CEC Journal Spring 2021

Issue 8 SPRING 2021

The Journal for the Constructive Engagement of Conflict IN THIS ISSUE 4 Honoring the 20th Anniversary of the Bartos Institute l 8 Systems Shift: Personal Transformation and System-wide Intervention l 14 COVID and the Moral Imagination l

Editor’s Note The year 2020-21 was, as UWC-USA President Dr. Victoria Mora said, “one for the books.” She was referring to yet another unexpected and urgent issue on campus (a burst water pipe), but she could have been thinking of any of the other myriad calamities, curiosities, and celebrations we have faced as a human and planetary collective.

This year also marks the 20th anniversary of the Bartos Institute for the Constructive Engagement of Conflict, and part of this issue is dedicated to the legacy of its founders and the promise of its pro-gramming. As ambassadorial chair Selena Sermeño writes about the work of the institute, “...it is important for students to become aware of the link between personal character, academic knowledge, ethical leadership, and constructive approaches to conflict...Moral courage and the development of a moral imagination are at the core of the program.”

and opportunity. Established institutions and systems of all kinds are unravelling before our eyes. New patterns are urgently required if we are to collectively flourish – to live sustainably with each other and the natural world on which we depend.” This issue includes essays, articles and artwork about systems-shifting work generally, as well as reflections about the pandemic and the personal and systemwide impacts (so far.)

As we venture into 2021, let us not only remember but embody Donella Meadows’ sage advice: “Living successfully in a world of systems requires more of us than our ability to calculate. It requires our full humanity–our rationality, our ability to sort out truth from falsehood, our intuition, our compassion, our vision, and our morality.”

The first section of the journal includes more in-depth reflections from Dr. Sermeno as well as past and present UWC-USA presidents, and those involved in imagining the institute’s potential as a global hub for CEC methodologies, thought leadership, content-sharing, and community-building.

Each year, students select a theme for UWC’s Annual Conference, which also informs a loose motif for the year and is the title of the second section of this month’s journal - Systems Shift: Personal Transformation and Systemwide Intervention.

Students were inspired by the idea, as articulated by my colleague and friend Dr. Julian Norris, “These are turbulent times. Previously stable systems are losing their coherence and we oscillate wildly between peril and possibility, between consciousness and catastrophe. We find ourselves at a threshold of unparalleled complexity

COVER: CEC challenges students to work with each other to solve problems. While this happens on campus in practice sessions, the goal is to help students develop the skills of collaboration and leadership.

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20th Anniversary of the Bartos Institute for the Constructive Engagement of Conflict

Honoring 20 Years of Bartos Institute It is my great pleasure to introduce this segment of the CEC Journal, honoring 20 years of the Bartos Institute for the Constructive Engagement of Conflict. The Bartos Institute was the brainchild of Phil Geier, whose vision has shaped UWC-USA in so many important ways. In founding the Institute, Phil recognized that a movement like UWC, dedicated to international understanding in service of peace, would need to focus seriously on engaging conflict.

Notice I said “engaging” conflict, not “resolving it.” I first reflected on the difference between resolving conflict and engaging it with my friend and colleague Selena Sermeño, who has been part of the Bartos Institute for the Constructive Engagement of Conflict from the beginning. She put it this way: “Since its inception, the Bartos Institute has aimed to focus students toward ‘engaging’ conflict rather than expecting to always resolve it. Attention is focused on principles of respectful engagement...so that students can develop a mindfulness, or self-awareness, about their own conflict behavior.”

This is what I love about the work of the Bartos Institute, and why I am so proud to have it as part of our core programming at UWC-USA. Our students see themselves as change-makers, as people who want to contribute to peace and a sustainable future. When they arrive here, they are fully focused on what needs changing--around them. And of course there is plenty that needs changing, systemically and globally. But as they engage the work in our CEC programming, they find that the change they wish to effect needs to start with them.

They learn to engage differences that in other contexts lead to division. They learn to see issues from a variety of perspectives, personal and political. And they learn to navigate different conflict landscapes with tools they didn’t have before coming here.

In my fifth year now as president of UWC-USA, I have worked personally with students from mainland China and Hong Kong around tensions related to protests and COVID; Arab and Israeli students around the location of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem and what it means to be conservative in a progressive community; students from “Red” and “Blue” ideologies who see the current political landscape in the U.S. in very different ways. All of these students, in one way and another, are grappling with systemic issues and the conflicts that arise when facing these issues with a view toward change.

I hope you will receive this edition of the CEC Journal in the spirit it is offered--as one more form of engagement that brings peoples, cultures, and nations closer together in service of a better future for all.

My very best,

Victoria J. Mora Ph.D. President, UWC-USA

CEC: Both Essential and Valuable On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Bartos Institute for the Constructive Engagement of Conflict, Dr. Phil Geier, president of UWC-USA from 1993 to 2005, shared some reflections on its history and potential which are excerpted here.

“Looking back, I see two dimensions to CEC, both essential and valuable,” Geier said. “The first dimension focuses on learning and teaching as useful practical skills and attitudes. Building on Kurt Hahn’s guiding vision, the Bartos Institute was created to bring focus, professional training and evolving methodologies into play for 21st century UWC students and how they might more constructively engage with both interpersonal and geopolitical conflicts.”

“The second dimension,” he further explained, “focuses on things more aspirational and transformative, with the castle symbolizing the magic and potential power of the Bartos Institute. One very concrete example of this which began during my tenure was taking peer to peer training to a higher level.

