My COVID Test Adventure

Today I have a relatively short To-Do list. I’m also very nervous. It’s this way every year on the day before we leave for Maine. I’m walking on eggshells afraid I’ll throw my back out packing up the car or something. Here’s what Pam wrote down for my To-Do list today:

1. Pay last minute bills.

2. Pack up your work computer.

3. Leave compliant away message on your business phone.

4. Cut grass

5. Pack car

6. Do not throw your back out

Just kidding...she didn’t leave me that list. She didn’t have to. She implies number 6 with her intense stare every time I do anything strenuous the day before we leave.

So, yesterday Pam and I went to Patient First to get our much ballyhooed and dreaded COVID tests. Much has been made of how horribly painful the test is what with a six inch long swab jammed up your nose all the way to your freaking brain where it could be doing God knows what. 

We even heard some moron suggest that he wouldn’t ever get a COVID test because it was all a government plot to implant a micro chip in your brain that makes you vote democrat or some such horses**t. Be that as it may, I was still quite apprehensive as we drove up into the parking lot and saw the little white tent. What made my apprehension even more acute was the fact that my wife was in the car. It’s important to my fragile male ego that I not show any weakness in front of her, so my worst nightmare would be throwing some kind of duck-dying fit in front of her as Nurse Ratchet jabs me with the swab, while Pam comports herself with calm grace by comparison. That’s the sort of performance it might be dang near impossible to live down.

So, the instructions were to remain in our vehicle, and present a picture ID when approached by the nurses in the hazmat gear. When they emerged from the tent, I have to admit to much trepidation. They looked like star fighters with their face shields but the talkative one was all business. She didn’t ask for my ID, she just asked me to blow my nose. Her exact quote was, “remove as much snot as possible.” I would have thought there would have been a more technical term for that like mucus...but she played the snot card. Ok. Then she took my temperature with one of those jabber things you place under your tongue. When she first whipped that baby out I thought I was a goner. What?? It’s made out of metal???!!! Then Nurse Ratchet turns to her assistant, Broomhilda, and says, “These people seem nice, lets not use the long probes on them.” Then she proceeds to place a regular looking Q-tip thing up both of my nostrils, swish it around a little, and she was done. Just like that, it was over. No pain, no discomfort, and no fatally embarrassing meltdown. And, as far as I know, no new found admiration for Karl Marx.

But seriously folks. The COVID test was the biggest nothing burger ever, in this, the Age of Nothing Burgers. So, let not your heart be troubled.

My Dad on Race

Woke up at 4:30 this morning. The closer I get to departure day the worse I sleep. I reached over for my phone and saw that my crazy pal from North Carolina (God bless her craziness) had sent me a text: So, for NASCAR I guess no noose is good news! What an awesome way to start your day, am I right?

It was a relief to hear that the whole thing was a misunderstanding/hyper-sensitive overreaction and not an honest to God noose left in a black driver’s garage! I mean, Holy Crap, are there still people out there playing the noose card? So yeah, it’s very good news.

I was thinking about my Dad the other day trying to remember the few times he and I ever talked about race. Dad was born in 1924, grew up in an entirely different era where ideas about race relations were far different than today. Honestly, it wasn’t a topic he enjoyed talking about much. He would talk about it sometimes in his sermons, but not an awful lot, like most people of his time. But I remember once when I was in college asking him what he thought about racism and he told me a story that I have never forgotten.

Dad grew up in the sticks of Buckingham County, Virginia. His Dad, my grandfather worked a farm as a share cropper. One of the other sharecropper families who also farmed for the same landlord was black and had sons my father’s age. Each year when it was time for harvesting, the families shared the combine and worked together. Dad told the story of the first time in his life when he realized what racism was. He said he was about ten years old, maybe twelve. He was working together along with all the other men when it was time for lunch. The first day lunch was served at the black family’s house. The next day lunch was served at his house. Dad said how confused he was when all the black men were served their lunch out in the yard under the shade tree, while all the white men went inside to eat. Dad ate his lunch outside with his friends but remembered feeling a strange sense of guilt. That night he asked his mother this question, “Mom, how come at lunch today my friends had to eat outside while everybody else went inside?” 

My Grandmother was born towards the end of the 19th century, over 120 years ago, and her answer was the best she could do. She looked at him with what my father described as a tired sadness and said, “Emmett, I don’t know why other than to say that’s just the way its always been.” My Dad, ten years old, confronted for the first time with one of life’s many injustices replied, “But, Mom...they worked just as hard as we did in the same hot sun...” 

And that’s where the story ended. No other explanation was offered. It’s just the way it had always been...was the best she could do. My father never forgot that moment because it was the first time he ever remembered understanding the concept of sin, the irrefutable truth that there was a right way and a wrong way, fair and unfair, just and unjust.

