Did We Learn What We Needed to Learn from This Covid19 Pandemic?

We found that lowering the amount of traffic had a measurable affect on our air quality. And the first spring after the lock down seemed more abundant with plant life than in previous years. It appeared that the Earth took a breather.

But, did we? Did we learn that we could make a difference? Or did we grumble that our way of life was stymied? I know it was tough—people dot sick, some died, people lost their jobs--my husband included. Still, I wonder if we got what the Earth, the virus, the Universal Consciousness, whatever, was trying to tell us.

Instead, we became polarized over politics, over to vaccinate or not to vaccinate. Many thought our freedoms were being taken away. We were mandated to wear masks. Some argued that masks did no good and actually harmed.

I found out recently that the arguments over vaccinations date way back to the smallpox vaccinations. “The Government is controlling us,” they said. “Don’t make me put that in my child.” (Some parents tried to suck out the vaccine from their children’s arms.)

During the past two years, we could have banded together and become a stronger people. We could have been more sympathetic to the suffering. We could have suggested that maybe, just maybe, the planet was trying to tell us that we needed to make some adjustments.

Stewards of the forest know that a healthy tree is more apt to resist bug infestations, blight, or a slew of tree diseases. So, it would be prudent to do everything possible to ensure healthy trees.

Biologists know that when an animal population becomes overcrowded or over stressed, their fertility declines, and they turn on each other. It would be prudent to investigate what make a healthy human being, and to pursue that.

People who contract a disease often say it was a wake-up call telling them they needed to change something. Are we paying attention? Or would we rather have a virtual reality that is a fantasy?

Some people like to think and say that the Earth is going through a natural cycle with global warming, and people aren’t responsible. What is it with people being resistant to taking responsibility? If they admit they have some control over factors, they also have control over changing those factors.

Do we believe in science or not? Do we think that people are trying to help, or just being pains in the butt? Do we think that those with the most money have the power? Is this a popularity contest?

 
And then we have this: A baby is God’s way of saying the Universe must continue.

Make the world good for him.

 

 

P.S. Pick a book, write a review, snag a tote bag. (Canvas with zipper.) The gift this week only, From March 8 until next Tuesday March 15. Not the 16th, or the 17th, nope, nada, it ends the 15th.

choose either or both, The Incredible Yellow School Bus or A Journey Into Inner Earth.

 

clink on books:

 

 

Thank you,

Jo

Ready?

 A psychiatrist in Eugene said he had never had so many depressed patients as this year.

The other day he called his office and said, “I’m not coming back.”

You know what they say about putting on your oxygen mask first? If you run out of oxygen, you will be no help to others.

 What can I say?  What comfort can I offer to folks scared these days? I could say that all pandemics end eventually. The trouble is we don’t know when this one will or how.

 I’m wondering if somehow there was a message this pandemic was screaming at us, but our ears were closed. So instead of listening, we dropped into survival mode and started hoarding toilet paper.

 Are we waiting for someone to fix the problem then arguing over how it ought to be done?

 Are we with each other or against? We’re divided and argumentative. The veins in our necks budge from arguing over ideologies.

 I thought of this in contrast to Ester, who got into a hotel elevator and pushed the button for the top floor. Shortly after that, nine other women joined her. One woman taking over elevator control asked the others, “What floor?”

 Ester said, “I’ll have the lingerie floor, please.”

 The women started to giggle, and one woman popped up, “I’ll have the bargain basement.” Another said, “Not me; I’ll have the penthouse.” One said, “Let’s just stop at every floor and see what’s there.”

 They all got off laughing after having a grand time.

 Zig Zigler said he started the day by opening two gifts—his eyes.

 I know it’s not easy to change one’s focus from fear to optimism. However, we can move incrementally up the ladder toward feeling good.

 Is it possible that our consciousness had something to do with a virus that got out of hand?

Not possible? What if it was?  What if we believe we can lick this thing? What if our attitude would have some effect on the outcome? What if we believe that our immune systems can take us to the penthouse? (On earth, not heaven.)

 I’ve talked about the brain many times--how we have a brain stacked on a brain on a brain and how we drop into the Reptilian brain in times of fear.

