Day 98-100: My Dreamy Hunt for a Flu Haven

I’m posting on the fly from a friend’s house way upstate, where a big sun burns off the mists every morning. It’s all trees, few people, and yet so huge that the population adds up to seven million upstaters—lots of them libertarians.

After Round Three has concluded or a good vaccine has penetrated me, I’d like to buy land up here and design a gorgeous house I could execute inch-by-inch, like a vine. That’s how immigrants to the U.S. do it back in their home countries; they add a room every few years.

UPSTATE NEW YORK—IT'S REALLY ALL GREENMine would be a palace shrouded in nature, camouflaged among trees and rocks and water. Not very Howard Roark-like. Still, Rand’s point is to fulfill oneself without superfluous references: There are different ways to clear out postmodern sludge.

I’ll try the Finger Lakes next. Meanwhile your humble correspondent can recommend Jose Saramago’s Blindness, a great disease novel about a virus that causes its victims to see only glowing whiteness. Stock it for Round Two. I can’t believe I just touted a book by a lifelong communist, but it’s that good: Superb. Guess I’ll sell it. (The movie wasn’t bad.)

Day 101-4: Meet Jane Doe—a DIY Flu Manifesto

Our pal Evelyn says she brought the following manifesto to the meeting I skipped. Did she intend to hand it to me and declare herself? Bombard me with paper planes while I was dozing?

I like what she says and I like how she wrote it. Reminds me a little of Gary Cooper’s populist speech in Meet John Doe. (Watch the speech here; read it here.)

"THE LITTLE PUNKS HAVE ALWAYS COUNTED"Evelyn wrote two distinct messages—a preface to me and an appeal to the world:

Dear ____, I wasn’t very aware of bird flu before the pandemic hit. I thought it was a hyped up monster story. I’ve learned a lot, thanks to you and your blog.

You said you didn’t personally know anyone who died in your Round One. I did. This isn’t a survival game for me. I’m not trying to profit or prove anything.

I believe in what I’m doing. It keeps me alive. More people need to do more while there’s still a chance. It’s not just about breathing. It’s about the world we want to live in. I’m sorry we didn’t get to meet, but that shouldn’t keep you from posting this. I bet you can think of a selfish reason to do what your heart wants to do anyway.

Here goes:

We are little people who have lost someone or who fear that we can and will lose someone. We are the immune system of this society, standing up and banding together to fight something we don’t recognize or understand, but which threatens all of us.

We are little people united by the fact that we breathe together and we hope to breathe together next year, no matter what we think of each other.

We are not alone. We are tens, hundreds of millions of Americans, billions of world citizens, and we must stand up together to fight for our survival.

Meet with your neighbors. Learn from them. Teach them. If they’re sick, help them. If they’re hungry, feed them. Meet with others who feel as you do, no matter what they think they think. Band together to do more than you can accomplish on your own. Save others. You may just save yourself, too.

Create your own DIY. Call it anything, in any language. Do it for yourself and for others and for the future we all want and need to have. It only needs teamwork and a sense of humor. If you don’t have one, team up with someone who does.

Evelyn ends with a private note: “Guess which one I’m missing?” Hard to tell. Personally, I’m missing both. Guess I missed her as well. Too bad: She sounds interesting again.

Day 105-7: Evelyn’s Sweet Success

Our anonymous contributor’s appeal went over awfully well. Other blogs linked and/or reposted, and I’ve spent a day poring over emails about it. Apart from a few loyalists who angrily defend my sense of humor and generous spirit (shhhh!), most laud her message. Some want her to keep posting here. Many ask questions.

They want to know how she is now, what she does, who she lost, how she deals with it, and if she herself caught the flu. More than a few ask why she doesn’t simply introduce herself to me. (Good one!)

She has stirred people. I’m delighted to have provided the venue.

For her part, she thanked me and says the LES DIY is setting up a website to take contacts directly from other DIYers. “But we’re going to stay local,” she assured me, signing off as Evelyn.

