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Sports During COVID

More specifically, baseball during COVID. I grew up on baseball. When I was in elementary school in the 1960’s, baseball was the sport American boys had in common. I am pleased and proud that girls now enjoy “America’s Pass Time” as well.

Every single one of us dreamed of someday playing major league baseball and being a World Series hero. Maybe it was hitting the walk-off home run in a deciding game 7, making the game saving catch, striking out the last opposition batter. Whatever it was, we all shared that dream together. We didn’t always talk about it, but we all knew what we wanted to do when we grew up.

Well, it’s now 2020 and our playing days are over. For that matter our kids playing days are over, save for those slow pitch softball teams that some of us belong to. But, those dreams never go away. Today they are being lived by a new generation of young boys and girls. The dreams of playing in the “Big Leagues” are now theirs.

I’m inspired to write about this now because the American baseball season ended yesterday as the World Series (not the World Baseball Classic which really is the world series of baseball) of this difficult and trying year of 2020 was decided.

“My” team, the Los Angeles Dodgers won the series in six games over a young and exciting Tampa Bay Rays team. I watched the players, manager, coaches and families celebrate on the field as you would expect them to celebrate during a viral pandemic.

But, underneath those masks were those school boys who, 10-15 years ago, were like me in the 1960’s. Kids with a dream of one day being a hero on the biggest stage in baseball.

This World Series is special. We needed this. We needed this sense of connection to the normal. We needed to see these men go out and play this little boys game with the same joy and unbridled enthusiasm that they played with when they were little boys not that long ago.

They brought me joy. They brought me happiness. They brought me hope for next season. Yes, there will be a next season and next season will be better than ever.

One last thought. The post game celebration for the winning Dodgers and their fans (including me at home). I watched the celebration as braodcast by several different news organizations. Each one had it’s own take and angle on what it looks and sounds like to be a champion.

But, what stood out to me were the names of the backs of their uniforms. Hernandez, Urias, Jansen, Betts, Kelly, Floro, Rios, Gonzales, Kershaw, Roberts. They were a diverse community of human beings coming from many different countries, socio economic groups, races and beliefs. But there they were as a unified group. Smiling, laughing, hugging (yes, even hugging) and enjoying this common moment of celebration together reminding me that we are indeed more alike than we are different.

So, there are lessons to be learned from sports. Many of you probably don’t look at the Sports Pages (I date myself because you find those in newspapers although. I guess you’ll also find them on Web Sites). Sports offers us a chance to be those little kids again, all with a common dream and a color blind eye.

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Singing During COVID

I am a singer. Singing is a very important part of my mental well-being and provides a connection and an outlet for my musical talent and social community. Singing side-by-side with my friends and colleagues is what keeps me going during the hustle and bustle of normal 21st Century life.

It is important during normal times. It is more important during COVID times. But, singing in a chorus involves sitting in close proximity to your mates and moving large amounts of air and the contents of that air into the shared air space of a choral rehearsal or performance space.

This air is a very effective medium for the spread of potentially virus carrying aerosols to your fellow singers and to you. For that reason, singing in-person was quickly identified as a sure fire way to spread virus containing aerosols rapidly and effectively.

Back in mid-March when California shut down in response to the novel Coronavirus, both my church choir and my audition choir very quickly realized the risk of viral spread among choristers and halted live rehearsals.

It’s hard enough to be socially isolating, but it goes to another level of impact when that isolation takes away an avocation that is central to your health and happiness. A previous post on this site goes into some detail about the benefits of singing in a group.

In the early days of the pandemic, the double whammy of social isolation and choral isolation began to take hold. Soon, individual performers, usually professionals, began finding ways to perform online.

These performances were very pleasing to hear. But for me, they were further reminders of the fact that we were unable to sing together at our normal Monday and Wednesday rehearsals for my two respective choirs.

So, what about choirs? Digital platforms were not set up to work with performers performing together in real time. There was the issue of how to sing together in real time. Performances can be recorded and mixed together in an asynchronous way, but rehearsals need to be done in real time.

Our now familiar virtual meeting platforms are not yet capable of allowing choral groups to rehearse together in real time. But, that has begun to change as the months go by. Techniques to utilize the online video meeting platform for choir rehearsals and performance began to evolve.

These techniques have eased the pain of not being together to sing, but they haven’t yet been able to duplicate the singing experience online. This is of considerable significance to me as a singer, especially since the Unitarian Universalist Association, the guiding body of our church community, announced that it was strongly advising that congregations not meet together until the Summer of 2021 at the earliest.

What were singers to do in response to not being able to sing together?

