Gently Down the Stream (2020)

Tang. That was the drink of the astronauts. If you wanted to make your mark in the future, you drank Tang just like them. Apollo 11 made history on July 20, 1969 with the momentous walk on the moon by Neil Armstrong.

She recalls she had been bike riding with a friend in the morning, a bright, sunny, cloudless day. It was lunchtime and time for the Flintstones. Two of her favorite things. A bowl of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup and a cheese sandwich made with white bread. Her mother insisted she watch the moon walk instead of her usual cartoon fair. Disappointment turned into disbelief. How could a man walk on the moon? Was this true? Was this just on TV or was this really taking place on the moon?

Years later, she discovered that the walk on the moon had been televised at night and not during the day as she remembered. How much more did she get wrong about her past? Could she ever really trust her memory or was it simply a rerun?

If it’s a weekday, around 3pm, EST, I’m here. In the chatroom that is. I was a long-time lurker before I joined in and by that time, I  just knew everyone – the regulars, that is, so I just fit in. You know, the live stream is like a campfire. We all huddle around it, but it’s not the main reason we’re here. It’s about sharing our stories, well, more like things on our mind, things we might not even mention to people in RL.

I’m really not sure what happened that day. I was busy at work and couldn’t log on at my regular time. When I popped in 15 minutes late, I saw it. “Chat is disabled for this live stream.” I couldn’t believe it. We had been meeting for almost three months now and suddenly everyone was gone. I kept reloading my page and tried different browsers. I checked out the other Samui webcams, but they were all disabled too. Gone. Everyone was gone. We had been silenced! I’m still looking for my friends. I’m hopeful we’ll meet again soon.

I’m not a hypochondriac  or at least I don’t think I am. I did get my flu shot this season, just to be safe. This morning I woke up early to shovel the snow and clean off the car. Big workday. After lunch my mind started to feel like it was drowning in the deep end of a pool. My neck grew stiff and started to ache. I was tired and wanted to nap. I’m not a hypochondriac  or at least I don’t think I am.

Elsewhere in the world, there are other lives being lived. Behind closed doors, underneath the bed covers, and between white painted walls. Sometimes invisible to the naked eye, these lives carry on, indifferent to other realities. Sometimes no words are spoken, other times, shouting is so loud it pierces the human skull. Public life has been reduced to telephone calls, Zoom parties, email transmissions. Nowhere in the world are we untouched by a sense of fear. It’s hard not to be unmoved by uncertainty.

Recently I re-read my grandmother’s account of the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic. The following is her account which was submitted to the Japanese Canadian Citizens’ Association Short Story Contest in 1958.

_____________________

At the beginning of October in 1918, people began to say, “The Spanish flu will cause a high fever and spread very fast. We have to be very careful.” Parents, especially many mothers with small children, worried about the disease.  Only a few days later, people began to suffer from the sickness. There were more sick people than healthy among my neighbours. Nobody took care of the sick because healthy people were afraid of being infected. Some people offered a lot of money for help, but the money could not buy any.

We were not allowed to go out and all schools were closed. Because the city hospitals were full of patients, other patients could not stay there. There were not enough hospital rooms for sick people, especially Japanese people. Beds for the sick had to be set up in the hallways. If a patient fell off the bed with a high fever, staff were too overwhelmed by the large number of patients to respond to everyone. There was a serious shortage of staff members in the hospital.

Even doctors and nurses began to be infected. Mr. and Mrs. Akagawa (a pastor in the Japanese United Church and his wife) played an important role in the flu epidemic, working with the Canadian Japanese Association.  They set up a special hospital for the Japanese. They borrowed Strathcona School (in Vancouver) as a temporary hospital. However, they could only use the classrooms on the main floor. Three doctors, Dr. Shimotakahara, Dr. Takahashi and Dr. Ishihara, started to call for volunteer nurses.  Two missionaries, Miss Howe and Mrs. DeWolf, applied for the work. Some church friends, teachers from a language school, and others voluntarily came to help the sick. Thanks to their help, the hospital could begin operation.

