

### Crisis 2020

by

#### Myanne Shelley

SMASHWORDS EDITION

PUBLISHED BY:

Myanne Shelley at Smashwords

Crisis 2020

Copyright © 2020 by Anne Shelley

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This ebook may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/myanne to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

Chapter 1

# Where's Callie

@allstaff @allboard @everyone Has anyone heard from Callie? Urgent need her signature in lieu of Marty's on bank account transition docs

JC I left 3 messages already, no reply

RT text or VM, think her voice mail full

KM Text, VM, slack, email. Nothing. Her input needed, getting annoyed

RT Try facebook?

JC Sending FB, Insta, Twitter

AH Are you guys concerned? She's got to be taking Marty's death hard.

AH Sorry, Lila, we all are. Worried Callie especially what I meant.

JC OMG, she's supposed to speak at the service and she's AWOL?

LW Hi everyone. She's done this before; I'm sure she will reappear. Keep trying.

RT Is there someone else who could sign the bank doc?

KM They said two officers and that only leaves her and Elizabeth, Marty was the 1st

EE Heard she had a client, maybe onsite there?

AH Without her phone or laptop? Come on, she's blowing us off.

EE Have a heart, she's upset.

RT Couldn't she sign whatever at the service?

JC Does someone have a list of all the items? Maybe more responsive if she knows it's a whole bunch of stuff.

AH We're trying to compartmentalize – no work at the service

KM What if she's not there, we've got bills now

KM Payroll in 2 days

KM Bank transfer must happen ASAP

RT We could send Elizabeth to the bank in person at least for the account matters

AH Elizabeth would you have time?

LW Don't worry about the family. We would expect Marty's work to pop up at the service!

JC I hope there's somebody available to represent LIF if Callie doesn't show up.

EE We will have plenty of representation, and Lila, I'd be happy to say a few words. Alma, Kai, I will do what it takes to make sure we have funds for payroll.

JC Callie was on Twitter an hour ago. Voice mail still full.

AH She hates Slack. Uses the new platform from google for her clients

RT No, is it Musks, but you need to be invited

AH From Tesla, WTF

RT No, its somebody else but point is limited pings

AH Yeah unlike us oops sorry guts

AH sorry guys

JC Can somebody set a deadline here like when do we panic

KM Kinda sounds like you're already there

EE The service is a few hours away. There's time.

....

....

....

CM Hi team. Apologies, I needed some time. I will see you at the service. I will have time for you after, bring docs, we can be discrete. See everyone soon.

LW @allstaffinternal Please don't anyone mention to Callie that it starts at 5. I told her 4:30.

Chapter 2

# Callie Faces the Crowd

I tried tuning out, turning off the devices, taking deep breaths, focusing on breathing. Allowing the all encompassing present to wash over me. Appreciating the breaths and my feet on the ground, the warmth of sunlight on my back, streaming in the wide back window like it's just a normal afternoon.

Except that I am at home staring at my reflection, having cast off one then another ridiculous set of clothes. My breath becomes fast and short again, as my attention skitters off one way and another. The laptop needs charging, my private phone blinks with incoming pings. The quiet in my head doesn't negate the questions and remarks and demands on my time. I have already missed a deadline with my clients and they are getting more fretful with every back and forth, assurances notwithstanding. The LIF staff is extra needy too.

Marty, of course, is still dead.

Yeah, being in the moment doesn't account for that stuff, does it. Was he supposed to embrace his oneness with the world those final weeks, wracked with pain, aware of how no miracle cures were in the offing despite everyone's desperate wishes, despite every advance of biotech he had ever helped enable?

I take in my reflection, the hardness in my eyes as I recall more of the platitudes I've been hearing. At least it was quick. He knew what was happening and he was surrounded by his loved ones. He didn't linger. Oh yeah, a big hooray for the bright side of Pancreatic cancer.

Suddenly exhausted with this day before it's half over, I select a simple drapey dress. It's royal blue rather than black, but that's not a convention I think most people care about anymore. It's old, a bit big on me now, but I can belt it. I reach around for a handful of hair and a large clip. Twist and clip it back and I can look formal rather than in need of a trim.

Streaks of white in my hair and gully-like lines framing my eyes remind me that I am 50. Full on middle aged, in case my sense of exhaustion and the fact that I am about to go speak at a friend's service aren't reminders enough. The dress is long enough to go with light flat boots and bare legs, so sudden changes of internal temperature shouldn't be a problem. Speaking of middle aged.

Eyes closed and then facing away from the mirror, I revert quickly to the mental picture of my appearance and age I consider myself, which is quite a bit younger, and strong and solid. Much closer to the person I was when I met Marty, it occurs, and I flick on my ipad to make a note. I was never one to prepare a detailed speech for such occasions, but it behooves me to at least jot down a brief outline, some points to be sure and cover. That will hardly be enough for most of my young colleagues at Less Impact First, who shudder at the very idea of an unplanned moment, especially on stage, but it will be more that I've generally done to prepare for a speech.

Off the cuff generally serves me fine. But this is Marty. I picture the moment we met. I was not quite 30, actually as young as I like to think I act and wish I looked. Also dressed up, uncomfortably formal as today. The setting was a big tech-corporate board room where I was meeting and officially signing documents for the buyout of my dinky little start up. (It was hardly even that, it was me and my laptop at the local Peet's with some time and wisdom begged off genius pals, but I had puffed it up with cliched jargon references for leverage.)

Anyway, there I was to face the Man, the big honchos of my buyers, the men who would make me wealthier than I possibly deserved, dudes who ran the company that itself would later be bought out and morphed unimaginably, as would my little app. Take a number, kid, Marty was likely to say when I still sometimes expressed my distress that my mapping app, designed and intended as a device for urban planners to promote sustainability had been twisted into a money making tool for corporate investors to game hot housing markets.

Marty Windsor had attended the meeting as an advisor and angel investor for the then still small buying group. I had expected a set of unimaginative jargon-spouting men with over inflated egos and an unjustified sense of self-importance, and the rest of them didn't disappoint. Marty, though. He was relaxed. Warm. He always had this way of cutting through everyone's bullshit and focusing on the actual point, from a simple negotiation to a drawn out Board dispute.

So. Room full of guys slyly checking themselves out in their designer suits and careful coifs and to the latest minute mobile devices, and there sat Marty, an old sports jacket slapped on in deference to the formality of the room, his sandy hair sparse over a tanned and grinning smile-lined face. Pretty sure he had a flip phone – he did not jump to buy the latest thing but waited for devices designed for optimum use.

He was genuinely nice, smart without the need to show it, and possessed with a remarkable insatiable curiosity about pretty much everything. He quickly understood what my app did, and better, what it could do, and why. And he asked about my background, my motivations, as though only building a complete picture would suffice even after the purchase decision had been made. Of course I found him unique and charming – who else had managed not to stumble over my name or limply shake hands without eyes wandering chestward and back.

He was funny too, and once he knew I appreciated that dry subtle wit, was quick with the asides and humorous stories whenever we met. Even when we were first acquainted, I felt that he really got me, understood my essential self. That's the starting point, I told myself, that will resonate with everyone. Marty had been capable of honing in on what was good and true in just about everybody.

Certainly that is the case for everyone at Less Impact First, where his name is still listed on the letterhead as former President and founding Board member. The LIF story line is that we co-founded it, meshed our ideas and organizing skills and thus spawned a brand new nonprofit that would help shape and save humanity as it teetered on the brink of ecological and financial and social chaos back after the last housing bubble burst.

Innocent days those were, from the perspective of a dozen years later, and the reality was not that simple at all. Generously you could say the seeds were sown, the concepts forged out of several wide ranging discussions the two of us had over late meals. But alone, I would have, I did stop at the lofty ideas. Marty was the pragmatist, feet on the ground, able to turn sky high ideals into an action plan, and pull together the people and funds and tools to actually launch the thing. He and his incredibly focused and supportive wife Lila, who never stepped up for credit yet was always just to the side of the picture, getting things done.

My rambling thoughts tumble to a stop as I picture Lila. They had been married for more than 40 years, raised two kids, been partners in every venture right up to fighting the physical pain of his cancer. She has – of course – been an absolute trooper, with him minute by minute, arranging hospice, coordinating visits and cutting off anything and anyone who would bring him down. And when the inevitable end came, she bore it with the grace and dignity we all expected. But she must be experiencing such core deep pain in her heart right now that I can barely fathom. Heartbreak that diminishes the rivulets of self-pity that have been washing over me certainly.

I pause again, several – a flood – of water analogies now flowing, much as our ideas did when we kicked back and shared them, diving deep, surfacing to clarity. Guilt pours over me now, because in these last weeks, I kept information from him. I did not have the open honest exchanges I actually needed, because I knew it would add to his burden. Lila would have shut me up anyway, but I was sensitive enough not to bother either of them with the recent divisions on the Less Impact First board. Marty may have been aware of factions taking sides, of the philosophical disruption and devolution of our original mission. But he did not know – and would have been distressed to have learned – just how real and tangible the divisions have become.

It occurs to me that this service might be the last time both sides, all the parties, gather in a neutral setting, all united in our agreement that losing Marty is bad for our movement.

Obviously the problems we seek to mitigate won't go away, so there should still be some sense of common ground. But as the years spin along and overuse of non-renewable energy continues, as the planet heats from human impact, as financial inequities worsen, as tech innovations keep accidentally spawning new social dilemmas – won't everyone trying to stop the madness just dig in deeper? Already I have listened and felt some sympathy toward everything I've heard. And then resented when realizing that my simple act of listening and saying I get that has been spun into co-founder Callie Marshall is on our side.

We formed Less Impact First as basically a local Bay Area tech-centric nonprofit that seeks to better the planet and lessen the impact that 21st century tech is having. Especially in light of the myriad innovations ("disrupters," as many prefer), entities like Uber and Airbnb that start out mixing tech and a simple solution that scale and morph into traffic jam nightmares and loss of critical rental housing. Facebook turning people into helpless smart phone addicts, jonesing for their next thumbs up dopamine rush, unable to distinguish truth from the spewing of Russian bots, and giving up personal data towards the corporate bottom line. Just for example. All we wanted was to use the same quick technology, easy fundraising through social media and fun in-person events to build a solid funding base. With that base, we could fund the research and methodology to take on the unintended consequences our fast evolving tech community has spawned and the havoc it is wreaking on our planet, to implement real time steps toward genuine sustainability.

Sounds so simple, right, just a quick elevator speech, a click away donation button, and help build a better world. Lately, the loudest voices in the room can't even agree on the wording of our latest vision statement, much less the vision itself. Board members are nearly all divided into factions, spitting out internal and unshared missives within their ranks. Staff are also lining up on sides, probably suspecting a purge. I hear from everybody, it seems. Callie, Switzerland.

I wonder if Lila has, or soon will be pulled in every direction as well. How long will a respectful silence toward her mourning last, how long before they reach to persuade her to take a side. How long before I can seek her counsel too.

Not today, that much is clear. The hours have gotten away from me, as usual these days. It's not super late except that it takes too long to clear my mind and gather my things before heading out the door. I will have to jog to BART and again to the Unitarian church at the other end. It would be an insult to Marty's memory to drive or Uber (not that that will likely stop some people), and anyway traffic is so bad it wouldn't save time.

The church is a pretty old stone building, graceful and archaic amidst the solid structures and roar of central San Francisco. Approaching at as fast a trot as I can muster, I see several people out front, in dark dressy clothes, hastily texting or murmuring into their phones. I slow, less late than I thought, or perhaps the start time was purposely flexible. A quick brush and redo of the twist, a couple pats to make sure my phone is off and ipad available, and I swallow a rush of air. Ready to face the crowd.

Good thing, as I am quickly surrounded by LIF folks.

"You made it," two or three exclaim, and I am puzzled; that had hardly been in doubt, whatever our philosophical differences, right?

"We have about five minutes," somebody says, and a bunch of them consult phones and paper handouts. I take one – it's a simple but well designed program, Marty Windsor's smiling face over the years 1945 – 2020 in a dignified font. A bio, a photo of him with Lila and their kids, a list of accomplishments and another list of speakers and readings for the service. I should find the kids, hardly kids, 30 somethings, whom I've met a few times but don't really know.

One of the more strident LIF staffers is at my side, whispering about urgent paperwork, while another corrects her and a third tries to quiet them both until after the service. Board members ignore them and reach past to shake hands, offer condolences.

Elizabeth, LIF's director, steers me away from the group and toward a smaller entranceway, in that casual but forceful way she has.

"Look at that dress, midnight blue gauze in a sea of black suits," I hear someone's murmur behind me. "Callie always has to stand out."

Crap, was I supposed to hear that? Is dark blue so bad?

Elizabeth pulls me along, reading my expression. "Please ignore them. You're lovely, perfectly appropriate."

She's also in a black suit, but whatever. Clothes are hardly the point here. Elizabeth points out where we should sit, the podium and the minister. The Unitarians aren't super formal for sure. The minister is out greeting people, and while Lila and the adult children are somberly dressed and properly seated in the front, numerous older people, friends from various parts of their lives, surround them. It has more of the feel of a farmers' market than a church, and I feel an unexpected smile curl across my face. Marty would approve.

Shortly, some order takes hold. Music begins, and the minister speaks warmly of why we are gathered. Apparently Marty's life will be discussed chronologically, his brother and then a college pal starting us off, then the son and daughter. It's all concise and sweet. Or maybe I'm just not processing input well just now – phrases resonate, so true, and then that person chokes up or offers a beatific upward smile, and they're done.

I'm toward the end, after his professional business partner, before Lila's coach at the boxing gym, an unlikely place where he until recently volunteered time. I glance at my ipad notes and feel my throat constrict for a moment. Nervous energy that I long ago learned to channel up and out. I feel the pent up energy of the room all around me, and I can hardly sit still until it is my turn to speak.

Eyes are on me as I stride forward, wide skirt flowing and chasing my movements, settling as I settle at the podium. "Hello everyone," I say, smiling out and testing the sound strength. "Listening to all these loved ones has created such a lovely portrait of Marty, hasn't it? It seems like we all know and love some aspect of him, and together have brought forth a complete picture, or almost a movie of a life brilliantly lived." I pause, looking out at nods, tearful smiles. "When I first met Marty, years ago, I was struck by how quickly he really got me. How he was really interested. It was unforced. As was our friendship." Mindful of the short time allotted, I fly through the creation of LIF, and the immense value of having had such a mentor.

"As we look ahead to a future without his guidance and wisdom, without his warmth and humor," I feel myself choking up and will it into no more than sparkly eyes, "I will take heart that so much of what he believed in lives on at Less Impact First. Whatever our differences, we share our history with Marty. Our core philosophy, our sense of the importance of our work. He wouldn't want us to let up for a minute." I pause again, feeling calmer, Marty's spiritual hand on my shoulder. "I'll keep arguing with him in my head and he'll probably still keep winning. His wisdom and his spirit will keep resonating with us all."

There's a tiny rush in the room as I return to my seat, like people are reminding themselves not to clap. I try to focus on the next speaker, the boxing coach. She only knew him as a senior citizen, a volunteer and retiree who supported his wife. She is young and overwhelmed, and her brief heartfelt words wrap it up nicely. If you believed in reincarnation, you'd imagine him just about lined up now to launch his next life as a beautiful happy baby.

After the formal service ends, much of the crowd merges into a reception area, where finger food, organic no doubt, has been laid out. People spill out into an airy little courtyard, some somber, many others suddenly loud and vigorous. Conversations swirl into bright crescendos. Memories are shared; we all have a Marty story, it seems.

I get into one of those social event volleys that feel like a ping pong match, or Wac-a-mole. Friends and associates appear in the forefront and we have our quick heartfelt exchange. As we move into things more genuine to say, that person is replaced by someone else, someone from a slightly different context, and I push forward their name from whatever place in my brain I can count on to track that stuff. We go, they go, I feel my heart pumping. I feel good, I enjoy this, and then I feel bad for feeling good. It's supposed to be a sad occasion, but it isn't any longer. Cliché or not, there is no doubt that this is what Marty would have wanted.

From the corner of my eye I see one of the LIF communications people filming the gathering, and I remember I'm supposed to sign some stuff. As I edge my way back into the room, I spot Alma and Kai, two LIF support staffers, nominally helping with the drinks but also tracking my movement. Kai is super organized, if a bit too tenacious in her demands – I acknowledge the need for such personalities on a team even as they tire me. I head toward them, lest they start elbowing the elderly on their mission to waylay me.

For all the dire and urgent requests, it's a simple set of paperwork they put before me. Things I'm sure could have been handled digitally, but I'm not going to make the point now – I'm here, they're here, they are going by the book even if the book is clearly outdated. If I'm honest, it's a bit of a rush to be in demand like this, my live signature so critical even during this event.

Elizabeth joins me, murmuring her thanks and then steering me subtly in the direction of some major donors, friends of Marty's clustered together in the main part of the church. Not people I know very well, but I have been trotted out for these folks at events before, part of the standard showcase of eccentric intellect, the flighty idea people, the coal mine canaries who need to be tamed, listened to, understood and funded.

This set of people are old, as old as my parents would have been if still living. Hands clasping, tiny hugs, and I speak my bit, humble and grateful for their support. I feel less of a fraud amongst these folks, who have little reason to question my wild ideas and whose support is real. These are people who remember the way things were when I was a child in the 1970s. As opposed to wealthy donors my own age and younger, people who also made a chunk of change in tech. People who are more interested in seeing and being seen at a LIF event, trendy and unaware of the irony that their affluent lifestyles conflict so starkly with the less impact mission.

Two of our most vocal board members join our little posse, which is expanding outward as donors flow in and out and Marty's regular friends look on.

"He would have loved this." Garret has been around since close to the beginning, and he brought on his pal Brad.

"It's awesome. Awesome turn out," Brad says.

What am I supposed to do, disagree? But I don't really trust Brad. He is super bright for sure, and his wealth has helped the LIF budget all right. Everything is awesome or perfect for this guy though, and he seems incapable of understanding divergent points of view. He is a leader of the 2.0 faction, as they have snarkily been called. He doesn't see why everybody doesn't climb on board: if we are about having less impact in promoting sustainable energy, reuse, purposeful less use of resources, then logic dictates that we should move farther. Don't recommend one child per person, demand it. Don't persuade people to use less energy, cut it off. Lately the phrase "useless use" of resources has been bandied, and it implied euthanasia to me.

I manage to keep all these thoughts safe in my head, and keep an appropriately gentle smile on my face. Regularly I will see a post of my image or even catch a glimpse of my reflection, and be surprised by my appearance of calm and lack of guile. Versus the chaotic swirl that I know was buzzing in my head at the time.

The Board members move off, factions rather pointedly not intermingling. Apron-clad workers bring out second set of food items, and these quickly disappear. Mark of a successful event, I know I'm not the only one thinking this. People don't want to leave.

Finally, I catch a few moments with Lila and the Windsor kids. They flank her, and it's a tossup as to who looks the most exhausted. Lila's face is carefully powdered, and she generally exudes the appearance of calm. Her eyes betray her though, reddened and awash with unshed tears.

The son and daughter have deep shadowed eyes and hollowed out cheeks. They pretty much kept a vigil with Marty the last days, and both have demanding jobs too. We chat, I ask questions and offer my own platitudes, but the words don't matter. I just want them to know I am with them, and I care. I can't say it aloud to them, but under my sympathetic surface I feel the sting of jealousy – I am deprived of the mentor who was closer to me than my own father ever was, but I'm denied the chance to mourn as they can. I'm still half on stage here, and about to be drawn in as battle lines form.

Lila tells me that she has finally gotten a good night's sleep. She couldn't at all, right after. I congratulate her even as I inwardly think how when you're old, your victories kind of diminish. Yet, good things are good. She turns to greet someone beside me. I see her Parkinson's tremor in her hand, more pronounced than usual, and the way she clasps it with her other hand. Marty used to say it was like a poker tell for her – tension or stress would show there even when she tried to be calm.

I've lost all track of time, as per usual. This thing was set for 90 minutes, but it's close to three hours gone. Marty's poor family is going to collapse from exhaustion, or the mellow Unitarians who run the facilities will have to bring out cattle prods. I get it, I do, I don't like to leave a gathering where I'm having an inspiring exchange of ideas either. That's the story for a bunch of these folks, I'd say.

For myself, it occurs, this is the public goodbye. Leaving Marty's service is leaving him again. An image of our last goodbye lodges in my head. We were keeping it casual, Lila careful not to acknowledge that visitors may be saying a final farewell. He was on the couch in their living room where he held court, but half prone, curled around that painful mid-section, face drawn. His hand was weak, clasping mine, but his eyes met mine with great intensity. Like he was already passing on his brightness.

That afternoon, I left in a hurry. I regularly run late, so that's normal for me, but the plain fact is I had to get out of there before something in me cracked, before all the unspoken mess of the bigger world came spewing out. And I feel that sensation now. The joy and politeness of the gathering giving way to the need to just stand on a cliff somewhere, screaming.

I clench my fists and let it all shudder through me. Tell Elizabeth as lightly as I can that I don't want to overstay, incur the church's wrath. She nods, a distracted smile on her face, I'm only one of a herd of skittish people who's personality quirks she must oversee.

I step purposefully toward the bathrooms, which are near a back exit, and without looking back make my escape. Everyone will assume I'm off having serious LIF one on ones. Striding alone down the cracked pavement of the sidewalk, traffic whizzing noisily by, it's like the cracks and cacophony belong there – they're already in my mind.

Most of the time I can keep it all at bay. But on a day like this, my good friend gone and the organization we built teetering towards a zero hour, I wonder if I'm about to be torn apart from the inside as well.

A guy half hidden in the shadow of a building staggers out toward me, muttering something, and I have to veer around him. My body language snaps back to confidence and speed – I refuse to be frightened by people whom society has cast off. But inside, the chaos swirls. One thing for sure, none of this is sustainable – my mind's conflicting emotions, LIF's in-fighting board, this country as it is today.

Chapter 3

# Lila's Fresh Perspective

Lila Windsor has always been a reader, and an advocate for learning through reading and research. Well worn pages of books a lifeline for nearly all her 71 years, running along side Laura Ingalls Wilder and Scout Finch and then the racier gals from Alice Adams and Doris Lessing, the early feminists of The Women's Room. Later exploring different cultures with Amy Tan and Isabelle Allende, taking solace in Anne Tyler, Richard Russo, Barbara Kingsolver.