Well, we all are now familiar with digital meeting platforms like Zoom, Google Meets etc. We are spending many hours on them for work, so the time that we spend online for our hobbies and enjoyment are under pressure to happen in a more concentrated and efficient way. No more two and three hour rehearsals. Some groups are trying to solve the technical problems of rehearsing online by meeting in expansive outdoor settings like in parking garages or parks, but many people are uncomfortable with this solution.

As we learn how to practice our craft in the socially distanced reality of COVID, we are learning to record ourselves in isolation from our peers and waiting for our choir directors and sound engineers to gather those individual recordings and compile them into a choral sound. This can be done. I have experienced the joy of harmonizing with my fellow choristers. It brings tears of joy to my eyes just writing about it.

Virtual singing is a temporary solution to singing remotely. It isn’t perfect, but it will serve to hold our choral communities and audiences together until we once again can make music together. Here’s a personal testimonial on the power of singing together even in the virtual world.

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“TheMoral Arc of the Universe…”

“I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight, I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”

Unitarian Minister Theodore Parker

Barack Obama used these words often, including at his inaugural speech on January 20, 2009. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used these words in a speech given at the National Cathedral on March 31, 1968 titled “Remaining Awake Through A Great Revolution.” Listen to the full speech here.

Professor Clayborn, a professor of history at Stanford University, discusses this quote in an NPR interview with Melissa Block on “All Things Considered.”

This quote has been used many times over the last nearly two centuries. The quote is attributed to the Unitarian Abolitionist Minister, Rev. Theodore H. Parker in a sermon that he gave in 1853.

Wherever the words came from, they ring true for me today. In the face of great darkness, know that through it all justice will prevail. I believe that.

October 15, 2020

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A Few Words About Singing

In the words of Stacy Horn, author of “Imperfect Harmony: Finding Happiness Singing With Others,” singing is “when musical vibrations move through you, altering your physical and emotional landscape.”

And you don’t have to be what is considered “good” at sining to enjoy the rewards of singing. In Horn’s words “singing is like the infusion of the perfect tranquilizer, the kind that both soothes your nerves and elevates your spirits.”

Science supports Horn’s claim. I feel good when I sing because of the release of hormones called Endorphins. You will too. These endorphins are associated with feelings of pleasure. Research also shows that another hormone, Oxytocin, is released during singing. Oxytocin enhances feelings of trust and bonding.

Another recent study cited by Horn tries to make the case that “music evolved as a tool of social living.” So, the pleasure that comes from singing together is our “evolutionary reward” for coming together in communities instead of remaining isolated cave dwellers.

So, as we sing together today, next week and in the weeks, months and years to come, hold this in your heart: When you sing, wherever it may be, you celebrate the community. When we sing, we sing as one and we sing together.

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Planned Unease

You might think that there is just no explaining the seemingly bizarre and unpredictable actions of this president and his administration of administrative incompitance.

But, I think that there is a pattern to the daily mayhem that is this presidency. Just to name a very few of the events that appear to fall into the category of inducing mayhem.

Taking children away from their parents and locking them up at the Mexican border, offering paper towels to Puerto Rican hurricane victims, a group called Q-Anon appears mysteriously online. In a California meeting with experts briefing the president about the wildfire, the president said that the climate will get cooler and the scientists don’t really know what the climate is doing. The promotion of quack medicine “cures” to treat COVID infection, things like Hydroxychloroquine. Just sweep the forest and the wildfires will stop.

Telling lawmakers to not worry about passing another much needed COVID Relief bill, but to put priority on rushing the hearings to consider this administration’s third potential Supreme Court nominee. Insisting that he leave the hospital and return to the White House while he is almost certainly still extremely contagious with COVID.

This list is long beyond your interest level in reading it. So, I’ll get to the point of this post.

Author Erick Larson’s book “In the Garden of Beasts” chronicles the experiences of William Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany starting in 1933. It would be another six years before the Nazi’s invaded Poland and started World War ll.

The National Socialist Party, which would become the Nazi Party, was a prominent player in German politics, but was not yet in total control of the government. It is within this culture that Dodd, appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, had been inserted to represent the interests of the United States in a country exhibiting very disturbing tendencies in dealing with non-Aryan peoples. Many thought that the Germans were building for war. Some, like Dodd, held out hope that the German Chancellor, Adolph Hitler, really wanted peace.

Again, back to my point. In late October 1933, Ambassador Dodd met with Hitler. Dodd was convinced that the German Chancellor wanted peace, but his Consul General was skeptical.

To quote Consul General Messersmith: “I think for the moment he genuinely desires peace, but it is a peace of his own kind and with an armed force constantly more effective in reserve in order to to impose their will when it may become essential.” My point is coming.

