A banner day in quarantine

Preparing sack lunches for the homeless

As quarantine days go, yesterday was a banner day. It began when Jordan cut my hair in the morning. She didn’t really cut it, just trimmed. But it was not a decision I reached lightly. For one thing, she seemed too eager to try it. But the ends were getting wispy. I called Rosa, who has styled my hair for almost twenty years, and she encouraged me to do it. So we did. And  you know what? It looks pretty darn good. There’s one spot I want her to trim just a bit more. But I feel better.

In the afternoon, Jordan and Jacob packed 20 sack lunches to go to the Presbyterian Night Shelter, through University Christian Church. I had intended to be part of this project. The food was all stored in my closet—snacks, energy bars, sacks, napkins, etc.  (Anything Jordan doesn’t know where to put, she stores in my closet which is ample, but not that big!). Turkey and cheese were in my fridge. But Jordan thought it would be easiest if they laid it all out on the dining table in the house. And they wanted to do it just when I usually nap. So I hope the church and the homeless know that my heart was in it, even if my hands were part of the preparation.

In the evening, Polly Hooper came to take our porch portrait. Polly is a longtime Berkeley resident who told us, as of last night, she had done 52 such portraits—and she had four scheduled last night. She knows all the tricks about posing—one foot in front of the other, weight on the back foot. Lean in a little bit. Move forward some. We were obedient. It’s unsettling to be photographed with the Burtons, because they are all three very photogenic—and I am not. Haven’t seen the pictures yet.

Polly has what I think is a super plan—to get each family to write something about their pandemic experience and then publish photos and text as a book. Sort of “How one neighborhood experienced the pandemic.”

Today has been much less eventful. Jordan went to a friend’s garage to celebrate a birthday—the friend lives alone and is strictly self-isolating, but Jordan wanted her to have birthday company. So she took her own wine, and Amye set a chair out in the garage for her. Amye stayed in the house, and they were separated by a small space of lawn. I was mostly at my desk and dined alone--scrambled eggs with lox, tomato, and scallion. And raspberry chocolate for dessert. Decadent.

Texas began to open up today, though it didn’t make much difference in my little world. I have heard of offices that are opening on a rotating basis—employees who have been working from home are given time slots when they may come to the office, so not too many are there at any one time. And they must wear masks. Now that is sensible. Rushing off to the mall or one of the restaurants that opened is sheer folly to me. I won’t be going for a long time.

My moral outrage grows by the day. A picture on the internet shows a protestor yelling, his mouth open, his expression grossly angry, right in the face of a law enforcement officer in the Lansing (Michigan) capitol building. Fortunately, the officers were all wearing masks. But to think that this man would yell in someone’s face, knowing what we do about transmission, is beyond my understanding. It’s sub-human behavior. And all those assault weapons—if it weren’t such a depredation, I’d be laughing at those heavily armed men. They look ridiculous in the halls of state—scruffily  dressed but armed to fight a major battle they know they’re not going to get. I think it’s true that those big guns compensate for something small.

I am often a critic of police brutality, but in this case, I think the police should arrest them. They're domestic terrorists, but when push comes to shove, I doubt many would use their weapons. And if one protestor got shot, it might teach the others a lesson. These protests are about guns, not about freedom to live without safety precautions. And no, mr. trump, these are not “very good people.”

Oops. I got carried away on a rant.