She made frequent forays to the library as a child, a long but perfectly safe and acceptable walk for a lone child in the late 1950s. Sidled into the adult section when she had finished everything in the children's and later she encouraged her own kids to do the same. (By that time, the late 80s, of course she had to accompany the children, no more pleasant solo strolls for a youngster then.) Even in the days of working plus raising the kids, she stole pleasurable moments with a book – on the commute, while dinner cooked, before zonking out in bed. Oh, remember those days, when time for sleep was pressed but falling asleep was easy.

When e-readers entered the scene, Marty embraced them. He had been a vocal advocate of making all the world's knowledge freely available to everyone since the first little NPR snippet about this thing called the world wide web. He had gotten them those clunky mono-screen Kindles when they first came out. Lila finally embraced the technology with her tablet that made the pages look like a book. Since retiring six years back, she had finally had the time to dig back into books, spend whole afternoons reading, only to get upended by her body's increasing inability to be still. She and Marty had done plenty of online research as she began her long battle with Parkinson's. Only to be superceded by his short, violent and fatal bout with Pancreatic.

The point is, they had been always proactive. They took steps, they were planners. No excuse to sit around whining, they had told the kids, as well as each other, when you can address a problem, analyze it, figure out a distant solution and then march down a path of your own creation towards it.

These past months had been filled with all of that – his pains and then the diagnosis, the possible treatments, experimental research, statistics on survival. Then quickly they had progressed – regressed – to a proactive approach to pain management and palliative care, to assuring his right to a peaceful death at home, in a place of comfort and without heroic measures. Plus putting documents in order and letting him be on rights with his family and friends. Such a large group, the latter. A blessing, yes, but sometimes overwhelming.

Even after, Lila had been terribly busy. So many things to do, people to see, endless meetings to negotiate bank accounts and legal papers. She and the kids scrambling to pull together a service. Trying to comfort them, and others, and often as not being the one to soothe the people who had started out trying to comfort her.

Now, mere weeks later, the demands on her time were drying up fast, like summer in the western landscape they both so loved. The children back with their own busy lives, as it should be. They called, they checked in like the good caring people she and Marty had raised them to be. Her friends were around, no one had abandoned her. But now her days stretched ahead empty in a way that was new and unwelcome. Now, she had time for more research, time to figure out mourning and widowhood and moving forward on her own.

But she was just so tired.

On a bright sunny winter morning, perfect for preliminary gardening or bringing the tablet out to sit and read in the soft lounge chair on their tiny back deck, she found herself instead immobilized at the kitchen table. She felt numb more than sad. She had forced herself to eat, she had made that promise to everyone. But sat in her ratty old t-shirt and sweats, had not even showered. She was alone. No need.

All those lawyer meetings and receiving friends – at least they forced her to look presentable. She knew it was important to establish a routine, to set small goals, to stay active and social. You can know it without actually doing it though, why don't they mention that in all the helpful blogs and chirpy advice articles?

She thought about activities for the week. She would go to Rock Steady boxing two or three times. Her fellow Parkinson's colleagues there were mostly age peers, sympathetic but also realistic about loss. There for a good workout first and foremost, which she certainly needed. She gazed down at her right hand, which unattended did that small queen-waving tremor, thumb on its own rapid track. Reached for her coffee cup and it stopped the movement and functioned okay; she was careful not to fill things too full.

Parkinson's was not that bad, certainly not compared to a lot of afflictions. Thing like eating out could be difficult though, in a way the able bodied didn't get, didn't appreciate the ease of guiding fork to mouth without a second thought.

Which reminded her – this afternoon was a Board meeting at Less Impact First. She had agreed to take the remainder of Marty's term back after his diagnosis, when he stopped being reliably able to sit comfortably for an hour at a time. This meeting was to start with a social gathering, the sort of standing and balancing a drink and finger food that Lila found more and more challenging. Funny, she thought, everyone else would be focussed on the conflicts within the organization, the factions and personalities, and she would need all her concentration just to not spill on her blouse.

She was scheduled to meet with their dear friend Callie beforehand. Assuming Callie remembered and showed up – she was always juggling projects and notoriously scattered about being where she was supposed to be. Lila worried for her as much as for her own children. The kids had their own friends, jobs and seemingly stable lives. Callie was more fragile, like a delicate flower poking its way amongst hardy weeds. Like that song about Princess Di, she thought. Like the late princess, Callie had that sort of charisma, but also that air of vulnerability.

Marty always assured her that the gal could hold her own. He saw her sharp mind first and foremost, and took at face value the way she could speak in public and work a crowd. He had been less attuned to peoples' subtleties, to the public masks they wore. Last few times Callie had come to visit, she was her ever hyper, bouncy wild concept-spouting self with him, and then looked about ready to break apart, to fully shatter, after she left his side. He didn't see it, and it was a credit to her that she spared him. As for Lila herself, she as always pretended to be strong.

Lila hied herself out of her chair and back toward the bathroom for her shower. They had talked, a couple years back, of redoing it, making it accessible for her, for both of them if need be. Well, so much for his future needs anyway. He had once feared being physically immobilized. No longer a fear. Lila so far and in the immediate future could manage. Marty? No more worries at all for him, much as he had been focussed on the ills of the whole planet right up until the end.

That was another thing, she thought, to appreciate about Callie. She knew Marty well, knew his beliefs and philosophies, and never once suggested that his death would be, should be, or had been a suicide. Oh, she was aware of the whispers. People at LIF, the 2.0 faction, they were frankly on board with it in this situation. It should have been Marty's choice, went the gossip – he advocated sensible use of finite resources after all.

The cancer was fast, there was no denying it. She had set up care in their home, just as they had always advocated in principle for anyone so afflicted. He had pain meds available, though they didn't seem to do much. At the end was a balance, the morphine, and he controlled the dose. But it was death from cancer, Lila knew for a fact. All he did was work to manage the pain; he certainly had not been otherwise ready to die as a resource waster.

She suspected that if it weren't already being discussed in certain quarters, it would be: regardless of the truth, why not trot out the late LIF leader's demise as a suicide, or what did they want to call it, a Sustainable Future Solution? A fine example of sensibly ending useless use of resources. Unselfishly looking toward the future common good.

To Lila, the phrase brought to mind Hitler's final solution. A number of the 2.0 terms did, and wouldn't you know they were all conceived by young adults fresh from their secondary education that included much self esteem and technological knowledge but wide gaps in the lessons of history.

She squinted at her reflection, best she could make it out in the misty bathroom mirror. Try not to sound like a scoldy old lady, she told herself. Enough that you look the part. She could not help glancing back toward their bedroom. Marty would have teased her, said she was the same lovely lady he had married in 1979, and of course he didn't need new glasses. Something sweet and truthful with a wry edge, to make her smile and stop stewing and get going with her day.

Lila stood as straight as she could, and pointedly drew both arms by her side. Squared her shoulders and faced the day.

The LIF office was located near Civic Center in downtown San Francisco. What had been one of the few barely affordable areas for a nonprofit years back, then a seedy marginal neighborhood beset by poverty and petty crime. As time passed and the group grew, tech firms edged out the seedier businesses and an odd mixture of desperate homeless people and brand new tech workers surged cheek by jowl on the crowded sidewalks and pigeon-fested plazas.

Lately, Lila thought, those poor mentally challenged or drug addled folks seemed to have re-asserted themselves. The techies scooted or Ubered into their fancy buildings and stayed inside, their immediate needs met in-house. Still, no one bothered her as she made her way slowly and carefully up from the BART station. Old lady invisibility, she called it. No one would offer her drugs or suggest she buy their music, the requests for spare change were half-hearted, and the police looked right past her.

She signed in at the security guard station, frowning as her hand skittered sideways mid-signature. No matter. Voices rose from the front office. The door was propped open and some fellow board members stood just inside, drinks in hand, loud conversations midstream.

"Oh, Lila, so good to see you. You look well."

Niceties, but not unwelcome. A reason you called them that. She replied in kind, purposefully modulating her voice. What felt like yelling, she had learned, sounded out loud as just normal.

Elizabeth darted out from her back office and embraced her gently. Lila felt a bit like a celebrity, such a focus of everybody's attention. She tried to enjoy it, though she felt awkward in the limelight.

"Callie is due here any minute," Elizabeth told her. "You can set up in the marketing office."

Lila followed her, appreciating the sensitivity – Elizabeth didn't say why don't you sit down, she made it seem logical.

One of the young admins fluttered in the doorway, desperate for Elizabeth's attention. "I'm fine, go ahead," Lila told her, reaching into her bag for printouts of the Board meeting material. She had already read the documents, but could at least appear purposeful waiting for Callie. Postpone the social hour awkwardness. A younger person would no doubt whip out a phone and futz with it for the duration.

A low but steady buzz of voices reached her. Two different conversations. Elizabeth soothing two of her team, who were unaccountably anxious about some sort of software registration foul up. Each thought the other had done it, a deadline passed, the sort of thing that would resolve regardless of one's stress level. From the other side of the thin wall, harsher tones, an argument about program priorities. Subordinates' time too, how they had to get tasks done, donor funded work, reports needed. The need for a meeting to further discuss with the development team.

Lila felt herself tensing a bit just listening. Also that tiredness reared. So much fluttering and flapping, so much energy and stress for such insubstantial matters. Just do the work, take one step then another, she wanted to tell them. These are small matters in your long young lives. There are other things far more important.

Voice rose in a whoosh, and Lila knew Callie had entered the office. Though Callie herself didn't seem to understand it, people were just drawn to her. She had such a big personality outwardly. She was loud and bright and attentive in the same way Marty had been. Peas in a pod, sometimes, those two. Both energized by and filled with longing to solve all the world's problems. Though while Callie was attentive to people or ideas new or needy or undiscovered, she could be bad on fulfilling promises or checking email or other such things so mundane.

Lila tucked her Board packet away. She could hear Callie's progress toward her, her voice wheedling and sincere, she would get back to them, of course, straight away. People made exceptions for her, her genius and creativity. But this has worn thin sometimes, and Lila didn't think Callie understood that either. She was loathe to bring it up however. Recently, and even farther back, before Marty's diagnosis, Callie had seemed on edge in a way that veered from fragile genius to genuinely at her wit's end.

Callie careened into the room, shoulder bag, phone, laptop, jacket, stray documents in a flurry in her wake. She closed the door and stood against it, mock battle mode, before half-heartedly attempting to organize all her gear. "Ever want to throw all this stuff out a window," she exclaimed, in lieu of a greeting.

Lila smiled in spite of herself. "Maybe even send a person or two out there with it."

"You did not just say that! All those people who think you're incapable of an unkind word." Callie threw back her head and laughed in a real and infectious way, none of the panicky near hysterical hilarity she sometimes displayed.

"I didn't name any names, now, did I?" Lila said, all innocence. But Callie knew she was bothered by the extremists, had been whatever the movement, all the way back to the militants of the 60s. Oh, she and Marty went way back, coming of age as they did during the Civil Rights movement, romance blossoming while fully immersed in ending the war in Vietnam.

"So," Callie said, hands on her laptop but eyes focused on Lila.

"From what I can see," Lila answered, more serious now, "there won't be any real decisions made here." She indicated the packet. She had in fact reviewed it thoroughly. "The real key is the Nominating Committee. Which sort of people fill out the termed out members, myself included."

Callie nodded. "Your input there will matter. I wanted us to review a list before we go out there." She noodled around on her laptop for a moment and then turned it toward Lila. Names, head shots and bios. "They're all viable."

Lila studied the names. To even be considered for the LIF Board, you'd better have some sort of local tech chops or boatloads of money. Be a name brand locally, in other words. Fortunately, it had become a bit of a prestige thing the last several years. Early days was a struggle to find people who would put in the time. Enough lavish parties and mentions in the society column, Marty used to say, and they'll decide it's worth it. "Do we know where they stand on the 2.0?"

Callie nodded. "Pretty good idea, based on who recommended them. I think there's a consensus that each side will get to pick one to replace their own. And that just leaves Marty's seat. He and I were the closest to middle ground."

"Much as he could be," Lila answered. "He didn't know anyone was so serious about a split." That was the crux of it, Lila understood.

Callie nodded. "I should never underestimate you," she said. "I guess I don't have to explain how bad it's gotten. You knew but he didn't?"

Lila's eyes filled, as happened regularly these days. "That's how I could tell how bad off he was, he lost interest in the complexities." She composed herself quickly. "Meantime I had plenty of time to read every missive on the slack channel, every nit picky email." There had been countless long hours, those last weeks, where she had been ensconced in a small area within sight and earshot, little to do but read that stuff and wait for poor Marty to surface from his pain.

"You'll have time now, to take a trip or something? At least get outside, hike locally?"

"I plan to," Lila said, appreciating the suggestion, the understanding. "Motivation is still..." she drifted off, too tired suddenly to even articulate it further.

"You guys always told me to put down the devices and go out in nature," Callie said. "It's good advice."

"It is," she admitted. "Lately I've been hesitant to go very far. Since Marty's illness of course. But I feel a bit insecure. I'm hearing about this virus in Asia, possible travel bans. My neighbors were going on a cruise to Asia for the Chinese New Year, and they cancelled the trip. Not so much worried about illness as getting stuck somewhere."

"I need to research that whole thing," Callie said. "Hard to tell how honest the reports are coming out of China. If it is a new virus, surely it will spread." Her face was serious for a moment, but then perked back up. "Still, you could drive somewhere closer. Unplug, leave the depressing news and all these messages behind for awhile."

"Well, eventually. When it warms up. I can shut down the devices anyway; I do worry for little kids growing up so constantly connected online. Thinking they're interacting with friends and creating things when they actually seem uncreative and so isolated. And inactive."

"It's not just kids," Callie said. "But yeah, they're the ones with developing minds, this is how they learn about the world."

"Some of the apps are frankly ridiculous. A fake garden app where you pretend to plant flowers. We could all use more time out digging in the real dirt."

In a flash, Callie mapped out an idea for an educational program with skill sets, social development, progressively more challenging goals for physical work, akin to an egalitarian modern scouting program. There could be financial incentives for teachers, and internship learning opportunities for older kids. She stopped herself though. "I won't bother really, it would just get co-opted like my other stuff."

"Turned into a for profit app probably." Lila smiled as she said this, well aware of Callie's own history with misuse of her bright ideas.

A brief smile lit her face, but she quickly frowned again, focussed back on the names. "So what do you think, Lila? You hold the cards in close, Marty said more than once how it amazed him to know you so well yet also regularly be surprised by what he didn't know about you."

Secret to a long marriage, Lila thought. She gazed back at the screen, the pixelled images staring out, the impressive bios full of crisp marketing jargon.

LIF had been founded and created to take advantage of modern means of funding. It was purposely pulled together more like a flush foundation than a scrappy nonprofit. Marty's big picture business background gave him confidence that investment in high salaries for the best and brightest, and hefty fundraising geared toward large high end donors, would eventually allow for funds and smart people to tackle the big problems in a significant way. They would scale up, just like the most successful start ups.

He just hadn't foreseen that all those bright leaders put in a room together to take on a set of problems he had clearly outlined might decide to reframe the problems instead. Over population, one example for instance. Certainly adding to the crisis of 21st century climate change. But it was the wasteful use of resources more than the sheer number of humans. Yet where Marty had asked how do we persuade folks to live full happy lives while consuming less, now some were pushing for legislation limiting family size and urging less productive members of society to step aside.

As someone facing disability, Lila took that last bit rather personally. Anyway, what happens when the people who care most for the future stop having kids and off themselves, she thought. Or was that already underway and part of the Trump phenomena?

And yet she had respect for way the 2.0 set demanded action and real change. The status quo would be another lengthy strategic planning process and watered down ideas and incessant high end gatherings to fund it all and keep the wheels spinning. That road led to little action, little consequence, plus the potential to compound problems by siphoning donations from more impactful organizations.

"No wonder you two didn't know what I thought," Lila said ruefully. "I don't know myself." She paused, gathering. "I know I don't care for the people who see no room for compromise. Bradley, for one. There are ideas that could have a real impact, but they can't be implemented by a hammer. Yet I couldn't support someone who refused the idea of new ideas and growth. The organization shouldn't just throw its parties and pay the staff and rest on its social media posts." She stopped, a bit breathless from her speech. "I wouldn't quite phrase it like that in a meeting."

Callie grinned. "No, but I almost wish you would. We both know board members who see their entire role as write a check and drink fine wine and get bargain restaurant deals at the silent auction. And it boggles, what people just coming out of school, new in the workforce, think they should get, not just the salary but the perks, immediate vacations and working from the beach." She kept her voice low. Such board and staff were no doubt close by.

"Maybe the real question is whether to split in half or pick a direction," Lila said, feeling a bit more clear headed than she had for awhile. "The staff seem to be leaning toward the latter?"

Callie hesitated. "Elizabeth, yes. A lot of others are already lining up one way or the other. Worried about their jobs too, I suppose."

"All that infrastructure done twice, it does seem a waste."

"We may be past stopping it at this point," Callie said, her expression now twisted with that familiar look of anxiety. "I've tried to hear everyone out and find middle ground, but a lot of the 2.0s see implementing the new ideas as the only way forward. Teeth to Less Impact or give it up."

Lila sighed. She had feared as much. "Maybe I can support whoever can best keep us as an organization from being resource wasters." She said it as a joke, but perhaps in fact that was what they needed. "Maybe someone with a fresh perspective, who isn't biased yet one way or another, who is impacted by new tech day to day rather than creating it."

Callie stared at her, wide eyes widening further. She used to get that look at their dinners, Lila thought, she and Marty both did, and then they would be racing off with wild new ideas, wearable tech that diagnosed medical problems or shared car docking stations that doubled as solar power collectors. Somebody would grab the white board; often the concepts went nowhere, occasionally a bizarre sounding scheme would turn up months later discussed in an obscure reference in the business section.

"You are so right, as usual," Callie exclaimed. "All these people, all business contacts and colleagues, society friends – we do need fresh perspectives. We lack connection to regular people, the sorts of people who are dealing with the fallout, the cops and teachers and bus drivers and waiters, who can't afford a life here anymore but are critical to a functioning society."

"Your nonprofit workers too," Lila said. "The young people who ask for the large salaries. I suppose the Board is rather insular." Notwithstanding herself, it was fully populated by people in tech or funding of tech, which made sense vis a vis the mission.

"We're like a cancer group with nobody fighting the disease, or homeless advocates with no homeless reps. How did we not see that?"

"Well, some of them have struggled to make ends meet, or did before their big breaks..."

But Callie was off to the races. LIF's growing endowment would easily afford one less of the standard sized Board gift generally expected. Ties to the communities, the non-tech ones, were more important – that support, in fact, could be critical to achieving wider mainstream support for some of the more forward looking sustainability ideas.

Lila could hear the rise of voices from the front. Board members were enjoying each others' company within their factions presumably, but it was time for the meeting to start. In front of her, Callie was scribbling fast notes on her computer. Lila could already see where this was headed. She would have a beautifully conceived notion of who to recommend for the open slot. Lila would just have to chime in with her acceptance at some key point.

As often happened, she could see the end of path a bit before others did, and would have to feign surprise and interest as it emerged.

"I have a friend that I think would be really good," Callie said, looking up with a genuine smile. "We've known each other since college. She's one of those people who keeps you grounded, who's not impressed by money but by what's done with it."

"Is she local? Available?" Lila asked. It wouldn't be unprecedented for Callie not to have considered this. Once she had a good idea, she pretty much whooshed forward.

"She and her wife live in Oakland. She's a teacher and active in the union, and her wife is a nurse, deals with indigent people and the stuff where poverty and medical problems collide. They both have hands on perspective with the on-the-ground stuff."

Lila nodded. "Fresh perspective, maybe, about LIF too, about spending priorities."

"Yeah, she's had some stuff to say about some of our events, you know, some of the over the top ones she read about. I'd have to do some convincing – but I think this is our concept, Lila. We need to get somebody in there who sees the mission from ground zero."

Lila agreed, maybe the board would respect the perspective of someone with a real life in the trenches and see the waste before insisting on a split and duplicate efforts. Although she wondered if such a person could really make a difference in the face of all the entrenched positions and forceful personalities. Middle ground and compromise were out of style these days, it seemed. But Lila was glad to have a position to support going into the meeting. Glad to have contributed her bit of wisdom.

Chapter 4

# Callie Facing the Facts

I used to really like our LIF Board meetings. The whole thing, reading the material, exchanging messages to line up votes, getting the inside scoop on what everyone was working on at the social hour, then blowing through the agenda itself. It's a blast to be in a group of smart, high energy people, even or perhaps especially when you don't agree with them. Or when you need to convince them of something you're sure is true. I've always like to argue; just ask my sister and brother, they'll say I took opposing viewpoints for the hell of it since I learned to talk.

For a few dedicated hours, a group of creative, confident, progressive people teamed up to accomplish something positive, against all odds. Less Impact First was a force for good.

Looking around tonight, toward the bitter end, I feel deflated. Not from the tangible absence of Marty and his calm sensibility, though it's a loss for sure. Lila did her best, but had to leave at the meeting's scheduled end time. No, tonight it's the utter sureness that this needy beast we created with such admirable intentions will not continue as we foresaw.

Around the table, the board members who have dug in deepest are the most wide eyed and energized. Brad and Garret, side by side, eyes darting to their twin iphones next to each other, which blink with incoming texts. Paige and her good friend Tohper across from them, glaring. These two are the most threatened by the changes proposed – they are our biggest socially connected fundraisers. Despite their status as investors, they signed on to preserve the good old city as they knew and loved it from the monster that was tech, and want nothing to do with social change via legislation and lobbying. But they would doom us to irrelevance, I fear. And divert funds from organizations that might make more substantive progress as well.

Seated along the windowed wall, program and support staff appear plain exhausted. They have to work their usual days and then stay for the board meeting, so it's a long and challenging day no doubt. But more than that, I take in a tiredness that has to do with our impasse, and with the frustration that they sit on the outside of this loud argumentative set of people who control the fate of their workplace but barely see them as individuals.

Even Elizabeth, who sits with us at the table, and whose opinions are at least considered, looks like she wishes she was anywhere but here. But she doggedly tries to keep us on track, narrowing down the proposed names to send to the nominating committee. Despite the group's general inability to agree on any of several plans of action or even the plenary sessions needed to move forward, we have discussed our way well past the meeting's scheduled end time.

Thanks to Lila and the group's general respect for her, I was able to immediately get buy in for the idea of bringing in a rep who was not tech, not wealthy, but impacted by all the changes. Naturally that opened a window for everybody to report on the particulars of someone they knew who had lost a house or moved in with parents or kids or had somehow suffered in a way that was crazy for such a rich region. Half a dozen names immediately went into the hat.

