Tend Your Orchard

It’s almost a year now that I’d been working as public health worker along with amazing teams of doctors, nurses and other disaster service workers managing outbreaks with our most vulnerable populations, including our elders. It’s relieving to notice that we’re finally seeing a plateau, as I was starting to loose count of how many lives we’ve lost just this year alone. Some from Covid, some from other illness and others in our communities from violent hate crimes brought on by xenophobia and ignorance about this virus. We still have so much work to do and this virus is not the only pandemic we are up against. As we continue to level off the death tolls from this virus, let’s also continue to check on our elders and tend to our communities. We can recreate what we need “normal” to be. There is hope, and it exists in how we hold each other.

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This mural that @misterbouncer and I created is in partnership with SOMA Pilipinas Filipino Cultural Heritage District and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts located on 3rd and Mission, SF at Yerba Buena Gardens. The tittle “Tend Your Orchard” is line from Tim Blunk’s 1987 poem, “for comrades who ask, ‘what is to be done?’ during this particular historical conjuncture, a (partial) list of practical things to do”.