MountainMornings

On a personal level, I celebrated my birthday this week by depositing our signed and sealed ballots, along with Great Grandma Ada and Hudson’s, into the historic Broadway USPS. We saw the Postmaster stamp them and Bob’s been tracking them online ever since. Now we can only hope our votes are counted!

And speaking of Hope, news broke that Hope Hicks tested positive last night for the coronavirus right before we went to bed. It gives me no sense of pleasure to hear that anyone of any political tilt has contracted this virus. I know what the Groom went through, and it wasn’t fun. I slept quite peacefully for a change last night, eight full hours, only to wake up and hear that Mr T and Melania have tested positive for Covid-19.

Or at least that’s what the president Tweeted.

There are so many questions, and the morning pundits are all abuzz – who else was exposed during debate prep for one. How could I forget that debate with Joe Biden? The way T threw shade on Hunter Biden’s past cocaine addiction. How T told the Proud Boys to stand by? I actually spent about 15 minutes watching it in disgust, and then went to bed with a good book, “Transcendent Kingdom,” by Yaa Gyasi.

My political life has turned a corner. It was either transcend this pandemic season of presidential denial or succumb. Maybe it was confessing my sins to a fountain, or maybe I just got a bit older. Hearing the news of Mr T’s taxes barely registered; I’ve become habituated to the daily onslaught of bad news. Sure, we’d all like to know who owns his marker for millions of dollars, what country?

But deep inside, I know that his cult will never betray him.

I truly wish Mr T well. We should not have lost 208,000 people to this disease – one in every 1,000 African Americans has died from it. How did we come to politicize wearing masks, why have Americans become immune to this tragedy? Writing in The Atlantic, Olga Khazan explains our collective exhaustion:

“… there’s an additional explanation for this empathy deficit: Part of the reason this majority-white, majority-non-elderly country has been so blasé about COVID-19 deaths is that mostly Black people and old people are dying. Eight out of 10 American COVID-19 deaths have been among people older than 65; the rest of the dead are disproportionately Black. White people’s brains psychologically sort minorities as “out-groups” that stir less empathy. Segregated neighborhoods have also helped insulate white Americans from the horror Black Americans face, because the ambulance sirens and the packed hospital wards are typically far from their own zip codes. “

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/covid-death-toll-us-empathy-elderly/616379/

It’s our history of covert racism that set us up for this divisive Trump era. Still, just because the Groom’s ICU was filled with Spanish speaking workers from a Tyson packing plant, the virus didn’t discriminate. My Son-in-Law and his colleagues were lucky to have moderate cases. Yesterday, Bob and I got our “elderly” flu shot at Walgreens. One less thing to worry about.

The high point of my week was a stroll through the Nashville Zoo with the Bride and our Pumpkin and Bug! The summer days of sweltering heat are gone and my kind of sweater weather has returned, all the animals agreed. An adorable eight month old Joey kept scampering about the kangaroo enclosure and then would crawl in and out of his mama’s pouch., unsure about the world.

I know how you feel little guy.