Wednesday, July 23
By Katherine Schneider, for the CVPost
I woke up on a Monday morning to the smell of a beautiful pink lily that a friend brought me yesterday and to a wonderful piece on National Public Radio about John Lewis.
I began to think through my upcoming week, and garden analogies just kept blooming in my mind. Then Calvin got up and slyly grabbed one of my shoes to lie on at the top of the stairs, ready for the first morning game of chase—game on!
Other flowers in the garden
Increasingly I notice other flowers in the garden—I’m not in social justice action alone, thank goodness. The morning paper has an article about Dawn Koplitz who interprets Health Department briefings about COVID-19 free on a Facebook group so Deaf folks know what’s going on.
I dashed off a quick email to the reporter who wrote the story, Ryan Patterson, hopefully encouraging him to profile more such fine community folks.
Later in the day I talked to the new director of Feed My People, Nancy Renkes, who has a passion for this important work. She’s trying to figure out how to get more food to more people in a safe way as the pandemic goes on, and reconfigure the organization’s fundraising now that Empty Bowls can’t be done in person. She says her word for the day or year is “pivot” – more power to her!
My first meeting of the week is an Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Social Justice task force for the county that I co-chair with a young man. At my age, I think sometimes my job is to mentor the younger activists and share my strength, hope and experience.
ADA’s 30th anniversary
Since this is the lead-up week for the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, I’ll share part of my poem about the ADA. The last bit of it reads this way:
We won’t stop until all can play,
Work, love and pray in whatever way.
So celebrate with us. Because of the ADA
And caring people, we can say
Together we’ll all rise!
Because of help from someone on a somewhat inaccessible website, I was able to post a blog about the ADA on PBS’s American Portrait site. You can find it at: https://www.pbs.org/american-portrait/story/13451/katherine-s-eau-claire-wi-now-is-the-time. Another example of “together we can all rise.”
To keep motivated to bloom, I have to keep my roots watered and the plant fed. Breakfast was blueberry pancakes given to me by a friend who is a great cook and a good vegetable grower. Enjoying the pancakes and thinking about the friend who gifted me with them nourish both my body and soul.
‘Across That Bridge’
I felt inspired to read some John Lewis, so I downloaded his Across That Bridge, about what he learned in a life of social justice work. As he says: We have to “be the change we seek if we are to effectively demand transformation from others.”
I’m lucky to have Calvin to keep reminding me to get up from the computer, play chase and not take myself too seriously. Maybe when the day is done, I’ll get back to the lily that started the day. I bookmarked a poem to savor, by Hazel Hall – “Before Quiet.” Near the end, she wrote:
I will learn the peace of lilies
And will take it for my own.
To read previous installments of “The Corona Chronicles,” click here
Note: The home page photo shows the late Cong. John Lewis in 2015 at the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, AL. (Roll Call photo)