It's all right, Ma (I'm only wheezing)

Once again we hope you and yours are doing well, staying healthy, and washing your hands. In fact, today we hope we're doing well. We made a trip to two different grocery stores. The first one was out of eggs, butter, almost out of flour and the meat shelves were about 75% bare. The Better Half and I each wore latex gloves while shopping and discarded them when we returned to the Jeep. Will such precautions become the new normal? Although people get killed and maimed in auto accidents every day, today was the first time I ever thought that I was putting my life at risk to go grocery shopping. There's a body of literature about real versus perceived risks. It will be interesting to see where corona viruses end up on such lists. Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease is third on this list of odds of death. Both the Better Half and I are, for several reasons each, in elevated risk demographic classes related to COVID19. Although we work to minimize our exposure, no life is risk free nor is the risk management guidance available comprehensive and consistent. In fact, it is at best, in my opinion, marginally better than the insights available to stock investors and we  all know how well that's going. Am I the only one that  wonders if this is what trumpsters were looking for when they voted for him to "shake things up?"

This is not  the first time that US has made a royal mess of things. As evidence see the poem below, written by a Nobel Laureate in the mid 1960's. (Yes, I was around back then.) We have shown a distressing, and now potentially very deadly, tendency to try to evade the consequences of our actions. We can't claim that no one could have foreseen this outbreak. David Quammen warned us about such prospects back in 2012, in his book Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic.

I have a couple of thoughts about our current situation. The first is that we should, we must, use the current breakdown in our systems to build new economies, communities and cultures that are respectful of both the earth on which we live and our co-inhabitants. This comes under the heading of never letting a good crisis go to waste. The second is that  this is the time to acknowledge that neoliberal capitalism is a failed system. We can't enjoy the benefits of global economies unless they are all built on level playing fields of social justice and environmental protection. No more moving manufacturing to where environmental regulations are less onerous and effective and/or labor is less expensive just to pass the savings on  to the consumer. Look at the earth rising or the pale blue dot NASA photos and tell me where you can find to park your "externalities." It's past time for us to grow out of being consumers and  time to become citizens of earth.

mid-March marsh, sandhill cranes

Photo by J. Harrington

Today, as we were leaving the second grocery store, a flock of sandhill cranes flew overhead. They've been around for at least 2.5 million years. In our current form, we humans have been around for about one-quarter to one-fifth that amount of time. Do you suppose there's anything we could learn from a species that has four or five times our experience living successfully on earth? If not, please join me in a sing-a-long of today's poem:

It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)

Written by: Bob Dylan

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child’s balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn
Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born is busy dying

Temptation’s page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover that you’d just be one more
Person crying

So don’t fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don’t hate nothing at all
Except hatred

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked

An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged
It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge
And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it

Advertising signs they con
You into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks they really found you

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit
To satisfy, insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something they invest in

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society’s pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he’s in

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him

Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn’t talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony

While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer’s pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death’s honesty
Won’t fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes must get lonely

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed
Graveyards, false gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
what else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only

Copyright

© 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music

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