Now we are trying to winnow all the other proposed prospects.

"Isn't that a function of the committee?" Paige asks, breaking in as three people talk over each other in defense of their suggestions. "I wonder that we don't just send them all."

"It's like 75 people," Garret snaps back. "I for one won't have that kind of time." We all know how busy he is running his highly successful new company, recently touted as the Uber of private school transport. Paige, as he implies and everyone knows, does have time, all of every day, since she is old school rich with her investor husband, and has both no traditional job and household help. Of course they are both on the Nominating Committee.

Glad that I am not. "Maybe we could each volunteer to suss out a few candidates, I mean no point arguing over somebody who won't want it," I suggest quietly.

No one even argues that point, and it's a bummer to think that our brand has publicly suffered to this point, to where just being asked might be as much a burden as an honor.

"We could follow up on the slack channel, say everyone bring it down to a couple candidates each," Brad says. He nods firmly to me as if to indicate this is an idea the two of us cooked up.

I offer a neutral nod. Used to the sides claiming my support and unwilling to actually take a side. I've held out hope of a compromise, a middle ground that doesn't carve the org in half. But that's slipping away as much as our collective energy to do anything but get the damn meeting done and get out of here.

Even Paige, who often seems willing to stay for all hours if there's a good Merlot on hand, drains her glass and says this seems reasonable. She'll have a say in the final three names in any case, whether they start with 50 or 20. The Marty and Lila replacement will be the proverbial swing vote regardless.

The beleaguered staff can't get out the door fast enough once we adjourn. I help clear the table just so as not to be a jerk, and at least a couple of the guys pitch in, pointedly egalitarians as they like to demonstrate. No fancy corporate corner office for any of our younger innovation leaders, I'm pretty sure.

I've always liked the fluid open workspaces of modern campuses, though I have seen it taken too far. Consultations I've done have allowed me to seem genius just for pointing out that naturally quiet people need some privacy and that constant interruptions aren't good for concentrated work.

We exit the building as a group, but immediately part ways. Most of them get rideshares without even seeing the irony. I make my way to BART, principles intact though destined to have a wait at this hour.

I bypass the miserable looking addicts and loudly arguing destitute people lining the entrance walkway with hardly a glance, then feel a stab of guilt as I click into the paid area, and descend the escalator toward the platform. There will be homeless people here too, and on the back seats of the trains, malodorous but quiet, trying to sleep. And I tune them out like they are so much furniture, even as I worry over Less Impact First. The org that is supposed to mitigate all those problems leading to rampant homelessness and an underclass of people whose lives have spiraled into addiction.

Clearly you cannot, as one individual, take all this on. That was the point of the thing, of banding together, raising enough funds to really mitigate some of those unintended consequences of our new disrupted economy. And the arguments from our meetings come rushing back – it's not sufficient to throw money at a problem, solutions must be strategic and firm. Look at Tipping Point, a nonprofit that is sometimes compared to ours, a group rich in resources and dedicated to ending homelessness. They have given millions to local groups. And the problem persists, widens even, with no fixing of the root causes.

That brings me, brings many of our discussions, to the depressing issue of climate change. A hundred environmental groups tackle a thousand enviro problems. Just glancing through my email, I see blasts with action alerts, pleas for funds. But the individual saving of rainforests and preservation of redwoods and protection of corals and cleaning of parks, recycling, reusing, conserving – all these sincere and concentrated efforts are dwarfed by the massiveness of climate change. Until clearing out those carbon emissions are at least part of the focus, why even bother with anything else, it will be meaningless. Like a decade's worth of savings from fuel efficient cars offset by a single month of wildfires.

And then we have the 2.0s, who say why should LIF even exist if it's not going to have a serious impact. The dire problems are here, we see them every day. They don't care if some of their suggested policy proposals sound like the worst fears of those who opposed assisted suicide laws coming true. You're either using more resources than you're giving back or you're not. Not part of the solution then part of the problem. So get yourself a solar set up that puts energy back into the grid, plug your Tesla into it, make damn sure that your one child eats local and composts, and when your productive days are over, well, you'll know what to do, right?

And I think of Marty dying and I get a chill. That sharp mind was assuredly not useless. Even late stage, he was able to bring people together. "Consensus builder," I had declared was his brand some time ago. He scoffed at the idea of a personal brand, but didn't disagree with the designation. I want to fill that role, someone should. But I'm barely keeping it together these days – rather than building consensus my role is to keep everything from flying apart. Where I was once skilled at honing in on a problem and tackling it from all sides, now it's hard to stay focused. There are so damn many of the problems. So little desire amongst my peers to share a perspective; it's like the hell that is our federal government this past decade has permeated us all.

One position Marty and I were able to get both sides to agree on was dedicating a funding stream for non-gazillionaires to apply to for investing in home solar. Because, yes, we had to spell this out, not everyone can just cash in a few shares from their IPO and slap on their panels. This resource of course is only of use to home-owners who have the time and energy to apply. I picture my friend Lauren for a moment, imagine her eyes rolling, how she would tell me about the kids she teaches and that their parents need rent money and groceries if there's a stack of money just sitting around for the greater good.

I was serious when I told Lila that she or her wife would be good for our board. Now I wonder if she would do it. No matter, her perspective would be good in any case. Lauren has been my sounding board over the years, much as I have been to my well healed clients, and she for no charge. In return, I can still make her laugh; we've known each other that long and that well.

Things were different when we first lived here, that we can all agree on. The train whooshes into the station and I board. It's full, but not jam packed the way it is at our lengthy rush hour. Once this transit system was mod, quiet, carpeted, suburban. For awhile it was really trashy, unreliable and loud. The last upgrades mean a somewhat quieter system, a little less garbage and graffiti. But it is packed pretty often now. Actual old or disabled people are hard pressed to find a seat, never mind the rest of us.

Still, BART is as fast and reliable as a car ride these past few years, speaking of changes. The streets are clogged with cars, I just take it for granted now. Not just Ubers and Lyfts, although those stats are staggering, the sheer number of drivers who have come from a hundred miles away to buzz our streets. It's also the Amazon deliveries, the DoorDashes, all the app driven services that send cars careening to your door, and it's the Waves and driver assists that route everybody into the neighborhoods because the main roads are hopelessly backed up.

Now and then I host an out of town visitor, or observe the expression of someone clearly fresh off the plane, and catch that perspective. See shock at the things we just accept, disheveled women holding babies and asking for money, drivers texting or grooming while they await several light changes in loud backed up traffic, hour long waits at restaurants just to cram into a tight seat and pay through the nose for tiny pretty portions of fashionable food.

I reach my station and trot up the stairs, again barely aware that the escalator has been out for weeks, trying not to think how it would be to struggle with a cane or a stroller, or what the one grungy elevator smells like. I hurry across the street, the night dark but the street well lit, populated and safe. Or it feels safe to me anyway, this is my neighborhood and I don't see every young man as a potential mugger slash car thief the way my fired up neighbors on Nextdoor generally do.

Sighing, thinking another nice idea backfiring. I hardly go there anymore, it's less an online link to an old fashioned community and more a place where white people rant about new arrivals while using euphemisms, and paranoid discussions circulate about the intent of people whose images are captured and posted from doorbells and spycams.

I leave the main road and turn down my small street, and at least a bit of good feeling returns. There's a community pocket garden, and next to it my elderly neighbors keep a lovely native array of succulents and wildflowers. Even at night, the flowers are beguiling and the air is suddenly fresher, smelling sweet and the promising the end of winter. Just pausing for a moment to take a breath, and then spinning away toward my front steps reminds me that my senses are all well intact, I can see and smell, hear and move freely. I have food inside for a late dinner. I have my nice little house.

My tenants' tabby cat is perched in the ground level window, and he solemnly blinks at me, long whiskered face majestic. Seeing him feels like a good luck charm, and I go inside perhaps able to put the bad parts of the day behind me. It's energizing to be around people, I've always felt a bit let down at the end of a meeting or party or whatever. Something my most recent ex, Ethan, never understood.

When he lived here and we returned after a gathering, I'd want to invite more people in, or keep talking and maybe play some music, while he would want immediate solitude, even from me. That's not why we broke up, but having someone to keep bouncing ideas off of is something I miss about living alone. Ironically he lives with three people now, a woman and her two teens from her marriage, but I get the impression they are all super calm, quiet people.

Ironically too for someone concerned about waste, I take up the space of my two bedroom house alone. One bedroom is my home office, and the place is small. And I rent out the in-law unit to a couple, at a not cheap but well under market rate, so it's not like the place is seriously underutilized. Who knows, I could hook up with somebody new and share the place again. Although it's difficult just now to envision someone willing to put up with my energy level and not be full on crazy too.

Tonight, a quick and tasty meal and the comfort of several social media exchanges going on at once. Friends not quite in the room but connected at some level. Tapping of ideas and wit back and forth. After awhile it occurs to me that something has shifted internally. I went from meeting stress to some sense of lightness because somewhere in there I've realized that a LIF split is inevitable. Instead of fighting it I can mitigate it, make sure the core concepts are preserved.

Chapter 5

# Lauren Takes a Day Off

Lauren Hillcox was driving fast, midday, mid-week, on a rare stretch of nearly open highway. That Pretenders song, Middle of the Road, came on the radio, thank you 80s rock station, and she cranked it up. Yeah, those lyrics still hit home, dated as they now seemed. Middle of her life at 33 – try one past 50, she thought.

But it was a treat to rock out anyway. Lauren was a high school teacher, long used to tamping down any side of herself that would suggest wildness or plain fun. This morning, though, she had the whole day off and an invite to a luxurious spa up in Napa. Her old college pal Callie Marshall's treat.

Typical Callie, calling out of the blue, issuing an invitation that felt more like a summons, assuming that Lauren could make the time. Well, she could in fact, she had been working too many hours and needed a weekday off. Before Lauren could dig it out of her, Callie confessed the ulterior motive too. She was longing to catch up of course, _of course_ , how had it possibly been so long since they had had face time, no she did not consider following each others' social media posts to be really connecting. And so on. But actually Callie wanted Lauren to consider coming on her Less Impact First group's board of directors. No strings attached, no commitments, that was all secondary to a pleasant day at the spa.

Yeah right, had been Del's reaction. Del, her wife, liked Callie. Well, everybody liked Callie. But Del mistrusted her a bit. Thought she took Lauren and their long friendship for granted. There was truth to that too, undeniable evidence of forgotten commitments and late arrivals, last minute excuses. But there are things you just forgive of a person who has been a friend more than half your life. Who knew you when you were young and dumb and listened to your late night confessions, who didn't point out your hypocrisies years down the road. Who would still listen now that both were older and wiser and yet somehow also dumber too.

We might have smoked some weed back in college, but didn't once walk into our dorm room and stand there slack jawed, having forgotten why we entered the room. Like she did now and then. Callie probably had an app for that, not that she didn't have her own set of problems, or so she claimed. Lauren arched an eyebrow. At least they were all aging together, right. She glanced over her shoulder before easing over a lane. Traffic was heavier again, and she didn't really trust all those driver assist functions.

Speaking of acting old. Was it too much to ask to be literally in the drivers seat of your own car? Callie still drove a years old, low mileage Volt, Lauren recalled. But some of those other Less Impact First people, probably sitting in the back of prototype driverless Lyfts or whatever they called the current iteration of those car shares.

Lauren didn't breathlessly follow her old pal's every social media move, but she tried to keep up. Hard to miss some of those over-the-top fundraisers they had, chic and stylish rich people bidding on ridiculous prizes. Lauren fascinated as well as annoyed, because the dollars being tossed around by those well healed baby millionaires would have gone so far in the poorly funded schools of the east bay. She had made some less than charitable remarks, she recalled. But Callie was not someone to hold a grudge about an honest opinion.

That was what she valued about their friendship – knowing either one could say anything and be listened to, appreciated, respected. There were probably things she could say to Callie that she would withhold even from Del. That shared history – Del first knew her at 35, Callie at age 19.

With Del, she laughed herself off, joked about her youthful idealism, the silly schemes, awful jobs, the stupid risks she had taken, the retrospect dreadful relationship choices. Turned them into amusing stories, or faux lessons that ended in "so that's why I never take a tofu dish to a potluck" or "get into a stranger's mini van without ascertaining that there are seatbelts and a car floor."

Whereas Callie had been there. They had roomed together at college and then shared a dinky flat in a rundown neighborhood, back when San Francisco had such things that newly arrived non-trust fund kids could afford. They had marched together for gay pride and anti-nuke, for the Nicaraguans and against global warming. Callie came from a family with money, at least more than Lauren grown up with. But that didn't matter back then, they were equals.

Lauren had channeled her ideals into working with children, and then teaching, getting her credentials and committing herself to work with city kids, kids with real challenges. She had learned decent Spanish, even some very basic Mandarin, and took extension courses in adolescent psychology. Once she got the first real teaching job, the work ate away at all that free time she used to have to join every march down Market Street. While Callie had joined the then burgeoning tech field, suddenly a part of start ups before they even called it Silicon Valley. She had moved down to the Peninsula for awhile, center of the action, and their lives (and financial outlook) had veered swiftly apart.

By the time 9-11 happened, and then the dot com bubble burst, into their early 30s, Lauren felt like maybe she was the tortoise in the old fable, and teaching was a slow and steady path toward a calm, successful life here. Callie's high leaps and crashing losses meant she always had a crazy story, a new set of friends and new ideas to talk about, and often their conversations stayed focussed on her. To be fair, Lauren thought, there were times when she hesitated to even mention a problem she herself might have, due to Callie's tendency to swoop in and try to fix everything, usually through brand new technology and or fresh not yet FDA approved medications.

Lauren's phone piped up with directions, and she focussed her attention on the road. Unlike Millennials – or Callie, always ahead of her time – she did not multi-task well.

Off the highway, the landscape opened up. Pretty rolling hills, green and vibrant from the winter rain, the road now narrow and winding over its contours. Lauren found the place, parked and walked toward the peaceful, understated entrance. The building blended in a lovely way with its surroundings. A curved walkway led past delicate blossoms and sweetly scented flowers. A receptionist who looked like a model welcomed her, and she thought this whole place must be oozing money. Better not to question Callie's claim of a great two for one deal.

Callie hadn't arrived yet, to zero surprise on Lauren's part. She had brought a book, assuming her friend's lateness, but she ended up changing into the spa wear and then just sitting out on the little patio, sipping something healthy and breathing in the fresh clean air. Admiring the flowers and trees and serenity that she didn't even realize she missed, day to day in the classroom and commuting through Oakland.

Callie's car zoomed in, and Lauren watched her leap out of the driver's seat as if pursued. She was talking, blue tooth presumably, and gesturing too, even as she reached into her backseat scrabbling stuff around.

She had always had a flightiness about her, a hummingbird's pace, fluttering at twice the speed of everyone around her. She used to be slender and wiry, and now she just looked thin. Burdened almost. Like her clothes were too big, her bag too heavy, too much literal weight on her narrow shoulders. Lauren had noticed this the last couple times they met, and now, as she waved and walked up to greet her, Callie's eyes looked wild and stricken as well.

It was hard to keep track, with Callie, just what weighty problems she carried, not to mention what brilliant insight she'd been lauded for, what new company's brand she had revitalized. The only constant, Lauren thought, was that it changed every time a few months had gone by between conversations.

Callie dashed off after a quick hello, returning with a green drink of her own and the place's recommendation for the order of treatments. "Bring it on," Lauren told her. "No preferences here."

So they sat side by side, being tended to, and catching each other's eyes, they laughed. "Long way from the Big Green rallies, I know," Callie said. "But I never felt the stress in my body like this back then, you know?"

Oh yeah, she knew. Back in school and in those first years in the city just after, they would have scorned two tired white ladies claiming their need to detox and wasting a whole day that could have been dedicated to fighting the good fight. Of course now the idea that being one of a large chanting march meant anything would change was certainly as questionable, Lauren thought. Day to day she did her bit for real young people in her classes. And Callie's work fixing the ills of technology made a real difference, or so they would like to think.

"How are you," Callie asked. "I really want to know."

Lauren replied with her usual summary, glossing over herself as she mentioned Del's ongoing back problems, worries about both their moms, the pressure of new requirements and grading a zillion papers at school, concern about the marginal students.

Funny how they'd ended up – Callie, the one who less needed money and did need occupation to keep that flittering mind grounded, ending up more with the opposite. While Lauren and Del struggled to stay afloat, free time fleeting and the idea of a secure retirement increasingly fuzzy and distant. Their careers, teacher, nurse, once so solid and now so pitiful compared to the salaries and exorbitant costs brought on by the new economy.

She hesitated to point this out though. Even old friends had trouble bridging such fiscal gulfs, she thought. She didn't want to sound like she was complaining or issuing blame. There had been those times where their lives had drifted furthest apart and they had exchanged harsher words. Lauren's peers and friends being pushed vigorously from their pleasant neighborhoods as hordes of young techies streamed in, locust-like, as if they had invented the Bay Area six months prior. Callie had been deep in that world, and it was hard not seem like she was holding her responsible. Callie, for her part, scoffed at the idea that anything stayed the same or that the internet technology wasn't at heart a force for good.

Well, her organization Less Impact First at least got right out and addressed a lot of those issues. Lauren might not quite get the, what was it, high style of the whole thing. But no denying that Callie had assessed the situation, the problems that her beloved tech innovations had brought with them, and sought to do something about it. Where another person might have salved her guilt with a charitable donation or turned a blind eye toward the ills of the community, Callie, typically, took the whole thing on and founded a group to try and fix everything.

Probably worth pointing out that despite their best efforts, problems still abounded – traffic worse than ever, housing a crisis, homelessness rampant, wealthy local lifestyles more wasteful than ever and newly minted millionaires joining the ranks with each new IPO. "So this Board thing," Lauren said, stepping out of one tub and heading for another, "what's the deal? You know I'm not going to design a new app or host ladies lunches."

Callie slid into the warm water beside her, and her expression evoked her much younger self, unmitigated joy and laughter. "I would love to see your version of that. Ladies! Phones off! Here, gals, grade some papers, and yes that is a Costco snack, what of it."

Lauren smiled. She had hard and fast rules about cell phones and meals both at school and at home. "Exactly. I'm really not seeing the fit."

Callie turned serious again. She explained that basically they needed a representative of the people impacted by all the tech-related things that had cropped up, basically the sort of person who felt pushed out, who could barely afford to be here anymore. The current board was entirely made up of inventors, investors, and those deeply mired in the field. There was a divide in the group, with some of the newer members wanting to take more decisive and radical action, while the earlier leaders were too timid, stuck just spinning their wheels and fundraising without an end goal in sight. And after Callie's good friend and co-founder had died, the conflict was coming to a head. They needed perspective before the whole thing was pulled apart.

Lauren felt a complex mix of emotions, and smiled in quiet acknowledgement of how often this occurred in dealing with Callie. Complicated, challenging, a bit intoxicating – still, after all these years. "So I could represent, like, the new silent majority, every old school occupation, every renter and everybody with crushing student loan debt? Lives of quiet lives of desperation and all that?"

"Well, not every single one, but I mean, there are issues you and Del have that the rest of us could stand to hear about." Callie trailed off, as if embarrassed or at least unusually subdued. Generally when she wanted to convince someone of something she had six or seven persuasive arguments locked and loaded.

"And this with my scads of free time. I said I wouldn't whine about work, Callie, but you are surely aware of how much time I spend on papers and meetings and so on outside of class time? That I have to work all summer, how Del's schedule shifts, how hard it is for us to make plans?"

"I know, you've said, but if you had some time – or if Del did, honestly I think she'd be great too if you couldn't do it."

Callie stopped again and Lauren thought she was reining herself in from suggesting some new calendar app or something to solve their time management problems, as if it was a tech matter and not the actual overwork and conflicting schedules. "I think anyone like us, working full time, dealing with parents or kids, you know, with those mid-life challenges – free time just isn't there."

"It wouldn't have to be a giant time commitment." Callie dipped her head back into the water and sat up straighter, shaking her dripping hair like a dog. "I just worry – we could devolve into a group of people so extreme that I couldn't even support them and the base group that just sits around admiring themselves for existing. You know Charity Buzz? Like click a post from a celebrity and you've done your part? But then some of biggest donors on the Board are angling for policies that would frankly scare off most normal people. For good reason."

"Great. So I'm a normal person now. Let's be sure and tell my uncle Marvin."

Callie smiled faintly. "You know what I mean. You could say, hey Brad, when you say you're going to decide how many children a family can have by mandate rather than encouragement it sounds like policies in China that led to forced abortions. Your useless users language seems like you're encouraging post-menopausal suicide."

"And you can't say these things?"

"Can, have, but I'm an outlier, you know? Not representing mainstream thought."

Lauren raised a brow. "And I am? You're dissing me, girl."

"Hey, there's a vast stretch of this country that those guys really don't get, and for some of them it starts east of the bay. People with paychecks instead of options. Jobs with tasks instead of brainstorming. Children without live in au pairs. You would be amazed how insular their little worlds can be, and how much they need to hear from the real world."

"Maybe." Lauren felt a little insulted that Callie might view her as so mainstream even as she admitted she saw Callie as one of those isolated tech types." They're really advocating, like, suicide?" she asked, voice lowered. They were pretty much alone, but there were other people, both clients and staff, on the grounds.

"We've got a whole lot of phrases bubbling up, positive sounding terms. Appropriate use of limited resources, 'less impact,' it's right there in our name. But that is the policy direction." Callie paused, glancing around, although no one was near. "Lila, that's Marty's wife, his widow? She's afraid rumors have started that Marty took his own life in the face of his cancer. As in that's a good thing."

"Well, maybe it should be a choice?" Lauren had seen first hand how terminal cancer took a person down with her own father.

"Yeah, sure," Callie answered fast. "But they're saying not as in he should have a choice, but like it's a planet friendly obligation. He wasn't at that point, he didn't do it, he wasn't ready."

Lauren shook her head. "You're not really convincing me this is something I should be part of," she observed. The conversation was reminding her of two things – the wild half asleep conversation they would have, as students with their whole undiscovered lives awaiting. And, more disturbing, some of the talk in the teachers' lounge. The rumors and worries about the kids, the trend of suicides happening well after a school shooting, and then other kids doing it, copy-catting. A student she had a few years ago had ODed, maybe by accident, maybe not. Just a regular kid, a little troubled but not different from half of them. So hard to tell what was a bad day and what was a spiral of depression.

