Life as it is – Page 2 – Splattered Brains

How I became friends with jimmy john (4/18/2008)

Inroduction – I have ended up digging deep into my past while creating this blog. It was supposed to be a simple re-post of an email I sent many years ago. Much water has flowed under the bridge since 2008. Life was very different at that time. This blog even takes me back to the early days of my career, before the email you are about to read was written. Here goes.

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There are two separate topics in this e-mail, and the second topic is more of a reflection on longer-term happenings in my life. It would be perfectly understandable if you skipped this second part.

So here I was walking through the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show in the Convention Center in Las Vegas, when I heard a shout “Hello, Malayalee anoo”? (Hello, are you a Malayalee?) I turned to see this guy walking up to me. He started talking to me in Malayalam with a heavy accent. I was totally taken aback at being accosted in this manner in the middle of a convention center in Las Vegas. The gentleman mentioned that he had seen my badge and recognized that the name must belong to a person from Kerala. Very quickly, before I could even recover, he asked me where I was from, whom I worked for, how long I was going to be in Las Vegas, etc.. I had no clue who this person was, and did not understand why he was talking to me with such familiarity and asking all these questions. He must have noticed a bewildered look on my face because he paused for a moment. “Am I asking too many questions?”, he enquired. I did not know what to say. He then noted that the way he was asking me questions was the manner in which people broke the ice and started conversations in Kerala. He said that he was from Toronto, and in my confused state of mind I heard the word Trivandrum instead. I looked at his badge and it said jimmy john (just the way I have written it!). Anyway, jimmy soon realized that I was not too much of a Malayalee (even though my parents are from Kerala), but that did not deter him from continuing the conversation. We continued to talk in English for a while about our backgrounds and I became more comfortable with the conversation. I suppose he was a simble (inside Malayalee joke!) person, and perhaps we could continue talking because I am also simble (hmm, maybe not that humble). Turns out that he produces a show in Toronto called Malayala Shabtham and his production company is called CKTV, Canadian Kerala TV Productions. He seems to know people and politicians in Canada, and he sounds like an enterprising fellow. For all I know, he is a well-known person in certain circles. Perhaps one or more of you may have heard his name. Anyway, we exchanged cards and then parted ways.

Now, changing topics: Later the same evening I went out for a dinner organized by a gentleman from DIRECTV named Bob Plummer. Bob had been at the David Sarnoff Research Center while I was there and had moved directly to DIRECTV after that. (He is one of the folks who encouraged me to move to DIRECTV.) He is a very senior person, has a lot of friends in the industry, and will be retiring this year. He apparently has been organizing this dinner during the NAB for several years for his friends in the industry. This time he invited me to the dinner so that I could get to know some of the folks, and I also met an old friend from Sarnoff, Joel Zdepski, who has now gone on become a Senior VP in a company called OpenTV. In any case, the food was very good (and very expensive) and there was plenty of wine to drink. At a particular moment during this whole affair, Bob walked into a conversation that I was having with somebody else and turned to the person and said something along the lines of – Kuria is one of those people who can actually get things to work. My goodness, what a complement! It is quite possible that the number of drinks that had been consumed at that point inspired the comment. But it got me thinking after I got back to my hotel room later in the night (and this is where the humble part goes out the window!). In the early years of my career I had worked on some really unique and challenging problems that were cutting edge, without really realizing the magnitude of what I was doing. At Sarnoff, we were trying to design the first digital high-definition broadcast TV system in the world, and were implementing certain concepts for the first time. Without really thinking too much about it, I came up with a unique solution to a particular system problem that we had, and, although I did not have any hardware experience, I got into the thick of things and actually helped in implementing the concept and making the darned thing work. I was working on something that I had minimum expertise in, and something far removed from the topic of my graduate studies. I depended a lot on intuition. I was also quite naive and did not even realize the complex nature of the problem I was taking on and solving. But others did notice and remember! And it is staggering to realize that the things that we worked on at Sarnoff have now become the foundation of a gigantic worldwide digital TV industry. Wow!

