Juan Signs Off

 Well, that was a long, interesting Spring.  But everything's done:

• Three months working for a local school district as a school psychologist; theirs went off to have a baby.  I just finished the last report Friday.
• Over two months in rehearsal, learning lines, and performance of "The Diary of Anne Frank" for Bigger Dreams Productions, in Oneonta, performing in Foothills Performing Arts & Civic Center.  The last two of our eight performances had to be cancelled because a cast member tested positive for COVID-19.  I played Otto Frank, Anne's father; it was a really gut-wrenching emotional experience to relive the Holocaust every night.
• Manage the installation of windows in the Cape Cod house - five huge picture-and-casement combos, and two normal sized windows.  We had to move all the furniture in all but two rooms to the center, and then it stayed there for over a month because of delays on the part of the company that assembled and installed the windows.  Also required us to sand, wipe, pre-stain, sand, wipe, stain, sand, wipe and polyurethane (2 coats) 40 pieces of trim and casing...
• ...all while trying to get the house ready for renters in mid-June.  We made it by the skin of our teeth, because we worked day and night right up to the deadline.

Back home in NY, working occasionally as a tour guide at Hyde Hall.  But I finally have time to think about, and write, the final New World post.

The most recent post hiatus was certainly the result of the sudden activity that, among other things, took up most of every day.  But it was also the result of... something more fundamental.

The New World is, first and foremost, a writing exercise for me.  I like to write, but I need some structure to keep me at it on a regular basis.  Many years ago I had a weekly column in a local newspaper.  More recently, I've written blogs on a variety of topics.  This was just the latest exercise designed to sharpen my skills and to do something I enjoyed.

But two years is enough.  When this post is done, I'll be three shy of 250 posts.  Enough.

But mostly I'm giving up because I'm giving up.  There is no New World.  Look up at the top, at Peter Baker's optimistic take on "disasters and emergencies."  I wanted to live in the "possibility of other worlds."  I wanted the massive pandemic's disruption to wake us all up and move us forward into a new set of possibilities, where we were more able to see each other, treat each other kindly and fairly, help each other, and all benefit from "working together for the common good."  I had hoped we would come out the other side of the pandemic and say, "Wow!  We don't want to go through that again!  Let's see how we can use the world's massive resources to make life safer and more enriching for everyone."

Or something like that.  But it didn't happen, not even something vaguely like that.  Oh, things changed all right.  We're now more divided and bitter, entrenched and intractable, and as a society, we're less likely to work for the common good than we were two and a half years ago.  You've been there.  You've watched it happen.  You know it's true.

So there is, I guess, a new world.  It's a world in which those who were able to benefit and profit by the "disasters and emergencies" have consolidated those gains and become even wealthier, while those who have felt the power of those calamities are left in ruins, or, at best, left without a single lesson learned.

In America, the pandemic is not over, but it might as well be.  We have learned nothing, and are in the process of setting our clocks back 50 years.  Living in America continues to mean tolerating child murder, living without adequate healthcare, aiding and abetting historic income inequality, and elevating those who live by hypocrisy.  Here's the new world:  An America where over one million Americans died, and nothing changed.

So, welcome to the new world, same as the old world, but worse.  

This is Juan Quintero, third mate of the Pinta, adrift in some ocean, somewhere, signing off.