September was certainly a long, difficult month, with the kiddo needing 24/7 care while his broken arms healed, but I’m delighted to have some cheery news to share this time.
First and biggest, the kiddo is now cast free!
The doctors have been very pleased with his progress. His bones are healing
well, and now he’s out of casts and bandages, he’s been regaining his range of
motion. Regaining his strength and fine motor control will take longer, but he’s
doing physical therapy twice a week and improving every day, which is wonderful
to see. Kids’ ability to heal truly is amazing. (I sure wish we kept that
ability as adults!)
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| Hooray for hands! |
He’s not back to fully normal life quite yet. No sports or running or biking allowed for 6 more weeks, lest he fall and damage his still-healing bones, and in a few months he'll need to get the titanium rods removed from his right arm. Currently he is able to swim and kayak and do easy hikes, hooray!
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| Enjoying an evening stroll alongside Otago Harbour |
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| View of Dunedin from Signal Hill |
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| Learning some science at the Otago Museum |
On Monday, when Term 4 of the NZ’s school year began, he returned to school full time, which means I finally have time again for both working and writing. It’s been great to dig back into my drafts. I’m doing some revision/editing on the Shattered Sigil short stories, and pushing farther forward on The Dreaming Sea. Okay, and also doing some hiking outside in the glorious spring weather...
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| Enjoying a local track alongside the Clutha River |
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| Spring in New Zealand means lots of blooming rhododendrons (seen here at Dunedin Botanic Gardens) |
The second chunk of good news I’m celebrating is not just specific to my own little family. New Zealand is once more COVID free! In case you didn’t hear, right about the time my son broke his arms, the virus escaped the managed isolation facilities for Kiwis returning from overseas and got into the community again in Auckland. This wasn’t a wholly unexpected event; the government had been warning everyone that flare-ups are inevitable, even as they worked to ramp up testing and tracing capabilities.
But then came the real test. NZ eliminated the
virus before with a super strict country-wide lockdown and a large amount of government
financial support to make sure people could afford to stay home and businesses
afford to close. Could we eliminate COVID again with only a limited, less strict single-city lockdown combined with rapid testing, tracing, and isolating?
Had the government done enough to prepare during the precious months of
normality the first lockdown bought us?
The answer is yes. As I write this, community
transmission within NZ is back to zero, Auckland is no longer in lockdown, and we’re
all back to “Level 1” normal. Everything open, no distancing, no masks required
(though strict border controls remain, as before: nobody is allowed into NZ except
returning citizens and residents).
Looking at the horrifying death tolls overseas,
life as normal feels more of a gift than ever. Yet it isn’t a gift, it’s the
result of hard work, on the part of both government and the people. PM Jacinda
Ardern and her government have followed the advice of scientists and public
health experts. They put people’s lives, not short-term economic gain, as
their highest priority; and in response, the majority of Kiwis have done all
they could to follow the rules and keep each other safe.
It’s been interesting to see the economic results
of that. Yes, the economy contracted sharply during NZ’s first lockdown. But when
normality returns, it brings a big bounce-back. People are happiest going out
to eat, traveling, shopping when there is no COVID to catch. NZ’s economy is now doing better than forecast, and business confidence has undergone a "remarkable" positive turnaround.
NZ’s success has come from going “hard and early”—doing
short, sharp lockdowns at the first sign of community transmission. That strategy
is no longer possible for countries who have allowed COVID to run rampant. (Oh
America, my heart breaks thinking of you.) The more of a foothold COVID gains,
the longer restrictions must remain in place to get control of infections, as
Melbourne’s recent struggle in Australia has unfortunately shown. Yet Melbourne’s numbers also show that control IS possible, even with high infection
rates beforehand.
I feel such frustration and fury whenever I think
about the utter incompetence of the US response. As the scathing analysis by the usually apolitical New England Journal of Medicine says, “The magnitude of
the failure is astonishing.” But that brings me to the final good news that I’m
celebrating: at last, at last, the US presidential election is almost here, bringing
the possibility of change.
I don’t love Biden. But by God, I’ve voted for
him, and if you are American, I hope you will too. Even in the case where Biden
wins and the Democrats also take both House and Senate, the stark divisions polarizing
the US and the lack of public trust won't be easy to fix. Yet as is true for
the larger, even more daunting problem of climate change, it is never too late
to take actions that will save lives and reduce damage.
NZ is also going through an election right now. Here, you
don’t have to be a citizen to vote; residents and permanent residents are also allowed.
(Not just allowed! Required to register.) Today I cast my very first ballot in
my adopted country, and I feel pretty darn happy about that. PM Jacinda Ardern
has done a terrific job handling COVID, and I hope she gets to continue.
