Supply chain strained: sometimes you can't get what you want

This morning I ventured out to the grocery store, all be-masked and gloved, taking advantage of senior hour. It wasn't so bad. The only must-find items I wanted -- matzah, grape juice, and wine -- were easy to find. In general the store seemed well stocked except for frozen vegetables. Not bad. But my happy experience in wealthy San Francisco may not be representative of what's happening in the food supply chain.

The powers-that-be keep telling us not to hoard; there's no real problem with getting food to all of us locked away in our cities. (So long as we can afford to buy, that is. I'm sure people who find themselves without a pay check aren't feeling so confident.) Some sample stories and where some glitches happen:

No need to hoard: There’s plenty of food in the system
Don’t be fooled by the barren grocery store shelves: There’s plenty more food on the way. ... “If you see depleted rice shelves in your local grocery store, it is not a supply problem; it is a signifier of changing logistics in the retail market,” said USA Rice President Betsy Ward in a statement.

The Supply Chain Is Fine. So When Will Everything Be Back In Stock?
Demand for toilet paper is generally pretty stable, which makes it even more likely to be out of stores for some time. "It's not like [manufacturers] have a lot of surge capacity they can suddenly bring on. They can maybe work a little bit longer, but most of those plants run 7 by 24 anyways," said Shih. ... Manufacturers [of hand sanitizer] have to decide whether to just ramp up production using existing infrastructure or to invest in new facilities — which would take additional time, and may not pay off when demand dies down.

Several years ago, Cronig's built solar arrays over its parking lots.

On Martha's Vineyard island off Massachusetts where we lived last fall, much of the grocery business is dominated by a locally owned independent chain named Cronig's consisting of two stores. The owner, Steve Bernier, shared with the local newspaper what the experience of the pandemic has been like from within a very personal business.

“So the crazy day here was Friday March 13,” Bernier said. “At Cronig’s, the third of July is always our busiest day of the year. We surpassed that by 30%." ... “We got scared,” he said. “It was out of control. ..."

In the summer, the stores employ shifts of temporary workers -- the island population balloons from around 15,000 to 100,000 in summer. Now, suddenly, Cronig's pattern of supply was thrown into chaos. Food for the island, all carried in via ferry on trucks, ordinarily is destined for both grocery stores (there are two others besides Bernier's) -- and restaurants. The shutdown means no restaurants. But no trucking company wanted to send over a partially empty trailer truck.

Then shipments started to shrink. “The next 10 days, the trailers came with less and less product.” At the time, everybody just soldiered through without much reflection but now Bernier said something has become evident.

“Looking back now the pattern was starting to develop that the warehouse was emptying out,” he said. Over the next week, Bernier said he had calls with a key warehouse and they didn’t seem to realize what was happening either. Bernier said the revelation was “they’re in as much trouble as we are.” Modern efficiency is one cause of the shortfall in supply, Bernier said. The world is on demand with no surplus today, he said. And because of that, when the pandemic came, he said, “our pants were around our ankles.”

Bernier pointed to a regional supplier, Sid Wainer and Son of New Bedford, a company that recently changed hands. He said 95 percent of that company’s business comes from restaurants. Cronig’s regularly buys from them and all of a sudden “they don’t have anything.”

That development scares the grocer. For the moment he's getting what people need, but the supply chain to purchasers who don't buy in corporate or industrial scale is being damaged, perhaps permanently.

The knock on effect, he said, is that if companies like Sid Wainer and Son go under, when the restaurants open back up, the suppliers they rely on won’t be there.

There have been other hurdles in the supply chain that show the failure of federal oversight in the emergency.

Trucks that come to Cronig’s are often interstate, he said, and that’s become problematic.

“We heard from a truck driver,” he said. “He was heading across country to New York — going east — and was stopped on the border going into New York. A state trooper stopped him and said you don’t have New York plates. Get out of here.”

That driver was going through New York and Massachusetts to get to a distribution hub in Brattleboro, Vermont, C & S Wholesale Grocers. He had “product we needed,” Bernier said. 

I thought having a "United States" federal government under the Constitution was the mechanism the country chose over 200 years ago to avoid that sort of thing.

Every day brings new challenges.

“We’ve been receiving no milk. Guy says to me, ‘are you ordering milk?’ I said yeah, we order milk every day. He says, ‘well where’s the milk?’ I said if it ain’t here, it’s probably in the cow.”

He added, “I don’t know what’s going on. There’s no communication with that stuff. Today we received our best dairy load, our best grocery aisle load that we’ve had since day one of the problem. But I don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring.”

Actually, this Reuters report explains where the milk is going.

U.S. dairy farmers dump milk as pandemic upends food markets
Despite strong demand for basic foods like dairy products amid the coronavirus pandemic, the milk supply chain has seen a host of disruptions that are preventing dairy farmers from getting their products to market.

