybe below this post, if you’re on a mobile device). I write for a living, so if you’d like to support my work, please hit the tip jar. Thank you.

Pandemic postcard #45: Screen saviors

Julie Fanselow

More than once since they began last spring, I’ve wanted to skip the Zoom vespers my church started amid the pandemic. “Screen fatigue is real,” we all say, and that’s true, but something keeps calling me back to this online congregation within a congregation, this constellation of kin who realize the value of a spiritual booster shot twice a month on Wednesday nights.

I especially had to force myself this week. The good news is I have a lot of paid work for the first time in more than a year. My brain is happy and my bank account will soon be too, but my back and neck and butt are not pleased to be spending long days in front of my computer again. My computer, such as it is; my desktop more or less died a few months ago, so my formal work station is now an ancient MacBook propped on a pile of books. It’s probably not the best long-term ergonomic solution, but it’s OK for now, as so many things are “OK for now” in this state of suspended animation in which we’ve lived for nearly a year.

So, wary of yet more screen time after an especially long work day, I decide to join vespers via my iPad, a good option when I want to be present but a little less tethered to the technology. The service is heavy, centered on a January-through-December remembrance of all that we lost in 2020, with many reminders that the toll of COVID-19 has fallen disproportionately hard on people of color and poor folks. I get up several times to do a few stretches. I assume the corpse pose on my floor for a while.

At long last, the litany is done. Our minister lights candles in memory of family and friends we’ve lost to the virus. (By this point in the pandemic, many of us have had that happen. I ask for a candle for Kelly, my friend who died last April.) The service has gone on for an hour and we are finally winding down when one among us says she wants to read a poem. And these days, who can deny a poem? So we take another minute, because that’s all it takes, to hear “The Patience of Ordinary Things” by Pat Schneider. It is beautiful, and once again, I am happy to have tuned in, happy to have these people and this poetry in my life, even via a small screen.

As with so many things in life, our technology can be both a blessing and a curse. The key, as always, is balance. During my now-long-again workdays, I get up to stretch as often as I can. I take walks, as often as not in a Seattle drizzle, because it’s worth it to be outside and breathe fresh air, even behind a mask.

As work re-asserts itself into a life that felt perfectly full in its absence, I can go days without checking social media. I pare back some of my online social calendar, which has grown robust over the past many months, begging “bandwidth issues.” I will miss something, but that’s OK. Ten months into this new way of being, we are all doing the best we can, and whatever we are doing is good enough.

“The Patience of Ordinary Things” can be read here. It’s also in Poetry of Presence, a 2017 volume I found a year later, shortly after Tom died. It is a beautiful anthology, worth having if you are “hungry for poems,” as a friend recently said. This week’s video is “Sanctuary” by Carrie Newcomer, also featured at vespers this week. Thank you for reading–and for sharing a small sliver of your too-much-screen-time with me.

Pandemic postcard #44: Let’s go, Joe

Julie Fanselow

I’ve never understood people who loudly dislike and distrust government yet still seek to run it–or, more likely, run it into the ground (or drown it in the bathtub, to quote Grover Norquist). But a whole bunch of them have lost power in the past week, and thank goodness for that. Government alone can’t solve all our problems, but its might can do plenty of good. We’ve seen glimpses of that this past year in the pandemic relief packages and in government support of vaccine development, but not nearly enough was done under our dire circumstances.

And now comes President Joe Biden, who clearly loves government and who has stocked his White House with people who, like him, know how to use big government to get big things done. In his first two days on the job, Uncle Joe–no stranger to the West Wing–got right down to work. Even with just a narrow Democratic majority in Congress, we could be in for one of the most productive times for our government–and by extension, our country–that we’ve witnessed in decades.

But arresting the pandemic and its accompanying economic fallout is Job One. Biden refers to the fight against the mutating spread of COVID as a war, and he noted in his inaugural speech how the pandemic has already killed more Americans in one year than died in all of World War II. On Thursday, officially releasing his 200-page pandemic response plan, the new president noted that COVID will likely claim its 500,000th American victim by February.

As Biden said, the “brutal truth” is that it will take many months before most Americans get vaccinated, especially since the current supply can’t easily be increased when the manufacturing capacity simply doesn’t exist. But our new national CEO has already ordered other steps that should help in the near term, including using the Defense Production Act to produce more testing supplies and protective gear and even a special syringe that ekes another dose from every vaccine vial; mandating masks for federal employees and on interstate travel; and asking FEMA to open community vaccination centers.

Taken together with his swift actions on other policy priorities–especially advancing another economic relief package and rejoining the world community’s fight against climate chaos–I am excited by Biden’s commitment to action. Joe Biden is a get-it-done guy, Kamala Harris is a formidable partner/tie-breaking Senate president, and that’s exactly what we need now: as much progress as possible, as fast as possible.

I was working in politics the last time we had one party holding power in both the executive and legislative branches, in 2009 when Barack Obama became president with Biden as his VP amid another economic crisis. (Here’s a remembrance of that year’s inauguration, which I attended.) Within days, Obama and Biden faced Republican stonewalling over the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that Obama nevertheless signed into law within a month of becoming president. Within months, the Tea Party–unfortunately abetted by some “Blue Dog” Democrats–rose up to oppose most of what Obama wanted to do, especially the Affordable Care Act. “Obamacare” passed in March 2010 but Democrats lost the House in that year’s elections and the Senate in 2014.