But as NZ is a parliamentary democracy, you don’t
vote for the PM. Under NZ’s MMP system, you get two votes: an “electorate”vote, where you vote for a person to represent your local area, and a “partyvote” that helps choose how many seats in Parliament each party will have.
Usually, no party gets enough votes to govern alone, and they must form a coalition
with other parties to gain a majority. Last election, a small party called NZ
First ended up as “kingmaker” because their choice of coalition partner would determine
which of the two major parties had enough seats to rule. NZ First is on the conservative
side, yet they chose to form a coalition with Labour party and the Green Party,
which meant Labour’s leader Jacinda Ardern became PM (and thank God for that!).
This time, Labour is coming into NZ’s election carrying
huge popularity, since many Kiwis are as happy as I am with Jacinda’s track
record on COVID and other crises. Labour may even win enough seats to rule
alone…but personally I hope they’ll still need the help of the Greens, who
always push their coalition partners to address climate change issues. For that
reason, my party vote went to Green, not Labour, despite how much I like
Jacinda Ardern. It feels both weird and good to know a small-party vote isn’t
wasted here.
With both my US and NZ ballots submitted, all I can do is pray that the country of my birth will join my adopted country on a better path. Maybe there's only a slim hope of that, but after the last four years--and especially the last few months!--it feels good to have any hope at all.
Hoping for a wave
The Battle of the Bulge is much om my mind these days. The short version is that in late 1944 Hitler knew he was losing the war, but he thought that if he could break through the Allied lines in the west and capture the city of Antwerp, he could split the American, British, and Canadian armies, trapping 4 whole army groups behind German lines with no supply . He hoped to convince the USA, the UK, and Canada to sue for a separate peace that didn't involve Russia. His aim wasn't to win the war, but to delay his own defeat, frustrate his adversaries, and make them decide that defeating him wasn't worth the effort.
ReplyDeleteThat is where conservatives in America are today. They know they have lost the culture war. Demographics are turning against them, and their view of how the world should be (dominated by white men) is now shared by a shrinking minority.
Let me be clear about this. Culturally and ideologically speaking, American conservatives have already lost. There is no way back for them. They admit as much in the documents they send each other which periodically find their way into the hands of the media.
So what American conservatives have done is to hijack the levers of power to entrench themselves in positions of power so that they can maintain their special status as the sole beneficiaries of society even as their numbers dwindle.
This is their Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein. It's the reason the Red State Project engaged in such obnoxious Gerrymandering that in Michigan, Democrats got the most votes but Republicans ended up with a near supermajority of seats. It's the reason Mitch McConnell (the most evil man in America) refused to let Obama nominate a SCOTUS justice in the last year of his presidency, but will make sure Trump gets to pick one in the last days of his. These SCOTUS picks will be on the bench for decades overturning every attempt liberals make to bring the laws of this country into alignment with the beliefs of the majority of its people.
The conservative message to America is this. "Give up! Give up and let us keep power or we'll burn it all down."
They're throwing everything they have at it because, like Hilter, they know if they lose power this time, they're never getting it back. The tide of culture is against them and they are out of time.
The tide of culture may indeed be against them, but I don't know about "out of time." I think a lot of people have this idea that conservatism is an old boomer's game; that youth and young adults can't possibly subscribe to the ideology. But speaking as someone who grew up super conservative and spent a lot of my early adulthood staunchly voting Republican...it's not that simple. There are tons of young people today still growing up in conservative bubbles, believing every word they're taught, never realizing how much of it is lies. Empathy can be learned later in life, thank goodness, and adult hearts can change...but speaking from my own experience, that's a long, slow road that a lot of people never walk (because it requires having enough friends with life experiences and views different enough from yours to challenge what you think you know). Many, if not most, of the kids and teens growing up in heavily conservative areas today will remain just as conservative as their parents and grandparents. Don't get me wrong, change is possible, but I think it happens lot slower than many of us would like to believe. (I'd guess all those protesters and marchers in the 60s likewise thought that racism and conservatism would soon die out...and yet here we are.) I don't mean this as a downer, but more as a warning...even if Republicans take a big defeat this election, don't assume American conservatism is finished.
DeleteI'm so glad things are going well for you and that your son is well on the road to recovery!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much!
DeleteCongratulations to your son, Courtney, and of course to you and your husband! And to NZ; I hope your election goes well and OMG I hope ours does, too. . . .
ReplyDeleteThanks, Kendall! NZ's election went pretty darn well, in that the more conservative party (who had begun dabbling a bit in Trumpian misinformation and attack politics) got absolutely crushed--such a relief to see. I can only hope for the same in the US, though I'm afraid to hope too hard, knowing the spread of misinformation and cult-like tribal mentality is far more dire! But still, I dream...
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