I think that’s wise. Thanks for writing, Evelyn.

Day 108-14: A New York (Up)State of Being

I’m posting this from a Wi-Fi café in a town whose name I forget because it’s so weird. I haven’t seen much news, unless you count TV. I see that H5N1 is kicking up here and there. Happily there’s no pattern yet.

I’ve been in—or at least driven past—Rome, Naples, Geneva, Waterloo, Phoenicia, Poland, and Norway without ever leaving New York State. Or being far from Wal-Mart. The big box is the cultural contribution from my neck of the woods, now that Budweiser is brewed by Belgians.

UPSTATE: BEING THERE & GETTING THERE (American Cipher 27, Thomas C. Jackson)The natives here are New Yorkers of a different sort. They have the trademark intensity and they worry a lot, but they can be nicer. The city dwellers are busier, more optimistic—and rotten listeners.

Upstate isn’t prosperous once you escape the city’s monetary spill-zone and that of the capital, Albany. Bird flu doesn’t faze upstaters. They cock an eyebrow if you mention it, curious to see if you have something new to say.

Where I’m from is more interesting to them than my views on H5N1. Few have visited Missouri, but it makes me a country boy, which they appreciate so long as I don’t seem dangerous or freaky.

The local papers can be fun. The crimes up here are pretty dramatic. Every time I pass through an old industrial town and then glide by one of thousands of lakes, I’m reminded of Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. The book starts in Missouri and ends up here—from a storefront revival house to death row. The precedent keeps me on my toes. (Yes, it’s for sale here.)

New York City is a monstrous distant rival. Upstaters fight to the death for government money and attention. In some counties job growth comes only from prisons that house convicts from the city. Upstaters are tough on crime.

They sure do sell a variety of rolling papers in service stations. Real choices greet the roving consumer.

Day 115-6: RAISE—Federal Flureaucrats

Sorry for being so slow to pick up on America’s leap into community organizing. She-who-never-sleeps emailed me a news story about it, but I didn’t realize how weird it was until I stopped to read and google.

Since the hiatus struck, I’ve felt there are three dimensions I can inhabit. There’s the popular zone in which H5N1 is dead and bells resound in celebration. There’s my world, where gongs are for warning people. And there’s been the Federal world, which seems unusually, uncharacteristically, remarkably similar to my own. From the president on down, we are told that disaster looms unless we prepare.

FEMA 'HELPS' AFTER KATRINA, 2005: WHO ASKED THE FEDS TO TAKE OVER CHARITY?Now the Feds have actually done something—just days after I helped issue Evelyn’s DIY Manifesto—though I am not claiming credit for the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to set up its own volunteer group. (DHS had already been recruiting Girl Scouts to fight terrorism and microbes.)

The ornately christened Restore America’s Independent Spirit & Enterprise looks to be a grand expansion of National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster. NVOAD is a Washington–based group of national, state, local, and faith-based volunteer organizations. Its board members have included the Federal Emergency Management Agency—FEMA, already part of the Department of Homeland Security—and the American Red Cross.

I confess I don’t see how creating RAISE can ever constitute the dramatic innovation so eloquently trumpeted by the president. Sure, the acronyms can make you dizzy and some people enjoy that sort of thing. But why do religious groups and charities need to be paid by Washington to do what they always said they wanted to do—and for which they constantly solicit vast sums from kind people?

Evelyn writes that she isn’t enthused, either. I’ll stick with her Do-It-Yourselfers, unsullied by taxes and bureaucracy. The LES DIY worked very well with our local churches and synagogues in Round One.

RAISE doesn’t need our help anyway. It’s already a hit in Congress, winning promises of big bucks from pols in both parties. It’s rapidly staffing up with candidates who flopped when they ran for elective office. I’d rather take soup from people who really want to dish it out—and who don’t work a clock, as these hacks will.

The Feds say they intend to contact the groups that coalesced so helpfully during Round One. They should bring guitars—and big amps!—when they come to my Village.