Time Will Tell: The Mess and Hopes of Wisconsin and Beyond

I didn’t do a monthly look back on the 14th as I have since we were all back intto school back in September here in Wisconsin. The data spoke for themselves. The increasing numbers of folks knowing friends and loved ones suffering and dying spoke of our realities.


For a great review of where the nation is at, I again refer you to Dr. Tom Frieden and his blog, Covid Epidemiology, where this week he says this will hopefully be his last report as the federal government operations that normally are in charge of this stuff aren’t being muzzled anymore and are posting this information publicly as they should have been since the beginning. It’s bad. Most of the nation is about “six times the rate at which we figured contact tracing would be hard or impossible” to do.

Through 12/21, Milwaukee County has lost 942 to COVID19 while neighboring Waukesha County (with 42% the population) has lost 310. There’s a disparity there just as there is in the populations that need addressing but that’s for another day. One could argue that it’s “only” 0.10% and 0.08% of each county’s respective total population suffering the ultimate penalty. One could say it’s “only” a death rate of 1.2% of all positives in Milwaukee County and 0.9% of all positives in Waukesha County.


But it’s also 1,252 families with new holes at the family tables. Thousands of friends with one less number on their phones. Probably hundreds of workplaces with one less employee, religious organizations with one less congregant, and businesses with one less customer.


It’s also about 112,944 folks who have had to isolate- or who should have. Who had to stop working and interacting with others to not spread the virus, thus affecting everyone they live with. Or should have. If those folks worked, it impacted their employers and probably cost them wages. Or should have. The government isn’t helping much in that regard.


It’s about the approximate 4,870 people of that 112,944 who have been hospitalized and have either slowly recovered or...are still fighting. 4% of all positives in Waukesha end up in hospital care. 5.8% of all the Milwaukee County ones do.


It’s thousands of healthcare workers who have to treat all the positives in their care at nursing homes, care facilities, and at clinics and hospitals as positive cases become critical. Those HCW impacted also have families of their own who are touched by this all: children, spouses, parents…


Looking at today’s totals on world rates of covid, the US has the 5th highest overall positive count in the world from the beginning of this pandemic- behind only Czechia, San Marino, Montenegro, Luxembourg, and Andorra. 55,075 cases for every million people. People are suffering around the world, make no mistake. But the US is showing the world a side of COVID19 in a shameful scale.


The world isn’t partying while the US wallows in some false reality of a fake virus. The fact that the “greatest” country in the world has a huge percent of the population believing things like this and not working together with medicine and science is so depressingly mind-blowing. Watching this unfold has been stomach-turning.


We have so much work ahead of us. Dr. Frieden highlights this, too. This virus needs to be controlled and THEN people need to be reintroduced in widening circles to each other in systematic ways. National and international pandemic plans need to be created to be in place for the next time this happens. (I love how Dr. Frieden put it: “It’s literally now or never to fix public health at local, city, state, national, [and on] global levels.”) Our economy needs to be rebuilt, including collecting taxes and/or donations of investment from our most solvent corporations and individuals to restore the nation’s financial strength. All the other crises the US is facing also need to be addressed in their own ways by thought-leaders within those fields, including racial equity, climate change, green economy, education, and health care.


After this year is done, we can take a look back and see how our overall death rates compared in 2020 to what we have experienced in previous years. Perhaps folks like me will be begging forgiveness at blowing this virus out of proportion. I for one would be glad to do so.


We have to get through this virus first. I eagerly await 2021.

We're in a Multiplayer Game

“Societies can easily talk themselves into conflict and misery.

But they can also talk, and act, their way out.” 

- Geoff Mulgan, author of Big Mind

It’s the day after the big school walk-outs. Time to reflect.

This week, I read Fred Guttenberg’s raw story, I Am Dedicating the Rest of My Life to Fighting Gun Violence—For Jaime,  about his daughter’s life and her death as a victim of the Parkland shootings, as told to Rachel Epstein of Marie Claire. I also read several articles, including one by Dakin Andone and Tina Burnside of CNN, relating to the shooting death on March 7 of 17-year old high school senior, and would-be nursing school student, Courtlin Arrington, in Alabama.

In total, there have been 20 high school student shooting deaths in the United States this year. In addition to these deaths, we must remember there are many other children and adults with physical and/or mental injuries as a result of these incidents, too.

We’re all asking why. There are piles of responses. The walkouts, the student-led advocacies, and the many March For Our Lives marches planned on the 24th are a few. Why all the shootings and what can we do?

I’m going to toss out a single word that might explain much of it: misery.

One Merriam-Webster definition of misery is “a state of great unhappiness and emotional distress”. Another is “a state of suffering and want that is the result of poverty or affliction”. I’m talking about GREAT unhappiness. GREAT distress. GREAT affliction.

