By this time next week, we will be in a new year.
Many people are rejoicing this concept, hoping that the new year will bring them a better result.
But as you know, 2020 was a good year for me in many ways. I made significant progress on all my personal goals, minus the ‘socialize with new people’ goal but that’s understandable. My mental state could be better, I’m still working on it.
I hope 2021 is better for all the people who suffered this year.
I also hope it remains good for me.
Today’s What We Got Right story is a son’s account of his mother, a survivor of the 1918 pandemic.
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Jeanne Shinnick; I Survived by Storyteller: Drew Shinnick
My mom was a professional worrier. She worried about everything from politics and the pulpit to crime and corruption. But her big worry was reserved for the natural world especially the weather.
As she aged in Florida, her external world narrowed to a pond she could see from her patio. She was convinced the water level was dropping; a sure sign something was terribly wrong. In her phone calls to my brother and me, the conversations would eventually work their way back to the dying pond. While we laughed about Mom′s hydrological fixation, my brother and I couldn′t quite grasp why our bright, beautiful and creative Mom was pathological about the impending Apocalypse.
This right here is a great setup. Some might remark its lack of necessity but for me, it sets up the conflict we as the offspring have when facing the quirks and intricacies of our mothers and fathers. Very insightful stuff. Go back and read it again.
Nearly 30 years after Mom died, I finally connected the dots. She was an eyewitness to the end of many worlds she lived in; her father′s suicide when she was 14; the Depression; World War II; then a horrid four-year period when we lost my father and his entire family. But there was an older trauma in her past. It was an event which I believe defined the woman who was to become my Mom. She only spoke of it once.
She was 7 or 8 years old and sick at home. She wasn′t the only one; there was a vicious sickness sweeping through her small town outside Philadelphia. Mom described standing on the porch and staring at the neighbors across the street. They were dead. Their bodies were lying in the front yard. Then she saw bodies in front of other houses and even in the street. Even the pets were dead. It was the horrific 1918 pandemic. From that day to the day she died, Mom maintained a vigil against a threatening world.
This explanation both validates the mother’s vigil against the Apocolypse and also provides a window into how world-shaping such an incident can be. As someone who’s on the positive side of the K Recovery (so far) and better off than ever, I can not fathom the impact the Covid-19 pandemic is having on people who lost their families, their friends, and/or their livelihoods.
I drove through Mom′s Florida neighborhood in 2004. Not only was the pond still there; it was overflowing. A hurricane had passed near the old house the week before. It was Hurricane Jeanne.
My brother now lives in a neighborhood with a pond. We joke about it, but I know he secretly checks the pond′s level. For me, I look at birds wondering if they′re bringing the next pandemic which will surely be the “End of Times.” We are our mother′s sons.
We rarely get to know how we’ve impacted other people just by existing around them. These final two paragraphs end the story of Jeanne Shinnick by leading us into the stories of her children.
Drew, the author of the story above, is a great storyteller. I’d listen to him any day of the week.
The Kingdom Gets The King That It Deserves
Something about this quote really makes me ponder.
What does it mean?
I don’t know where I first heard this quote but it never sat right with me. Not when I was an idealist. Millions of amazing people are just out there trying their best. They are inherently and truly selfish. They know that true selfishness shapes itself as purposeful interaction within the communities we preside. A truly selfish person wants to be appreciated within their community. They want to be acknowledged for work well done. They want their family to have a good name to carry forward into the future. All of these wants of the truly selfish require behavior that is recognized as kind and beneficial.
As a realist I look at the behavior of individuals online, the ever increasingly polarized political climate, the ever blurred line between fact and fiction, the rising lack of trust between the common folk and the experts, and the overwhelming response of America that decried the temporary economic hurt over the massively permanent loss of human lives… as evidence that we are a nation that deserves the likes of massive corruption and cruelty.
Maybe we should let the world fucking burn.
Why should we care about others when this is the world that we live in:
BECAUSE WHAT THE FUCK ELSE ARE WE GOING TO DO?
Give up? Fuck that.
For as long as we draw breath, we can make tomorrow better than today.
Google’s Year In Search
The video above is Google’s Year in Search for 2020. Google’s done this for a few years now… And in two weeks, this year’s Year in Search got more views than 2019’s (which has been out for over a year).
I just think it’s really fascinating.
Defense Spending
Scrolling through Twitter the other day I stumbled into a tweet that sums up America:
I grew up in love with history, civics, and economics. My favorite video games were Civilization, SimCity, Age of Empires… I thought American politicians were so cool. I really liked Teddy Roosevelt. I LOVED Franklin Delano Roosevelt. When I got my growth spurt I wondered if I could even approach the towering heights of Abraham Lincoln (I can literally, but never figuratively. I’ll always be looking up at him). I respected the whole cast of founding fathers as true heroes of democracy.
I’ve always been an idealist. I thought the political sphere welcomed with it the highest caliber of an individual. I thought the people who could spend their lives researching the state of our country would be the ones best suited to make changes for the better. Experienced, wise, old men made sense to me. What’s wrong with greasing their hands a little? The righteous deserve good compensation and what’s more righteous than a person dedicated to finding problems and proposing solutions for the nation’s collective interest.
Conversely, I also thought that the majority rule was a fool’s errand. I’d seen first hand the flawed result of majority rule. The ill-informed electorate’s vote should not weigh as heavy as the informed and the affected electorate’s vote should. If we’re talking about medical reform, then it should be left to the doctors with a little oversight over the long term provided by us.
I judged politicians against the prime example of everything good about American politics: Franklin Delano Roosevelt. His presidency, the only one in our history to go beyond two terms, was so radical and profound that I believed we should do everything in our power to learn from his policies and powers. I’ve personally been trying to since my middle school days.
This made sense to me and I was all for Obama and his expansive use of Executive Orders to get the job done.
And then we got Trump.
And the foundation with which my faith in our institution wavered.
And then with every horrid tweet, criminal indictment, and blatantly corrupt behavior from the man with orange hair… my house crumbled.
I don’t believe in our political system anymore.
I was one of the faithful. One who’d never complain about paying his fair share in taxes. One who’d never question the guiding hand’s declarations. One who allowed the greasy hand to remain. One who’d be willing to let the short term failings be ignored as long as the long term results proved that America continued down the proper path.
This faith tinted my glasses. It blocked out the truth.
There are so many dejected souls out there who were hidden from view before.
I realize now that our political system is in dire straights. It needs more scrutiny now than ever. We mustn’t relent. Changes need to be made. In 2021, What We Got Right will highlight the changes needed. Let’s get cracking.
One Final Thing
Get Disney+, then watch this movie: