On the Passage of Seven Billion People Through a Moment in Time

The coronavirus disease abruptly announced the arrival of a brave new world—but not everyone is reacting to the brave new world in quite the same way.

Old norms have been discarded or destroyed. As for the new norms, they remain to be defined and diffused through a sufficient number of social groups to constitute wholesale change; and with it the possibility of an unprecedented number of social innovations.

This much is certain:: Nobody is immune from many of the changes that are occurring. And whether this inflection point ushers in a revolution or a reaction; an era of progress or regress, seven billion people will have had a shared, protracted experience when the pandemic passes.

And it will pass, as all things must.

For now, we must recognize the fact that our world is passing through an extraordinary moment in time that is worth capturing however our smart friends around the world see fit to capture it. ::

—GreenHouse::Innovation

Portait of a Young Era by an Artist

June 9, 2020 — 90 Days After WHO Declares COVID-19 a Pandemic

Anything gravely serious contains a trace of the ridiculous.

A chaos of bulletins on COVID-19 mocks the possibility of straight information. 

Who knew the entire phantasmagoria could be shut down in less than a month  — Broadway, Disneyland, cineplex, bars, restaurants? 

Nothing surpasses the internet as a super-spreader of pathogenic information. 

To be infected by the infodemic, stay home and cruise the web.

Intent seems to be in cahoots with whatever rises to confute it.

When not around other people, he had no reason to remember he was human.

Whim is taking a beating under the forced self-isolation that shuts down pointless excursions.

How to seem mindful while remaining heedless is now the task of every citizen.

The skeleton, that abstraction of human frame, ideal fashion model, perfect movie star, without content, void … every skeleton deserves an Oscar. 

Passing the graveyard, I wondered about all those motionless retirees under their grassy plots, watching their little TVs mounted in the lids of their coffins, keeping them updated on the global pandemic.  

Following the Jurassic mass extinction, the rat-sized inheritors of the earth, our ancestors, had a nostalgia for the annihilated dinosaurs.

If it were an honor to be treated as a statistic, we would all be radiant with pride. 

Fear thy neighbor as thyself, says the government on behalf of the virus, and we obey.

Lifeforms acting within lifeforms acting within lifeforms, all at cross purposes —do you trust your body to make the right decisions as it acts within our body politic? 

The pandemic distorts dream life in proportion to the distortion of waking life, each compensating the other under duress; the one warps the other in the vortex of infra-psychic terror.

An economy built on blind greed cannot survive a broad uprising of conscience.

Soon the universe will smell of disinfectant. 

The genie, sampling the air of the 21st century, finds desire itself devastated, leaving no one willing to risk a wish, so he returns to his Hermetic confinement for another few centuries. 

This world has survived so many end-of-the-worlds no one living can count them all.

—Philip Trussell, artist; author of ‘Sentences’ (Cuneiform Press, 2019)

LIFE DURING THE TIME OF COVID-19

Racing Traffic

June 2— 83 Days After WHO Declares COVID-19 a Pandemic

The “home” in my #stayhome is Davis, California.

Also home to the University of California at Davis, it’s a town of 60,000, all-in; today, with only about 10% of students still on campus, we’re down to about 2/3 our regular size. It’s like summer has come early. 

UC Davis was established as Berkeley’s agricultural campus and outpost. As such, we’re surrounded on 3 sides by fields of corn, sunflowers, walnuts, and olives; along the fourth runs a freeway, which divides Davis from a massive floodplain; every non-drought spring this plain fills, so that Sacramento doesn’t become an inadvertent Venice, as its nearby namesake river would flood its downtown boulevards. 

Quite literally planted between California’s coastal range and the Sierras, which have inspired since long before Mark Twain compared them favorably to the Alps, Davis and the surrounding countryside are microscope-slide flat; if I want to ride my bicycle up and down a hill of consequence, it’s a solid 15-mile pedal to its base. I’ve thus taken to jousting with the winds, or riding up and down the levees (though not in the spring) — and to racing cars. 

Davis is home to a major university, and to family farms and a few agribusinesses, and we’re also a stop on the way: On the way from the Bay Area to legislating or lobbying at the Capitol, or to skiing at Lake Tahoe. When we moved here, friends told us, “Oh – we know Davis; we stop at the In & Out when we’re headed to the mountains.” That freeway that runs along our south border is I-80, connecting San Francisco to Sacramento, Reno, Salt Lake — all the way to Teaneck, New Jersey.

Between the stretch of I-80 running between Davis and the levees runs a frontage road, which is where I ride my bike when I’m short on time. Once a week I ride out of my garage, warm up along residential streets and a broad, mile-long stripe of country road, and start a two-mile west-to-east charge, an interstate jammed with cars to my left. 

Most late afternoons I beat the cars: they surge, and I fall behind, and they slow, and as I pass them I smile. I’ll admit it: I relish outpacing the traffic. On a Friday afternoon during ski season I can sprint the full length of my route, turn around and catch my breath, and only then begin to see the cars I’ve passed. 

Of course, traffic has moved much faster of late; it’s been more than two months since I could so much as catch the eye of a driver as I sped past. California led the move to shelter-in-place, and San Francisco was one of the US’ first major cities to declare a state of emergency. I rode out to my frontage road the Friday that our governor made the announcement, and the freeway scene was nearing apocalyptic as the Bay Area’s second-home crowd fled either the pandemic, or at least the edict.

As we’ve all learned, though, this disaster is no flood or earthquake to be fled for firmer ground; soon locals in Tahoe towns like Truckee and Incline Village declared visitors personae non gratae, and since then the Bay Area has largely sheltered in its own place — and I-80 traffic has been an autobahn. 

Racing traffic from the frontage road has been act of futility: even with a westerly wind at my back, cars and trucks pass me, one blur every twenty seconds or so, surely driving 80 miles an hour. Every third vehicle is a semi – and every third one of those is a Prime truck. Recently, on consecutive rides, ambulances wailed by; I imagined them porting COVID patients to UC Davis’ hospital in Sacramento. 

For the last few weeks I’ve ridden instead on the vector-straight roads that connect Davis to farm towns to the west and north; there’s not much shoulder, but there also hasn’t been much traffic. But last Friday, Gavin Newsom announced modest steps towards re-opening, so this afternoon I rode out to our bike-and-pedestrian I-80 overpass, where I saw it: stop-and-go traffic. 

That didn’t take much.

Down the other side of the bike bridge, to the start of my frontage road, and I began my first interval. Sure enough, I kept pace. This wasn’t a pre-ski weekend parking lot, but it also was no longer a speedway; I traded leads with one Tesla several times over the first mile.

My heart, though, wasn’t in it, and I pulled up well before my finish line. I pedaled back to the overpass and watched car after car after truck pass beneath, wondering on a Monday afternoon during a pandemic, Where are they going?

None of us knows when “normal” will return, let alone what it will look like when it does. Certainly I look forward to consistently racing past the cars once again. But today…that was too easy, as if a storm had suddenly subsided with one slight shift in the wind.

I expect that soon enough, I’ll be exploring those country roads once again. 

—Mike Fee, Co-Founder, Spotlight Education

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Time to Live

 May 26— 76 Days Since WHO Declared COVID-19 a Pandemic

Two months ago I was preparing to lead one of the coolest workshops I’d EVER planned. Literally.

And that’s over a 25-year career.

A week later, I’d find myself in Florida, to run that workshop, which would be cancelled 2 hours after my arrival, and this new normal would officially begin for me. 

When I think back on who I was in February of this year, and who I am now, that other person seems really far away. I catch glimpses of her in the mirror now and again, and I beg her to depart, I try to free her like a specter who needs to go make peace with the world and head to the great beyond.

“Be free!” I shout. But she blinks back at me, confused. 

Yup. Two months.

That’s all it’s taken for me to come to terms with the fact that I have only been partially participating in my life.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been fully busy. Running from place to place, a moderately well-dressed blur. Wistfully thinking about turning a hobby into a full-time job, like some Hallmark channel and bourbon fueled fantasy. Take kid to school, run to meetings – grab a flight – write a deck – be smart in a meeting – meet friends for drinks – get to the gym (who am I lying to? You or me?). I was never alone, not really. And I was rarely fully present. But I have been lonely for years. 

That specter I keep trying to banish is me. The me floating through my life but not anchored, not manifested in the way that I used to be before I became this “fierce powerhouse” of a woman. Mom, executive, friend, daughter. All things to everyone, and a shadow to myself.

This shit has been messy, sure:: Home school. Home work. Home home.

I don’t love it. But it’s forced me to sit still, to stare at that damn specter and actually deal with HER. 

