As an optimist, or at least someone who tries to be one, I often try to point out the positives in every situation. I’ve always felt as though the negatives of life needed to be blocked out. They needed to be shunned! There’s a line from one of my favorite songs by Tom Petty that goes “Some days are diamonds, some days are rocks.” And although it’s always more fun to reminisce on those “diamond days,” you get some of your most important life lessons from “the rocks.” 

Yesterday morning I woke up with my heart almost beating straight out of my chest from excitement. I had been online friends with a boy named JD from Indiana since eighth grade (I just graduated high school) and we had finally made plans to meet for the first time. We both agreed to meet halfway in Gary Indiana. It’s important to note that JD and I, at least for an online friendship, were pretty close. From facetime calls to texting each other almost every night for over four years, my overwhelming feeling of excitement to finally meet him would be understood by anyone who looked into the windows of our unique friendship. 

Seeing him for the first time felt almost like I had been meeting up with a lifelong friend. It wasn’t awkward, we both knew current things about each other’s lives, like how he would be leaving for the airforce in a few months, and I overall had a great day! We went fishing, laughed about how it took us almost four gas stations to try and find bait, and most importantly got to just enjoy each other’s company for the first time in person. Or so I thought…

There’s an indescribable feeling of pain to wake up the next morning blocked on all platforms possible; Snapchat, Instagram, even my phone number! All blocked by none other than the person I had just drove two hours to visit the previous day. Usually when someone blocks me, there’s a validated reason behind it; a bad argument or perhaps I had mustard on my shirt the entire date. Those blocks, though it stings, you at least have clarity as to why you have been blocked. In JD’s case, I had nothing. No closure as to why our platonic friendship of over four years had just suddenly come to an end over absolutely no known reason! 

As a self proclaimed optimist, I tried to crack the case by displaying the day in my head, because I highly doubt my text to him from an app that disguises your blocked number (don’t give away my secrets) is going to be responded to. I asked myself if there could’ve been anything at all that inspired him to hit all of those block buttons. Maybe it’s because I suck at fishing (I accidentally hooked his shorts), or perhaps it was a turn off that I was too scared to touch the worm (he fishes all of the time). Whatever the case may be, It’s important that I supply my own closure by being honest with myself. I’m not always an optimist, I hate fishing, and as much as I wanted to feel as though I had fun yesterday, JD blocking me made me realise that he had just as bad a time as I did. No hard feelings. Some people are just meant to be strictly online friends.

If you are reading this JD, I wish you nothing but the best!

Most of us wait too many years before we decide that it is time to take charge and do something about our hearing. Changes to hearing can happen very gradually. Most often we are the last ones to realize that there is something that needs to be done. The good news is that when steps are taken to improve hearing, there are documented positive impacts to overall health.

Better hearing leads to better relationships. The ability to share feelings, express opinions and emotions can intensify our personal connections. Missing or misunderstanding a conversation, can lead to negative consequences. Socialization improves relationships and is tied to better health outcomes.

Consider the benefits of better hearing to personal safety. There is a correlation between increased hospitalization and untreated hearing loss. The risk of falling is reduced when hearing loss is treated with hearing aids. A loss of hearing also requires closer proximity in order to capture the sounds around us. As an example, when an emergency vehicle approaches, it takes a longer time to hear the siren for a person with hearing loss. Reaction time and environmental awareness can be improved with better hearing.

Improved hearing is correlated with a better quality of life. Studies show that wages are higher, physical intimacy improves, there is amplified confidence along with increased emotional and physical health.

Listening to new sounds is great for brain health. Stress and anxiety is reduced when we don’t have to listen so hard. There is also more energy at the end of the day. Straining to hear what others are saying takes extra effort and can be quite tiresome.

Life is certainly easier when there are no barriers to communication. Now that we are donning masks in public, these challenges are much more apparent for many of us. If you notice that you are missing conversation, make an appointment to get your hearing checked. See an Audiologist. You’ll be glad that you did.

Many of us likely make lists before important conversations. As a journalist, I would jot down points before interviewing someone to make sure everything important would be covered.

But a list to talk to your mother?

