Enough with the pan beating, horn blowing, screaming at 8 p.m.

john ater
3 min readDec 20, 2020

At 8 p.m. tonight, as happens every night in our neighborhood since the beginning of this shit show, people started banging on pots, blowing horns, yelling, whistling, clapping, for the front line workers, the ambulance drivers, the nurses, the doctors, the hospital personnel who are fighting this pandemic in spite of their exhaustion. Commendable that we should applaud them.

photo by Nicholas Morris

However, they are too busy, too far away, too exhausted and too shielded by hospital walls and the sounds of their sirens to hear us, far too busy saving our lives to take note.

So, all that cacophony is an exercise to make US feel better.

Without thinking, we overlook the delivery folks we see everyday, the ones who deliver our groceries, bring us our take out, deliver our packages. These are the folks who have stepped up into this chaotic void of a pandemic to make sure we get what we need to live one more day. If we are to celebrate anyone, these are the folks we need to celebrate every day.

--

--

john ater
john ater

Written by john ater

author / street photographer / writer / editor / iconoclast / anarchist