Ken Dobson's Queer Ruminations from Thailand
Search this site
  • Life in Thailand
  • Queer Issues in Thailand
  • Queer Christian Issues
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Stories

Some Good

3/17/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
Good will come from this.  We can see good breaking out just as the daffodils are pushing the dirt aside, paying little attention to late snow.  [Thanks to Krisana for the picture she posted between snow falls.]  Here are examples to give us perspective:

Schools are closing.  What are working parents to do?  Suddenly children are home without supervision or care.  We’ve heard of people helping out by taking in a couple of kids, turning their family room into a play-classroom.  Some take turns being hosts.  This sort of neighborly cooperation has almost disappeared, but now a whole new generation is rediscovering it.

Restaurants and bars are closing.  (In Illinois it’s to be statewide.  In San Francisco the whole city is on “lock down” with only people performing essential services allowed out of their houses).  What are food service workers to do?  What about hungry people, for that matter?  They have to adapt.  Some restaurants are providing curb service, although not quite in the manner we got from A&W Root Beer stands or Stake and Shake.  I don’t think bars can do that.  Cloth-napkin restaurants may have to scale down.  We are just beginning to see a return to food distribution as it used to be.  Some of us may actually learn to cook a thing or two.

Universities are closing.  Very large Bangkok University today announced two weeks suspension of classes after a student was found to possibly have COVID 2019.  Assumption and Mahidol universities are also partially closed.  Officials have hinted that all schools and colleges in the country might be closed as early as next week.  What now?  The immediate response we’ve heard about is to re-design instruction to be provided on-line at a distance.  This is nudging traditional colleges to “get modern” and for regulatory agencies to reform.  There are many ways of providing high quality education.  This crisis will get some of those ways unstuck.

Travel options are shut down.  This is going to upset lots of plans, but what are people away from their home countries going to do?  What about international students?  I can imagine students who would otherwise have slipped into their institutions, into their enclaves inside, and into their degrees and trips back home, without ever having really seen American family life.  Now, behold, they might be invited into guest rooms and family experiences they never expected.  Those families might discover their first international “family members.”  It’s about time.

My point is opportunities for good are emerging.  Every hour brings new accounts of this cooperation and adaptation taking place as a result of good-will confronting sheer necessity.  Whole new categories of good things are being suggested, explored, and undertaken.  Some of those avenues might lead to breakthroughs into alternative political, economic, and environmental constructs.  It sometimes takes a crisis right in our face to crack us open to tough change.

If Chiang Mai were to be put on a San Francisco type of lock-down, I can’t imagine how we’d get through two or three weeks, but we’d be better off than hundreds confined to condominiums.  We live in a village.  Small communities are hothouses for cultivating creative care and kindness.       
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Rev. Dr. Kenneth Dobson posts his weekly reflections on this blog. 

    Archives

    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Copyright © 2023 Rev. Dr. Kenneth Dobson