Can you imagine this many deaths in a world where most people are happy and hopeful? Where most people feel like they have a place and aren’t lost? Where most people feel valued? I can’t. Just as I wrote about suicide in Regret: A Look Back, people don’t kill when they are happy.

Misery is a single word, but reducing it, let along removing it, will take many approaches.

Misery is a tool for the people within organizations like the NRA. Their messages rely on the cultivation of fear and hostility between people. They paint pictures that guns are sexy and necessary. They argue that the world is a place of “us” versus “them” and it’s critical to “defend yourself”. That all breeds misery.

We can address it.

We can read today what Fred Guttenberg, as the dad of a shooting victim, plans to do in order to stop gun violence. The students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are building extensive social media presences and have been interviewed and featured on many news reports. We only have bits and pieces of Courtlin Arrington’s story, and this is from the efforts of a few reporters. There’s a big difference in how our society responds to different shooting deaths. MSD students are noticing this in their own tweets. Courtlin’s death is no less horrific or tragic than those at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. That fact and our responses, which must be clearly declared as racist, are another cause for misery.

We can address them.

There are a number of other things our citizens experience on a daily basis that breed misery. How about the stress of getting treatment for and paying for chronic diseases? Or the stigma about and difficulties in obtaining treatment for mental illnesses? These conditions and our responses to them as a nation are also causes of misery.

We can address them.

There are more sources of misery. How about the growing understanding that our rules don’t apply equally across genders, ethnicities and economic levels and that those differences are getting bigger as time goes by, and not smaller? The ways our laws are being manipulated and interpreted are causing huge amounts of misery.

We can address them.

My WoW Rogue. Great DPS but needed others.

That’s quite a list, and there are probably more. It seems overwhelming. For an individual, it is. However, we have a fact in our favor: life’s a multiplayer game. A massively multiplayer game. If you’ve ever played a game like World of Warcraft, you understand the power (and difficulties) of group work. As Chief Executive of the UK’s National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA) Geoff Mulgan points out in the above quote, we can get ourselves out of tight spots by working together in new and creative ways.

Throughout history, people have come together in times of need. Today, the multiple causes themselves need to come together. No one person can fix any of it, but by linking and networking efforts, we can move the proverbial mountains.

If you’re interested in a cause to help a specific group, whether it’s gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, criminal law, corporate law, healthcare, gun violence, etc, go for it. Look at it in terms of misery- don’t just scream in outrage. How could things be changed to lighten that misery currently experienced by those within that group? Focus and campaign for that. My guess is, those changes, if they truly relieve misery, would benefit others as well.

While you follow that passion, reach out to other interests, too. If we stay in isolated bubbles, we lose opportunities and strength. Show in concrete terms that you see others. Build alliances. Look for common ground. Respect each other. Collaborate. Build trust.

If we play this multiplayer game together, we can battle misery. Big or small, let’s do something.

Together.

Old Places & Tired Things

I’m showing my age.

I catch myself remembering places. Homes with creaking floorboards and woodwork caked with thick layers of paint. Basement shelves festooned with cobwebs and garages with untold treasures tucked away in tattered boxes and old tin cans in the half-lit gloom. The visual memories tickle my smell memories. If I breathe in, I my mind could trick me into believing that the dry, odd funks I recall would again fill my nostrils. Dust, age, grit. Lives lived hard, going back decades. Generations.

I didn’t understand what that all could mean. There’s a value in those worn things.

Having the latest and greatest things isn’t important. Having what you need is.

Being seen with the “right” people isn’t important. Giving love and support to and receiving them from others are.

Seeing all the current shows isn’t important. Being able to enjoy a good story with someone is.

Being The Best isn’t important. Having the opportunity to be a good and genuine YOU is.

Our ancestors were no angels. They worked hard. They suffered much to survive. They screwed up. They had to start over. They used and reused. They fought. They improvised. They made deals. They shared with their family and friends. They practiced skills they hoped would benefit both them and their loved ones over the long-run. They defended what (and who) they thought of as “their own”.

We have more resources today and have more complex tools, but we also have bigger problems. That’s not an excuse. We should be able to devise ways to ensure we all have a chance. We claim we’re more advanced than those who existed 500 years ago. We should show it.

We should be able to expand our circles and include more of each other in solutions to our problems. It’s not “us” versus “them”. Today, we have more and more ways for things beyond our own immediate control to affect us directly, painfully and perhaps catastrophically.

Our own country’s founding documents include 3 “inalienable” rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I wrote of this recently in Personal and Public Ikigai in the United States. What amazingly constructive things could occur if we revisited those ideas in our world today? I’m reading that piece again in light of the March For Our Lives campaign. To do, “that which the world needs” and “that which you love”. I believe they may be embracing this idea already.