I had a few other such “Eureka” moments during the early part of my career, some of them at Hughes Network Systems, but I think none matched the magnitude of the work at Sarnoff. I think I had a real problem-solving mentality that is typical of an Engineer, and this ability compensated for a lot of my other personality issues. But the years have gone by since then and the reality of life has caught up. It is now more about shouldering responsibilities and trying to make sure that one does not screw things up. I do not have to solve difficult technical problems. I am more careful. Everything is more mundane. And I have to find other less risky roads to follow to push myself and experience the excitement of learning new things and challenging myself. And, although one accepts where one is in life without any regrets, one wonders once in a while about what might have been if other routes in life had been followed and if more time had been spent earlier in life on developing other talents. It is probably true that one can waste a lifetime simply asking questions and not doing anything else. But at least on that one magical evening in Las Vegas (under the influence of alcohol, of course) I felt like I had done something unique and special, something that not just anybody could have done. Is it all about feeding the ego?

There used to be an advertising line having to do with the Las Vegas tourism scene that stated – Whatever happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas. You can see that this is certainly not true with what has happened to me in Las Vegas during my last two trips.

Such is life.
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Today’s postscript – While looking for pictures of people who I worked with while at Sarnoff, I came upon this website with details about the project I was involved in at that time. You can even find pictures of me from my youth (at least four of them in the section about the “AD-HDTV System Integration at Sarnoff Field Lab”). My signature is on a document that we signed at the end of the project. I directly contributed to the specification document for this project. I was responsible for something called the priority processor.

I do not know how long this website will stay up, but I might as well make use of it while it lasts. This is certainly taking me down a memory lane.
https://www.glennreitmeier.tv/advanced-digital-hdtv-prototype
https://www.glennreitmeier.tv/advanced-digital-hdtv-prototype?lightbox=dataItem-jkrigr9z2

They’ve All Come To Look For America

“Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike,
They’ve all come to look for America“
Simon and Garfunkel……………….America

This song was playing in my head as we drove back to Maryland from Massachusetts last weekend – as we headed down the New Jersey Turnpike. Traffic on the roads was normal, not as bad as it can get on a crowded day, but enough to slow you down when you least expected it. You would think that this was a typical day in the USofA at the end of summer. Labor day is over and you get the feeling that autumn is around the corner.People like us are out and about, going about our lives, as if everything were normal.

But these are not really normal times here in the USA. Within a few short days, over 200,000 people would have perished in our country because of COVID-19. Who knows what the numbers will be by election time. About 20% of the global deaths due to the virus are in our country at this time. It is not a record to be proud of. The raw numbers are already much higher than the number of US soldiers killed in the Vietnam war, a war that left its painful mark on the American psyche. How will we remember this particular crisis?

And yet there are those who still believe that this is all a big hoax. No real effort is being made by the authorities, the people in power who know what is actually going on, to correct this mistaken belief. In fact, the misinformed are being encouraged by some to carry on living in their imaginary world. And we all carry on.

Back on the New Jersey Turnpike, at one of the rest stops, there are plenty of cars in the parking lots – but the lots are also not full. Thankfully, the indoor area, where the food court and the restrooms are located, is not completely packed with people – but there are enough of us that we have to keep our eyes peeled in order to maintain physical distancing. Some of us seem to have become somewhat used to performing this particular kind of dance by now. There are also only a few tables and chairs left in the open area of the building for people to dine at. The tables are clean, leading me to believe that they are being more careful in cleaning up after customers. The lines at the eateries for ordering food are long. Our food takes a long time to arrive.

Thankfully, most people are masked. Perhaps it is because New Jersey has already been through the worst of it during the first wave of the coronavirus earlier on, and they know how bad it can get if they are not careful. But the urge also exists to try to carry on as if everything is normal – that there is nothing that is wrong. Yet the virus remains in the air – unseen. We do not know who is carrying it. It could be anywhere.

