Memorial Day 2020 a Week Later

One week later, and I feel OBE yet again. Memorial Day weekend roundabout Exit 151 was somber and intermittently rainy, with the long shadow of covid19 looming over the unofficial start of summer. Many of the traditional observances at veterans cemeteries were simplified and restricted to family members with passes and face coverings, and some of the first-of-the-summer holiday revels took on political overtones, becoming either cautiously mannered or defiantly raucous. The grinding partisanship often didn't seem to leave much room for appeals to empathy and decency.

By grim coincidence the tally of confirmed covid19 deaths in the U.S. neared 100,000 during the holiday weekend, prompting the astonishing Sunday, May 24, 2020 New York Times front page shown to the right. It's a list of names with brief obituaries of 1,000 people known to have died of covid19 in the time since the epidemic began in the U.S., less than four months. Add in the unidentified deaths to the ceaselessly growing total, and it would take over 100 pages to list them all. As the headline reads, the loss is incalculable.

It seems to me one of the better ways to honor the memory of so many dead is to keep on keeping on with the single method that is proven effective: social distancing. Attempts to foster natural herd immunity, as in Sweden, have failed, at a high human cost. Many antibody tests have proven not reliable as a guide for personal behavior or public policy. Efforts to invent a safe and effective vaccine continue, as they should, although in the U.S. opinions on taking a vaccine are evenly split between Yes and No/Not Sure. The search for safe and effective treatments also continues. Overall, there are reasons for optimism and reasons for pessimism.

At the close of the holiday weekend came two incidents that pulled another veil off the reality of racism in the U.S. First, a white woman in Central Park got into a verbal argument with a black man, threatened to call the police on him, and indeed summoned police with a false story he was threatening her. He recorded the encounter, which went viral, with many consequences and much spilled ink.

The evening of Memorial Day, George Floyd died while in police custody in Minneapolis. Peaceful protests gave way to violence and looting, and documented concerns that white agents provocateurs like Umbrella Man and others from outside the Twin Cities had come to pursue violent agendas of their own. The protests, violence, and suspicions spread quickly to other cities amid pleas for calm from city and state officials and a flight from responsibility at the top.

As deadly serious as all this is, I am reminded that continued existence IS resistance. So I completed a pair of socks, Waterlily by Sivia Harding, in time to qualify for April/May SKA.



With so much going on, it's my first foot of 2020, and that will have to be enough.