Notice: Next Thursday  April 1, on the first day of National Poetry Month, I will be interviewed, along with Ashland poet Kim Hamilton and Rebel Heart Books owner, Eileen Bobeck, on Jefferson Public Radio, 9:00-10:00am (rebroadcast 9:00-10:00 in the evening).

    You can listen live on a JPR station or on the website (jeffexchange.org) and can participate by calling 800-838-3670 or emailing JX@jeffnet.org. The interview will be posted on the website within a day. But I hope you'll listen live. It's more fun.

    When I received my first vaccination, last week, I was so excited I wanted to shout the news from the rooftops. We're going to end this thing! I've taken one of the millions of steps, two from each of us, it's going to take to end the pandemic, but we'll get there. As with so many things, with all of us working together, we'll beat this virus.

    However, I quickly discovered that not everyone is excited about vaccinations. Some people are foregoing the opportunity, a decision that baffles me because do they like wearing masks? Do they like our social isolation and a stalled economy? Of course not, but that's what a choice not to vaccinate comes down to. The person not getting vaccinated either doesn't care if the pandemic continues or is saying, "I think the vaccines were developed too fast [or gives another reason] and in spite of what Fauci and the CDC say, I think they're too risky. I'm not going to get vaccinated. But you do it because if you do, we'll get over the pandemic." 

    In other words that person is saying, "You take the risk [if there is any] so I don't have to" because he, like all of us, would like the pandemic to end. Maybe his life is more important than mine or other people's who have taken or will take the vaccine, and certainly to him it is, but in the big picture, I think we're pretty much equal, all of us. 

    Of course, no one is going to force anyone to get the shot. It's your choice. But America's strong concept of individual freedom has preempted a sense of the common good. If we are going to pull ourselves out of the pandemic, it'll take a sense of responsibility from all of us to do what we can. And the most important thing we can do, in addition to wearing masks, avoiding crowds, and keeping six feet apart, is get vaccinated, not just to protect our individual selves but to keep the coronavirus from finding a foothold among us. The vaccination of me alone will do no good at all in stopping the pandemic. It takes a combined effort. 

    Some time last spring or summer (the pandemic months run together) I heard an interview on the radio with a young woman, in her forties, I think, who had volunteered for COVID trials and experiments. Of course, she was taking an enormous risk, but she had taken a look at her life (single, no kids or grandkids, ordinary job) and decided that it wasn't so important that she couldn't give it, if necessary, to help us understand and overcome the coronavirus. Even though I am much older than she, with much more of my life behind me, I couldn't have done what she did. But I can get vaccinated. Being vaccinated inoculates me against getting sick, for which I am profoundly grateful, but I'm also grateful to the millions of other people who, like me, got vaccinated as much for the common good as for our individual protection.

The First Thing I Will Do after We All Get Vaccinated

     The first thing I will do is get a haircut.

    The next thing I will do is sit for an hour in my favorite coffee shop with a book and a cup of coffee and partly read and partly watch the two women chatting at the adjacent table and the checkers players across the room and the Bible study group and the student with her books and love every minute of discreet comradeship.

    The next thing I will do is have dinner with friends at a restaurant, where someone else will do the cooking and the place is noisy with laughter and clamor from young people on dates and families eating out together and an elderly couple celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary and all the waitpeople, unmasked, walking freely between tables, pouring wine with broad smiles, bringing steaming plates of delicious food made by the happy chef in the busy kitchen.

    Then I will get on a train for eight hours and go visit my granddaughter, and I will talk happily with the seat mate I would previously have ignored so I could read my book because although I could read my book any time during the pandemic, to have a seat mate to relate to is a treat.

    I will say to everyone I see—the conductor on the train, the waitperson at the restaurant, the barista at the coffee shop, the hairdresser, everyone I pass on the street—"What a beautiful smile you have."

    I will say, "How nice it is to see your face."

    The next thing I will do is take a big plastic bag and pick up every piece of trash that has been collecting at the side of the road for a year, but maybe before I do that, I'll get a two-hour massage and let the trash sit for just another day.

    I will go to a concert and then to a play and then to a Fourth-of-July parade, sitting cheek by jowl with open-faced strangers, and I will smile radiantly at them as we enjoy together our common pleasures.