But, you know, things could have been worse. The virus could have been more virulent. What if it had been able to survive in the open without a host for longer periods of time? What if it actually survived on certain surfaces and under certain conditions for a longer amount of time? What if a higher percentage of the people that caught the virus die? From a very different perspective, what if something like this had happened before we had a robust online system to keep at least some of the systems that maintain our infrastructure still operational, i.e., what if this had happened before we had a well-developed Internet?

These are strange and unique times. And they are not going to end any time soon.

Our Little Bubbles

I listened to a very interesting podcast episode recently. It was from a series called The Seen and The Unseen with Amit Varma. The particular episode was called Caste, Gender, Karnatik Music. The subject matter of the particular episode was actually broader than the title makes it sound. The whole episode made me think about various things, some even unrelated to the subject of the interview. The person being interviewed was a remarkable person – a thinker who was self-aware to an extreme. He was able to express this self-awareness in very clear manner.

One of the things I ended up thinking about is how most of us tend to get stuck in our own bubbles in various ways, and even in multiple contexts. This is nearly always counterproductive to our own growth, our true understanding of the world, and our own broad-mindedness. One aspect of the bubble is our inability to properly understand things from beyond our own circumstances, background, and perspectives, and to understand where other people are coming from. I am not sure if this is only about empathy. It is about smugness of those of us who are fortunate in our circumstances, and this can be true even when we think we are doing the right thing for other people who we may think of as less fortunate than us. It is about complacency. It is about a determination of fairness in society. It is about the ability for societies to exist and thrive from everybody’s perspective.

I am not sure that it is easy for us to break out of our bubbles, but I am sure that I would better off if I could break out of mine more effectively. Once you become complacent, you are lost.

The Summer Slip Sliding Away

Days, weeks, and months go by in the time of COVID-19. We have our daily routines, including work and volunteering, and the occasional trip to the grocery store. We have to be careful with all of this. There have been no summer trips, no official vacations so far this summer, a big change from our usual annual routines.

It has been cool the last few days. There has been no need to use the air-conditioner. We have kept the windows open – to listen to the birds outside, and watch the deer relax in our backyard.

I have been sitting on the deck the last few evenings. I ask myself why I did not start doing this earlier, in all the years we have lived in this house. The plants, growing in pots on the deck, are yielding produce these days. They are a nice sight to see. These are grape tomatoes.These are bell peppers.The trees that I planted as saplings in the backyard many years ago have survived the deer, and have grown to tower over the backyard, and also provide shade on the deck in the late evenings. One evening, as I sat on the deck, my entertainment was provided by a flock of bluejays on the branches of the cherry tree, with a chickadeeand what appeared to be a juvenile tufted titmouse (I could be wrong)making their appearance once in a while. The bluejays were creating a cacophony as they called out to each other across the backyard.

There were no birds on the trees the next evening. I waited and waited with my camera! I think I might go out to the deck today too, maybe with a beverage in hand in addition to the camera!

The “books” that were on hold for me at the county library finally became available after a couple of weeks of waiting. This is the year I discovered digital books. I read books on my smartphone these days because of necessity. The physical libraries had been closed for a while. Reading a book on the smartphone takes getting used to. Reading actually feels a little different from when reading a physical book. I am still figuring out how to bookmark pages reliably on the different digital readers, or even flipping between pages in a flexible way when I want to refer to something that I read earlier on in the book. I still tend to lose my place in a “book”.

I have been watching a lot of episodes of American Experience recently. It is actually a little depressing to see the various ways in which discrimination and injustice have taken place, and continue to take place, in American society. Many of us are not aware of some of these unsavory sides of the history of the country. We live in the little bubbles that we find ourselves in today and are happy to stay there. Here in the US, the people in power (typically the white man) find it hard give up some of that power. There is the sense of superiority. People in power find it hard to treat people fairly. Systems are rigged against the weak, sometimes even when that reality is recognized. Many times the system can be cruel. This is truer than ever today. But the struggle continues. Politics is in the news with the upcoming elections. The choice is very clear this time.