Here’s my point. As you read this, consider the daily mayhem that the United States has lived through for the past four years and that doesn’t include COVID-19, multiple hurricanes affecting the Gulf and East coasts and devastating wildfires affecting the West.

Messersmith reiterated his belief that Hitler’s government could not be viewed as a rational entity. “There are so many pathological cases that it would be impossible from day-to-day what will happen any more than the keeper of a madhouse is able to tell what his inmates will do in the next hour or during the next day.”

I bring this up because what Messersmith was describing in 1933 Germany has parallels with the 2020 United States. The constant pathology in the White House has the effect of keeping Americans on edge, nervous, always off our centers just a little bit. This constant state of anxiety can be manipulated by unscrupulous leaders to create a state of fear and doubt which is capable of paralyzing the entire country.

This is what is happening right now in the United States. My request of you, wherever you are and whatever you do, is don’t buy into it. Overcome your fear and doubt and act boldly in any way that feels right to you short of violence against anyone.

Civil disobedience is fine, writing letters and postcards, marching with posters and banners, sending letters to the editor of whatever and whoever you are reading, record a message and send it to podcaster, radio station or website, write a blog. (That’s where this writing is coming from.)

Most importantly is to vote. Your vote is your voice. Make sure it is heard.

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Coping with the 2020 U.S. Election

Wednesday, September 23, 2020

I couldn’t sleep last night.  My mind would not quiet down.  Why?  Seeds of doubt about the results of the upcoming election would not leave me alone and I was unable to meditate them away.

But, quiet them I must.  Along with my liberal and progressive kindred spirits, I need to let go of the idea that if Joe Biden and Kamala Harris don’t win the presidency this November, that our Democracy is doomed to a downward death spiral toward a totalitarian Oligarchy similar to the one in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Surely it will not be a step in the right direction towards true American greatness should the Republican Party control the White House for the next four years.  Yet, neither will it be a terminal event in the history of our republic.  

This is where I turn to history.  Historians remind us that there was life before us and that there will be life after us.  Historians like Doris Kearns Goodwin, Michael Beschloss and John Meacham remind us of that.  It is stories from the past that bring me solace and comfort in this dark time.  Meacham’s book “The Soul of America,” focuses on several events in the presidential history of the United States.  Any of these events could easily have been interpreted to be “the end of life as we know it.”

History shows us that Americans and American institutions are quite resilient. Even when it seems that our current times can get no darker, there exists at least one lone vibrating photon of light energy to show us the way.

My efforts to elect a new president and change the balance of power in the Senate over to the Democrats will not in any way waiver.  I am writing personal letters to “reluctant” voters through the non-partisan organization Vote Forward.  I am selectively donating money to candidates up and down the ballot.  I proudly display an “I Believe…” yard sign in the front yard and I remind myself and others with a sidewalk chalk message that says “Stay Focused, Black Lives Matter.”

But, what I have resolved  is that my personal happiness and hopefulness will not depend on a larger collective decision that I cannot control.  As the Serenity Prayer reads:  “God grant me the courage to change the things I can change, the serenity to accept the things that I can’t change and the wisdom to know the difference.”

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Coping with the Upcoming American Election

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Victory Gardens

October 1, 2020 

A Brief History of theVictory Garden

When my school district announced that it was shutting down operations on March 13, 2020  in response to the COVID-19, my very first response was:  “Wow, two weeks of unexpected vacation.  We can go somewhere.  Maybe camping at Yosemite.  Then it hit me.  You’re not supposed to go travelling around.  It would spread the virus.  That’s the point.”

Well, now what was I supposed to do with my time. Part of my time from March 23-June 5 was spent learning the new term “Distance Learning” along with my Sixth Grade Science and PE students at Cabrillo Middle School.  That was about four hours of my Monday-Friday time.  What about the rest?

I can’t really go anywhere.  At that point, I didn’t feel like I could even leave the house.  Being in California, I now feel free to take neighborhood walks, go to the grocery store (with my mask on), ride my bicycle and other basic activities that restored some small sense of normalcy.

Most of the time, however, was spent in and around my house.  That wasn’t too bad.  I had the companionship of my wife and two cats.  And, the yard.  The pleasant sensation of sitting in the yard, front and back. The birds and squirrels, the willow trees and roses , the succulents. What’s so good about that?  Well, I rediscovered something that I had learned from my father.  The power of the garden.

