“Don’t give up the ship — even when you feel it sinking and you don’t know what to do…” writes David Friedman in his great song, “Help Is On The Way.”
I found myself thinking about this song when I heard Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer say “Help is on the way!” on TV after helping to pass the American Rescue Plan.
Although I have not been able to confirm this from searching the internet, I think David Friedman created this song during a previous plague — HIV/AIDS.
I wrote about David in a post three years ago which you can read if you are curious by clicking here.
Some were willing and able to ignore the threat of HIV/AIDS when it appeared — as some are still attempting to do with COVID-19.
However, HIV/AIDS left a vast trail of shock and grief for many human beings — as COVID-19 is now doing…
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
I thought of this song again when I was listening to yet another medical expert pleading with us to continue to wear masks, wash our hands, and practice physical dustancing.
“We have the football on the five-yard line,” he said, “and we’ve got to hang in there so that we don’t lose possession of the ball when we are so close to making a touchdown and winning the game.”
His football metaphor was inspired by the fact that many states in the USA are currently relaxing health measures even as new — more communicable and possibly more lethal —varieties of the COVID-19 virus are spreading exponentially around the country.
Apparently we are now in a contest to see if we can vaccinate enough people before we are overtaken by yet another tidal wave of infections due in part to these new genetic variations and in part to us human beings letting down our guard.
Another deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
My heart goes out in particular to the health care workers who — amazingly — continue to care for people infected with Covid whether the infected people had chosen to take Covid seriously in the first place or not…
I’m not a healthcare worker or someone with a job that requires interaction with the public or a senior citizen.
So I’m wearing a mask when I go outside for my daily walks and waiting patiently — as I know many of us are — until I become eligible to get vaccinated.
Singer Bobbi Carrey, pianist Doug Hammer and I recorded this song many years ago as part of a musical program called IN GOOD COMPANY which explored working and business and capitalism using songs and stories.
I consider it to be a quintessential “helps me get out of bed in the morning” song.
And I’ve been needing these sorts of songs in recent weeks — because I’ve been feeling rather crabby.
Maybe it’s the rising spring energy of the northern hemisphere as we struggle — like bulbs — to push our way through the thawing soil towards the sun.
Maybe it’s the fact that a pandemic which we all thought might last a month or two has now stretched past the one year mark…
Maybe it’s an at-times-overwhelming sense of empathy for all of the folks who have already died due to Covid-19 — AND for their grieving family + friends.
Maybe it’s a sense of frustration that we human beings seem to have done an extremely poor job of teaching one another about the formidable power of exponential growth.
One doubles and becomes two.
Two doubles and becomes four.
Four doubles and becomes eight.
Eight doubles and becomes sixteen.
Sixteen doubles and becomes thirty-two.
Thirty-two doubles and becomes sixty-four.
Sixty-four doubles and becomes one hundred-and-twenty eight.
And sooner than one might think possible, the total rises into the thousands, then millions, then billions…
Understanding exponential growth deepens one’s respect/humility/awe/terror for how a virus left un-checked spreads exponentially through a host population — and thus has vastly more opportunities to mutate into new varieties as a result…
This is why we need to be distributing COVID-19 vaccines to every country in the world — even countries such as Tanzania, led by a Covid-denying leader who recently died after an 18-day period of ill health…officially attributed to a heart condition and unofficially speculated to have been Covid-related.
Clearly it is a huge challenge to change anyone’s mind when they have very strong convictions about a particular topic.
Here in the USA the Covid-related death of a newly elected, incoming, 41-year-old congressman from Louisiana — Luke Letlow — has done little to change the mindset and behavior of some of his Republican colleagues regarding the severity of the risk of Covid infection.
Yet another deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
I don’t entirely believe the message of this song — although I WANT to believe it because it gives me hope.
My favorite line is probably “from friends we may not have met yet.”
I feel that way about some of my fellow bloggers, and also about some of the photographers on Pixabay.
Now that I have started including their names underneath their beautiful photographs, I have begun noticing that certain photographers have taken a LOT of the photos I’ve used in past blog posts.
David Mark is one of them.
Many of the images in this blog post were taken by him.
And he has thousands more at Pixabay.
I will end this blog post with several more of his lovely images.
Thank you to David Friedman for his wonderful songs and to Forbes Magazine for this great interview with him.
Thank you to Doug Hammer and to Bobbi Carrey for their heartful musicianship.
Thank you to all the “friends we may not have met yet” — who are growing our food, developing new vaccines, taking care of us in hospitals, working in grocery stores, delivering packages, etc. etc. etc.
Thank you to Pixabay and all of the photographers who generously share their images there — and allow me to travel far and wide around this extraordinary planet earth without leaving my living room.
Thank you to the cardinals who have been singing and singing and singing in my neighborhood in recent days.
Thank you for the return of spring here in New England.
And thank YOU for reading and listening to another one of my blog posts.
I’ve re-designed my website in recent months to include a LOT more music — and you are always welcome to visit there.
You can also find me on Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music and other digital music platforms.
One more deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
“Help is on the way…”
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