Thanks to my friend Joe, I have been doing a lot of math puzzles these days. I really enjoy them. This is the last one we tackled.Perhaps you will also find it interesting!

I cannot seem to keep up a good routine when it comes to exercising regularly. Rainy days and laziness mess up the attempts to create a rhythm. And it is so difficult to get back to something that you have even been away from, even for a few weeks. Each time I start running after a break, I have to take it easy with the pace, and wait for my body to adjust. It takes at least a couple of runs. Nothing is routine in that sense. Morning walks still continue. Sunrises begin later and later as summer progresses, and there is now the chill in the morning air. Feels nice.

Here is the song that inspired the title of this blog. One of the things I still regret not having done when I was young was going for this concert in New York City. I was a graduate student at Stonybrook, not too far away, when it happened.

Where Have All the Hippies Gone

The motivation to write this particular blog arose after I saw a particular episode of the PBS series American Experience. This one was titled Woodstock – Three Days That Defined A Generation. The movie was remarkable!

For some reason or the other, even though I did not live in the United States at that time, I have been drawn to the US of the 60s and the 70s. Part of it was the music. I do not know if others of my generation who lived in India at that time remember this, but we used to be easily able to get comic books from the US in India during those days. I used to read any that I could get my hands on. Many of these comic books would include pages where they advertised certain music clubs in the US that you could join to get the few albums for almost no cost. Even though we were not able to join these clubs, I used to read about the music. I could even listen to some of this music on shortwave radio.

Anyway, it was not until the 1980s that I was able listen to more of this music, and to even obtain the complete official live recording of the music of Woodstock. We still have the VHS tape of this recording in our basement. I will be honest in admitting I did not really completely understand the spirit of those times since I did not live in the country, but, as I said before, I was still drawn to it. Maybe it reflected something that I felt in my inner self.

Which brings me to today. The movie from PBS which I saw last week tells the entire story of the Woodstock concert. It is not a music video. It is a remarkable documentary. First of all, the event itself would be considered a complete disaster from the point of view of the staging of any kind of event. Almost everything that could go wrong in the organization of the event went wrong. Our sense of organizational structure these days would not allow a concert like this to happen in the United States today. The organizers of Woodstock completely miscalculated. They did not have enough time to set up for the concert, and the crowds that came were many more than they anticipated. They did not set up enough resources for the concert-goers, including food and sanitation. The place was a disaster zone by the end of the four-day event.

But a remarkable thing also happened during those days of Woodstock. Hundreds of thousands of young people gathered in an open field, under very, very, crowded, and appalling and dangerous conditions, to listen to music, to get high, and to basically have a good time. During the almost four days, they slept where ever they could. They managed in spite of the lack of toilets. They took to skinny dipping in the local pond to clean themselves and have some fun in the process. When a dangerous thunderstorm passed through they sheltered in place, and then they started playing in the mud like little kids. And they managed to have their fun in spite of the chaos and the terrible conditions around them. They did not riot. They behaved as a giant human family – taking care of each other, and managing with whatever they had. The kids were completely peaceful in spite of the worst that others were expecting of them.

There are too many things worth noting about the concert. (If you are interested, it is worth watching the movie to get a better insight.) The organizers had to make it a free concert because people arrived well before the fences around the field had been set up. An activist commune from California called the Hog Farm provided “security”, and whatever organization and community service that was needed – even feeding the people after the concessions ran out of food, and also taking care of the people who had overdosed on drugs. The members of the Hog Farm were hippies who did all of this for the benefit of the community just because they wanted to, and not because of any monetary incentive. The community of Bethel, NY, where the concert took place, was a deeply conservative one. They were generally Republican folks who supported the war in Vietnam, something that the young people were against. They did not want the concert in their backyard, and opposed Max Yasgur, the farmer who provided his land for the purpose. In spite of their opposition, the locals banded together to provide food for the kids when the situation grew desperate on the concert grounds. The military even flew in doctors and medical supplies to take care of the kids. (The Huey choppers that flew in for this purpose were similar to those being used in the Vietnam war at that time.) The musicians had to be flown in to the concert grounds in helicopters because the roads were all blocked. Each group that was performing had their own unique story line and attitude that they brought with them to the stage. It was a remarkable set of circumstances.