My mother has been in coronavirus lockdown in an assisted living residence for 11 weeks. No visitors, no leaving the premises. My three siblings and I have been communicating with her by phone. We’ve joked about the brevity of the calls. Mom has nothing to report, and under the circumstances our lives are hardly more eventful.

“Mom,” I said about five minutes into a recent call, “don’t think that I don’t want to talk to you, but I can’t come up with anything to say.”

Last Saturday I was supposed to see her for the first time since early March. Nursing staff had been allowing Mom outdoors for the previous couple of weeks. My siblings had seen her outside — six feet away, of course — and I would be the last to go.

Two days before, we were told that corporate management had clamped down on outdoor visits. Mom was crestfallen. I decided to drive down to Plainfield anyway and sit below her window where she could see me from the third floor. We’d talk on the phone while looking at one another from a distance. My brother would join us, he and I sitting in lawn chairs on the ground.

On Friday I had an anxious thought: How would we keep a conversation going for more than 10 minutes? We could sit in companionable silence during a face-to-face visit, but a pause during a phone call is awkward, and she might hang up in confusion.

And so I made a list of topics to bring up. I would ask her about her first session with a physical therapist who comes to her; about how it feels to miss church for the longest time in her life; and about what the friends who called her recently had to say. I would talk about the sympathy cards I received after losing Lizzy, my cat; about searching for someone to install flooring in my bedroom; about seeding lettuce in an EarthBox; and about failing at intermittent fasting.

It was enough for nearly an hour and a half, at which point my brother asked whether Mom’s back was hurting from leaning toward the window. She admitted that it was, so we wished her goodbye. Just before I walked away, I said I hoped we would be able to take her out to eat for her 93rd birthday in five weeks.

Maybe I shouldn’t have raised her hopes, but senior residences are going to have to ease their restrictions sooner or later, and we hope it’s sooner. We’re grateful that Mom’s building has not had any coronavirus cases, but we hope that community residences figure out how to fulfill their sales pitch and make social and emotional needs as important as physical well-being.

The above was already written when I was reading today’s Chicago Tribune and noticed a headline in the opinion section that began, “Isolation must be recognized as a form of elder abuse.” The lead paragraph said, “Elders everywhere sadly find themselves in long-term care protection from their own families. For those in congregate settings such as nursing homes, both the risk of the coronavirus and the experience of isolation are especially acute.”

The piece by Sandy Baksys, who was identified only as a Springfield resident, didn’t go in the direction I expected, but I second the way she opened it.

*****

GRATITUDE TO HAVE A BALCONY NOW

I drafted most of this post in longhand on my balcony Sunday. I wasn’t sure I was still capable of composing without a computer, but the weather was too glorious to be indoors.

How grateful I am to have a balcony as we’re socially distancing. In a 2017 post, I wrote about my surprise that balconies around my neighborhood seemed little used. That’s changing. I’ve noticed more of my neighbors on their balconies than last year. Four of the balconies facing me on the building to the south were occupied while I was scribbling.

In a late May article, Chicago magazine predicted that dwellers in multiunit residences will increasingly desire balconies. If they hadn’t already, people found during coronavirus isolation that balconies are more than places to grill food, Ryan Smith wrote. The “pandemic-proof social space” has been rediscovered as a place to work from home, enjoy fresh air, grow and eat food, and chat with neighbors without anxiety.

As I said in my earlier post, “My balcony is my sanctuary. . . . It doesn’t matter that the balcony is smaller than a yard or a deck; I don’t need a lot of space to sit in a comfortable chair and breathe the fresh air.”

*****

ANTI-TRUMP COMMENTS: 117TH IN AN ONGOING SERIES

“I am outraged. The president did not pray when he came to St. John’s, nor . . . did he acknowledge the agony of our country right now.”
— Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, DC, about the president’s walking from the White House to the church for a photo opportunity after peaceful protestors were forcefully dispersed

The Last of Us is widely regarded as one of the best games of all time and is back in the spotlight with the sequel coming out in less than two weeks. What better time to revisit a game about a pandemic causing the decay and fall of all aspects of society than now?