    I will have a grand party at my house, and everyone will eat great food and drink and talk freely without the muffle of masks, and I will hug everyone who comes in the door and again each person who leaves and probably do a lot of hugging in between, too.

    Then I will get on an airplane and go somewhere just for the experience of being on an airplane.

    I will hang my mask on a hook in the closet. I thought about burning it, but it is a symbol of our common suffering and our combined efforts to overcome this adversity, and I think I'll keep it.

    I will never do another Zoom meeting.

    

Vaccination Trials

    I was eligible on February 9 for a coronavirus vaccination. I was counting the days, and on that morning, I started calling places that gave vaccinations, naively thinking I would make an appointment for the next day.

    Friends and family in other states were already beginning to be vaccinated, many of them younger than I, but I was patient with Oregon's decisions. I supported their prioritization of teachers over the elderly. I am not an essential worker, not do I live in a nursing home or have to be in public places often. I recognized that I had a place in line and that my turn would come.

    On February 9, I thought my turn had come, but as I went down the list—Asante hospital, Jackson County Health Department, Bi-Mart pharmacy, Fred Meyer, Safeway—I got the same message: All appointments are booked. Period.

    My doctor's office suggested I call Asante instead of trying to book online. When I did, I got a recorded message that I had to be eligible before making an appointment, and I was, so I waited on hold until I was cut off. I called again and was cut off again.

    I was told from several people to go through Asante's app called Mychart, but when I tried to get an account on Mychart, I was told I needed a verification number, which, of course, I didn't have. Another dead end.

    Meanwhile, people were making other suggestions: Try this place and that one. None had appointments available. Some people had simply waited at the fairgrounds when mass inoculations were being given, but the county wasn't doing that any more. One had lied about her circumstances, but, really, there were reasons for prioritization and, in the end, anyone who wants a vaccination is going to get one. It's not worth lying about. 

    When I called my doctor's office again, she gave me a different number to call for Asante, where, she said, I could get a verification number for Mychart. In fact, that's what happened, and, in fact, Mychart worked, and I now have an appointment for a vaccination. It's more than a month away, but I am secured with an appointment. 

    It's really mostly the psychological impact that matters for the long wait. Friends and family who have already been vaccinated have all reported the same response: the immense relief, the opening of possibilities, the sense of a return to unfettered life. I can hardly wait. And even though I had a frustrating experience getting an appointment, I am proud of Oregon's response to the coronavirus crisis and its handling of vaccinations. Oregon ranks 11th in the list of states of efficient roll-out. April 23, my vaccination date, is just around the corner. I have an appointment. I will be vaccinated. And the pandemic will come to an end. 

The Intense Beauty of Skiing through a Forest in its Coat of Deep, Fluffy Snow

     The weather was perfect last Saturday for a cross-country ski trip in the Cascades between Medford and Klamath Falls. Snow was falling in earnest as ten members of the Grants Pass Nordic Ski Club clipped boots into skis and headed down the Pacific Crest trail. The snow was deep and fluffy. The trail led through big firs and pines to an unplowed road and then again onto the Pacific Crest trail through the big trees. 

    When the snow is too soft because temperatures are too warm, as has been the case too frequently this winter, snow sticks to the bottoms of skis, necessitating a long pause for skiers to take off their skis and apply wax. That was not the case on Saturday. The snow stayed silky under the skis after trail was broken. We had good glide and smooth, fast downhill rides. The snow stopped falling early in the day, and in places where the clouds had lifted, the sky behind the snow-burdened trees was such a deep blue you might have thought you were looking down into Crater Lake instead of up into the sky.

    At what I think now was the most beautiful spot on the trail, we stopped for a rest and a bite to eat. Two skiers, dark figures in the snow-bound forest. were a good distance in front of Jan, Judy, and me. The three of us were ahead of the others, who had stopped around the corner behind us. We stood on our skis, absorbing the beauty. I was so immersed in the scene I forgot to eat.

    "It's so beautiful," I said, sotto voce, not wanting to beak the spell of the snow-bundled forest with its snow-dotted dark trunks and white-burdened limbs bowing to the earth. 

    "Strangely, it reminds me of being at the beach," Judy said, "that same sense of expanse and of solitude."

    I understood the analogy, though mine was different. "I have the same sense of immersion here as I have when I swim in a very cold high-altitude lake," I said, "the same oneness with the environment around me."

