Writers offering strength, hope, and solidarity since 2020
On March 19, 2020, our world tipped sideways. Everything changed. Schools closed. Businesses closed. Factories closed. Art galleries, restaurants, bars, places of worship. All closed. We were physically isolated at home with our immediate families, masked when we ventured out. The newspaper column “Going The Distance” first appeared in the Benicia Herald on April 1, 2020, focused on the COVID-19 pandemic and the fears, hopes, tensions, and oddities generated by the coronavirus and social distancing.
Following the murder of George Floyd, the focus for “Going The Distance” expanded. On Juneteenth 2020 the column’s intriguing “guy on the bench” logo gave way to Lady Liberty, masked up, lighting the way for all who are “yearning,” in every sense, “to breathe free.” To breathe free of all the chokeholds that threaten us. Coronavirus. Systemic racism. Economic hardship. Climate crisis. (*Order the 2020 book, Yearning To Breathe Free, see below)
In the spring of 2021 we reassessed “Going The Distance.” Although the wide distribution of effective vaccines made COVID 19 less lethal, all those other threats to life and liberty, were still very much a part of our lives. We’re just not there yet, where we want to be. And we need one another along the way.
After the 2024 Presidential election, it seemed that the subtitle “not there yet” was too great an understatement. We retained the image of the long road ahead, and swapped out the caption. Beginning November 8, 2024 the column is “Going The Distance—Long Road Ahead.”
“Going the Distance”
8 November 2024
* The collected “Going The Distance” columns from 2020 are available in book form as Yearning To Breathe Free—A Community Journal of 2020 at Benicia Literary Arts.