I wrote about how Doom Eternal wasn’t a game I was jiving with during quarantine times and wondered if similar would happen as I prepared to revisit the bleak world of The Last of Us ahead of the sequel. The Last of Us is my favorite game of all-time. I played it twice and watched multiple playthroughs online to see how other people react to the key moments.

This time, I dove into The Last of Us Remastered, the version for the PS4 that has improved graphics, for my third playthrough. The opening scene where you play as Joel’s daughter, Sarah, as the outbreak hits is as emotional as ever. The montage that follows during the opening credits hits a lot of beats that we are seeing during the coronavirus pandemic today, albeit on a far less destructive scale. There are similarities that weren’t familiar when playing the game previously.

That somewhat unexpected emotional response reached a climax later on in the early hours of the game. In the first scene Joel and Ellie are alone together, they come across an armored truck patrolling the streets of the quarantine zone of Boston. In the game, it acts as a demonstration of the world they live in. In real life, I was playing with a window open in my apartment, which is on a busy street in Chicago. Just as the armored vehicle drove by Joel and Ellie in the game, a police siren blared outside my window.

Had this happened earlier in in the coronavirus pandemic, I might have ignored the comparison. However, police violence has been brought to the forefront on top of the pandemic, which fit The Last of Us scene all too well. I never expected the world of The Last of Us to be so relatable.

Of course, even that shouldn’t be that much of a surprise. The way the game uses the world to build its characters is what makes it so special. You understand most of the extreme actions the people in the world take to survive and buy into how the world devolved the way it did. That’s why I think it will work as an HBO series as well.

The opening hours of the game are more about showing the quarantine zone of Boston and display the grim world you, as the player, are tasked with surviving. In Boston, the gameplay and the story move slower. The shock value of seeing the world of The Last of Us is lost by the third playthrough, but the game gradually gains momentum throughout until its hard to put down in the back half.

Early on, the gameplay’s failings are still apparent, perhaps the cracks even growing larger with time. However, the gameplay succeeds at putting you in tense moments that complement the story. You see a broken world and then you are on the edge of survival and every kill is tense. So, while the game shows its age, even in Remastered form on the PS4, it still holds up as the most memorable experience I’ve had in a video game.

For some of the key dialogue moments, I found myself reciting lines as they were about to happen as if quoting a beloved movie. It sounds pretentious, but The Last of Us moved video games forward for the way it told a truly compelling story. I’m happy to say that even during quarantine the game was still gripping and didn’t depress me.

I can’t wait to see what developer Naughty Dog has in store for the sequel.

People like to trash public transportation. I get it. I do, too. But in reality, I love PubTrans. It’s always there. It gets you where you want/need to go relatively fast. Plus, it’s cheap…and if you’re a senior with a fixed income, in a lot of cases it’s free! Good deal, right?

I use public transportation multiple times every day…except during a pandemic. Uh Uh! Nope! Sorry! No way, no how!

Until today!!

I’ve been pandemicing in the burbs. There aren’t as many people and the area is spacious, so I feel safer. Plus, I love being with my pandemic partner, so it’s a win/win all around.

One thing about being in the burbs is you don’t need to ride trains and buses. People get around in these things called cars. No bus drivers needed. You drive yourself. Who knew?! City life….pfffft!

I’ve been in the burbs for almost three months. Since March 14th to be exact. But, today I needed to go to downtown Chicago….and during a pandemic. OY! What’s a guy to do?

Public Transportation!

I’ve heard ridership on public transportation is down. Reports say it’s by as much as eighty-five per cent. That works for me. Let’s start to get back into civilization by riding Metra.

We pull into the Metra-Highland Park station. There are four cars in their parking lot. Apparently people are still pandemicing at home. That’s cool. I feel good, so far. The train itself is close to empty. The conductor never came into my car to collect the fare. FREE RIDE!! Score!!

I arrive at my stop in less than a half hour. So far, so good. Now it’s time for the CTA bus. Let’s see how this goes. I’m more than a little apprehensive. Scared is a better word. Scared shitless is a better phrase.

