I found four softballs, a baseball and a whiffle ball on the same day Hank Aaron died. Coincidence? I think not.
It was not a coincidence because I was walking the dog around the outfield fences of a ball diamond on January 22, 2021 in the middle of winter in Iowa in order to avoid people not wearing masks during a pandemic.
My partner had tuberculosis, she has asthma, and the last time she had a chest cold she didn’t really get over it for about seven months. Covid-19 was not a joke to us. It wasn’t some kind of cultural marker to signify who’s tribe we belonged in. It was real and we weren’t messing around.
Right from the start, we took the attitude that ultimately this would be a temporary situation and that we were going to get through it. I kept thinking of the experiences of my parents growing up in the Great Depression. I thought of the people of London during the Blitz and kept the motto of “Keep Calm and Carry On” in the forefront of my mind the whole time.
I had once owned a retail natural foods store in a small town for seven years and knew a thing or two about inventory management. We stocked up. We planned ahead.
Flattening the curve and getting things back to as normal as they could be was always a possibility and for about three weeks everybody did a good job. Then Fox News cranked up their propaganda machine and they turned the pandemic into another culture war wedge issue.
I think the kinds of people who are used to getting their way by throwing their weight around thought they would be able to make everybody live in their chaos, just like they always do. Well, not in our house.
We were determined to ride this out and come through it successful.
During the winter, while the virus skyrocketed, and society fell apart, and the doomsday preppers lost their minds, and the movers-and-shakers couldn’t make the earth move like they thought they could, we stayed cozy and happy.
I found a complex of ball diamonds elevated on a rise that overlooked a park with a pond near a schoolyard. The dog and I usually had the place to ourselves. At home, we were inventing all kinds of little traditions that we looked forward to each week. All through December we made traditional Christmas goodies that were right out of Charles Dickens. I would bound through the snow with the dog each day with the sounds of The Wexford Carol going through my head. Despite the rest of the world, it was one of the happiest times of my life.
It occurred to me that my little scene was reminiscent of the painting, The Bird Trap, by Pieter Breugel and that the cautionary symbolism contained within it is as relevant now as when it was painted in 1565, when plagues were all too common in Europe.
Paintings of this period were often allegories, and in this painting the deeper meaning is that people are pilgrims making their way through life across a landscape dotted with dangers.
The thorny branches in the foreground reveal a bird trap with several unsuspecting birds milling about, oblivious to the danger they are walking into. Bird traps were used in literature of this time to symbolize the devil’s temptations destined for lost souls. Birds were traditional symbols of the soul.
Skating scenes in art often portray the uncertain (slippery) nature of existence. Birds and skaters are brought together here to represent both obliviousness to danger and vulnerability.
Since the Middle Ages, our mastery of technology has advanced to the point that vaccines for Coronavirus were developed in record time; the advancement of human nature, however, has not fared so well.
The Great Men of History were usually only great at exploiting people and getting them killed. They thrived because they made everyone else live in the chaos they created.
It’s only been in the last 200 years or so that we’ve attempted to have, imperfect as it is, a representative democracy governed by the rule of law.
We almost blew it.
And we might blow it yet.
Schmecken! 