"What, you look like you saw a ghost."

Lauren explained about her student. How she wished she could have known or helped even though it was ridiculous, she was years out of touch with him.

"It's not ridiculous to care," Callie said firmly. "It's worth not forgetting. Think of all the kids you do help."

"Yeah, well. It's not like how it used to be. Fewer and fewer kids come talk to me, or to anyone, even their friends. It's a thousand texts back and forth, it's posing for the funniest Insta, but I worry how many of my students don't have an outlet. Someone real to talk to about shitty things in their lives."

"I agree with you about the isolation," Callie said. "I understand that better now. Some places are developing specific tools to bounce people off – and I know, you'll say an app to remind you go outside is stupid, but maybe it's not."

Lauren could not argue that as she once would have. It had gotten to a point where she agreed, whatever it took to free up some non-screen time for a lot of these kids. "What's bad too," she added, " is that they feed off each other. The anorexics have their networks that give strategies and egg each other on. Depressed kids read depressing stuff, and maybe also see it as glory when all the kids bemoan a suicide, you know? Look at all the people who care about the dead kid."

"Man, that's dark." Callie stretched and raised herself out of the tub. The warm water and fragrant blossoms contrasted all the more to their grim topic.

"I'm sorry, I don't want to bring down our nice day."

"No, this is important stuff. I wasn't even thinking about how young people would view some of these ideas. Nobody's talking useless use about teens or young adults, but when they push it as, like, a stylish choice, a way to bring value to a life well lived, I mean, what if kids misinterpreted that? Oh, crap." Callie looked almost too distraught.

"Everything gets distorted now, and stuff moves really fast, I know that," Lauren said. "Trends are started and pretty much done before the teachers figure it out half the time. I'm not sure what my kids would make of it, but if the right celeb or trending movement latches onto something, even something that sounds off to us, it can catch fire and spread."

Callie's expression was both somber and thoughtful. "Are kids that depressed? I mean with real problems?"

Lauren nodded. "Some the typical teen angst, but yeah, some stuff you and I had no concept of back then. Parents pressed for food and rent, or no one there, single mom with three jobs. Crime and drug use, people they know getting harassed or arrested. Blatant racism. The separations at the border, just the tone in the daily news. Even the kids with more stability can get caught up in the general trauma and stress."

"But it goes both ways at least, right? I've seen some great spontaneous activism in reaction to Trump bullshit just came together. Besides gofundmes and easy stuff."

"Yeah, maybe. Kinda rare. Don't get Del started about online pleas for medical costs," Lauren added. It outraged her, both of them, that the system had slipped to where people felt compelled to put out their sad story in a plea for money from strangers, in order to afford non-routine medical care, "You know, that's another point about your Board's new philosophy or whatever. Are they going to suggest that people who can't afford treatment or need super expensive treatment just do without? Because that's how people might see it. Del has seen patients who want to die rather than potentially bankrupt their families."

Callie now looked fully bummed out. And stressed, the opposite of how she should look here taking the healing waters and lounging in the winter sunlight. "We will have to be clear about the language. It's about waste, curing somebody isn't waste. We can't have people suicidal because the health care system is employer-based and profit driven and screwed up."

"That's a nice thought, but I feel like we're already there. The last few years the system is unraveling. Costs spiraling, high deductibles, people going without because of the costs, and throw on poor nutrition, lack of exercise, obesity. I mean Del sees the brunt of it working where she does, it's not like that everywhere."

Callie stared into the distance, almost like she was watching someone on the hillside beyond the greenery and trees. "But you're talking more theoretical, right? I mean someone talking to a nurse is already getting treatment?"

"Callie, she's in the ER. She sees people who are in crisis because they lacked the means for early intervention. It's classic, absolutely predictable stuff, from the attempted dismantling of Obamacare." Lauren paused, telling herself to take it down a notch. But Callie said she wanted her perspective. Well, this was part of it. "Seriously? Both of us have had people mention suicide pacts. Me a couple kids, and her more than one desperate patient."

"Jesus. What did you do?"

"We listened. Try to empathize. That's the most you can do really. Telling someone who's distraught that you know better isn't the best approach. But that's what I was saying, online just magnifies everything. Online by themselves, people find all kinds of forums and networks that push them further off the cliff, you know?" At Callie's unusual lengthy silence, Lauren added," It's hard to stop a kid who's determined to do self damage from searching out the ways. You do know there are online resources for everything, right?"

Callie turned back toward her at last, a pale half smile on her face. "I don't think in those terms, I guess. That's just one more concern, that LIF could get connected or misconstrued to be some sort of advocate to a young person in trouble."

Lauren felt like her friend had resurfaced. Concerned as usual about her organization first and foremost. "Well, I'm more concerned about the kids joining suicide sites than how it impacts Less Impact First. But yeah."

It was a relief when one of the young women approached to guide them to lunch, a pretty patio set with bamboo forks and compostable plates, and an array of fresh natural foods. They sat and ate family style, passing platters, raving over the delicious offerings, making small talk. None of the women – it was all middle aged women, everyone else straight, Lauren thought – mentioned jobs or the stress that might have pushed them here. It was all, the massage feels so great, I've got to get this recipe, isn't the air perfect up here. Non-controversial comments about the latest Democratic debate, everyone assuming this was a Republican-free establishment.

Lauren dug in. She would not let this much free food go to waste aside from any philosophical concerns. She watched Callie take a slow bite, kind of picking at her food. She had always been like that, willing to nibble on what was put before her, but easily distracted. If she was bothered by the potential waste of so much food, she kept it to herself. Lauren would bet that the staff had a go once the clients were done. You could make rules or whatever about managing waste, she thought, but a lot of time that stuff just balanced out on its own. Says the teacher who regularly trolled for computers just a few years old that corporations would dump and that her kids desperately needed.

They mostly dropped the downer stuff and stuck to familiar reminiscing after lunch. Oft told recollections, speculation about friends who were out of touch, jokes about their old apartment and how much it probably rented for now. By afternoon, Lauren felt sleepy and relaxed. Good, both sated and open in body and mind, the way a spa day should feel.

Callie seemed fairly relaxed. But a little jumpy too – more than once she had charged off to get her ipad and check messages and make notes. When she asked, Callie muttered it was just people she needed to get back to, to reassure. She asked if Lauren had heard about this new disease that was cropping up in China, whether Del was concerned. Lauren recalled hearing something on the news, but nothing more.

"Should we worry, what are you hearing?" Lauren asked, aware that Callie tended to hear about all kinds of things via friends of friends a bit before everybody else did.

"I don't know. Apparently it's a rapid spread type virus. This guy I know who was visiting China, not there, just Shanghai, said everybody is wearing face masks. People have died. They don't trust the government to be accurate."

"Well, that sounds familiar," Lauren said.

"Yeah, the current administration is singularly unprepared for telling the truth and taking on a new health issue. Maybe it could help Biden."

Lauren didn't say anything, just smiled that Callie was apparently jumping ahead with the assumption that Biden would be the nominee, never mind the many primaries still to go. It was good to see that she was taking an interest. At least she seemed less tense than when she arrived.

Lauren thanked her for the outing, and promised she would talk the board thing over with Del. She was honest with Callie, always had been, and she told her it was unlikely either of them would be able to make the commitment. But they knew any number of principled progressive people who might be up for it.

Callie, oddly solemn, thanked her back, said she had much to think about.

Lauren eased into her car, and the warmth from the sun made her feel like she was melting into the seats. We should just go to a lake or pool more often, she told herself. Bring our own picnic but get all soft and relaxed like this. She waved to Callie, who sped off ahead of her. Wondered when they would hang out again, what new thing she would be spearheading.

The drive back went fast – Lauren had a podcast on and traffic wasn't horrible. Del wasn't home yet, so she got a light dinner started. Listened to the news and candidate debate silliness and purposely stayed away from her work email. Emergencies would have generated a text; she could catch up on the sub's report tomorrow. Spend extra time on the weekend grading papers.

She didn't really envy Del her job, but there was one aspect she wished she had. Del might come home emotionally charged or worried about a patient, but when she left the hospital she left the work behind. Whoever was there took care of the next patient. Sure, they all complained about paperwork, but it wasn't like she returned to double the work after a day away.

Early days teaching, Lauren had sometimes felt crushed by the load. With experience, she had numerous shortcuts and ways to cope, even as class size ballooned. And she was better at just shutting it down, focussing her mind elsewhere when she needed to, such as on a pleasant day like this one.

Not to say she had enough down time to take on a leadership role with reading material and discussions and hours long meetings in the city though. Really, what was Callie thinking. She had seemed serious, troubled about her organization and looking for help. Well, Lauren thought, she and Del could come up with some people, single, younger, wanting to make connections, that might fit the bill. Plus she could at least email her some links she had found about the clandestine movements, the so called susie pacts.

She heard Del's step on the walk, and their elderly cat bestirring herself, aware Del meant food in her dish. For now, a light dinner, pleasant catching up from their days, hopefully no urgent calls from either of their moms, Who knows what Callie will have cooked up by the time we see her next.

Chapter 6

# Callie's Impulse

I'm home, midday, free from obligations, having finished two different branding consultations. Clients pleased and invoiced. No pressing new jobs and frankly no need to troll for one; my finances keep undulating upwards due to the continuing market surge, accounts brimming with funds. I feel the usual stab of guilt at this – the anti-progressive tax roll backs and climate hostile loosening of regulations in the short term propped up my own bottom line.

Free to do anything at all, and yet here I sit, feeling almost rooted in place. Office, back friendly office chair, laptop hooked up to the big bright monitor and a half dozen items open. I am occupied and yet not. I have read through the first few paragraphs of six or seven hard news stories. Got the gist and then got overwhelmed by the meticulous details. The specifics of the candidates' proposals. The virus in China now all over the country, spreading to Europe and oddly Iran, and what it might imply. Elsewhere, how many people were missing, women were abused, species are dying. I feel compelled to know, to somehow bear witness. I seem unable to let any margin of time go by without knowing – at least by topic, by region – the ills of the world. Turning away from hard news, the light stories of the local site AreaCentral are just so much ad revenue driven fluff.

Instead I spin through facebook and email, keeping touch with more old fashioned people like my sister and brother. The social sites are clogged with useless junk, the posts of people I barely recognized all desperately vying for attention. Mixed with a thousand hysterical pleas for money and clicks and support.

Not to mention the usual frenetic back and forth from the board and staff at LIF. Was this a curse of my own making? Knowing I dislike the slack channel, several colleagues here cced me on two different email accounts, so these ridiculously long labored message chains popped up multiple times with different sets of reply-to-alls on each. Generally – as true with just about any communication, people – the key points were made in the first line or two, and everything else was just repetitive clutter. My occasional responses, carefully neutral, concise and well-reasoned, would often be snatched up by one faction or the other. As Callie says below, blah blah their own point that might not tie in at all.

Trying to further clarify a point, or reply one on one, just to stress the actual opinion, tended to backfire. Just caused more round robin interpretations and pronouncements, more forwarding. I felt my skin prickle sometimes, as if the various anxious people were reaching out, staring despite the tape over the camera, grabbing at my fingers as they paused above the keyboard. It was crazy making, because even as the sides split further apart and the organization felt about to wrench into pieces, it all kept hurtling forward too. Preparing next year fiscal year's budget, signing off on the spring fundraiser, updating the corporate docs now that Marty was gone.

I thought that most of the Board didn't get it about maintaining the day to day stuff, how much work that took. Similarly, the staff seemed to have heads in the sand about the reality of organizational change. Having been in both positions, seen both perspectives. That used to be a good thing, but now it loomed like another burden. Understanding what each player might prioritize did nothing to bring a peaceful solution. The older staff and the early board members were doggedly dug in and wanted to stick to the old plan: raise lots of money and let it trickle down, some being better than none in mitigating the problems caused by new tech. The 2.0s would not be satisfied without a full legislative package that mandated the end of fossil fuels, major taxes on excessive use, and a dive in the population. Slim chances of legislative success and potential for alienating the broader public be damned, principles or nothing.

I sighed aloud, flexing fingers above the keyboard. I should go out and do something, even if it was to visit the market for something fresh. Should exercise, get my eyes roving over a real landscape and not these bright pixels. Still, I stay seated.

The phone rings, making me jump. As if guilty or caught in the act of catatonic laziness. My sister Nicole. I at least stood, paced as I said hello and listened for anything concerning in her voice. Nicole was the oldest and had stood in as Mom's lieutenant since childhood. Since Mom's passing a decade ago, family crises were inevitably routed through her.

But this was a social call; Nicole had been on facebook moments ago when I posted, and would rather chat directly than type or post a selfie. I didn't mind – actually it was good to get my mind off all the bullshit, the bad news, the LIF infighting. I ask after Nicole's job and her daughter, still hard to picture as in independent adult living now in San Antonio.

I try to really listen, though Nicole can be overly detailed about the minutia of her job. She will tell the same story sometimes to illustrate a point, emphasizing one or another small aspect. Was she aware she did that, I wonder. Did she assume that little Callie, whom she used to tease as a space case years after she got better at focussing, wasn't listening or wouldn't remember?

Eventually Nicole winds down, and asks about my work. I can hear the air quotes over the phone. It galls both siblings the hourly rate I can charge just for the privilege of a one on one with me, and that my so called career now mostly consisted of taking meetings when I felt like it and getting paid to fanaticize about the future. Or so they saw it, having never been on the other end of the deadlines and panicked calls. Telling her I was between jobs didn't please Nicole either, though. It just drove home that I did not need to work full time.

I plug back in to speculate about niece Nissa's love life off in Texas. She lives with a group of young people, just like pretty much everybody new to San Francisco although not the norm where Nicole has settled in Grass Valley. Fodder for potential romance anyway. Nicole's attitude swung back and forth between being a concerned hover mom and overly blasé. Scandalized at the culture of hooking up, that her daughter might casually bed a roommate and then see someone else while still sharing a bathroom. And then a moment later lording it over me that she understands the young way of thinking, the importance of relationships and free time over material possessions.

The implication of course, that I was mired in the old ways, with my house and things, my arms length attitude toward dating, brimming bank account. Where I once would have challenged Nicole, I just listen instead. Let my lack of argument make a point instead; not worth it, Sis.

It works, and Nicole switches topics to another family favorite – bemoaning the loss of Ethan, and my subsequent lack of a suitable partner. "Has he called again," Nicole wants to know. "The fact that you two still talk tells me something. Anyone I know here who splits after that long has nothing more to say."

"We still have commonalties, we can bounce ideas," I tell her. "His foundation is an LIF funder. And there is actually a friendship, but that doesn't mean what you think. He's fully involved, moved in, the new girlfriend has two children."

"Instant family. I won't say it."

She didn't have to; the whole family had openly wished for me to marry Ethan and pop out kids within hours of meeting him, back years ago. I had kind of let it be understood that my indifference to having kids was the reason we had finally ended things. The truth, as usual, was more complex. Yes, Ethan wanted to be a dad, but more to the point he wanted to build whatever life with someone more stable. A cool, collected version of himself, who was always on time and without the highs and lows that I could be counted on to provide. There had been brilliant vibrant days and nights, I remind myself, it wasn't all just my downer moods.

"I'm glad he's happy," I tell her. "You should be too."

"We are facebook friends. He never posts though." She pauses. "So what about now, are you, is there..."

"Nobody new. I haven't had time until recently and then, I don't know, it's so much effort." I sigh, knowing my sister can hear the lameness of these excuses. "Honestly, you're right. You and Mom, you're always telling me what she would say if she were here. I should get out there again. I'm not getting any younger."

"She'd say that, I wouldn't."

"I just don't think I'd be good for anybody right now," I tell her, being honest. "I have the time and all, but I'm not in a healthy place exactly spiritually, right? I still feel like I'm being pulled apart, like my organization is going to pieces and I can't fix it and it's frustrating."

"Oh Callie," Nicole says, her voice the same as it has been every time she exclaimed those words over five decades. Oh, you've done it again you little minx, was the implication. Bitten off more than you can chew, barked up the wrong tree, tried to take on the big bad wolf world when you're just a scattered little girl. "It can't just be you fixing everything. I'm sure Mom would have said so too. Or Ethan."

"I know. And that's not an excuse to always go to super loud parties just to avoid real intimacy. You, Mom, Dear Abby, you're all correct there."

"I'm sure your so called spirituality will perk back up when you get involved. Find somebody who shares those passions. Or start a new organization – sounds like you have the time."

Was I really maturing? Again, I did not front an argument. That the city has bright passionate single straight men who would jump at the chance to take on an emotionally fraught 50 year old woman if only she showed an interest. That one could, poof, conjure up a new version of Less Impact First. Oh, great, an org to mitigate the probs of the last problem mitigater! No, I just murmur vague appreciation and we wind down with a bit of gossip about our brother, who tended wisely to be secretive about any but the most mundane aspects of his busy life.

I sit again when we finish. What had she said, my spirituality would perk up? I try to envision my inner essence as a mere withered flower on a stem in need of a bit of water. After a moment of this, unsuccessful, need I add, I picture saying this to Lauren. The eye rolls she had to hide from one of her hippy dippy students saying something similar that she would fully share with me.

So. My next move is a mistake. I'm just so edgy and wired. World news is distressing. Ever see yourself doing something and thinking I should put on the brakes now, turn away, but just feel yourself keep doing it? Like that, I start clicking on the links that Lauren forwarded. I did tell her I was interested in the disturbing online suicide community issue. She was nice enough to cull through some of the sites even as the gist of her message to me was sorry, Del and I have no time for Board service, but we'll ask one of her co-workers if you want. Grudgingly I can admit this woman would be a good fit, though I'd rather it was someone I know and trust.

Anyway, here's the thing about the suicide pacts – it's this whole hidden place with odd nicknames and in-the-know references. Not quite the dark web, but not exactly in the open either. So, like, when Mom and Dad google the phrase suicide pact, they're directed to some sensible verbiage on Wikipedia about Japan in the 1980s and rare instances of love struck teens pulled apart. A case of a deranged person who tried to dupe others into simultaneous acts but didn't himself go through with it. None of it sounds too disturbing, Lauren has explained, until you dig down a level. She refers to the whole thing as the Sucie sites, not wanting to glorify their phrasing even in a message to me.

But two clicks in and here are some massively depressing communities filled with desperate people sharing tragic stories, like minded allies supporting each other in the quest to try to kill themselves. That's really what they're about, never mind all the pretty words and hand wringing about the right time and place and mutual support. Obviously, there are places you can go, numbers you can call, people to reach out to, to be talked out of it. However, these are places to go to egg each other on. To discuss degrees of spiritual pain and glowingly rhapsodize about methods.

Anonymous leaders – but of course there are moderators and frequent posters with cringe worthy handles – steer posters towards their favored vendors and promise discrete IMs with the more secretive urls. Discussions flower about locations, jump sights, famous or local or with easy access. Free from cameras or security. People gush about our own Golden Gate bridge, as though the jumpers there are particular heroes and not sorrowful souls who died painfully hitting the water hard as cement from that distance.

It should be no surprise, but it startles me nonetheless, that the most popular and high traffic sucie sites are for young people. By and for, with the trending splashy visuals, every other phrase a funny or self referential hashtag. The standard whiny irritation about their elders who can never understand and how hopeless and clueless basically everybody else is – all this unironically dispersed in casual exchanges about the pros and cons of ending it all.

I know, I know LIF has nothing to do with the development of these secretive sites or their bizarrely perky posters and followers. But I feel my chest and face constricting anyway. We are part of it, the bigger picture. We are advocates of resource conservation that can really have an impact. Haven't I proclaimed that my lack of procreation is the best thing I can do to help the planet? Why wouldn't someone take that one more step, stop the resource wasting then and there?

I mean, the people here are not flagging resources and protecting our small blue world as their key stresses and reasons for premature death. But several different posters come looping around to basically that logic. Do it, do it, both you and the world will be a better place if you do.

I can hardly help connecting the dots here. Look at the area around the Chernobyl site all these years later, sans humans and grown back into its natural state, wild life abounding. There is a part of the message, of my message, my thinking, that says humans have been increasingly bad for the planet, that this era of rapidly increasing climate change is the start of the end.

But this is very big picture thinking. This is me and Marty sketching out ideas on the whiteboard. Not a view to be considered by a real life teenager being bullied and feeling hopeless and like there is no way out.

As far as I can tell, I am viewing the chats in real time. People, kids it looks like, speedily tapping out their messages, dissecting their pain, mixing in jarring emoticons and cultural references I don't recognize. Out there in plain view for anyone to follow, cheered on by the regulars and trolls. It's a little more nuanced than people standing under a person on a ledge yelling jump, but not a lot.

I stand again and pace my small office. I could be outside, admiring the neighbors' flowers or running my hands over fresh fruit at the market, and all this would still be happening. Is, was, will continue regardless of my knowledge or opinion on the matter. What am I going to do, make an app that will somehow shut these kids off the site, locate and text their parents if certain phrases are repeated? I wonder about the technical aspects of this idea even as I scoff at myself. Like Nicole said, always trying to swoop in and fix things.

And yet, and yet – here I am and there they are, and I do have the benefit of my decades of life experience. More than that, my experience as a person who has always surfed along the ridges and depths of emotional instability. Wait it out and things even out, solutions present, being late slash unprepared ceases to matter.

I also have my well equipped office at my disposal, in contrast to what appears much to be these desperate folks with battery-limited phones. It is easy to gain guest access to the low security places. And I have been using one of the original communications organization tools. (Expensive, I know, but so is my time, and it saves hours of it.) So when I peel the tape and speak, directly, clearly, with high quality sound and res, a couple clicks bring my message to not only this whole arena of live streams, but to the fore of my own world of social media. I do not pause or edit or add sound or anything that stops the momentum, that brings me straight into this twisted place. Even as I recognize my impulsiveness like an old friend, I don't try to stop myself.

The message is about 25 seconds. I identify myself as Callie Marshall, co-founder of Less Impact First, and can hear the emotion in my voice as I plead with all the participants and viewers who have any part in urging or committing suicide to hold up. "Whatever pain you might feel just now, these sites, these suicide forums are not the answer. When I have advocated less use, I mean to be thoughtful, to conserve, to value what might be lost. I would never propose taking one's life – that definition of no more resource use is short term, and has the capacity to crush a whole circle of people beyond you. Caring thoughtful people can have greater impact working on global sized change together!" Tiny pause. "You have someone who cares deeply about you, you know you do."

