Editorials
Updated: We Can Still Have Joy
“After all I’ve seen, I still have joy.”
That’s a line I heard sung many years ago by a gospel choir at St. Paul A.M.E. Church. I’ve had the quote pinned to bulletin boards above my various desks for a long time.
It’s good to think about when things seem to be getting out of whack. The bewildered television newsies have lately taken to using the phrase “at times like these” or perhaps “on a day like today”, but in fact there haven’t been many times like these.
I confess that more than once when I heard someone complaining about the horror that is now president of the United States I said jocularly that at least we didn’t have the black plague to contend with in addition to Trump. That one’s come back to haunt me.
But if the descendants of enslaved ancestors can sing that they still have joy amidst adversity, the rest of us can do our best to find joy in the life we have now.
Last week a couple of the Abrahamic desert religions, each in its own way, were celebrating deliverance from evil.
Passover, to use the common English name, according to Wikipedia celebrates deliverance of the Israelites from the tenth of the plagues which God inflicted on the Egyptians, and it also celebrates their escape from slavery.
Easter, the Christian celebration, is all about resurrection from the dead, another good concept consistent with the arrival of spring, which was celebrated in pre-Christian Britain with rabbits, as it still is to this day.
But this last week many of us have been tempted to despair, especially because the prospect of release from confinement is constantly dangled in front of us by our witless “leader”. Not, of course, that anyone likely to read this has been seriously inclined to believe him, but the temptation exists.
Most of the reality-based people I know, and I know a lot of them, think that the present crisis will last until midsummer at least. Those of us in risky categories will be the last to escape from home confinement, if and when we do.
We’ve been grasping at digital straws, organizing zoom get-togethers with family, colleagues, and old friends, and this has proved to be very rewarding in many cases.
Neighbors have been waving to each other from porches and at a prescribed 6-foot remove when walking the dog. This form of human encounter is bracing, much more than we’d ever expected it to be.
Those of us who’ve previously disdained Facebook are starting to learn how it works. I’ve come to value it primarily as a way of keeping track of second and third cousins whose names I can barely remember. These days I check out what they’re up to in their various quarantine venues.
This week I’ve found a video on the Facebook page of—a third cousin, perhaps? Her grandfather and my grandfather were first cousins, I believe, if I remember correctly. We both came from St. Louis originally, but now she and her musician husband, Gen Obata, live in Tacoma.
(Berkeley connection: she went to UCB for a while as an undergraduate and he’s the grandson of famous Berkeley artist Chiura Obata.}
Her Facebook video shows him sitting at one end of a long porch playing a guitar, with a flute-player at the other end, well over six feet apart. They’re duetting on a Carter Family song in the general category of old-timey or perhaps blue-grassey—the musical equivalent of comfort food, and it sounds lovely.
In yesterday’s Chronicle there was a story about a similar collaboration, between two musicians who are next-door neighbors in San Francisco. They took a few pickets out of their joint backyard fence so they could play together.
In both cases, I’m sure those who heard the music felt better about the general situation.
Here in Berkeley, the inimitable Lisa Bullwinkle, whose email identifies her as “Hoopla CEO” and who has devoted many years to publicizing the arts, put out this call to action when the shutdown started:
BERKELEY MUSIC CIRCUS
These need not be such dark times.
There is still art to be made! Warm up your vocal chords or start practicing your instruments. Each week, on Wednesday at noon, step outside your door or open your window and make the hills (and the flats) come alive with music.
You will have one week to learn the words or practice on an instrument. These are simple songs and easy for everyone to learn. This will give kids incentive to practice their violin or flute and lessen the boredom of being sequestered, just a bit. It may even put a smile on your face.
If you are a block captain, or feel like you are capable, please go out in the middle of your block to act as the conductor, starting your neighborhood off at the same time and setting the tempo for the music. On the sidewalk please!
A list of songs and lyrics was included.
On my corner on the first Wednesday people from five houses came out to sing “Take me out to the ballgame”.
The fact that our street happens to be Ashby made coordinating challenging. It’s at least 25 feet between our houses—the standard traffic lane is 12 feet wide.
Next week, the song was “Don’t worry, be happy”, which was pretty funny, because none of us knew it, until the neighbor with a gorgeous soprano voice came out and showed us what it sounds like.