Mass closures of restaurants and schools have forced a sudden shift from those wholesale food-service markets to retail grocery stores, creating logistical and packaging nightmares for plants processing milk, butter and cheese. Trucking companies that haul dairy products are scrambling to get enough drivers as some who fear the virus have stopped working. And sales to major dairy export markets have dried up as the food-service sector largely shuts down globally.

So it goes amid this poorly managed pandemic. Thank goodness for state governors and all the essential workers still trying to patch up broken links within and between communities.

Necessary memory

On Saturday I received an email from the dedicated couple who, in December 2016, launched the Indivisible movement to help people come together to build collective power and use the tools remaining in our democracy to make their voices heard. Lots of times they ask for money or promote campaigns. But this letter was about something less tangible, but also important: we must hang on to what our eyes have seen and our ears have heard.

One form of resistance in moments like this is to simply to insist that reality is reality. We resist by insisting that the past is not just whatever they say it is. We have to cling to real, honest-to-God truths, otherwise the authoritarians will control our future. We’ve felt this at various times during the Trump presidency, but never more than we do now.

Ezra & Leah

As so many suffer and die in an epidemic which Trump administration mismanagement has allowed to run unhindered, we cannot allow the rush of news and the ongoing pain to push aside the memory of failure from the top. Here's an incomplete list:

Jan 8th - First CDC warning

Jan 9th - Trump campaign rally

Jan 14th - Trump campaign rally

Jan 16th - House sends impeachment articles to Senate

Jan 18th - Trump golfs

Jan 19th - Trump golfs

Jan 22nd - “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”

Jan 28th - Trump campaign rally

Jan 30th - Trump campaign rally

Feb 1st - Trump golfs

Feb 2nd - “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China."

Feb 5th - Senate votes to acquit

Feb 10th - Trump campaign rally

Feb 15h - Trump golfs

Feb 19th - Trump campaign rally

Feb 20th - Trump campaign rally

Feb 21st - Trump campaign rally

Feb 24th - “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA… Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”

Feb 25h - “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.”

Feb 25h - “I think that's a problem that’s going to go away… They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.”

Feb 26th - “The 15 (cases in the US) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”

Feb 26th - “We're going very substantially down, not up.”

Feb 27 - “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

Feb 28th - “We're ordering a lot of supplies. We're ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn't be ordering unless it was something like this. But we're ordering a lot of different elements of medical.”

Feb 28th - Trump campaign rally

March 2nd - “You take a solid flu vaccine, you don't think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?”

March 2nd - “A lot of things are happening, a lot of very exciting things are happening and they’re happening very rapidly.”

March 4 - “If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work, but they get better.”

March 5th - “I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work.”

March 5th - “The United States… has, as of now, only 129 cases… and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!”

March 6th - “I think we’re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down… a tremendous job at keeping it down.”

March 6th - “Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. They’re there. And the tests are beautiful…. the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.”

March 6th - “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it… Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”

March 6th - “I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault.”

March 7th - Trump golfs

March 8th - Trump golfs

March 8th - “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus.”

March 9th - “This blindsided the world.”

March 13th - [Declared state of emergency]

March 17th - “This is a pandemic,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”

I never listen to the guy live; he just obfuscates and/or lies. But he clogs the position from which leadership ought to emanate. His phony words matter -- not as much as his deeds -- but certainly to our sanity. Remember and act.

Solidarity endures

The Art Bistro in the farthest Richmond District is plenty precarious, but it's there for its neighbors.

On Bernal Hill, calls for applause for the health workers, grocery clerks, delivery people, garbage haulers -- all who are keeping us together through this horror.

There will be an "after COVID-19" ...

When last month Donald Trump blurted, "It’s something that nobody expected," I almost blew a fuse. Journalist Laurie Garrett knew. She spelled out the threat of a global pandemic in 1994 in her best-selling THE COMING PLAGUE: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance. She'd seen AIDS/HIV spread across our country and the globe. Earlier, she'd seen Legionnaires Disease erupt -- and fortunately be pushed out of sight. She's heard of bizarre illnesses in remote places like the blood curdling Ebola in inaccessible parts of Africa. She understood that new sorts of biological threats to humans, amplified by the speed and scope of world travel and by our complacent confidence that modern medicine had a remedy for illness, was going to break through one day. And here we are. I remember reading the book and wishing I could shove what I'd learned into some dark corner where I never had to think about it again.

Today Garrett is reporting in real time on a plague that is engulfing humans everywhere. She has constructed a clear timeline of COVID-19's emergence in China, the criminal denial from both Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, and scientists' efforts to work around these self-centered political leaders. It turns out it's neither our flawed democracy or Chinese authoritarianism that determines responses; it's powerful men's fixation on their self-interests.