Boom, done. My heart is pounding and I feel weak with a twisting range of emotions. And yet pumped too. Energized as I have not been all day, all week. Like a switch has been flipped back on, like the real me is back from wherever the psycho demons hold me hostage during my down times.

It's not more than seconds gone by when I start getting responses and commentary on the forums. A wide variety, too. Instant likes from the sort of people who like everything, surprised face emoticons and a bunch of who the F are you sorts of posts. As in this is our private place and what does some old lady know about anything at all.

Within minutes my plea is taken down from two of the sites. Memes have already started though, both a clip and a still shot of my face looking particularly manic. Great, always count on myself to have a bad hair day and for that to be what a troll focuses on. But there are also shares and at least a couple real sounding posts that just thank me for caring. Someone wants to know if I'm a suicide survivor and a side thread starts speculating on who's mom I might be.

I open a couple of the smaller sites and see the discussion has migrated to one of them too. Somebody has googled and posted my LinkedIn bio, and another suggests directing comments to Less Impact First. Oh, crap.

Checking in over there, I can see that at least one of the admins has been following my twitter feed and already warned the rest of the staff. Before the rest of them go ape shit, I post a quick message to say yes that was me having a real life reaction and that I was of course speaking for myself and not LIF. They should say so on the LIF feed. Two different staffers say the same thing within 30 seconds, and a whole message chain devolves about whether Communications or Admin owns this sudden new mess.

It's like I've poured a cup of water into an ant colony. Everybody's clear work path upended, all of then dropping their loads and scrambling for cover. I apologize to the group at large, although surely most of them are familiar with people identifying themselves without being a spokesperson.

Messages are arriving on my facebook, my email, by Twitter and text. People who barely know me are concerned that I'm suicidal. Closer friends just wonder what set me off, and why I can't just go chill with a bottle of wine like a normal person. People who tend to resent me already for what one person has ungraciously said is my habit of sucking all the air in a room are stewing that I have somehow located an issue that nobody has been talking about and am hogging it as my own issue. Because shares and discussion continue. Oh, and someone from the local suicide prevention network tells me to call ASAP.

A trip to the bathroom cannot be prolonged. I stay in the cool quiet room, rinsing off my hands and then slowly brushing back my hair. (I know, too late.) But staring back at my reflection and rolling my eyes. This is what I tell people most pointedly not to do. Don't let your brand, your image, your message be co-opted by anyone else, even those you might agree with.

Minutes count in the world of spin. But the sense of peace I feel now, compared to earlier or out there in front of the screen is profound.

I guess this is familiar too. I now and always have cherished the good feeling that comes with taking action to make a difference. Even as a kid, I regretted being too young to go south and take a stand for civil rights, or stop the war in Vietnam. I tried to get out in front of the movements of the day though. And that capacity has helped define me – nothing that's happening this afternoon should change the entire arc of my political life.

Checking my phone, the message deluge continues. I send a few quick responses. Reassurances to the folks who stopped listening after the S-word, quick thumbs up to the supportive texts and re-posts. A couple sentences to Lauren, who's "damn, girl!" text is shorthand for a continuation of our recent chat.

Then I snap closed the laptop and head out to the market. I happily pay a little more for the convenience of walking there, of knowing they've chosen local and organic. And it validates my sense of self, my brand of being a caring member of the community, to mingle with the pleasant slow paced midday mixture of retirees, young moms, and unconventionally employed adults like myself.

No one here would guess that I have stirred things up in three or four separate little worlds. I wish I could maintain this calm image of myself, conjure it up later when I'm inevitably in the hot seat again for my pot-stirring outbursts.

After an hour or so, the storm has mostly passed. My email account has been effectively locked out of the main sucie sites, and while it wouldn't be that hard to sneak in again, I don't take on the challenge. I've made my point, right.

LIF leadership is still riled up, and goodie, there's a slack channel dedicated to me and my faux crisis. Neither the original head in the sand folks nor the 2.0s are ready to claim the issue though. Not surprisingly, the former angle for a well researched study on the topic and the latter suggest immediate action if LIF is somehow in the wrong here.

I send a quick follow up to Elizabeth, sorry to have stirred the pot without forewarning, but also that this is about me not LIF. Her response is fairly quick and reasonable – the same people feel the same conflict over pretty much anything right now. She's right, and once again I am visited with the certainty that the organization won't stay as it is. What I need to do is hunker down and figure out the best way to keep all the elements going forward.

My head still feels clearer than it has for awhile, so this is a good time to map out a plan. I'll have to use my memory of Marty, my predictions for others' reactions for now. Not ready to face an actual meeting yet. And before any of that, I'll need to stick a stake in the ground again and reel in my own brand. Can't have potential clients scared off by the crazy.

Last message that appears before I shut everything down again is from Nicole. Many exclamation points and late to the online party as usual – she is emailing from an office meeting or she would call again, wondering what on earth she has said to provoke this reaction from me, should she visit, should she leave work now? I hastily reply about the sites I had been on, my concern about LIF's impact. My concern is for other people in general, not a personal crisis, no need to worry.

I suppose it's a nice thought, how many people are concerned for me. I want to turn a mirror and face it back out though. Worry about the planet, dammit.

Chapter 7

# Nicole – Heart of a Big Sister

Nicole Marshall Brennan regularly had the feeling of being pulled in several directions at once. Honestly, she would probably feel some regret if she wasn't in demand professionally. It was her nature to be a take charge sort of person, and others got that, appreciated it, maybe even took advantage of it.

Her ability was as a leader, a decision-maker. This afternoon, for instance, she had basically run a meeting that went late, would have gone later without her stepping in and quieting in the people who just liked to hear themselves talk. Also, she had a conference call soon to start, and the time that might have been spent preparing got eaten up by the meeting. Good thing she had anticipated that likelihood and prepared last night. And then, smack in the middle of the back to backs, her little sister's latest whatever it was. Playing out in the cloud, visible in glances at her phone.

Count on Callie. Callie also got pulled in multiple directions, but in her case it was more emotional stuff. Peoples' needs, demands on her time for her so called insights. Issues that sounded dire in real time, but generally proved to be quite less than critical. She just thought they were wildly urgent. Callie had always had a wild imagination, and a mind that leapt from one crazy sounding idea to the next, and regularly landed someplace thoroughly unexpected and occasionally proclaimed brilliant. Even as a child. And no, it was not fun being the babysitter of this whirling dervish of energy and insight, expected to give extra leeway for her sensitivity and childishness.

This afternoon's incident had launched like a surprise storm on a clear day. They had chatted in a normal and not at all emotional way while Nicole lunched on her salad and caught up on facebook. Barely an hour later, a barrage of facebook notifications alerted her, and there was Callie telling the world not to give in to suicide while appearing so fraught as to be on the edge of it herself.

Nicole wracked her brain trying to think what they might have discussed to bring this on. But – typical – when she got the chance to message again, her sister breezily assured her she was fine, this whole thing was some sort of generalized rant to the wider world. Like it had just occurred to her that some of the frankly elitist type "solutions" her beloved organization touted might be take wrong by people with less means?

Well, Nicole would do her best not to take any of this personally. She would go on about her day, wrap up her call, respond to messages, get in the car and head home before rush hour. Once there, she could sit with her tablet and do a more thorough investigation. See what was really going on, if more than a follow up call was needed.

Nicole had had almost a lifetime of dealing with Callie and her endless drama. She had been six when Callie was born, Darren four. She had no memory of life without Darren, but Callie's grand entrance was one of her clearest memories from childhood. The concern about her mother first, who had become enormous and snappish late in her pregnancy. And then the terrible unfairness when both parents had to go off to the hospital – it was the weekend of the county fair, and Nicole had counted on going as they always did, but instead they were left under the strict supervision of their grandparents. Mom was away for days; there had been some complication. It all turned out fine, but it seemed an eternity of waiting for a child.

At the end of it all, delicate little angel baby. Callista, Callie, who stayed petite and bird-like all her life, but who quickly became a demanding tyrant in Nicole's previously ordered world. Oh, she could pretend to be all benevolence and concern for all mankind, but even as a tot she had a fine talent for manipulating people, for being the center of attention in any particular setting. Her joy when the world seemed right was contagious. But often enough there was a dark side that fewer people saw. Callie off the rails upset, wrapped up in fury over perceived injustices.

Who but big sis Nicole would be blamed and or tasked with fixing whatever it was to bring back that little ray of sunshine? The topics and concerns had changed as Callie grew up and supposedly matured. But not so that essential nature. Nicole got tired of her sister's unpredictable mood swings and sudden new devotions. The only certainty was that there would by a new cause, a new focus for her laser sharp attention. This afternoon's rant for example. Though she knew in her head it would pass soon enough, in her heart it was all she could do not to get in the car and drive down to San Fran immediately, her own busy day be damned.

Because of course she loved Callie with all her heart, how could she not? Callie was like the Fool on the Tarot deck, head looking up to the clouds, skipping along the edge of a cliff, always about to fall but never falling. As a child, she had flirted with danger unaware she was doing so, and she retained much of that childish naivete into adulthood. Waltzing through dangerous neighborhoods in the city, forgetting to make reservations or running hours late and just expecting to be accommodated.

Nicole recalled a time when they were kids, playing in a nearby park. In the 70s, when a teenager was expected to keep an eye on her younger siblings, no questions, no fear. Only with Callie, who knew what wacky ideas she would conjure up. This occasion, some anniversary of Earth Day if she was remembering right, Callie had decided to mount a one girl clean up of the park. Or more to the point she would direct it – another of her not endearing traits, she was ever an instigator of others.

And so Nicole had spent a few minutes on her history homework, then looked up to realize her sister was gone, and several of her playmates were no longer playing but hauling trash and fallen branches like tiny day laborers. Herself? She had left the playground entirely and made her way to a construction site to badger the men there for use of their tools. Nicole had retrieved her as she staggered back across a busy street, dragging a stray rusty rake, the construction guys roaring their approval.

No, it was not cute, as their parents and neighbors inevitably thought when they told the tale. She could have been run over or molested, or gotten tetanus from the rake. She saw no danger, only her sudden lofty goal. And never had the sense of absurdity that Nicole could so clearly see – that one small child could not solve a problem, even a small one, by herself one afternoon.

Callie would of course not see this. Her whole life philosophy was based on people dropping everything to take up arms. Then she would be anguished by bitter disappointment when whatever problems persisted. No good suggesting that other people had jobs and kids and busy lives, and that there were plenty of ways to designate money to a cause if so inclined. Nicole herself certainly donated to the Red Cross after disasters, and made her regular donations to the Salvation Army when they sent around those postcards asking for castoffs.

No, Callie proclaimed the whole family as teeming with white privilege. The luck of their birth, went this thinking, must result in an adulthood of sacrifice and giving back. It galled her, Nicole thought, that neither her siblings nor cousins had founded idealistic charities of their own.

Naturally it was left to Nicole to reassure the cousins after the occasional extended family get together. Because Callie would have rushed off somewhere, late for a meeting or to see a long forgotten but suddenly beloved old friend. These people sometimes even consulted Nicole about Callie's schedule, knowing Nicole wouldn't just jot something down and forget about it, and then Nicole would blithely agree that her dear sister could be spacey but was one of a kind indeed. But meantime, she would be clearing the dishes, helping the kids find their toys and jackets, and explaining that no, Callie didn't mean to imply that the lot of them were responsible for global warming with their multiple children and single family homes and non-hybrid cars. She just cared deeply about the wrongs of the world.

Callie would rail about privilege and fail to see her own. She had real estate in the most expensive city in the state! And say what you would about Washington – Nicole was certainly no fan – but the Trump era had been lucrative to those who held stock funds. She was out there worrying about wasting water and wild fires in the foothills, and tended not to notice all the things she did have. Her easy hours, her hefty fees, her friends and admirers. Even her ex was still a fan.

Then recently, on top of the myriad problems she sought to solve, her own charity was in crisis. Or at least having some sort of problems, taking into account Callie's tendency toward exaggeration. And now, apparently, she was taking on suicide. Did this tie into the discussion they'd had, last birthday, about student loan debt? Opioids? Was this a new solution or a further addition to the charity's issues? Again, hard to see anything but a glass half full concerning a richly funded and well staffed entity that went around fixing Silicon Valley type problems.

Nicole would admit she had been skeptical, back when Callie was wrangling the whole thing together, years ago now. She had offered to write a small check, just being supportive, tit for tat for all those school fundraisers they asked Callie to support. But no, even this generosity was shot down. Nicole was made to understand that this organization was new and futuristic, meant to appeal to the young and tech savvy, the people who did everything via cell phone aps.

Callie had seen that coming early, or been part of it there as part of Silicon Valley. Their money would be raised in large grants, lavish events, service fees. It would all "scale," a term she threw around in the context of every organization or occupation she dealt with, a word so sharp and concise yet never defined. Even Nicole's daughter Nissa used lots of this same jargon now. Frankly it was a relief that she had recently moved away from rather than toward her favorite aunt, even if she was too far from home. It would have galled her if the pair of them decided to take on the world together. Hard enough dealing with each of their problems separately.

Nissa was made of sterner stuff though, Nicole thought. She'll end up caring for us both in the old age home some day, assuming we live that long, knock wood. She had a sudden amusing image of Callie as a spry elder, organizing the wheelchair bound for more TV time and fresher pudding.

Nicole looked at her watch, surprised to see it was already go time. Her musing had carried her through the routine messages and reassurances of the afternoon. Her moderate commute would get her caught up on world news.

She got in her car and drove home, the urgent need to take care of her sister dissipating, happily. Not just out of sight out of mind – Nicole did a fast review of the facebook messages and Callie's ever active twitter feed. Things were calmer, and nothing more posted by herself. She would still monitor the situation, check in, but she didn't feel her mom spidey sense tingling anymore.

And that was a good thing. A good dinner, a quiet night at home with her husband, that's all she really needed to feel okay. If only Callie understood that. If only she could somehow achieve it for herself. Nicole sighed. It was no use setting her up, God knows she had tried. Oh, Callie would go on a date, she was up for an evening out socializing any time. In fact she was likely to suggest something bizarre and off putting, and probably insulted the poor guys unknowingly, just as with the cousins. Nothing came of these things though. (Word would filter back from the friend of friend guys that Callie was so fun and interesting, just not the right fit for them. While Callie inevitably found people Nicole knew boring.)

It was a shame it hadn't worked out with her last long term boyfriend Ethan. Nicole hadn't even liked him that much at first – he was also mired in the tech world, more interested in hot new trends than in chatting about normal stuff. Even when he moved occupations to something more admirable, raising money and helping the wealthy make donations, he tended to talk big, global issues rather than how's the kid, what's for dinner. He had always clearly admired Callie, shared her intellectual curiosity, even liked goading her and arguing. But he wasn't a raving egomaniac like some of the earlier guys had been. After a bit, he had grown on her, on the family.

But – no real explanation offered – the thing had petered out. Callie had hinted that he wanted kids while she was (of course!) hesitant to expand the world's population by even one more baby. It was more than that, though, Nicole surmised. Something bigger; she couldn't imagine a man who really wanted babies so badly. Probably Callie had insulted him, driven him away without even noticing. They were so careful and meticulous about avoiding conflicts of interest – her charity, his clients – maybe she had gone off and gotten all intense and flirtatious with a competitor. Or maybe Ethan tired of playing second fiddle to all the friends old and brand spanking new that tended to trail in her wake. Or to Callie's mentor and father figure, the poor guy who recently passed.

Well, too late now apparently. Any hint to her sister about keeping in touch with dear Ethan was batted away. She supposed he had seen her social media explosion even if he wasn't a big facebook user. Hard to imagine him swooping in to save her though. Callie probably wasn't lying when she said he had a new lady in his life. Ethan wasn't exactly a ride in on a white horse type of guy either. Opposite of that really, smart, but cool, almost detached. Kind of opposite of Callie too, despite whatever philosophies they shared.

Nicole had chosen more conservatively from, well, forever. Her husband was not glamorous or rich or off the charts in any particular area. She had married somewhat late; it could possibly be said she had "settled." But he was there for her. Now, and in the future, unlike Callie or so many other women she knew, she could count on her plain solid marriage to see her into her old age.

That was enough for her, Nicole told herself. Life should not be a competition of course, but hard not to unlock her stately front door, look around the sensible and dignified living room, and tell herself she won.

Chapter 8

# Ethan's Feedback

People thought the job of a money manager had to be the easiest thing in the world. You didn't have to earn the money, your role was simply determining what to do with it. What investment would bring the best return, what would generate even more money, or more importantly, bring good to society?

Okay, in Ethan Kaplan's case, he had in fact earned a good deal of money on his own. Back in his earlier life, working in the valley, heady days involved in start ups and pushing forward disjointed groups of young geniuses whose crazy ideas might turn into something that could change the world. Or – truth – at least make life more convenient for those plenty of means already.

Back when he had the stamina to work 12 hour days for weeks on end, in that feeding frenzy testosterone-fueled environment that now seemed like a parody of itself, Ethan had been a small part of it all. But he recognized his ability was of the cat herder, the reasonable manager who knew when things had gone too far. Sure, he had made his money from the benefit of being there and in early, but he had sensibly known when to draw himself back. He had created his own business as an investment advisor to the young and newly rich and clueless. Gotten a decent enough reputation that his services had been sought by more that one new money foundation, and he had somewhat reluctantly jumped ship to take progressively cushier positions.

So now his was a sensible head surrounded by others even more sensible. His peer group at the foundation these days seemed like mirrors of himself and of each other. A lot of advocates of the safe and sensible well trod path, leaving the daring ideas and possible game changing innovations to groups more edgy, less endowed.

Ironic, wasn't it, that he regularly missed those bad old days. Working with people who took risks, who flamed out, but who lived with such vigor. It didn't make sense. Ethan's pension and retirement income was solid, his reputation sound. He had steered funding to numerous entities that brought some good to the world. He had no need for regret, he was, as they say, part of the solution.

But regularly he scrolled through his messages and social sites, and wondered at the ideas and scrappy new schemes and brilliant people he had entirely missed. He would catch up on a post about a new technology, say – the flexible solar applications, developments on ultra light batteries – and realize the start up had been funded and bought before he was even aware of it. Same with the orgs that needed a boost. The ones with the wherewithal to jump through the application and budget hoops tended not to be those with either the finest missions or greatest needs. Just the ability to carefully follow directions. Was that even a good thing really? Sure, they funded good solid programs. Just sometimes Ethan worried that they were missing the most serious issues, were blind to the truly neediest or most revolutionary.

Being honest, the rest of life was a bit like that too. Relationship solid, perfect on paper. A genuine partnership, a sedate and comfortable meeting of the minds. And aging bodies. Sarabeth could be counted on to do what she promised, be wherever she was supposed to be, to do her half of the chores and to promptly arrive appropriately dressed at whatever function they attended. Her kids, theirs during the half time they were in the house, were good kids, considering the drama teenagers could bring. They each liked the company of their phones in their small rooms. They reluctantly did the basics of what was asked of them, and only rolled their eyes moderately at the foibles of their elders.

Just, it was all pretty routine. Days and weeks and months proceeded apace, plans were made and carried out. There were no surprises. Ethan knew intellectually that was to be expected as he moved through his 50s. He had proactively chosen this life, even pursued this woman, who was such a contrast to his previously partner, the ever volatile and emotive Callie Marshall.

His best friend had joked, back when he broke off with Callie and shortly took up with Sarabeth, that his midlife crisis had been a mirror to the norm. Instead of buying a sports car and seeking out change and unpredictability, he had traded swoops of wrath and vivacious passion for a nice Jewish girl with a minivan.

All in all it was a good trade. For his life's path, his health – it was still a relief not to be on guard about his partner's volatile state. Ethan's own mother could be moody that way, so he was practiced at dealing with another person's emotional ups and downs. (Yeah, neither he nor his buddy missed those psychological implications back in the day.) You don't choose your mom, though, do you. While you can steer your own ship, relationship-wise. It was eminently sensible to settle down with a woman who was level headed and steady.

Ethan was not entirely unattached from Callie, as Sarabeth sometimes pointed out. She was too smart to really challenge him. She just radiated enough quiet disapproval that Ethan tried to keep his communication with Callie strictly business. The foundation had ongoing ties to her non-profit, Less Impact First. Beyond its role in funding, they made a point of working with their groups, helping them develop program and efficiently manage their resources.

So he did have to follow the ups and downs of LIF. It was part of his job. And if he regularly read Callie's social media posts, well, you could rationalize that too. Especially lately, as the none too secret mission migration and power disputes threatened the org. He tried to be non-biased. Ethics – remember ethics? – had gotten so completely trampled, the very concept demolished by the Trump era, that Ethan felt almost apologetic for his archaic notions about right and wrong. The concern of self interest, interested parties, potential favoritism.

Still he persisted. He weighed those considerations and tried not to prejudge his funding decisions for any request – at this point, he had ties with more than a few – on more than his own myriad opinions. G-d knows he had opinions. As years passed, they thrived and fruitfully multiplied until it seemed like he had something smart to say about even the slightest of topics. Here he sat with the power to say yes or no and how much, and why or why not if he so deigned. The quintessential white man. Who kind of wished he wasn't, but who also had come around to being okay with the perks.

Usually he proceeded apace in reviewing the stacks of proposals and requests. Vetted, of course, by an oft changing aide who weeded out the undeserving and those unwilling to follow simple guidelines. Regularly he got in such a groove that he impressed his colleagues with a flurry of work – gracious rejections, approvals, intelligent comments, and an authoritative summary of it all. But now and then – sadly now, it seemed – Ethan got stuck, stymied by something unexpected or especially contradictory.

It wasn't even a proposal in this case. Just a progress report. The one from Less Impact First, Callie Marshall's org. It had been flagged for his attention due to the program concerns that had been raised in the initial grant. The language of the proposal had been careful, judicious, neutral, and Ethan recognized the hand of its sensible director presumably toning down the reach of the different sides. But the gist of it was that they were wrapping up a successful series of initiatives and had sought support that would encompass planning for the next phase. And that, it was widely known, was in contention. Ethan had talked about the conflicts directly with Callie, but even if he hadn't, any number of his contacts and colleagues were aware of them. They had made the grant, with the agreement that the group very much needed to figure out its future.

In this case, his feedback was needed in response to the report. But now more specifically, he should address how they had glossed over the supposed plenary sessions that had been funded in favor of generic verbiage about their standard program work. As if the forward progress had ground to a halt, which he and his team suspected.

