It’s about time. On May 4, 2020, it was announced that Ida B. Wells Barnett had received a posthumous Special Citation Pulitzer Prize for journalism. Wells had a much fuller life than can be described here. But several of her outstanding characteristics continue to appeal and inspire: the crusading journalist, savvy newspaper owner, piercing orator, organizer of tactical genius, pioneer of marriage equality and working mother –in short, a woman ahead of her time.
My friend Sylvia, a hospital administrator, has been working from home during the pandemic. Her boss, who is the chief executive, sent her home as soon as the dimensions of the Coronavirus’ impact became clear. She foresaw there needed to be a clear mind and able hands beyond the front lines of critical care to help with the immense coordinating tasks that lay ahead.
In 2018, the March on Washington Film Festival paid tribute to the great Sonia Sanchez on its Opening Night. Seminal figure of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, now in her 80s, Sonia Sanchez continues to raise her indomitable voice for art, power, racial justice, women’s liberation and peace.
Picture this: climbing Kilimanjaro and a Mayan pyramid, scuba diving in a school of sharks in Tahiti, riding on top of a vintage train in the English countryside. Along with pursuing these adventuresome experiences, Michael Crichton was a medical doctor, a bestselling author, a film and TV director/producer, and inveterate adventurer of the outer and inner realms whose fame and fortune continues to outlive him.
By now you probably know someone, or know someone who knows someone who is positive or has died from the virus. And even if you don’t, you’ve seen the virtual funerals, body bags, refrigerator truck morgues, plain wooden caskets and mass graves on the news.
One of the Corona paradoxes has been that in order to survive together we must stay apart. We’re practicing physical and social distancing but still need to maintain social connection in ways old and new. We’re desperate for it – on phones and online chat rooms, on balconies, across driveways, on the other side of a window or street or world – we’re reaching out with space in between.
In 1871, novelist Lewis Carroll wrote the sequel to his 1865 classic, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, called Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. In it he described an alternate universe, where things are contrary to the real world. The Covid-19 pandemic is a potent opportunity to use it as a kind of mirror, to see things from an alternative perspective for what might be hiding in plain sight.
The only thing making me write this blog right now is stubbornness. You see, I made a commitment at the beginning of 2020 to a year of Radical Resilience. Not just to be committed to doing the things I say I want to do, or to enduring whatever comes, but to do both of those things with a vengeance. Now, resilience is a grand and lofty word. It actually pretties up what is really going on. I liked the sound of it as my New Year’s resolution. But what I actually need is stubbornness. Gritty, dug in, mean and ornery, in it ‘til the wheels fall off.
Yes, he actually said it. After weeks of deflecting when asked about the lagging rollout of coronavirus testing, our President said, “No, I’m not responsible at all.” Some of his predecessors had a different take on what should be expected of a leader. Harry Truman had a sign on his desk that read “The buck stops here.” John F. Kennedy urged citizens to “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
My friend A’Lelia Bundles has been the keeper of her family’s history almost all her life. She is the great great granddaughter and biographer of Sarah Breedlove, more famously known as Madam C. J. Walker, the nation’s first female self-made millionaire.