I write an uplifting post, and then I get slammed against the wall figuratively.
I want to be uplifting, and then something awful creeps in.
My daughter comes home ranting because her elderly charge wants to continually watch the news, driving my daughter nuts. The news will not let up. It’s one crisis after another. They search for worse case scenarios. They languish in it. And it is mostly about the Coronavirus. On the other hand, my daughter is into the Law of Attraction and how we create our own reality.
BAM! What a collusion.
At home, I write. And for research, I stumble upon the picture of a drop-dead gorgeous Somalian woman and find that the African country of Somalia is “The most failed state on earth.”
While the Western World obsesses over a flu pandemic, Somalians are dying of malnutrition.
Malnutrition is preventable. We worry over making a vaccine—yes, make one, but what about feeding the people of the world? Feeding people should be much easier than creating a vaccine, which I imagine is as complex as launching a rocket into space. We have food. We have planes.
We have the capability of growing food, thank heavens, and we have the capacity of getting that food to people who need it. These people are dying of preventable diseases, lower respiratory infections, diarrhea, meningitis, TB, malaria, malnutrition, and maternal conditions. For women, there is a lifetime risk of death in childbirth of 1 in 22. In Somalia, 1 in 7 children dies before they are 7-years-old. Only 14.6% of women have access to contraception. The average Somalian woman gives birth to 6 children and then watches many of them die.
If that is not a crime, I don’t know what is.
And what is their greatest export? Terrorism.
I am of the thought that you teach a person to fish and they can take care of themselves, but people need full bellies to listen long enough to be taught. And when you worry about where the next meal is coming from you aren’t prone to long thoughts about the nature of reality.
In Somalia, Halima Omar said: “Maybe this is our fate — or maybe a miracle will happen, and we will be saved from this nightmare.”
I pray for miracles.
On the home front: Spend time out of doors.
This is what I wanted to write about when I got distracted.
In a study of 7,300 cases of Covid19 in China, guess how many caught the disease outside?
Two.
Well, I was right about wanting a house with no walls. I love the outdoors, which makes me wonder about the lectures we are getting about staying inside. Go outside. Just keep your distance. The trouble with a house having no walls is you need to live in a warm climate. We live in Oregon.
The Dragon’s Eye School in Hawaii had an ideal construction. Poles held up the roof, but that was all. The school was a large roof, period. The parts that needed protection, tables, books, and such, were located in the center of that canopy, far away from the wind and the drifting rain. It was still too hot under that overhead, though. And when it rained—which it regularly did, everything needed to be protected from the moisture.
It’s hard to get it right.
The children, though, had free run of indoors and out. That’s right.
When we lived in Hawaii, we kept the windows open all the time—with no heat and no air conditioning. A room, screened on three sides thus allowing a wonderful breeze to waft through, was shaded by a tree. The Lanai, we called it, had no glass and exited off the kitchen. We liked having our meals there by candlelight so much that we never installed an electric light.
It did get cold some nights, but a comforter fixed that. (And wool socks in the morning.)
In Minnesota, early testing following the Black Lives Matter protests suggested that SAR-CoV2 outside is rare. With thousands of people gathering, talking, yelling, chanting (at least some wore masks), out of 13,000 protesters, only 1.8% tested positive.
In the Western world, humans spend 90% of their lives indoors. The average American spends even more, 93%.
For years scientists have sounded the alarm that our disconnect with the outdoors is linked to many chronic health problems. Luke Leuring, director of sustainable engineering of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, says that a “misalignment with nature in buildings is partly to blame for the scourge of chronic diseases, and the current pandemic. Lack of airflow and sunlight is obvious. Temperature, humidity, and indoor air pollution play a role. Leuring says we need to cultivate our indoor spaces like a farm.
It’s complicated. Scientists know how to create an immunization better than we know how to balance our lives.
I used to think that nobody walked, that was until we moved onto this street. Our street runs for four blocks with no cross streets and no sidewalk, so everybody walks down the middle of the road. You can go out with your dog at 2 am, and chances are you will encounter somebody.
I’m happy the people walking our street are healthy—adults pushing strollers, babies, kids on bikes, dogs.
When a doctoral student in Dubai asked the question: “What is heaven?” No matter the faith, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, heaven was always a place with a garden and running water.
Oh, say, we live in such a place now.
“If you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to achieve, then you become an instrument of God. You help the soul of the world, and you understand why you are here.”
—Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist.
When we have scenes such as this one, I, for one, believe that the world should and will continue. How about you?
Protect the babies.