Draft Language for Podcast

I've thought a lot about what to say this month. At times like these, words fail us. I say times like these as if I have ever experienced something quite like the current pandemic. And I haven't.

I've written and rewritten what I want to say so many times in my head. I want to be hopeful, but I do not want to minimize the seriousness of our situation. I don't want to spread panic, or contribute to any confusion or misinformation out there. So I've decided this is not the place to tell people to stay home and wash their hands. Although, if you can, absolutely do.

Some of us may feel adrift, so far from normal that each day feels like a week. Things we knew to be true an hour ago may not be so certain now. Some of us are suddenly very busy, while others who find ourselves at home not sure how to fill our time. I feel that somehow I am in both those situations simultaneously.

Today is Saturday March 21st. It's my birthday, actually. I also found out that March 21st is World Poetry Day.


Alone, Maya Angelou

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

 "Alone, Together" is a phrase that has been making the rounds recently. It is especially apparent to me now that we are connected. Our way into the future is as a community and I have already seen amazing ways that people have shown their ingenuity, their compassion, their humanity in the face of adversity. Even when we are physically alone, we are doing so out of a commitment to the common good. We are doing it together. We are not alone. You are not alone.

I want to share one more excerpt - this poem is for the helpers, the people who are not able to stay home.

I want to be with people who submerge

in the task, who go into the fields to harvest

and work in a row and pass the bags along,

who are not parlor generals and field deserters

but move in a common rhythm

when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.

Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.

But the thing worth doing well done

has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

Greek amphoras for wine or oil,

Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums

but you know they were made to be used.

The pitcher cries for water to carry

and a person for work that is real.

  -- Marge Piercy, To Be of Use