Ethan drummed his fingers across his keyboard. It would be easy enough to just shoot back a basic response, request some specifics. But he also could guess what would transpire – the development department's apologetic extension request along with pointing out the tragic death of the founding director. He recalled the initial conversation he'd had with Callie about it. Over the phone he could hear the anguish in her voice, even as her words sounded calm and logical.

Their Board would be forced to make a choice, she had said, filling the seat that his wife had taken for a few months as a placeholder. This could force them out of their inertia. The greater good once again to be served. Next thing he hears – this say nothing progress report. Well, preceded by Callie herself on a viral video addressing suicide, seemingly out of nowhere. She had followed up with a calmer, apologetic post, explaining this was merely her having a moment, not a new LIF priority. But still. Something must be near a breaking point.

He turned to look out his window, the view of the windswept bay now mired by new tower developments raising upward. Reasonable and needed projects, of course, with set asides for affordable housing. He supported them, but also missed the open views, the days of slightly less congested streets and sidewalks. The foundation's office – happily locked in a long term lease – was on an upper floor of a relatively new building, a solid and well built place with double paned windows and clean filtered air flow. It would withstand an earthquake, and day to day it kept the noise and chaos of the city masked. You didn't hear car horns or people screaming obscenities up here, you were free from the sight of addicts shooting up in their worn sidewalk tents, far from the powerful smells that pervaded the little alleys.

Like Ethan's route through the city, he thought, and like so many well off people who existed near but also so far removed from the abject poverty in their midst. These parallel worlds carried on in almost the same space and yet to each the other was remote.

Last time they had talked, hadn't Callie said something similar about her own mental health? It had been shortly after Marty Windsor's service. Everybody checking in. Ethan himself had considered Marty a friend, but nothing like Callie's closeness. She had been the best version of herself at the service, speaking brilliantly and working the room. Yet had told him that inside, she was barely keeping it together. And even this worrying confession was quickly followed with a hardy laugh, some funny (near hysterical?) riffs on well off WASPs and their aptitude for self indulgent self analysis.

In case he hadn't seen it on his own, at least four separate people had forwarded him Callie's post. And while he felt professionally that they should take her at her word, that she was opining as a concerned individual, it might need a mention in his response to LIF.

Ethan realized he was biting his fingernail. He might have been twelve again, sitting in his bedroom and wondering how long he could hide there before going out to see about his mother. In retrospect, she had been depressed. She had needed more help than a child, or even a husband and child could give. But how could he understand that back then? It just fell on him, carefully trying to determine just how upset she was or might become. Whether dinner would be prepared, or pizza ordered, or the door would slam and he would quietly eat sandwiches until his father got home.

He coolly placed his fingers back on the keyboard. He was a grown man. Mom was gone, and the ghost of his young self could serve him now in dealing with other peoples' instability. It was Callie's screed that was underlying all this, he became aware. His mother had danced close to the edge, he knew. And now possibly the woman he had been with for almost a decade? Unnerving.

Deep breath, and he rapidly typed out a draft response. A polite request for details on their planning process, along with sympathy about the leadership, to deflect any easy excuses. Then he almost deleted the whole thing. To be fair, he gave Callie a buzz. See if she had more to say that might make this easier, or at least have made the effort if she didn't.

Callie answered the first line he tried, somewhat surprisingly. Both of them valued their privacy. "Hi and I'm not headed off the deep end, just yet anyway," Callie said in lieu of a more traditional greeting. "You're like the last person to call to check, what kept you?"

Ethan tried not to smile, to be charmed out of remembering why he was calling. "I'm fine too, in case you wondered."

"You – never a question. So? Business, personal, both?"

As briefly as he could, Ethan outlined his concern – that LIF, according to their progress report anyway, was coasting on old program work and not moving forward with the planning process that had been funded.

"Well, I didn't see the report, but I can imagine. Staff is scared to make a move. The Board is split and dug in deep. Half want to shred everything we've done in favor of a radical new plan that puts teeth – razor sharp fangs – in our core policy beliefs. Half are understandably worried that we could alienate our funding base, but don't want to budge on proactive forward progress."

"That's where you were last time we talked, right? Isn't that what plenary sessions are for?"

"Oh, it's not pretty, Ethan. Elizabeth – who has all the patience in the world – is having trouble even locking down that process. We have a new board member who looks bleary eyed at the background material. Buzzwords anyone? I think the rest of us are inured to it. But I don't think she'll be a swing vote. Everybody's tired of it."

"You know, I think there's a more general level of exhaustion out there," he said. "Since Trump's election, since the kind of unreality coming from DC, the circle firing squad of all the Democratic candidates. Have you been reading about the Corona Virus? That there are already cases here? Seems like all the news is bad. People are sticking to their secure path, afraid to deviate a step, or ready to throw it all out for something entirely new."

"Great, so LIF is an analogy for our times? That doesn't help us move forward."

"So is that what your little rant was really about," he asked carefully. "Shaking things up? I don't want to pressure you, but we do need to talk about this."

"I said what I had to say," she said, sounding defensive.

"People are coming out of the woodwork to snark on your reputation, you know that, right?"

Callie's long pause was actually a bit concerning. She was rarely at a loss for words. "I wonder that anyone sounds very sane anymore," she finally said. "Maybe I'm still processing the election, or Marty. Maybe it's got nothing to do with LIF's direction. I just needed to address a situation." She went on about a bunch of dark web type places she or somebody had found, and how she got freaked out about the mission, LIF's philosophies, that they might be implicated somehow. Less impact good implying no impact better, implying advocating suicide.

Ethan could picture her face as she spoke, the twists to her expression. And he envisioned his late mother. "Contemplating suicide doesn't really evolve like that," he told her. "It's not thoughtful and logical. You remember my mom. Her issues. Seriously, I am confident that somebody on edge like that is not weighing out their personal environmental impact. It's very egotistical, really. Not much thought about impacting anyone else, how could there be?" He felt the emotion in his voice, and worked to tamp it down. "It's incredibly selfish, really. Less Impact First is off the hook on this one, unless you've made a pretty big mission leap."

"Fair point. Nobody really put it that way," she said, volume unusually soft. "Sorry, I do remember, um, about your mom."

She, like everyone in Ethan's world, had a vague air of unease, or maybe embarrassment, when speaking about his difficult mother. Like there was an unpleasant odor, something base and intimate, best tolerated and ignored until it went away. She had died of a sudden heart attack, a few years back. But it had certainly occurred to him that if she had survived and then had to recuperate in a hospital or rest home, it would have stretched her already shaky mental framework badly. Perhaps she would have taken her own life under that level of stress. "So," said, reeling it back, "did we change the subject?"

"I was just explaining myself. I know I acted on impulse. That tends to work for me."

"Right. And nothing you said or how people reacted changes the crux of things there. Can LIF remain a single, viable organization?"

"It can't," Callie replied right away. "I know it, like I know things. Even though it's not official. But we still absolutely need the foundation's support in bridging the gap. Striking the best alternative." The confidence was back in her voice.

He nodded, never mind being on the phone. "That's what our support was supposed to be for. Not too late to move it forward. Walk me through it, okay?" This was is standard line, useful for the greenest of new nonprofit leaders, but he used it anyway. She owed him honesty at least.

"Yeah, I've done some pro/cons of various alternatives," she said, even toned. "The simplest thing is just a clean break. Each side takes half and proceeds, unrelated."

"Double the infrastructure, all the administrative details..."

"More to the point, would either one survive? Funding would dry up from the big traditional sources for anything radical. But also, why support the group that raises money just to raise money?"

Ethan was glad he didn't have to say it. "You're sure the sides can't just compromise on the mission."

"Well, somewhat. But it's the implementation. And Ethan, you should hear some of the terms they use. If we are to prevent so called useless use of resources, the methods need to be pretty extreme. I might support the results, but I don't think I'd be on board with legislating what people can purchase, how much energy they're entitled to, how many children they can have. Never mind it's unlikely to pass even at the state level."

"I suppose some laws just in Berkeley and Portland won't stem the tide," he said dryly.

"Yeah, no kidding. Although I guess I might even argue in favor of model programs. Reasonable ones, I mean. Look at banning single use water bottles, or how composting got started. Or even curbside recycling."

"Hard to remember when that wasn't normal. So you're saying yes, tamp down the extremes and let them make their case before a small, receptive audience?"

"Am I?" She sighed audibly. "Maybe some test cases would be good for everybody. Show if there's a level of support. And show some actual change is possible."

"The group as a whole has to get to the place where that can happen, as one entity or two."

"Or a hundred tiny ones, I don't know. Did we scale too fast?" She paused. "What if this virus tanks the economy, are we even addressing the right issues at this point?"

"Again, something for your board to calculate." Ethan glanced at his screen, at the notes he had jotted. Phrases, mostly, and he realized they barely made sense. The distracting memories of his mother had the effect of muddling his normally logical flow of information, even with this much time passed. But he had gotten the assurances he needed from Callie, he thought. That she and the group would carry out a thoughtful process. "So you personally are sticking with LIF, aside from whatever else you're taking on. And you come down on the side of making a big change," he asked her. "If you had to pick?"

"I want us to fulfill the original mission," she said. "Or at least use the brainpower here as a force for good. Yeah, I'm in it long haul. I—We will argue our way to the other side of this impasse. We have to."

Thus reassured and not wishing to prolong the conversation, Ethan wrapped it up. He now had a quick sense of how to edit his response, what phrases to use, what to say to the development director. He even had a fair idea of what he'd get back, and as long as they did what they had to do, he was comfortable in recommending the next phase of funding. Now instead of his late mother, he pictured Sarabeth. How he would mention the context of why he had the little chat with Callie. That's all.

Sarabeth would understand the issue – she would loudly object to some of the concepts pushed by the new young leaders of the group. She would certainly want him to rein in the worst of it with whatever power he had. She had lost whole branches of her family, generations ago back in Poland. Both of them, but Sarabeth especially, would oppose anything that smacked of eugenics, of Nazi style prejudices.

End of life issues were important, don't get him wrong. It was crazy, the over-the-top expensive and painful and ultimately harmful prolonging of life, the so called heroic measures that provide a few extra painful days in a hospital. That jacked up medical costs for everybody and gave such a rotten alternative to dying quietly and peacefully at home. But that understanding was a far cry from phrasing that implied a life was not useful past the stage of child rearing and prime economic output. He could, and he would, steer any organization away from a goal that advocated self-elimination or implied that conserving resources meant more than addressing American materialism and waste.

Ethan returned his attention to his growing in box of messages. His confidence was restored.

Chapter 9

# Callie Attempting to Unplug

I am spending a fairly ridiculous amount of time in brand re-build mode, and that in itself is stressing me out. One of my worst characteristics, I'd say, and oh such a white privilege thing, is how I can find something to worry me, something I have to fix, at basically any point. While it's true that I don't have a crushing pile of other demands on my time, this feels wasteful. A "useless use" of my time, except of course it's not. I need my reputation as a seer of trends to be intact. But that latest bit of notoriety has not helped my mental state, either.

And so I opine calmly about the events of the day, tweet only things uncontroversial, check in with mild humor and respectfulness with any number of clients and former clients, friends and associates. I consciously avoid getting drawn into controversy, even silly stuff. Especially not about serious matters.

My recent chat with Ethan shook me up a bit. I mean the delicacy with which he reached out made me realize that I wasn't keeping that twitchy unstable side of myself under wraps much at all anymore. What I intended as concern for scared young people and clarifying a central premise of Less Impact First, was widely interpreted as my own cry for help. It wasn't. I mean, was it? I replayed it and listened to the words, and they are quite clear. But people were not just responding to the direct meaning of the words, I guess, but to my face and voice and tone.

Ethan generally wasn't one to mince words, and even he had approached as though I was a fidgety bird that might flutter off at any moment. Even with him, I had to explain myself. I had to will my voice into something cool and collected, and was glad we were on the phone and not facetiming. And then we got down to the particulars of the LIF matter, which he also seemed to feel was connected to my questionable emotional stability. He knows how involved I am in the group, but still, he should get it I am a separate entity, you know? As we talked, it struck me that as much as I knew a break was inevitable, I had to let it play out with the our leadership. I was not the puppet master.

Fix yourself, I told my puppet hands. I mean I have been really getting paranoid recently. Out and about, just doing normal stuff, I feel people staring. Whispering. I see someone snap a pic and think they've spotted me. They are going to post something awful, and everyone they know will see this fleeting image of the woman who was advocating early death and then went off online to deny it.

It isn't all baseless paranoia either. I have advocated for important work that needs to be done to preserve the planet. Some of it could be misconstrued. Possibly my philosophy has caused people to avoid medical care, to sacrifice themselves for their family members or something. I know, Ethan was right, that people don't hunker down at our website and review our visionary message before making a life choice. But still, my words and ideas were very much out there.

And of course I've raised money for Less Impact First. Big picture, I get a stab of worry if better purposes might have been served. Lives could have been lost from those priorities too. Even as I make mental lists of the potential harm I have caused, I have to scoff a bit too. I mean, hello monster ego, right? People do listen to me, try to make money off of my predictions and grab gems of my ideas as their own. They want to link themselves to my brand of creative problem solver. Or they did. But really, how swelled was my head to feel so personally responsible for every damn thing.

It's another fresh bright day in the comfort of my cozy home office. Window cracked, the breeze wafts the curtain, and carries the faint scent of early blooming flowers from next door. I stand for a moment, and gaze out to where I can just see the bright tips of them, climbing the trellis at the corner of their well-tended garden.

It's a simple thing. To stand and stretch, and look and smell, and of course take the time to appreciate. Too many people don't get that chance, or don't slow down to take it. Myself as well, I have bad habits like everybody. I'm checking in all the time, all my socials, news feeds, spotting trends and being the first to pass on something hilarious.

I force myself out. Unplugged. Carry my phone but that is all, and I promise not to look at it. Rather, I stroll up the hill toward the small neighborhood playground. It's got a couple basketball hoops, a lone and badly tended tennis court, a picnic area and sparkly new play equipment for little kids. All those super safe bright plastic things, arrayed on a bouncy surface where you could fall and not risk even a scrape. I scoff a little, but in fact the kids who play here love it.

Perched on a bench overlooking the whole place, I let my eyes wander. Shouts and laughter from a set of pre-schoolers playing below. Thumping and swishes from the lone basketball player practicing his shots. A pair of what are probably nannies push strollers languidly as they chat, and behind them, ready to pass, a pair of seniors walking earnestly for exercise.

Wish I could move the LIF board meetings out here. Breathing this clean air, smelling the cut grass, appreciating the little kids and old people who are making good use of resources. Maybe they could see the big picture better – that neither faction was entirely in the right. They would need to compromise, yes. But also understand how they could help each other. What did I say to Ethan, had we scaled too fast. Maybe it was actually too slow. Maybe there was a way to keep the base, keep Paige and Topher and their society friends and big ticket events humming along, but let them help develop the new strategies as new fledging single issues ventures? Not have LIF itself take it all on, but be an incubator, an advocate for change carried out by on the ground activists. They could review other entrepreneur's ideas, provide seed money. Launch franchises, nimble single subject campaigns.

Wonder if any of the 2.0s would accept such a thing. Well, not if it was a directive, but perhaps if they conceived of it themselves? I feel energized, my mind racing happily. But then I have an abrupt painful stab. Because without even thinking, I reached for my phone. To call Marty of course.

The sudden shame of it, that I had forgotten, just took it for granted that he would be there for me. And then the punch in the chest I feel, remembering. Mental and physical pain tip me right back out of the park and towards home. I have to do this myself. I feel sure he would have backed me, and maybe I can even ask Lila for some feedback, once I have a better grasp. But this is on me. I need to make the calls, plant the seeds, frankly manipulate the easier leaders on the Board to come up with this as their own idea.

I will unplug eventually, I promise myself. Need it for my sanity, apparently everybody else can see that too. But back in the office, I have calls to make and people to prod. Headlines are more than a little alarming too. This new Corona Virus has spread well out of the initial province in central China, presumably carried by visitors celebrating the Chinese New Year. People are falling ill in Europe, Iran, and in a nursing home up in Washington state. No doubt it will – or already has – hit California. There is a cruise ship with infected passengers not being allowed to dock. Talking heads offer dried analyses of the expected body counts.

The stories offer conflicting conclusions – from extreme sounding gloom and doom to breezy assurances that this is a foreign thing, as though tight borders will save the United States from contagious disease. I recall that movie _Contagion_ for a moment. Didn't that feature Gwenyth Paltrow contracting something in China and then bringing it home to SF?

More to the point, there's the disturbing Trump influenced assumption that it doesn't matter much what's happening in Asia or Europe. Apparently most people who catch the thing recover easily. But a small percentage, like the flu, I guess, are not so lucky. And guess what, people, even a tiny percentage of millions is a significant number.

I stand for a moment. Feel a repeat of the gut punch I felt earlier in the park. Is it free floating anxiety, longing for my old friend, or should I really be scared? This will be serious. And beyond a deadly virus, what might it do to people's livelihood? Or economic markets – we've been due for a correction for awhile. The administration is a joke, leadership positions packed with brown nosing acting directors who lack anything but toady devotion to the President. The US is singularly unprepared for a health care emergency. I jot a note to myself to review some holdings. Good time to invest in work-from-home software, delivery services, home exercise equipment, and to dump things related to travel.

First things first, though. A call to Lila to ask for some feedback, and I should probably consult with Elizabeth. Then start my own little stealth campaign toward the LIF board.

Chapter 10

# Lila Upended Again

Lila's progress toward anything approaching normalcy was very, very slow. She acknowledged that to herself and to anyone who inquired, even politely. People should know this. A loss of a life partner meant a giant chasm in one's life path, even if you were over 70 and mentally prepared for it.

But there was progress. Tiny steps. She noticed the days getting longer as spring approached. She found herself better able be out in public, shopping or walking with her hiking poles for balance, not self conscious being alone but simply doing what needed to be done. The groceries and errands were easier than in those weeks at the end of last year, after all, when she was maintaining the household for both of them. And she had the kids available, neither more than a couple hours drive, for anything serious or heavy. Good hearted neighbors she could call upon if she got in a jam, and friends from various points in their lives she could talk to.

Marty would never leave her memory. Lila was not a religious person, and yet she did have a feeling about souls. Or auras or life energy or whatever you wanted to call it. Perhaps it was all in her head, but she did have a strong sense of him still. With her, as if he was leaning over her shoulder sometimes, sneaking looks just as he used to sneak bites of dinner she was preparing. Happily, more and more she pictured him as he had looked before the cancer.

With all this free time now, she was about ready to try to give back a little, not just read and garden and make miniature portions of new recipes. Not quite ready to put herself out yet, but she started to research what was possible. A variety of opportunities, it seemed, even for someone of her age and ability. Her service on the LIF board made her steer away from board participation, or things involving long evening meetings. But there was a tight group who maintained plants in the nearby park, there were animal rescues, ocean clean up, many tasks that related to children.

She decided to build a large list and then have a series of conversation with family and friends. Winnow it down. She had no particular deadline, she just needed to feel productive again. Keep busy, do something else besides keep her house and miss her husband.

Dinner last night with Callie had gotten this idea rolling. Oh, it was a bit sorrowful at first, just the two of them trying to talk their way around the gaping hole left by Marty's absence at the table. Lila had even cooked way too much, she admitted ruefully. Old habits, she was used making a bigger meal with company.

But once they climbed together over that obstacle, the talk had been fruitful. Lila was still good at listening after all, and Callie skilled at tackling a big problem and breaking it into components.

Their nominal reason for meeting, she had laid out a multi-pronged plan for resolving the split at Less Impact First. She outlined it tentatively, as though still seeking Lila's advice, but the fact was she had taken into account pretty much every question one might ask. The gist of it was that the basic organization would stay as is, and function as a fundraising arm. Separated apart, the 2.0 faction might launch single issue projects, be it legislation or social media influence, to be funded. As such, these would require a well thought out action plan, measurable goals, a clear statement of what a win would look like. And community support, of course, which would hopefully tamp down the ideas that sounded like euthanasia.

Lila would have found something positive to say in any case, but the fact was, she approved. It made some sense, and sounded rather like the sort of thing Marty would have proposed. "My mentor still speaks to me," Callie had said with a quick smile. And Lila felt as if Marty was in the room with them, beaming.

She had mused whether the more strident of the useless use advocates would accept any sort of check on their positions. Callie had a ready response: she had been caucusing with the group, and this was actually partly Garret's idea. A way to dive deep into critical matters without being bogged down by the details of staffing and fundraising.

Lila could just picture Callie's subtle manipulation of those fellows, who frankly loved to hear themselves speak. She recognized their buzzwords, scalable solutions, instant pop ups, nimble and pivoting. She agreed that with their buy in, this could be a workable way to split the organization but maintain its central premise. She would do whatever steps needed to move the people and pieces forward.

It frustrated her that all of them didn't see the bigger concerns like making corporations and the government fulfill commitments to mitigate climate change. Of course there were many issues out there. The Trump era take downs of our constitution, for one, or demonizing immigrants or allowing rogue nation hacking to mess with democracy. What Callie was suggesting was not to ignore the bigger picture so much as tackle it step by step in as much as realistically possible. And given her recent concerns about suicide, this should cut any such talk from the stated and funded goals of the group.

By the time they had finished dessert, Lila, who had worried whether she had the stamina for a whole evening, felt expansive and calm. Callie's effusive thanks for her feedback seemed sincere. It was good to be needed, even as a sounding wall. She had sent her younger friend off with a tupperware of leftovers, and felt, well, normal.

One thing bothered her, it occurred now. Callie had talked at some length about the Corona Virus, which was spreading from China to Europe and now racing through a nursing home near Seattle. And she had gotten that frantic manic look back. She told Lila that the death rate was highest amongst older people, which was obviously concerning. She even suggested that they both might want to stock up on food and supplies. Not go crazy, as apparently many people were doing at the Costco these days, but just be ready.

Lila had visited Whole Foods earlier in the day, picking up basics and some wine for the dinner. She had noticed a fellow in the line with a carton full of toilet paper, paper towels, and bottled water. Figured he must run a day care or something, but now she realized – he was expecting shortages. The type of disruption that would cause shortages. Should she load up too?

She was not a person to panic. But she did follow the news, and she kept NPR on all morning. Reassurances from the President did little to assuage her concern. In fact, the contrast between the reporters and the White House were so stark as to be funny, were it not in regard to a deadly new disease. Someone asked if scientists were ready to call it a Pandemic. Lila felt her heart racing.