And I should probably say something about the music itself. The organizers tried to keep the music going all 24 hours of the day, hoping to keep the kids entertained and in a good mood. They did not want trouble to break out. The music was of the times – starting with folk music on the first day, and moving on to more mainstream pop music and rock and roll. There was a general anti-establishment theme to a lot of the music. The kids were rebelling against the voice of authority, they were against the Vietnam war. Richie Havens was the first performer. He improvised the song Freedom on the spot at the end of his set. The organizers had him performing well beyond his initially allotted time because the next band was not ready. Santana apparently took the excitement in the crowd to a higher level on the second day with Soul Sacrifice (listen to the mother of all drum solos in this rendition!). Sly and Family Stone took the crowd higher with their final rendition of I want to take you Higher in what was apparently one of the most energizing sets of the concert. Who would have thought that Funk would work well in the middle of a series of rock and roll music sets? On the last morning, after many of the concertgoers had already left for home, Jimi Hendrix woke up the remaining crowd with the now classic rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner. The sounds and the violence of the Vietnam war (“The bombs bursting in air!”) come alive in the song through his guitar. It was electrifying! If you do a search on the “Best Performances at Woodstock”, you will find a few articles that tell you a little more about some of the songs that were performed at the concert. Here is one such article. There were apparently a few duds at the concert, including the Grateful Dead. They were too stoned for their own good.

After seeing the movie, I decided that I wanted to find out more about Max Yasgur, the farmer who had provided his land for the concert. I found a great video – a talk given by Max’s son Sam Yasgur to a legal group. The video is supposed to be about the First Amendment and free speech. I found the entire video interesting, but you can skip directly to the 40th minute of the video to go directly to the part where Sam starts talking more about the circumstances of Woodstock, and about Max himself. Sam Yasgur is an amazing speaker, and quite entertaining. And Max Yasgur was a remarkable human being. (I hope that this video does not get removed by Youtube!)

I did a little more of searching on the Internet regarding Woodstock. This is a video of an interview given to the The Guardian more recently by one of the organizers of the original concert. You can find interviews with a few people who were at Woodstock, including this video. There were attempts to have concerts at the original location (or close to it) for the 40th and 50 anniversaries. I do not think they were very successful. I am sure there were a few people who went back for these concerts to try to relive some of the days of their youth. There is apparently an art center near the original site of the concert.

Although, I was not here in the US during the time of Woodstock, I somewhat identify with the sense of idealism of the kids. They were the hippies, the flower children. They were questioning the ways of their society. They were not into materialism. They were looking a simpler way to live. They wanted a peaceful way of life. They were against the war that was going on. I get the impression that at least a few of the young people of the 1960s and 70s remained true to their original spirit as they went on through life. I am guessing that there must be others who went on to become conservative Republicans. I wish we could feel and see more of a positive impact of these youth of the 60s and 70s in the culture of the current times, but it is difficult to influence the world in the major way when your life is based simply on peace, love, and understanding.

The world has changed a lot since the days of Woodstock. It seems to have become tougher, and life has become more regulated and seemingly more systematized. Society is less inclined to allow you to take risks. But, I would like to believe that the young people today are still idealistic, although it must be more difficult than ever to confront The Man in today’s world. Life ought to be about looking out for your brothers and sisters. I wonder how many people think that way today. For heaven’s sake, we cannot even come together in our country to confront the corona virus!

An event like Woodstock would not be allowed to happen today – even if there were enough interest. There would be too many rules. There are new causes for the day, but it is a different crowd – a less mellow one than before, I think.