Motivated UWC-USA students not only learned how to learn from faculty and one another on the U.S. campus, but they also went on Project Week trips to engage with their peers at other UWC schools. This not only deepened their understanding of the CEC objectives but challenged them to share their growing expertise with others in the UWC movement. This ripple effect was global and equipped many with lifelong skills.”

Today, the UWC-USA strategic plan identifies “Constructive Engagement of Conflict programming as foundational and distinguishing,” and imagines one of the ways to achieve this is for the Bartos Institute to commit to and embrace its role as a global hub for CEC methodologies, thought leadership, content-sharing, and community-building.

UWC-USA’s current strategic plan identifies Constructive Engagement of Conflict programming as foundational and distinguishing, and provides clear directives for the Bartos Institute to commit to and embrace its role as a global hub for CEC methodologies, thought leadership, content-sharing, and community-building.

Geier agrees with and affirms the centrality of CEC programming going forward for the school. “In looking ahead strategically,” he said, “the Bartos Institute can be a springboard for even greater breadth of impact by deploying its Davis International Center as a venue for bringing conflicted groups together — out of the media spotlight but benefiting from the synergy with expectations of today’s students and the mission of the UWC movement.”

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Sermeno Dedicates Education, Career to Understand Healing from Violence

By Gwen Albers Claudia Gonzalez’s childhood left her traumatized, yet she didn’t realize it until arriving at the United World College-USA. The second eldest of five, Gonzalez ’20, Mexico, experienced months of homelessness while living in Cancun’s poorer crime-ridden neighborhoods. When times were “better,” her family of eight, including her 92-year-old grandmother, lived in one room. Gonzalez lived without electricity, clean drinking water, regular schooling and regular meals. Twice, extortionists stole her father’s livelihood. She lived in fear of kidnapping by human traffickers and rapists.

“At a pretty young age, I got to understand the power of corruption and evil, and how you can rarely find good things in life,” the 18-year-old said.

Upon arriving in Montezuma, Gonzalez didn’t smile for three months. It was during that time that she met Selena Sermeno, ambassadorial chairperson for the Bartos Institute, which teaches students about peacemaking, conflict resolution, goal-setting and collaboration. The Bartos also funds an annual Constructive Engagement of Conflict student retreat, which Gonzalez attended.

“They got us into small groups and asked ‘what are we most grateful for?’ I said ‘to be alive. I didn’t think I would make it this far,’” said Gonzalez, who said she has been diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder, depression and hallucinations.

“Selena helped by saying ‘it’s okay to talk and if I don’t want to, that’s okay,’” Gonzalez said. “She’s someone who cares.”

Born in El Salvador, Selena Sermeno has dedicated her education and career to understanding how to heal from violence, especially violence caused from people from one’s own culture. She has spent much of the last 20 years working with the UWC movement.

“My entire life -- personal and professional -- has put me in touch with suffering, especially the suffering of youth who had experienced significant loss in their lives,” she said.

Selena Sermeno planned to study medicine and return to El Salvador.

The oldest of four, Sermeno grew up in San Salvador, El Salvador. She left home at age 18 after receiving a scholarship to attend a liberal arts college in Kansas. A civil war in El Salvador that created a very unstable political and social climate led to Sermeno’s decision to leave.

The 1980 assassination of El Salvador’s Arch Bishop Oscar Romero followed by the rapes and murders of four Catholic missionaries by the El Salvador National Guard changed her plans.

“These events really impacted me, and I was motivated by this deep desire to understand how people fall into such cruel behavior and how they heal and we overcome this,” she said.

“I wanted to be someone who was an agent of peace.”

Sermeno earned a master’s in counseling from the University of Northern Colorado and doctorate in counseling clinical psychology from Temple University in Philadelphia. For her dissertation, she researched the Continued on next page

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impact of political and social violence on the character and conscious development of youth who had experienced violence in El Salvador versus youth who had not in Costa Rica.

In the early 1990s, Sermeno did her doctoral internship with the University of New Mexico, where research was being done to understand the impact of historical trauma on the native American population. “It was during this internship that my husband and I camped near Montezuma, and saw the castle,” she said. “We talked to security guards, who told me what kind of school it was.

My husband said to me ‘some day you ought to work here’ because of my interest.”

In the late 1990s, Sermeno met human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Dr. Charlie Clements, who wrote the book “Witness to War: An American Doctor in El Salvador.” Clements told Sermeno that UWC-USA could benefit from her background and spoke to its former president, Phil Geier.

“I think my first gig with the school was in 2000, doing faculty training during orientation, I believe on how to support youth in transition,” Sermeno said. The school later hired Clements as its Bartos Institute director, and Sermeno helped develop the CEC program.

“The students didn’t want a model of dealing with conflict that was too prescribed or too focused on resolution,” she

said. “A lot of issues students were dealing with didn’t have an easy resolution. We started the CEC program on the promise that conflict and differences are a part of life.”

Sermeno was named director of the Bartos in 2004, and through private philanthropy and donors, UWCUSA received a gift for the CEC program to share with other UWCs. Sermeno also helped start up the CEC program at UWC Costa Rica, Atlantic College and Li Po Chen. Sermeno continued with the Costa Rica program until 2018. For two years during Project Week, the Bartos joined forces with the Peace Corps in El Salvador and Costa Rica students.