Both Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping instinctively sought to repress news of the true danger of their countries’ outbreaks, and the reach of their infection zones, so as to minimize potential political damage to their regimes.

Okay. We know that and it is important to keep in mind their record of murderous malfeasance. But I'm almost more interested when Garrrett looks ahead toward a time when, after millions of deaths across the world, scientists invent a vaccine that could immunize us against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. And once again, she's drawing on what can be learned from the past.

Going forward, there is one hope for humanity, and for the Sino-American relationship: the development of an effective coronavirus vaccine. Several nations, including China and the United States, are racing to create a vaccine, and to push prototypes of one into large clinical trials. With luck, one of those products can stop Covid-19’s spread, without difficult side effects.

But that may well lay the groundwork for additional high-stakes battles. In past global epidemics, such discoveries have led to two terrible outcomes: patent disputes, and a fully unjust distribution of lifesaving innovations worldwide. In 2009, for example, the H1N1 swine flu spread globally in less than six months, but viable vaccines weren’t available for most countries until the epidemic had passed. Poor countries never did receive supplies of the vaccine that were sufficient to put a dent in their outbreaks. ...

International agencies are now poised to counter such profit-motive failures in the vaccines markets, drawing their funding mostly from the Gates Foundation and the foreign aid budgets of a handful of wealthy countries. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which grew out of the World Economic Forum, offers financial support for vaccine invention. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, makes bulk purchases of childhood vaccines and helps ensure their distribution in poor countries. The Global Fund underwrites some health system costs for poor countries, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa. Together, they represent a fledgling international infrastructure for global immunization

But Covid-19 won’t simply disappear if the wealthy world is left to its own devices, manufacturing costly vaccines that are only affordable to fully insured residents of the 30 richest nations on Earth. What we collectively face is the need to execute the largest mass immunization program in world history, deploying teams of vaccinators to every nook and cranny of the planet, rich or poor.

... If an effective Covid-19 vaccine is developed, its targets will include almost eight billion human beings, with nearly three-quarters of a billion living in conditions of extreme poverty, according to World Bank figures. Eliminating the coronavirus scourge will require mobilization of tens of thousands of immunization teams, armed with affordably priced vaccines. It is likely that both China and the United States, based on their initial human tests of candidate vaccines, will lead global manufacturing—and that both countries will face the moral and economic pressures of balancing global needs against company profits.

Whether we like it or not, we are all citizens of the world. Xenophobia and panic separate us. That's not going to serve.

Friday cat blogging

Morty just wants to sit in his sunbeam. But the sight drives Carly to distraction. Since the dog is not getting out to walk, she gets her exercise by running up the back steps and banging into the glass door, trying to reach that cat. Morty remains oblivious.

In the season of the coronavirus, campaigns have a new project

A small detail in an article about the Wisconsin primary election still scheduled to go forward next Tuesday caught my eye. Wisconsin Republicans have refused to postpone like other states because they think the extremely probable low turnout will help them win a state supreme court election. So the vote is going on ...

As was almost certain to happen, the state is having trouble staffing polling places.

In Tuesday’s Wisconsin elections, more than 100 municipalities will not have enough poll workers to open a single voting location.

Well, duh ... the sort of folks who staff Election Day are usually older, often retired, none too spry -- just exactly the people most threatened by COVID-19. For sure they aren't going to risk their lives to sit in a drafty auditorium checking lists for little or no pay. Isn't going to happen.

Ordinarily, candidate campaigns haven't paid much attention to whether the local election authorities have recruited enough election day workers. That's their job while campaigns campaign. But, in however many states reject changing to all mail-in voting in November, campaigns are going to have to help the local authorities find enough poll workers. Smart campaigns will be looking among their volunteers for persons who might be willing to become poll workers. We're going to have to encourage an infusion of younger -- or perhaps tested to establish immunity -- workers into election jobs. Their purpose isn't to be partisan. It's simply to ensure a free and fair election can happen at all.

We're bearing up!

If I weren't Walking San Francisco during the lockdown, I wouldn't have encountered the bears. (Don't be concerned; if I see other pedestrians, we give each other a wide berth.)

The great international #bearhunt inspired by Michael Rosen's children's book is alive and well in at least one city neighborhood.

There are cuddly bears.

There are quizzical bears.

There are bear displays.

There are uncomfortable looking bears.

Hey -- that's no bear!

The hazard that comes with our best choices

Erudite Partner's latest syndicated TomDispatch article asks Is the Pandemic Patriarchal?

