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.