Today, Sermeno works closely with Naomi Swinton, Dean of Students; Victoria J. Mora, president of UWCUSA; and the Strategic Leadership Team at UWC-USA on developing a blueprint and program initiatives that support social, emotional and mental health for students.

“To accomplish the UWC mission requires a great deal of personal growth and sustainability,” Sermeno said. “We cannot ignore the well-being of our youth and our community. It’s important to understand youth will do better in the long run if provided with the mentoring and skillset to manage adversity.”

“I’m very committed to creating and supporting students who have come from significant adversity,” she added.

Gwen Albers is the communication coordinator for UWCUSA; she was a journalist for more than 30 years.

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Systems Shift: Personal Transformation and System-Wide Intervention

Work Focuses on Para del Condor

By Francisco Letelier With the interdisciplinary visual arts project, Paso del Condor, I am making artworks with documents, accounts and narratives concerning Operation Condor, known as a collaborative plan by U.S. supported military dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay to track down, kidnap and kill people they labeled as subversives. Operación Condor, received guidance, training and technology from the United States in the 70’s and 80’s.

My project explores alternative narratives, combining visual art, text, ancestral craft, and popular art forms. The work gives a human face to a rich a world of imagination and human experience, often defined solely by its tragedies.

Chile entered a new period of ‘democracy’ in 1990 with a center left coalition of political parties, under a constitution instituted by former dictator, General Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet’s constitution gives the military a major role in domestic security and puts the private sector in a leading role for providing social services, health care and education.

The document does not mention Chile’s indigenous groups and their centuries long push for land and rights.

Under extreme free market policies, Chile became one of the only nations on the planet to privatize its water. The effects of this and other policies have been further aggravated by climate change, transforming the daily lives the

lives of thousands. Instead of providing the promised prosperity, Chile has become an example of neoliberal economic policies gone awry.

During October and November 2019, I was in residence at the Santa Fe Art Institute as a Truth and Reconciliation Fellow. The project had taken me from Chile to the headwaters of the Rio Grande with the Land Arts of the American West program of the University of New Mexico. On Oct. 18, 2020, a protest by high school students in Santiago Chile against a price increase in subway fares turned into a national insurrection against the government led by one-time Pinochet supporter, conservative billionaire, President Sebastian Piñera.

Rising social inequalities affecting the majority of Chileans led to massive protests with chilling cases of state violence by police and military against demonstrators. I spent days glued to information coming from Chile. As early snow fell in New Mexico, I felt the weight of memory and distance. The mural sized work, Chile Despertó, Octubre 19, 2019, responds to those days.

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Machi Kultrun, Home Sweet Home is a symbol of resistance and healing.

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reprisals and growing contagion, protests continued, until the government was forced to agree to a national referendum to vote whether the constitution should be rewritten. Machi Kultrun, Home Sweet Home is a symbol of resistance and healing.

A year after the start of La Revuelta, (The Revolt) aka the Estallido Social (Social Outbreak) Chileans overwhelmingly voted to have a constitutional convention with gender parity draft a new charter. The schedule includes the election of 155 citizens on April 11, 2021, the installation of the convention in May and then another referendum on the proposed constitution by mid-2022.

In the United States, police killings have also triggered renewed efforts to create a more perfect nation. Those living more than two centuries ago did not imagine the world of today with its increasing need for social and economic justice. The extreme need for gender, race and environmental equity was not foretold. Across the borders of the Americas, new generations are questioning legal frameworks while setting the course for the future social, political and economic goals of the world as a whole.

Chilean artist Francisco Letelier was a Bartos Fellow at UWC-USA in 2004 and is based in Venice, Calif.

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Rising social inequalities affecting the majority of Chileans led to massive protests with violence.

Letelier created this mural, entitled Chile Despertó, Octubre 19, 2019, in response to those days.

SOCIAL NETWORKS AND SYSTEMS INTERVENTION

Tackling Lies about COVID-19 in Low- & Middle-Class Countries

By Chinwe Onuegbu Social networks are important conduits for information access and influence in low and middleincome countries LMICs (1). There is a relatively high reliance on and utilization of social connections (for example, kin, friends, colleagues) in accessing relevant information and making critical decisions, such as those regarding health or adoption of new technologies in these countries (1).

In such contexts, social networks may therefore offer potentials for mediating accurate information, tackling misinformation and eliciting compliance to appropriate behaviors regarding COVID-19. COVID-19 caused unforeseen disruptions to social systems including, education, economy and family across the globe, exposing countries’ lack in epidemic preparedness (2).

As efforts are ongoing to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic and restore stability in social systems, for example, the ongoing development of the COVID-19 vaccine; there is a serious need to confront the spread of misinformation proliferating in LMICs (3, 4). Misinformation about COVID19 spreads widely as the virus itself (5). For instance, between Jan. 1 and mid-march 2020, a study found that there were 240 million messages on the subject of COVID-19, including unverified opinions and speculations (6). Tackling misinformation about COVID-19 is particularly important in LMICs as its negative outcomes may create an extra burden for the weak economic structures and healthcare systems (7) and cause community unrest (4).

For instance, as conspiracies claiming that home therapies such as eating garlic and gargling salt water can cure COVID-19 is rampant in some countries in South Asia and Africa, scammers are capitalizing on this to sell unverified treatments to people (8). In Nigeria, rumors about the efficacy of chloroquine as a cure for COVID-19 went viral in March 2020, leading to cases of abuse of the drugs and deaths (9). Similar misinformation challenges were observed during the Ebola outbreak. For instance, there were widespread rumors in affected African countries that consuming salt and bathing in saltwater could

cure Ebola (10). As efforts to confront the problems are ongoing (11), it is necessary to incorporate innovative strategies that can have long term impacts, especially halting the spread of misinformation.

