One consistent thing abut my Good News Roundups is the little admonition I add at the end. You know the one—“go out and make some good news of your own.” Today I’m going to modify that a bit by saying, “Stay in and make some good news of your own.” At a time like this, we all need all the good news we can get. And as we sit in our homes wondering what comes next and dealing with the mental toll that uncertainty puts on us, we can all do ourselves a favor by making our own good news for and about ourselves. And all we have to do is take some of that extra time we have on our hands and consider a few things.
Maybe comfort can come with having the time to notice or think about something that life’s usual routine makes invisible to you. The way the light of the setting or rising sun strikes the room you’re in as it comes through your window. The sounds you can hear late at night without the background noise of traffic or the obligation to get to bed early. Things around you that you don’t usually have time to notice.
Right outside my apartment are trees. No news there. They line the block — they line lots of residential blocks in New York City. Apparently, however, I’ve been too absent these many years to notice the one tree that’s erupted in white flowers every April. I paid it my first attention only last week. Now, just about every day, I stand there and do something like meditate before it. (“Something like” because I’m probably holding a bowl of oatmeal or peeling an orange, murmuring amazement.) A friend told me I have about a week before I’m just looking at a regular tree. That’s fine. I’m home now with nowhere to go, feeling lucky to be a regular tree myself.
Or consider how lucky we are to have ways to be together even when we are isolated. You have a phone and/or a computer that allows you to be with a group of good friends and interact with them even when you can’t be with them in person. That’s what we’re doing right now. You can talk to all of us or privately to any one of us. We take that for granted sometimes, but I always feel so lucky to have friends in California, New York, Florida, and even Thailand (hi tjdk!) who I can communicate with in real time even when I’m forced to stay home. Think about what an amazing thing that is.
For the last month or so, I’ve been talking regularly to six colleagues via a group text we set up as a stave-off-the-loneliness measure. We’re all over the place physically (and sometimes mentally), but we check in with each other every day. We share news and gossip and stray clips that we’ve heard and read and seen. We calm each other down when things feel overwhelming. Our running conversational thread is full of advice, hellos, tears, support, dry remarks and bracing commentary, on topics ranging from the most serious (friends who are gravely ill) to the most frivolous (one of the group’s — OK, Ginia Bellafante’s — unaccountable middle-of-the-night panic purchase of an expensive brass coffee-table giraffe). The other day we had a (non-Covid-related) health scare at my house, and the great outpouring of sympathy and kindness and practical help that flowed in over my phone late into the night and through the next day — I will never forget it. (All is well now.) With everything going on, our little group is such a small thing, but it feels like a big thing. It feels like a lifeline. It feels like love.
Think about all the people who are doing their best to do the right thing.. If one spends too much time looking at the news or (god help you) social media, you’re going to see a lot of examples of people acting badly and/or stupidly. But most people we know and most people we see around us are not. For every yahoo in Lansing, Michigan whining about having to stay home there are ten people who know that this is not about their personal inconvenience. And for every idiot who thinks their god doesn’t hear them unless they’re with a crowd in a certain building on a certain day, there are ten people who are doing godly work (whatever that means to you) for real.
I’ve seen some beautiful things: People coming together, the healthy checking on the sick, the able grocery shopping for the stricken, applause for medical workers, but the thing that has stayed with me the most was two weeks ago, when the bat mitzvah of my dear friends’ daughter, Rose, was canceled. The synagogue was shut and her grandparents and family (and us) couldn’t get on a plane from New York to see her. A few of the women who are part of the women-only theater group that mounts a musical every year each recorded, synchronized and edited the extremely melodic introduction to the ceremony of calling her up to the Torah. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and just like that, the story of a girl’s canceled bat mitzvah became the story of how much everyone loved her and went out of their way to show it that weekend.
Those who make time to sit quietly and notice what’s around them know the sensory pleasures that come with letting their environment wash over them. If you usually don’t have the time or are too busy to do that, now is your chance. You might have become habituated to the perceived need to be busy all the time. Free yourself from that—the little jobs you have to do around the house will wait, and the shows or movies you’ve been streaming will still be there and hour from now. You may not have had time to pause before—you do now.