In the past dozen years, as Biden so memorably put it, hyper partisan politics has become “a raging fire destroying everything in its path.” (I blame Fox, MSNBC, and especially antisocial media, for enabling this decline.) But Biden said it doesn’t have to be this way, and I’m inclined to think that most Americans–weary of a fight that has nearly cost us our country–will agree that we can disagree on plenty of issues and still accomplish a lot of good.

As Charlotte Alter writes in her upcoming cover story for Time magazine, “Unity is not the same as uniform opinion or even widespread agreement. By these standards, the United States of America has rarely been unified, and never for long.” But earlier generations still managed to pass social safety net programs, environmental protections, and voting rights for women and people of color (which, extensively rolled back in recent years, must now be restored and strengthened).

“Every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for war,” as Biden put it.

How refreshing.

Let’s go.

I’m sure you watched the inauguration, but you might want to read President Biden’s speech. Here you go.  And of course you want to hear the incandescent Amanda Gorman perform her poem again. See below. I’ve also included two of my favorite highlights from the “Celebrating America” show. Thanks for reading.


Pandemic postcard #37: ‘We are still here’

Julie Fanselow

Eight miles west of Highway 101, I had a decision to make: Continue straight to La Push on Washington 110 or turn right to Mora. I had a reservation at the Mora Campground near Rialto Beach, but check-in was many hours off, so I thought I’d spend the morning at Second Beach near La Push. As I neared the intersection, I saw the choice had been made for me: The temporary road sign flashed “QUILEUTE RESERVATION CLOSED.”
Good for them, I thought.

Forest sprite, Hoh Rain Forest, Washington

As the pandemic took hold last spring, tribal governments up and down Washington’s coast closed their lands to visitors. When summer came and the spread of the virus slowed, many adjacent areas in Olympic National Park opened to stir-crazy Americans seeking outdoor relief from isolation. I saw license plates from all over at Rialto Beach and cars parked a half-mile down Mora Road. But just across the Quileute River, its eponymous tribal nation remained off-limits to outsiders, as did the Makah reservation at the northwestern tip of the contiguous United States and the Quinault Indian Nation in southwestern Washington.

I applaud tribal nations for doing whatever they can to keep the coronavirus at bay, especially given the long history of indigenous people dying from diseases brought by outsiders and the high COVID-19 toll some Indian nations are facing in 2020. The closures are a reminder that the 574 tribal nations in the United States are sovereign and have the right to self-determination as well as the right to receive benefits from the federal government.

At least most of them do. Here in Seattle, we live on the unceded land of the Duwamish people. Our city was named for Duwamish Chief Si’ahl, who famously said, “The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know: all things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected.” 

The Duwamish are a federally recognized tribe under the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott, but they are not currently on the list of federally acknowledged tribes. According to the Duwamish website, in 1978, the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs basically amended the treaty by adding seven new rules with which the Duwamish must comply to receive land, benefits, and services. The case has been under review by the Interior Department’s Board of Indian Appeals for more than five years. 

Meanwhile, despite being in the heart of one of the wealthiest areas in the United States, many Duwamish people cannot access health services, nor can the tribe profit from tourism and gaming, as so many others do. (Seattle is surrounded by high-end resorts run by the Snoqualmie, Puyallup, Suquamish, and other neighboring tribes.) Even if the Duwamish prevail, I’m not sure how likely I’d be to hit a future casino. But along with more than 10,500 other people—half of whom have signed up in 2020—I’ve decided it’s time to pay a small, symbolic amount of rent to the Duwamish people in recognition of the centuries they’ve spent caring for the land where I live today.

In last Sunday’s online service, my minister Rev. Beth Chronister advocated for Real Rent Duwamish, and she also acknowledged that our physical building is on Duwamish land. I am part of a faith tradition that is grappling like never before with our nation’s history of settler colonialism and enslavement. But Rev. Beth cautioned us against absolving ourselves with what theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace.” We can pay token rent and say a land acknowledgment and call it good, or we can go deeper, into real relationship and covenant with each other. 

I can think of two ways beyond church that I will try to do this. Early in my freelance writing career, I authored two guidebooks that explored the Oregon Trail and the Lewis and Clark Trail. I know I tried my best—given my body of knowledge in the 1990s—to offer a nuanced view of how the United States expanded westward, yet I am sure I fell fall short. As I get future opportunities to write about history, I will do better.

Second, I recommit to living as lightly as I can. I retain a small footprint by American standards, dwelling in 400 square feet, yet like Henry David Thoreau, I need to leave my cabin now and then. I usually go on foot, but I have a car, and I occasionally use it to visit nature that’s not within walking distance. A paradox, I know. So when I go into the woods and walk beside the waters, I want to be as mindful as I can of what I find there. “We rarely care for that we cannot name,” says British writer Robert Macfarlane, who has worked with artist Jackie Morris and musicians to re-animate lost words from the natural world, just as many Americans seek to authentically connect with indigenous wisdom.  

This is not wisdom from the past. Its practitioners are here now, seeking the right to harvest salmon and protect their water from oil spills. As best I can as a 21st century urban creature of comfort, I want to know plants by their names and birds by their songs. I want to invoke spirits and spells and “sing the things I see,” perhaps gaining a tiny fraction of the knowledge possessed by the people who have lived here for millennia and who still live here today. I honor their wisdom and would be grateful for a small measure of it, if I am worthy. Spirit of life, let me be worthy of these gifts, and let us share them widely.

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