“What the world needs.” Powerful notion.

Sure, we could hide from each other. Sure, we could try to protect “ours” in smaller and smaller buckets. But, there are other possibilities. What if we take what we’ve learned from out past and apply those concepts of what I defined earlier as what is really important. 

What if we worked towards everyone having what they need (wages, health & mental care), everyone giving & receiving love & support (volunteering, networking, focusing on positives, not focusing on defending), everyone being able to sit with someone else (collaborating, not yelling and blaming), and everyone having the opportunity to be a good and genuine self (respect the other’s sex, sexual orientation, color, ethnicity and religion)?

If we have hope, we can try. Today we can reuse and improvise in brand new ways. We can work from “I can” and “We will” instead of “We can’t” or “I won’t”.

The kids of today’s kids will have the same opportunity as I had to walk among the bits and pieces of what will become the stuff we left behind. They should be able to discover truths and connections with their own lives and futures. Hopefully, they will both be bright.

They may be, with our help.

4 Reasons Why B.A.P's 'Wake Me Up' is My Favorite Song of 2017

I don’t claim to be a music expert in any way, and I definitely have my own quirky tastes, but I felt compelled to claim B.A.P’s Wake Me Up as my favorite for 2017. There were many other incredible K-Pop works this year, but this one grabbed my philosophical side, which is what gives it a special spot in my heart.

(Side note: The other song that hit me this this year was the collaboration of BTS's RM and rapper Wale, which I wrote about in When's it Gonna Change? Right Now.)

B.A.P has been a group since 2012 and in their most recent years, have focused on songs with messages covering important topics often avoided by many, whether performing artists or not. Columnist Jeff Benjamin highlights their history and his own support for this song in his March 2017 Billboard article, Why B.A.P's 'Wake Me Up' Is the K-Pop Act's Most Personal & Accomplished Single Yet. Here are my thoughts on why this song is my 2017 favorite.

1. Lyrics of physical & mental reality

The lyrics to Wake Me Up aren’t revolutionary but they are important and forcefully presented. They speak a good therapist’s truths, but based in their own experiences. B.A.P knows the reality of the warfare we wage on the inside. “Wake my other self within me, fading light that was dim” “To the soul deep inside me, burn up everything. Wake me up, wake them all.” 

Let me make clear what I think is expressed in this song: we have social and emotional barriers that we must break down and connections to make.

We try to hide our misery, and we know hate and anger are around us more and more. Something has to give- we need and deserve to live our supportive truths- but we can’t do it alone. We need others to help us out of our dark times. We need to call other people out of their darkness, as well.

2. Inclusive video  

The actors in the Wake Me Up video clearly come from all racial and social backgrounds and all suffer from deception, alienation and violence. This is a critical part of the video’s success. By coming together and being willing to struggle as a group, they *may* overcome. 

Initially blinded by choice and manipulation, the people start to see reality. One woman finally sees that her food isn’t really food. Another stops hiding behind masks and vomits out the pills and alcohol she’s been using to deal. A man, desperately trying to clear the puppet-inducing darkness people are walking through (he promotes an Emotion Revolution), smashes a stalled car before tiny lights start to appear: first from the band members who want to share their light, and then larger and varied types of fires as people come together.

3. Melody that supports the lyrical call to arms

Of course, this song's addictive sound was what first drew me in. It's been a mainstay of my workout soundtrack. B.A.P are masters at layering beats, vocals, and instrumentals. 

The song first whimpers, then cries, yells, howls and finally explodes in a crescendo as you’re moved to an energized, hopeful energy as the group paints a picture of What Could Be. The singers glare and the music lacks any fluff but is not all gloom, either. There are no guarantees. However, we absolutely must try to reach up and out so we can all experience a bit of the warm sun.

4. KPop tragedy affirms this song's truth

B.A.P’s great strength is rooted, in part, to the huge problems of their industry. Illnesses based in depression, anxiety and other mental conditions connected to isolation and feelings of lack of control are part of the modern world on the whole, however, and we all have to face that fact. Thankfully, they have dealt with their trials openly. SHINee’s Kim Jong-hyun’s magical talent was no match to what he felt he was facing, alone. He didn’t escape his pain. His fans embraced the symbol of a hand holding a red rose after his death: the rose of love. In B.A.P’s video, you see the newly awakened, in their new world, holding red roses and smiling.

Many fans are making connections between this song and that tragedy. For all of us who see the sun rise in the morning, we have the choice, opportunity and obligation to try for that new world for everyone to feel respected, loved, and valued. Together. 

The alternative? Our destruction.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this or your own 2017 favorites. Please comment below.