It’s my heightened senses, especially at night. The stars are brighter than ever, the Big Dipper tipped as if pouring out unfamiliar stars looking to be noticed. The ambient sound in my suburban neighborhood now comes from inside my ears, as if the world’s a seashell. Gone is the soft hum of faraway traffic or the sporadic rumble of neighborhood cars coming home; absent are the barking dogs, since their owners are always near. In their places are critters rustling in the ivy, light rain dripping into the gutters, late-night whispers of my teenage daughter to a friend’s screen across town. The smell of smoke from the chimney of one next-door neighbor, and the pungent musk of fresh bark delivered in a pile to the other, send silent signals that they are OK. Yesterday, in the front yard, I noticed a spot of grass riffling amid the calm sea of blades. It was an unseen mole, chewing on roots. I am numbed to the outside world, but a quarantined superhero of the senses.
Think of all the ways you can help others without leaving your house. You can call friends and neighbors (yes, your phone does that too) to see if they’re OK and offer what help you can if they need it. You can use social media for good by spreading what good news you see with the world. You can join with others in online communities and organizations who are working to make a better world when this is all over (and it will be over one day). If you’re fortunate enough to have some extra money, the simple act of donating to your favorite cause or charity will make things better for someone somewhere. There are other things you can do for others—please feel free to mention them when you comment here today. It’s a powerful feeling to know that you have the ability to make things easier for someone. That’s really making some good news of your own.
Finally, remember that you are saving lives by doing the simplest thing possible—staying home. I personally feel privileged and powerful knowing that I can fight the pandemic by literally doing nothing. I’m really good at nothing.
Also remember—kittens exist, and a world that contains them can’t be all bad.
[Note: the quotations above are from a New York Times article entitled “One Bright Thing.” You should check out the whole thing.]
Here’s a song from North Africa whose title is something all of us have—“A Wish.” Let’s all work to make some of our wishes come true—even the ones we might not know we had.
And now, here’s the news.
Back when the removal of Confederate statues and other memorials was in the news, the government of Virginia took steps to prevent individual cities from taking down these monuments to racist treason. Add another action to the list of good things being done by that state’s Democratic government.
Virginia localities will now have the power to remove their Confederate monuments, under the provisions of a long-debated bill that Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam signed into law Saturday.
Previously, Virginia cities and counties were not allowed to remove, modify or add historical context markers to war memorials. That’s not the case in many other states — a number of Maryland localities, for example, have voted in recent years to relocate Confederate statues from prominent public spaces to private property.
Both chambers of Virginia’s Democratic-majority General Assembly passed legislation earlier this year to ease the restrictions on modifying war memorials. The final bill, from Sen. Mamie Locke (D-Hampton) and Del. Delores McQuinn (D-Richmond), allows local lawmakers to hold non-binding referendums on their monuments.
Federal prison inmates to get free phone calls
Most prisons and jails—and all federal prisons—are currently closed to visitors. As one who has been incarcerated, I can tell you that contact with one’s family and friends is more important than anyone on the outside can know. Right now the only contact these people can have with their loved ones is over the phone, and normally facilities charge them money they may not have to make phone calls. Yesterday the Federal Bureau of prisons removed that restriction at the urging of Senator Cory Booker.
One of the distressing behaviors of many liberals is making anyone who says anything against Trump into a hero of the Resistance. Justin Amash is an example. When he left the Republican party there were far too many people that praised him as an ally of the left. But he has always been and remains a Teabagger who differs from his fellow wingnuts only in taking the Tea Party’s libertarian rhetoric seriously.
But now he has the chance to actually help the Democratic party, if inadvertently.
Rep. Justin Amash (I-Mich.) said he's looking "closely" at a third-party presidential bid on Monday after blasting President Trump’s remarks at a coronavirus press briefing.
