(The Mayflower at anchor, 1620).

No blast this morning, unless it is the faint echo of something that happened four hundred years ago on a creaky sailing ship in a chill New England fall. The Mayflower. The Compact that identified a company of free people doing something new. Not like that 1619 nonsense designed to do something else. I am filled with a sense of vague relief. The heavy moist clouds have been blown off and golden sunshine bathes the pastures blow the house. The 28 hours of rain reinforced the grim aura of this astonishing year. I missed some of the beginning of it, cooped up in the hospital.

But that was a first layer in the stack of things that reached out to touch us all. I am sure you have been counting them- start with the first personal layer of whatever challenge you have in life. Then begin to slather things atop the challenge. It becomes a mound swiftly, and it is difficult to arrange them in chronologic order.

Some skilled folks have been watching the pandemic all year. It is worth it, from both the medical perspective and the social one, and that can yield multiple responses. I won’t get into them, but they range from self-righteous to self-righteous as we have seen. I would put in one of those asterisk things to remind you that like many, I am in the middle. I take this seriously, and have observed national response to virus outbreaks in person. am willing to wear a mask in social interaction scenarios, avoid random contact with my fellow citizens, wash my hands more than usual and all that. You know, the way our Moms taught us to be more careful in cold and flu season.

So all that would be enough, but add in the wildly divergent responses from the state governments for some excitement. New York sent COVID positive older patients back to nursing homes. Those were the places housing the most vulnerable of us, and the mask thing. Good, bad, good, mandatory in turn. I heard that the Governor of Colorado is banning Thanksgiving. Grooming, place of work and social intimacy are just some of the things that have been dramatically altered. Like school. The impact of some will be incorporated into how we live.

I don’t know which of these will be overcome by our natural inclination to do what we think is best. But the other thing is getting used to doing what we are told. Our Governor just announced, without public discussion I heard, that gatherings of more than 25 people are prohibited for an indeterminate amount of time. I don’t have a dog in that fight, since gatherings of any kind were put way down on my list quite a while ago. But the scope of what the governor is doing directly impacts things like houses of worship, or mass protests except when he likes them. I find that something worthy of discussion, but we have leapt beyond things like that.

So, add the controversy over elections to the mix and there is a significant new layer added to our pile. Again, I should insert the “footnote” that I support rational public health measures to minimize bad things. But I am still not convinced that our public response is without another component and that would be the role between the Governor and the rest of us.

For or against all that is the impact of death. A pal lost a brother, so add the visceral pain of emotional loss to the stack. If it hasn’t happened to you, I am thankful for that. But it could, as the Pilgrims were about to find outand is added to other layers of things that must be endured. I am sensitive to the anguish it causes, and guilty that in the recent season of profound generational loss the weather was decent and kind.

The weight of all these layers is almost surmounted by the extended election. That too is just one of the sidelights to the totality of 20-20’s marksmanship on the human experience. Add the challenges of simply moving around to gathering a large family and commemorating life itself adds stress. So I am trying to be nice, and you can imagine adding that layer on the pile.

I have concerns, like any good citizen, but I am not writing to engage on any of the issues except to marvel at their impact. They have contributed to staying home, avoiding other people, flooded with information that has been manipulated for policy, shopping for everything by the net. I leave the property three times a week, for carefully orchestrated activities. I have pals who are still reporting to offices, but this eerie period who have adapted to new ways of working and more orchestrated presence.

Love continues- I have that on authority from pals in a position to know. But the new means of social interaction has placed an aching strain on that level so vital to happiness. So, we have quite a thick and viscous layer atop all the other ones. A bright sunny day like this makes me feel that things will be OK if we give it some time to sort out. Oh, crap. I forgot to mention how strange the weather has been the last six months.

I guess we got used to that already. Though the layers are thick, and take a while to sort out, we can at least recognize why people are acting the way they are. And why Refuge Farm has been the best leveler I can think of. Compared to living on the Mayflower, I am having the best National Emergency ever.

– Vic

Copyright 2020 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com