Day 277

 Saturday December 12, 2020

It is with anticipation and trepidation I await the arrival of the vaccine to the United States. My reasons of anticipation ought to be obvious as we all long for the life we lived prior to the pandemic and the vaccine offers us a great hope for controlling the virus and its prodigious spread. The fear I hold onto is because of the way the pandemic has divided our country and it will continue to be evident as the vaccine becomes available. I believe many people in the U.S. will not vaccinate and the divide will continue as those that long to heal this country will be combatted by the unbelievers and such who did not care to help quell the virus from the onset. Also, it is a matter of the unknown. What side effects will the vaccine bring? Will enough people take it to eradicate the virus within a few months or will the process take longer?

Questions. So much uncertainty. Yet we have hope. And that sure feels good as we approach the new year.

Recently I read an article about Brooklyn and how it has changed through the years. Incorporated in 1834 by the Civil War it had grown to the third largest city in America. A century later it was barely a functioning borough of New York. As neighborhoods began to fall from poverty and crime the nail in the proverbial Brooklyn coffin was the closing of the Navy Yard in 1966. Some 12,000 jobs were lost and many fled to the suburbs leaving behind a Brooklyn ripe for decay. Of course it survived and went through many changes as different ethnicities moved away, gangs dissolved and crime brought under control. The modern movement has brought in a younger clientele and the gentrified Brooklyn we know today is thriving.  The following photos are from Brooklyn in the 1960's. 

1. A diverse neighborhood with a Jewish deli, Chinese restaurant and Italian pizza place side-by-side

2. The workers of the Navy Yard give a thumbs down to the potential closing

3. Two New York Yankees visit neighborhood kids.

Reading of Brooklyn made me think of Walt Whitman, raised in Brooklyn, but born on Long Island, the great poet of his time and beyond. He self-published Leaves of Grass in 1855 and the second edition included the poem "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry". Whitman was a volunteer nurse during the civil war and later a printer, editor and of course writer for publications such as the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the Crescent (in New Orleans) and the Brooklyn Freemen. It is Leaves of Grass, Whitman's view of the world as he sees it, in which we are given 32 poems of Americana. One, I sing the body electric, deeply explores the physical body of man and woman. Whitman also explores purpose and one phrase states, 
"Each has his or her place in the procession.
(All is a procession, the universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion.)"

We are sometimes in need of reminding what is our place in this universe and how we ought to go about pursuing or spreading our dream to our fellow humans. Pass on to one another cheer, love and the treasures you know to be talents. Build one another up. Praise those that bring you joy when they sing, dance, teach or inspire you to be more than just the a sacred body, but indeed an integral part of this perfectly measured procession of life. Here I am under the Brooklyn Bridge in 2013.