Coronavirus Diary: Opening Day

Posted on July 28, 2020 by dawkins53

It’s been decades since baseball was America’s national pastime, but the sport still speaks volumes about America. The state of our nation was on display Thursday night at Nationals Park, which was almost entirely empty due to the Coronavirus crisis.

Even with no fans in attendance to boo him as they did at the 2019 World Series, Trump did not throw out the ceremonial first pitch and likely will leave office as one of the few U.S. presidents in the past 100-plus years never to participate in that tradition. Similar to Trump’s abandoning the fight against the Coronavirus crisis, leaving Dr. Anthony Fauci as the trusted public face in that battle, Fauci supplanted Trump on the pitcher’s mound.

Unfortunately, Fauci’s toss displayed all the quality of Trump’s approach to the virus.

The rest of the evening wasn’t much better. The awful rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Nationals Park had some fans longing for the Roseanne Barr version. The fake crowd noise and cardboard cutouts representing fans in the stands at Dodgers Stadium for the evening’s second game reminded the nation that next to nothing was normal.

Still, there was hope. For just a few minutes in the seventh inning the game itself took over. Watching Mookie Betts’ breathtaking baserunning reminded us of baseball’s beauty. Lost in the drama and athleticism as Betts slid headfirst into home plate for the go-ahead run, we remembered how to forget.

Next in series: Coronavirus Diary: NBA Restart

Series starts at Coronavirus Diary: Introduction

John Lewis

Posted on July 18, 2020 by dawkins53

Just over five years ago, I joined Sojourn to the Past for one of its immersive Civil Rights history experiences for high school students. My son, Sam, took the journey along with 100+ peers from throughout the U.S.

In addition to serving as one of about 20 other chaperones, I was in charge of capturing and sharing media, along with official photographer Audra Gray. On the third day of our six-day journey, we had a private audience at The King Center in Atlanta with Rep. John Lewis, who passed last night of pancreatic cancer at age 80.

Rep. Lewis arrived late at our event. He was out the previous night celebrating his 75th birthday. He was worth the wait. A forceful speaker, his voice rose and fell to emphasize his points. You could still hear the hurt, even 50 years after he led the Bloody Sunday march across Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, where Alabama state troopers cracked his skull.

Rep. Lewis sounded every bit as fresh and relevant as he did when he chaired the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and spoke at the March on Washington, in my view, even more powerfully than Dr. King in his “I Have A Dream” speech.

Sojourn tradition provides each person on a journey a private moment with guest speakers. Hugging Rep. Lewis, I thanked him for all he had done for our country. Then we shot this impromptu testimonial video for Sojourn.

Despite my decades of meeting “important” pro athletes, I had never experienced such gravitas. Although he rests in power now, Rep. Lewis will forever stand as the most important, impactful person I have ever met.

Coronavirus Diary: Swine

Posted on July 18, 2020 by dawkins53

About this time, Larry would be pulling the pigs off their spits. The ’82 Project Foundation Swine Social would reach full swing. Along with fellow board members from the Whitefish Bay High School Class of 1982 and our 100 or so guests, we would eat and drink together, pulling cold beers from Beth and John’s ice-filled canoe on the back lawn and toasting our organization for its effort to fund-raise on behalf of our community.

We would heap our plates with pot-luck side-dishes and salads and desserts. We might take a final look at the silent auction items that raise funds, like our $25 food and beverage bracelets, for the scholarships we grant each year to a graduating senior from our alma mater and for the reserve we keep to help community members in need.

We WOULD be doing this right now, but we are not, thanks to the Coronavirus crisis.

Instead, the best I could do today, stuck in California when I was supposed to be at home in Milwaukee for this event, was to bike to the nearest bbq joint for some symbolic swine, meditate on what I was missing, then bike home to refresh myself with a can of Quarantine Beer shipped to me by the co-founder of The ’82 Project, and make a donation equal to my two tickets for admission to the event that SHOULD have been.

Next post in series: Coronavirus Diary: Opening Day

Series starts at Coronavirus Diary: Introduction

Coronavirus Diary: Funeral

Posted on July 8, 2020 by dawkins53

Today I “attended” my first online funeral. I would have stood graveside and sat shiva if not for the Coronavirus crisis. My friend’s father passed from an illness that preceded the pandemic.

He was a beautiful man, praised this morning by his widow, with whom he raised three outstanding children. My friend and her siblings all tearfully spoke on my screen, followed by all six of their children, sharing memories of their Papa.

They told tales of his love of family, sports, dirty jokes, and Dewar’s. I also love his family and sports, and we shared more than a few dirty jokes over many more than a few Dewar’s. I raise one to him now while writing.

It hurt not to be there for my friend today. This is the week I usually spend in Milwaukee with my family, and I would have driven to Detroit for the funeral. But I cancelled Midwest plans because my family fears infection so deeply they would not let me visit.

Pandemic protocol also might have kept me from my friend’s family. Even if not, hugs and handholding would have been out of the question.

The only good that comes from most deaths is a heightened sense of the preciousness of life. Mourning together, supporting each other, we are more mindful of what’s important.

It’s an evil irony that we’re deprived that now – at least in the flesh, face-to-face, literal and metaphorical masks lowered – in a time when so many die alone and so many more seek solace.

Still, I give thanks for the life we celebrated today, so well lived that whoever knew him at all will follow his lead in making the most of our time, a time when we know that any breath we draw, even in the company of friends and family, may prove fatal.

Still, the example set by the man we mourn inspires us to breathe deeply of life.

Next post in series: Coronavirus Diary: Swine

Series starts at Coronavirus Diary: Introduction

Firewords

Posted on July 4, 2020 by dawkins53

Most Independence Days it would be time for fireworks. This Fourth of July, it’s time for firewords.

I have always loved this holiday. I was raised to be a patriot. One grandmother was born on the Fourth of July. The other belonged to the Daughters of the American Revolution, tracing her lineage to the Revolutionary War financier Haym Salomon.

I drank the same red, white and blue Kool-Aid that most of my peers did. I loved this country and celebrated it every Fourth of July.

Ordinarily at this time of night, I would lie back on a blanket beneath the fireworks at Klode Park in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, where I graduated high school and where my parents still live. I would have spent the day following a parade of stilt-legged Uncle Sams and cheerily oblivious families through the streets, drinking beer sold by Rotary or Kiwanis, and “dancing” to a Tom Petty cover band.

Tonight, July 4, 2020, fireworks sound distantly through my Foster City, California porch door. It’s not a scheduled show. Those are all canceled due to the Coronavirus crisis, as was my annual trip home. Air travel is unsafe while this virus rages, and anyway my parents fear infection too much to let me in the door.

So, any fireworks I hear now are set off by the people. By morning. we’ll learn that some of those fireworks were gunshots. Beyond the Coronavirus crisis there is anger in the streets and a reckoning still to come for the recent police murders of unarmed Black folks George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, Ahmaud Arbery, and Rayshard Brooks.

It’s just as well that I did not have a normal celebration today. We’re not free. We are captive to the Coronavirus crisis and the failed government that flouts it — at our expense and deadly danger — even while flying a fake freedom flag. We suffer from centuries of systemic racism, now fanned by 45.

Maybe it’s best that instead of my normal celebration, I spent today on my porch close-reading Frederick Douglass’ “What, to the Slave, is the Fourth of July?” One-hundred-sixty-eight years later, his question remains unanswered. So, this Fourth of July, what’s to celebrate?