Amash’s comments come in the wake of Trump telling reporters he has “total" authority over when states can ease restrictions implemented amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The libertarian-leaning Independent, who left the Republican Party last July, blasted the remarks as “flat-out wrong,” and said conservatives should have another option on the ballot.
“Americans who believe in limited government deserve another option,” he tweeted.
So while a few centrists still insist that Bernie Sanders is going to sabotage Democratic chances by running for the Green Party, it turns out that in the real world it’s the Republicans who might be facing someone who splits their vote. Another example of the Right in disarray.
Another example of elections having consequences.
Certain essential workers in Illinois who believe they contracted COVID-19 on the job will now be automatically covered by workers’ compensation.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker made the announcement Monday as the state reported that new cases of COVID-19 in Illinois increased by more than 1,000 for the eighth straight day, jumping 1,173 to a new total of 22,025, according to the Illinois Department of Health. Deaths rose 74 to a total of 794.
Illinoisans injured on the job normally must prove their illness or injury was directly caused by their duties. But in an emergency ruling Monday, the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission ordered that “COVID-19 first responder(s) and front-line worker(s)” who say they contracted the illness because of their job will automatically be presumed to be telling the truth so they can receive workers’ compensation benefits.
The ruling, which can last up to 150 days, applies to many of the “essential workers” defined under Pritzker’s stay-at-home order. They include health care workers, police and fire personnel, corrections officers, grocery store workers, food producers and postal workers.
Musical interlude:
After that, what else can we do but have some news from Texas?
Texas is one of those states that makes it harder to vote by mail because of course it is. But yesterday the Texas Civil Rights project won a court ruling that would force the state to adopt common-sense voting reform, at least as far as mail-in voting is concerned.
A Travis County state District Court judge on Wednesday issued a temporary injunction against the wishes of Republican state leaders, clearing the way for Texans to vote early by mail to avoid contracting the coronavirus at polling places.
Judge Tim Sulak’s decision came at the end of an all-day remote video hearing. His action sided with Texas Democratic Party officials, who had argued that the pandemic is unlikely to end before Democratic runoffs in July and that voters should not be required to choose between their health and their desire to vote.
Some states allow all eligible voters to submit a ballot by mail, but Texas limits it to just four classes of voters: anyone 65 or older; anyone who is absent from the county and cannot get to the polls; some jail inmates; or anyone with a disability.
The state Democratic Party has filed a similar lawsuit in federal court.
The University of Texas at Austin, citing ongoing COVID-19 economic challenges, will make changes to both university scheduling and spending for the coming semesters.
In a memo released online, UT President Greg Fenves and Interim President Designate Jay Hartzell said they will reduce the cost of all undergraduate summer learning courses to 50% of its standard fall and spring rates. Summer classes will only be offered online.
And now let’s take a look at some polling numbers. As usual, the doomsayers have been working overtime to find any outlier poll they can to “prove” that Trump is inexplicable gaining in popularity. But when you look at the average of all the reputable polls, the truth is that the Conniver-in-Chief experienced only a very small and very temporary bounce, no matter what anyone concludes from the findings of Bubba’s Political Polls and Live Bait.
Check it out:
I cut the picture off at the right, but that’s 44.4% approval versus 51.4% disapproval. And as much as I’d rather the news networks quite giving him free airtime for his daily virtual rallies, it appears that the more people see of his bizarre performances the less they like what they’re watching.
Nor is he doing his party of death cultists any favors.
Here’s yesterday’s polling for the generic Congressional ballot.
As the GOP continues to come apart while Trump’s daily appearances look more and more like performances by a carnival geek, and the Democratic party starts to come together, expect these numbers to start looking even better for the good guys.
I think that will do it for this week. I’m running up against deadline and I want to give y’all a chance to add your own good news. The comments here are something I always look forward to.
So I’ll leave you with a prayer by Warren Zevon that I know we can all relate to, and a reminder that if you don’t see enough good news here—go out (or stay in) and make some of your own.
Whew, made it with 10 minutes to spare.