What I’ve learned through this pandemic is fundamental. My dirty little secret is that I’m not done with the world as it was. I’m done with not participating fully in my own world. I’m done rushing thoughtlessly from thing to thing, place to place, conversation to conversation. Done taking a note and getting back to that important thing later.

I thought I was present, “aware,” and way more self-actualized than I am.

So, this next move is simple. I am making this next moment what I want it to be. I am HERE for this new joint. Because I refuse to go back to the place where I felt like I could never work hard enough, never be perfect enough, on enough, smart enough, real enough, given enough, get enough, enough.

ENOUGH.

I am enough. I’ve said it before. But it wasn’t until now that I really understood it. When I participate with my head, heart, voice, body – my being – that’s when I’m enough. And not for YOU. For ME. And that will require sacrifice. Focus. Active participation. Unequivocal yeses or nos. Because that’s what living is. And I have no desire to willing ghost this next round. I’ve made my peace.

This is the beyond. Let’s go. 

—Tanarra Schneider

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Love Letter From a Foxhole  

May 19, 2020 — 69 Days After WHO Declares COVID-19 a Pandemic

There is, I think, cause for optimism, even though the war is just beginning.

No doubt, the next couple weeks will be a bumpy ride. Maybe you have been one of the fortunate soldiers, like me, charged with staying home and flattening the curve.

Stationed at my home office, I have stood in awe of the health care workers, serving on the frontline, risking exposure to the coronavirus as they go about their jobs.

Seeing them in action is a daily reminder of the very best in humanity.

Here in my Chicago neighborhood, I felt the love, too.

Earlier the pandemic, a neighbor sent out a group email to everyone on our block. He wanted to identify those who would be able to help secure food and supplies for neighbors in need and those who would potentially need assistance.

Right away, a whole lot of hands went up with offers to volunteer. 

Not long after that, I had a long phone call with an old friend. We hadn’t done that in quite a while because there never seemed to be enough time. As we talked, I was sitting in my backyard. It was a cool day, but I felt the sun on my face. I saw a cardinal and noticed all the sprouting plants in my garden.

Then I drove over to my favorite local bakery and dinette, Baker Miller, on Lincoln Avenue.  Since all Illinois restaurants were and are currently closed, Dave, the owner, set up a curbside pickup window. He waved to me when I pulled up. It was raining that morning, and before I even got out of my car, the smiling cashier came running out with my brown bag of lovingly baked sourdough. 

Recently, my best friend and I exchanged thirty-some texts. We covered a lot of ground, including virus anxiety, recipes for a pandemic, and the latest on our kids.  You can practice social distancing without feeling alone.

This is not to downplay the seriousness of the situation. When COVID-19 is at last behind us, some will have lost loved ones and fortunes.

But I have a feeling we won’t take things for granted the way we did before.

We might finally understand how much we need one another and how one person’s welfare impacts everyone’s welfare. It is just possible that humanity might emerge transformed for the better.

—Mary Osborne, Author

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Rock Like Bach, Part 1.

May 11, 2020 — 61 Days After WHO Declares COVID-19 a Pandemic

As a deer eyed student of the piano (I was 25), my piano teacher properly introduced me to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. 

I’ve heard his works plenty as a spectator to music and could be moved by a winding fugue or heavy breathing suite.  It wasn't until I got behind the keyboard that I was overwhelmed at the complexity and simplicity of his music. 

By no means can I rattle off a work from memory.  I still fumble and tinker, but am humbled whenever I’m able to string together notes assembled by any master.

Before starting in on a composer, my teacher would share humanizing anecdotes that would reveal personality traits and tie those to expressions within his or her music.  The tidbit my teacher shared about Bach was a concept that he quoted in many forms. 

Essentially, Bach would explain that he reveled in the unlimited freedom he had within his musical construct.  That’s right, limitlessness within limits, infinity within the finite.  It’s a fascinating and enlightening concept that intellectually clicked for me when thinking of his great music.   

J.S. Bach’s boundaries were quite vast.  He unlocked a musical puzzle and spent a lifetime assembling the permutations allotted within Western music.  The symmetry of equally tempered scales, chords and interlocking relationships were all Bach’s to weave and spin with a master’s touch.  One can say he had great discipline to stay within the confines of these musical “rules”. 

The result is awe and wonderment 300 years later at even the smallest of Bach doodles.

Bach is regularly referred to as the greatest composer of all time.  The published catalog of his works, known as the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (BWV) catalog, total 1128.  His other more earthly limits include conceiving 20 children and living 65 years.

Our earthly limits thus far can be summed up as a complete halt from our daily routines. 

This accursed virus that glides from eye to mouth across the world has us all looking askance.  We are scrubbing our limbs with the vigor of our grandmothers on the washboard.  Confined to our homes, we oscillate amongst anger, sorrow, shock, gratefulness, hope, disappointment and so much more.  The continuous blast of media makes an outage of several weeks appear to be an insurmountable affront to Capitalism and our American way of life.  Click.  Turn off the media.  Click.  Seriously, turn it off.  Click. 

It’s for the best. 

Now time for reflection. 

Bach’s world of the infinite within the finite strikes me once again as I sit within my four walls.  This time it graces me on a more practical level.

My house is unlimited potential! 

We all can be the Bach of our households, finding life changing tasks and activities to feed our curiosity and self actualization:: 

Reading, drawing, writing, playing music, painting, cleaning, building and bench pressing our way to a satisfying time!  Let’s dust off that list of goals, dreams and to do lists.  At once, we should pivot our efforts to the what-ifs we dream about during our normal lives on the outside. 

When the “all clear” is given, we can properly mourn the senseless numbers who have passed.  After that, does the cruelty of time and our routines force us backward? 

We can forget our newfound culinary prowess and head to our favorite restaurants. 

We can drive mindlessly once again to work, pounding the steering wheel and curse at the crawl of traffic. 

We can go back to our 12 minute runs before picking up the kids from school and cramming in another conference call before dinner.  

Good heavens, we are confined when we leave our house!  We’ll be back to building more stifling boundaries in the open air than what a virus has foisted upon us indoors.

I say we “Rock like Bach” and redraw our boundaries and float within the limitlessness and freedom inside now and forever.  Take stock of this time.  If we are fortunate enough to have basic needs covered, tackle this time to be bold.  We would hate to look back on these weeks and remember it as squandered.  We can compose the fugue of brotherhood, the partita of a changed career, a gigue of a reunited love.  

For now enjoy the free space of our house, prepare to knock down the artificial walls we build for ourselves when we return to our routines and flow infinitely within our great, God-given potential.

—Tony Saineghi, Citizen of Earth

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Finding The Words

May 5 — 55 Days After WHO Declares COVID-19 a Pandemic

Ever since I got sober twelve years ago, my yoga mat has been where I make sense of my life.

I step on the rectangle of battered blue rubber on which I’ve spent countless hours, kneel and sink forward into extended child’s pose. I wait.

I wait until my body tells me how it wants to move. 

With movement comes truth, the only one I know. The truth of muscles expanding and contracting, knees, ankles and necks clicking.

And I leave my world of words behind. The words that I live from, that take me into strange seas of thought, that I consume by the thousands every day.

Because I know words won’t help me get to where I need to go.

When I was drinking, my problem was that I couldn’t find the words that would get me sober.

I began yoga after I got sober on a spiritual retreat. Sobriety happened because I went somewhere beyond words. I didn’t have to listen to someone telling me I was going to kill myself if I carried on drinking the way I was. I couldn’t use words to weasel my way out of facing up to my addiction.

Now when I step off my mat, the words come, as they always do. But I know they’re rooted in the truth of my body. 

During this time we’re living through, I’ve been going to my mat more often and for longer. At the same time, my practice has become more experimental. 

This is because I need to go further into the truth of my body to wriggle out of the straitjacket of words, but also to come back to my world with words that are as right as they’ll ever be.

Why does yoga help me find the words?

It starts with the breath. When I focus on and control my breathing, I become less anxious.

When I become less anxious, the doorway to my place of truth opens.

The physical aspect of my yoga practice – the asanas, poses or postures – is important for my physical health and intensely pleasurable. But, for me, spending time in a pose is really a reason to make my breathing as calm and unlaboured as it can possibly be.

This is why my practice isn’t especially complicated and just challenging enough. 

Better to do an asana properly and receive all the physical benefits than tie myself in knots and become short of breath and anxious all over again.

Staying in a pose and breathing consciously allows me to close my eyes and travel inside my body, to explore my inner emotional landscape. 

Some yogis believe that emotions get trapped in particular parts of our bodies. 

For example, anger gets stuck in the hips. Which is why what we call hip openers can be so anger-making.

It’s impossible to say whether this is true or not. But it’s incredibly useful as a way of holding one’s anger up to the light, taking a good look, identifying its causes and watching it drift away.

