This Covid year (going on two) has had plenty of grim and sad in it. Like almost everyone, I’ve had friends get sick with it and know a few who have died. Voluntary and forced isolation, and the endless debates over vaccines and masks have become numbing.
But, this magnifying glass of Covid has also made way—in books, articles, and the workings of my own mind—for good things, important things that might never have reached daylight without it. Add that it’s caused us to reach out to old friends and relatives through magical Zoom, and encouraged stock-taking and life changing from many, including some people I know.
A handful of us from the Oceanside High class of 1960 zoom frequently to retrace old stories and catch up on current events. I’ve watched nephews grow through high school and baseball tournaments, and a brother and sister-in-law settle into a new home in a new town, and spent more time with my sisters and their children than at any time in the last 60 years.
The place I work and the people I work with at the Josephy Center have risen marvelously to the challenges of the pandemic. Our artsy staff put together over 2000 “art bags” of projects for children and families, and gave them away through clinics and out our front door. Our “Nez Perce Treaties and Reservations” exhibit this summer drew praise. And we were able to purchase the Josephy building from our angel landlord.
Most importantly, the true history and current injustices that have been uncovered and magnified during this pandemic cannot, as author Rebecca Solnit points out in a recent Guardian article, be covered up again. The world now knows about the water situation on the Navajo Reservation, the boarding schools in Canada and the US, the poor health care and disproportionate impacts of diseases in communities of color and the poor. It knows about disproportion in police treatment as well.
The books that have been published about the awful treatment of Indians, Blacks, Asians, and Latinix in our country cannot be erased—despite the best efforts of schoolboard crashers. The not-white faces of athletes, actors, newscasters, scientists, that appear on our screens will not go away.
And my friend Kim Stafford, recent poet laureate of our state, posts new work almost daily. I get weekly thoughtful updates on Covid and life in Idaho from friend John Rember. And, I “get to” write these pandemic blurbs.
When we awake—in fits and starts as has always been the case with plagues and epidemics—there will be new things to grapple with; Covid times will fade, but with good fortune, the silver linings will not.
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