Because our society routinely disadvantages women, the novel virus and the social distancing with which we have responded only have made more difficult the lives of many, or even most, women. It's not just being cooped up the house with increased childcare responsibilities. Men seem to be more vulnerable to catching the disease, but because of how families and societies are organized, women face ongoing, escalating threats. E.P. spells it out.

Good news you understandably might have missed

While we were all trying to adjust to being locked down, some good stuff happened out there.

Did you know that Colorado abolished the death penalty last Monday? Governor Jared Polis signed the measure sent him from the Democratic legislature eliminating capital punishment and also converted the sentences of three men awaiting execution to life without the possibility of parole. This makes Colorado the 22nd state without a death penalty. Many states, including California, retain death penalty laws on the books, but seldom or never execute convicted offenders....Early in March, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger ordered removal of Confederate paraphernalia from all of the service's bases. Oh, you thought that the victor in that war had been determined a century and a half ago? So did I. But after members of Congress had held a hearing on white supremacist activity in the ranks, the general felt he should take action.

"We're not being politically correct -- nobody told me to do this. The sergeant major and I are just trying to do what's right for the institution.

"We're trying to make it better."

...

Finally, the Water Is Life movement scored a big win against a dangerous, dirty oil pipeline.

... a federal court issued a major ruling in favor of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s legal challenge to the Dakota Access Pipeline. The D.C. Court of Appeals found that the Army Corps of Engineers violated federal law in giving the pipeline a permit to cross beneath the Missouri River, at a spot just north of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, whose residents say the pipeline poses an ongoing threat to their drinking water, sacred sites, and way of life.

“This decision vindicates everything we have been saying,” Dallas Goldooth, a grassroots organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network, tells Mother Jones. “Indigenous expert knowledge cannot be ignored. The fight to keep fossil fuels in the ground cannot be ignored. This is a huge win, not just for the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux Tribes, but for the hundreds of other nations fighting extractive projects on their lands.”

Will this hold up in court? There's a chance. The victory is a reminder of what Native Americans have to know: never say never.

Raised up by the wind in colonized Massachusetts

When Puritan colonists descended on epidemic-decimated Massachusetts in the 1600s, they ostensibly believed it was their responsibility to evangelize the existing Native inhabitants. According to Michael P. Winship's Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America:

The English had always made pious, empty noise about the missionizing goals of their colonies. "Come over and help us," says the Native American on the 1629 seal of the Massachusetts Bay Company. Yet for already overworked New England ministers faced with what one called the "veriest ruins of mankind," it was easier to agree with the illustrious John Cotton about the Native Americans' place in God's plan for humanity. The Native Americans' mass conversion was to take place only after the mass conversion of the Jews. Since the Jews remained stubbornly Jewish, the Native Americans must remain, for the time being, Native American, and there was no point in putting energy into trying to convert them.

Somewhat surprisingly, some local Natives took it upon themselves to investigate the Englishmen's God. After all, that God seemed powerful while their Wampanoag spirits had allowed the epidemic.

Winship tells the story of a man named Waban who apparently had always felt a call to be a spiritual leader of some sort to his people, but never quite found his role until he decided to study the secrets of the English religion. He then led a community called by the Puritans the "Praying Indians" who attempted to adopt Puritan customs. They convinced at least some Puritan congregations of the authenticity of their acceptance of the Christ and were baptized -- a far from perfunctory rite in that colony. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts confirmed their title to their land and later the town of Natick was founded as a home for "Praying Indians." Conversion spread around Cape Cod and particularly offshore on the island of Martha's Vineyard. Though imported European illnesses continued to kill off members of the tribe for several generations, some Wampanoags found a way to make their peace with the white men's God.

Waban's acceptance of Christianity had one idiosyncrasy to it. He never adopted the practice, common among Praying Indians, of taking a Christian first name. Perhaps that was because he felt he did not need to, for his name was already charged with Christian significance. "Waban" meant "wind," and Eliot's first sermon to the Notamun Indians was on Ezekiel 37:1-4, which speaks of wind stirring dry bones.

Native Americans and English alike made the connection between the verse and Waban and his evangelizing activities. For Waban, his prophetic name meant that the coming of Christianity started before the arrival of Europeans. Other Native Americans recalled pre-contact dreams of the arrival of black-clothed missionaries, while still others were convinced that the missionaries were restoring wisdom the Native Americans had forgotten.

These newest of Native American stories, about how their God used the English to complete his bringing of this truth to them, meant nothing to most colonists. ...

The Praying Indian community was further repressed in the wake of what the colonists called "King Phillip's War" in 1676 when some of the tribespeople rose up against the English interlopers.

