WNIJ Perspectives

I open my mailbox with a cleaning wipe.

I wipe down the mail and then smother my hands with sanitizer.

Welcome to my new normal — being abnormal … during this pandemic.

My county has only a few positive cases of COVID-19. But experts say numbers are deceiving and I should not feel safe. It’s most likely here … surrounding me.

I have a beer bottle cap in the pocket of my spring coat that I worry with my thumb and forefinger. I’m not sure how long the bottle cap has been there. I find it with my fingers, and then I forget about it again. 

In a few short weeks COVID-19 has come to grip the nation. Practically overnight we are uncomfortably settling into economic uncertainty, self-quarantining, online education, and accepting social distancing.

All the while, unfortunately, the leadership coming out of Washington is often contradictory, confused, and uncertain. It seems as though the most important message on the mind of the White House is how great of a job Mr. Trump is doing -- a dubious, self-righteous, point-missing affront to the grave urgency of the moment, a moment that grows exponentially more dire daily.

I imagine there’s an unwritten law in public radio not to talk about astrology, at least in any serious way, but in these trying times maybe there’s an exception.

So I checked in with my favorite stargazer, Rob Brezsny. I have followed his “Freewill Astrology” forecasts, periodically, for many years. His is a whimsical approach, full of anecdotes and mythological references, lighthearted but insightful.

Stay six feet apart. Don’t leave home except for groceries and essentials. Don’t go to the playground and don’t go visit your neighbors. Spray all the doorknobs with Lysol every hour. This is all excellent advice for keeping your body healthy. It isn’t such a great way to nurture your soul.

Like many Americans, I recently completed the 2020 Census online. I was prepared to engage in an act of civil disobedience -- refusing to answer any question about citizenship. Thankfully, I didn't need to. 

As I contemplated what to write for this edition of perspectives, my mind kept returning to the recent day when my son returned from his freshman year of college several months early. I came home from work that evening and there he was in the kitchen. Cooking dinner! Lemon pepper baked fish.

Now this is a big deal. Unlike my 15-year-old son who readily fries himself bacon in the middle of the night, and cooks hamburgers on the frying pan for a snack, my eldest does not necessarily find himself comfortable in the kitchen.

Right now, it's impossible to claim ignorance of all the warnings to prevent contagion of coronavirus. We must wash our hands as often as possible. We should keep our distance from other people, stay well hydrated and, finally, not touch our face.

Now, most people can follow directions well, but there's always a subset that will do the opposite. It's not deliberate, they just can't help it. I learned that I'm one of them when I realized that I touch my face. A lot. All the time.

The cardinal comes at dawn.

His spiky silhouette backlit against a copper sky, the bare branches of our backyard woods his amphitheatre.

He is the first one to sing, heralding the coming of a new day.  The moon is still up too, hanging opposite the sunrise, its silver essence shimmering in a sea of pale blue.

Rising early after a fretful night of sleep, I am grateful to have found this moment, for I am looking for the light, and I’m sure you are too.

As I record this perspective, it is now day four of our school district’s shut down because of COVID-19, and I’m about stark raving loony for two reasons.

First, e-learning is going to be no substitute for the intellectual fervor of a good class discussion. And second, junior high kids are hilarious, so I’m missing the dozens of good laughs I often get in a day. None of us will be getting the “brain food” to which we are accustomed.

Then there’s the problem with kids getting actual food.

Due to the corona virus, all schools have suspended face-to-face instruction and are in the process of moving everything to online delivery. At NIU, online classes begin Monday. So today, I simply want to run through a list of helpful hints for making a successful transition.

Now we find ourselves in a national contagion of fear and loathing. Fear of a deadly invisible virus. Loathing of fellow Americans.

Fear because the number of people getting sick will double every six days. We all do the math to calculate the chances of dying for ourselves and loved ones.

Everyone will know someone the virus takes. We wonder, who will be the Rock Hudson of Covid19?

As a participant in a leadership seminar over twenty years ago, a campus police officer at the UW-Madison shared his incredible story.

He was doing his rounds at 2 a.m. when he noticed a young man standing on the top floor of a parking garage. Instinct told him that something was wrong, so he approached and engaged the young man in conversation. As suspected, he intended to jump. My colleague persuaded him to come to his office, had a long conversation, and lined up professional care. This dedicated officer spent four hours saving a life.

Recently, I read a statement in a religious journal, “Most of the rest of the world does not understand life through a Western worldview. We in the West are the anomaly.” The author, Randy Woodley (May, 2019 Sojourners), claims that we in the Euro-West have interpreted life primarily from a Western Enlightenment perspective, going back to Platonic dualism inherited from the Greeks. This dualism values the realm of the abstract –- spirit, soul, mind –- above the concrete realm of earth, body, material. 