To start, we need to understand how social networks are structured and used during epidemics. This is important as people may rely on different networks for different functions (12), and it is necessary to uncover who is consulted and trusted during epidemics. In line with this, there is a need to invest in social network research in LMICs. Evidence in this area is generally lacking in LMICs (1).

Three kinds of social network interventions (13) to confront misformation about COVID can be adopted. One, influential actors within the networks may be identified and partnered with to mediate accurate information. Two, networks can be linked to formal sources of information such as local community information officer. Three, co-creation of information and ideas for compliance with the networks may be useful for gaining their cooperation and adherence to public health advice on COVID-19.

In conclusion, social network is critical for the spread of both the COVID-19 virus and misinformation about the virus.

While global efforts are ongoing to tackle the former, there should be parallel efforts to tackle the latter especially in LMICs, using innovative social network interventions.

Studying at Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick, UK, Chinwe Onuegbu was a Bartos Fellow at UWC-USA in 2017.

REFERENCES 1. Chuang Y, Schechter L. Social networks in developing countries. Annu Rev Resour Econ. 2015;7(1):45172.

2. Villa S, Lombardi A, Mangioni D, Bozzi G, Bandera A, Gori A, et al. The COVID-19 pandemic preparedness or lack thereof: from China to Italy. Global Health & Medicine. 2020.

3. Kasozi KI, MacLeod E, Ssempijja F, Mahero MW, Matama K, Musoke GH, et al. Misconceptions on COVID-19 Risk Among Ugandan Men: Results From a Rapid Exploratory Survey, April 2020. Frontiers in public health. 2020;8:416.

4. Ahinkorah BO, Ameyaw EK, Hagan Jr JE, Seidu A-A, Schack T. Rising above misinformation or fake news in Africa: Another strategy to control COVID-19 spread. Frontiers in Communication. 2020;5:45.

5. Mian A, Khan S. Coronavirus: the spread of misinformation. BMC medicine. 2020;18(1):1-2.

6. Larson HJ. Blocking information on COVID-19 can fuel the spread of misinformation. Nature. 2020:306-.

7. Ittefaq M, Hussain SA, Fatima M. COVID-19 and social-politics of medical misinformation on social media in Pakistan. Media Asia. 2020;47(1-2):75-80.

8. UK Government. UK aid to tackle global spread of coronavirus ‘fake news’. [Accessed on 26/11/2020] gov.uk/government/news/uk-aid-to-tackle-global-spread-of-coronavirus-fake-news 9. Nigeria records chlorquine poisoning after Trump endorses it for coranavirus treatment [press release].

CNN2020.

10. Oyeyemi SO, Gabarron E, Wynn R. Ebola, Twitter, and misinformation: a dangerous combination?

Bmj. 2014;349:g6178.

11. Godman B. Combating COVID-19: Lessons learned particularly among developing countries and the implications. Bangladesh Journal of Medical Science. 2020:103-S 8.

12. Perry BL, Pescosolido BA. Functional specificity in discussion networks: The influence of general and problem-specific networks on health outcomes. Social Networks. 2010;32(4):345-57.

13. Heaney CA, Israel BA. Social networks and social support. Health behavior and health

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Horse’s (Mouth) Final Work from Keystone Confederates Series

By Jesse Thomas Horse’s (Mouth) is the fifth and final work from my 2017 series, Keystone Confederates. These lithographs explore the cultural moment when the City of New Orleans made its decision to remove four highly visible public monuments to the Confederacy.

New Orleans is a city of severely limited economic opportunity whose indomitable population created North America’s most enduring and influential art form, Jazz. Growing up there, I learned to see Art (music, dance, and theatrical/performative processions) as a form of resistance and endurance in the face of enforced poverty (the hoarding of education and job resources by the local aristocracy) and violence (we are by now familiar with some mediated version of the villainy of a state that uses its police force and prison system to exacerbate and continue this cycle of urban violence and desperation/poverty).

Attend excellent primary schools, ace the IB, attend elite university, secure employment in financial sector, make philanthropic donations Paintings, mirrors, and labyrinths posit space where the confusion of appearance with reality becomes thinkable. Pictures and words are both representations that point to some thing in the world. Language does not simply mirror the world, its labyrinthine representations create a set of speculative relations to truth as does an artist’s pictures. The intersection of the aesthetic and political realms is a vital and vibrant space where we consider how best to live today in order to realize our vision for tomorrow. Art is a vitally important part of this vision.

Jesse Thomas ‘89 is an associate professor and coordinator of the painting program in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Alberta and an internationally exhibited painter.

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COVID and the Moral Imagination

In face of struggle, stay grateful for blessings in one’s life

By Dr. Celene Ibrahim A piece of wisdom from the Islamic tradition, a hadith narrated by Ibn Abbas, has been on my mind: “The Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him, said, ‘Take advantage of five before five: your youth before your old age, your health before your illness, your riches before your poverty, your free time before your work, and your life before your death.’” In Islamic teachings, part of showing gratitude for youth, health, provision, leisure, and life itself entails maximizing these blessing for good. In the face of individual and collective struggle, we stay grateful for the blessings we do have by putting these favors to use.