But elements of a syncretistic piety survive to this day among the Wampanoags. On Martha's Vineyard Island, the tribe is an important component of a racially diverse population. In southern Massachusetts in the last few days, the Trump Administration Department of the Interior is trying to "disestablish" the Mashpec Wampanoags. Perhaps the tribe is suspected of wanting to compete with Trump in a casino business? ...I thought of Waban when we read from Ezekiel about the dry bones brought to life by wind in online church on Sunday morning....The illustration here is from Native American Netroots.

I took up Hot Protestants as part of my personal "1620 project" in which I'm trying to learn a little more about the story of my ancestors who were among those tough but otherwise unattractive settlers at Plymouth 400 years ago. A previous post:
Those Plymouth Puritans

Instacart workers call for work stoppage

This is so brave it's breathtaking. Workers serving as "personal shoppers" for the gig grocery delivery company Instacart plan to walk off their jobs tomorrow, March 30, demanding the company provide them with protective equipment, hazard pay including a default tip of 10 percent of the order, and to keep promises to assist any worker impacted by COVID-19.

I first encountered Instacart while working on an election campaign for a union in 2018. As is always the case on a campaign, there was too much to do with too few people to accomplish it. The autumn days were burning hot; we were sending squads of canvassers out all day long; they carried multiple plastic bottles of water to keep themselves from heat stroke. A nearby big box store advertised deliveries by Instacart.

We needed 20 cases of water NOW. So we ordered for immediate delivery. Several hours later, well into the evening, a battered looking middle aged woman stuck her head into the office. "Where's the elevator?"

There was no elevator, only a full flight of stairs. "I'm not going to be able to carry these cases of water up here." That looked to be true.

A couple of us went down stairs with her. Somehow she had managed to cram 20 cases of water into a battered mid-size Corolla. The car looked as if it might blow apart. So did she.

Naturally, we mobilized a few folks and carried the water up to the office. We made sure to more than double the tip in the app.

And we only used Instacart sparingly after that, knowing that we were contributing to the exploitation of desperate people.

Now many shut-in people need these Instacart workers to deliver their food. They are performing an essential service. There are so many delivery options in this crisis, I wonder whether these workers can exert real pressure on the company. But you gotta applaud their courage and dignity to press their demands even in these tough times.

#inplacetogether

Somebody pinned this up on 24th Street. I like it, even if it is a bit saccharine.

Social distancing, physical distancing ...

... means standing in lines ...

... this one to enter Costco. These scenes are from about a week ago. I haven't returned.

Meanwhile on an upscale neighborhood shopping strip ...

There's no mistaking what is expected of shoppers ...

... this was "senior shopping," early one morning, all carefully ordered.

San Fran rocks!

Activist community organizations and union locals have come together calling themselves United in Crisis to demand a more humane and more just city response to the coronavirus pandemic and economic crash. They put out a ten point program:

• Meeting Basic needs:
  Ensure Equitable Access to Information For All
  Ensure Deliveries of Food and Medications

• Workers
  Create Public Health Emergency Leave and Worker Protections
  Direct Payments to Vulnerable Workers, Not Through Employers

• Students and School Communities
  Schools Sites Act as Centers for Food, Childcare, Wellness
  Sustainable Funding to Fill Gaps in School and Childcare Systems

• Healthcare
  Provide Full Healthcare Staffing at all Public Facilities
  Give Access to Basic Sanitation and Testing for All San Franciscans

• Housing and Homelessness
  Implement a Full Eviction Moratorium
  Give Access to Unfilled Hotels and Private Housing

Even as we shelter in place, we can hold our city pols accountable -- and take notes about who has risen to this awful occasion.

To learn more and to build community strength, check out San Francisco United in Crisis.

Friday cat blogging from lockdown

We're all in here together. Morty can look out the window. Virus or no virus, we wouldn't let him out anyway, but he can hope for a sunbeam.

Those Plymouth puritans

Less religiously zealous English commentators of the 16th century maintained that Puritans were "hot protestants." The Protestant Reformation and the emergence of a mercantile bourgeois class which formed a novel, post-feudal, power center turned the island kingdom upside down. The puritans, rigorous and cantankerous Calvinists, were undesirable troublemakers in the view of nearly everyone who didn't agree with them. Between the 1540s and the 1690s

... puritans executed a king, helped remove another one, founded a short-lived republic in England, and established quasi-republics in New England. Coming from all ranks of society, puritans reshaped England's religious culture, destroyed much of its great medieval artistic legacy, wrote creeds and catechisms with worldwide impact, and created a lasting body of religious literature.

... They were the most determined seekers of salvation and the most committed activists for the moral and spiritual reformation necessary to keep God's wrath off England for its many sins and for its failure raise itself to the pristine standards of the Bible. ...

