May 1, 2020
Bozeman, Montana

It is said that the opposite of blue is orange, an interesting and symbolic premise in this time of the Covid-19 blues guiding the thoughts and actions of Americans, some of whom see more value in living the blues than dying with orange. Not that the blues guarantees living or the orange dying. There are no guarantees except that life includes death. I mean, the Covid-19 blues is only one expression in the infinite repertoire of the blues which are, after all, as emblematic of America as the racism, slavery and slaves from which they grew in the 19th century as an inspired means to survive unacceptable living conditions by finding value in just living, meaning in song, truth in words, soul in singing and survival in each breath. And orange is as emblematic of today’s America as the racism, sexism, dishonesty, greed and cruel stupidity of its soulless, orange headed, moronic, malevolent president, Donald Trump, who a friend has nicknamed “Agent Orange.” Every American should remember Agent Orange from Operation Ranch Hand in Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia between 1962 and 1971 when the U.S. Air Force sprayed more than 20 million gallons of the poisonous Agent Orange over five million acres of forest and half a million acres of farmland to deprive fellow human beings of food and forest cover. “Only you can prevent a forest” was the motto of the Agent Orange ‘Ranch Handers.’ Millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians and American servicemen and women and their descendants were killed and maimed, crippled and tortured and continue to suffer today as a consequence of the long term toxicity of Agent Orange.

May 10, 2020
Bozeman, Montana

That our nation has both the Covid-19 blues and President Agent Orange to deal with at the same time is a quirk of fate that makes the blues of B.B. King no more mournful than an improvisational standup comedy routine of Robin Williams. I write these blues words in full awareness that my personal circumstances of self quarantine clean hands lock down dealing with the Covid-19 blues are far, far better than those of most of humanity. I have lived the authenticity of my own experience, but the blues has many shades. I have never known anything close to the daily lives of the slaves and slavery that inspired them in the 19th century and which, despite the flaky veneer of American law, have never left and are a shameful reality of our country. Just ask anyone on the dark side of our country’s racism or anyone of any shade of any color trying to support a family working for minimum wage. If you ask Agent Orange about such matters you are more likely to be sprayed with poisonous nonsense or Ranch Handed (handled?) by Agent Orange’s sycophantic lackeys than to receive an answer rooted in reality. I live in a comfortable house by a large pond in an upscale neighborhood abutting the Gallatin Mountains and Bozeman has some of the lowest Covid-19 statistics in the nation, with only one death in Gallatin County. My lovely partner does most of the grocery shopping in order to further insulate my 81 year old body from unnecessary exposure to the Big C, and I have close and easy access to fine hiking trails in the mountains. When my partner is gone on work or adventure trips, even in self quarantine I am surrounded by deer in the yard, coyotes in the night, every so often a bear on the trails or in the street or rambling along the bank on the far side of the pond (I encountered the first one of the year in a neighbor’s yard this afternoon while on a walk), geese and ducks and even once a loon in the pond, and the ospreys/eagles/robins/magpies/bluebirds/blackbirds/crows/sparrows and other airborne creatures cruising above, in and around the trees with the grace and freedom of winged herds (flocks?) dancing the ecstatic boogie-woogie in a ballroom of infinite space. I am reminded of the beautiful blues song sung by many, though Billie Holliday sang it best for me:

“Back In Your Own Backyard”

“The bird with feathers of blue
Is waiting for you
Back in your own backyard
You’ll see your castles in Spain
Through your window pane
Back in your own backyard
Oh you can go to the East
Go to the West
But someday you’ll come
Weary at heart
Back where you started from
You’ll find your happiness lies
Right under your eyes
Back in your own backyard”

The primary change to start the daily routine in my own backyard during the Covid19 blues is that most mornings I do not set a morning alarm. Self quarantine creates more time that my body relishes for the relaxation it needs after all those years (decades) of going east, going west, going up, down and around and around and around (yes, including Spain). Covid19 has stranded me in my own backyard where, as Billie sang so well, happiness lies. My body and the rest of me (I’m still working on trying to understand who/what ‘me’ is) do not miss suddenly awakening from deep or shallow sleep and dark or illuminated dreams to a shrill mechanical shriek. The inherent wisdom of the organic is a better friend to the independent individual body, mind and soul than the schedule of the clock and the convenience of the motorized, linear regimen that defines America’s materialistic/gridlock traffic/smog/ climate change/flooding/vanishing glaciers/drought/forest fires culture of never ending growth, aptly described by Ed Abbey as “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” Thanks Ed. Schedule. Clock. Convenience. Motorized. Linear. Regimen. Cancer.

