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Episode show notes
CreditsHost: Maggie BlahaTheme music: “Thanks for the Memory” written by Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger, performed by Bob Hope and Shirley Ross in the 1938 film of the same name
The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on all our lives. Maggie just wanted to put out a quick episode to address that.
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Episode transcript
INTRO
Maggie: For most of us, daily life probably looks very different right now. If your job can be done remotely, you’ve probably been asked to work from home. If you have children, they’re probably forced to learn from home for the rest of the school year. In New York, New Jersey, and a few other states, bars and restaurants have been forced to close, with only a handful staying open to provide takeout. In San Francisco, residents have been asked to shelter in place.
Sporting events have come to a halt. Major festivals, SAT testing, and even some states’ presidential primaries have been postponed. Gatherings of more than 10 people are banned, and we’re being asked to leave our homes only if absolutely necessary.
“Social distancing” it’s been called, and part of me wonders if that term is part of the reason why people aren’t taking it seriously.
All this to help stop the spread and #flattenthecurve of COVID-19, which the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a pandemic on March 12th. I won’t try to quantify the spread of this virus and how devastating it’s been; it changes daily. What’s clear is that we should all expect our lives to be very different for the foreseeable future.
You’re listening to Thrift: What Your Garage Sale Says About You, and this episode is NOT about yard sales or the things we once loved and are ready to let go of.
[Theme music, 30 seconds]
Maggie: I’m Maggie Blaha, and I’m going to start this episode by saying that I feel a little guilty about abandoning New York City during this outbreak. It feels like that’s what I’ve done—abandon it.
I left last Thursday when it was clear my company was going to make work from home mandatory. I have terrible WiFi in my apartment. Now it looks like I might be in NJ for the next few weeks.
Why do I feel guilty? I guess it’s because I feel like I should be part of my community more than ever, even if it’s just sitting in my apartment all day and staring out the window. Brooklyn, Carroll Gardens is my home, my neighborhood, and I hope it’s OK.
This week my Instagram and other social feeds have been a steady stream of all the places I love frequenting announcing that they’ll be closing their doors. A lot of them are independent businesses and mom-and-pop shops, and I know they’re hurting financially. Many of them started reducing their hours and limiting their customer capacity before it was mandatory, understanding how important it is to protect their employees and the community they serve.
I’ve been doing some thinking about this podcast. I’m still going to call it Thrift: What Your Garage Sale Says About You, and it’s still going to largely be about the stories behind our stuff, but it’s also about something more than that: It’s about neighborhoods, community, people.
The topics I talk about on the podcast are going to start shifting to reflect that. This is why I wanted to talk about COVID-19. It’s affecting neighborhoods around the world, and we’re all being called to protect the most vulnerable among us. We know that this virus is particularly deadly for the elderly and people with underlying conditions, so young people should stop being dicks about their healthy immune systems and care about the fact that they could kill people if they spread the virus.
But I don’t want this to be a rant. It’s just important that we all care enough about each other to #staythefuckhome.
In the US, it’s become apparent that we haven’t been doing a good job taking care of our most vulnerable, and I don’t just mean the elderly. Let’s start with the obvious: According to census.gov, about 28,566,000 people were uninsured in 2018, and private insurance continues to be more prevalent than public coverage. For those of us who have insurance, 55.1% are covered through our employers.
Congress has even had to draft a Coronavirus relief bill in order to give the American people what we should have had already like paid sick leave (there are still a lot of restrictions, though), free coronavirus testing (if you can get one, but it doesn’t help you actually get treatment), increased funding for food assistance programs (Trump was actually planning to cut funding just days ago), and strengthened unemployment insurance benefits.
This pandemic has made it abundantly clear that we haven’t been taking care of the most vulnerable among us—workers, students, people of color, people with disabilities, people living below the poverty line—and it’s sad that it’s taken an outbreak to force lawmakers to take any kind of action, even a small one.
When this is over, I hope it seems like we overreacted. For now, we have to isolate ourselves to protect our communities. It’s going to take a toll on all of us. You might be starting to feel stir crazy—I know I am. You might be feeling helpless, looking for ways you can give back and help those who are less fortunate at this time.
I’m going to start sending newsletters 3 times a week to all subscribers with some ideas for how we can all help and where we can send donations. I’ll include links to organizations you can make a contribution to at a national level, and I’ll include links to some local efforts in different states as well.
Obviously you know your community better than I do, so please let me know if there are any organizations or causes I should be highlighting. Send them to me through email at hello@thriftpodcast.com, on Facebook and Instagram at @thriftpodcast, or on Twitter @Thrift_Pod. I’ll also post a thread on Substack where you can leave suggestions in the comments.
For the next couple of weeks, I’ll be re-releasing episodes from the back catalog. I hope to be back with new episodes soon, but I’ll have to play it by ear.
In the meantime, be good to each other. Be kind to people who can’t stay home and have to keep things running, like people who work at your local grocery store or pharmacy. Enjoy your quarantine snacks and keep your frequently washed fingers crossed that store shelves are stocked with toilet paper again soon.
Thanks for listening.
[Outro, 10 seconds]