Perseverance, particularly in times of trial, is a virtue discussed regularly in the Qur’an; those who steadfastly persevere are elevated in their character and spiritual station.

During Ramadan, for instance, Muslims intentionally experience hunger and thirst in order to train the mind, body, and spirit to patiently persevere. That month-long training builds up the muscles of perseverance. This is not a passive, apathetic patience; this practice is about enduring something difficult with a spirit of gratitude and building around it a sense of community unity, born from generosity in the tangibles—dates, donations, maybe—and the intangibles like radical hospitality, extending the benefit of the doubt, and “good words, whose likeness is like the beneficial tree, firmly rooted with skyward branches” (Qur’an 14:24).

A collective trial is an opportunity for personal development, and growth in the aggregate. In a crisis, we see and experience suffering, but we also witness too tremendous acts of courage, generosity, compassion, and ingenuity; we see abounding selflessness to give us hope. There is an oft quoted Qur’anic verse: “Truly God does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves” (Q 13:10). There are many potential lessons to extrapolate from this verse, but let us simply ask the question: “What can I change in myself to improve our collective state?” The global pandemic has supplied more time and collective energy to fight, for instance, the pandemic of racism. What can we do, each in our own circles, to sustain that struggle against the diseases of hatred and bigotry?

This pandemic requires that we pay more attention to the needs of our most vulnerable social groups, including those advanced in age, the working poor, those incarcerated or detained, migrants, the homeless, and all those who suffer systemic violence. Ideally, we care for these vulnerable populations in non-crisis times out of a sense of empathy and social responsibility; however, if we collectively have not been taking on this task wholeheartedly from a place of compassion and duty, now we are forced to take it on as a self-preservation instinct. The body politic cannot be truly healthy until all its members are well.

Can we envision and work towards a society where every person has access to appropriate medical care?

The intensity of this pandemic might lessen in weeks or months, but we will still face existential challenges, including endemic poverty, violent conflicts, forced migration, rising global temperatures, and environmental destruction. We have hard questions to ask ourselves: What do we want to learn from this crisis so that we can face the others collaboratively? Will we take care of the vulnerable; not just when it is in the immediate self-interests of youthful, wealthy, and free people, but when it remains a basic moral imperative?

As we battle together the invisible enemy of a virus, let’s decide spread justice. Love can be contagious too.

Dr. Celene Ibrahim ‘02 teaches in the Department of Religious Studies and Philosophy at the Groton School. She has published widely, and her contributions to enhancing cultural and religious literacy have been featured by prominent academic and media outlets.

This fall, we invited alumni, students, and friends from various faith traditions to contribute a comment about the pandemic, whether from personal experience or more philosophical ideas about faith in crisis.

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Witnessing Death up Close

By Rev. Brooks Cato When I worked for my dad in his veterinary clinic, folks brought in all sorts of critters: dogs and cats, exotic birds, iguanas, even a deer hit out on the highway. He did what he could, brought many of them back from the edge of death, but many he lost right there on the lip of the abyss. Country has a way of showing you death up close.

These days, I spend my days caring for a flock of parishioners, but I’m no shepherd. That title belongs to someone else. I’m more of a sheepdog. Usually, that means gentle guidance, keeping people out of places that will harm them and tending to them when they go there anyway. Usually, it’s easy to love my people. Usually, I can wrap my head around this work. Usually.

A couple of Sundays ago, I got a call from Susan that David, her husband, was under the weather. Wednesday came; David went to the doctor with a fever, got some meds, and went home. Thursday, the fever hadn’t broken, so he went back. His cough worsened: pneumonia. The last time he’d spent the night in the hospital was the night he was born! Friday came, and with it, a desperate call from Susan. He was being taken to a facility more equipped to deal with struggling lungs. And then another, minutes later. “No, they’re not going. It’s bad. I don’t know what to do.” The nurses gave permission for me to say last rites, and while I was putting on my collar and driving the short shot to the hospital, David died.

scrawled notes on the glass in dry erase markers to their colleagues outside. I wondered how frustrated they must be, how many times one side had to read or write backwards, how many medical puzzles they could solve with such a bottleneck.

Finally, they finished their preparations, but before we could enter, the nurses brought us PPEs: surgical masks, gloves, and bright yellow robes. Susan recalled her wedding while a nurse helped her dress. Her mask went on, and I wondered if she wore a veil. Then, the yellow robe, and I wondered if she even liked yellow, if he liked seeing her in yellow. Finally, gloves, and I wondered if she was ever the type to wear evening gloves to round out a look. Fifty-six years they’d been married, and today, dressed as she was in Resurrection Sunday yellow, we stepped toward his chamber.

There was a small vestibule that sealed shut when we entered, waiting to be let through to where he lay. Nurses in matching yellow and apocalyptic face shields stood watch, and Susan sank into a chair beside her dear husband. She said she’d taken thousands of pictures of him because he had such a handsome face. Even in the indignities of death, I saw what she meant.

She tried to kiss his cheek, but her veil frustrated the attempt. She stroked his head, asked after his rings. A nurse removed one, a cameo ring his father had found.

I removed the other, his wedding ring, given to her to put on his hand by a priest 56 years ago, now removed by a priest and given back to her. She clutched them to her heart and said she’d soon see him again.

A nurse escorted me back to Susan, sitting in a chair and listening to a tall nurse. She looked at me and said, “I think I’m ready to wake up.” I knew we were supposed to be maintaining social distance. I knew that, but I figured I was already there, unprotected, and Susan needed comfort. I offered a hug and felt her shake as her face buried into my shoulder. “This is not a nice dream,” she said.

