coronavirus

The Dichotomies of Hate

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Racists, driven by their feeble-minded ignorance and incapacitating insecurities, will always leech off any opportunity or misfortune to project their self-loathing and self-delusions upon others of whom they both envy and fear…

A man followed the Chinese American doctor from the Boston hospital, spewing a profanity-laced racist tirade as she walked to the subway. “Why are you Chinese people killing everyone?” Li recalled the man shouting. “What is wrong with you? Why the f— are you killing us?”

Asian American doctors and nurses are fighting racism and the coronavirus, Washington Post, May 19, 2020

#hatethehate

Empty Words of the Privileged

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It’s hard to believe so many people have to live so miserably in the richest, most powerful country in the world.


This has become cliché and empty to say, especially from those of us speaking from our privilege, but since there are so many pockets of wretched poverty all around the country such as described in the following article, it’s hard not to say it.

Courtesy New York Times

“Hundreds of miles of roads are unpaved, so it can take up to three hours to get a sick person to help. It’s difficult to self-isolate because families live in one-room homes called hogans. Up to 40 percent of Navajo households don’t have running water, making it hard to wash hands. Cellphone service and Wi-Fi are limited, so it’s difficult to keep in touch and to get information about the epidemic.”

A Life on and Off the Navajo Nation, New York Times, May 13, 2020

#alonetogetherwithourprivilege

Any “Weird Christians” Out There?

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When I was a kid a buddy of mine would occasionally drag me along to a Catholic church service with him, seeing how misery loves company, especially as a child. Even though I hadn’t a clue what was going on — being raised Protestant — I was always mesmerized by the outlandish garb, the thick incense, and especially the incomprehensible Latin that still kind of seemed to make sense. It all seemed so surreal, so magical.

I’m not m much of a church-goer, but I’ve never had that wondrous feeling at a Protestant service and I guess deep down I’ve always wished I had.

Perhaps if I had, I would have gone more to church.

Perhaps not.

More and more young Christians, disillusioned by the political binaries, economic uncertainties and spiritual emptiness that have come to define modern America, are finding solace in a decidedly anti-modern vision of faith. As the coronavirus and the subsequent lockdowns throw the failures of the current social order into stark relief, old forms of religiosity offer a glimpse of the transcendent beyond the present.

From The Future of Christianity Is Punk, New York Times, May 8, 2020
Courtesy the New York Times

#alonetogetherbeingweird

Say what you will…

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Be it be an exploration of loneliness or light or whatever, but ”Nighthawks,” to me, is the most colorful expression of the beautiful bleakness of noir that I know…

From Those who say Edward Hopper is the artist of social distancing may be wrong:

But while some Hopper experts appreciate the wave of [social media] interest in the American painter, who died in 1967, they say it’s a mistake to brand him as a patron saint of loneliness and social isolation.”

Washington Post April 27, 2020 at 9:00 a.m. EDT
Courtesy Wikipedia

#alonetogetherwithhopper