Posted on 03/15/2020 9:36:53 AM PDT by Kaslin
On Friday, due to mounting fears about COVID-19, our university announced that it was suspending all on-site classes until April 1. A nursing student who is one of my teaching assistants in a chemistry lab commented that the fear radiated by the students was palpable. “Their freshman year experience was being taken away and many of them expressed they had a loved one who was particularly at risk.”
The south Florida campus where I teach stretches over many acres. It is a lush, sub-tropical paradise of green spaces, palm trees and variegated shrubs in an explosion of colors. Our easternmost border – affectionately dubbed the “Lower East Side” by several New York transplants, is located across the street from the Intracoastal Waterway.
Surrounded by such beauty, it is easy to be lulled into complacency about the reality of the harshness of life elsewhere. But now that elsewhere is here and it has the name pandemic.
I sympathize with my students, most of them members of GenZ, arguably the most stressed-out generation. This school year began with a close brush with Hurricane Dorian in September. But every generation has had some idealistic “experience” taken away from them by the harsh realities of living in an imperfect world, marred by sin and distorted from the perfection that its Creator had in mind at the outset.
My grandparents immigrated from Italy in the late nineteenth century when William McKinley was president. Like most immigrants, they came to America for a better life. It didn’t get off to a great start. McKinley was assassinated six months into his second term in 1901. Thirteen years later the First World War began, lasting until 1918. Immediately following was the Spanish Influenza pandemic that infected 500 million people worldwide, killing 10% of infected patients; 3-5% of the world’s population. My grandparents also lived through the Great Depression, an economic crisis of unprecedented proportion, sparked by the 1929 stock market crash. Tough times persisted for a decade. My grandfather lost his job. They almost lost their home.
One of their four children was my dad. He was born in 1920; a member of the Greatest Generation. He too lived through the Great Depression and later as an adult, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent Second World War that followed.
My generation is the Baby Boomers. I grew up under the threat of nuclear annihilation at the hands of the Soviet Union and Cuba’s Fidel Castro. The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1961 brought us to the brink of nuclear war. As a kindergartener, I remember the drills in our public school. A warning siren sounded followed by the announcement, “Take safest places. Take safest places,” that sent us scurrying to our metal lockers away from the windows. Later in life as a college freshman, the Vietnam War was winding down and Reagan’s presidency brought a calm to the world as the Berlin Wall crumbled and words such as glasnost and perestroika gave us hope that we would avoid mutually assured destruction.
Our two millennial sons were born into a time of relative calm until September 11 shattered all that. We were living in New York at the time, only 11 miles from the city. We could see the smoke rising from the rubble of the Twin Towers across the Hudson River. Then there was the anthrax scare shortly thereafter, a succession of wars in the Middle East and the beheadings of innocent Americans by Islamic extremists.
In 2003, we traveled to China to adopt our first daughter at the same time the world was learning about SARS. By the time we got back to the States, panic was ensuing in China, the truth finally making its way past the communist media censors. The same crowded places that we had visited as tourists only four weeks earlier were now deserted.
Years later when our sons graduated from college, they were faced with a bleak job market as the Great Recession took the economy down in 2010.
We went back to China in 2005 to adopt another daughter. They are now both teenagers and members of GenZ. They along with most of my students have grown up in a world marred by gun violence. Their “Take safest places,” drills have been replaced by lockdowns.
The truth is that we do not live in a Garden of Eden. Each generation has faced its own challenges, some of them real existential threats. I have faith in the young people I teach as a university professor that they are up to the task and will overcome their fears.
The expression, “And it came to pass,” is one that is frequently repeated in the Bible. COVID-19 will “come to pass” in its time and life will resume a calmer rhythm. But in the meantime, now is a good time to remind ourselves that God has “not given us a spirit of fear but of power and of love and of a sound mind,” (2 Timothy 1:7 NKJV).
WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!
eventually
I live near McCord/FT. Lewis bases. The off base food vendors are voluntarily closing inhouse dining, drive-through only.
.........
Word has it (?) that those food vendors without drive-through will be placed off limits if there are any infections reported.
...........
Essential only travel off base is be asked for now, they may close the base.
