Good Morning from Maine

By Isabel

Last weekend we drove seven hours north from the city and left behind what has been very difficult few months for everyone in New York. We will be spending the next month surrounded by nature and serenity in beautiful Northern Maine. This area has had very few COVID cases, but people are cautious and, for the most part, following the rules. There is currently an influx of summer people and city refugees, such as ourselves. So the locals are exceptionally vigilant in wearing masks and not allowing too much mingling in the central part of our village.

Other than that, life here is just as beautiful as ever. Georgy, the kids, and I have been coming to Blue Hill for many years in mid to late August to take part in an intensive week of teaching amateurs chamber music as well as performing at the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival. My teacher Seymour Lipkin was the artistic director here for 30 years, and I cherish some of the most incredible moments performing four hands with him here. Kneisel Hall was the inspiration for our festival in Kovachevitsa: located in a serenely beautiful remote village, surrounded by magnificent natural beauty and interesting history. Only once we stayed here for a week longer and explored the area around, which is splendid.

Since our arrival, I have been going to bed early and waking up at dawn. We are listening to bird songs and picking wildflowers. I started a new book, written by a Maine writer: Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout. The house we are staying in now has no TV and slow internet, which gives us all the time in the world to engage with each other.

The food here is excellent, there are a lot of farms around, and people truly make an effort to live connected to nature. It seems that highly intelligent people inhabit most of the small villages around here. However, one can’t help but notice how expensive everything is: $10 for a jar of yogurt, $10 for a piece of ham, etc. I guess this place is heaven for rich hippies.

Yesterday we went to a larger town nearby seeking art canvases for my inspired artist daughter and ended up in a giant Walmart. What a contrast. There, all the food is cheap, mass-produced, and all the items sold are manufactured in China. The people who worked at the store and those who shopped were almost all humongous, like elephants. Some of them were so obese that they couldn’t move freely, and so the store provided them with special shopping carts, which had electrical wheelchairs attached to them, to help them navigate the store and shop.

Upset at what we saw, we got out of there quickly.

These two realities are what is wrong with America and perhaps the world, in a nutshell. In one village, people live as they did in the 19th century: they keep their authentic, lovely old English houses, filled with antiques and unique locally produced artifacts. They compost and save water, they don’t watch TV and for the most part, do what they can to live in harmony with the planet. They spend their days gardening, reading, watching the stars and comets, and exploring nature. They eat ten-dollar tomatoes made by “kumbaya” singing hippies. And they read the New York Times every morning.

At the same time, the inhabitants of the town next door eat 48 doughnuts each day for breakfast.

I am not exaggerating.

So, is there a way we can connect the two? Bring down the price of the local food to a level where everyone can afford it? Educate people so that they can understand that, for the most part, they are living in a trance, in front of a screen, with a Big Mac in their mouth? Or is that going too much in the way of politics these days? Like everything else … in the world, including COVID.

I remember when Michelle Obama started a campaign educating people on how to garden and eat well, the people who are now known as “basket of déplorables” were up in arms against her. They called her all kinds of horrendous racist things. They were scared of having their doughnuts taken away by the government.

Of course, nobody wanted to make doughnuts illegal, but how about if we tax them so that they become more expensive than say … tomatoes. Wouldn’t that do the trick? One can afford one doughnut per day and 48 vegetables, not vice versa.

This type of taxation is not unheard and is implemented successfully in highly civilized societies, places like Denmark, for example. But for this to work, the majority of the population has to be behind it. The government can’t mandate taxation on unhealthy food unless the people want it. I believe that if we tax these large companies, we would be able to pay for a ton of things, such as healthcare and education, while at the same time taking care of people’s eating habits. It is simple, really, but can you imagine what the deplorable would do to a president who advocates for this type of tax law?

In NYC, all chain restaurants are required to list the calories of the items they sell. This law was mandated by Bloomberg, who is a health nut. He also began the initiative of CitiBikes and other great things for the city having to do with housing and charter schools. On some issues, Bloomberg is a lefty (such as guns, environment, and healthy eating). Still, in other matters, he is much more to the right of the political spectrum: he approved and supported the controversial Success Academy, a charter school in the city, which provides an exceptional education to underprivileged kids, and is run very much like a private school, but paid by public funds. Many people didn’t like this model because they felt that it was too selective and did not include all types of students. They also may or may not be using teaching methods that are too rough or military. Of course, to me, after growing up in a Soviet-Style school, all the schools in the US are too easygoing.

Anyways, I was hoping that Bloomberg would run for president because I thought that he could stand up to Trump. But many of my progressive friends hated him, because they saw him as just another billionaire, out of touch, and not effective enough for regular people. Perhaps they are right.

I hope that the guy they picked, Joe Biden, would be kind enough to end the current climate of hate. However, I am very pessimistic about the future of this country and this planet. I don’t think that this nightmare would have been any different if we had another president.

You can’t force people to be smart suddenly.

Just today, at the local coffee shop, I saw a MAGA type man, who looked like a hillbilly. Without a mask, he was making sarcastic remarks and making fun of the people, who had provided hand sanitizer, marked the 6 ft. social distancing requirements, and asked everyone to wear a mask near the coffee counter. Would this guy behave any differently if Biden was president? Or Jesus?

I know that this sounds snobbish, but let it be what it may: the only thing we can do as smart people is to swim through all the scum and strive for the things that truly make us great. Otherwise, we would be giving up this planet in the hands of greed, intolerance, and ignorance.

The situation is very similar in Bulgaria, by the way, where society is polarized in two very different camps: intellectuals vs. half-witted nationalistic scumbags. Sadly, there too, the politicians in power have taken over all the control in government. That includes the judicial power, the presidency, and the parliament. All thanks to the votes of the said scumbags.

Right now, amid COVID, people are marching the streets in Sofia, demanding that the government step down. Last time this happened, in 2012, I walked with them. The way I marched in New York’s Women’s March and for Black Lives Matter. These are movements that make history and the only way our voices can unite, and we can make the politicians do what’s right.

Of course, it matters who is in the Oval Office.

But it is also vital who walks the streets. People who think that COVID is a hoax, or believe that healthy food is an infringement on their independence, obviously can’t be electing people to office.

Being smart means avoiding theses types of idiots, because we have an emergency on our hands: an immediate one with the virus and a long term one with the future of this country and this planet.