I traced a cross on his forehead and offered the prayer I’ve said at so many bedsides: “Depart, O Christian soul… ” She said her love, she said her longing, she cried her tears, and the Easter-yellow bridesmaids escorted us to the vestibule.

We couldn’t go into David’s room just yet. It was glassed off, and the curtain had been drawn to offer him some privacy and, maybe, her some small comfort, not having to watch him suffer through the end.

Another nurse helped us remove our PPEs and offered hand sanitizer and a place to wash up. “Sing a song, maybe a hymn? Wash your hands the whole time.” Between the two of us, neither could remember any hymns, and by the time we’d almost settled on one, the nurse interrupted, “Ok, that’s enough, you can dry off now.”

There was no intercom inside the room, and the staff was particularly careful. So the doctors and nurses

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Susan chuckled at our musical failure while the nurses gave us more directions, squirted more soap into our hands, and directed us to the sink at the nurses’ station, a busy hub with six or eight doctors, nurses, and other staff rushing around. Susan said, “Why don’t you just pick one this time.”

I started “Amazing Grace,” and Susan joined in, voice cracking where strength failed and memories swelled. The bustle stopped. All those people froze in place and watched while Susan and I sang so close to and so far from David’s bed. One nurse was on the phone, but she covered it with her hand and hummed along. Finally, at “was blind, but now I see,” the bustle began again, and Susan leaned in, bumping sides to mark the moment we both knew to be holy.

The tall nurse gathered our belongings and showed us to a rear exit to keep other patients away from us newly identified potential vectors. She held the door, but she didn’t leave. She expressed her sympathy to Susan, and her voice weakened as she tried to say that they’d done all they could. David charmed them all in his short time there, much like he’d charmed everyone in town, Susan most of all. I offered a prayer, and the nurse wept with us by that hidden door behind the hospital.

ripped through those herds. By the time we got there, a quarter would’ve died already and another quarter were on their way. The farmers always had the same look. Farmers who could repair a $200,000 tractor with some baling wire and a prayer (and many had) looked uncharacteristically helpless. They loved their herds, and watching while not being able to do a thing broke more of them than not. They’d take off their hat, rub their hair the wrong way, and kick at the dirt. Or they’d cuss. Or they’d slump onto the nearest bale of hay and stare off into the middle distance. I’m not there yet, but I’m worried that’s where I’m headed.

I’m no farmer. And I’m no shepherd. But these are my people. Usually, it’s easy to love them. Usually, I can wrap my head around this work. Usually.

I don’t know what’s in store in the coming weeks. I don’t know how much this little village can bear, and I don’t know how much I can, either. After sharing the news of all this loss, a parishioner said, “You are our pillar.” Thanks, but I can’t bear that weight, especially not tonight.

The Rev. Brooks Cato ‘04 is a priest in the Diocese of Central New York. Originally from Arkansas, he is the Rector of St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church in Hamilton where he finds joy in writing, chasing his dogs, and digging up rocks.

I gave Susan one last hug and walked her to her car. This was the last time we’d be able to see people outside of our homes for 14 days, and she had a hard road ahead. I went home to my wife to sit quarantine together. Susan went home to grieve in cruel isolation.

Once home, I lysoled the car, my keys, anything I’d touched. I washed all my clothes and settled in for a long and uncertain wait. And as soon as I caught my breath, the phone rang. Another parishioner calling about her husband and his pneumonia and the fears she faced as the hospital took him away.

Two days later, David’s test results came back positive for the coronavirus, the first death in our county. “I’m already cried out,” Susan told me over the phone. “I’m going in to get tested.” Her son called later that evening. With a fever, shortness of breath, and a cough, the hospital admitted her.

Back when I worked with my dad, we called on quite a few cattle farms. These usually made for lighthearted but hard work. But once in a while, something awful

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COVID Exposes Racism

By Ian Palanga Prior to COVID, there was a prevailing social issue I was dealing with.

Being a half Ukrainian/ half Togolese child who grew up in a West African country, I experienced racism in a way that most US Americans may find odd and quite different. Here in the US, mixed people are denoted as black.

However, in African countries, where the roles are reversed and where white people are the minority, mixed people find themselves labeled as white.

Having a double national and racial identity that wasn’t fully accepted by either of my communities, brought rise to an existential crisis that was only festered by my adolescence.

Put simply, I was alienated in both white and black communities. There is a black community, a white community, an Asian community, an Australian, Subconti, and even Latin American community. But there is no

mixed community, nor are mixed people fully accepted in either of their racial groups.

Knowing that I am not the only one from Africa dealing with such things, I do my best to educate fellow members of my Togolese society, that having clearer skin, or having European ancestry doesn’t make me any less Togolese. I am not a 50/50. I am a 100/100 with the best and the most of the both worlds I come from, and so I am a part of both. And being a part of both doesn’t take away the place I have in the other.

Once COVID hit though, there were other things to bring attention to. Our school sports season was being canceled, and there was a lot of uncertainty whether our country could handle a major wave, because no one knew whether everybody would be responsible enough to follow safety guidelines (which they weren’t), nor were we sure that our economy could withstand a pressure similar to what Italy and the US experienced. There was also a lot of scrutiny towards Continued on next page

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the government on their handling of the situation, due to their very low margin for daily tests, and the fact that the numbers they made public didn’t seem to add up or make sense.

