Slogging through Covid

My mother and me in the new Covid era.

     It’s been more than a year since I did a blog and there’s much to tell. It’s been a tough 12 months. My daughter is still institutionalized. One church group I was part of dissolved when the pastor suddenly left town and another had a major rift that involved me. Once Covid hit, three-quarters of my income sources bit the dust. I had to think up new ways to bring in money, so I got into online teaching, which brought in a few hundred dollars. I also learned ways to communicate with Veeka on Zoom during the 24 weeks I was not allowed to see her. Fortunately, the institution is now allowing parents to visit as of two weeks ago, so I can hug her again. I tell my friends: Think how you would feel if your teenager had spent last year separated from you. She won’t be home any time soon.

So I have spent time at home trying to do long-term projects and lots of articles for new publications. I put my time in Mongolia to good use by publishing this piece in Image Journal  about evangelical Christian artists in Ulaanbaatar. The Image folks snapped up my idea right away and the story ran in January. What’s resulted from that is an offer from an art gallery in Washington DC to host works by these artists in a show slated for March 2022. I am so pleased about this and I’m trying to find funding sources to bring some of these artists to Washington for the show. And in February, Foreign Policy ran my piece on sexual abuse and Mongolian women. Unfortunately it’s still quite a problem today, which is why Yanjmaa — the woman I visited in Mongolia — wants to begin a Christian counseling center in Ulaanbaatar and later a retreat center in the countryside.

Speaking of which, Yanjmaa decided last summer to pursue post-doc work at the University of North Carolina/Charlotte and moved her family to the States for a two-year period while she looks for ways to get her work published. I had been telling her about L’Abri Fellowship, the worldwide network of Christian communities that has retreat centers somewhat like she would be starting up in Mongolia. So I gave her some of my airplane miles to fly to the L’Abri branch near Boston, where she spent a week at the beginning of March. The timing was just right, as she’d barely returned to Charlotte when Covid-19 began shutting down all travel. But Yanjmaa stayed busy, starting up an online Bible study for expatriate Mongolians in many time zones. At present, she’s got nearly 80 people in 13-14 countries listening in on Friday mornings and she reports many healings and conversions from this group. She never dreamed of having an online ministry like this, but it’s really growing and doing well. We have also started a newsletter about her that I send to interested people and possible donors to start building a funding base for when she returns to Mongolia. (Send me a message if you wish to be added to that list).

Veeka from last Christmas

Fortunately, neither I nor any family members got Covid, but, as mentioned above, the facility where Veeka was staying forbade parents to visit starting in mid-March. She switched facilities in January and has a great therapist now and is doing better but progress is slow. (There’s a lot more going on, but a public blog isn’t the place to discuss it). Meanwhile, my mother’s retirement center isn’t letting any of us come inside, so I have been taking my mom on field, medical and shopping trips just to get her out. For being 92, she’s doing pretty well but she’s very bored! She isn’t allowed to eat with any of her friends there, so it’s been incredibly lonely. I totally disagree with how these places — where there’s been no Covid cases in months — wall off elderly people, who depend on social interactions to keep from being depressed.

I get depressed too, so sometimes I just have to work to get my mind off stuff. I’ve done a lot of writing for ReligonUnplugged this year, including this piece on an Icelandic author in search of  a publisher for her fascinating book on the Barbary pirates’ devastating 17th century raid in south Iceland; a piece on Pentecostals who oppose Trump; the chaplains who staffed the craziness at Seattle/s CHAZ/CHOP area in June (see photo below) and a piece on the Native Episcopal priest shortage in Alaska.

That chapalains story, by the way, was hard to research. No other reporters were writing about the religious elements at CHOP, so I had to track down these chaplains through a chance caption I saw at the bottom of a photo in the Seattle Times. Visiting the area a week after all the protests was quite weird. I wasn’t unsafe there, but I wasn’t welcome, either. I also renewed my friendship with the folks at that most unusual Catholic theater company, Saint Luke Productions, which has been hit hard with cancellations from Covid. My piece on their play on America’s first black Catholic priest came out here and my piece on their Saint Faustina play ran here on her birthday, Aug. 25.

Fortunately, I managed to land two travel stories with the Seattle Times before Covid came out. They were on hiking in the rain and how to travel with dysregulated kids. I thought the latter would be a huge hit, but it was not, surprisingly. Then all my travel assignments dried up because of Covid, but I did manage to sell a piece to the Washington Post this summer on post-Covid Idaho here. How was I able to do that?
Well, I splurged in February on a ski trip to Sun Valley, spending part of my time researching a feature on stargazing for the Seattle Times. It was lovely driving up an 8,000-foot mountain pass one winter night and seeing the gorgeous skies. It was a lovely, sunny week in central Idaho even if the snow quality was anemic. None of us in my ski group realized, when we arrived, that the area hadn’t gotten any decent snow in about a month. Fortunately the grooming was excellent, but the lack of fresh stuff was telling. But, the Times has put all its travel pieces on hold, so maybe it will run next winter?

Again, my earnings via substitute teaching, travel writing and crafts took a dive because of Covid. Recently, I attended a workshop with my school district on how to substitute teach via Zoom and the process is so complex, I am not sure I can do it. It was clear that several dozen other subs listening in on this workshop were just as flummoxed. One thing I did start in May was teaching journalism via Outschool.com to upper-elementary kids and I’ve had several classes – which are four sessions each – so far. My latest listings are here. If you have a budding journalist that age, please sign them up! What I’d like to get into even more is personal tutoring in journalism techniques for kids, which is easier and the money is better, so I’ve posted some classes here. I am also trying to break into religion classes on Outschool but have had no bites yet with my six-week world religions offering. There’s a huge motherlode of need out there, as online schooling looks like it will be around for awhile, but it takes some savvy to know how to market one’s talents to stand out among several thousand other teachers.

Me on an REI-sponsored snowshoe trip to Blewett Pass in March.

I am trying to get out and do stuff – ie long hikes – that won’t be possible once Veeka moves home and so I’ve spent time this summer on some really nice walks in the mountains, thanks to some really decent weather we had in July and August. I am up to eight-mile hikes now, although that is quite a stretch, but it’s an improvement from my five-mile limit of a year ago. Six miles is more my style, as my body isn’t as young as it once was!

And so, here we are, in this awful year of all years that 2020 has been. As you may notice, I also got my website re-done and switched over from WordPress to SquareSpace. I am still writing for GetReligion.org, albeit one piece a week instead of three. Church-wise, I feel homeless. The first congregation I attended after moving here feels more and more alien to me as it’s been made clear that my daughter and I are not wanted or valued there. After the lead pastor basically told me to get lost some time ago, I started attending a new church plant near where Veeka is now living near Tacoma. But then that pastor — in early August — announced that Washington state was too godless for him and his family and they were decamping for Idaho where they felt freer to practice their faith. As of that day, they were ending services and we were basically on our own to find another place to worship. As humorist Dave Barry used to say, you can’t make this stuff up.

Please explore my website — which is a great improvement in terms of selling my books and promoting other work — and I promise I’ll be better in terms of posting more blogs as this bizarre year draws to a close.