    "We are lucky to be here," Jan said, expressing what we all felt. 

    No more was said as we absorbed the silence, the immensity of the forest, and the beauty of the snow, feeling deeply our gratitude for being there.   

    The temperatures have been just at freezing on ski trips this winter, sometimes just above, sometimes a few degrees below. It used to be we would ski in temperatures in the twenties. One year, riding to a ski trail in a car with a thermometer mounted above the window, I watched the temperature drop steadily as we climbed higher towards the sno-park: 20 degrees, 15, 14, until it stopped at 10 degrees when we arrived. It was ominous and thrilling, and the skiing that day was superb.

    There has been nothing close to that for the past few years.

    We who ski together in the Nordic Ski Club frequently talk about how lucky we feel to live where we have such close access to excellent cross-country skiing. But this year I have been reminded that it will only take the earth warming two degrees to destroy that enjoyment. 

    I would be deeply saddened to lose the privilege of skiing through such landscapes as the one I experienced Saturday. The loss would be more than that of a favorite activity. It would be to lose a quiet ecstasy that helps keep my soul alive.

Masks

     Masks serve many purposes. When I was a child, in elementary school, I wanted to mask my face with my hair, but my parents kept making me pin it back. They knew it wasn't good for me to try to hide myself, that I needed to learn not to be afraid to let people see my face, which would tell them who I was.

    Though a mask always hides the face, its purpose is not always to prevent knowing who is behind the mask. A bank robber will wear one to prevent recognition, but a skier wears a knitted ski-mask for protection from the harsh elements. A Halloween trick-or-treater wears a mask simply as a part of the costume. These days we wear masks not to hide our identities or protect our faces, but to protect each other. Wearing a mask to protect you gives me a pleasant sense of fellowship and caring for my fellow-beings.

   People (grocery store clerks, barristers for drive-through coffee) tell me they like my mask. "Cute mask!" they'll say. I made it from some South African fabric my friend Maren brought back from that country, lime green with tiny zebras. I like it that my mask, a symbol of such dark and difficult times, can bring a smile to someone's face. I can't see it, but I can hear it in the voice and see it in the eyes.

    I'm not much of a collector, but I do have a small collection of masks, displayed above the bookcase in my library.

    I bought the mask on the far left—the gold-faced woman with a mass of black hair—

years ago in Denmark, or maybe Sweden. I wore it one year as part of a Hallowe'en costume: the gold-sparkly woman's face with a large bush of black hair, dark red lips, and black-lined eyes, along with red high-heel shoes, a black leather mini-skirt, a gold lame blouse, and a red feather boa. It wasn't hard to step into character in a costume like that! 

    The next mask in the collection is a leather face my nephew brought me from his trip to Haiti. It is the kind of mask that is the likeness of a face rather than the covering for a face. Such leather masks are a craft in Haiti. I don't know anything about their origins or purpose, only that this one is beautiful.

   Next to the Haitian mask is a Venetian mask, made of papier maché, gold paint, glitter, and decorative braid, given me by a friend when we were in Verona to see Aida. In the heyday of old Venice, masks were used to disguise identities, giving people anonymity in their amours and shady business dealings. The concealing of identity in daily life gave license to all sorts of moral decadence. Underhanded transactions went undetected. Promiscuity was rampant. Gambling went on day and night. Society grew more and more decadent, until finally masks were banned. Today tourists buy these beautiful, bejeweled masks not to wear but to hang on the wall as art. Stripped of their original nefarious context, the masks are mute reminders of what happens to a society when it becomes masked for reasons of anonymity, not for reasons of protection.

   I bought the half-face mask that hangs next in line at the Oregon Country Fair from a booth of puppeteers from Takilma, Oregon. Like the gold-faced woman, it is meant to be worn. I wore it at the Country Fair, not so much to disguise myself—I had neither amorous intentions nor cheating tricks up my sleeve—but to enter the spirit of the festival. Masks are good for that.

    The next three are more accurately faces than masks. All are ceramic: a sun-face; an Elizabethan tragedy-mask a student gave me; and another sun-face. These faces match the large ceramic face that was my mother's and now hangs in the center of my custom-built bookcase.

 

    Maybe in a few years, I'll hang my South African zebra-fabric mask on the wall as a historical object, too, a reminder of yet another reason we might wear a mask. I'll be glad to relegate it to history.