By Dean Koontz. A book entitled “The eyes of darkness.” Published in 1981. On page 312 it says:
“In around 2020, a severe pneumonia like illness will spread throughout the globe, attacking the lungs and the bronchial tubes and resisting all known treatments. Almost more baffling than the illness itself will be the fact that it will suddenly vanish as quickly as it arrived, attacking again ten years later, then disappear altogether.”
I stopped at the
“Beheadings”,,,
.
Did I pass on the
“Good News?”
I find it interesting that the same screennames come to Free Republic day after day after day, posting thread after thread after thread about how dangerous Coronavirus is.
I wonder at their motivation.
Are they really loving people who are genuinely trying to warn everyone?
When does expressing genuine concern for others cross over into overhyping a problem?
Have these same people exhibited a concern for the general population in the past or is this just the cause they have latched onto? If so, why this cause?
There are those who have followed the Boy Scout Motto Of “Be Prepared”, and appear to be ready to hunker down.
Good.
But does it really help the situation to keep telling everyone that you’re prepared? Or is it just bragging?
I know that there are people who work through their concerns by discussing them with others. How long until their concerns are answered? Perhaps they need professional help to deal with their fears. Constantly posting their concerns, over and over, day after day, just looks, well, weak.
We also live in a competitive world. There are countries who want to harm the United States. There are many countries who would like to see our country crippled so that companies in their country can sell more. We also have very strong political fighting within our own country. Very strong.
These countries and political people will pay people to come to a Conservative site like Free Republic to spread gloom and doom.
They have economic reasons to hype the Coronavirus.
If you are a genuinely nice person concerned about others, well, thank you. Are you warning everyone about other dangers? If not, why?
If you are working through your concerns in public, well, how long until you work them out? Maybe you should see a professional.
And if you are hurting my country and my fellow citizens because you are being paid to do it.....then check to see if you can spend that money in hell.
But I thought that it was.
In the Garden of Eden baby.
Don’t you know that I love you?
I suggest you let the horses think,as they have larger heads *wink*
Yeah I am going to let someone that joined FR 24 years after I did tell my what I can post. For your information these are ob-eds written by Columnists in Townhall.com, I copy and paste them in FR for Freepers to read them
Yeah.
I’ve written you once before about this.
The proper etiquette on Free Republic is to post GENERAL comments to the first post.
You are the first poster.
Years ago, you thought that I was insulting your husband because I posted to your first post.
I realize that there are a lot of people looking for a fight on Free Republic.
I was following the proper etiquette on Free Republic.
I am actually grateful for this thread.
Thank you.
I live about 5 miles from Fort Campbell, KY and my son takes me twice a month to the Commissary to go grocery shopping. We will see and find out when we go again in a couple of weeks what is available and what not.
.
“I sympathize with my students, most of them members of GenZ, arguably the most stressed-out generation.”
I do NOT sympathize them, I disdain them. I work with them — pitiful spoiled snots, a great many of them. Me me me me me. Video-infected adult-children.
“...the most stressed put generation.” WTH? Did they fear dying of infection, polio or TB? Did their mom die giving birth to them? Did a sibling doe young? Did they start doing hard work at 14 to help support their family? Or as a child on the farm? Did they even do regular chores?? Did they get shot at in WWI? WWII? Korea? Vietnam? Arabia? Did they have to do schoolwork all on their own?
Good grief!
.
Speaking of gardens — there will probably be a run on garden seeds, too.
That was an excellent post.
You ought to hear me REALLY rant ;)
This ain’t the garden of Eden
There ain’t no angels above
And things ain’t like what they used to be
And this ain’t the summer of love
Feeling easy on the outside
But not so funny on the inside
Feel the sound, pray for rain
For this is the night we ride
This ain’t the garden of eden
There ain’t no angels above
And things ain’t like what they used to be
And this ain’t the summer of love
Lock all your doors from the outside
The key will dangle by the inside
You may begin to understand
That this is the night we ride
This ain’t the garden of eden
There ain’t no angels above
And things ain’t like what they used to be
And this ain’t the summer of love
On the night we ride...this ain’t the summer of love.
This ain’t the garden of eden
There ain’t no angels above
And things ain’t like what they used to be
And this ain’t the summer of love
This ain’t the summer, this ain’t, this ain’t
This ain’t the summer of love
Rant On Dude!
I had a Tussle with a
Pair of skateboarders
the other day,
I wanted Their Parents
On The Deck!
Make your plans; NOW!
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