May 25, 2020 (Memorial Day)
Bozeman, Montana

Covid19 is a disaster that at this writing has killed almost 100,000 Americans, the highest fatality number of any nation. There will be many, many more. I will do what I can to keep my body from increasing those numbers because I selfishly wish to keep living. It is also the right action with the right intention for the world that each individual, as much as possible, avoids contributing to a disaster, even if that action and intention will not avert the calamity. There is happiness in doing the right thing, peacefully fighting the good battle even if it can’t be won. Don’t you think?
Less than three months into the process of self quarantine (which will be a one to two year event) I already better appreciate, embrace and am more alert than I was just a few months ago to the connectivity of all things organic and the disconnect between different sides of all things linear and the exclusion of those that don’t move to the regimen. (Gertrude Stein correctly observed. “There is no straight line in nature.”) Organic encompasses everything, including the linear, the regimented and Agent Orange. Since the organic is neither constrained nor regimented by the clock it may take awhile for it to return to working order, but it will. Early signs of the organic in action during the early stages of the Covid19 Blues include clear sky over major cities throughout the world for the first time in decades, bears walking around and coyotes napping in the middle of the road of a closed Yosemite National Park as if their natural home for thousands of years were something other than a stage for modern homo sapiens to proclaim control of and connection to the very environment they continue to decimate. Early indications of the endurance of disconnection in the chemistry of Agent Orange include that it is still poisonously alive in the flora, fauna, food chain, soil, and water of Vietnam and in the bodies of today’s Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians and Americans and their descendants after 50 years. It’s still too early to take a reading on the lasting endurance of the damage to the world of Agent Orange’s pestilential presidency, but as Taj Mahal says and we can hope, “Particularly with the blues, it’s not just about bad times. It’s about the healing spirit.”

June 14, 2020 (Agent Orange’s 74th birthday)
Bozeman, Montana

The healing spirit of the Covid19 Blues is everywhere, as is Covid19. On a hike I often make up one of the steepest trails around Bozeman I recently came across a situation I perceive as imbued with healing spirit. A burly Montana dude in his mid-20s wearing a MAGA hat was standing aside at a turn in the trail. An attractive Native American woman about the same age appeared to be giving him a back rub. My first thought was that it was an anomaly for a Montana MAGA dude to be with a Native American. As I passed I commented that he was a lucky man to be getting a back rub. The woman giggled anxiously and there were tears in her eyes and she said, “No, no, since I was a little girl I’ve always been terrified of heights. I’m not rubbing his back. I’m hanging on to him. He convinced me to come up here to help me get over my fear, but I’m soooo frightened.” They started down the trail, one slow step at a time, she hanging on to a patient and seemingly caring Montana MAGA dude. In complete awareness that the dude may have had ulterior, less healing motives than calming the woman’s fears, choosing to attribute his actions and intentions to the healing spirit is in and of itself healing. For sure it is for those who choose the healing spirit and, since all things and people are connected, to some extent it heals the MAGA dude with (maybe) ulterior motives to his exterior moves and relieves some of the woman’s fears from childhood.
Agent Orange, MAGA and Covid19 dominate American life at this writing, neither of them describable as compassionate, healing, and beneficial to humanity or contributing to the well being of planet Earth. They can easily turn the individual away from his and her better self to embrace the dark side that exists in everyone, the side that wounds instead of heals, conquers instead of shares and hates instead of loves. Whenever the darkness arises I try to remember the words of America’s finest poet of my generation, Bob Dylan:

“So don’t fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don’t hate nothing at all
Except hatred

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred”

‘Don’t hate nothing at all except hatred’ are words I keep in mind whenever Agent Orange appears in my thoughts, which is much more often than I would like. But I also consciously focus on these words of my own: “I am deeply ashamed of and sorry for every person who supports Donald Trump,” as shame and pity can be tools of healing. On those occasions when I am asked to express my thoughts on Agent Orange (usually but not always by a Trumper), I use the same words, and, honestly, in the spirit of healing a very fucked up world I like saying them to another person more than just thinking them by myself.