My father was no crusader. If he were here to speak for himself he probably would say he should have preached on the topic of racism more than he did...or maybe not. Dad wasn’t a man of many regrets. But for most people, the feeling you get in your stomach when you read of nooses being left in NASCAR garages was the very same feeling that stirred within the heart of my ten year old father under a shade tree in 1934. Some things are forever wrong, for all time.

A Metaphor

The death toll from the Coronavirus in the United States now stands at 120,000. Worldwide the number is fast approaching a half a million. While progress has been made in many states, others are experiencing a resurgence of cases. There is currently no vaccine. But around the world, the scientific community is working around the clock to find one. To that end, the Coronavirus is dominating new research, and gobbling up medical resources and rightfully so since it is killing people all over the world and the only way to stop it ultimately is to find a vaccine.

This doesn’t mean that scientists and researchers no longer care about heart disease or cancer. It doesn't mean that HIV suddenly doesn’t matter or that diabetes is no longer a horrible killer. It’s just that, right now, there’s an emergency, so all hands are on deck to stop the spread of this thing and find a working vaccine. Sure...all diseases matter, but right now, the priority is COVID-19.

I am losing patience with this All Lives Matter foolishness and those who persist in making the argument. 

“Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And yet one of them shall not fall to the ground without your Father seeing. The very hairs of your head are numbered. Fear not, therefore, you are of more value than many sparrows.” Matthew 10: 29-31

Of course, all lives matter. We are all made in the image of God and we have inherent worth and value as human beings. So why is it so hard for so many people to acknowledge that, right now, at this moment in America, it doesn’t seem that black lives matter nearly as much? It in no way diminishes me as a white man to agree that Black Lives Matter. It is just an acknowledgment of the imbalance in the justice system that still, stubbornly persists. It doesn’t mean I have to support every single item on the agenda of the BLM movement. It doesn’t mean that I support the looting and violence that has happened at many protests. All it means is that when I see a police officer with his knee on the throat of a black man for 8 and a half minutes, when I see a black man get murdered for the crime of jogging through a white neighborhood and weeks go by without an arrest, I am agreeing that if Black Lives Mattered MORE, this wouldn’t be happening over and over again, all across the country. That’s all.

So, yes. All diseases matter. We still acknowledge that cancer, heart disease and diabetes are horrible afflictions. But, right now, we’re trying to stop a pandemic, so we will be trying desperately to fix COVID-19 for a while. Is that ok? Are we good?

Nothing To See Here, Move Along, Folks...

This is the week we’ve waited for all year. This is Go Week. Pam has laid out the battle plan...

Now all we have to do is execute.

I’ve got a lot to get buttoned up at the office, last minute things to get wrapped up. Maine is so close now I can taste it. This, being 2020, allows for the opportunity that some last second catastrophe, geo-political earthquake, or meteor attack might come out of nowhere to thwart our plans to leave Short Pump. If it does, this will be me...

So, last night I received FaceTime calls from Patrick and Sarah, Kaitlin and Jon wishing me a happy Father’s Day. These are the four people who make me a father. Of course I share fathering duties with Andy Upchurch and Robert Manchester for my daughter and son in law, but I view both of them as my kids too. That’s the way it works in my family, once you’re in, you’re in all the way, like it or not! The hardest part of being a parent these days is being apart from them. I envy my friends who’s kids all live either in the same city, or at least the same State. They can pop in for dinner, or drop by for lunch. We have to sit close together and stare into a jumpy computer screen at their digital faces. Hugging a laptop leaves a lot to be desired, I’ve learned. But in July we will spend 10 days with Kaitlin and Jon, 7 days with Patrick and Sarah, and 4 glorious days all together in our favorite place in the whole world. There will be great food, much kayaking, swimming and canoeing on the lake, many sunsets to watch from the dock, and fires to sit around while solving all the problems of the world. There will be no Fox News, no CNN, no Drudge Report. If something horrendous (notice the hopeful “if”)happens, the readers of this blog will have to inform me, since we will be unplugged. I will continue to provide dispatches from paradise via The Tempest. 

96 hours and counting.

Tick Tock...

Lucky Enough

Pam went for her normal walk this morning. She starts out with Lucy tagging along, but after a bit of that she drops Lucy back at the house and starts the second, more aggressive part of her walk. She wears ear buds when she walks, usually listening to an audio book. But this morning she had a ton of things on her plate and was especially anxious. My wife is a worrier, a planner, a meticulous organizer, who thinks about things, sometimes to excess. That verse in the Bible that says, Let not your heart be troubled, I am convinced was put in the Bible specifically for her.

Anyway, she gets back from her walk this morning in a decidedly upbeat mood, almost light hearted, a rarity in these days of pandemics and social upheaval. Then she told me her secret, “You know what I listened to on my walk this morning?” I’m trying to think of some Jodi Picoult book when she burst out with, “Christmas music!!!” She has now left the house after spending all day making these treats for her dad...

These are the world famous Molasses crinkles, a staple of the White family...Christmas tradition. Pam made three dozen or more, all the while with Nat King Cole, The Carpenters, James Taylor and Harry Connick Jr streaming through the kitchen speakers. She’s like a different person. Her plan now is to listen to Christmas music until we leave for Maine. It transports me to a different place, makes me think of happier times, makes me concentrate on what’s really important, she explained. Hard to argue with a woman baking cookies.

Oh...and there’s this, perhaps the truest words ever placed on a piece of wood. For us it will be true for six weeks this year...

Seven Days

One week. One week from today. Actually, more like one week from this very moment, Pam and I will be backing out of our driveway to begin the two day, 15 hour road trip to Loon Call Cottage in Union, Maine. At least that’s the plan. Something inside of me won’t quite let me believe that it will actually happen, visions of some last second national emergency stay-at-home order being proclaimed from on high keep dancing around in my head. So, I will believe it when I’m on the road.

We both will get our COVID tests on Wednesday the 24th, 72 hours before our planned arrival in The Pine Tree State, as per their Governor’s directive. We will check in to our cottage on the afternoon of the 27th. The first 24 hours will be filled with unpacking, making the place our own, arranging things to best accommodate our living preferences, buying groceries, organizing the inside and the dock to our liking. It will probably be the morning of the 29th, a Monday, when we will wake up and realize that ...we made it, we’re here, and now everything will be alright!

For the duration of the month of July, most of my Blog posts will be about our experiences, filled with pictures. Many of you will enjoy reading all about it, a lot of you won’t. Which is fine. You can’t please everyone. Speaking of which...

Yesterday’s post about the whole Aunt Jemima thing was crazy. It was the most read post I have written all year, but it was completely unique in one way. Never in the ten year history of this blog have I written such a widely read post that produced virtually no comments. Usually when something pops like that people have lots to say about it. This one?..crickets. I can only assume that most of you read it out of curiosity and didn’t agree with my conclusions but were too polite to say anything. That’s ok. It happens sometime. We don’t always see things the same way. I just found it strange, the silence.

The next seven days are going to be the slowest of my life...

Aunt Jemima...Seriously??

Just when you thought that life couldn’t possibly get any worse, news breaks that Aunt Jemima is being forced into early retirement because of the scourge of political correctness sweeping the nation. In the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the reemergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, the limp-wristed, gutless invertebrates at Quaker Oats have caved to the jackals of the left and stolen a cultural icon from white America. Oh, and George Soros is somehow involved...

At least that’s the impression I’m getting from Facebook and Instagram.

I would like to propose a slightly different explanation for this Aunt Jemima thing that involves advertising as a reflection of societal norms and how they have constantly changed, often rapidly, throughout the past hundred years. I should also point out the fact, apropos to nothing really, that Aunt Jemima is a truly awful imitation of real maple syrup and shouldn’t even be mentioned in the same breath.

Ok, so here’s a advertising campaign from the year of my birth, 1958...

Who doesn’t long for the days when a man felt entitled to beat his wife for the mortal sin of serving him stale coffee?

Well, maybe she can open it, but who’s going to be there to show her how to pour it?

Absolutely nothing worse than a poor, fat woman, am I right?

Good to know that there will still be plenty of women’s work in the exciting new space age!

And the ones who don’t are clearly savages.

Why, indeed?

Colored kids?

Wow...good to know that inside his unfortunate dark skin beats a white heart!

Ok, here’s the thing. If any of these advertisements caused you to wince, and I would hope that all of them did, you now understand that our society has evolved from a time when these types of stereotypes were perfectly acceptable to vast swaths of the buying public. No company doing business in 2020 would dream of running ads like these. Why? Because the assumptions behind them have been rejected by the vast majority of their customers. So what about dear old Aunt Jemima? Even she has changed through the years...a lot!

So...tell me again why Quaker Oats’ decision to finally retire the Aunt Jemima Mammy routine is such a horrible example of political correctness? 

Listen, for some of you, the picture of her on a plastic bottle of corn syrup with 16 artificial flavors is a comforting, harmless icon from your childhood and you just can’t understand what all the fuss is about. I get it, I really do. But, I would imagine she represents something else entirely to an awful lot of African Americans. Ask yourself this, if you think it’s wrong for a company to use words like, “Happy days is here. Time fo’ my Dee-licious pancakes ready mixed fo’ you.” Then maybe you can understand why a symbol from an era where that line was thought to be funny and clever might rub modern ears the wrong way.

I think that somehow the world will survive without Aunt Jemima. Chill out people!