Releasing trapped emotion also has a positive side. When I practice what are called heart openers – anything that opens up my rib cage and shoulder blades – I visualise love and compassion pouring out.

After an hour or so of concentrating on my breath, connecting to my body and detaching from thoughts and words, those that come when I step off the mat feel shining and new.

They come from the heart.

What might yoga do for you?

Living through these strange times may well have sent your anxiety levels sky high. You might not be able to exercise in the way you do normally. You might just fancy a change.

If you’re completely new to yoga, there are countless online platforms and films on YouTube to get you started. 

Should you make your living through writing or you’re someone who cares about where your words come from and how you choose them, my own Secret Writing Mantra online course is yoga for writers.

If you’re not keen on the physical practice of yoga or can’t do it for any reason, try Yoga Nidra. 

This is a form of yoga where you lie flat on your back in a comfortable position for around 20 minutes while you’re talked through a full body visualisation meditation. It’s one of my favourite ways to practice because it takes me so deep into my body and away from the thoughts with which my Monkey Mind tries to distract me.

Or you can simply find somewhere quiet to sit with a straight back, close your eyes and watch your breath as it comes in through your nose and down to your abdomen and then out again as your abdomen contracts. 

Do this for as little as five minutes and you’ll feel the difference when you open your eyes.

And your mouth. And your laptop.

—DavidHolzer is an author, blogger, journalist, messaging writer and yogi. He writes regularly for OM Yoga and Lifestyle Magazine and is a contributor to the book Embodied Resilience through Yoga: Thirty Mindful Essays About Finding Empowerment After Addiction, Trauma, Grief, and Loss. You can find out more about David's work here and try his popular yoga for writers course here. David is a member of the Yoga and Body Image Coalition.

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Best of Frenemies

April 28, 2020 — 50 Days After WHO Declares COVID-19 a Pandemic

Growing up in London I have never much liked pigeons.

Rats with wings, we called them:: they crap everywhere and ruin your al fresco eating experiences.

In my coronavirus isolation, it therefore comes as a surprise to me to have accepted, nay, more, warmed to the presence of a pair of pigeon chicks roosting in the tree outside my property. 

 In the absence of human social interaction I am reassured by their day-in-day-out presence, some natural constancy amidst all the turmoil and change. 

The chicks, to be fair, are not the scraggy, flea-infested, malformed adults that they may yet become — or perhaps, if we are to believe to the rumours that nature is ostensibly bouncing back now that we humans have taken a back seat, this generation may prove to be less urban than their forbears, and retain their glossy sheen and all their toes. 

There is some local evidence for this — I see foxes during the day, where previously they only came at night to rifle through my bins since I don’t keep chickens, though they don’t find much there of interest given a vegetarian diet and low-waste living. 

I also hear birds chirping in the morning, a chorus I have not heard since I was young, that is theoretically lovely. 

Sleep is evading me for much of the night at the moment, as these are anxious times, and this early burst of avian energy is at the same time so welcome and the last thing I want. 

That’s what we’re getting now, islands of beauty in an ocean of social collapse. 

In the meantime, the pigeons, there they are. 

They check on me daily, through my yoga practice, my elaborate and slow cooking, indeed even as I write this, hanging sagely, heavy and grounded. And I reciprocate their acknowledgement of me with a nod. 

Time has slowed. It is a moment for reflection and re-setting. New norms, behaviours, likes and dislikes emerge. 

For now, these guys are my new social life.  

I never thought I’d connect with a pigeon, given my history with them in London. But we humans are social animals. Cut from our usual bonds we connect with whatever lives and breathes. 

As I am imprisoned here, these free birds offer me a kind of Stockholm syndrome experience.  I won’t later testify against them. 

Then again, if, with the double-whammy of Brexit and the coronavirus travel restrictions, the veggies do run out, this pristine pair might yet end up in a pie. 

—Miles Joseph, London

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The New Social Fabric

April 21, 2020 — 42 Days Since WHO Declared COVID-19 a Pandemic

This moment is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.

Society has drastically transformed social norms at the drop of a hat in order to protect the greater good. Though some will use this moment to try and boost political standing or financial gains, in general people are working in unified ways to get us past the crisis, and it’s heartening to see them coming together for this common cause. 

We’re even seeing proponents of small-government embracing policies they might recently have referred to negatively as “socialist.” As it turns out, social safety-nets are important when constituents' lives are at stake.

Democracy is still working on some level.

Interestingly, the physical space of social distancing is actually bringing us closer together in new ways, and is pushing us to weave an updated social fabric. Like so many others, my life has become a blur of homeschooling, Zoom* meetings, and live streaming events; all things I rarely did before the great pandemic struck.

So how is sheltering in place affecting us and what might the lasting ramifications be?

Education

Homeschooling has proved a significant learning curve for me, especially since I’ve got a couple of Montessori kids and neither my wife nor I are trained in that method. But we’re learning to give our boys a well rounded group of options and let them self-guide their path to learning within a loose framework. Kids need boundaries to feel safe and happy, but they also need to be able to explore broadly within those guidelines in order for true learning to blossom.

This philosophy is keeping us all happier than if we were trying to force specific curricula on them. Since they’re natural sponges at five and eight years old, they inherently know how to learn at their own pace. 

So far this seems to be bringing our family unit closer together, even as we sometimes struggle to get work done in such close quarters. When our kids look back on this they'll remember the feeling of the time more than anything they learned, so we're doing our best to make sure they feel loved and supported. 

It takes patience and discipline to remain calm and kind through the stress and anxiety of navigating an unprecedented and often scary new reality. This is not easy and we often fail, but the effort and love put in now will be worth it as we look back on this time.

I’m learning a lot through these trial and error cycles and I hope some of it will stick with me when we eventually head back out into the physical world.

Communications

I put an asterisk next to Zoom* earlier because said brand has become the de facto video conferencing platform of the moment, but that doesn’t mean I like it. Zoom is simple and stable which is great, but as I began to question who this company is that suddenly filters such massive amounts of our information through their system, news began to emerge about their less-than-optimal security.

During a Passover seder, the 40-minute limit on the free Zoom account we were using was mysteriously lifted. This was very kind of Zoom, but also kinda creepy. Did they know we were using their platform for a seder?

I’ve recently shifted to using Skype Meet Now which Microsoft launched to compete with Zoom’s simplicity. So far it seems to function better, have fewer restrictions, and is apparently more secure (but who knows?). 

I’ve been finding video conferencing to be quite productive for conducting business and will likely feel more comfortable using it in the future than I have in the past. Our kids on the other hand are having a hard time learning video conferencing etiquette. Whether it’s a “call” with school, family, or a virtual playdate, they’re more interested in making faces and using emojis than actually talking to people through the screen, and they generally lose interest after a few minutes. 

Their reactions are understandable. Connecting with people through devices is awkward, weird, and just not like the real thing. The idea that they’re not going to see their friends, teachers, and extended family in person for who-knows-how-long doesn’t compute. They’re generally in good spirits but regular tantrums still spring up out of nowhere. The emotional toll of all that’s happening around them is surely at play.

One day they’ll become much more comfortable using screens to communicate than we are, but for the moment I don’t want to push it on them, and in fact am inclined to simply let them play with each other, and even be bored. I’m sure we’ll look back at this down-time as a gift.

Space archaeologist Sara Parcak summed it up well in a recent twitter thread picked up by Buzzfeed: 

“We know we have to make sure [our son] stays as happy as possible, and that does not mean us forcing him to learn when he knows that something is very wrong. It's been a month and kids are super perceptive. He's scared because we cannot hide that we are. We talk a lot about what's happening to him. This completely stinks for him and all kids. He is missing his friends, his routine, his classes — he loves school — and we cannot even take him to the local park. It's the biggest crisis our nation has faced since WWII. We are all living history right now. Not really a good time for subtraction worksheets, in my opinion.”

Entertainment

Live streaming is not something I’d delved into before, but as my DJ gigs in March fell like dominos, I began to think about alternate ways to connect with people through music from home. 

First I worked on “Shelter in Place” Spotify playlists — one for dancing around the livingroom/kitchen, and another that’s more contemplative. 

More recently, I’ve been using Facebook and Instagram Live to connect with folks in real time. 

On March 28th I did a test run. I set up the cameras, plugged in the audio, and was off. I did no advance promotion. I just went live and before I knew it my family and I were dancing in our Chicago home as our friends around the world danced in theirs. We had 500 views with representation from Bangkok, Berlin, Boston, Los Angeles, Montreal, New York, Portland, Santiago, Seattle, and Tel Aviv.

The following Friday I live streamed a DJ set for my kids school fundraiser. That stream reached over 1,000 people and the school’s first ever online gala raised nearly $100k toward scholarships for families in need.

