What will 2021 bring?
Taking a walk on this second day of 2021 I came to one of our main streets — Fermoy — and was amazed to see there were no cars. This happened often at the height of the pandemic but I wondered on this Saturday if people had again become afraid. However, after I crossed the street car after car crept around street corners and then sped down the road. Aha, they just had slept late.
However, as I walked I thought of the past year and the varying reactions of people — many hovering in their houses, some in my neighborhood continuing to walk their dogs and some refusing to accept what was happening. I remember first entering a store in March wearing a mask and meeting people who refused to look at me, who rushed away. The last time I went to WinCo (my large grocery of choice in Elk Grove) everyone was wearing a mask. Some still refused to talk or look at me, but others had adjusted well, willing to laugh about an incident or look with twinkling eyes which certainly indicated a smile.
Life has continued no matter the circumstances and even the people who still seem afraid at least talk from a distance. Yes, all of us now have been affected whether it’s not seeing the doctor in person (haven’t done that since early February) or experiencing a loved one dying and not being present. However, have the other effects been mentioned? Like 81,000 deaths last year from overdoses? Or my ICU nurse grandson seeing more suicide attempts than COVID patients during many of the months. And many of us could go on forever about the children falling way behind in the educational pattern, especially those in the lower grades.
Those who are positive see last year as a time for learning to trust God and that He will move us through, perhaps in a new direction. Actually, with everything developing in our country and the world the new direction most likely is already upon us!
——— Congratulations to Judy Halstead and the Lodi Community Concert Association Board members for moving positively forward. While they suffered disappointment as the pandemic enveloped any plans for the 2020 season, they still have planned for the future. They have chosen some possible concerts for their loyal supporters and now await when the COVID will stop visiting us. Renewing members were sent a notice about all plans and we all look forward to the futue.
May all organizations feel as positive. Life will go on and once again we will be attending those special events which mean so much to all of us in the area.
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As I examined the past year, no population in the world was free of the pandemic and its aftermath. They all managed to survive in various ways from lockdowns to trust in the their populations. But then there is China.
In the late ’90s Vern and I spent 21 days on a China tour. I’ll never forgot how we all ran to Wendys when we arrived in Hong Kong. Twenty-one days with Chinese food is a bit much! The BIG COMMENT I made upon returning to the U.S. was that all Americans should visit China to see what we may be facing at some point in our lives.
From what I’ve been hearing and reading that point may be now.
My family gives me a bad time about my predictions. Obviously, they aren’t very accurate — like I saw money problems for the ’90s and it wasn’t until the early 2000s before anything happened. Also, I always felt I’d live through an especially dire time — but I thought another war not the pandemic. My daughter said at Christmas 2019 that I also warned about China “and nothing has happened.” Well — welcome to the 2020s (or maybe ’30s).
The Chinese people are delightful and resilient. One guide said, “We’ve been around for thousands of years and will still be around for more thousands because we are survivors.”
Indeed they are — through a litany of rulers to this present time. We saw Beijing, Wuhan (never knew it would be so famous), Chongquing, Xian, Guillin, Hong Kong and a five-day Yangtze River cruise. That’s a lot in a short time — given the highlights and the feel of what China is — at least from the perspective of what the Chinese government wants us to see. The dam had not been finished, but when it was completed over a million people were displaced somewhere else.
Imagine trying to do that in the U. S.!
Yet the Chinese continue to survive. Could we? And what does China really think of us?