By now it seems obvious that timing IS everything. We all want to be in the right place at the right time. None of us wants, when it rains soup, to show up with a fork. 

How many ways can one say that timing is everything? Shakespeare’s Brutus was eloquent: “There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” Brutus was right in general, but he ended up losing the battle to Marc Antony. 

On March 17th voters will be asked to approve a half-cent increase in our sales tax to provide a source of funding for mental health services in Winnebago County.

Advocates say the revenue from such a tax would allow Winnebago County to build a sustainable safety net for residents in need of mental health and addiction treatment services.

We first see a little girl counting as she plucks the petals from a daisy. A countdown starts -- and then a mushroom cloud fills the screen. This was an ad for Democratic presidential candidate Lyndon Johnson when he was running against arch-conservative Republican Barry Goldwater. The year was 1964 and we had witnessed the birth of the modern political ad. 

They’re everywhere. campaign signs littering the landscape, material crowding your mailboxes, the knock on the door and so much more -- democracy in action. Welcome to the election cycle! The stage is set for the typically low voter turnout on March 17th, the Illinois Primary.  

Occasionally, our Perspectives author Elsa Glover turns over regularly scheduled spot to her colleagues and students who have something to say. This time, she asked students in Clinton Rosette Middle School's Green Club to talk about something important to them. Melanie Hernandez and Julia Glover worked together to research, write, and deliver their Perspective.

April 1st, 2020 is fast approaching. This year it is not an ordinary April Fool’s Day. This April 1st is Census Day 2020. The day that has been designated for everyone to be counted. Everyone regardless of your citizenship status. Everyone is counted regardless of age. And you will be counted where you are living on that day. 

Halfway into President Trump’s first year in office, WNIJ broadcast my Perspective calling for the Democrats to do a better job of marketing their strengths, which include competent leadership and positive, though incremental, progress toward more freedoms and fair treatment for all. 

Have you heard about the new smartphone apps that help you keep track of your friendships? With names like UpHabit and Dex, these apps provide users with a place to store information about their friends. Like birthdays, shared interests, and how often they get together. You can even set up regular reminders to schedule phone calls and meet-ups. It’s like a spreadsheet for friendship engagement. 

Not long ago, while walking back to my office after teaching, I passed in front of a classroom and happened to hear a colleague beginning her own class with these words: "And that's the beauty of symmetric frequencies."

I have no idea what "symmetric frequencies" are. In fact, those are two concepts I cannot associate. Symmetry to me is something graphic or visual, while frequency is a notion that I connect with either physics or statistics. In what field could anyone use these two such disparate concepts together?

Glory be to God for poop. After a forty-degree temperature change and full water buckets, across two days, I was relieved to see big piles of manure in the mares’ wet, dirty stalls. I was relieved to see buckets drained and bright eyes and soft hellos, sounding like huh, huh, huh, with a flittering of their noses, greeting me. 

A vital key to Democratic Party success requires genuine and painful introspection. The party alienated a core constituency that must be welcomed back home.

OK. The other day I was staring at my hands and thinking about the power and magic they hold.

You realize this when you take the time to think about it. And I did …  after seeing an image we’ve all seen hundreds of times.

Two people, their hands intertwined. People connecting. Love.

Think about how often this image -- just the hands -- is used and the variety of ways it’s used to spark immediate emotion.

Our world has been bent and shaped to blend with our hands. Including how we communicate. 

Hands on. Hands up. 

In It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey is shown a world without him, and as we know, it’s pretty grim. That got me to thinking…what if one day an ill-intentioned angel granted the wish of an extremist who thinks the world’s populace should be homogeneous?

I wake up, turn on my radio and find…well, obviously, no hip hop or R & B -- no more Elvis Presley -- rock ‘n’ roll is gone. Country -- maybe some bluegrass. Jazz -- also missing from my playlist.

I recently switched careers, trading comfort of routine and wealth of accumulated knowledge for the challenges of the unfamiliar and unknown. Suddenly, I knew very little about my job. It seemed I’d be spending so much time “learning the ropes” that I’d be inefficient, ineffective, and my performance unsatisfactory. My solution ended up being a big mistake: Devote every spare minute to my new job.

Committing myself wholly to my new job, it didn’t take long for my relationships with my wife and children to suffer. An uneven work-life balance was not a sustainable solution.

I had started writing my perspective about some dreary, political topic when it dawned on me that it would air on Mardi Gras -- so I happily changed gears to immerse myself in all things carnival!