The central institution for guidance in these great puritan struggles with outward and inward sin was, or should have been, the Church of England. ... Puritans supported the Church of England's religious tasks, as well as its religious monopoly. God had only one truth, and England should have only one monarch and one church that governed the country together in their different spheres. The Reformation had been about religious liberty only insofar as that meant the liberty of follow God's law correctly, as outlined in the Bible.

For puritans, the problem with the Church of England was that it was following God's law only erratically, which meant, in their eyes, that it did none of its tasks well. It lagged far behind the continental Reformed churches in purging itself of the government, worship, and the inadequate discipline of its Catholic past. Ever-growing hostility toward puritanism from authorities in church and state eventually pushed some puritans to take the drastic step of immigrating to New England.

... In New England, puritans could finish the business of puritans: fashioning governments and properly reformed Calvinist church establishments that would supervise a unified Christian community, and see to it that God's elect were shepherded to heaven ...

The enormous virtue of Michael P. Winship's Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America, for someone who received a mostly forgotten introduction to mythologized Massachusetts "Pilgrim fathers" in grade school, is that it places those puritans firmly in the context of English political and religious history of which they were but a small offshoot -- albeit one that fathered a worldwide evangelical style which completely overshadowed its Church of England roots. Those who took off across the ocean dodged the high drama and considerable misery of England's religious/civil war of the mid-17th century; they were simply not important in the life and death struggles that consumed the mother country. Consequently they were able to design their own inward looking communities with little hindrance. For many years, they didn't have to realize how far out of phase with England's evolving society and culture they had become. The Atlantic is a big ocean

Here's some of Winship's take on my Plymouth ancestors, the earliest of the puritan emigrants. Their little separatist congregation included apparently some of the hottest of the hot ones.

By the end of the 1610s, their hopes of fostering reformation in the Netherlands were growing dim. Making a living was hard and the Dutch did not meet their high standards of piety. They told themselves that these problems were what prevented English people from flocking to them and freeing themselves from the corruptions of the Church of England. If the separatists went to America and prospered, however, their countrymen would be keener to join them there. And so the decision was made to cross the Atlantic. ... When the time came to depart from the Netherlands in July 1620, the majority of the congregation got cold feet. ...

Their ship got lost on what became the coast of Massachusetts; they settled in an abandoned native village they found depopulated by a recent epidemic; around half of the settlers died in the ensuing winter, leaving only ten households. Moreover they had brought with them no pastor; their former leader who they hoped to import died in London in an outbreak of the plague. They made do with lay leadership from one William Bradford whose chronicle of the colony gave it its later prominence

By 1626, the future of the debt-laden, minister less plantation, its roughly 150 settlers, and the reformation it had hoped to foster appeared grim. Plymouth seemed destined to join the growing scrap heap of failed English North American colonies. "To look humanly on the state of things as they presented themselves at this time, it is a marvel it did not wholly discourage them," Bradford wrote later. That the plantation did survive was because it would shortly acquire a sympathetic, larger, and much better connected puritan neighbor to the north ...

That is, my ancestors needed a rescue and they got lucky. The Massachusetts Bay colony at what became Boston replaced Plymouth as the center of the Calvinist bridgehead in New England. Its leaders were far more sophisticated, and better funded and connected, refugees from the English monarch's effort to suppress the strong strain of Calvinism in the Church of England. Regicide and Civil War followed from Charles II's failure to manage his religiously fractious kingdom.

Meanwhile, the little Plymouth settlement became part of a "United Colonies of New England" compact in 1643, consisting of almost 50 towns. This put this faraway appendage of the embattled English state well on its way to founding its own community "propagating and preserving the truth and liberties of the gospel," and providing for its own defense and welfare. Once kings were re-established in England -- not really until after 1688 -- the Crown tried to resume control over its overseas protestant colonies. The strains of that effort prefigured the eruption of discontent less than 100 years later which led to these United States.

Professor Winship is an American historian, but his real apparent field of interest is Protestant reformation politics in early modern England. This is a fascinating book about the many ins and outs of Calvinist fortunes vis a vis various iterations of governments and the Church of England. I found it solid on the American colonial aspects of the story, but this is not the best part. Still I would recommend taking a look if the course of English speaking Calvinism interests you. The book is also fascinating on what happened when these New England puritans tried to evangelize the native American people among whom they had plopped their little godly polity. I'm planing another post on that story.

I took up Hot Protestants as part of my personal "1620 project" in which I'm trying to learn a little more about the story of my ancestors who were among those tough but otherwise unattractive settlers at Plymouth 400 years ago. A previous post in the series is here:
Those Massachusetts pilgrims

Out and about

Sunrise over 24th Street on Wednesday morning. They say I can take a walk, so I've gone back to a practice I haven't done in years, perambulating a rapid 5K on Valencia and adjacent streets at dawn. It's not hard to stay a good distance from others; there aren't many others. Most runners stay on the sidewalks, but I can't or I'll risk activating my chronic plantar fasciitis.

