Covid Remembrance Day 2025….. From ‘Emergence’ Magazine…..
by Bernie Bell - 08:34 on 11 March 2025
Covid Remembrance Day 2025…..
Sunday the 9th of March was Covid Remembrance Day.
Late February/early March last year, Mike had Covid. Up to that year, we’d both been offered, and had, Covid jabs. That year, I was offered one because I’m old and manky – Mike was told he couldn’t have one, though we pointed out that if he got Covid, that could put me at risk, and also I’d find it difficult to take care of him as I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I did manage – thank God for good neighbours and the Co-op food delivery service.
I had my jab last October and, presumably, will continue to be offered it each year. Mike, however won’t be allowed until he’s old enough to ‘qualify’.
It’s well worth remembering, and reminding folk that Covid is still with us.
I wrote this when Mike was ill with it….
Covid Is A Cruel Thing….
Covid is a cruel thing
I haven’t seen Mike’s face
For six days.
When I’m in the room
He wears a mask
I can only see his eyes.
His eyes are sad and weary
And I can’t hug him better.
Covid is a cruel thing.
This time next week it will be gone
Mike will be well
And we will hug each other!
BB February ‘24
I’d previously written this, in October 2020…
The Fabric Of Our Lives
The fabric of our lives
Has holes in it.
The Folk Festival
The Blues Festival
Harvest Home
Lucy Service
Nine Lessons & Carols.
No meal out for my birthday
Our wedding anniversary
Mike’s birthday.
Not attending the funerals of those we know.
Not visiting the new baby.
The fabric of our lives
Has holes in it.
But I’m trying to see it as lace
Where the holes
Are part of what makes it what it is.
I’m trying to see it that way
And not go crazy.
Bernie Bell 7th October 2020
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From ‘Emergence’ Magazine…..
Episode Four
an Emergence Magazine Production
“Healing—it goes both ways because when non-Native people realize the history and realize what’s missing, that’s when they embrace Indigenous people to come back to the community, to come home.” —Theresa Harlan
Marin County in Northern California, where Emergence is located, has been home for millennia to the Coast Miwok people, who continue to live and thrive here despite settler-colonial efforts to erase them from the story of this land. In 2022, we released a three-part audio series exploring a thread of this attempted erasure: the eviction of a Coast Miwok family from their ancestral home on a cove in Tomales Bay, and the grassroots efforts of one woman, Theresa Harlan, to re-Indigenize the collective memory of this place.
This week, we come together again with Theresa to explore the impact of her vision to protect, restore, and rematriate Felix Cove over the last three years—how she has widened community awareness of Coast Miwok history; opened hearts to allyship between Indigenous and settler families; and run traditional ecological knowledge workshops, including tule harvesting and canoe building. Amid ongoing vandalism of the house at the cove, the recent eviction of eleven multigenerational ranching families from the Peninsula, and incoming land management by The Nature Conservancy and the National Park Service, the future of Theresa’s ancestral home remains uncertain. Yet, she continues to bring into being a larger story of cultural healing, asking: What does a landscape lose in the absence of loving stewardship? What does a place, a community, look like when it welcomes home Indigenous presence? And are we willing to come together to honor the entire story of a land?
https://emergencemagazine.org/audio-story/coming-home-to-the-cove/
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