Passages of Time – Let the Music Play on (8/1/2014)

This is a letter I sent to my former high school classmates in 2014. I studied at a school called Central School, or Kendriya Vidyalaya (KV), in Chennai (formerly Madras) in India.

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“On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are”

It feels like life in recent times has been particularly eventful for me, especially in the context of deaths of people that I have known one way or the other. Starting with my sister’s father-in-law’s death towards the end of last year, and continuing with my own father-in-law’s death while we were in India, including a good friend’s mother’s death around the time of my FIL’s passing away , and continuing with the recent news of the passing of PN Sreeniwas, and the latest – the death of a parishioner in our church a few days ago. (She had been very a very active person in social outreach programs and was actually younger than me – a tragic loss.) We did also lose a member of our acapella chorus to cancer earlier this year. He was also younger than me. There have been others. I will mention Suma’s dad in particular even though I did not know him. Ramu also lost his dad not too long ago. We have lost a few other former teachers from KV recently. We are at that age where our elders who are still in this world are in the end-game of their lives, and we ourselves happen to be vulnerable to the ravages of middle-age. Cancer appears to be a common scourge. While we mourn all the good people that we have lost, we perhaps also cannot help wondering how vulnerable we ourselves are, perhaps even feeling that we have become more vulnerable with the passage of time.

But we also know that death is simply an unavoidable component of the pattern of life. It is the nature of life that there is death at the end of it. One does not make sense without the other. The body does deteriorate with time even if the spirit may not. We might find ways to extend our lives, but the end is inevitable. Is there a reason to get depressed about all of this? Can we afford to be afraid of our destinies? If it is inevitable, what is the point in worrying? Should we not simply focus on taking care of things today? Should we not straighten out our relationships with the world today? We should not postpone things – because the tomorrow that you are waiting for may never come. We could celebrate each day as if it might be our last, and find a way to ignore what is irrelevant in this regard. For me to try to keep this kind of a perspective is difficult, but I must try.

Other than the cycle of life and death, I have found other ways of marking the passage of time in my life. In my own case, I am very aware of how quickly the world is changing around me. Because of my overall background, it is the rapid development and use of new technologies for communication and entertainment that I particularly think about. The rate of change is amazing even to me. But the experiences in life that I identify with most, as far as marking the passage of time is concerned, have to do with the popular music of the times. When a piece of music plays, my brain automatically tends to identify it with a period of time in my life. Getting back to childhood, I have some very faint memory of my mom noting some music from the Beatles even when I was very very young (we must have just returned from our stay in the US). During the period of life that includes my teenage years, I usually listened to contemporary music. It was the music of Hindi movies that my mom played and sang to on the radio. And it was the English music that was locally broadcast, and which also came from far off countries and continents over the shortwave frequencies. I was a child of the music of the 60s and 70s, and it will always remain that way.

My dad bought us a stereo system at home at some point, and I ended up buying music on vinyl from a store on Mount Road regularly. (Anyone remember The Bay City Rollers? In hindsight, their music was not very good. (sample)) The 80s came by, and I was a graduate student at Stony Brook before I started working in New Jersey. I ended up collecting older music in the CD format that was becoming popular at that time, while still continuing to listen to contemporary 80s music, both pop and rock, mostly on the radio. In general, there is less music from this era that brings that feeling of warmth, but there is still good music to be found and even bought (sample). The 90’s rolled by, and by this time, I begin to feel like I was becoming dated. There was less music that I could identify with, but, as a part of a continuing process that had started earlier on, I was getting more into the older music of a time before I was born. I was getting more exposure to the original music of America – mostly jazz and the blues. Our kids are born during this period of time, and they spend their life listening to daddy’s music.

While I do get to listen to the music of the 21st century on occasion these days (when the kids turn on the radio and I am not in control), I do not go looking for it, and I do not quite identify with it.

