Jubilation!

The last day of 9th grade at Hillside JHS 172 (now called Irwin Altman Middle School 172 and 6th-8th grade) in Floral Park, NY was early for me, as I was to get the spinal fusion operation that would gain me 3 and a half inches in height and supposedly several years of life span on May 17, 1972. I’ll never forget my classmates carrying me around the English classroom in celebration of the event, after we played handball in the back of the room, and I accepted the challenge of stealing the teacher’s pencil and breaking it in front of him. Now a substitute teacher, I can truly say that almost nothing fazes me.

Well, that was the last really fun day I had for several months, as I first got stretched on a rack (really!), put in a full-body cast, had the operation (over 4 hours!), spent a week on demerol flying high, in between bouts of pain all over, and then, just as I was about to be discharged, got an infection, and had to stay another two weeks in the hospital in isolation, and, especially relevant to this story, spent the next six months literally 23 hours a day in bed in a full-body cast (the same one from before the operation, sawed open and taped shut).

[Author’s note: While in the teenage ward at the Hospital for Joint Diseases in Spanish Harlem recuperating from the operation, I heard Stairway to Heaven for the first time. Wow! It had been released the winter before, and was being played on pop stations that spring. This version by Dolly Parton is awesome!]

This was my first lockdown, at the ripe old age of 13. A life-changer for sure. During that summer, instead of playing stickball and hanging out with my friends until all hours of the night, I laid in bed and mostly listened to the radio (my musical knowledge increased greatly!). The first term of high school, I was home, getting tutored in English (live in my apartment!), listening to the radio for history, and even having a telephone class in biology. The farthest I went was the kitchen for meals. Thank goodness for air conditioning, my cat, and a constant parade of visitors and well-wishers.

But I did it, and got to go to high school one term late, with a half cast and a special bus. School, which I always did and still do love, was actually pretty good that term in bed. No internet, no cell phones, no computers, but the technology of the day (pen and paper, radio, telephone) was used well. Kudos to the school district, which like today, was doing its best to keep its students learning, come what may.

And though I played some ball and rode bikes and such in the summers, I was pretty much a schlub as a kid, watching TV and laying around most of the time outside of school. Not after that ordeal! I became excited about the outdoors, and started hiking and becoming the “radical environmentalist” I am today. That lockdown turned out to make a positive change in my life possible that probably wouldn’t have otherwise happened.

——- &&&&&& ——-

The next lockdown I remember, somewhat fondly, was during and after the Blizzard of ’77 in Buffalo, where I was a sophomore at the State University of New York at Buffalo (UB). I’ll never forget, right after the blizzard, while our dorm floor was playing Risk (for 5 days!), a student went out to the liquor store to get some sustenance, it being the only thing open for food and drink in the area. He came back a few hours later, downing a flaming bottle of vodka, in only his underwear, and singing happily. Food and drink secured, we weathered the 2-week holiday relatively unscathed. Later that year, I applied to transfer to the New College in Sarasota, Florida, but chickened out after my girlfriend and everyone at UB told me it was a surfer school. (I often wonder where I’d be if I went through with it…)

——-&&&&&&——-

My favorite sport is ice hockey, and I learned to play on ice, after being told by my doctor not to, in Buffalo (I played lots of street hockey in NYC). Amazingly, up until November 1999, I never had a bad injury from the game, and I played a lot in grad school at Berkeley and then in Seattle when I moved there in 1989. But then, a few days into what was to be my first sabbatical, after 7 years (or so) of work at the Washington State Department of Ecology, I broke my right ankle and fibula, trying not to fall on my back (my doctor had warned me not to do this!). My six-month sabbatical turned into a 6-month partial lockdown, with my poor wife and 3-year old son doing an amazing job of keeping me clean, fed and humored. In the words of our holiday missive in 2000, “When we left our intrepid hero, Bob, last year (1999), he was hurtin’ pretty bad, and feeling sorry for himself. And our heroine, Nancy, was on the brink. Well, somehow, we made it through the first few months of the year…”

My original plan was to spend the new millennium celebration in Rio, and definitely attend the WTO protests in Seattle just before that. I had to settle for both of those on TV, and a lot more on TV, as I had to give up my promise to not let my kid watch TV until at least age 5 to keep him occupied while I moped on the couch (and also worked 10 hours a week from home). But even this turned out good, because we basically watched cartoons all the time, and now Cartoon Network was available on cable, and we could watch old cartoons as well as new ones. Cartoons were a big part of my childhood, but I thought those days were over now that I was a responsible adult. But, no! We watched shows like Johnny Bravo, Ed, Edd & Eddy, the Powerpuff Girls (!), Dexter’s Laboratory (awesome!!!), Sheep in the Big City, and more. If you’ve never seen any of these shows, your life is not really complete. (Just watching some episodes again for this piece has made my life better!)