At that time, hospital patients came not only from Vancouver but from outside the city.  Within a few days of the opening of the hospital, the main floor became full of patients. We had to ask the school to allow us to use additional classrooms upstairs. Once people entered the school building, it was like a different world. For instance, there was the terrible smell of disinfectant, many nurses dressed in white, and the screaming of patients. I was very moved to watch many volunteer nurses working diligently with the patients. They looked divine. Many people died each day. I saw a husband and a wife who both were suffering from the flu. They died while calling each other’s names. I could not help but feel sorry for them

We spent every day with a lot of anxiety. I had two daughters, 3 and 4 years old. I left my daughters in the care of my next-door neighbour, to help the staff in the hospital. I thanked God for giving me the health to help many people. I prayed to God for comfort and energy to help the patients and staff. One week later, I was told that I should not be working with patients because I had two small children. They wanted me to stay away from the patients, and to work in the kitchen. I felt gratitude for their kindness. After that, I worked in the kitchen until the hospital closed. Many of the volunteer nurses became infected and died.

The passing days were sad and lonely. After about a month, some patients began to recover and left the hospital. The number of patients decreased, and we were told that the situation was about to improve. People who were still sick were moved to the city hospital. The hospital at Strathcona School closed on November 11th. Three doctors and 34 staff members held a farewell party and took photographs.

The flu became weaker, but other hospitals were still busy and short of staff. Then the flu once again intensified. I will never forget this terrible time. After several calm days, my neighbour and church friend Mrs… was first infected, then our next-door neighbour fell sick.

I became anxious as my four-year-old daughter became sick. Two days later, the other daughter was infected. Then I also became sick. My husband was the only family member who did not become sick. He had to take care of us and did all the housework. Because the flu was contagious, we had no visitors. I felt sorry for my husband, as he had to work very hard on our behalf, all by himself.  All I could hear was the sound of his breaking ice to cool us down.

When I was caring for my children in the middle of the night, I thought of God. God says, “Don’t worry about anything. Keep praying. Believe in God. Fortunately, two doctors, Dr. Shimotakahara and Dr. … , who was the children’s doctor, came every day. They encouraged me and I appreciated their kindness.

A nurse came to Ms. N’s house, but Ms. N died, leaving her two-year-old son. We were in deep grief. Then Miss… came to my house to help, and I was relieved. However, a half-day later, my elder daughter developed meningitis and passed away. She was with me for only four years and 3 months. My younger daughter was also in critical condition. I was desperate. I did not have enough time to mourn my elder daughter, because I had to arrange her funeral.  I stood up and prayed for help from God for my younger daughter.

What happens in this world does not depend on blind fate but is in the hands of our Father. There is comfort in tragedy, we need to suffer to atone for our sins and not forget Jesus. This was what I had been told, but I lost hope and could not keep my faith. I was ashamed of myself. Because I was not allowed to go out of the house, I could not attend my daughter’s funeral. I could not stop crying. I asked my late daughter for forgiveness.

There were three funerals on that day. Fortunately, my younger daughter was in the excellent care of Japanese nurses. They knew it would be a great tragedy if I lost two daughters. So they worked very hard to avoid such a catastrophe. Thanks to them, my daughter recovered.  Then I took care of the two-year-old boy whose mother had died. A month ago, the tragedy was someone else’s problem, but then it had come to me.

I learned a lesson from this experience – that I should not think of anything as someone else’s problem.

We have to go through many difficulties in our journey. On the way, I learned to not give up hope and to keep my belief in God. As my younger daughter was told about the Spanish flu many times, she eventually studied nursing at the Vancouver General Hospital and she became one of the first Japanese Canadian nurses. She studied at the University of British Columbia, then attended the University of Toronto.  She worked as a nurse, caring for sick people.

I kept my belief for 40 years and always prayed for my elder daughter in the morning and evening, every day, every year. Even now, many years after her death, I still keep track of the time since her death and pray for her.

