Category Archives: World News

My COVID-19 Experience

I haven’t given a pandemic update in a while, and that’s felt like an oversight. It’s helpful to capture how we’re feeling at the time. Unfortunately, it’s been a bit of a time lately.

Since late February when Russia invaded Ukraine, it’s all felt like a little much. I noticed my reading dropped incredibly after the invasion, and it’s only gotten worse.

Here we are, supposedly at the end of the pandemic, with health and safety requirements dropping like flies, and that’s when I get COVID-19. I got sick two weeks ago, after a weekend of family coming to town for a visit. Because hey, we’re all vaccinated and things are better so it’s about time, right? I guess not. I don’t actually know how we got exposed, but something like 8 of the 11 family members got sick. Fun.

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An Inspiring Quote in a Troubling Time

The news is really hard right now (as if it hasn’t been for months and years and… oh). Russia invaded Ukraine. Texas is trying to bully trans kids. People are trying to ban books and pretend racism wasn’t so bad and doesn’t exist today.

It’s just a lot.

It’s hard to focus, it’s hard to work, it’s hard to stop doom scrolling. (guilty)

When that happens, I find it best to focus on small acts of love and kindness.

So among other things, I shared this on social media today from my West St. Paul Reader accounts (nothing gives me more joy than using my platforms to be a positive voice):

“I could not look my granddaughter in the eye and tell her things needed to change but do nothing to change them.”

-KaeJae Johnson, the first Black candidate to run for municipal office in West St. Paul
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The January 6 Insurrection: The Loss of Trust and Truth

Yesterday a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol as a joint session of Congress attempted their Constitutionally mandated task of approving the electors for the next president. We spent yesterday watching the news unfold on Twitter and live TV.

I’ve never seen anything like this. I’m grieving for our nation.

There will be so many better opinions and commentaries and I hesitate to add to the noise, but I keep coming back to one thing that I think is important to emphasize.

An erosion of trust and a lack of common truth has imperiled our democracy.

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CoVID-19 at Nine Months In

I haven’t given a coronavirus update in a while, mainly because it’s frustrating and foolish and hard to write about. But I think it’s important to document.

I last left off in the middle of summer. Late summer continued in relative safety, as many things opened up again and restrictions relaxed as we headed into school. Many of us were cautiously optimistic. While normal summer things like vacation and the state fair were cancelled, being able to get outside and eat in restaurants felt like a return to normal.

It didn’t last.

Continue reading CoVID-19 at Nine Months In

Coronavirus: 5 Months In

I’ve been too busy to blog. We’re in a weird time here in 2020, in the midst of a global pandemic and probably the most important presidential election in my lifetime. That pandemic has caused an economic scare (never mind, you know, death), and things are just weird.

I wrote about it a bit this spring to capture my feelings, and those days feel so long ago. So maybe it’s time to do it again. (This is going to be a bit scattered, so I apologize in advance for that.)

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Coronavirus Check In

This is a weird time. Coronavirus has spread across the world and infections are exploding in the U.S., prompting changes in day-to-day life like I’ve never seen before. I wanted to document a bit of what this is like mid-stream.

Which means it’s probably a little pessimistic. I’m an idealist by nature, but this whole thing has me feeling kind of bleak. Darkness aside, seems important to document the moment, so here goes.

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Boston Bombings: I Want to Run

Yesterday two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring more than 150.

It’s always difficult marshaling my thoughts in the wake of these tragedies. Everything is a little scattered and disjointed.

News Coverage
As has become the norm, this is another event I learned about through social media. I saw the first comments about an explosion at the finish line of the Boston Marathon (my first thought: They run the Boston Marathon on a Monday?) on Facebook. I hopped over to CNN for details, found the barest sentence of an update and went back to social media for all kinds of updates. Seems like it took less than 20 minutes for photos and video of the blast to surface. Vague details, misinformation, ridiculous speculation and stories of the triumph of the human spirit were all flowing.

I turned on network TV coverage for only a few minutes, just to watch the president’s address, and was quickly pushed back to the Internet. I can’t stand the unending footage of shaky cam footage of carnage. I much prefer the news online where I can pick and choose what I want to see, decide for myself whether that video is worth watching, get the warning about gruesome photos and decide if I need to see that.

It’s a different experience. Though the need to know something, anything, is pretty much the same.

ContextRight now this attack feels huge. It will be interesting to place this event in context once we have some distance. It’s not Sept. 11 big, but it has that kind of feel to it. While the number of injuries is enormous, so far the deaths are, thankfully, relatively low.

