Tag: COVID business closures

Personal Cleansing

Posted on by Mike McLaren

It is said fire purifies, and for that my wife and I perform a ritual every New Year’s. We write all the things we want to forget of the previous year on strips of paper and burn them. This year, when we stepped into the frigid cold one second after midnight, my wife held a toilet paper tube crammed with thin strips of denunciations. My tube looked identical.

We stood oblivious to the weather and joined in the cacophony of our neighbors as we all whistled and cheered and yelled obscenities about the previous two hundred ninety-one days. Every few seconds small fireworks blossomed overhead, rekindled our shouts and catcalls, and though all of us appeared as only shadows beneath the streetlights or remained unseen in the darkness of our own yards, we howled united in a common cause–death to the Year of COVID.

I lit a small fire in a small portable barbecue grill. My wife laid her tube in the flames. I laid mine beside hers. We watched the tubes turn to ash, as if the rising smoke could wisp away all we had burned.

Against our better judgment, we stayed up two more hours, hoped the next time we opened the front door the world would be different, like Dorothy stepping into the color world of Oz. My wife and I knew better, but still we hoped.

It is said fire purifies; this year it cannot. Like so many others in the world, my wife and I carry too many unhealed wounds from last year: the loss of her dream, a yoga studio that celebrated its second anniversary only days before California issued “Shelter in Place” directives; leaving thirty years of our lives behind in a move from the West Coast back to the Colorado Rockies; the passing of a dearest friend, and the passing of the cutest little fella we’ve ever rescued from the SPCA…

… and the devastating fires in the western United States, and all over the world; the shooting of innocent people by policemen; the political destructiveness of a madman in the White House and the misguided elected officials who furthered (and for another two weeks will continue to further) his dastard, narcissistic plans…

… and the pandemic which killed nearly two million people, forced too many people into unemployment, has closed so many of the businesses that supported so many people, and which will persist in shutting down so many more as it continues its wave of global depredation into this new year.

The fire did not erase all my wife and I hoped to forget. We knew that as we stepped out beneath a clear blue sky New Year’s day and crunched through snow toward the path which follows alongside the Cache la Poudre River, one of only fourteen wild rivers remaining in the United States. Years ago the river was sacred to us, and once again has become another of our rituals, our stream of hope for the future that flows from the majestic Rockies.

After a thirty-year absence from Fort Collins—the home of our college Alma maters, the town where met, and the birthplace of our daughter–we have returned full-circle to start fresh.

Something inside me says the mountains and the waters of our past will cleanse us. Maybe 2021 will be better than last year.

Inferno

Posted on by Mike McLaren

Dante wrote his famous epic poem, Inferno, in the early 1300's. It tells the story of the narrator (Dante) on a journey through nine concentric circles (worlds) which comprise Hell. The poem begins in March. Dante steps through the gate of Hell, over which is inscribed "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." Immediately upon passing through the Gate of Hell, Dante recognizes a man of considerable political power whose selfish thirst for his own welfare serves as the metaphor for the door through which too many have entered into delusional salvation. For the next 190 pages or so, all hell breaks loose.

The poem is religious, but times, attitudes, beliefs, perspectives, and scientific revelations change. What a great plot for a modern story.

Oh wait. It's not a story. It's happening right now, seven hundred years after the original version, and because after so many centuries the poem is no longer protected by copyright, my version of Inferno differs.

My main character could be any man, woman or child who walks out their front door, and who discovers their once-familiar portal to the outside world is now the gateway to Hell, in all its flame and fury.

The Inferno is here. Pick a calamity, any of which is a massive story by itself:

1) An inland hurricane in Iowa, which destroyed 43% of the state's corn and soybean crops.

2) Tornadoes in Massachusetts, not unheard of, yet rare.

3) Fires in California, Washington, Oregon, and Colorado which have scorched the West to ash and cinder.

4) Unconstitutional civic behavior and violence condoned by the White House.

5) Racist murders on our city streets and within our homes, justified by the White House under a mandate of "law and order."

6) Corruption and international meddling in the upcoming election.

7) Social media so loaded with lies and altered photographs one cannot decipher what is or is not true.

8) A dangerous person in the White House, and too many misguided souls who want to extend his residency.

9) COVID-19.

... and now an additional level: 10) the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

My story begins in March, just like Dante's tale, yet this updated Inferno is not a story I can write. This series of unfortunate events writes itself daily, sometimes hourly, and each new plot twist becomes so surreal I could never conceive such madness; this story reaches beyond my understanding and creativity. Even if I could, my writing is dark; the ending would be extremely bleak...

... and I don' want this new Inferno to end that way.

To Her Lost Breath

Posted on by Mike McLaren

My wife made a good run of it, but then was done. A month after the second anniversary of her yoga studio, the world shut down to acquiesce the COVID-19 virus. The government mandated "temporary" closure of her studio, along with every other business not deemed "essential." A damned shame, because her studio had just begun to take off: five teachers, twenty-one classes of various techniques―with plans to add more―and a membership that began to grow weekly.

People in the area had begun to realize the benefits of yoga in their hectic, Silicon Valley lives. My wife was excited; her dream was coming true.

Then... nope... the virus... doors closed... indefinitely.

I continued to manage an office supply store. My work selling plastic crap that did not work long enough to invoke an extended warranty was deemed essential. Seven of us worked ten to twelve hours a day, while nine of my employees opted to use their accumulated sick and vacation time to remain at home until the end of the "Shelter-in-Place" (SIP) mandate issued by the State of California, and vehemently enforced by Santa Clara County, where my wife and I lived and worked... or rather, where she had once worked.

The end of March, the mandate was extend to June. My wife made a decision: her studio could not last four months without income. She closed her studio permanently. We cried endlessly for several weeks. For awhile my wife wondered if she had closed prematurely, particularly when the State said it would do an an early re-assessment of the restrictions on businesses. May 1st it did, though business owners were stunned by the restrictive restrictions that remained in place. Gym and yoga studios were not included in the re-assessment; were to remain closed until the next re-assessment the following month.

For the next two weeks, my wife and I could not count on our four hands the number of yoga studios that closed their doors permanently. A husband and wife, who I knew, closed their gym and left town. June came, and "fitness" businesses were allowed to reopen, but only at a third their capacity. Once again, my wife and I could not keep track of all the yoga studios that decided to close permanently. The yoga studio owners group she belonged to online dwindled from thousands to hundreds.

My wife and I felt sorry for how much it cost the other studio owners who thought they could hold out. By closing down when she did, my wife saved herself a heavy financial loss. The yoga studios that remain open in California offer classes outside. It has cost them a ton to do so. Unfortunately, the smaller memberships they now experience will dwindle even more when the winds and rains of October and November remind people that yoga and working out ain't all that and a bag of chips when the temperature outside drops to 46 degrees Farenheit.

Will the restrictions on yoga studios be fully lifted by then? My wife and I don't think so.