What You May Know

 I had a student once who wrote that she liked to "collect people." In the 1990s back then, she meant literally.  I suppose people can comprise a collection.  On Facebook, isn't that exactly what we do? But does a person really have 4000 friends?  Perhaps it should be called Namebook? Aside from a handful of real friends, what most folks seem to have accumulated is a pile of names. Something you can get in the thousands if you circulate petitions.  

Facebook, like Linked-in, has a feature called "People You May Know," wherein a series of profiles appears, not unlike a line-up and you can decide if you know them or would like to.  When I see these profile pictures I often see a montage of people who live and continue to live in the corners of my life.  If we're not connected by now, there might be a reason.  Seldom, if ever, do I contact any of these folks and I doubt if/when I appear on their feed do they contact me.  

What fascinates me most about this feature is how the people I might know occupy very different spaces both geographically and philosophically.  Their politics are often at opposite ends of the spectrum as well as education level and often their taste in music, art, film, and fashion.  That is the intriguing part.  When I look at the array of those I may know, I realize I don't really know many of the people I think I already know.  

Once, during a particularly busy time of my life, I began a Saturday by going to a thoroughbred horse auction.  I was working on a radio documentary about the sub-culture of horse racing.  The auction gave me the opportunity to interview potential owners, trainers, and breeders, not to mention the wonderful sound of a professional auctioneer plying his trade.  I wore cowboy boots that day.  That done, I worked my way over to Golden Gate Park in San Francisco to catch some live performances at a blues festival.  Off came the boots and on came some comfortable sandals.  

Somehow this simple change of footwear reminded me about the two very different worlds I was inhabiting that day.  The Facebook gallery of "may knows" does the same thing.  How many different worlds can you find in your own collection of people?

Camptown

 All the signs are there.  Last night one of them included the crowd at the Dodgers-Padres game in San Diego.  Maskless, for the most part, eating hot dogs at 10 pm and trying to do the wave.  Restaurants are opening, for the most part with a streetside table, events that were canceled last year are returning, albeit, re-invented in appearance, venue, and duration.  This year in my town we will again have the Portland Waterfront Blues Festival, and the annual Mt. Hood to Coast run.  There are even a few indications that new businesses may be opening.

By September, schools will be open for classroom learning.  The collective sigh of relief will be audible, no doubt.  By June, the snow in the mountain passes will have melted, for the most part, and campgrounds and day-use areas from the mountains to the prairies, to the ocean, white with foam, will see their parking lots full.  God Bless America, and especially those who had no trouble realizing that at least one mask is necessary even after two vaccinations.

People are planning trips.  Even out-of-state trips.  As the weather warms, perhaps our outlook will soften. 

People are beginning to take stock.  Who am I now 15 months after the lockdown began?  What have I lost?  Is it even possible that I gained anything?  I can only speak for myself.  
I feel older.  I lost momentum at the gym, in getting outdoors up to my favorite fishing spots, in my progress on blues harp.  My weekly music group disbanded temporarily, so I lost friendships and social interaction.  Harmonicas and face masks do not go well together.  Turning your head in another direction while playing unmasked is futile because it mutes your sound.  So suffer the consequences.

Other signs are on the horizon too.  Fire season here in the northwest has no real boundaries now.  Even in Spring, we hear the D-word.  Snow will disappear and a dusty residue will follow.  Last year, among the worst of the fire seasons yet, the face masks did double duty when folks went outside into smokey air from dawn till dusk.  Oregonians praying for rain is a bit unusual, but that seems to be the case these days.

Perhaps the biggest indicator of how we are now is the physical condition of our city.  Portland, like many urban centers, is awash with homeless camps, trash, and all manner of mentally ill people roaming the streets.  Against this backdrop is the continual street "protests" where Police encounter those that have more interest in destroying property than changing views.  We are all in camps now, aren't we?

Even Your Sandwich is Political

The state of Georgia, after passing some new voter regulations, is getting a stiff dose of consequences have actions.  Most notably, Major League Baseball (MLB) decided to pull its plans to have the 2021 All-Star game in Atlanta.  MLB is getting stiff feedback from many of Georgia's politicians who vehemently bemoan the loss of revenue that the game would have provided.   This is a classic example of an economic sanction.  

But Georgia's Republican government led by the governor tried to pull a fast one by passing a law straight out of the Jim Crow era.  The numbers are clear unless severe voter suppression is used, the Republican party is facing an uphill battle to win anything in Georgia.  Perhaps it is the blatant nature with which this law was passed that created such a strong response.  When you have a provision in a law that purports to enhance democracy that would prevent someone from giving a drink of water to someone in a long line, then you know the reaction will be swift.  The comparison is not without merit, where the separate but equal notion at the heart of Jim Crow America yielded some ridiculous examples.  How about city parks checking out separate balls and chess sets for black and white patrons? Look it up, it really happened.  Check out C Van Woodward's classic, The Strange Career of Jim Crow if you want to see the degree of ludicrousness this era endured. Of course, all this could be prevented by having mail-in ballots, like my home state has had for years, but no, Georgia's new law wants to close polling places by 5:00pm eliminating any chance of voting for folks who work till 5 or later on weekdays.

The Georgia law is mean-spirited. What's worse is that their defense of this law is both racist and unjust.  Enter MLB.  Hopefully, by leading the way in a political stance based on morality, others will follow.  Hit 'em in the wallet and they suddenly remember that politics has an ethical component and that they might not be able to pull off something so unjust so easily.

In his defense, the Governor of Georgia likened MLB's decision to "cancel culture."  Now, that's a real false equivalency.  Was ending Jim Crow in the US through decisions like Brown v Board of Ed cancel culture?  What about apartheid in South Africa?  Or was it the right thing to do?  

A former colleague of mine used to have a large sign in her classroom that said, "Even Your Sandwich is Political." It functioned as a sort of Zen koan, with more than one student puzzling over the meaning.  I'm sure it led to many fascinating discussions and possibly implicated the contents of a lunchbox or two.

I tip my SF Giants hat to MLB for having the guts to lead the way here.  Hopefully, others will follow.  Some already have.  

People in our culture also vote with their dollars.  If you try to suppress voting as a right for all the people, their dollar vote can easily knock you out of the game.  It's one thing to cancel, it's quite another to place morality smack dab in the middle of political action.  Rousseau once suggested that the person who tries to use politics without morality understands neither.