Monday, March 30, 2020 - Community Howl, 8 p.m. - Dispatches from SIP -

Tonight, at 8 p.m. sharp,  the three us stepped outside the house and the howls, yips and yodels were already echoing against the hill on the far side of North San Pedro Road. We lifted our faces, framed our voices with our hands and joined in for two minutes of unabashed wolf-style howling. It was thrilling, uplifiting, a communal rebuke against the physical restraints we all must operate under these days if we are to slow the transmission of COVID-19.  A primal yowling, a release of anxiety.  We heard yippers, we  heard long involved rolling ar-hooooooos!  but all were expressions of gratitude and support for the nurses (some who live on our street) and doctors and sonographers and EMTs and the myriad of medical personnel risking their lives so that we can survive the pandemic. And isn't that the very definition of a soldier?

Our medical folks are on the front lines, exposed to this relentless enemy in countless, unending ways. They have been left unprotected and unsupported, dangling in the wind,  through the mismanagement of the pandemic crises from the very start by Drumpf and his Republican henchmen (you can read most of the sordid details here) -  most certainly many of our valiant Soldiers of Medicine will die in this fight. Yet they return to the fray, even if exhausted, sick, missing their families, leaving a sick loved one at home to fight the illness alone. Heroes, all.

And so we take the cue from Italy and Spain and France, where the sequestered citizens step outside at 8 p.m. every night and applaud their health care workers. It's the least we can do -- though of course, we've added some unique twists to the practice.  Howling like wolves - it seems appropriate in this land of Jack London and  The Call of the Wild, in this territory where coyotes are snooping around our spaces. Wonder what the coyotes  think of this Community Howl?  Have the Humans gone mad, lost their collective minds?

Or maybe, we are finally getting it, that the community that howls together, stays together, through thick and  thin, in sickness and in health..