Having received some wonderful encouragement to keep these DJ sets coming (believe me, it didn’t take much) I’m now live streaming a “Shelter in Place DJ Series” every Saturday evening when my wife, 2 boys and I have a super-fun dance party with friends around the world. 

It’s not much like being out at a party with real people, but it’s fun in its own way, and it’s a solution to the difficult challenge of being a dad-jay who’s been searching for more regular outlets to mix and share music. This moment of isolation has provided the creative spark I needed to connect in a way I wouldn’t have just a month ago.

As this economic, social, political, and cultural upheaval continues to unfold, nearly every aspect of our lives will be affected. Many of the impacts will be negative. On the other hand, I see glimmers of light shining through the constraints as we’re forced to create new ways to learn, communicate, and engage. Might this hardship also be forging long-lasting changes for the better?

I think so.

—Jake Trussell, Principal, Metabolize

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When Your Dog Smells Like Fish

April 17, 2020 — 38 Days Since WHO Declared COVID-19 a Pandemic

Who even knew?

When your dog smells like fish

It just might be COVID stress

And, for us, that’s how it started

With a malodorous milieu

Then life began to cancel

NBA, March Madness scrapped

Tom Hanks cast away again and

Our 80-something parents left home alone

How bizarre, especially for the young

The warnings, the washing, the lockdown 

Can we still play hoops in the driveway?

When the college kids return

All lathered in sanitizer the

British boyfriend says, “It’s lock a moo-vie!”

Globally it was becoming a sad, scary picture

How many lives lost, how many jobs to be lost?

As the wife hooks up her tele-therapy

Relieve the anal sacs, advised Google

That’s where a dog holds its angst

Cue the country’s run on TP

Middle school, zoom courses, Tik Tok

Crafting an emergency corporate message

Waiting and waiting for the approval

All the sudden we’re front porch special agents

Thanks for the package, now drop it carefully

And slowly back away from the house

The numbers climb, and they’re grim

But they’re still numbers, still so surreal

Should we be ordering takeout?

Craving leadership, we get more Honey Boo Boo

It’s still all about him; Aw, how deplorable

Pass the Cabernet, and give us the Fauci

Out for a run, resist the farmer’s blow

And think about how the dog could know

That sixth sense or just a bowel on furlough?

Daughter turns 13, a real quaranTEEN

With a drive-by, b-day honking parade

Each car drops a card, and a teary smile

Work continues, but only for some

Gotta keep the doors open ‘til July

Trying to pitch what matters most

For most, corona causes mild fever, cough

For others, especially elders, more severe

Including pneumonia, which can lead to death

Guilty about the stay-cation vibe

But Better Call Saul and drinking games now saves lives

Cheers, the test on our niece came up a “no”

Care, coordination, communication takes unity

But living in a time of MAGA fear, Brexit pride

Pope Francis calls for a global ceasefire – brilliant!?

Parents still feeling fine, but dad jokes

It will end in suicide or homicide

And the body you find will be mine

On the upside, how ‘bout that environment

Clearer skies expected in China all month

Just don’t breathe too deep

What’s the lesson in a country divided?

With the proud embrace of self-righteousness

Anti-establishment, anti-intellectualism, anti-empathy

All the sudden, we want everyone tested

But don’t give that stimulus to just anyone

Ah, capitalism in the end times

We have to be more accountable

To each other and for each other

The C-19 heroes just do it, man

How ‘bout we all take ownership

Because more will die unnecessarily

While we continue to stream our favorites

Speaking of, what did I just hear on Netflix?

A line that hurts like only the truth can

Delivered by none better than Anthony Hopkins

“I’ve told you, Bernard. Never place your trust in us.

We’re only human. Inevitably, we will disappoint you.”

Hmm, not ending on a high note

But some things are looking up

Our dog, Bernard, now smells like bacon

—Dave Whitaker, Editor/Writer/Poet/Communications Guru/Husband/Dad/Dog Lover

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To My Future Firstborn Child

April 15, 2020— 36 Days After WHO Declares COVID-19 a Pandemic

To my future first-born child, when you are ready,

Your grandfather often asks the question: When ranking your allegiances by geography, where do you stand? I told him, first and foremost, I was a Chicagoan. Following that, I considered myself an American, an Illinoisian, a resident of Bucktown and, lastly, a human of the world. One’s answer is a telling indication of one’s loyalties.  

Why did I feel as if my loyalty to the world—to humanity ranked last?

At that time, our world was splitting at its seams as countries wrestled with inaction on climate change, the continued presence of endless wars, and the growing issue of inequality. There was no unifying force or driving cause that glued citizens of the globe together. One might argue that the climate crisis deserves this level of unity, but we have not yet mobilized quickly or efficiently enough for that to hold true.

There had been no “we’re all in this together” thrust that made me feel connected to the citizens in France, Brazil, China and elsewhere. 

That began to change on March 11, 2020; the day the World Health Organization announced the first pandemic in 102 years.

What people across the world initially shrugged off as what might be a minor inconvenience on their lives quickly turned into a once-in-a-lifetime public health catastrophe. 

Governments ordered businesses to shut down. Millions were laid off. Every festival, fundraiser and sports competition from the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade in Dublin to the Summer Olympics in Tokyo were canceled or postponed. Individuals were ordered to stay home or risk being fined, arrested or harassed. As of mid-April, the cases reached nearly 2 million and the death toll barreled ahead, currently at over 120,000 lives lost.

This rapid unraveling of the world as we know it taught me a few lessons: Everything is uncertain. Nothing is promised. Anything can be taken away from you at a second’s notice. 

We’re seeing unimaginable layoffs and moratoriums on services. Over 17 million Americans filed for unemployment in the last three weeks. This record-shattering filing of unemployment isn’t just hitting the U.S., it is rippling across the world and devastating countries’ economies everywhere. 

As I’ve sheltered-in-place for the last month, I’ve watched how society deviates from the social norms we’ve learned to so closely follow. We’re seeing the diffusion of deviance in all walks of life, that is, how we innovate at the limits placed on our lives. 7.8 billion humans across the world are, willingly and unwillingly, making unprecedented sacrifices. With sacrifice comes a set of new lenses for tackling social problems. 

Sacrifice is a catalyst for social innovation.

Businesses, nonprofits and individuals are rethinking their avenues for revenue, which require varying degrees of sacrifice. We are learning to sink alone or swim together; Pernod Ricard, the distiller of Jameson Whiskey and Absolut Vodka, mass-produced free hand sanitizer in a week; Dyson Vacuum Cleaners built a COVID-19 ventilator in ten days; Maker Nexus volunteered to make 3D Face Shields for front-line hospital staff. 

I watch as individuals discover the humanity inside of themselves; assisting at-risk seniors with retrieving groceries; nominating each other for social media challenges — and showing us all finally the true value of these platforms, which is to feel united when we’ve never been so physically distant; neighbors singing each other songs from their balconies in unison. This is how we swim — together.

Mike Allen, founder of Axios suggested we look all the way back to World War II for lessons of unity, sacrifice and perseverance. However, my generation and generations before mine, don’t have this context top-of-mind and, as a society, “the muscle memory of sacrifice has atrophied.” 

It’s true. My generation knows nothing of sacrifice on an international scale, but we are learning…fast. And with that learning is a surge of brilliant ideas, inventions and innovations that will bring humanity together and combat this crisis. This is everyone’s fight now. Our methods of survival and perseverance will shape countless years of social norms, policy and ways of living. 

As author and professor Marcelo Gleiser states, “We are entering the age of tribal override, the time when our species will begin to operate as one, as a human hive, working across the planet as a member of a living community of species and not as a destructive parasite. One tribe that embraces diversity and the common good.” 

Gleiser’s point brings me back to your grandfather’s question, but now I consider it through a different lens. What if we stopped defining ourselves by our geographical borders? COVID-19 might shatter these barriers of tribalism and allow us to look at each other simply as humans of the world all trying to overcome the same obstacle. Maybe that’s what we need.

I write this for you to give you a sense of what life was like in the spring of 2020 — when the world hit “reset.” 

With love,

Your father-to-be

—Walker Post, social impact consultant at Prosper Strategies, fellow at GreenHouse::Innovation

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Understand the Metaphor

April 13, 2020 — 34 Days After WHO Declares COVID-19 a Pandemic

Most of us made a mad dash into 2020 with the best intentions.

A new year. A new decade. A new outlook.

And then March arrived and along with it a pronounced COVID-19 pandemic. Everything screeched to a halt. The term “social distancing” was born and suddenly the Here and Now found us sequestered at home, distanced from many of the things we truly appreciate and which may have defined parts of us on some level — loved ones, office mates, the gym, restaurants, that groovy java barista, the entertainment venue we often frequented.