Our school couldn’t stay open physically either, as we couldn’t spontaneously adapt to a socially distanced environment. Furthermore, a large portion of our school community was elderly and or had pre-existing health conditions.

Fortunately, I felt quite secure from the pandemic financially, because both my parents successfully adapted their work to a virtual environment, keeping them safe from both the virus and unemployment.

With the ‘new normal’ we all had to get used to, and with how much we all required from each other to stay safe, I realized just how much potential my everyday choices had on the future. Washing my hands could literally save my life, or someone else’s, and I realized just how much of a responsibility we all have to do the necessary, be selfless, and keep not only ourselves, but each other safe, in a situation of crisis. I also realized, quite unfortunately, that rain doesn’t fall on one man’s house, and that not everyone seemed to understand that. Many disregarded the gravity of the pandemic, and some even thought the virus was a hoax, which is quite irrational to say the least. I didn’t comprehend how I could make the mature decision not to hug my grandmother (which I am yearning to do at the moment) whilst others could stay blind to the death around them and even go as far as to voluntarily cough in other’s faces and congregate in protest in the streets, all because they “want a haircut”. It was a shocking, but honestly, a somewhat expected reminder that some people in this world are just crazy.

I’ve had the bitter privilege to see the devastating effects of the virus third hand. My father unfortunately lost one of his friends to COVID. Having learned about it a bit later than the date it happened, I began to understand why my father was being so protective of me, and why he was so reluctant to let me out of the house to play basketball with my friends. He knew and saw what COVID could do, and he didn’t want it for me, or anyone else in the family to whom I could pass the disease onto if I were to act carelessly.

Aside from what disease can do to family and friends, COVID-19 has also showed us many other things. It has

showed us why we should listen to scientists, and not take advice from uneducated politicians who imply that they take a non-prescribed drug, or that we should start injecting ourselves with Listerine. It has showed us that we are all connected through our actions and choices.

It has taught us the word “quarantine”. It has showed us that the people have a greater responsibility than the government, and that the government’s responsibility should be the people, and that money should be their second priority. It has showed us what happens when we act irresponsibly, and reminded us that we have to actively educate each other, for there will always be a group of people who will make it their job to let the team down. It has showed us that female world leaders can be just as competent if not more than male leaders, which we see with the COVID control success of New Zealand and South Korea, contrasted with that’s of Brazil, the USA and the UK. It has even showed me that I don’t know how to wash my hands properly. But most importantly, it has exposed the social and systemic injustice in places like the United States, that can simply not be denied or ignored.

With such revelations made, I now make every effort to maintain better hygiene, stay educated, informed and willing to renew my ideas when presented with new information. I now make every effort to not perpetuate social injustices in my speech and actions, and go beyond sharing posts on an Instagram story.

What is more crucial however, is that we all learn from this experience. Politicians must learn to humble themselves and take advice from specialists before making decisions about situations they are simply not qualified to analyze and generate solutions for. They must recognize that politicizing something unnecessarily spawns nothing but chaos, and that they set the pace, the example for not only their nations, but the entire world.

We as a society must also learn to leave our political agendas out the window when dealing with a national, or even international crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic or climate change. We must also accept that we hold political, racial and cultural biases that do nothing but seed division and destruction. Thus, we must do our best to neutralize those biases. We all have to make an effort to listen to the other side with the intent to understand, not to counter. If we can do that, we can compromise and find solutions around the issues of social injustice in the world and operate collaboratively in an efficient manner that is in the long-term benefit of us all.

Ian Palanga ‘22 is from Lome, Togo, in West Africa.

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Yachting

By Sparrow Campbell There are a couple of prevailing story lines that have kept me afloat through the pandemic paralysis from Qatar. Landing in the Arabian desert from the Land of Enchantment, before we quite knew that a microorganism would soon change everything, hope was as it is before a war. Full of thoughts of restaurants we’d try and sights we might see, we were trivial and lighthearted then. Docile and naive, brash, superficial, careless.... we were ripe for the picking.

Within a few hours of my arrival, Qatar’s Supreme Committee for Crisis Management announced the cessation of scheduled passenger aviation. The foreseeable had been usurped by the unforeseeable. The anticipated, expat adjustment trajectory of relocation and acclimation to cultural context no longer held relevance. Our maps and charts were decimated. Pandemic culture now prevails. Humanity had been transplanted without a plan, and no one quite knew what that was or meant.

Our new flat was empty and echoing, harsh and bare.

Fresh construction, barely completed, with a film of concrete dust still settling. A reluctant home base with Eeyore at bat and unlimited innings to come. The country’s labor force was now abruptly confined to the industrial area.

Hard perimeters delineating a city within a city, as a nation state began to confront an enemy who fed on precisely the recipe of mosaic allure that is the gem called Doha.

Our terrible and formidable new world crept in with a crash. My personal transition, made more blunt by an absence of anything familiar, such as furniture or Internet, seemed amplified by the news that shops had been closed to protect us. Outside our austere confinement cell, breathing air together with other humans was suddenly life-threatening, and there was a sense that things were about to get fiercely worse.

It was then that I decided to take up yachting -- an all-encompassing theme, much larger than a fantasy, stronger than denial, and grander than an imaginary friend. So, by midMarch, we had selected our voyage: an intimate tour of the Persian Gulf. We took only our two dogs with us, ensuring a purely private and intimate high-seas retreat.

