This past month, I’ve been pitching a story about a website — a DIY digital repository — that hosts thousands of medical device service manuals. Biomedical technicians who work in hospitals around the world use this website all the time: to look up machine specs, to quickly repair a malfunction when there is little time to spare, or, for example, to work out how to attach several tubes to one ventilator because they do not have enough machines to serve every patient in need.
The website is run a single person, a biomedical tech currently working in Tanzania. He’s been compiling this information for nearly 15 years because device manufacturers, for a variety of intentional reasons and sometimes due to some careless oversight, do not always host these manuals on their own websites. Moreover, devices change, but some models are similar, and even if you can’t find a manual for one, if you can track down a directory sorted by device type, perhaps you can figure out enough to make something work the way you need.
A California company built on maintenance principles — basically, that we all have the right to repair things — set about duplicating and enhancing this vital website. It took two months of dedicated volunteers plugging away, and they did it! It is done. Now there are backups; now there is a secondary source. If something happens to that one single website, or the one single man running it, a redundancy is in place as a safeguard.
So while I didn’t get to write about it — anyone who knows me knows how badly I wanted to call this German biomed tech who fixes water pumps for fun and tinkers with his bike at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro — this is a big part of the COVID-19 ventilator story. All the stories about startups getting into ventilators are awesome. But being able to keep using what we have, and knowing how to use it, is more critical than ever.
More broadly, of course, this is a lesson about how to live, which is why I was so keen to write it up. We all have the right to repair rather than replace; reduce and reuse are the words after recycle that we often forget are just as (or even more) crucial.
A story went around this week about how many folks have stopped shopping during this pandemic. There is also an online campaign encouraging folks, en masse, to finally ditch Amazon (which, again, if you know me, is a very weathered drum I keep tiredly beating, and if a website makes people change their behavior, then by all means, let’s please promote whatever works).
Like so many, I’ve been thinking about how my needs are (already) met, how to keep being intentional in service and working for justice, and how small acts of support can literally change people’s lives.
And, it’s a small creative outlet that will not save the world, but more than ever, I’ve been embellishing some of my plain writing paper. Given the volume of mail I send, I have to keep the stationery box brimming.
The stories I have gotten to write include profiles of folks who are maintaining through this time, such as two women covering San Francisco on foot, now with masks and social distancing.
I also wrote about how I have been adopting storm drains through a lovely municipal program. I ended up snapping up drains on every alley named for a writer bro and naming the drains for their overlooked women contemporaries (or predecessors). What I had to leave out of the piece was a bit about several (women) artists whose bodies of work were largely around tidying up public space, and in one case, keeping track of how many sanitation workers’ hands she shook.
We’re all in this together. And we all rely on maintenance activities. I’ll circle back to those excellent examples of artistic civic engagement in my next missive.
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I recently connected with some folks interested in continuing COVID vigils and also contemplating possible memorials. Some of those conversations were related to a forthcoming story; some were just part of being in the world. We can’t repair the damages of this pandemic, but we can honor those who have died.
This did not have to happen.
Everyone is essential.