Not be left out: Our favorite and delightfully accessible brands of toilet paper.

SIDE NOTE: (Yes, and so early on in the game but follow along. You have extra time on your hands now): This may be the most opportune moment in ALL of 2020, to give a shout out to Who Gives a Crap Toilet Paper, a stellar TP-producing outpost based in Australia, whose We All Have To Do What We Do With №2 products include 100 percent recycled toilet paper and bamboo toilet paper — relax kids, it’s soft on the tushy — and whose mission is to “Flush Poverty Down the Loo.” They do that by donating 50 percent of their profits to help build toilets and improve sanitation in the developing world. Downright enterprising. (Careful now, folks: before heading to their site and stockpiling — I mean, please, break a norm or two and take a breath — they are currently wiped out of product. Pun intended. Look into it come … June?

Where was I?

Right. Toilet paper.

I’d say it’s safe move on, wouldn’t you?

Here we go …

There’s more than a hint of metaphor occurring at the moment and I, for one, want to fully embrace it, cuddle it and learn from it.

Once COVID-19 turned the world upside down quicker than whatever that maniacal place really is in the Stranger Things streaming series, I realized that, perhaps, it’s quite possible that we may have been training ourselves for this exact moment in time.

What? Trained ourselves for a pandemic, you say.

Yes. Sort of. In a way.

There are two reasons I believe this to be true. One of them really makes sense. The other smacks of woo-woo, but heck — if you’ve read this far, I suspect, it may very well resonate with you, too.

For years, Olympians train for competition. But so do many of us in the professional world. We’ve taken motivational seminars. We’ve delved into personal development courses. We’ve trained ourselves to understand the finer points of leadership, to be an effective manager or how to dive deep into the mysteries of our own psyche and pull that magic rabbit out of our internal hats to reveal what our deepest passions are and how to actualize them. We’ve read the personal growth books. (I mean, think about how many!) Followed the masters. We have lived for this sort of thing — for decades. Deepak-ing and Oprah-ing ourselves with aplomb.

Training. Always. Forever. It never stopped.

Why, that’s why our LinkedIn profiles are so deliciously robust. We are — PROfessionals.

For years, we have feverishly explored our human potential; to be better humans. It’s quite possible that COVID-19, with its mystery and its profound seriousness, stunned us into temporarily forgetting that truth. Yes, the danger is real. Yes, we need to be aware. And yes, we need to take precautions. More now than ever.

And we are. We will — no matter what end of the COVID-19 spectrum we suddenly find ourselves. Why? Because, like an athlete, we’ve prepared. A lot. We got this. We can do this. We can whether the temporary storm. We may not have ever realized the storm would come this way, but we’ve trained for it nonetheless.

I suspect we all know this on some deeper level — that we are more powerful than we truly realize. Is it scary out there? Yes. But we can move through this.

I cannot help recall some of the events that took place in the 1997 Italian comedy-drama, Life is Beautiful. The film was directed by and starred Roberto Benigni, who plays Guido Orefice, a Jewish-Italian bookshop owner who uses his fertile imagination to shield his son from the horrors of a Nazi internment camp. The lengths in which Guido went to protect his son — basically shifting the young lad’s focus — spared him greatly on many levels. Perhaps there are element’s of Guido’s approach we can all consider employing — as in … focus on what’s “good,” just and right — our loved ones, our lives, our own internal worlds, which may be asking us for attention.

Moving on …

So why COVID-19? Why now?

About that … I was struck with another interesting thought lately. This is the Smacks of Woo Woo reason I noted earlier. Ever since Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok, SmartPhones, (ahem!) Google Docs — is it just me or does the big GD seem like a sojourn into crazy? — and a gaggle of other techy things and social media platforms all crawled into bed with each other, consumers have turned to them for greater “connectivity” only to wind up feeling — wait for it! — less connected on an emotional level.

We’ve sensed it — that hollow empty pit in our tummies — while perusing that social media platform or THAT one. (No wait — THAT one!) We went in wanting to discover real connection but, quite often, we did not. At least not in the way we thought we would. In fact, we may have felt completely and positively disconnected from the most vital component of lives — people.

It’s interesting then, that a global pandemic would manifest and mirror for us on such a larger scale what many of us may have been experiencing for years: Isolation.

What am I saying? That somehow, eerily, collectively, unconsciously, that robust vibe of disconnection showed up like, well, this?

I don’t know. It’s a thought that came to mind. And the mind is powerful. So are emotions. So is collective “group thought.” Throughout time, we’ve seen this to be true.

So, what is the lesson? What is the takeaway?

During a recent therapy session — look, are you really that surprised I go to therapy? — I was trying to make sense of something regarding a mini era of my recent past, when my therapist calmly responded with: “It may not be all that necessary … right now … to understand all of it or ask yourself what it all means. What may be important is that it happened and here you are. Who do you want to be? How are you being? How are you showing up?”

I took that to heart.

For the first time in most of our lifetimes, we are in the makings of a brand new paradigm. We are, collectively, all in the same thing — together. We can understand the metaphor. We can explore new ways to connect more deeply with one another — ironically, through tech, which “disconnected” many us for some time.”

How do I know this — for sure?

We’ve trained for it.

—Greg Archer, Storyteller/Communications and Marketing Specialist, Esalen

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Whether to Flee

April 12, 2020— 33 Days After WHO Declares COVID-19 a Pandemic

We are in a global struggle against a virus that knows no country, political, racial, or religious boundaries, that requires us to work together; a challenge we can answer with great joy as we serve one another.  

As a result, we can emerge from this pandemic as a global people with a greater sense of vocation, oriented around the needs of those around us.

Where to begin?

A letter written more than 500 years ago by one of the biggest disruptors of social norms in the western world holds more than a few clues:

Martin Luther’s Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague is a letter to a fellow pastor, the Reverend Johann Hess, who was struggling with the choice of staying or fleeing his town of Breslau, which was stricken with plague.

It’s an amazingly relevant letter, considering the difficult choices that many who serve in critical essential roles from public officials to religious leaders to medical workers to first responders to grocery clerks have to make each day when they walk out their doors and put themselves in harm’s way.

He also provides guidance that applies to all of us as we make social distance choices with people such as friends, neighbors or elderly relatives.  

In his letter, he encouraged everyone to base their choices on the principal of how it could affect their neighbor.  

“Therefore I shall ask God mercifully to protect us. Then I shall fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine, and take it. I shall avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order not to become contaminated and thus perchance infect and pollute others, and so cause their death as a result of my negligence…

All of this takes more than good intentions; it takes practice. Here then are some steps to consider as one contemplates how best to answer one’s own calling during our “deadly plague”::

• Start each morning with quiet meditation or another mindfulness activity and change your mindset from “me” to “we”.

• Explore Luther’s letter Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague for insights on how to navigate in this pandemic.

• Put your neighbor’s well-being first. Consider all of the situations in which you could potentially interact with others. Practice social distancing where possible.

• Look for chances to make someone’s day better.  The opportunities are all around us and don’t always require close contact.  Pick up the phone and call someone who could use an uplifting conversation.

Luther makes it quite clear:: a calling to serve others in a time of great need should not be drudgery; rather, our service should be a reflection of the joy we have in our faith. As he wrote in Concerning Liberty::

“Here is faith really working by love, when a man applies himself with joy and love to the works of that freest servitude in which he serves others voluntarily and for naught, himself abundantly satisfied in the fullness and riches of his own faith.”

 —Mark Allen Schumacher, CEO and Chief Solutionist, Fearbox Solutions

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LIFE DURING THE TIME OF COVID-19

A Beautiful Annoyance

April 9, 2020— 30 Days After WHO Declares COVID-19 a Pandemic

On any other night of the week in the third largest city in the country, a prolonged cacophony of hoots, horns and whistles would be a most unwelcome disruption.

During a pandemic, however, such sounds are a deeply needed reassurance that one is not alone; that there are other living, breathing human beings tucked away inside all of those dozing brownstones, bungalows, apartment buildings and Miesian —and post-Miesian— condos.

There’s another reason for all that glorious noise, writes Shannon Kelly, who recorded a recent and very public display of gratitude::

“Every night at 8 p.m., people have been opening their windows to thank health workers — and the thank you’s have escalated! First there was clapping. Then clapping, howling, and whistling. Then the pots and pans came out. Last night, someone brought out a trumpet. It’s been something fun and uplifting to look forward to every night, not to mention a reminder that we’re all still connected.”

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The Persistence of Norms

April 6, 2020 — 27 Days After WHO Declares COVID-19 a Pandemic

Real change often happens slowly, it takes time, years, even decades for social norms to change.