But I am getting older, and nostalgia is only a matter of time. The music that was once rejected has now become more familiar, and is capable of putting me in that unique frame of mind that comes with listening to some of my other older pieces of music. I am not prepared yet to admit that the pop music of the 80s was anything more than atrocious, but I am enjoying it (perhaps in the same manner that I enjoy some of the atrocious music of the 70s). It certainly makes me happy when I am exercising on the treadmill or cooking in the kitchen, and it also reminds me of a period of time in my life. Time has passed, and I have changed.

I don’t know if I will live long enough to enjoy the music of the 90s. If and when that happens, it will be another milestone, another marker, for the passage of time in my life. But it does not matter whether that happens or not. I have to enjoy the music today. Let the music play on.

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Another Spring Week in the Time of COVID-19

It was Easter, and we wanted to get back home from our Sunday morning walk along the canal before the live Easter service taking place on the Internet at noon. I felt a little rushed because of the time constraint. We ended up walking a little less than what we would have done normally. The weather was also not ideal, but this was compensated for by the fact that there were a few more, even different, signs of Spring from the previous weekend. Here are a few pictures.

We see squirrels in the park frequently, and we have sometimes even mistaken the noise that they make to be that of birds. This particular one was observed just after we left Riley’s Lock. I don’t think I have ever seen a squirrel carrying a bunch of leaves in its mouth like this. Perhaps somebody reading this blog has a better idea of what is going on. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA The dogwood flowers were out by the trail.These flowers of Spring in the picture below are called Trillium. There are other varieties of Trillium, with other colors, but this particular variety dominates the towpath. I could not remember the name of this flower for the longest time after I first saw it. I fear that my mind is becoming like a sieve. I have had the hardest time recollecting names of the flowers that I saw last Spring. I am too dependent on the Internet! OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA We could hear beautiful music in the air as we approached the Horsepen Branch campsite. The culprit was this wren sitting on a dead tree stump. This was as close as I could get to it before it flew away. What a wonderful bird – entertaining us in the morning! Puts Pavarotti to shame! OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA If you look carefully at the picture below, you will notice that the ducks’ heads are actually pointed towards the camera. They are turned around 180° from where they would normally be pointing. Maybe somebody knows why ducks behave this way.Of course, Spring would not be complete without the dandelions. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Meanwhile, our world continues its adjustment to the presence of the coronavirus. Many of us are getting more and more getting restless with the need to stay home bound. Many, many, people are also unable to make a living in the current environment. Bills need to be paid. Food needs to be placed on the table. It becomes harder and harder with time to continue to accept that what we are putting ourselves through makes sense, especially in the context of the common good, but like it or not, that is a fact. The first responders, health care professionals, and those ensuring our safety, continue to put their lives, and even the lives of their families, at risk. Politicians are still being politicians, and are using all of this as an excuse to fulfill their own agenda. People in power are also quite happy to deflect responsibility and play the blame game instead of solving problems. Chaos, and a lack of will to take charge and do something concrete on a national scale, seems to reign at the highest levels of our government – even as the individual states struggle without adequate support from above. In a time of trouble, when you think we would come together, we are falling apart, not just in the country, but as a global community. I fear that this is all going to continue for a while.

Some of us that are more fortunate like to complain about how the coronavirus has impacted our lives. We are actually the lucky ones. There are others who are really suffering, and are going to continue to suffer for a long time – much more than us. I might worry about when I will be able to get a haircut, getting my car serviced, being able to meet my friends, or something else, but others have more basic needs that are not being fulfilled today.

I have to note that the last time I went to the food bank, there was not enough food for all the people who needed it that day. We had to reduce the amount of food for each family from what they would normally have gotten. I felt a little dispirited when I returned home that day. I hope that this was a one-time event. It would be hard to sit by without action if this continues.

The Grim Reaper

It happened a few nights ago. It was shortly after midnight. There was a phone call coming through on her mobile phone. It must be the governor with some urgent message, I muttered groggily, as I stirred from my deep sleep. It was actually a phone call from her place of work. Her colleague had called to pass on the information that one of the other workers at the facility had caught the coronavirus and was in the ICU with COVID-19.

