Oh brother, it’s Guy Smiley again…
The taste of sickness wasn’t bad. Mom always made buttered toast and orange juice, and I’d suffer gallantly, a feverish juvenile sloth, watching Sesame Street.
Guy Smiley drove me nuts. Didn’t realize I’d grow up to be him.
Oh well.
Alert alert! BREAKING NEWS! I’ll be on The Schilling Show today at 1:30 pm eastern, talking about 5 years since the COVID lockdowns, Cities on a Hill, and what we’ve learned.
Listen live here, or local to Charlottesville on Newsradio WINA 1070 AM. I’ll be posting a recording once it’s online, too. A big thanks to Christine, Merian, Mark, John, and of course Rob Schilling for making this possible.
Afternoon update: The show is live here (I start at around the 55 minute mark). Big thanks to Rob for the insightful conversation, Marshall for well, marshalling things (he’s the producer) and for all the folks listening in.
And now, back to our regular programming…
Vol. 148, April 15th, 2025 Published a day early online
The Water Clock
Mom said she’s picking dandelions tomorrow.
The flecks of mock sunshine scatter across the green fields– almost ready. Clouds drift through the lazy afternoon, letting patches of the real sun through, the light playing across the mountain. Spring unfolds gently this year.
I walked down to the stream to watch. It swept the stony bank, then rushed noisily under the railroad tracks. The tunnel is so old, generations of trolls could have lived there. (I don’t believe in trolls, but if I were one, I’d set up shop there, human opinions be dashed.)
The water sounds the same, though, day by day, and the stones sit, listening. C.S. Lewis said God made us to love both change and permanence: the rhythm of seasons and such. I imagine the stream is Nature’s water clock, each burble a tick or a tock, bringing a new fiddlehead or a tiny cloud of bluets to scatter at the feet of the oaks.
The dandelions seem the bright brassy chimes that mark the quarter hours. I’ve got a few antique clocks back up at the house, ticking through the long nights and sunny days, vigilant.
The violets and pine seedlings echo them outside the window, waiting for the great peal of a summer noon.
Honey Mustard
A wild mustard plant blesses the driveway with a spot of color (and a tasty snack for a honeybee).
Book of the Week
The Encyclopedia
In the digital era, a paper encyclopedia seems strange. But I just snagged the 1911 Britannica. It’s a time capsule, a historical perspective, and balance to the “edit wars” of online editions.
Happy Birthday, Ronald (McDonald)
Ray Kroc opens his first McDonald’s today, 1955 in Des Plaines, Illinois.
Carol’s Appalachian Word of the Week
Wooling (messing up): “Ethel! Stop wooling up your nice dress before we even get to church.”
Quotes for the Soul
“The bluebird carries the sky on his back.”
–Thoreau
Write to Us!
The Nighthawk is a new old-fashioned way to connect, published weekly. You’re invited to write back, or just enjoy reading. Let’s have some fun! It’s a social paper! Send stories, etc to: PO Box 783, Rustburg, VA 24588 or Joshurban@protonmail.com
Letters from Josh
(A weekly update from Josh Urban’s adventures on the farm and in the city. #229)
Appearing in the Altavista Journal, etc: Five Years Past
Howdy folks, and welcome back to the show! Got a serious one for you today. It’s been five years since the lockdowns, five years since the Fear arrived, five years since the masks spread. Five years in a world with COVID. What have we learned?
Well, that’s an annoying way to put it You’re kind enough to read this, so I’ll keep the ear-boxing confined to my own head (but you’re invited to join the thinking). What have I learned?
A new friend sparked the question. Christine Black wrote a kind review of my book Cities on a Hill–21 Isolated Months With The Elderly During COVID (my account of working in a locked-down nursing home). During that time, one of the residents, the perfect casting for any grandma in any Hallmark movie, told me I should write it. So I did, witnessing their year barred from family, and what happens when safety is placed above everything else, at any cost.
Christine got a copy on the five year anniversary of the pandemic. “Yours was one of the only ones I could find. Why aren’t people writing about this?” she asked. “Why aren’t people talking about it?” I don’t know. But the question is a match, and my brain is always awash in gasoline. (Must be something in the coffee.) Woof.
Maybe some folks look at the pandemic like a hurricane–here today, gone tomorrow, it is what it is. I saw people die from the disease (but less than I expected), from loneliness, and, I suspect, the treatment. Some died suddenly for reasons unknowable. I don’t know, I’m not a doctor, only a friend who’s not allowed to ask. Pastor John is still on my Google calendar. At 7:20 every Tuesday evening, the ten minute reminder pops up for his guitar lesson that he’ll never attend. And I’ll never delete it.
Barbara is always giving me a hug when I put on those heavy shirts with the logo. “I wanted to work for that company once” I told her as she cleaned rooms at the nursing home. She got me a few extra from her fella. But that was then, and she went to the hospital one day, got on a ventilator, and never came home. I don’t know why.
I emerged unscathed, except almost everything burned: My work, my industry, my atheism, my trust in the State, my pursuit of happiness as a goal, blind faith in experts and Big Science (but not the scientific method–there’s a lethal difference), the naive idea that doing the Right thing was easy, that “all it took was a little kindness”, that conflict was to be avoided, that History was something in the books. I lost friends who still live, but that’s okay. I wish them peace, and will always defend their right to think and speak disagreement. That’s a promise.
I moved, and here we are, way out in the country where the moonlight washes the fields clean. There’s God, church, a flag on the front porch, grass-fed beef in the freezer. Change on every front. It blows my mind. If the old Josh could see me now.
And what’s this Service word that keeps popping up? I’ve never been to prison, but felt like a jailer when I told those old folks they couldn’t go outside “for their own good.” Now I feel like an ex-con drinking in the sky when I see the ordinary things: cars driving, people crowding, a cool spring breeze rustling the wild mustard plant at the end of the driveway. It can stay. I like it. Beauty is worth something.
These are some of the things that I’ve learned.
How about you?
–Josh