BillBarksdaleRealEstateJournal&Thoughts About Life

 

FEELINGS

by Bill Barksdale

In the wonderful movie The Fabulous Baker Boys Michelle Pfeiffer, playing a sassy saloon singer says, “Does anyone really need to hear somebody sing “Feelings” again?”.  I always laugh because a later scene cuts to her singing “Feelings” in a bar.  It was  written by Brazilian singer Morris Albert.  The song is super-sentimental and has been performed by so many singers it’s almost a cliché, yet it touches people because the lyric really talks about feeling life. 

For well over twenty years I wrote a real estate column about the nuts-and-bolts of real estate.  In my thirty-year career I learned a lot and tried to share what I learned.  Now someone else writes the nuts-and-bolts column and I’m free to talk about other matters.  I may write about that technical stuff in future columns, but for now my life is concerned with other things.

I heard an interesting idea the other day.  How will any of us describe these times to someone else 30 or 40 years from now if we’re still around?  I was just a little boy in the 1950’s when republican Senator Joseph McCarthy from the state of Wisconsin lorded his paranoid theories over the Senate’s House Un-American Activities Committee – HUAC - destroying lives, careers and driving some people to suicide.  His reign of terror finally began to crumble when Chief Council for the U.S. Army, Joseph Nye Welch, boldly confronted McCarthy during a hearing with, "Have you left no sense of decency?"

I saw the headline when the Reverend Jim Jones mass-murdered his flock in Jonestown in 1978 forcing, even children at gun-point to drink Cyanide-laced Kool Aid.  For you who weren’t around then, that’s where the now common comment “Drink the Kool Aid” comes from.  Nine days later, ex-Supervisor Dan White assassinated San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.  I used to take my film to Harvey’s camera shop to get developed, and have a friendly chat over the counter.  No digital cameras in those days.  Feelings. 

A few years later in the 1980’s I became a caregiver for AIDS patients and their loved ones as that plague began to wipe out thousands then millions of people - while a United States President said and did nothing.  In 2007 the economy of the U.S. came crashing down because of still largely unregulated, corrupt financial practices.  Now we have children locked in cages while they and their parents try desperately to escape murderous gangs and dictators.  Furthermore, we have Covid-19 killing thousands of Americans and thousands more around the world as economies flounder, and the struggle continues for equal justice under law.  The words “Equal Justice Under Law” are engraved over the entrance to the U.S. Supreme Court.

How might I describe today?  It’s always difficult to describe the scope of an event when you’re in the middle of it.  We don’t yet know where this is going.  Certainly, fear and loneliness.  I think I’d say that a new vocabulary and behavior evolved:  social-distancing, Wear a mask and save lives, contact tracing, antibody test, self-quarantine, heroism, pandemic, contagion without symptoms, corona virus, flattening the curve.  The list goes on and on.  Then there’s white supremacy, riots, divided government, semi-automatic weapons, fake news, “the wall”, Black Lives Matter – with many more items to add. 

I felt so sad the other day when a dear friend who lives alone told me “It’s been months since anyone has hugged me.”  She’s one of millions.  Touch is essential to nearly every sentient being.  Touch is so necessary that without it babies die. 

We’re now into the tenth month since we were made aware of Covid-19.  People are exhausted and angry.  Nearly a fifth, that’s about twenty percent of the world’s known dead from this pandemic are Americans, even though we’re only about four percent of the world’s population.  People are struggling with depression, often not even recognizing how it’s affecting them. 

This is only the second time in my life that I’ve seen a disease politicized, the first being HIV/AIDS.  But then as now, we see heroes step forward.  Back in the days when HIV/AIDS emerged Dr. Anthony Fauci was a very visible young researcher trying to discover the cause and a cure.  Now he’s back at the age of nearly 80, guiding us and researching the cause and possible cure for this new pandemic.  Hospital workers and doctors, post office employees, store clerks, janitors, garbage collectors, government bureaucrats, teachers, food processors and so many others, risk their lives everyday so society can keep going.  My feelings toward these people are gratitude, admiration, and sympathy because of the fear and risk they face each day - yet keep going. 

As TV news reporter Walter Cronkite would say at the end of each broadcast, "And that's the way it is.”