The number 9 bus is going to take me home. Surprisingly, it’s waiting for me at the bus stop. This is better than in normal times. You enter through the rear door. Again no one takes your money. Another freebie. I’d be a lot more excited about this if I wasn’t already on the free transportation dole.

It’s a two mile ride on this bus. There’s a few more people, but everyone is spread apart. Good social distancing…until the end. I get up to leave and someone pushes past me…and he’s not wearing a mask. DUDE!!! I back away fast. I’m not playing chicken, on a bus, during a pandemic.

Two legs down, two to go to get downtown. Should be a breeze, right? I check my CTA phone app to see when the next bus is coming. It’s the first time I’ve used this in three months. Feels a little strange. Only a six minute wait. The ride down Belmont is uneventful. Phew! Only one more ride to go. The finish line is close.

Hey…look at this! The 146 bus is waiting. This never happens….EVER! There’s plenty of room on this bus. We cruise down Lake Shore Drive and in less than ten minutes we’ve arrived at our destination. I’m actually early for this appointment!

Downtown is a ghost town. Businesses are boarded up. There are few cars on the street and even fewer people walking around. Sadly, plenty of the walkers aren’t wearing masks. What’s the matter with them. Don’t they know there’s a pandemic?

The appointment goes smooth. It’s time to head back home. I’m going to spend a few hours in the city so it’s two more bus rides. We head back up north of LSD. A group of us depart at Belmont. One woman has her mask around her neck. Ummm….I’m pretty sure that’s not proper way to wear a mask?

One more bus ride to go. I check the app and it says the bus will be here in fifteen mnutes. WTF!!! Okay, so everything isn’t perfect. It’s good to know that not everything in city life has changed. Here’s the bus. Oh man, getting on with me is the woman with the improper mask etiquette. SHIT!!!!  The good news is she’s sitting on the other end of the bus. The better news is she gets off before me. PHEW!!

I arrive at my final destination. I get off the bus, walk down the street and enter my apartment. WOW!! What a morning. I’m think it went okay. I keep feeling my head to see if I have a temperature. Seems fine for now. I’m pretty sure that I’m not going to have to go into quarantine for the next two weeks…pretty sure. The only thing for sure is after all this excitement, I need a nap.

I’m headed back to the burbs in a few hours. Two more rides on public transportation. The main one is another Metra train trip. Yeah, that eighty-five per cent fewer riders thing. YEAH!!!! I guess these rides are a small step into getting back towards leading a normal life again…..very, very small steps. What’s next? Riding the Red Line and getting a haircut? WHOA!! I’m sure I’m not bad ass enough to do that yet!

Related Post: Are people nicer to each other during the coronavirus pandemic?

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The images of violent out of control police officers have provided the necessary evidence to prove not only endless police criminality but also resembles the violence of an occupying force.

The never-ending police violence that administers death as a default mode, and murdered Black bodies are treated as spectacle. Yet, not only does the killing and destruction continue: criminal cops seldom go to jail or are even punished at all.

The protests and violent aftermath of the George Floyd murder is a response to the centuries of police state terrorism. These murders are modern-day lynchings, with a badge and a gun now replacing a tree and a rope.

The Louisville police shooting of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery’s killing by white vigilantes in Glynn County, Georgia, and George Floyd in Minneapolis has been a recent exhibition on how a country fails to protect and provide justice for its Black citizens.

The police reforms, including the ban of chokeholds, diversity in hiring new police, diversity training, dashcam, and body cams, have still shown overwhelmingly white police criminality towards Black victims. The police violence has been unleashed on Black victims by Black officers. The sergeant on-site during the Eric Garner murder was Black. Of the six officers charged in the Freddie Gray killing three of the six were Black.

The skin color of these police officers is neither Black or white; it is blue. The DNA of the police is rooted in violence, suppression, control, and a code of silence. Too often, the code of silence is synonymous with a system of cooperation where police act as accessories in complicity with criminal police.