Rather than just sit and stew, she got in the Prius and drove to the Safeway, where she went for around the house items. Darned if the place wasn't unusually packed full of shoppers late morning. Several aisles looked like locusts had descended – there was barely any toilet paper left. She put a four pack in her cart, thinking it would be silly to get more. The impulse was there though. There was hardly any pasta either, nor eggs.

Lila already had a fair amount of items like pasta and canned foods at home. Her earthquake supplies, along with water and a flashlight and a solar powered radio. Still, she found herself filling her cart and then waiting in a very long line with other people with similarly laden carts.

Back home, hoisting the bags into the house load after load so as not to strain anything, she told herself she was over reacting. She wished Marty were here to tell her so, although that thought was followed right away by a sense of relief that there hadn't been a deadly disease – another one – threatening during all those trips they had taken to the hospital. She checked in briefly with both the children. Both were busy at work and neither seemed overly concerned. Of course they could not see that poor cruise ship that she could spot far out the living room window, circling, burdened with sick passengers and not allowed to dock.

Later, Callie called. "I don't want to worry you," she said, "but I heard from a friend who works for the city that the Mayor is considering shutting things down. Not just her, but coordinating with the whole Bay Area. In the next couple weeks."

Lila confessed about her grocery run. "Word seems to be getting out. People are hoarding by the looks of it."

"Well, you should probably stay put for a bit. Things could be rocky."

"What do you mean shutting down?" Lila thought to ask.

Callie's voice was harsh, almost raspy. "They are going to require any business that is not essential to close, or have staff work from home. And tell people not to go out unless it's an emergency. Oh, and they're closing schools."

"That's – can they do that? What will parents do?" Lila felt her own issues shrinking in the face of all this. An odd shot of relief that she did not yet have grandchildren.

"The parents will be home too, working from home. Or not working. Bay Area at least I'm sure lots of people can manage. Maybe not be very productive. But the point is to keep everybody apart, keep from spreading the infection."

Lila pictured the crowded supermarket. Wondered at the risk she might have just taken.

"I'll forward you the article I was reading," Callie told her. "It's pretty sobering. Could be that all my negotiating at LIF is misplaced. I'm thinking we'll have bigger problems, and soon. A lot of people aren't taking this seriously, but it's a genuine threat. This is the sort of thing virologists have been warning about for years."

Lila thanked her for getting in touch, and promised to read up. And to stay away from crowds for the next little while. Not that she had plans to go farther than the library and boxing class. Did that qualify as a crowd?

Forewarned was forearmed, it seemed. Not long later came a message from the Rock Steady coach that classes would be cancelled for at least the next two weeks. An edict had come from the city recommending people over 60 stay home as much as possible. Everyone should practice "social distancing," limit non-essential travel, and wash and disinfect hands. The first cases had appeared in the area.

Lila sighed, feeling a bit put out, and also a bit selfish that her reaction was to be annoyed about missing her friends and her workout rather than concern about the poor stricken people. They sent along a link that she could put on her computer to try a workout at home. She supposed she could at least do that much. Studying the office where the laptop resided and then the bigger, brighter living room, she made an executive decision and brought the computer out. She would rearrange things to give herself a nice little workout space in the middle of the floor.

From there, from that pleasant afternoon rearranging the furniture and feeling in charge of her health, things fast began to spiral. Days and then weeks ran together, even as most every day brought about something else new and extraordinary. News from abroad got increasingly dire. Hospital staff rationing ICU beds, running out of protective gear. The "shelter in place" declared locally, and by that week's end the Governor made it statewide. There were runs on grocery stores and Amazon. Suddenly all the neighbors were home, and young parents trotted kids around the streets, people walked and jogged, and wore face masks and protective gloves. Not only were schools closed, but libraries, playgrounds, ball fields. Lila had been home a lot since retiring, so she was used to the relaxed pace, but clearly many people were not.

Meantime, all the news exploded with stories of the pandemic. COVID 19, they now called it, or the novel corona virus. Novel, it was new, and some relative of SARs. Despite early claims to the contrary, it spread like wildfire amongst people, and was raging in Italy, then Spain. The bulk of cases in the US were around Seattle, and then suddenly virulent in New York City. Predictions of cases and deaths were staggering and seemed unreal. Terrifying, of course. More so as they came to pass. Stories of people in Brooklyn hearing only ambulances on the streets, hospital beds laden with critical patients lined up in the hall. Waiting for the "surge" to hit California.

Lila already tended toward insomnia, and the daily news stoked her until she could barely get a few hours sound sleep. Her tremor became more pronounced, and she wondered about scheduling a visit with her neurologist. Only nobody was supposed to seek any but emergency care. Like everyone she spoke to, she found herself monitoring her physical health obsessively, worried and alert to every twinge, afraid for any cough or sense of overheat. She washed her hands over and over, the wasted water ignored versus a potential stay in the hospital. Anxiety was like a low hum now, almost always present.

And the health crisis triggered economic chaos that no one had ever seen. Even the Great Depression had begun over a period of time. Now came millions and millions unemployed over the space of weeks. Tourism dried up and disappeared. Air travel ground to a near halt, which was extraordinary. Like a 9/11 happening in every city, every country. The stock market gyrated and plunged, records set and broken and broken again. Talking heads debated whether to call it a recession or a depression.

Lila's retirement accounts were conservative, but dropping in value like everything else. Both the children had jobs they could do from home, so they were both still busy and stressed, but not suddenly jobless. Oh, it was something these days – the unemployment rate rocketing up, and the sorts of workers who were underpaid and lacking decent benefits had become heroes. Grocery store clerks, home heath aids, delivery drivers. Not to mention hospital staff, and Lila was stunned to find that the United States was unable to provide healthcare workers in New York City with protective masks and gowns.

There were days when it was very hard to rise out of bed. Like just after Marty passed. Lila knew she was regressing, but she felt like a great weight kept pressing her down. The news was just so dire, and there was nothing to be done – her only task was to stay home. She found herself muttering some of those phrases. Thinking those thoughts – what was she doing but using resources, day after look alike day, getting exercise, standing in the Soviet style line outside the market, talking on the phone about the same grim topic. Noting the ages of those dying and feeling her age as never before.

Lila worked, though, at finding something good. Her children called almost every day, her daughter joking that she no longer felt pressure to produce a grandchild. She got emails from old friends, just checking in and telling their own stories. Her boxing classes were held online on Zoom now, and it was cheering to see her friends fiddling with their computers and exercising in their homes. Walking in the neighborhood, people had adapted to wearing masks and politely darting into the street to keep distance when they approached. It was charming to see young dads squiring around their small children – these were bonds that would last a lifetime, she thought. Traffic had lightened, and the air was noticeably cleaner. Even the homeless problem was being better addressed, as cities scrambled to keep the virus from spreading in squalid conditions. Local agencies coordinated to build emergency hospital facilities, and local leaders stepped up. Both the mayor and governor demonstrated leadership even as the Trump administration faltered.

Lila felt a slow steady pattern emerging to her days. Morning walks and gardening, carefully prepared lunches, afternoon online exercise, a rest, some emailing. PBS News Hour, All things Considered, phone calls, lengthy preparation of dinner, something soothing and unrelated to current events from the streaming service in the evening. Punctuated by careful visits to buy food and disinfect everything related, which seemed to consume everybody's time and attention now.

By the second half of April, the news people began harping on when things would open up again. The White House issued contradictory and infuriating statements, but she paid more attention to Governor Newsom and Dr. Fauci. Both urged extreme caution, and indicated it would be months before things were close to normal. Lila tried to count her blessings regularly – even without having seen them in person, her children were close. She was in touch with friends, she was not sick nor was she facing losing a loved one without the chance to hold hands and say goodbye. She was safely retired and owned her home. Her daily medication was inexpensive and plentiful.

She had her ups and downs over the course of each day. Nobody's mental health was very stable these days, that was clear. She had initially worried about Callie, who had been so fragile over the winter. But recently, she seemed freshly energized. Actually, their friendship had blossomed into one that transcended the mentor/protegee of Marty and Callie. They checked in on each other these days, and talked easily.

Callie was a lifeline for supplies as well. Lila got basics she needed on foot, locally, gloved and masked as if for battle. But Callie insisted on making runs to bigger stores for bulky items. It was no trouble, she claimed, as she was shopping for several seniors anyway, something she had set up around her neighborhood. Bargains in bulk, and she had set everyone up on Venmo for payments. Such arrangements were bubbling up anyway, and she was creating a simple downloadable app to run on NextDoor.

Plus they got to see each other this way. Callie did not enter the house, but unloaded bags by the garage, insisting that Lila wait a couple hours before even touching them. This afternoon, Lila opened the front door to say thanks, and Callie sat on the front step, her mask lowered, and a smile on her face. "It's good exercise," she said, offering a thin flexed arm. "I should have started this years ago – keeps me out of trouble and I'm getting to know some great people, neighbors for years I hadn't really talked to."

"I've had some lovely chats too," Lila said. In her case she supposed some of this neighborliness began with Marty's illness. But it was certainly a good thing.

"Are you feeling okay? Getting out walking?"

"Every day," Lila assured her. "Not very fast but pretty far. Even tackled some hills." Much of the area here was flat. "Now, what are you working on?" Callie, no surprise, was a whirlwind of research, opinions, and schemes about the COVID pandemic.

"I'm publicizing that info on ventilators. There's enough evidence for me," she said right away. Apparently the normal triggers for putting patients on ventilators did not readily apply to COVID. Less invasive measures could help and prevent later problems. A dire portion of patients who went on them were dying anyway.

"I put my no heroic measures paperwork right in my purse," Lila told her.

Callie looked surprised for a moment, but she nodded. Such was the reality. "I am still trying to calculate the timing here, whether there were undetected cases far earlier, even late last year. The metrics seem off, Bay Area compared to New York. Our shelter started only a few days sooner."

"Well, they are densely packed there, apartments and on the subway."

"That could account for some increases, but not ten or twenty fold. Either it was already here or what we have here is less contagious. Bay Area strain came from China, and New York from Europe. Could be one mutated."

"Be that as it may, everyone knew it was coming. There were cases diagnosed and it was clearly spreading in February, while the President was saying it was a hoax!"

"I'm stunned, every freaking day. The administration flat squandered a full month before requiring anyone to make anything. Now they're finally catching up on PPEs after 40,000 deaths." Callie paused, as if remembering she was preaching to the choir. "States are in charge by default. It's all about the testing now. The only way to get beyond everybody hiding out. Obviously more people have had it then have been tested. We have to know who is immune."

"I thought I heard those tests were coming?"

"There are several places developing them locally, but unfortunately the false negative rate is high. I'd put my resources toward the anti-body tests more than contact tracing. I mean I am, we are. Find out who's immune, otherwise it would mean a major investment for every positive, and weeks of quarantine for an exponential number of contacts. Parallel track, fast and coordinated work on the vaccine, of course. Got the wealth of the Gates Foundation there."

Lila nodded, having heard a variety of opinions on all this and trusting Callie as well as anyone. "People do seem to be reaching a breaking point with the stay at home," she noted. Recent news stories featured people actually protesting the prevention measures, stoked by right wing news people. And apparently unclear on the fact that those very measures were already working to keep people healthy, or what sort of painful death they or their parents might otherwise face.

"Don't get me started. I wanted to blame a lot of the online BS on bots and whatnot, but these are actual flesh and blood morons. What are we going to do, not treat them later when they're ill?

"I hate to say it, but I will," Lila said, voicing a thought she could only share with someone as broadminded as Callie. "It seems almost like the planet fighting back. Nothing else has put a dent in carbon usage. Al Gore couldn't convince people to change and now no one is flying."

Callie raised an eyebrow. "Reports say this is just a blip, not enough to change what's started. Although a lot of interested parties really want the economy fired up again. There has to be an impact, just look at the glut of unused oil."

Lila was glad she could see her friend's face, her lively expression. "I suppose it's too much to ask that people stop taking airplane trips so casually."

"I've been thinking about that too," Callie said. "These past months have demonstrated that tech can replace in person in a whole lot of business settings. At some point even a conservative has to take note of that bottom line, and nobody wants a junket that includes mandatory temperature checks and a 3 hour plane ride in germ soup."

"Still, I worry for all the workers," Lila said. "Airline, restaurants, tourist industry. People can get by for a few weeks, but what if some of those jobs are just gone?"

"Will Andrew Yang's universal income come to pass? Bernie's universal healthcare?" Callie offered an exaggerated shrug. "Nothing seems crazy anymore when everything does. Speaking of which, I'll forward you the latest from LIF. We're definitely going to pivot. Everybody's on board. "

"Look forward to it. Give me something else to read other than every local pandemic story on AreaCentral."

"At least they're covering real news these days. Just don't watch the White House briefings for your sanity."

Lila laughed, and offered another thanks, and Callie bounced up and into her car with a wave.

She was quite glad to be off the board of directors, but did still have an interest. And after all that wrangling, the whole group had readily agreed to the two prong approach, fundraising and supporting single issue campaigns. First campaign, front and center, would be tackling COVID 19. Anti-body test development, it sounded like, and broadening the reach of Callie's neighborhood networking. Presumably a bunch more efforts to appropriately use limited resources to survive this thing. She could only wish that Marty was here to goad them on and offer his own original ideas.

Chapter 11

# Jack Still Working from Home

May 2020, San Francisco – while much of the state took a giant, EDD-funded staycation, traipsing around with bandanas loose around their necks and all day to exercise and bake bread, Jack Traviro wrote news stories. Story after story. He was ensconced in his home office, one freaking month over the stay in place age cut. But that turned out to be okay, because his boss – a smug and whiney 30 something who had come to the newsroom from some ridiculous fashion website – was basically out of his hair. What was left of it.

Jack was one of the last dinosaurs of the AreaCentral news site, lasting more than 20 years. Earlier, he had helped launch the Examiner's site, back when they were among the first to understand the then new media. Dawn of time to the current batch of workers, some not even born when that took place. He'd been poached back when he was considered a pioneer, experienced at website news, a man to be pursued. Heady days long gone, for sure. Staff had changed, the recession had come and gone, news sites were ubiquitous, then dumbed down, then trimmed until a lot of them cut editorial staff altogether. Trusting the magic of algorithms over editors. Playing to the lowest common denominator of readership, who clicked constantly on that same bait they loved to complain about in the omnipresent comments.

His role had been whittled away and then chopped, along with respect for his experience. People he liked and respected left, one after another, such that by now it was the third or fourth iteration already departed for greener pastures – early retirement or PR jobs or start ups, anything as the revenues dried and news budgets shrank. He had seen the shift coming to online early, the migration from newsprint, the obvious budgetary concern that no one felt the obligation to pay for content.

Jack had looked around, of course, now and again. Nothing appeared much better, though. His age at this point worked against him. Baby faced managers came and went, and he had just waited them out, ignored any remarks about gray hair or the high cost of medical benefits. He was far younger than either major party presidential candidate, chew on that.

He was not in any way glad about the coronavirus rampaging the world this spring, killing people, tanking jobs, closing businesses, ruining weddings and funerals, halting the damned baseball season. However, Jack had to admit that his work was at last interesting again. A welcome reversal from years of news items increasingly less important and more sensational, of stupid click bait headlines, of the constant pressure of achieving page views and putting together inane slide shows.

Now the team competed for approval of stories that could not be more critical and important. The freaking Bay Area had actually flattened the curve, and every provider that spread the word might well have had a hand in saving lives. As the disease spread and the official recommendations and estimates shifted and morphed, Jack took pride in getting out ahead. Home office be damned, he could phone or video conference whomever he could reach. He was smart enough to ask probing questions and summarize complex answers. But not too egotistical to think he knew any better – his role was seeking and providing answers from actual experts.

Jack had been ahead on the face coverings, that they would be required, understanding as so many people hadn't that their purpose is to protect others. He monitored the Hopkins site with its updated regional stats, and correctly predicted the state's peak of deaths. This first round anyway – he had investigated enough to be quite sure that a second round, possibly more severe, would happen come the fall.

While there was grim amusement and regular off the charts page views on covering the President and his daily dose of exaggerated proclamations, jaw dropping egomania and regular utter falsehoods, Jack left that for his colleagues. Too easy, all they had to do was play a clip, insert the facts, and watch the comments section explode. He looked for the on-the-ground trends. He researched exhaustively, looking for leads on the various entities developing tests, treatments and vaccines.

Nothing but the fate of humanity resting on that process. On Jack's occasional optimistic days, he thought a vaccine could happen within the year. None other than the resources of the Gates Foundation taking it on as their top priority, and more than one large drug company claiming to be ready to test come summer. But what were the chances of a best case? So many road blocks. Early polio vacs had killed people. The sheer numbers of dosages, the distribution chain, staggering, and who knew if a single vac would be enough, how the virus would mutate. Only so much to be said about the process so early. It was a lot of speculation, and he worked against the common tendency to parrot back the latest expert opinion as fact.

There was a local group, Less Impact First, that announced a new campaign to be focussed on development of COVID anti-body testing. Not just ensuring accurate tests, but the judicious equitable roll out, so that the entire community was quickly and fairly served. They wanted to make testing simple and doable at home. Jack read over the news release, agreeing with the concept but skeptical. They were basically just providing seed money to local biotech, who presumably were on this already. Would a mail in or home test be accurate, would people take it and not contaminate stuff? Was the premise that people with anti-bodies would be immune even correct? He had read several studies that suggested the virus mutations meant chances of re-infection.

Less Impact First was promoting some immediate fixes as well. They offered a set of very basic online communication tools, for easy to set up video chats and photo sharing that a senior could use to stay in touch with family or doctors. And they had a free app that enabled neighbors to find each other, linking elders with bored stay at home younger adults and families. Presented like a cheesy Norman Rockwell portrait – eager teens could shop and deliver goods, in exchange for homemade treats from delighted seniors who in turn might become faux nanas and offer video help with their studies. Jack rolled his eyes at his own cynicism. This sort of thing was positive. A tiny bit of good to come out of the pandemic.

He recalled seeing something from the group's founder a several weeks ago, an impassioned plea against suicide. Not so long ago in actual time, but before the virus hit, a whole different era. Some insider controversy within the organization, which he recalled was mostly known for its fancy charity auctions.

Although think about it – maybe she had been on to something early. The mental health aspects of this whole thing were just beginning to be explored. Obviously, there was the trauma of those who were ill, hospitalized, isolated, and of their families unable to see them. And the gut wrenching heroics of hospital workers on the front line, faced with illness, infection, death, with no script, not even proper gear. The first person narratives from New York ER nurses were mind blowing. Everybody on the front lines, doing their jobs and fully aware that they were probably coming in contact with the thing.

But he would bet that a whole other load of mental stress was building in everybody sheltering. Jack lived comfortably alone, but imagine being confined with a resentful partner who was there every minute, or restless children. The conflicts that would bubble with no outlet. People who lost their jobs and now had endless hours – yeah, he resented seeing these able bodied adults on their long leisurely strolls, but he couldn't personally imagine himself without a challenging occupation. Everyone frantically washing their hands and sewing their face masks, taking their temperatures, basically waiting to get sick and die. Even little children were scared. On his last exercise jaunt, he had seen a kid literally spill off her bike just to avoid coming close to Jack on the sidewalk.

Then the financial hit. The job loss. Sense of futility when a your chosen field shifted into oblivion or your life's work small business failed. The mourning over people dying, the long recovery of those who survived, and even the guilt of those who were comfortably able to stay home and get their stuff delivered week after week. That sense that it would never end, that nothing was safe anymore, normal life was done. He would bet there was going to be PSTD for a long long time after this chaotic season.

Jack had pitched this angle, the mental stuff, on the lasting impacts of the pandemic already, to be met with less than enthusiasm from the boss or anyone up the food chain. There were plenty of news outlets with dense long pieces getting people depressed, went the thinking. AreaCentral should be a place you turned to for local updates and cheering or inspirational stories of hometown heroes. With eye catching graphics, of course.

He decided to interview that founding Board member, the one who had spoken out about suicide. He left that part out of the editorial check in, naturally, rather pointing out the new initiative being promoted by a San Francisco local who was steering her group's work to beat the coronavirus and uniting the community. Images, they could drum something up of a teen handing a bag to a senior.

Jack had to wade through several numbers before he got the Less Impact First director to agree that she would have Callie Marshall phone him back. He grunted his assent, thinking, really, how busy could this lady be right now.

A good 30 minutes past the promised hour, she phoned, and agreed to a facetime interview. She seemed reluctant to talk about herself though, and he resigned himself to lengthy process. Jack did his primary work on his large old reliable iMac. But he had a laptop for video chats, and had gone as far as clearing one side of the office, aiming it toward a neat bookshelf with actual books and a healthy plant. His head was center, well lit, and if anyone didn't like his now shaggy hair, so be it.

Callie Marshall, he saw right away, had paid considerable attention to her video chat image and background. She sat to the side away from the camera, and faced it at eye level, so appearing more like a colleague at the next desk rather than a chin forward close up. Behind her, a dark wood bookcase and a window overlooking greenery. She was middle aged, but wore her hair long and loose, dressed in bright colors, and had a cobalt blue scarf draped at her neck. Image points, he thought, even at home a nod to covering.

Jack laid out some of the basics of what he had already researched. She nodded, with a backhanded compliment to the return to seriousness of the site. At least she was familiar with AreaCentral, he should be glad of that.

At his most basic prompt, she launched into a series of talking points about the COVID campaign. But she sounded like she knew what she was talking about, definitely not reading someone else's script. She was an image and public relations consultant among other things, so her ease of speaking made sense. A leftie, but not a fanatic. She had no need to trash Trump, she just spoke with the assumption that California was on its own right now, and there was more than enough brain power to step up to the plate.

"Just as the Governor has outlined the 4 Phases, our COVID campaign has related prongs. And it is critical right now that individuals know if they have COVID, or have recovered from it after mild symptoms. That's how we can get out of sheltering and start getting back to work, to school, to play. And for those who must quarantine, we need community-based human resources to make sure they get what they need."

Jack pretended to jot a note. He tried to segue to the importance of mental health, but she had more to say on anti-bodies. "I know any number of people who had some weird nasty cold, or weeks long cough back in February. I bet you do too. We should have had a basic antigen test weeks ago, but at this point we just need accurate testing to let us know. Or we face the situation in places like Georgia, opening while people are vulnerable."

"So what makes this grant you're offering different from simple profit motive?"

Her laugh sounded genuine. "You'd think nothing, right? But our team includes key investors in the field who have immediate contacts here locally. We will be right here to frame the problems, cut through red tape and let the scientists laser focus on the solutions."