The part of my mind that was awake actually froze. I had this picture in my mind of the grim reaper paying his visits to the neighborhoods in our county. Maybe he (always a male!) had found a way to our specific neighborhood, and was hovering around our street (or sitting on the curbside), waiting patiently. This was the closest we have been to somebody who had actually been diagnosed with COVID-19. The mind turned somewhat irrational. There was fear. I was resigned to not being able to sleep the rest of the night. Azrael was waiting! Thankfully, sleep came a few hours later.

I became more rational about the situation in the light of the morning. I could accept the situation for what it was without feeling fear. Whatever sequence of events had already been put into play would take place. We would just have to be more careful. Whatever will be, will be. No point worrying about it. And we are OK so far.

It was last week that the musician John Prine died from COVID-19. I did not know who John Prine was, but I was curious to learn more about the kind of music that he created. I was very pleasantly surprised. It was the kind of music that I would have liked. I was actually surprised that I had not heard of him before. He was a folk musician who sang about the life stories of ordinary people. He sang about the human experience – of love and hate, of suffering, of relationships, of joy, of war, of religion, of addiction, of what he had learnt of the human condition in America. He had a remarkable gift for words and for poetry. Each line was effective. It just flowed out of his very soul. He was a natural. He served in Vietnam, and worked as a mailman for some time after that, before he started singing. He was also extremely funny. You just have to watch some of his live performances on Youtube to know that. So, I will end this blog with his songs. It was somewhat difficult to pick a particular one from among the collection of songs I have been listening to the last few days. So I picked two. These are performances from more recent times.

In good news, the person with COVID-19 whom I had mentioned at the beginning of this blog is getting better. But the full story of the impact on the facility is still being written.

A Happy and Holy Easter to all of you of the Faith.

At the Food Bank in the Time of COVID-19

I have been volunteering at the food bank once a week after returning, and recovering, from the trip to India. I have been there on three successive Tuesdays packing food boxes for customers. There have been changes in the procedures that are being followed every single time I have gone, in order to try to keep people working in the warehouse safe. They have been getting stricter with time. We have had to be very flexible about working out the kinks in the new processes as they are being created. The number of boxes that are being delivered to families has also been increasing with each week that passes by.

Guests and volunteers do not have free access to the Manna warehouse anymore. They are very careful about who is allowed in. They clean the place out regularly. I noticed that something had been sprayed over the lockers the last time I was there. Most likely, it was disinfectant.

The tables on which we pack the boxes of perishable food for customers have been separated from each other by greater and greater distances each week that I have been there. This is to try to separate people who are doing their jobs from each other. They would ideally like to have only one person at each table at any time. In practice, that is a goal that is very difficult to achieve. We have also been using disposable gloves to do our work. We change them as often as needed. They have guidelines in this regard, but the guidelines are only as good as how well they are followed by the employees and volunteers. (I put on my regular cloth gloves under the disposable latex gloves yesterday because the latex gloves have a tendency to tear.) Tables are disinfected each time a batch of boxes is packed and put away. And finally, this week, we started to wear masks. That takes some getting used to. I am still learning. I felt that I could have used my mask in a more effective way yesterday.

I have been gladdened to see the same few employees and volunteers at the food bank again and again during the last three weeks. The illness is amongst us, and I am always concerned that someone that I have been working with has caught something. It is easily conceivable that somebody could be carrying the contagion without their knowledge. That person could even be me. And, with the ever increasing number of infections that are being reported in our part of the world these days, the probability of the presence of the virus in our midst is not insignificant. We have to be vigilant.

Be safe.

Flying Back to China During The COVID-19 Crisis – SamChui.com

The most interesting part of the travelogue for me was the description of the steps being taken in China to combat COVID-19. What they are doing must be having an impact based on the numbers we are seeing. We look like relative fools here in the USA. Our leadership is failing. Soon we will be number one, and it will not be a positive thing. Shame on us.

via Flying Back to China During The COVID-19 Crisis – SamChui.com