Safety

[mallorys_camera]

The recent meteorological pattern of thaw & freeze, freeze & thaw, has turned the field in back of the house into a plate of ice. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it before.

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I’ve gotta figure out some way not to get massively depressed while I’m Remunerating.

I mean, I’m lucky to have the work. I know that.

But the work is excessively dry, which means I write, say, 200 words & then my mind goes dry.

To tap the well again, I watch bad TV, or restlessly scroll social media, or—worst of all—read news stories.

Bad TV is bad TV. Meaning that if I’m in a good mood, it is diverting along the lines of Lord, what fools these mortals be!

But social media is just awful. I mostly do FB & Reddit. Reddit is more tolerable, probably because posters are free from accountability—you don’t have to use your own name or give any clue as to your real identity—so what they say is more authentic.

FB is just one soapbox after another. Frightened people regurgitating URLs with very few intelligent observations of their own. Very disheartening.

The news stories, though, are the most depressing of all.

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Trump’s strategy has been to throw fusillades of executive orders at bewildering speed—and then back down from many of them. Muzzle fire, Steve Bannon calls it.

The result is that one never knows what one should be looking at. Some of the orders are important, but many are not. It’s disorienting—and, of course, that disorientation is the point.

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One of the biggest Trump firestorms is over the shuttering of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

I am well aware of USAID’s history, thanks to my love for John LeCarré. It was a CIA front; may well still be a CIA front. The Cold War’s rallying cry, after all, was Hearts and minds.

However… It also funds a number of humanitarian initiatives, not only overseas but also at home.

For example: USAID funds Catholic Relief Services. Catholic Relief Services funds Catholic Charities, a network of agencies that function as a domestic relief arm.

Catholic Charities has branches in approximately 4,000 U.S. cities. These agencies do everything from food banks and emergency financial assistance (rent, medication) to providing transportation for seniors (to doctors' appointments, grocery stores, etc.) who no longer drive.

When I was doing TaxBwana in Poughkeepsie, we used to meet in Catholic Charities’ decrepit downtown building.

There's considerable synergy here, too. The popular Meals on Wheels program, for example, may only be partly funded through Catholic Charities (the rest comes from grants, state and local governments, the Administration on Aging, etc.), but in many communities, Catholic Charities provides the kitchens where these meals are assembled.

And I don't know what the homeless population of the quaint & scenic Hudson Valley is going to do once Catholic Charities is out of the picture. Once Photoshopped pix of mass deportations lose their ability to shock or delight, I fully expect Trump to go after the homeless—three squares, a bed, and a fabulous view of Guantanamo Bay! But till then, they are a population with needs, and whatever you may feel about them, that population is going to be a lot more visible & disruptive when those needs aren't met.

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I can’t do a fucking thing about any of it. So reading about it is just like picking a scab: Should stop, don’t know how.

Reading the news makes me feel very unsafe, and, of course, I am unsafe. But if I have to think about how unsafe I am for very long, I get monumentally depressed. Because there's very little I can do right now to make myself safer.

Comments

[mallorys_camera]

But what does that mean, "support each other as best we can"? Serious question.

[asakiyume]

For me, in terms of support I'm offering, it means trying to be in touch (like here! but also by messages) so you and my other friends and family have a sense of thickness. And I get that, too, from you, my kids, etc. For my former tutee, the trans one from El Salvador, it means letting her know that if she needs any help, I'm available (in fact what she wanted was an extra English lesson, but I would drive her places, vouch for her etc.) So long as I have an income, it means offering the degree of financial support I can manage when people need it.

(ETA: And if I needed money, I'd hope that my friends would contribute to help me--and I feel like they would.)

You already do all this type of stuff (and more) for other people, and you get this stuff from people too, is my impression.

[mallorys_camera]

I would definitely provide you with any financial support I could within my means.

And yeah. I am definitely much blessed by the generosity of my family & friends.

[asakiyume]

Yeah--that's all I'm talking about. Basically it amounts to, "I'm not going to just go, 'I'm all right; you can go hang.' I'm here as a friend [or supportive family member, for my family] for the long haul."

It doesn't sound like much, but when times get really tough, I feel like there's a fear that everyone gets very everyone-for-themselves. So it's just a promise NOT to be that way.