I think the manner of the attack rather than the impact is what makes it feel so large in my mind. It wasn’t just some random bombing, it was targeting a major sporting event that draws half a million people. It’s also the first major attack on U.S. soil since Sept. 11. While we still don’t know much about the attacks, the manner of them—what appears to be IED-type bombs like what our soldiers face in Iraq and Afghanistan—in some ways brings those conflicts home. It’s too early to know if there are any connections, but it’s a similar style of attack.

Finally what makes it feel larger in my mind right now is perhaps the way I’m experiencing it with almost immediate social media updates. The 1996 Atlanta bombing at the Olympics would be pretty comparable—major sporting event, two dead, more than 100 injured. Though my experience of that event was extremely limited. I would have been in high school at the time and would have paid minimal attention to the news. I knew it had happened, but I don’t remember following the updates. While the Olympics was obviously covered pretty heavily, we didn’t have the civilian photos and videos like we do now.

For better or for worse, that allows us to experience these violent events more intimately. It gives us a small taste of what some people around the world experience on an almost daily basis.

I Want to Run
One thing I do feel after the Boston bombings: I want to run. I’m not much of a runner, but I’ve been getting into it, slowly trying to build up my endurance. I don’t know if I could ever run a marathon (I don’t think I’ve even run five miles at once yet), but at times I think about it. I usually run on Tuesdays, so running today isn’t anything special, but it is important that we get up and keep moving. In my own little act of defiance against our attackers and in a show of support for those hurting in Boston, I’m going to run.

Update: I ran five miles this morning (and didn’t collapse).

Libyan Tunnels: Fredd & I the Spies

As the Libyan rebels raided Colonel Gaddafi’s compound this week I was reminded of a story I wrote in fourth grade: Fredd and I the Spies. The basic plot is that President George H.W. Bush asks me, a 9-year-old boy, to make a friend in Italy (the oddly spelled “Fredd”) and spy on a chemical weapons plant in Libya.

Why a 9-year-old spy?

“If we sent a grown-up man then it would be more obvious.”

As you can imagine, it’s pretty incredible.

Incredibly painful.

One of my favorite moments is that they give me a car that converts to a submarine and that’s how I get to Libya. I drive across the Atlantic Ocean:

“It took me a few hours, but I finally made it.”

Awesome.

We did much of our spy work by reading a newspaper article in a McDonald’s which laid out Libya’s plans to attack the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. (yes, that’s what it was called when I was in fourth grade) with chemical weapons.

A less ludicrous plot point in the story is that we discover a secret tunnel that gives us access to the chemical weapons plant. Fast-forward 20+ years: This week the Libyan rebels discovered a secret network of tunnels under Tripoli.

But my life as a spy was not meant to be. When President Bush asked me if I’d like to be a full-time spy during a press conference (!) announcing the success of our mission, I declined.

“I’d rather have friends than bullet holes.”

After 36 hand-written pages of James Bond-inspired (i.e. heavily borrowed) violence, I suddenly became aware of the potential for harm.

(While the story is packed with James Bond references—this was 1989 and the height [and end] of the Timothy Dalton as James Bond resurrgence—I was pleasantly surprised to see a reference to the “pocket grenades used by Leonard (in Leonard Part 6).” If you’re not familiar with it, Leonard Part 6 is a 1987 Bill Cosby spy spoof so bad that Cosby himself urged people not to see it. He went so far as to buy the television rights so it would never appear on TV. My 9-year-old self disagreed. I still remember a spectacular scene where Cosby fended off man-eating lobsters using their natural enemy—what else?—melted butter [surprisingly, the clip doesn’t hold up as well on YouTube]. I also remember wishing I could watch the five previous installments that surely existed. Ah, to be 9 and have such low expectations. Despite Cosby’s efforts, Leonard Part 6 is available on DVD and Amazon’s Instant Video.)

Haiti Update from Lauren Stanley

Last night I went to hear Rev. Lauren Stanley speak about the relief efforts in Haiti (after catching the end of the Daytona 500, of course, which made me a little late). She is a missionary of the Episcopal Church appointed to serve the the diocese of Haiti and has been asked to remain in the United States, coordinating immediate relief efforts and long-term development through the Episcopal Church and Episcopal Relief and Development.

So basically her boss is the Bishop of Haiti, Jean Zache Duracin (last I heard he was living in a tent). The Episcopal Church of Haiti is running something like 20 refugee camps and caring for more than 20,000 people. Among those are the priests, parishioners, parents and students of the churches and schools with which my own church has had a 20-year partnership.

So Lauren Stanley was giving Twin Cities churches an update on what’s happening on the ground in Haiti. I went to hear what’s happening in Haiti and learn how the money Color4aCause has raised is helping (a tiny, tiny fraction of the money that’s been raised). Lauren had sobering updates, butt-kicking statements and in-depth stories and history to share. She’s a firecracker.

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