We are comfortable in what we do, we grow into a way of life, it is an evolution that happens without us being conscious of it.

So how do we know if there is a better way?

We do so much without thinking, how we greet people, how we shop, what we consider to be essential to our life, diet, what we wear, how we travel and how we communicate.  To change the thinking that determines what we see as important means breaking our established routine, the pattern that shapes our life; something we find comfortable. 

The small things, often imperceptible actions and attitudes, that were not planned but evolved over time, shape our lives.

To change that in a fundamental way, to remove the norms that guide our lives, would normally take years.

Enter COVID-19…

A global pandemic, an invisible killer that is forcing us to change our thinking and behaviour in a timescale that is unprecedented.   We are having to evaluate everything we do, including re-thinking what is really important. When the threat of Coronavirus comes to your country, your city, do you think about your job, fighting for promotion, making money or staying alive along with your family and closest friends.  

A pandemic, this virus, it does not discriminate.  You cannot pay it to keep away from you. It affects owners of large corporate businesses to public services, old and young, it does not discriminate between race or religion and so bizarrely in that respect, it is a unifying force for the world.  Whilst it is still early days, there is growing evidence of people re-evaluating what is important and what value we place on certain roles in life.  

There will be – indeed already are – different working practices in place, and the length of the pandemic – likely to impact us for many months – will be such that our behaviour may change for a long enough period of time such that a very different set of norms are in place. 

Will we revert to the pre-COVID status quo or will we find that those different ways to work and live our lives work well?

We may find we like it, and that it is in fact better. 

We may find we are making better use of time.

A benefit of COVID-19 (or at least as I see it) is that it will lead to more family time.  “Social distancing” has become a watchword but perhaps it is the wrong term to use. If we think of it instead as “physical distancing” it makes more sense.  For the first time in many years I will spend 6-8 weeks with my family, adult children returning to the mother ship and the day to day discourse will be something to cherish. 

We will talk to our friends and wider family via social media and many of our friends are now speaking to people that they haven’t contacted for a while; a social catch-up -the opposite to social distancing.  We can be socially closer than ever as we have the time to do so, but what a shame it took a pandemic to make us think this way.

The most significant change I believe could be how we view “time”. 

Time defines our lives in so many ways.  The time we get up, the time we start work and the time we eat tends to shape our day. 

But there is also the time of year we do things; take holidays, sit exams or have conferences. But there is also time in the sense of eras that defines our history.

When we look back there are certain events that have changed what we do on a global scale. Post World War II, a system of global institutions came into being; the United Nations, NATO, the global economic structures founded at the Bretton Woods conference. 

These have shaped the western world for the past 60-70 years but resulted from a global catastrophe. 

Henry Kissinger has said this week that the Coronavirus pandemic could cause global economic doom that could last for generations and many institutions will be perceived to have failed. 

This begs the question of whether we look back at what failed and try to repair, or whether it is time (that word again) to reshape structural norms on a global scale. Do we have the great thinkers that can truly evaluate change needed for a better way forward; or is it something that will be driven bottom up from the family unit, the companies we work for and people redefining what we consider important and how we make best use of our time?

It is almost as if someone has said to the world, slow down, evaluate what is important and re-think they way you are doing things, because you cannot carry on the way you are. 

I do not know what the world will be like post-COVID, but I suspect how we live, work and think will be different. 

There will not be a reset button that reverts us to previous norms; a new way is coming.

—John Petrie, Chief Executive, Serle Court, London

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We’re All Improvising

April 5, 2020 — 26 Days after WHO Declares COVID-19 a Pandemic

This morning I had a rare 30 minutes to myself: no Zoom meetings, no webinars, no conference calls, no emergency brainstorming.

So I decided to clean up my email inbox.

As I went back day by day and then week by week, I caught myself thinking, “March 5th, what an innocent time that was.”

Ironically, that day started with a call from a new contact I was introduced to at Zoom to talk about ways in which my company, The Second City, might work with this burgeoning remote conferencing service.

Fortuitous timing.

After that, a working session with our partners at Thrive Global for a new culture program we’d been developing; lunch with two brand new hires; two afternoon meetings downtown; a quick dinner break at Roots in Piper’s Alley; and then a live taping of my podcast at The Second City Training Center. I remember one of the audience members couldn’t stop sneezing and insisted on shaking our hands after the taping. We knew enough at that simpler, more gentle time, to run to the bathroom and wash our hands. But we had no idea what we were truly in for. 

Right now, we’re all improvising.

And in my work, that means we are turning a 60-year-old live entertainment and education company into a virtual entertainment and education company.

The Second City has become a 60-year-old start up.

But what this means for all of us is that we are all working script-less. So we need to mine the toolkit of an improviser.

We need to say “yes, and” rather than “no” or “yes, but,” as a way to create an abundance of ideas and options; we need to operate with an ensemble mindset where all of us are better than one of us; and we need to see all obstacles as gifts, as we rapidly experiment to discover what works and what doesn’t in this new environment.

We need to play the scene we’re in, not the scene we want to be in.

Let’s not pretend this isn’t hard. It is. But let’s also not pretend that things were going so great before the global pandemic. And I’m not just talking about the national political conversation (which has become lethally tribal), I’m talking about the way we work: the many ways in which we don’t listen, we don’t support, and we don’t allow for the kind or risk and failure that is the antidote to the kinds of mistakes that can kill a business. 

We needed to be better improvisers then. We need to be significantly better improvisers now. 

Three weeks ago, The Second City Training Center hosted a few writing classes online.

As of today, our entire program has moved to virtual delivery and we have retained 85% of our students; we are still working with our corporate clients to move our workshops and entertainment programs to be distant-led. We even found a hidden benefit, as companies can invite way more employees across the company to attend; and last night we announced that we would deliver our first live improv show via Zoom. We had 150 reservations last night.

By this morning, we were up to 2,000. 

The Second City created a new virtual business in about 16 working days. 

We’re improvising. 

Now it’s your turn.

—Kelly Leonard, Executive Director, Learning and Applied Improvisation at Second City Works

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Return to the Mountains

April 2, 2020 — 23 Days After WHO Declares COVID-19 a Pandemic

Like most of the other restless, anxious and stressed residents of Sol 3, pacing, sanitizing and wondering what has happened to our world and when it will start spinning in the right direction again, I am trying to stave off listlessness with diversion.

Since there is only so much hand washing one can do without becoming a sort of Lady Macbeth with a bottle of Purell, my regimen has been healthily divvied up between working, reading, writing, painting and now movies.

I’ll spare you the Netflix and Vudu queue that I have slowly been ticking off one at a time but one of the most powerful and moving films that I have seen is Terrence Malik’s A Hidden Life.

A radical and linear departure from his traditionally non-linear and visual and mood-driven works, A Hidden Life tells the true story of Franz Jägerstatter, an Austrian farmer who escaped the anonymity of history and of what George Eliot called “the unvisited tomb” simply by saying no and holding to his conscience.

Franz was a simple Austrian farmer, a devoted husband and father and a devout Catholic who opposed the Anschluss, Adolf Hitler and Nazism for one simple reason. He saw Hitler as the Antichrist and the tenets of National Socialism, including antisemitism, aggressive war, euthanasia and deification of the state as unequivocally evil. Given the chance to avoid prison and military service and work as a hospital orderly, Franz continued to say no as it would entail his swearing an oath to Hitler which was fundamentally repugnant to his faith and his conscience.

For his resistance to evil, Franz suffered a brutal imprisonment, endured a kangaroo court trial and was convicted and executed by beheading in 1943. 

While showing Franz endure his purgatory of a prison sentence, along with beatings and humiliating abuse, Malick juxtaposes these scenes of horror and despair with shots of his wife Fani and their three young daughters continuing to work their humble farm in the unspeakable beauty of the Austrian Alps. Above their lush green fields, clouds swirl around snow-capped peaks, thunder roars among towering crags and sunsets of blue, salmon and crimson settle over interminable ranges of mountains piercing the sky. 

And yet, in Malick’s film, the majesty and glory of the Alpine vistas is seconded to the true source of Franz’s agony and that to which he desperately wants to return: the blessedly mundane drone of everyday life. Milling wheat, scything hay and grass, gathering up the harvest, holding his daughters and praying with them before bed become precious icons and sacred portals that he wishes to pass through back to the mystery of life and love. He thinks they are gone forever but, in the final letter of Fani to Franz she assures him that those days will come again and that, one day, they will “meet again in the mountains”. 