——-&&&&&&——-

The ancient Jewish tradition of the sabbatical year, taken every 7th year, was a technique for turning more to G-d as you let the soil on your land rebuild, rested and re-energized, spent time with family, had debts forgiven, and basically took a time out. Taken with the Sabbath, the 7th day of the week, and the 49th (7×7) year, Jubilee, a kind of sabbatical on steroids, sabbaticals were the middle step of these resting and rejuvenating commandments set forth by the prophets and leaders of the Jewish people from at least the times of the first temple in Jerusalem, several hundred years before the birth of Christ.

The western tradition of Christmas break is a good example of this sort of time out period, when families gather, work and school pause, shops close, and you can re-energize and get ready for the new year. Like the Jewish resting periods though, we are more and more getting away from these chances to re-energize, reset, and let things lie for a while. The Jews tended not to obey the sabbatical and jubilee commandments, and even the sabbath has been ignored for quite a while in most places. Before the coronavirus shut things down around most of the world, we were a 365/24/7 world, where any rest and contemplation was considered a loss of productivity, a weakness, embarrassing, and costly. Especially in the US.

Certainly, I am a prime example of this. Before schools in the area shut down on March 13, I was working every school day in one of them, and in the evening, I was preparing for a North Coast Chorale concert and also a production of the Real Lewis & Clark Story by the Astor Street Opry Company (ASOC). I wasn’t quite certain how I was going to do both the play and the concert, with accompanying rehearsals, especially since my voice wasn’t really working. Projects around the house were left undone (some for years), and I also had other volunteer activities and regular life to deal with, as always.

As things started to progress with the pandemic, the uncertainty and fear was definitely taking a toll. First, the governor announced that schools would be closed at least until April 29. Then the group the chorale was singing with for the March concerts cancelled their show. Then our chorale cancelled the show scheduled in late March in Astoria. Then they cancelled our concerts in May. And finally, after the governor announced a lockdown in late March, ASOC finally announced their show was cancelled. Governor Brown then announced that schools would close until September, and the lockdown was tightened.

So, I had the beginnings of a sabbatical on my hands. Assuming I didn’t succumb to the virus, or some other horrible tragedy, I had a possible do-over of that sabbatical that wasn’t in 1999-2000. And the world was, at least for a little of it, going to be on that sabbatical with me. In fact, this was not only a sabbatical year, but also a jubilee year, since we had our last bad recession in 2008-9 (not technically 7 years, but let’s go with it), and the oil embargo crises somewhere around 49 years ago, in the 1970s, which brought us into the modern, neoliberal/neoconservative era.

Like the Jews of old, most of us were not happy about the commandments to not travel, stop working, and go home. Those stories are told on the news almost 24/7 these days. But for me, the chance for at least a six-month break from work, and possibly from most of my other volunteer activities, was pretty alluring.

For years, I had envisioned what I now call the Great Digitization Project (or, ironically, GDP), where I somehow turned all the paper, photos, CDs, DVDs and other inanimate objects I’ve accumulated over time into almost massless and invisible electrons that could easily be shared and handed down to posterity when I go, even if the originals were lost or discarded. The electrons I had on my computer and various disks around the house also needed to be organized and updated. And the very real, space-filling junk in the garage either needed to be dealt with, or my wife was going to have it hauled away to the dump. The yard and house desperately needed maintenance and fixing, and had for years.

There are literally over a hundred ebooks stored in my Apple Books account that I have accumulated over the last few years, meaning to read. And of course there were a few actual hard-copy ones sitting in various places around the house that I’ve started, but never had time to finish. Don’t even think about the thousands of bookmarks I have on my various devices that point to websites with either articles to read or ideas to process. With constant information and news in-coming, and either working or volunteering making it difficult even to get to that, the stored-up words of the past were never going to be read.

Usually, we like to spend vacations traveling, but even that option is not available. So, I have been digitizing, organizing, reminiscing, gardening, fixing, reading, cooking, and spending a lot of time with my wife and the cats. Even getting in touch with old friends from Australia, where I did the second part of my masters degree from 1985-1987. As Joe Walsh says, “life’s been good to me so far.”

Oh, Nancy and I have also been binge-watching two of my old favorites, Spongebob Squarepants and Star Trek (the original series). Yes, because we can. (You can, too…)

——-&&&&&&——-

I know that there are lots of people who are having a hard time fulfilling the jubilee commandment. Some are sick, some are dying, some are already gone. Others are unable to enjoy being home with no income, no savings and no hope. Still others now have to balance working at home with child care, as their kids have to balance being away from their friends and schoolwork. So many wonderful events and gatherings have been cancelled, some well into the year and even the next one. Uncertainty reigns. But amazing things are also happening.

There are an endless amount of cultural events being beamed to every device connected to the Internet, for free, both live and recorded. People are coming together in new ways to help each other and keep other sane and hopeful. And perhaps most importantly, the skies and waterways are clearing, the sounds of wildlife are more apparent than ever, and you can almost feel the pace of life and existence slowing down. Soil regenerating. Life regenerating. Resting and rejuvenating.

Jubilation, I fall on the floor and I’m laughing!