More Thoughts on the Inauguration of Joe Biden

        Although I don't follow fashion and don't spend a lot of money on clothes, I am a sartorial person. I  like to come up with new outfits and am always pleased when a stranger stops me on the street to complement what I'm wearing. So I was particularly interested in the sartorial aspect of Biden and Harris's inaugural ceremony. It was the colors, of course, that caught my attention: sky-blue, monochrome white, deep yellow, and purples of all shades. Just about all the women in the spotlight were monochromatically clothed, so the colors seemed even more significant than if they had been mixed.

    And so, it seems, they were. The inauguration women were using fashion to make a statement about America.

        If I saw in Jill Biden's outfit—shoes, gloves, coat, dress—the beautiful blue of a cloudless spring sky, like a glorious new day, more astute fashion followers knew that this outfit had been designed by Markarian, a three-year-old brand of clothing designed and made in New York City that has a sustainable, minimal-waste policy. Thus the First Lady was saying, by the clothes she wore, not just "a new day," but also, "We will invest in American Businesses and are committed to addressing climate change." Bravo for fashion! 

        I loved Kamala Harris's bright purple dress and coat and was even more impressed when I learned that its designer, Christopher John Rogers, was a 23-year-old black American from Louisiana, now in New York City.

        Amanda Gorman's yellow coat was by Prada, a woman designer with strong feminist leanings. Gorman said that wearing yellow was a nod to Jill Biden, who suggested her as the inaugural poet and who had told her once how much she liked seeing her in yellow. The symbolism of Gorman's outfit was personal as well as political.

    Jennifer Lopez wore all white—pants, long coat, lacy blouse, white earrings—a choice fashion editors have interpreted as reflecting the suffragette moment, when women frequently wore white as they marched or made their appeals, but I haven't heard Lopez say that. She might have worn white simply because it was beautiful on her.

    Lady Gaga made a smashingly dramatic entrance in her enormous red-skirted ball gown, out of which her dark blue torso rose like out of a cloud. With her white hair and the huge gold dove pin on her shoulder, she looked like America the Beautiful. 

    Michelle Obama, who as First Lady, unlike her successor, made it a point to wear clothes by American designers, wore a rose-purple pants-and-coat outfit designed by Sergio Hudson, another black American fashion designer. Hillary Clinton wore a grape pants suit from Ralph Lauren, who was born in the Bronx to Ashkenazy Jewish immigrant parents and who built a fortune as a fashion designer: the "American Dream" story. All of this purple at the inauguration, especially by Harris, was certainly a political statement: red and blue combined, signifying the theme of the inauguration, American unity. 

    As for the men, I certainly noticed Garth Brooks in blue jeans (at an inauguration!). What I didn't know was that Joe Biden's suit was also a Ralph Lauren design.

    I won't be wearing Prada, Lauren, or Hudson, unless I happen to stumble across something in a thrift store. There doesn't seem to be any reason to pay attention to what I wear these days, anyway, since not only am I not going to, you know, a Presidential inauguration, but I'm not going anywhere! Still, clothes are fun. Today, for instance, I put on a pair of new Raggedy-Ann-style, black-and-white-striped, over-the-knee socks I acquired as a give-away at Joann's, then tried to figure out what to wear with them. What I came up with wouldn't be appropriate for Kamala Harris, and it makes no political statement, but it's fun to wear.

A Poem for Starting the New Year

 On the Threshold of 2021

                Again I begin
On the threshold of the year
To re-determin-ate the myth
                To end its past determined path
                                the year of death and isolation
                                induced by politics, disease, and natural disaster
                                Annus horribilis
                To create instead a myth of my making

                Open a door once more on promise

                                violets, not violence

                                chorus of birds not angry words

                                the intent of truth to unbend crooked lies

                                arms that hug like angels' wings

                                                without harm of viral things

But I did not choose to lose so much last year

And no matter how I yearn to turn the myth my way

                                this year

                to make it mind my kind of story

                to pen it from my yen for joy,

From this threshold

                it seems too bold to hold such hope

                it seems like pipe dreams and hype

                                mythic fantasy of a mystic type

But I can dream of miracles and truths

I can aspire to higher luck than last year's muck.

I can want

and hope

and welcome, oh,

                annus mirabilis!