Week three, however, it was down to only me and one other neighbor, a woman I met 50 years ago when we both worked on the Shirley Chisholm campaign in Ann Arbor. No shrinking violet, either one of us.
What happened to the rest? Well, one of them confessed to me that they’d been intimidated by this threatening language which was quoted on NextDoor.com from our District 8 Councilmember Droste’s newsletter:
“(2) Please stop socially-distancing block parties, dance parties and cocktail parties. Now is not the time to socialize in person, even at a distance. This is a public health pandemic. Of course, we encourage you to call or email your neighbors, friends, and loved ones for wellness checks, particularly if they are elderly or have a pre-existing condition but I want to be clear that you must stay at home as much as possible. It is also a punishable misdemeanor.
“(3) Stay at home as much as possible. You should only leave your home to get groceries, go to the doctor, provide essential work, travel for essential business/care, and/or get essential exercise (only with your household). That is it."
Asking around, I learned that Berkeley police had been called to a similar gathering (which also involved dancing in place!) on Russell Street. Participants were admonished, though not arrested, at least this time.
On the other hand, the police who were called to a North Berkeley street on a similar complaint told the musicians that everything was just fine, they should keep it up. All in all, I wondered exactly who’s been making these “rules”, and whether they were either legal or necessary.
Who claims the authority to forbid Berkeleyans from having “socially-distant block parties?”
Frankly, it sounds a lot like Trump’s press conference claims that the President can do anything he pleases and get away with it.
I called Droste’s office, and after a day or two one of her aides called me back. I asked for a code cite for the source of these threats, especially the one calling “socializing” a “punishable misdemeanor”. All the aide (Brie?) could say, repeated several times, was “it’s citywide”. Perhaps it was Ms. Droste’s own idea?
So I called a couple of other councilmembers who told me on background that they’d never heard of any such thing.
But no one showed up to sing today. Even though I can’t sing worth a dime, I feel like it’s a sad loss.
I told Rebecca Stith, my Tacoma cousin, that someone in Berkeley is trying to forbid group singing outdoors during the pandemic. She’s a retired environmental and civil rights attorney, so she was appropriately shocked.
Between us, I think we should get to the bottom of this. She’s not only a lawyer herself, she's in a good position to ask around, since one of her sisters is a Missouri Supreme Court Justice (former Chief Justice) and another sister teaches at Yale Law School (and is a former Acting Dean).
I suspect the First Amendment might enter into the discussion. Singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” outdoors with people 25 feet away is not the same as shouting fire in a crowded theater.
After all we’ve seen, we still need joy, wherever we can find it.
I’m told that at the virtual Seders which had to be zoomed this year the traditional “Next year in Jerusalem” was often “Next year in Person”. It’s a virtuous wish which we can all share.
I was reminded that sometime in the 60s I attended an alternative Holy Thursday celebration with a group of Liberation Theology fans, held for some reason I no longer remember in a University of Michigan cafeteria. The leader was a Jesuit who was also a U.of M. faculty member, again for reasons I no longer remember. But I’ve never forgotten the theme of his informal homily, which riffed on “Next Year in Jerusalem”. He pointed out that it could just as well be “Next Year in Chicago” or really Next Year Anywhere.
As it happens, I was supposed to visit my granddaughter in Chicago this week, but the University of Chicago sent her home to Santa Cruz after the pandemic pandemonium happened, so our family had a virtual Easter instead. But getting together in harmony with family, friends and neighbors is what’s important, not the place you do it, even (or especially) during a “public health pandemic”. And we all need music.
You should tell your councilmember and the mayor this:
“These need not be such dark times. There is still art to be made!”
Here’s a Berkeley family making art out of adversity. These links came in over the transom, so I don’t know their name, but their music is wonderful.
And this one cheered up all of Britain during The War. Hear them sing along:
Finally, a suggestion from the Planet's consulting biologist, Dr. Rachel E. O'Malley: "You should add these citations and explain that outdoor exercise is more dangerous and no more necessary than singing in a pandemic."
Benefits of group singing for community mental health and wellbeing : survey and literature review
And after all these brave women must have seen, they still have joy in singing:
