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Interesting Times

“May you live in interesting times.”
– ancient Chinese curse

by Eva Murray

One of the side effects of any rough spot in our lives is a preponderance of experts. From medical professionals who have established credibility through long careers in public health, infectious disease research, or emergency medicine to random bored people on the internet, these days everybody has wisdom to share.

Whether it’s the advice of physicians or the ruminations of the “man on the street,”—or on the island, where we have no streets—allow me to repeat some overheard intelligence which may prove edifying, or at least harmless:

Dr. Nirav Shah, the head of Maine’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has become a popular “regular visitor” in peoples’ homes with his daily television briefings and his accessible, warm demeanor. The good doctor’s advice: “These are unsettling times and there may not be a single word that describes how many of us feel right now. That’s OK. My recommendation is call your mother. She wants to hear from you.”

Michael Dowling, President and CEO of Northwell Health, New York told CBS’ Face the Nation a while back, “At times of crisis like this, people’s character reveals itself… We are seeing in many ways the best of humanity…How fortunate we are to have the people with that compassion, that commitment, the courage to do what it is they’re doing…So when this is all over, and when you can get close to people, when you see a healthcare worker, a nurse or a doctor that has been on the front lines, please give them a hug. But don’t do it today.”

“Don’t do it today;” that’s exactly what is so frustrating for us. So much of what we routinely do is on hold, postponed, or managed at some awkward distance. Going back to work, and how much to commit to a new at-home lifestyle, is absolutely clear as mud. A Maine preschool teacher described the feeling thus: “It’s hard to lean in to a new work routine when you don’t know whether this is a major adjustment or just for the next week. It’s like running a marathon without knowing how long a marathon is supposed to be.”

Sometimes people lose their composure, and sometimes our exploits make the news in ways we wish would fade quickly. Those involved with small-town municipal affairs sometimes end up functioning as the complaint department. Mainers who lose it at “outta-staters” based solely on a license plate, meaning to protect their hometowns from infection by self-centered wealthy folks escaping to their “cottages” but who end up unwittingly insulting some traveling nurse or power company lineman instead, prove that often the best thing to do when we’re mad is to keep still and count to ten. Tom Groening, editor of the Working Waterfront, assured a meeting of island community leaders and volunteers that, “As far as bad things that happen in your town, the town officials don’t own that any more than they own all the acts of kindness that take place in your town. The only place where no bad things happen is Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.”

In the same meeting Kate Dufour, Legislative Advocate from the Maine Municipal Association, offered some professional advice: “Don’t worry about the naysayers. Keep your heads up. In a few days somebody else will mess up and your story will drop out of the headlines.”

Islanders, still hard at work doing what they do to support their communities, might drop comments in ordinary conversation which just happen to be spot-on, and speak for many. On Swan’s Island, Donna Wiegle runs the Health Center and is involved in numerous community efforts. In a Zoom meeting with folks from islands up and down the coast, Donna said, “I think we are better prepared to survive than most, because of the way we live every day.”

She was referring to how islanders just routinely stock up on food, leave nobody to go hungry, and offer to help each other with essential work. On the other hand, an island repairman who would just as soon leave his name out of this—as he looked over a plumbing and heating wholesaler’s website—observed to nobody in particular that, “There is a shortage of bidets.”

Serious words don’t always come from where you’d expect. On a CBS “Sunday Morning” program in early April, we heard the following, intended for the ears of leadership: “Don’t scare us. Persuade us with your reason, your logic. Lead by example and show us you care about this country and who’s in it.” But we heard it from Mel Brooks. Yes, that Mel Brooks.

Closer to home, Islesboro food historian and columnist Sandy Oliver reminds newspaper readers that, “This is no time to be doctrinaire about a recipe. If it’s red and it used to be a tomato, it’s fair game.” The accompanying photo included a bottle of ketchup.

Sometimes you hear people insisting that, “It’s all about just protecting yourself, looking out for number one. This is every man for himself.” No, it isn’t. Kevin Waters of Penobscot Island Air, the flying service which brings our mail, freight, groceries, and—as I write, which was a month ago, remember—carries passengers, said very quietly, “It’s about watching out for the other guy.” His pilots are frequently the heroes of our island experience. We try to watch out for them; they take good care of us.

Ray Sisk, the Knox County Emergency Management Director, reminded all of us local emergency nerds that, “We have to flatten the curve of this disease, but we also have to flatten the curve of the hysteria.” Of course, my friend Ray also once commented during a major winter storm that he “used to ride his bicycle to work in weather worse than this,” and he calls a Force 10 gale a “four-clothespin laundry day.”

Reporter Don Carrigan of NewsCenter Maine, our NBC affiliate, has a little blurb which pops up among the advertisements during the evening news in which he offers a respectful shout-out to America’s war veterans and the organization Honor Flight Maine. But now, his words perfectly fit our medical workers, particularly in hotspots: “These people left their homes, and in some cases put their lives on the line, or were willing to.”

But it is the offhand comments of folks who aren’t in the business of public address that often speak for so many:

“Maybe I could learn to play the accordion.”

Liam Ingvar Cook, architect and classical pianist who was visiting his parents in England and is now pretty much stuck living in his childhood bedroom.

“I’ve got a new pet. It’s a sourdough. I’ve been told I ought to name it.”

Somebody in a zoom meeting.

“Just ordered a chicken and an egg from Amazon. I’ll let you know.”

My husband’s cousin Darren on the internet.

And, there are always a few technical experts among us who are presumably well-versed in the Pure and Applied Sciences. A neighbor who is a Registered Nurse overheard the following at her local gym, before that business had to shut down: “Coronavirus is found in oxygen, and since water is made of oxygen, they have to find a way to take the oxygen out of the water and just bottle up the other stuff.”

That could get interesting, indeed.

As our friend Bob Moynihan (who taught school on this island for a while) likes to say, “Things are getting all Mickey Bitsko around here.”

I’ll leave readers with the tenderhearted words of Suzanne Rankin, the Town Historian of Matinicus Isle Plantation, a friend whose attention is more typically involved with the past: “If we are smart we will retain all we are learning, and all we are enjoying, and bring it into the future.”

Perhaps I should write more about that notion of all we are learning another time, how people are making the effort to cook and sew and raise chicks and share and prioritize and go without a good haircut. It sounds like many urban and suburban friends are learning a bit of “island mentality.”

Eva Murray is the Recycling and Solid Waste Coordinator for Matinicus Island. Eva’s last lobster license was dated 1990, the year her son was born, and cost $53.00, which at the time she thought was an awful lot of money.