My father was an avid gardener.  He loved growing things.  Our suburban home in Visalia, CA in the heart of the agriculturally rich San Joaquin Valley.  The house took up a good portion of the 6,000 square feet of land owned by my Dad and the bank.  But, whatever was not taken up by the house was dedicated to growing plants.  Some of them were ornamental, they were there because they were pretty.  A good deal more of the yard was devoted to growing plants that produced things that we could eat.  We had lettuce, mustard greens, carrots, potatoes, onions and blackberry vines along the back fence.  We had a plum tree with several varieties of plums, an apricot tree, a grapefruit tree, an orange tree, a tangerine tree and a White Kadota fig tree.  We even had a small grass lawn in the front.

When you read the story about Victory Gardens in the link at the top of this page, you’ll begin to understand why I took up gardening during the COVID-19 pandemic.  My garden is not anywhere close to what my father did, but in several grow bags, a couple of wooden planter boxes, a self watering pot and a couple of non-self watering pots, I created my own garden.  My garden included (and still does to this date) several varieties of tomatoes, a lemon cucumber, green bell peppers, three wonderfully productive Sweet Basil plants (enjoyed by neighbors as well), a small eggplant variety that produced (is still producing) small eggplants that are great on those you bake pizzas that need a little more pizzazz.

The thought that what I and many Americans were doing with our yards was creating Victory Gardens really just hit me this past week.  These gardens are providing us with food, but they are also helping to raise our spirits.  Each one of us doing our part to defeat the COVID-19 in our own personal way provides a feeling of community and support that we have so badly needed during our extended Zoom-a-Thon.

The challenges didn’t end with a new virus.  Then came the fires on the west coast and floods in the Gulf and Eastern states.  A presidential election season that has added unnecessary stress on top of the natural phenomenon that we were already dealing with.  Yet, for me at least, the idea that my garden is helping not only me, but my family, friends and neighbors through some hard times is very gratifying for me and gives me hope.

Carry on.

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Welcome !

Well, here we go. Now that I don’t have to get up and log on anymore for a living, I now have the time to log on whenever I want to and write about things that (until now) have run through my head and then ended up in the vast place where unexpressed thoughts go to die. The content will vary greatly. Politics, Education, Music, Religion, Philosophy, sports and the list goes and goes and goes. I hope it brings you some joy. It gives me a lot of joy to write it!

I’m going to start with a piece written to help preserve some semblance of sanity in a year that just had to end in a contentious American presidential election. I (we) really didn’t need that to finish out a year of COVID, Racial Awakening, a president who is of no help to most of us, fires, hurricanes and whatever local maladies that you have faced, with a freaking election. We just didn’t need this.

But, we have it and here’s what I have to say about it.

A little about me. I retired from a 30 career as a public school educator in July of 2020 in the midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Most of that time was spend teaching Science to Sixth Graders in Terra Bella and Santa Clara, California, USA. My hobbies include singing, bicycle riding and writing. I love to travel and spent two years as a volunteer in the U.S. Peace Corps in Belize from 1988-90. I’m anxious to continue the traveling hobby as soon as my country figures out how to deal with stopping the spread of a tiny virus.

The Pandemic nudged me into retiring a year earlier than I had planned, but at age 64, with my wife already retired, and with teaching being limited to online instruction and contact with my students and colleagues being dependent on a reliable internet connection and limited to two dimensions, I decided that it was time to begin the next phase of life.

I’ve taken advantage of some of that time to pursue my interests in the 2020 elections, helping my wife assist her 90+ year old parents and aunt and to experiment with new rituals and routines suitable with my new time freedoms. I enjoy tinkering with technology, particularly with the audio and video technology associated with virtual singing.

Unlike many, perhaps most, people, I am very comfortable in life right now. I have a nice suburban house with a pleasant yard. I have a good retirement income and a partner to spend my days with. I am politically liberal and I identify as a person that some might derisively label as a Socialist. Socialism is people taking care of people. It is NOT Communism, as many on the political Right would lead you to believe. My strong feelings on this topic will often show through in my writings. Again, I have no problem with you disagreeing with me. But, let’s disagree without being disagreeable!

Bruce Halen with a couple of my light weight friends (Courtesy of Bones and Skully on Pinterest)

I have many interests and I have strong opinions. You may not agree with my opinions and that’s ok. But, if you want to express your disagreement you had better darn well be civil about it. If there is anything that truly angers me, it’s incivility. That’s as uncivil as I will be.

Let’s have a conversation. That’s why I started publicizing my thoughts. It’s about bridging the political and social divides in my country (the United States of America) and quite possibly yours too.

I welcome your comments. Again, keep them civil and rational and we can engage each other in passionate and civil discourse.

I hope that the time you spend reading this Blog is considered time well spent and helps you make the lives of those around you just a little bit better.

Bruce