I am going to make bold and speak with my fellow travelers during this time of pandemic that, like Franz, we feel imprisoned in a gray, terrifying and unfamiliar world and are robbed of life, light, color, community and all their handmaidens that make up the comforting drone of our former lives. Like Franz, we would love to once again possess the majesty of the mountains but I feel that what we truly miss and despair of is the loss of the infinitely more precious treasure called the boring, the normal and the routine.  And, like Franz, we are convinced we will never see or experience them again.   

There have been, and most assuredly there will be again, national and global catastrophes that force collective humanity to hang the “Closed” sign on the door, go dark and silent and try to salve the wounds. Recall, for instance, the blood-freezing experience of 9/11 unfolding on morning television as we tried to eat breakfast and get out the door to work. How did we cope, how did we deal? The same way in which humanity has coped and dealt with every catastrophe that stopped the world on its axis for millennia; we gathered together, we ate, we drank, we commiserated and told ourselves that this is part of the story and that it, too, will pass. The wisdom was in the conversation and the healing was in the communal. 

What makes this pandemic an entirely new experience for all concerned is that, unlike all previous catastrophes, we have to endure it alone.  No family scrums at Mom’s house sated with the comfort of food and relatives, no restaurants or bars or sports events to numb and dull and assure us as we scramble and scratch that somehow life will resume and normality return to us like the dawn.

But it is not to be.

In this not-so-splendid isolation we are confronted with a reality more terrifying and inescapable than COVID-19 and more elusive than a vaccine: ourselves. 

The 17th century philosophe Blaise Pascal said that so much of the evil in the world comes from our inability to simply sit quietly in an empty room. Perhaps this rose-colored pathogen has presented our overstimulated and over-technologized and over-everything society that we of wiser years have griped about for years the opportunity we have sought for so long. Namely, the chance to disconnect from the phone, the work, the pointless distractions, the 500 station cable networks and the hustle and bustle and the hurly burly that we say are killing the souls of young and old alike and simply sit, alone, and wait.  

For what or for Who is for us to decide but we need to go into the mystery.

Like Franz, we need to enter into the prison psychosis where everything comfortable and familiar and safe and controlled is let go in order to arrive at true freedom.

Finally, we must trust, as Fani told her husband, that we will indeed once again “Meet in the mountains”. 

—Joseph Malham, Author, John Ford::Poet In The Desert

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Les Tables Ont Tourné

April 1, 2020 — 22 Days After WHO Declares COVID-19 a Pandemic

If you can get to the Port of Montevideo, Uruguay, you’re close to a life sans Coronavirus.

But once at the Port, you will need to travel by fishing boat for seven days, covering 2,400 miles over fierce seas. And upon your arrival, the islanders will likely prevent you from docking.

Welcome to Tristan da Cunha, a British Overseas Territory with just 243 British citizens, 6,163 miles from London and, most importantly, zero cases.

Strange how one’s perspective shifts depending upon external circumstances. Two weeks ago, and for most of my life before that, I have been fascinated with this 37.8 square miles of seclusion, but also felt a bit sorry for its cloistered denizens.

A hearty stock, descendants of four or five families, they have lived a life of worldly isolation, mostly farming, selling stamps, knitting "love" socks, all without 21st century conveniences.  

But they have not seemed to mind...and they certainly don’t want you to visit. In fact, you’re prohibited from buying land, or ever settling with them—a prohibition imposed before the C19 scourge.

But how les tables ont tourné. I now envy their lives. They can gather, eat, drink, mingle and dance without fear of ever catching the contagion. True, they are isolated but not quarantined.

As cases mount, and sickness, death, creeps nearer, our modern family is together, in person and on Zoom. We eat, drink, laugh, cry, play Xbox, and ponder the next day without friends, jobs or toilet paper. We are truly grateful for our closeness and yet yearn for community with others.

A good cup of coffee. Waiting on a crowded train platform. Sitting at a crowded bar chatting with a stranger. People watching. So many odd things we miss, but mostly, we long for mingling anonymously with the human herd.

As pack animals, well...we need the pack.

Maybe this deadly yet teeny virus will help us finally focus upon our human similarities rather than our cliché differences. The virus sees us as one body--when this is all over, perhaps we should adopt its perspective.

In the meantime, I will be strolling on Tristan Da Cunha, darning socks and eagerly hugging its 243 inhabitants.

—Charlie Stone, Chairman, Founder at SRW

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The Life Eremitic

March 30, 2020 — 19 Days After WHO Declares COVID-19 a Pandemic

I am a Roman Catholic priest who, for the past 15 years, has lived as a hermit in silence and solitude seeking the living God—God’s voice, God’s face.

A friend writing to me very recently began:: "We are all hermits now. " 

Well, “yes” and “no.”

This virus has imposed upon us self isolation. I have freely chosen and sought out self isolation.

I am still learning and trying to be a hermit bit by bit, day by day. I like to think of myself as someone who is trying to live as a Desert Father.  By choice I try to bring myself to a sought-after wilderness in our busy and noisy world of today. I think it is best to plunge in and try; and if you are not called to this way of life you will know jolly quickly.

Eremitical living tests one's mental and sometimes physical resources to the limit. For the Desert Fathers sometimes physical extremes were almost relished.

This is not my way.

I have come to see it as a stripping away of more and more things we needlessly cling to. This cannot be done quickly or it may not last nor may it bear fruit. How one can judge that fruit?

A big question.

Simplicity, balance and moderation are the best starters, I think. Prayer in its many and varied forms is nourished on a simple diet of the constant repartition of the Psalms (a prayer book of at least 3,000 years old) and the Lectionary (that fairly recent book 1969) where selected readings from the Bible for use during the Eucharist are systematically laid out. This repartition needs to be relentless, day by day, in season and out of season. The words of these books have to seep into one's bones so to speak. They nourish and they feed. Sometimes this may be intense but it is usually quite ordinary and simple.

Several of my allotted prayer times begin with the phrase from Psalms ( Psalm 70):: O God, come to our aid. O Lord, make haste to save us". I hardly need say how relevant and urgent this is today as we face COVID-19 sweeping our world. In my lifetime I must have recited and prayed this tens of thousands of time.

Now I long to pray it, I look forward to saying it for all in our shaken and frightened world.

From the start I have clung to a short phrase from the Psalms (Psalm 46):: Be still and know that I am God. Many will know it and cherish it as I do. In recent years another longer phrase again from the Psalms (Psalm 19:3-4) has come to join it:: No speak, no word, no voice is heard yet their span extends through all the earth, their words to the utmost bounds of the world.

Wherever you are I am praying for you no matter your faith or religion or race.

—Fr. Bruno Healy, hermit priest

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Collective We

March 27, 2020 — 16 Days After WHO Declares COVID-19 a Pandemic

It's a time to flex a new muscle.

To let go of old ideas and see what quality can come out of less time or resources.

We are making a jump into the future—together—and the socialist in me wonders how we can do it together. Then the capitalist in me thinks maybe we should make it a competition. Awards and recognition for the most lives saved, the most attention to science and the most creative way we give up something for the greater group. John Nash's contributions to game theory have been coming into my head for the last couple of days.  We must do what is best taking into account the decisions of others... 

…I think it comes down to pride. Having pride in what we're all doing together big or small. The 400-pound guy who can barely stand cheers for his Olympic team feels like he wins with them:: "We won!".

How do we replicate this sense of goal and pride in this huge task we must take on together? How do we become "We" and how do we bring every step of progress into the art of "we are winning!"? ::

—Elizabeth C. Nelson, Founder, Learn Adapt Build/Amsterdam / Author, The Healthy Office Revolution

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Planet Veggie

How long will it take until we realize that the human harvesting of animals is a significant contributor to some of the worst pandemics in history?  

Swine flu, avian flu, COVID-19 to name a few.  SARS was likely animal transmitted as well.  

Although this is tongue in cheek, I have yet to hear about the great lentil virus of 1923.  Or the dreaded asparagus epidemic of 2007.  While I am not a staunch vegetarian, I cannot help but think that in the greater scheme of things, there are a whole lot of animals laughing at us with the attitude of “that’s what those humans get for treating us like this.”  

And they would be right.  

From an evolutionary perspective, this is natural selection at its finest. When some animal eats something it’s not supposed to, it usually dies, and thus is rendered unable to pass on the genetics to offspring who would be inclined to make the same mistake. Did we stop eating pigs after the swine flu?  Of course not.  Did we stop raising birds and poultry in the face of avian flu?  Never.  

We have a carnivorous society, and while I recognize the idea of a vegetarian planet is horribly unrealistic, perhaps this most critical COVID-19 epidemic serves as a wake-up call that humans need to change our focus on how the animal kingdom fits into our world, or more accurately, how humans fit into theirs.