The Chicago Tribune’s editorial on May 27th remarked on the damage to another police force’s reputation. The Chicago Tribune wrote, “the damage to another force’s reputation has been done,” but the Minneapolis police department has had longstanding issues with the Black community. According to a recent New York Times article:

African-Americans account for about 20 percent of the city’s population, but they are more likely to be pulled over, arrested, and have force used against them than white residents, Police Department data shows. And black people accounted for more than 60 percent of the victims in Minneapolis police shootings from late 2009 through May 2019, data shows.

Firing a killer cop will remove the gun and badge and is a necessary and fundamental procedure when someone is terrible at their job. The expectation is that it will be heightened when an individual harms or kills someone.

In the Eric Garner case, one NYPD officer used an illegal chokehold on Garner during a scuffle with police. Multiple officers at the scene piled on Garner, resulting in his death due to compression to his chest and rib cage. The Justice Department refused to prosecute Officer Joe Pantaleo for choking the life out of Eric Garner. The New York City Police Department fired police Pantaleo; this is not justice. This form of “justice” is not an anomaly. We’ve seen police either not charged at all or escape convictions at trial.

Rekia Boyd’s shooting in March of 2012 by Chicago police officer Dante Servin is another in the endless tragic stories of Black corpses stacked up across the country by an amped-up militarized police force, whether on duty or off. Servin was off duty when he shot Rekia Boyd in the head and Antonio Cross in hand. Boyd died the next day.

Eddie Johnson, later named Chicago Police Superintendant, was the designated on-call incident commander at the scene. Johnson’s investigation of Boyd’s shooting could only be called a tragic parade of errors and justice. One example, Johnson and “police investigators waited six hours to administer a blood alcohol test.”

The Intercept reported, “Detectives also discovered cameras mounted on Servin’s house that looked directly over the scene of the shooting. When Servin said the cameras didn’t work, instead of insisting on inspecting them or obtaining a search warrant, detectives dropped the matter, eventually asking him to sign an affidavit swearing that the cameras were inoperable.”

On the Official Use Of Force Report, Johnson did not check the box to indicate the case be recommended for additional investigation. Johnson stated in his report, “Officer Servin fired his weapon at the offender after the offender pointed a firearm at Officer Servin.”

Servin was indicted for manslaughter that was eventually dismissed. According to the judge in the case, Dennis Porter, the prosecutors did not file charges sufficient to prove to Servin acted recklessly. “It is intentional and the crime, if any there be, is first-degree murder,” Judge Porter said in his seven-page ruling, implying prosecutors should have charged Servin with murder, not involuntary manslaughter.

Servin quit the police force two days before his police board hearing, knowing full well that the conference would most likely lead to his termination while Servin still receives his $48,500 a year pension. The city of Chicago awarded Rekia Boyd’s family a settlement of $4.5 million.

What has been consistent in both the Garner and Boyd cases and an overwhelming majority acts of police misconduct and criminality has been the systemic injustice from top to bottom by police departments in criminal acts and fellow officers and or supervisors acting in concert with them.

The use of dashcams, body cams (which officers routinely forget to turn on), and more focus on police training implemented to help in addressing police criminality and misconduct as part of reform efforts have failed miserably.

Police departments consume vast portions of city budgets in America, mirroring the defense budget, which is near $1Trillion. Chicago Police Department accounts for 39% of the budget, which includes over $95 billion on the West Side police academy, and $33 million to police Chicago Public Schools. There are also millions in settlement suits and taxpayer dollars for attorney fees involving police misconduct cases.

In the New York Post, Alex Vitale writes, “New York City spends more on policing than it does on the Departments of Health, Homeless Services, Housing Preservation and Development, and Youth and Community Development combined.”

A defund the police movement may be an answer. A primary definition being: remove police from the schools (this a well-researched article by Kenwood High School teacher Dave Steiber) mental health crises and no longer interacting with the homeless. No more money allocated for purchasing militarized weapons and vehicles. It is a good start saving lives and freeing up revenue for schools, housing, and human services. Ensuring criminal police are charged, prosecuted, and jailed will always be at the forefront of justice.

Note: As I was finishing this story, Minneapolis City Council announced it was disbanding the police. My hope is there will be more cities to follow.

Check out the top winning moments from the 2019-20 season before the PGA TOUR returns to action at the Charles Schwab Challenge.

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