 I had asked my daughter the question I asked you, “Do you think metaphysically we had anything to do with this pandemic?”

 Her answer came the following day. She said, “I think it runs on fear.”

 And she followed that with, “And I think that overcoming fear is becoming the master.”

 Wow. Something to aim for.

One of our brains helps us fight the tiger. Another brain runs our bodies without us thinking about it.   “Sent an enzyme down to the stomach.” “Send a sleep chemical. Send a wake-up chemical. The cells are crying for water—make them thirsty. Breathe. Pump the heart. Send white blood cells to clean up that injury.”

 Talk about spinning plates on poles.

 And then sitting on top of all the machinery is the cerebral cortex, the thinking brain, that can analyze, plan and build empires.

 Give that big thinking brain a problem, and it will find a solution—not always the best solution, but it will come up with something. And then brains got together and created the computer to speed up problem-solving ability.

 We have all felt emotion in our heart space, and indeed, some say the heart has a brain. In times of trouble or joy, we have felt a hit in our solar-plexus, so we know something is responding there. And who hasn’t felt as though every cell in the body was tinkling with life?

 We are warriors.

 We are going to take care of each other. We’re going to encourage the light, not the darkness. We’re going to trust that it will tell us to go here or there. Eat this. It will help our immune systems.

 We have become so chemicalized our poor tiny cells must think they are swimming in toxic waste. Our ozone is struggling to hold itself together, and the plants were happy for a breather when we decreased our driving.

 What if we stopped waiting for a synthetic pill to save us and instead looked to some natural remedies? Yes, use chemistry but be reasonable about it. Don’t put weird things in our bodies. I’ve heard that in nature, where there is a toxic plant, there is also an antidote plant. For example, where we live, we have poison oak, and we also have rhododendron plants. Rhododendron tea can soothe poison oak rash.

 Many of our medicines are synthetic versions of the real thing, and we think it’s the same. However, once a doctor—he was so fascinating. I don’t remember his name. He lived in San Diego and was in a wheelchair. His office had a wall of supplements and an aisle in front of them where he wheeled his chair back and forth, plucking from the shelves what he thought would help his client.

 This doctor told me that the calcium from eating the plant worked better than a calcium supplement. He didn’t know why, but going through a plant added something to the calcium that made it work better in our bodies.

 We’ve heard the idea that once a people believed in planning for the seventh generation. We know that many Indigenous cultures knew to walk gently on mother earth’s back. I’ve heard that the Native Americans said they would be back, like smoke, and that they did not die in vain. They were smart enough not to kill off the buffaloes—how stupid to wipe out one’s food source. And on top of it to revere the man who killed them. A man with a gun on a horse --the buffalos didn’t stand a chance. And the people in revering this man did not respect the life of another creature.

 I’m not saying the Native Americans were perfect—they were people, and some fought other tribes. However, living close to the land did teach them some things. Like not to pollute the very earth that sustains you. Do not take more than you need. Plan for the next harvest, like tying up the Camus flowers, so that next year, when the tribe traveled through that area, they would know where the bulbs, a food source, were.

We need to treasure what we have and bless it. We need to remember that the populace keeps the corporations going, not the other way around. The public keeps the medical personal in jobs. They know it, and we know it, but somehow, we are intimidated by the big guys. (Money, bluster, and degrees does not a master make.)

We run the cogs we think are running us.

We aren’t powerless. We are powerful.

 We are worth saving.

 

 

Have We Learned from the Pandemic?

 

First, look what came yesterday, a proof for my novel, The Girl on the Pier. The stripe is to make sure I don’t sell it. Everything fit, the spine worked, no unnecessary blank pages. I choose a misty/foggy cover for it is a bit of a mystery. First, why would a customer offer two million dollars for the painting The Girl on the Pier? Second, when he saw it he said, “But that’s not the painting, there is another?”

Read a Free sample click here

Now, onto El Bloggo:

“There is more love than hate in the world, but hate gets noticed.”

Have We Learned from this Pandemic?

 

I don’t know. Maybe.

 

Today I heard someone say she was tired of commuting, tired of her job, just tired, and didn’t want to talk to anyone. She just wanted peace and quiet and to crawl off alone. She said that recently she had spent a lot of time in meditation. “Did I cause this pandemic?” she asked. 

