Activism

All Love Is Local

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The late film critic Pauline Kael is mistakenly said to have remarked after Richard Nixon was reelected, “How could that be? I don’t know ANYONE who voted for him.” The story is apocryphal, as Ms. Kael never said it; but many of us have reacted in a similar naive way if only for a split-second after an election whose results surprised/dismayed us.

Unlike our film critic friend, I do indeed know people who voted opposite me yesterday. (To be open: I voted for the vice-president and our local representative and in favor of a proposition in New York that may prove salutary and, now, surprisingly important in the coming years.) You see, I attend several recovery meetings each week and sit next to men and women who feel vehemently happy today or at least contentedly pleased about the result of the presidential election and unhappy the proposition passed.
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Kyiv/Minsk, 1989; Grief, Today

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

We almost died in Kyiv. It’s a funny anecdote, but as a person who has since experienced some moments in which my mortality pointed finger-guns at me and said, “Catch you later,” I know now how valid my opening sentence remains. Sometimes one’s present and future existence depends on the reflexes of a cab driver in a foreign city.

I love Kyiv, perhaps because I experienced one of my first glimpses of my own mortality there, and thus experienced my own love of life for one of the first times as an adult. I love Kyiv because it’s a beautiful city, and my memory of it is full of music. It is a treasured place in memory.
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Who We Lost and ‘Who We Lost’

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

An anthology of essays by individuals who lost loved ones to Covid, Who We Lost, edited by Martha Greenwald, will be published on May 9, 2023, by Belt Publishing. An essay that I wrote specifically for this volume is included. Order your copy now from the publisher and booksellers everywhere. (Support your independent bookseller!)

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After my father died of COVID-19 in May 2020, I have followed various groups online that advocate for those of us who lost loved ones in the ongoing pandemic and for those who advocate for justice as well as for preparation for the next pandemic, as there certainly will be one.

There are many memorial groups, more than I know of, I think. There is a movement to establish a national Covid memorial day for the victims, on the first Monday each March, which has attracted the support of senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey and representatives including Greg Stanton. There is a design proposal and plan for a gasp-inducing and beautiful virtual Covid monument:

The most effective have been those that collect stories, those that ask us to look beyond the mind-numbing and sometimes overwhelming statistics and instead see that each number is a story of a full life cut short, those that invite us to meet and honor those we lost.
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