Shelter in Place: Part 1
An essay in multiple parts, more likely than not
Shelter in Place…
This has come to mean several things in the last decade, none of them for good reasons. When a person with a gun (it’s never an animal. Why is that? If anyone has reasons to shoot people it’s deer or maybe bears) comes to your school or grocery store or concert with thousands of happy people dancing and swaying to the music, you are instructed to hide and shelter where you are, in hopes that the person with the gun will pass you by.
Shelter in Place…
When I was in grade school, oh those many decades ago, we used to have a drill that was supposed to protect us from the nuclear bomb that Russia or maybe Cuba, was going to drop on us. They would sound a siren and we would all proceed from our classrooms to the darkened auditorium, where we would sit on the floor, against the wall.
I suspect the auditorium would have little protective effect on a nuclear bomb. Or maybe since there were no windows, they figured to radiation poisoning wouldn’t take effect till we got home. I mean, if our homes hadn’t also been blown into oblivion.
Shelter in Place…
When the Covid 19 pandemic washed up on our shores, after we figured out that the story: “It’s only 15 cases and they will soon be gone, and everything will be fine, nothing to worry about” was a lie, we were told to shelter in place. As one of the fortunate self employed, who didn’t have to share an 800 sq. ft apartment with 4 other people, all of whom were trying to work from home or figure out how to attend school on an iPad, it wasn’t so much a hardship as an altered state of being. Sleep was elusive. My work suffered. Only my garden prospered, secluded and safe…maybe.
On those rare occasions when I would venture out to the store, the roads would be empty. It felt like being the last person alive on earth. Then you’d get to the store, creep around as fast as you could, wearing masks, slathering hand sanitizer on your hands as soon as you got back to the car, rotate the piles of cloth masks into dirty and clean, speed home, wipe your groceries and scrub your hands, wondering if you should change your clothes or take a shower.
Shelter in Place…
When flag waving, pole pounding, threat screaming Trump supporters showed up at the US Capitol after their loser of a leader wound them up and pointed them in the direction of Congress to take what was not theirs, where could officials and staff shelter? Some were still in their offices, barricading themselves behind doors, under tables. Some were in the chambers, hiding behind chairs until they could be evacuated.
The perverse parody of patriots prowled the halls in which laws are written, spreading chaos and sedition, leaving both physical and metaphorical filth in their wake.
Shelter in Place…
It is three years almost to the week the order to shut down public life as we had known it, came from our governor. It is six years from when I realized that Tr*mp’s reign of terror would be every bit as bad and then worse than I feared it would be.
Two years have passed since TFG left the White House, but his poisoning of the minds of the GOP was too potent to pass off. How does one take shelter from those who insist that up is down, that perpetuators of privilege are victims, and that to educate is to indoctrinate?
Is all we can do is to shelter in place?
If you are as depressed after reading this as I am after writing it, maybe it’s time to take a break and go read some panda ‘toons over at the Panda Chronicles.
I’ll continue these thoughts next time. Please feel free to share this post. I welcome your comments. I’ll leave you with a spirit cleansing bear.
I lived on a farm - always took a bus to school. One day in second grade they told us we needed to take a form and fill out the time when we left school and when we arrived home. That seemed a bit odd but... It took me 45 minutes. When I brought it back to school my teacher just looked at me wide-eyed and said "It takes you 45 minutes to get home?" I said, "Yes, it always takes that long." I hadn't realized until I was an adult and watched a documentary about the Cuban missile crisis that this was most likely a test to see if the kids got home in the less than the 30-minute rule for missiles. I've always wondered if the teacher/school had a conversation with my parents about what they would do with me. The bus driver was really doomed. By the time I realized what this must have been, my parents had already died, so I couldn't ask them.
You got to shelter in place in an auditorium with no windows? We had to climb under our desks, and someone in the class was assigned to pull down all the window shades to, you know, protect our eyes from the nuclear blast. Never fear . . . . pandas will set us free.