Jack asked about who they were working with, and she zinged over a link to their list of names and contacts, promising it was frequently updated with each company's progress. Helpful, although he knew most of these already. They went back and forth about some of the initial missteps. False negative results, unreliability. She seemed pretty confident that when the antigen anti-body testing was as easy and cheap as a pregnancy test, people could take several tries for better accuracy. That, plus the now better ingrained sense everyone had of staying apart from others, would go a long way toward letting lots of people resume regular life.

"Look how fast we've all gotten used to lining up 6 feet apart," she said. "How many small stores and restaurants have pivoted to at the door service. And remember, this is all a bridge to getting people vaccinated."

Jack had the gist of what he needed for background. He wanted more on mental health, her take. And he needed the personal angle. "So how did you get involved in all this? I take it you're not a scientist."

"Oh, hardly. Let me shoot you my bio," she said, clearly intent on deflecting his question. "My good friend the late Marty Windsor was really the driving force behind Less Impact First."

"What about the COVID campaign in particular?"

Callie tossed him a quick look before recovering her bland public smile, as in what else would I do you moron. "It's the only issue out there right now, isn't it. Our organization had been at somewhat of an impasse, and taking on this critical issue has allowed us to develop leadership as a powerful backer of immediate issue campaigns."

That was a mouthful and did sound rehearsed. Also would not be part of the story. "What about your concern – I understand you are an advocate to prevent suicide? Does that tie into the mental stress so many people are facing?"

She gave a slight nod. "That's an interesting connection.

He waited her out. Sometimes getting more entailed saying less.

Callie sighed with another nod. "The concern I expressed had specifically to do with my discovery of some very disturbing online community forums. I hesitate to give them any sort of publicity other that strongly encouraging people to seek another way. This was before the coronavirus was widespread. But you're right, as time passes, I have no doubt the point remains important. People are going through a very trying time right now, and we are still in the opening phase in my opinion."

"I agree that the line about everything back up by summer is delusional," Jack acknowledged. "Will your campaign tackle mental health?"

"We need to be nimble, and pivot where ever the need is greatest," she said, kind of a non-answer. "A friend, an ER nurse in Oakland, says that the racial disparities have jumped out at her. Also, that people are avoiding the hospital to the point of ignoring symptoms and letting things get critical – appendices, strokes. These may be more critical issues short term."

"You'll fix racial inequity?"

Callie frowned slightly. "Our role is to frame the problems and fund those who can help solve them."

"Big job," Jack said, trying not to come off as sarcastic. "Lots of problems."

"Speaking for myself and not Less Impact First," she said carefully, "inequity, racial and economic, has been stripped bare. The value society placed on the people who turned out to be 'essential' and who are carrying the rest of us through this thing. When everybody gets a chance to catch their breath, I'm guessing the threat of societal breakdown over gross inequity might be bigger than your and my anxiety and agoraphobia."

Jack could feel himself smiling despite wanting to appear neutral. He did like getting people to let loose like this. "You must have some opinions on the way things have been handled so far."

"I'm more concerned with how we move forward," she snapped back, easily able to pivot herself. "We as a country have to understand that our progress depends on a sense of shared sacrifice. Until there's a vaccine, there will be roving hotspots. Local and regional governments will need to be right there, stepping in, coordinating, testing. You've run these feel good stories about homemade facemasks for hospital workers, crowd-funding for PPEs, but come on. That's not something that should be left to volunteers! States should not be outbidding each other for supplies!"

"Have you personally been impacted?" Jack asked. "Know someone who's care has been inadequate?"

"Fortunately, no closer than friend of a friend. But everybody is impacted. The new normal of distancing and masks will be shared by almost everyone. I'm more of a big picture thinker here. I'm concerned about preparedness. What if there are mutations? A second or third or annual wave? What happens here during wildfires, who do we send in, who risks compromised respiratory systems?" Callie hadn't shifted positions, but her otherwise cool demeanor had heated up, and one hand tugged at her hair as if it would fly away with her emotion.

Jack thought it would be amusing and interesting to keep prodding her for more quote big picture ranting, but that wouldn't help him. "Come on, throw me a bone here," he tried instead. "I need something personal to get this piece rolling. If you visit the site, you get that."

She tried not to show the grimace that flew across her face. Put back the public neutral expression. "My good friend and LIF co-founder Marty Windsor died near the start of the year," she said soberly. "At the time, my biggest problem was how to keep our nonprofit on track. I spoke at his service, and we had this massive gathering, all handshakes and hugs, I mean it seems crazy now, like something from another age. But now our organization is taking on new problems we didn't foresee even six months ago. And I help bring supplies to Marty's widow, and to several older people in my neighborhood. This pandemic had shed a light on what really matters in my community."

Jack let it go at that. He could lead with the community thing, the network bringing groceries to elders sheltering, her and the widow. He thanked her for her time, adding he could email any direct quotes for her review. Had a good sense that Callie Marshall would demand as much and have commentary, but also that she understood just who was writing the piece. She might be interesting for a follow up if he didn't piss her off too much this afternoon. He turned back to the Mac and typed rapidly. Another day, another dollar.

Chapter 12

Callie, She's Back

Obs, I know, but what a lot of things have changed dramatically this spring of 2020. While I might have gotten a couple weeks head start on this thing, I otherwise pretty much failed as a seer of trends. So it's been a scramble to recapture my brand, readjust, get back out front, shift so many expectations and goals. Thank all deities that I like my little house and have my good set up here.

I'm pretty sure the distinction between work and home has gotten splintered beyond recognition. Kids now, will as adults see the separation as something silly and quaint. Little kids now, it occurs, won't really remember the start of the pandemic at all. They'll just grow up with stories of that season when old style schools shut suddenly and it was new to stay safe at home. Like how I recall the end of the Vietnam War – technically I was alive, but my knowledge, my understanding of what was right and wrong and how I'm sure I would have been a brave protester like Marty and Lila, those were all learned later.

Anyway, despite the suddenness, the shock of the new reality, there's no turning back. I will admit to feeling pretty down hearted and plain frustrated those first few weeks. Been an extrovert my whole life, and here was shelter in place on top of all the other fashionable lauding of the introvert lifestyle. I like crowds and big gatherings. I'm energized by the quick moving dance of small talk that shifts to big talk, I like catching up with friends and learning new peoples' stories, reading the expressions on their faces, interacting. My favorite part of a new workplace consultation is, was, the initial walk through, where I meet everyone, gather a host of info face to face and do my onsite assessment of the space.

Somewhat surprisingly, I am adapting. Friends have streamed out of the woodwork to check in by phone or facetime and exchange pandemic stories, so there have been plenty of people virtually around. Guess I'm at an age and place where peers are doing okay, either set up to work at home or comfortably able to weather a season of underemployment. Healthy, even people I know on the harder hit east coast. I have listened obsessively to the news and been terrified like everyone, but it hasn't hit close to home, at least not yet. More than one wise friend has urged me to turn it off for awhile, to unplug, get outside, try to enjoy the relative peacefulness we have here in Northern California. Poor Lauren – both she and Del are more overworked than ever, but she is insistent to me as to all her at-home students: take breaks from the bad news, get out into the sunshine, don't feel guilty for feeling okay, your job right now is just to survive it.

Right off the bat, I sketched out a quick system to coordinate errands for some senior citizen neighbors. Nice people, who because of their age must avoid public places more than I need to. Much as I'd like to claim benevolence here, this was a test for an app I wanted LIF to launch. And it has basically provided a new source of people for me to chat with, after I dart in and out of stores, confident that brief encounters with masked strangers won't be enough exposure to harm me. Of course no direct contact during the hand offs, and I recommend everything sit in the air for a couple hours.

Workwise, got tapped for several quick consults helping businesses set up their all hands at home systems, and since I can already function 100 percent online, these were easy to do and easily billed. And I have donated my time to implement similar set ups to a few nonprofits, including LIF. While not in the flesh, this has still meant many videochats, in-depth phone conversations and the sort of socializing that keeps me sane. Guess something has loosened for me – the face to face online is acceptable interaction now. The tape is permanently pealed from my laptop camera, and I don't mind people peeking into my space. Everybody is home in yoga pants, doing their best but being their essential selves.

LIF board meetings – now we know that wise, level headed Elizabeth has twin boys who cannot be quiet or out of range for more than ten minutes tops. That Garret's labradoodle is ferociously loyal and thinks he is a lapdog. Honestly, it's hard to be annoyed with him anymore with that fuzzy face nuzzling him. The most I have is occasional noisy birds out back, but then I've been blending work at home for awhile now.

Less Impact First has survived our epic battle to pull apart, and wound up with a solid structure to more forward, even though the original mission has been chewed and spit back out by the COVID crisis. Still, we're in it to mitigate the problems of modern society and be a force for environmental and societal good. The Board has drawn together like passengers on a ship weathering a terrible storm. Our funding will be okay for the near future, thanks to a conservatively invested endowment, deep pockets on the Board, and even a modestly successful virtual Spring fundraiser. Rent and in office expenses are sure to drop with the movement to home offices, with staff happy to be employed and not commuting.

If our first series of campaigns succeed, we can hope to get closer to business as usual. Or more likely some hybrid version will continue, and new initiative goals will shift around, part mitigating the new challenges brought by the pandemic, and part battling the same old problems as the economy surges back. I guess I'll consider it a good day when the old divisions rear up on the Board in fights over future targeted franchise projects.

The launch of the initial campaign went well, considering it was entirely online. Of course we are taking on the issue of the day, the month, the year of 2020. But so are lots of entities. Our connections with biotech are a great help, and even Marty's name carries weight from the beyond. We have gotten decent publicity, with most of the local media picking up at least a bit from the press release.

I've done my level best to blend into the background, once assured my general opinions were heard and part of the campaign. Elizabeth does just fine as our spokesperson, and – taking credit where due – the executive summary I helped draft does a good job of explaining the campaign. We steer the more esoteric questions to our funded partners on the ground. We frame and fund, the experts explain and solve.

A couple news places sought me out, people I had talked to before, or in the case of AreaCentral, the guy had seen me going off about suicide and wanted to link it to life in the pandemic rather than the earlier "useless use" mindset. Elizabeth is seemingly without ego as far as letting others step up, and in that gracious way she has let me know she would support me if anyone started squawking about me representing the Board.

I have watched or read all the news items, googling us daily. It's a good cycle, because every mention carries both the message about our current priorities and gets our name out there, front and center for future fundraisers.

Jack from AreaCentral got a decent amount of detail, and was able to break down the elements well. He gets it, that the landscape is changing fast, as far as the fight against the virus and the mitigation of its horrifying impacts. He kind of tried to highlight my own role in the campaign, but I didn't let it go there. No photo of me, and it struck me that the dude himself was more of an old school journalist, just paying lip service to the AreaCentral style that must feature a personal heroic story.

He quizzed me about my so old as to no longer be infamous suicide rant, implying that I was foreshadowing the desperation so many people are feeling now. Was tempted to claim extraordinary early insight to the coming storm, but didn't. As I told him, there are problems more immediate and critical to take on first. Though I'm sure we will need to tackle a whole host of mental and stress related health issues as the pandemic recedes, starting with the fractured, exorbitant, employment dependent health care system in the US.

Ironically enough, I find myself feeling saner than I have for awhile. Perhaps because I have been so busy and focussed there hasn't been time for my usual mood swoops. It's not the forced sense of racing forward and barely keeping it together of rushed jobs either. Nor is it the sudden vacuum of free time; usually stable friends like my ex Ethan have lately seemed a bit unhinged by their lack of work. For me, these recent weeks, this time that started out so frightening and filled with endless empty hours, have transformed. My schedule now is comfortably full, the tasks diverse, and a fair portion of my time is devoted to the sort of big picture analyses and philosophizing that I enjoy.

Sure I wish the topics were less grim. Hate to see the worst of the predictions coming true. The individual stories of the illness, its suddenness and devastation, are horrible. But I am trying to focus on the facts, which includes that only a small percentage of infected people will actually die. And it's a rush trying to get in front of the whole thing. I watch the stats in real time and I have committed the resources of my organization to solving the biology. There are numerous centers of research around the world all frantically working on the vaccine, and my fervent hope is that dozens of them emerge. At that point we will be front and center of pushing equity and sharing of resources; imagine a cure that's only available to the elite.

And then I worry for our democracy as I never have before. There's the distressing but sociologically fascinating splintering of red and blue America. After seemingly pulling together, but of course the old divisions have roared back, now in the guise of protesting sheltering and claiming the economic impact is worse than the virus. Versus city centers still hard hit and the facts of how a contagious virus spreads during an epidemic. Also I suppose in opposition to the stereotypically wealthy urban liberals who are shaming joggers without face masks and comfortably ensconced in home offices. Each side fueled by its own set of news sources, "facts," and charges of fake news. A reasonable middle ground, that rural areas don't face the same threat, but that hotspots will flare and ready response are surely needed, is sorely lacking.

The open America movement is bubbling up rather like the Tea Party did, aided no doubt by the same wealthy right wingers whose self interest would be served by rising stocks and who could hardly care less about some immigrant meat packers falling ill. The visible front line is filled with angry white men in MAGA hats, the sorts of Trump supporters who regularly don't vote in their own self interest. But hard to just brush off, as a lot of these folks are touting firearms and seem amenable to the idea of armed insurrection. Goaded, of course, by Trump himself, for whom anything and everything revolves around his ego and his upcoming campaign.

My social media is predictably flooded with furious rants about the latest outrages. The President's blatant lies, proven with back to back video clips. Front line healthcare workers forced to reuse their protective gear while manufactures are idled. The pastor who held crowded services and ended up in the ICU in the midst of a local hotspot of his own making. Disturbing comments from that weasel Kushner that the Administration isn't sure there will be an election come November 3.

I interact and try to be supportive, primarily to the clear and well reasoned remarks. The simple pointing out of facts, the science, rather than angry missives, understandable as these are. My own posts are forward looking. I share the straight news and observations that are relevant. That might help clarify. I want my commentary and shares to be received as smart and thoughtful, edited and not just random clicks on what's at the top of the feed. Simple reminders too, over and over again I make the point that we need to wear masks around others to protect them. It's absurd that this has become a political divide, or that anyone would object to other people in face coverings. The numbers are clear – societies where people habitually wear protective masks, again as a courtesy to anyone they might encounter, are way down in COVID cases.

I'm not just highlighting all gloomy stuff either. I monitor a host of funny people. I like including a few little clips that will amuse. I was in the midst of a conversation with Lauren recently, that devolved into helpless raucous laughter, and I realized how long it had been since I laughed out loud like that. How good it is, how important, even or maybe especially now.

Also, I've become rather a devotee to several exercise gurus, and I have been giving my favorites a push. Lila told me about her Zoom Parkinson's boxing classes, and I realized how much of that sort of thing is available. Vitally important for everyone homebound. I'm lucky that I can hike around my pretty neighborhood, challenged by steep hills and visually gorgeous with blooming flowers. But I am also doing mat work, stretches, conscious breathing, all with the coaching of new internet pals. That these kind folks seem to be supporting themselves via ad revenue restores my faith in tech a little bit.

The reporters on NPR feel like old friends too, broadcasting from their garages or kitchen tables. People I see around the neighborhood are new friends, driving home to me the importance of simple personal contact. Even quick exchanges from behind our masks, patting the dogs, pointing out teddy bears and rainbows in windows to the little kids. The way people greet each other now is a small good thing that has emerged. We have to value that sort of thing, I tell myself, everything can't be bad news and misery.

I jot down ideas as they come to me, as always. I try to get the gist of these thoughts so they don't sound like pollyannaish praise of the COVID pandemic, but simple acknowledgement that a crisis can bring one's values into sharp focus.

This afternoon, the sun has emerged, after a week of unusual drizzle for mid-May. Bright clouds sit sharp against the blue sky, and the plants and trees seem to sparkle. Moving to the front window, I can see the kids across the street with their rubber balls and chalk, playing in the driveway as though from a simpler era. Next door, greenery from series of planters, a home made vegetable garden. The mail carrier dashes past, tossing small boxes to doorways and calling hellos. A jogger swerves to the street to overtake an elderly lady with her equally elderly little pooch. A dad follows with his toddler, pointing out the plants, and bugs maybe? They both crouch on the sidewalk for a moment, enthusiastic about whatever it is.

The children, at least these housed and healthy ones I can observe, seem to be weathering this thing okay. They are endlessly adaptable. I wonder if we will see a new greatest generation, gamely able to hunker down, make do, entertain each other as needed, self reliant and appreciative of the simple things. Who will grow up with an understanding of which people actually best contributes to society, who value knowledge and relationships over status and material possessions, who are careful with those old or frail, who expect fairness. And who are capable of distinguishing between fact and opinion, who trust science.

Maybe the question also is how to keep hold of the good values we are coming to prize this frenetic year. Make sure the economy doesn't bounce into something like that post-war materialism of the 1950s. Keep people grounded, appreciative of food, health, family, friends, pets, exercise, sleep, an engaging occupation. Reward the people who help others as fully as those in big corporations. Provide universal healthcare. Somehow get to a place where corporations are no longer people and the insanely wealthy are equitably taxed. I mean, I was happy to hear that the Twitter CEO is donating a hefty chunk to the local relief fund, but why not divvy up relief funds to all who need it. Why not let our democracy smooth out the haves and have nots before the next crisis?

I retreat from the window, tap a few more notes on the ipad. Did I just overlook reliable electricity and internet connection in my thoughts on what to value? And of course the list of what any child being educated at home should have available, as needed as running water? People have talked about a potential regression from technological innovation. Right now, everyone is looking backward as far as entertainment, and there's such a focus on the disease. But I expect a surge of innovation over the next several years. As we adjust. I mean worldwide, in fact more likely places other than here. Can't even put a finger on what, but I'm hopeful that this mythical return to normal includes more technology made for everyone's betterment and able to conserve dwindling resources.

I'm not ready to start pontificating quite so far ahead yet. Though it occurs, my new friend Jack from AreaCentral could be a ready source of publicity later on. For now, though, for these next weeks of slowly opening and wary watching for sudden case spikes, I have more immediate work. Related maybe, but separate from Less Impact First, I as creative problem solver Callie Marshall need to get my next set of tools out of my head and onto my feed. I feel pretty good that new paid jobs will come my way as the sorts of places that haven't gone under seek to retrench.

Several things I have taken on recently have helped me, and I'm sure can help others. For example, one of Lauren's old girlfriends from school got a weekly social hour of our classmates going, and it's been a riot. She is, or was, in theater, and has instigated themes and creative costume or background requirements. And college era drinking, albeit with politically correct allowances for fake beverages. Anyway, I want to basically create a starter kit for shyer people to use to set these up, to give an excuse to get them going. There is no doubt in my mind but that this sort of faux social gathering will greatly help people stuck at home alone or with only family members.

I am putting together an expandable compilation of exercise workouts. Some basic cardio, simple Yoga, and fun stuff, dancing, competitive challenges, multiple viewer sessions requiring teamwork, options to build one's own workout. Lila tells me that exercise is part of her medicine, and she's right. Anyone home with time and anyone feeling anxious or blue would greatly benefit from vigorous workouts. Good for body and mind, accessible just by walking briskly outside or on the floor with the simplest of props. Good use of resources on hand.

I will need advice, but want a whole food growing and cooking thing. I'm sure Nicole will have ideas. Ties in with improving health, eating local, saving scarce resources, even fun for the little ones. What if everyone with a yard or a sunny window box got some veggies growing, and maybe exchanging harvest extras within walking distance. Everybody has been mostly cooking at home anyway, making creative use of what's available and trying new recipes. Baking bread. I'll admit to longing for even take out from my favorite places, but maybe we can all get used to kitchen creativity. Better nutrition, less crap. Get the next generation to turn away from over processed fast food.

That makes me think about all those type of jobs, crappy service industry positions that left so many employed people straddling poverty and lacking decent medical care long before the pandemic began. Oh, it's daunting, starting down that path. The enormous swath of those left behind during the past decade of recovery and soon to be left further behind. Whose health was not great to start with. Who lost jobs, or kept them and then got sick, lost family members. Those whose soft intonation and desperate stories capture our attention just for a moment before they are lost in chorus of other such voices. There really will be people on the brink of suicide before a vaccine makes things close to livable. There has been that much real trauma.

I have to pause and remind myself that I cannot personally be the problem solver here, anymore than I can find a cure.

Focusing and trying to untangle all these issues are helping me get through these months without losing my way. Me, with the benefit of assets and friends and decent health. It won't be enough for me to go off on another rant in order to prevent suicide.

But what resources do I have? I make a promise to myself, and to the spirit of Marty. During the months ahead, I will muster anything and everything toward this effort too. If I can manage to persuade even a small number of desperate people to somehow get back involved in their lives, to pull together the basics they need and find the mental courage to keep the demons away, I'll call it success. Better, a network of people pulling through their darkest times and then reaching back to help someone else worse off. Feeling able to share their weakness and their strength, and finding, as I have, that offering assistance does as much good for helper.

I will track down and cull and provide links to material for battling anxiety and depression. I'll go email by email if need be, to come up with donations of virtual face to face links with shrinks. I will link to food banks, credit union loans, bartering resources, child care and home education assistance. I'll find more free software and easy tutorials to ensure people can access these things online, tech support, video conferencing – it pains me to hear about people wasting hours trying to telephone for help that's available online. Oh, and set up local networks to enable quick and easy donations of old laptops. I know there are bored teenagers who could be tapped to clean them up, Lauren has said as much about her stay at home students. Simple as a fundme for postal deliveries.

My list of fixes is growing despite myself. Well, nothing like most of every day for awhile to make it happen.

Then I fiercely hope that by the time all these resources are together, when we all wear masks without a second thought, when expectations have lowered but people have bits of hope and nobody is starving – then alerts will come of successful vaccination tests. An actual safe and reliable cure. And at that moment, or before, because I count on hearing it through back channels, I'll be pivoting like nobody's business. Bringing everything and everyone to bear on ensuring that the vaccine is immediately mass produced, fairly priced, and widely available.

It brings me a smile just picturing those days. We can put together the biggest fundraiser ever for Less Impact First. I picture all those people who came for Marty's service gathered, hugging, sharing ideas, at a happy event. I imagine myself there, in my element, surrounded by friends and minus the problems and pressures that were weighing so heavy back then.

Those burdens have lifted now. The split at LIF, the pestering of clients, my own sense of fracturing, being pulled apart. The only real problems I had at the start of 2020 were that Marty was dying and that everyone was unaware of the coming pandemic. My burden now is building a bridge of my own to get from here to that near future.

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