 

The answer was, “Yes. Along with all the others who were tired of the way it was.”

 

Wow, that hit me like an anvil.

 

That’s a pretty out-there statement, but what if that is true? We were tired of the way it was. Competition wore us out. Long hours at the job were draining us. Commutes were pushing people to the breaking point.  Kids were getting shot at school. We still had racism and prejudice, and that was after we thought we were smarter than that.  We allowed a wall to begin at our border. We separated kids from their parents at the border. We were discouraged and feeling that we weren’t getting anywhere near to what we wanted. We felt impotent to instigate change when issues such as global warming were staring us in the face.  (Oh yes, global warming doesn’t exist, say some, or it is a natural earth cycle—well, maybe we ought to study it.) We are having more wildfires because of dry conditions. Why did the winter slip past with hardly a cold day? What happened to the snows of yesteryear? When I was a kid, it was so blooming cold in the Cascades that the water flowing over Multnomah Falls froze on its way down. and during this time the Columbia River had chunks of ice the size of Volkswagens.

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People like wild-caught salmon, but if the tributaries, the spawning grounds of salmon, dry up, there will be no fish. We take supplements, fish oil to make us healthier. No fish, no fish oil. We’ve come to accept such luxuries without thought of where it comes from. Californians are happy to have the electricity that the Dams on the Columbia River provide. That river needs input from other rivers. Other rivers come from snow-melt.

 

I wonder if we have learned anything. People are anxious to get back to “Normal” WHEN NORMAL SUCKED.

 

And now they call what’s coming the “New Normal,” insinuating that it means something not good. That further scares us.

 

I have tried to get people out of fear and into possibilities--I don’t know if I’ve been successful, for the fear mongers have a louder voice. And who am I anyway? Some little blogger sitting out in the sticks, taking walks in the forest, and proclaiming that we can create the world of our dreams.

 

Well, how stupid is that?

I tried to place a 30 sec video here, “Pond Ripples.” This site, however, had different ideas. The video is a moment of calm. The water was so clear, and the reflection so perfect we had to throw pebbles into the water to prove it was wet.

You can find it on https://www.youtube.com/JoyceDavis0001/videos

I would love it if you subscribed to my videos.

Saturday Morning's Stream of Consciousness

I’m just going to begin writing. I’m frustrated. I’m not going to think about posting this, for I’m in a quandary about what to think. We’re in a pandemic. The government is undergoing a second impeachment trial on the ex-president. We’ve had people storming the Capital, and claiming to lynch the Vice President. We watch this in wonder. How in the world did we get to this place? 

We can hardly talk to each other anymore, for we might offend someone’s sensibilities because we’re on opposite sides. And why in the hell are we so polarized anyway? Extremism has happened. 

I had decided not to talk about the virus anymore, for I believed it gave energy to it, but I see people want to talk about it. It’s on our minds, it’s in our hearts, it’s in our faces if we venture out of our houses. It’s our concern right now, and we need relief from it. 

People are home with their kids, trying to home-school, getting their jobs done, and feeling overwhelmed. In times before the last Presidential campaign, I heard that Russia—hey, I want to be friends with Russia–and you don’t blame an entire country for the ills of a few. Still, I heard that they were dinking with our media to keep us off-kilter. Keep people off-kilter, and it’s easy to plant a belief. We are open and susceptible. Like how in the world did insurrectionists believe they could hang a Vice President for doing his job? Or resort to such violence anyway?

I had to write. I know you know all this, but we have few people to talk to about our concerns. We want to reach out and place a suave on wounded hearts, but we’re home, behind masks. 

We’re all in this together. Not one in the world is exempt from this virus scare except maybe some lucky aborigines who never heard of Covid19. However, they probably have their own concerns.

A little old lady at the eye doctor’s office, she had her temperature taken, she was feet away from anyone else, she had on two masks. See how frightened people are.

On January 7, a 34-year-old man admitted to a hospital in Bhutan’s Capital, Thimphu, with preexisting liver and kidney problems died of COVID-19. His was the country’s first death from the coronavirus. (And he was a tourist.) Not the first death that day, that week, or that month: the very first coronavirus death since the pandemic began. How did this poor underdeveloped country do it—A Coronavirus success story.