October 9th, 1958

Suno Yamazaki

Translation by Kazue Kitamura

Some edits by Susan Yatabe

In her tiny brain, she kept hearing the happy male voice over from that commercial – “and it’s made from jellyfish!” As if that was such a big selling point.

This month’s video pays homage to two men who are committed to their work and who continue to show us different ways of seeing the world. All the footage was shot by Steve who runs a website  and YouTube channel

Since 2008, Steve has been live streaming his trucking adventures across the US. He currently has 40.3K subscribers and provides a mesmerizing view of America through his windshield. In these days of Covid-19, the world has come to understand the fragile balance of our supply chain and how much we owe to dedicated truckers such as Steve. So next time you’re frustrated by those large trucks carrying their loads down the highway, I hope you pause and think of Steve and silently thank him for his service.

The other man, is Lorne Marin. A filmmaker beyond anyone’s imagination. This video pays tribute to Lorne’s masterpiece, “Trains of Thought” (1983).  This short film has pierced my film memory with it’s beauty and craftsmanship. The original film was rotoscoped a pain-staking process of re-photographing images one frame at a time. Today, this is achieved by a simple video effect. Thank you Lorne, for your insight, grace and films that stand the test of time.

Mit out password is a contemporary play on the old film term, MOS. Although there are many interpretations of this acronym, the most common is Mit Out Sound. Legend has it that back in the days of old Hollywood, a German director wanted to film a scene “without sound” but he had trouble pronouncing “without” which was heard as “mit out”. MOS became the designation on the film slate to indicate there was no sound recorded. Today, surveillance cameras come with generic factory set passwords or without passwords altogether. As a result, many people do not reset this factory setting, making it open to the public. Insecam.org is the world’s largest directory of online surveillance security IP cameras. Bored with YouTube, try Insecam.org for your viewing pleasure.

Trains. Once the mode of transportation for the rich with time on their hands.  Now a moving platform potentially carrying the Corona virus. Times have changed. When I was young, behind our house there was a rail line just beyond our backyard. Seeing a train was a rare occasion. We would lay down our pennies on the rails and wait for them to be flatten beneath the heavy cars passing by. I’m not sure why we did this or where those thin wafer coins ended up, but it was exciting. Something that really made our day special. Times have changed.

September. A fresh pack of Laurentian coloured pencils, new sneakers, a new classroom. Seeing old friends and the possibility of making new ones. That was school in the Pre-Covid days. Today, the world is uncertain, as is classroom safety. As I near the close of this project, I have found comfort and distraction in viewing this live stream from Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park, Alaska. Enjoy and keep that mask on!

We have become a society obsessed with security and yet we sometimes overlook the obvious. It’s hard to imagine someone spending thousands of dollars on a deluxe security system and neglecting to change the manufacturer generated password, leaving their security cameras open to all. And yet so many people continue to do this. Insecam.org is a bottomless treasure trove that reveals the worlds we think are covert and invisible. This site shines a light on issues of privacy, personal protection and who we are as a society. Everyone is watching, all the time, everywhere.

When I first moved out of my parents’ house, I lived in a 3-bedroom apartment with some friends from high school. Living downtown was full of excitement and new experiences. One of which was going to the neighbourhood laundromat. I loved being there. It never seemed like a chore, more like a way to secretly glimpse into the lives of strangers. Peek at their socks and undergarments. Judge them by the pattern or lack of on their sheets. Somewhere, every day is laundry day.

It’s been one helluva year! Globally we are still struggling with the ravages of Covid-19. The initial fear has changed to impatience and frustration, tempers are short, and some people feel that the governments are ignoring individual freedoms. I wear a mask. I only go out for essential items. I don’t really understand those who are protesting against mask wearing. Do you not stop at a red light? Do you litter on the streets? There are certain ways we need to responsibly behave in society and wearing a mask, limiting the number of people we’re in contact with and staying calm are just a few of the new ways we need to live today. This will not last forever. Be patient and take care.