Humans are coming to the harsh realization that we are not in charge of animals, viruses, or any part of this ecosphere we pretend to know so much about.  We are simply another species on this planet, a species that does not necessarily have guaranteed sustainability.  As testament to our arrogance, you would never have to convince an injured or threatened animal to take shelter and hide itself from the threats against it.  Yet for some reason, the thought of social isolation in the face of life-threatening danger is just not acceptable for a large percentage of humans.  

Maybe this is natural selection at work after all. ::

—Name Withheld Upon Request

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Time Out

March 21, 2020 — 10 Days After WHO Declares Coronavirus a Pandemic

When Henry Kissinger asked the premier of the People’s Republic of China, Zhou Enlai, about the impact of the French Revolution, he responded famously::

“Too soon to tell.”

That was in the early 1970s, and the answer is not just wise—it’s useful. Given the uncertainty of our current moment, it’s clearly applicable for predicting COVID-19’s effects, though I am certain of one thing::

We need to start thinking about the impact of this virus in a brand-new way. It’s not a pandemic. It’s a global timeout—one called (possibly by Mother Earth herself) for a planet filled with children and no adults.

Parents typically call timeouts because kids are doing something dangerous, something hurtful to themselves or other kids or are flat-out refusing to follow clear, parental direction after a warning or two. One look at the United Nations’ 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs)—and the fact that we kids have failed to achieve any of them—and it’s plain to see why a timeout was a long time coming.

Timeouts are boring. Timeouts are no fun. But they’re the best, most immediate way to call attention to and interrupt bad behavior. They’re also the most effective means for creating and sustaining new, more desirable behaviors in the long-term for selfish, stubborn, spoiled children.

Progress by another name?

Already this global timeout has called attention to and corrected some of our bad behavior as producers and consumers. Since the lockdowns in Italy and China, emissions have reduced significantly, working wonders for our natural habitat, including the air we breathe. Some experts argue that, as a result, more lives could be saved than are lost to the coronavirus. If that’s true, COVID-19 isn’t the pathogen. It’s Earth’s antibody attacking the virus of production—unclean production unbound.

Even at a comparatively early stage of this motherly timeout, the notion of a world of vegetarians is, suddenly, no longer ridiculous. As one medical authority put it, on the condition of anonymity:: “How long will it take until we realize that the human harvesting of animals is a significant contributor to some of the worst pandemics in history? Swine flu, avian flu, COVID-19 to name a few. SARS was likely animal transmitted as well. 

“We have a carnivorous world, and while I recognize the idea of a vegetarian planet is horribly unrealistic, perhaps this most critical COVID-19 epidemic serves as a wake-up call that humans need to change our focus on how the animal kingdom fits into our world, or more accurately, how humans fit into theirs.”

What is a chain like McDonald’s in such a world? What becomes of the cattle industry and poultry farming? The answers lie in innovative self-destruction—a hallmark of capitalism. Destroy one need; invent another, as well as new, profitable ways to meet it. (Repeat.)

Kicked out of our comfort zones

This timeout is also demonstrating the vulnerabilities, the failures—and most unnervingly— the superfluity of other existing business models and old world “innovations.” In other words, we’re slowly discovering that tomorrow is still another day even without the surplus of modern “necessities.”

Scary? Confounding? Exhilarating? It all depends on how one wishes to engage with the global timeout.

If one should choose to adopt the internal stance of an innovator, the moment is a clarion call to create, design and develop new models—new innovations as we look for other things to stay busy (and employed) under a quarantine.

It doesn’t mean we stop producing. It means we shall discover new modes and new things and new reasons to produce, if indeed we must produce at all. It means we’re all in the R&D business now.

Yes—the timeout is kicking many of us out of our comfort zones, driven us from the expected places of employment, or cloistered us within them if we work from home…or a convent.

It has stopped the world, not so we can get off, not so we can melt with one another, but so we can exercise the option to reclaim something of our humanity by not moving at the speed of business, a first for many of us.

More than an opportunity

This is a moment of forced mindfulness, perhaps to realize that we are human beings, not merely human doings. And that maybe we should figure out how to give a damn about basic humanitarian concerns when the market is up.

We can infect people with a serious disease if we don't Do The Five. We know that now, too.

And now, more than ever, we know infection works. One person can “infect” others—the whole world in fact—with other things like virtues of kindness, compassion, inspiration, hope, courage, comfort, understanding, empathy, imagination through and by example; as well as other types of viruses that savage the human spirit, like bigotry, fear, ignorance, and hatred of others who don’t look like us, who don’t vote like us, who don’t hate like us.

If we’re not more careful, that is.

Yes—many have died already. And based on the increase of confirmed cases in several major cities in the U.S., the worst is yet to come. Clearly there’s no better time for swift, deliberate action as we work together under the banner of tragic optimism—to literally say “yes” to life again and again in spite of a global calamity—if only to do our part to improve the conditions of our natural and physical spaces for the future safety of the present generation, and the safety of future generations to ensure that those who have perished from this disease have not done so pointlessly.

Really, what else can one do? This isn’t a movie or original series about a zombie apocalypse. This is real life on planet Earth; and right now the Mother of us all is using real life to show us something, to illustrate something that the best Art conveys:: how fragile, how vulnerable, how precious life of the Earth and life on the Earth is.

And how much more precious that life is when we realize it does not last forever. Or as Jack Gilbert put it::

The Lord gives everything and charges

by taking it back. What a bargain.

We have the answers

Mom's timeout is proving something else:: seven billion kids can figure out how to work together, to “play nice,” to contain a virus that threatens all of us, not just “the bad guys,” as it knows neither borders nor boundaries; nor divisions in caste or class.

In the process, it is making it soberingly clear that we have everything we need to do what we need to do to survive and prosper and flourish if we believe life on Earth—and an Earth of life—is worth keeping and preserving.

Simply put:: If we want a sustainable environment that promotes health and wellness for all, a high road economy must be on the table; if we want a world free of COVID-19 and other zoonotic diseases that can be caused through the ingestion of animal parts, we’ll need a new nutrition plan. Or at minimum we must rethink how we engage and interact with those animals; and they with us. If we want our businesses to come out on the other side of this pandemic, we’ll need to accept the fact that the old modes of doing things may be gone for now—maybe forever. And in order to find new modes, we’ll just have to keep calm and innovate as this train is now heading where there “ain’t no track.”

Into the void, in fact:: the dream location for true innovation.

By dint of this timeout, it’s definitely not too soon for us kids to grasp the obvious:: that we have the answers, or at least the means and ways to get those answers when we work together, to make the world a better, kinder, healthier place right now.

What we need is the good sense to use them. ::

—Howell J. Malham, Founder, GreenHouse::Innovation

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What If?

MARCH 12, 2020 — 1 Day After WHO Declares COVID-19 a Pandemic

What if, among the panic and suffering, we could find wisdom? 

What if coronavirus and climate change are cosmic clues in the great test of life, and how we might live if we are truly committed to saving our species?

What if satellite images of China’s cleaner air amid the coronavirus lockdown, were a prophetic picture of Earth’s regeneration rather than a symbol of lost productivity?

What if the closed schools, colleges and offices were an invitation to a new norm of learning and working and being, a way that embraces trust and technology, nurtures families, communities, sustaining staff morale and Mother Nature herself?

What if coronavirus and climate change are calling us to travel further inwards, and not outwards? What if mindfulness and flying along spiritual superhighways was the new luxury travel?  

What if the failed new runways at Heathrow and Bristol were actually successes? 

What if we journeyed instead to the neighbour next door, or to the strangers on our streets?

What if hope is more contagious than fear?

What if everything is going to be okay?

—Simon Cohen

ONE YEAR LATER…

Yes, what if everything is going to be okay….but::

What if it’s okay to not be okay?

This is the main “what if” question that has been percolating for me during this pandemic.

The principles of the unapologetically optimistic “What If” I penned on March 12, 2020 (above), and the several what if videos that followed, still hold true, but it’s fair to say that the latest lockdown has taken a mental toll on me and so many others around the world.

The first lockdown felt like a literal and proverbial breath of fresh air, as we re-calibrated our relationship with Earth and dared to slow down our relentless pursuit of…whatever we were pursuing:: Bike rides. Quiet streets. Ah, the sound of nature.

But recently, I’ve felt the creeping proximity between a pandemic and pandaemonium — the capital of Hell in Milton’s Paradise Lost.

So while there is indeed wisdom in zooming out and finding hope in our forced solitude, and the idea that this storm too shall pass — it can also be liberating to accept that many of us are not okay right now.

What if we are experiencing the inextricable relationship between this heaven and hell, the lightness and darkness that permeates our existence in this beautiful world?

What if our enduring challenge is where we direct our attention?

As Nelson Mandela said “Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair.”

What if we don’t give up?

What if, for now, that’s enough?

—Simon Cohen, March 12, 2021

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