Notes from my Knapsack 3-19-20

Notes from my Knapsack 3-19-20

Jeff Gill

 

A bubble over Brigadoon

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If there is really a bubble over the top of Our Fayre Village, and Granville surrounded by high walls to keep out development and tacky businesses from intruding into our community, we should be fine with the whole COVID-19 virus deal.

 

After all, if intentional distancing is now something that the CDC and WHO are recommending, then we're on the right track here, aren't we?

 

To be serious for a moment, I feel badly for the students from China at Denison, and international students in general. To return home, and be uncertain about when you can come back, or to stay here and hope something can be worked out… no one saw all this coming, and we might not see the like of it for another decade or two, but right now the situation for family and friends is uncertain back home, and the course of the viral outbreak still unclear here in the United States, let alone around the world.

 

So even within our friendly confines, between Raccoon Creek and the Homestead, from Cherry Valley Road over to Loudon Street, we will still have to observe all the same precautions of hand-washing and elbow coughing and self-quarantining. The odds of a coronavirus making its way into to Welsh Hills are pretty good, considering our highly mobile population and much vaunted proximity to the John Glenn International Airport. The intersection of Broadway and Main is not far from Trafalgar Square and the Champs-Élysées and Tiananmen Square.

 

And this, too, is part of being a participant in a global culture. As the saying goes, we are all downstream. The idea that an infection or an idea is the property of any one corner of the globe is gone, and even the concept of a non-native species is problematic, when our "native" dandelions and plantain came from abroad, if longer ago, and now garlic mustard and purple loosestrife are so deeply woven into our landscape as to be inextricable. (Go look up Louis Bromfield and multiflora rose, or Johnny Appleseed and dog fennel for an education in global realities and the last couple of centuries.)

 

On the other hand, how can local areas maintain their own unique qualities while interacting with a much, much wider context? We don't want to encourage zebra mussels in the Great Lakes, nor have leaping Asian carp in Lake Erie. By the same token we're concerned about changes in the streetscape or local economy that transforms the entire experience beyond recognition.

 

It's a series of trade-offs and resistances and acceptance that can manage to make everyone uncomfortable. Lots of hand-washing and sanitizer and avoiding handshaking is not what most of us are used to, but it might need to become more common. The current virus will crest and fade in time and with summer's sunlight, but the seasonal influenza will always be with us, perhaps with our being a bit more vigilant the next time. And we're not likely to see grocery stores downtown again in our time, but the nature and mix of shops and retail will continue to change and surprise us.

 

Our resistance to change has been a community strength in some ways. That's worth maintaining, up to a point. But the idea we can avoid every bug in the system, any passing viral trend, is not only impossible, it would be unhealthy in the long run. We can build up some immunities to worse things by letting a few new ideas infect us from time to time.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's probably less into change than he should be, but doesn't care. Tell him what you'd like to change in Granville at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.