What to do? What to say? I’m just a person sitting in front of my computer typing my heart-felt best. And there you are, doing your heart-felt best. And I wonder what you and I can do to make a difference.

I have written before about beliefs, and probably will again. A belief is so firmly held that it’s like chipping cement to change it. We argue, not over who gets the biggest piece of cake, but over ideologies, which are thoughts. Of course, behind that belief is that something will be taken from us, or we will be forced to do something we do not want to do. That’s imprisonment, so I understand why we tenaciously hold our position. We want to be free.

Sometimes a belief does not serve the person, or they hold onto a theory such as when people thought the earth was the center of the solar system that to change their minds means to lose face. But to change in the face of new evidence is smart. And to allow change means that we have grown. That change ought to be celebrated, not, “Haha, I told you so.”

Most of us want to live and let live, but there comes a time when you realize you are being manipulated or lied to, and it boils the blood to watch injustice.

We have a strong sense of individualism in this country. We’re pioneers, adventurers, explorers, investigators, and inventors. We love doing what we do. Why then is there so much turmoil?

I’ve been taking care of business, being frustrated with my slow computer and a website that was giving me trouble. So today, I’m turning to the page and to you. 

I wanted to write, so I’m doing it. 

Perhaps I am writing “Morning Pages,” words for myself alone. 

I know the world is filled with words, and I wonder if it needs mine. Yet, my job is to write. It’s the job I have chosen for myself. I believe (ah-ha, see a belief) that writing is a transformational experience. I try to explain that to people in a little eBook, Grab a Pen and Kick-Ass, for that reason. I enjoyed doing it. It was directing people toward the pen and the page, not to teach them how to write; I list ten books that will do that, but because I believe writing is healing. 

In the March issue of Life Extension, I just saw that Matthew McConaughey has journaled since he was fifteen. How cool is that?!

Before I leave the subject of Beliefs, and I have written about them before, and probably will again, I have noticed how literal people are. You mention a myth, and many people do not see the symbolism, but instead run off to the gruesome, the diabolical, and the horrendous things people have done in the past.

My second daughter and I are writing a book in the form of letters. This is an excellent activity during these times. We are Elizabeth and Josephine, young archeologists in the 1920’s. Elizabeth discovered a gold coin, and we learned that there are three coins that together form a map to a treasure. The problem is finding the coins. One place Josephine will soon go is to the Yucatan. I have personally stood atop the pyramid, in the Holy of holies, that little room at the top of the Temple of Kukulkan in Chichen Itza. In our story, I go to find a clue or a coin I don’t know which. My point is my daughter asked me my interpretation of a frieze present at Chichen Itza of a Jaguar holding what has been interpreted as a heart. Curls come from his mouth appear to be flowing over the object in his hand (paw). To me, those curls look like his breath is flowing over the object in his paw, rather like God breathing life into Adam. The “Scholars” say that Jaguar is eating the heart. 

What do you think?

Well crap. When I visited Chichen Itza, I saw a frieze of the victor of the ball game. The Mayans built a ball court larger than a football field. (A whisper at one end of the court can be heard at the other end.) The victor of the game is represented as headless, with vegetation coming out of his neck. The guide said they decapitated the victor to ensure the crops. Well, that would really make a warrior want to win. My interpretation is that it is symbolic. The vegetation coming from his head indicated that they would have abundant crops. Did that mean they cut off his head? I prefer not. So argue with me. It’s a matter of interpretation. 

You see, I see, we all see, but we see different. Why is that? Our upbringing? Our genetics? Our past injuries served to form who we are. Some believed they could storm the Capital and threaten the Vice President. Some believe in throwing a tantrum if they don’t get their own way. Some believe that democracy should prevail and are endeavoring to make that happen. Some are afraid of losing their jobs or are in danger of their lives or those of their family, or the repercussions of going against the party line.

We need a Mr. Smith as in the movie Mr. Smith goes to Washington, starring Jimmy Stewart.

