HOW TO BUILD A TABLE - OR NOT

     To build a table. If someone would have asked me if I could even contemplate building a table even just a few months ago, I would have laughed and asked if they were okay. I had been brave enough to buy and resurrect some tattered shadowbox drawers, fill them in, and just yesterday, finally was able to hang them on the wall. Beautiful! But- a table?! A table! Kidding, right?

I had even gone as far as buying a worn, paint stained stepladder, hoping to renew it with some paint and wood, and use it as a small display piece and it came out better than I had expected. Frankly, I love it and can take pride in actually having created or renewed or given new life and purpose to items otherwise declared pfft! And thus, the quarantining actually had at least one positive effect for me. And Gerry, as he was pulled into the ersatz woodshop as I needed some of the tools to be held in steady hands. We loved working together in new ways with new outcomes.

But a table? A table! No, not a dining room size table; nor even a bistro size one. Nope, I tempered dreams with reality and settled on a side table size. Then the preparation. Read as many articles, watch as many videos as I could find about such a creation. And my head spun! So many. So many different choices, ranging in difficulty and I had to rein in dreams with reality.

Along the way I fell in love with the infinite beauty and variety of wood. I learned new terms,- blanks, burls, knife scale, hairpin legs, and all the many ways to attach legs to a table. After all, the idea was to build one that did not collapse when a glass of water and a magazine was placed upon it! And the choices - of wood, of size and color, the very formation of the top, one or two layered, accents, whatever! The head continued to spin, but a nice spin, not a dizzying or frightening one, but in fact, rather encouraging. Empowering, actually and not to forget, no big tools to drill holes, to have fancier leg attachments, as all had to be done by hand and with hand tools. The mere thought of going into the woodworking shop here and learning to use those larger tools was rather intimidating. So, nope, hand tools and hand power all the way.

I began to sketch out the layout in my mind. I rummaged through my wood supplies and ordered more to enlarge the choices. Now having a beautiful selection of gorgeous wood  from all over the world, including Japan, Hawaii, all over America, natural and used, planed and rough, barn wood and cedar, all just calling out to be used. And now to work.

And then life intervened. Bad back, two major falls, a fractured hip and a compression fracture in the spine, a procedure for that this week, limited energies and stamina, and there sits my beautiful wood, my table real only in my mind, as I have figured and refigured it over and over, always trying for a better effect. And it will happen. It will be built, all the better for the delay, for the fine tuning prior to execution of the proposed design. Meanwhile, I enjoy looking through the beautiful selection of woods, marveling at the infinite variety and beauty, wondering why I had never known all these different woods before, never appreciated the beauty to be found in an old piece of barn or fence.

So a different reality intruded again. A procedure required new steps, testing again for COVID-19, staying close to home so exposure was limited, medication planning, care planning, being careful so the fractured hip would heal without surgery. And then, again, I began to wonder. If one simple person had to do such planning for a one day visit to a hospital, or for building a table, and then for a delay in that, then why was it not so assumed on the federal level, on the state and local levels, and on  the street level, that this pandemic needed planning if we were to conquer it, and prepare for the next one coming down the line.

 Yes, there will be more, for we have crunched the world together, brought about configurations never ever seen or imagined before, as the world of humans, of Nature, of animals and birds, of the microbe world, all met with outcomes not always positive. Hence, the virus, hence, the rest. We will need precise planning, and enough maneuvering room within those plans, to be able to adjust to differences, and save people from infection and /or death. It can be done. It should have been done. It was not.

Perhaps we need to include a new course in the syllabi of master programs called Building a Table 101. Complete the project, criticize its completion with suggestions for improvement or why one method was better than another. Then expand that planning to a world problem. Perhaps a simple exercise in planning, in forethought, in anticipation, in contemplation of results, in following the thinking through before actually taking a physical step in the real world. Perhaps that would help. 

Perhaps then we will not have to read the following. 

"I think by the end of the year we'll be at about 300,000 deaths and by the end of January we could be pushing 400,000 deaths. We're going to see consistently probably 2,000 deaths per day and as we get into January toward the peak, we're going to see over 3,000 deaths per day unfortunately, and maybe get close to 4,000 deaths per day. So this is going to get a lot worse before it starts to resolve."

“There are, of course, many other people, unfortunately, that have comorbidities that live outside of care facilities, that it will take more time to immunize them.”

Perhaps then we will not literally have to plan for a seriously real danger, get our lives in order, accept the fact that we, or a loved one, might die alone, in agony, without comfort, other than a tired and devoted nurse or orderly or anyone, someone who might have found the precious time to be there, to hold a hand, to enable a final video conversation.

So, go, plan a table. Plan for its completion and for every step in between. Demand that our legislators go back to school and take the course. Exhibit the finished products along with the written evaluations of them, along with suggestions for improvements and smoother planning and procedure. Simple enough, yet we, along with so many others, refuse to plan, refuse to accept reality and necessity, and thus, our tables are collapsing, that glass of water and magazine proving too much for its delicate balancing stance. Shame on us. Shame on us for not planning, for not understanding and for allowing others to get away with it - in the world, in the country, in the state and in Century Village.

Loeffler dodges question on Trump's election claims

US Coronavirus: As daily case average nears 200,000, experts say 'behavget our lives in order, accept the fact that we, or a loved one, might die alone, in agony, and without comfort other than a tired and devoted nurse or orderly or anyone, someone, who might find it possible to be there, to enable a last conversation. For us, for me, for the elderly, for those with comorbidities - a new term I could have lived without learning - the risk is great and there but for lack of planning for table building we find oursleves..

We can do better. We must do better. Those figures presented to us, that fortune told, is simply not acceptable. It cannot be allowed.