Monthly Archives: May 2020

May 7 2020

Idaho: May 7, 2020

Today I left the apartment for the first time in 2 months. The reason: to go get a very important blood draw.

I agonized about whether the benefit of this test was worth it for weeks. But last week, the number of new diagnosed Covid cases fell to about 1/10th of what it had been in the beginning of April. Meanwhile, our lockdown was about to expire. So I figured that around now would be possibly the most optimal time for the next few months to Not get infected.

Planning my blood draw was like a scene from The Martian. First I tried in vain to find a home health aide or mobile blood draw that would do it. Covid appears to spread mostly in indoor spaces, so if somebody could come here and stand outside, that would be safer. No dice. So then I did it like this:

  • Found local clinic with the least traffice
  • First patient of the day
  • Wore my Cambridge Mask I’d originally bought for the wildfires
  • Wore Wil’s swim goggles and protective glasses over them
  • Put a button-down shirt and a skirt over my clothes, then shucked them off after my blood draw
  • Took a shower as soon as I got home

I was in and out in under 5 minutes, praise be to God.

It’s a very strange thing to go outside when you haven’t been able to. As someone dealing with multiple health problems, it’s certainly an experience I’ve had before, but of course, never like this.

As we drove through Boise, I saw the following:

  • Construction workers downtown, working on a hospital building, standing close together, with no masks on
  • Other construction workers, outside with no masks, talking closely x 2
  • People walking without masks
  • People jogging without masks
  • People biking with masks

The only place I saw masks were at the doctor’s office. I saw ZERO people wearing masks otherwise.

Idaho is stuck in its “Freedom” kick, and I guess nobody is going to legislate wearing masks. If that’s how it’s going to be for the foreseeable future, then I want to get the heck out of any place w/ population density. Which means not living downtown anymore, and maybe even not living in any apartment complex. I can’t deal with this much stupid.

May 4 2020

The Science of Human Development

All this education I had, all these facts and figures and logical reasoning, and nobody said anything about Power.

Nobody said, “Of course, if you’re poor, researching the proper treatment for your medical condition won’t save you, because you won’t be able to afford treatment.”

Nobody said, “Of course, being the smartest person in the room won’t get you the promotion if you’re a woman or a person of color.”

Nobody said, “Of course, if you’re a scientist with important recommendations to avoid catastrophe, it won’t matter if your government is too corrupt to care.”

The next ten years have to be about science, but they also have to be about the study of power. Power for the people. Power over our own lives. Different ideas of fair land use and private property — why should apartment-dwellers fearing for a food shortage be unable to plant gardens in the land around their homes? We should starve so that absentee landlords have a pretty lawn? All to satisfy some antiquated idea of what land ownership means. As if anyone, in the end, can really own the earth.

We need to study the science of human development, of teamwork, of unions, of social progress, of empowerment and evolution from below rather than the false promise of revolution — which removes one corrupt government by force only to put a different corrupt government in its place.

The science of human potential must be studied and developed before any hard science will even have soil in which to grow.