My telephone just rang. A certified caller from Georgia., I know someone in Georgia, so I answered it. It was Judy, the niece of my old friend June whom I have mentioned before. She is 97, and Judy took her from Eugene, Oregon, to Georgia, where she could place her in a memory care facility and look after her. 

June is on her way out. 

What an illustrious life she has had. An artist by choice, trade, and talent. I can foresee the celebration now. She will sashay into the group waiting for her on the other side– chocolate in one hand and wine in the other, saying, “Whoopie, what a ride.”

And now:

So, how was your morning?

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Look Out the Window

There’s a big wide wonderful world out there. It may not seem so at the moment, but when we crawl out of our caves it will be there waiting for us.

Since my daughter is a caregiver in an assistant-living facility, I see how small some people’s lives can become. They are sequestered away with the television as their keeper. They once had a life, family, children, good heavens, the lady she is caring for (I’ll call her Marie) escaped Germany as a child aboard the Kinder Transport. (Somehow, the Nazi’s let some of the children escape while keeping their parents.) Unlike Dr. Ruth (the sex therapist), who also escaped aboard the Kinder Transport, and whose parents were killed, Marie’s parents escaped Germany later on.

Marie went on to become an expert mathematician, even becoming a co-maker of a theorem. 

Now her life is the news, and body count. She thinks news will be fresh at the top of the hour. The trouble is, it’s the same news as the bottom of the hour. It is driving my daughter nuts.

I have heard that if we don’t work on ourselves, we become worse. they used to call it, “Set in your ways.” Without input, people can become depressed or melancholy. (There’s a pill for that.) Remember the old song Old Man River, “We’re tired of livin’, but fear’d of dyin’?”

Don’t do that. 

We’ll get through this current pandemic. We haven’t had to escape the Nazi’s or be shipped away from our parents. We just need to take care of ourselves and our families. This is a time to re-think our lives and priorities, and if you’re like me, give some thought to how it all works—you know, not what our parents told us, or our schools, but what we really think, down deep.

Who are we as people? 

I’ve heard that one way to seduce a nation is to make it so nobody can come to a sensible conclusion. Well, we’re sort-of there. We can have beliefs and ideas about what is happening. We can listen to one side or the other, but it appears we can’t really know what’s going on. So, we do what we are told. We cover our faces and stay away from people and close our businesses, or we get laid off and wonder what is the world is happening.

Once upon a time, I came up with the idea that it depends upon which window we’re looking through. Out one window, you see the birds chirping, the sun shining, and flowers in full bloom. Look out the window that opens to the back yard, and you see that clouds have obscured the sun, and people are fighting.

What is real?

I guess it all is.

Choose your window.

My daughter and I have found a fantastic way to have adventures without going anywhere, and to write a book in the process. We are two archeologists, young women in 1920, on the hunt for the mystery of three gold coins. These three coins together are a map to a treasure. The trouble is, finding the coins. We become separated from each other, and thus we are communicating through letters. She sent me to Peru, where I found, upon landing in Lima, that it was a booming metropolis, with shops, restaurants, theater, museums, and fine hotels. In the 1920’s it was frequented by the likes of Greta Garbo and Ernest Hemingway, and people rich enough to be gold coin collectors.

(Good old Google research.) One thing about a dictator, he can get things done, and President Augusto Leguia decided to transform Lima into a cosmopolitan city, not unlike some found in Europe. The streets crisscrossed using Parisian design, and many of the buildings copied ones you might find in Paris.

 I found I could use a telephone, and they did have limited air travel in 1920. Generally, however, people traveling long distances did so on ships. Lima today isn’t that of the ’20s and ’30s, for earthquakes, war, and politics have interfered.

When daughter’s bush plane crashed in the Amazon jungle on her way to meet me, natives applied the scrapings of a frog’s skin to her wounds. (They tie the frog’s four legs together, causing the stressed frog to secrete a fluid on his skin. That fluid is then scraped off and applied to burns or injuries. This treatment, she said, was to purge her of all negativity, and it caused her to purge all stomach contents as well.

“Well,” she wrote, “if throwing up is a spiritual experience, next time, I’ll just go to New York and eat Coney Island Red Hots until I puke. Why not save the frog the humiliation?”