Elaborate and enduring, my mythical reality grows more credible every day. I mean, it really resonates.

In the letter to our family and friends, we would say: Dear Ones, We have taken the decision to restore our meditative lives through an extended seafaring retreat. Our focus will be on contemplation, music, art, yoga and literature. Where our inner life of late has become shallow and inconsistent on land, this secluded nautical excursion promises to revive -- and refresh us, as well as deepen our connection with you, our loved ones, and with all of humanity. We are grateful for this rare opportunity and look forward to seeing you upon our return, when the virus allows.

Grand aspirations, i realize, but i think this is what’s actually been happening. The joy of yachting has proven to be the most effective and enduring identity available.

More than a daydream -- it’s become an optimal, conscripted lifestyle. A calling even.

At first it was hard to imagine that yachting could be saving lives -- or that by going inside, we could be doing a bigger service to humanity and the planet than going outside ourselves. Creating a smaller, more intentional life does feel surprisingly impactful. It’s part of what Carmelite nuns, Tibetan monks, and contemplatives of all types have been trying to tell us for centuries. It’s possible that service can be contemplation or in this case just staying out of everybody’s way can be of service.

By the age of 3 or 4, I had adopted the identity of a Lakota Sioux girl, and subsequently, a young Timbavati lion. Encapsulated on our boat, it wasn’t difficult to convince myself to immerse in uninterrupted gazing at turquoise waters and pristine beaches while safeguarding our lives.

It’s like saying I spent a couple of years as a fish, as a Parisian, as a Campbell, as a member of the royal family. In 2020, i spent my year at sea.

As our excursion progressed, chandlers and cargo vessels sprung up and more and more provisions were delivered. Internet was installed, our fantasy enhanced over Zoom by our vivid, ‘actual’ backdrop, the one we all agreed was the real world, complete with saxeblue seas and mathematically-spaced palm trees, outshining any that could be digitally created or edited. The backdrop is real, the rest of my story, apocryphal.

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As we will only ever experience this writing digitally, and likely only meet each other virtually, i recommend you begin listening to some drifting, ambient music right now while you read, as we sail through one version of the Great Adjustment. With so much to mourn and to fear, it can be difficult to remain focused on the uplifting. If being easily distracted was an indicator of creativity, I’d be an incredible artist ... but music helps.

Like the Great Depression, we are living through something that will indelibly mark ours and future generations of humans. I save the waxy rind of Parmesan cheese for future soup broths because during the 1930’s, my grandmother learned to squeeze every ounce of purpose and flavor out of every available ingredient. Scarcity and isolation nurture different competencies than Easy Street. I resisted the identity of writer for a lifetime, chiefly because i feared the compulsory aloneness which defines it. The pandemic got me writing because we might die and i never said it to anyone. During the Great Adjustment, I’ve learned how to pickle vegetables so that they last longer and re-use everything I was previously thoughtless about.

I may not be able to ever get another fill-in-the-blank. I have also stopped misplacing things. I know whatever I’m looking for is either within the salon or the main cabin, so no need to panic that I might have lost it. I never disembark and no one ever comes aboard. There is a sense of total accountability in that.

I’ve never been a good minimalist, but when you have only four forks, you’re going to wash them right away so that you can eat again. That’s what running a tight ship means! This is a soft minimalism on our yacht. Very soft.

Yet even i have grown to appreciate the limitations our Great Adjustment lives demand. When “reality” is intolerable or antithetical to sanity, yachting becomes imperative. We swab the deck daily to keep the sand and the bougainvillea blossoms at bay.

Among the awkward benefits of yachting is its supreme exclusivity. We have no additional crew. We’ve grown more conscious and grateful for relationships to others, known and unknown to us. Where the moral imperatives demanded by climate change action didn’t quite get through to us all, perhaps this will.

The planet has been in a state of expansive disrepair for quite a while now. Yachting is that sensation in a dream when tumbling into the deepest, endless darkness but not exactly falling because gravity is still present, but different, and it shuttles you abruptly and smoothly in a novel direction between light and dark and taking off like a rocket all at once.

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.

Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

-- Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi Our yacht now has a lovely stateroom, a garden on the upper deck, a galley offering organic menus, an infirmary, barber shop, and spa. There are daily classes in our main deck yoga studio, piano and guitar intensives, and a broad range of wellness amenities. Celestial events on the upper deck have included the dazzling ring-of-fire solar eclipse and the many moons of Ramadan. Time is negligible while yachting, space moves on all sides, easing navigation of our lonely flotilla of somber, mandatory luxury.

For the first few months, it was forbidden to venture off deck, but once permission was granted, we secured a tender and approval to touch the water. We now swim straight off the bow, paddle toward a nearby islet, and steep our thirsty bodies in a gentle, ultramarine water-cosmos. The sea cradles us in a big, warm briny womb; remineralizing, hydrating, arousing our cells and souls.

The world on the other side of the surface overwhelms with strange familiarity, coaxing out breath, movement, prayer, and a hunch that if i get right with these fish, I’ll get right with myself, and that somehow this integral alignment will help you. ‘The hunch that inner work matters and that we finally have time and space to devote to that -- and what else can you do at sea for months but swab the deck and get right?

Three jellyfish stung me on my first swim back to the mother-ship. I have the hunch that intention could save us from ourselves. Inshā’Allah. I think we will call her Inshā’Allah Sparrow Campbell is president and chief executive officer for Sparrowhawk Inc. She has more than 20 years of event management and organizational development experience.