I am a little distressed to see increasing vehicle traffic over the last few days. The flow is a lot like what used to be visible at a similar hour on Sundays. Don't know whether that's a sign we're not staying inside or this is essential urban life. A city sure depends on a lot of labor that is usually invisible to other residents who aren't doing it.

Over the weekend, people jammed the parks, enough to persuade our authorities to work hard to keep people out by closing parking lots. I was distressed to read that those who flocked to the out-of-doors took the opportunity to run off with the toilet paper and hand sanitizer from public restrooms.

Last week I continued my Walking San Francisco project. Ambling through neighborhoods with a camera is a form of going for a walk, isn't it? I drove to my starting points; in normal times I try to arrive by public transit. I encountered few people and avoided contact. I think I'll do a few more precincts this week and see how it feels. If walking about acquires a social stigma or there's an order against it, I'll stop.

The world seems to contract and yet we get by with a little help from our friends. A phone call from a faraway friend interrupted posting this. Yes!

Bored in lockdown? Fill out your census form!

Do it now if you haven't yet! You are not only being a good citizen, you are helping your city to the tune of $2000 in federal funding per person enumerated and ensuring that California is allocated all the Congresscritters we should get. Since we're a lot saner here than some places, we need all the representation our true numbers deserve. By filling out your form, you are also sparing Census employees one less door to knock on -- and one less potential risk of encountering the damn virus. They aren't out there now, but some level of virus is going to be with us for a long time ...

It's easy to do. You've almost certainly received a letter addressed to "RESIDENT."

There are more instructions than you'll probably need. The government goes in for paper.

The questions mostly seem innocuous: how many persons live in your home, who are they, do you "own" (pay a mortgage) or rent.

EP took offense when asked her sex. "What -- no place for 'sprite'?!" The census doesn't know diddly-squat about the variations within sexes and among genders.

We let it rip in the race/ethnicity section after declaring ourselves "White"; I'm "English, Irish, and French Hugenot"; she's "Ashkenazi Jewish, Ukrainian, and English." Wonder how, or even if, they compile this stuff.

Since the federal government is proving itself something of a hostile entity these days, it is slightly anxious-making to offer them information, even for folks like us. But we all have to do it for the sake of community solidarity ... we get by with a little help from our friends.

California doing the right thing

Even that strutting plutocrat, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, warns we may face 20 percent unemployment as public health measures shut down so much of the economy. Many of those laid off workers will lose whatever health insurance they received from employers. Heck, small business employers may lose their health insurance.

Covered California, the state health insurance marketplace, has announced it will extend its enrollment period from April 30 to June 30.

“We want to get as many people covered as possible to ensure they have access to the health care they need,” said Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, in a statement. “Having more people insured is the right thing to do, and this action builds on our efforts to leave no one behind in California.”

Under Covered California, people have access to private health insurance plans with monthly premiums that may be lowered as new federal and state financial help becomes available, according to a news release. Coverage begins on the first day of the following month after a person chooses a plan.

Some people may also be eligible for no-cost or low-cost Medi-Cal, which becomes effective right away after signing up online.

It's not the universal health plan this county needs, but at least our health officials are trying in this moment of need.

UPDATE: March 23. It's not just California. States colored purple here are opening their exchanges to the flood of newly unemployed people who are going to need health insurance. Meanwhile, the Trump Administration is still pursuing its legal efforts to tear down the whole Obamacare edifice.

From my clutter to your screen: coronavirus oddments

If you haven't seen this, you have to (unless perhaps you are easily upset by "bad" language). If you've seen it before, play it again. It might cheer you up.

An article in STAT, a credible medical news publication, points to a COVID-19 Self Triage Tool, developed out of USC. It's a website that helps you evaluate whether that tickle in the back of your throat is a serious symptom or not. Of course, unless you are seriously ill there is nothing medicine can do for you, but still, for most of us this can be reassuring.

Economist Dean Baker has been beating the drum for years, insisting that drug companies shouldn't win exclusive rights to new drugs -- instead the government should incentivize innovation with one time cash prizes to the inventors. He argues it is time to take the patent-seeking motivation out of efforts to develop a vaccine.

The situation we see today is that many top-notch researchers, in Germany, China, the U.S., and elsewhere, are racing to develop a vaccine that can enter the testing process. The problem with this picture is that they are working in competition, not collaboration. This means that they are not widely sharing information with each other, since they don’t want to give their competitors an edge.

... Each team of researchers hopes to be able to gain a patent on an effective vaccine. This could in principle lead to an enormous payoff, as they will have a monopoly on a vaccine that protects people from a potentially deadly disease. But these are not ordinary days. The coronavirus pandemic cries out for an alternative approach. Instead of competing, these teams of researchers could be working in cooperation with each other, sharing new findings quickly and fully.  

When a successful vaccine is developed, it can be placed in the public domain, which means that it can be sold as a cheap generic from the first day it is approved by the Food and Drug Administration. This would mean that we don’t have to worry about begging a drug company to make its vaccine available at an affordable price. Drugs are almost always cheap to manufacture and distribute. If there were no patent monopoly, drug companies would not be able to charge high prices.

... Rather than giving out patent monopolies so that they may recover additional private expenditures, it would make far more sense just to have the government pick up the rest of the tab for the research and testing so that the companies would have no research costs to recover. This would be the best route to ensure the quick development of an affordable vaccine. 

Baker is completely convincing; the drug monopolies are incredibly powerful. But they shouldn't have the power to condemn people to death for profit.

Juan Cole points out:

Why Burning Fossil Fuels is to Today’s Pandemics as Fleas were to the Black Death
... There is an exact analogy between Trump’s treatment of Covid-19 and his treatment of the climate emergency. In both cases, he and his surrogates attacked the science and took pride in giving the finger to reality. Trump actually promotes coal and petroleum, the dirtiest fossil fuels, as though he is impatient to see the lower floors of his Trump Tower in Manhattan under water. Likewise, he takes pride in holding infectious rallies and shaking hands. ...

Everything comes down to our coal burning.

My favorite writer on training for long distance running, David Roche, responded to the anxiety his coached athletes were showing.

Psychologists say that anxiety is partially related to our brain’s desire to map structure onto an uncertain world. Well, right now we have lots of uncertainty and the removal of lots of structure. It’s an immensely hard and strange time. Some people feel overwhelmed, scared, or sad. Some people become problem-solvers, which in this uncertain moment could manifest as some interesting social-media posts. Some launch into fear, denial, anger. For others it’s like a snow day, full of adventure. All of this is mapped onto a world where economic disparity and privilege is inextricable from actions and options.

Through it all, the beauty of the human spirit shined. People are thinking about social good and collective action in a way that is unique to crisis. And it’s on full display in the athletic community. But throw that beauty of the human spirit in with the fragility of the human body, the uncertainty, the political situation and the economic downturn, and it can get overwhelmed by the bitter tastes, particularly if you’re looking at TV news or Twitter. 

Fast forward to now. We are in a world of uncertainty, and probably will be for a bit. I coach psychologists who are scared and sad. I coach hourly workers who are laughing. Our responses to the crisis are as unpredictable as the pandemic itself.
In that swirl of uncertainty, just try as hard as you can to cut yourself slack. ...

Good advice.

Just one more thought. Maybe we should listen to a nun.

People say they want peace and quiet. Then when it is thrown in their lap, they panic. They don’t know how to be alone. They are afraid to confront their “shadow side,” the hard truths about themselves that they don’t like. They fill their lives with noise to run away from their emotions. Life isn’t meant to be rushed. Use this time to get to know yourself.

Stop. Be still. You can either waste this period of social-distancing and be frustrated, or you can choose to make it the best it can be.

Saturday scenes: shutdown Mission

Early Friday morning I took a walk north on Valencia to 16th St, east to Mission, and south to my starting point, carefully distancing myself from the few other people abroad at 8am.

It was jarring to see the Crepe House boarded up. Note the young heterosexual couple strolling together with their morning coffees. Insofar as there were people walking within the six foot zone we're supposed to keep clear, these were the sort I saw.

Across the street, the tough lefty survivors of Radio Habana Social Club are out for the duration.

There was a line at Ritual Roasters -- properly spaced out to avert contagion over caffeine I should mention.

There were a few unhoused people sleeping in doorways, but less than I am used to seeing. Where have people gone, I wonder?

El Buen Sabor was also boarded up.

There were plenty of runners! Up until very recently, I might have been among them -- I used to run Valencia in the bike lane sometimes, but only very early on Sunday mornings when I could be sure of little traffic. Maybe I should give this another try ... But I couldn't do what either of these people were doing, running on the sidewalk. I need the relative softness of asphalt -- hence running the street.

Never noticed this place on Mission before; nice sign.

This gent was checking a take-out menu. Aren't we all? We're actually more likely to grab take-out as long as some of these hole-in-the-wall places continue to serve. They need all the customers they can get or they won't make it through this. I don't trust that any bailout is going to reach the owners and workers of Mission storefront restaurants. Will they be replaced by chains or just shuttered forever?

Yet another locked coffee shop. Will such community places ever reopen? It's hard to imagine they can hold on for a long closing. Yet we all know urban communities are not only changeable, they are also surprisingly resilient. Time will tell.