As my son-in-law Loic drove us along the normally clogged but now empty highways away from Millbrae headed to El Cerrito in late March 2020, we were both in somewhat of a state of shock. In this we were hardly alone. The entire world was trying to come to grips with the shocking arrival of a global pandemic, the likes of which had not been seen since the Great Flu of 1919.
And back then there had been no 24/7 news cycle to tell people about it.
Nowadays, what happened in Wuhan, China, might as well have happened next door in Burlingame, and in fact in this case it was.
As we drove, my mind turned to the logistics of my situation.
With us in the car were three bags, my computer case and a couple of garbage bags hastily stuffed with clothes, and some random supplies -- toilet paper, coffee filters, cans of soup.
Most of my possessions were in disarray. I'd been gradually moving from the flat in San Francisco where'd I'd spent the previous 17 years to the assisted living facility in Millbrae, so my stuff was split between those two places. But now I was headed to a third location, my daughter's house in the hills of El Cerrito and it wasn't clear whether I'd ever go back to the other two again.
Laila, a journalist and mother of three, had been extremely concerned about the coming pandemic much earlier than most people I knew. Weeks before the official schools shutdown she had already decided to pull her kids out of school and teach them at home. She converted all their shopping to online deliveries and ordered masks for the whole family. Loic the CEO of a global non-profit, had cancelled all of the trips he normally took to Europe and South America and Africa in order to work from home.
My daughter's house was a sharp contrast to what my life had been like at Millbrae. Instead of being isolated (for good reason) in my room, I now was surrounded by three lively children excited by the latest developments.
To them it all felt like a holiday from the boring reality of daily life. Orders had just come down that everyone was to shelter-in-place, the schools were all shuttered, so they had broken out the marshmallows, chocolate bars and graham crackers for s'mores! Eleven-year-old Luca told me he was an expert at building fires in the fireplace.
I immediately regretted not being 11 myself.
Because for adults, every aspect of our lives suddenly became magnified to a new level of scrutiny. Would we have enough to eat? Did we have enough water on hand? Where could we get good facemasks? Was the economy going to collapse? Would this madman Trump do something crazy like declare martial law?
Laila started baking bread and a network of friends started exchanging tips about where to order certain foods or supplies, how to set up a home office, where to leave any extra stuff so those in need could swing by and pick it up.
We settled into a new lifestyle, all six of us hunkered down with Betsy the dog and the fears of what would happen next.
Into the middle of this cauldron of uncertainty, in late May a policeman in Minnesota did what had been done countless times over decades, killling a black man accused of committing the most trivial of crimes -- attempting to pass a counterfeit $20 bill.
It seemed ludicrous that in the middle of a pandemic, someone in authority could do that. After all, due to the emergency, evictions had been halted, courts had been suspended, and millions of people were out of work. Poor people, including addicts, were desperate.
So of course the overwhelming majority of us wanted to help one another, not further torment those in need.
Who knew at the time that this would be the spark that ignited a conflagration that would eventually help to sweep the madman Trump from power.
But the explosion of protests in the wake of the killing of George Floyd showed that millions of people were willing to risk infection from the coronavirus to stand up to abuses of power by authorities; that, in turn, indicated a degree of political instability that shook global confidence in the U.S. as a nation to look up to.
It was suddenly obvious that even facing the threat of death by a disease that authorities could neither control no explain, people were simply no longer going to be silent about the racism, inequality and basic lack of fairness epitomized by the Floyd case.
No way. Almost overnight, all hell had broken loose and as it did, a huge chasm in the population of this country became starkly visible.
Just witnessing this triggered powerful, mostly forgotten memories for me, from the 1960s when I was a student activist and aspiring journalist at the University of Michigan. In April 1968 a carload of us had driven from Ann Arbor down to Memphis, Tennessee, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was leading a demonstration of black sanitation workers.
As it turned out, that that was the last demonstration King would ever lead.
This time around, recovering from an illness that had almost ended my life, and sheltering-in-place in El Cerrito, I decided it was probably time for me to start telling my life story -- right here, right now, on Facebook.
***
The news:
* Israel and Hamas agree Gaza truce after Egyptian mediation (Reuters)
* New Political Pressures Push U.S. and Europe to Stop Israel-Gaza Conflict -- President Biden faces a leftward shift in his party. In Europe, Muslim migration, terrorism fears and populist politics make diplomacy more urgent than ever. (NYT)
* Biden’s warning to Israel shakes up diplomacy — and politics (WP)
* Israel unleashed new airstrikes across the Gaza Strip early Thursday, killing at least one Palestinian and wounding several others. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back against U.S. pressure to wind down the offensive against Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers, who have fired thousands of rockets at Israel. [AP]
* Sen. Bernie Sanders to introduce resolution of disapproval on $735 million U.S. arms sale to Israel (WP)
* The Gaza Conflict Is Stoking an ‘Identity Crisis’ for Some Young American Jews -- A new generation is confronting the region’s longstanding conflict in a very different context, with very different pressures, from their parents’ and grandparents’ generations. (NYT)
* House Republican votes for U.S. Capitol riot plan a blow to Kevin McCarthy (Reuters)
* Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the Republican official who came under fire from Trump while doing his job to certify the 2020 election results in his state, has confirmed that he is running for reelection next year. He spoke about the essential role the rule of law plays in the democratic process, saying, "I lived it." [HuffPost]
* Trump loyalists push to revisit 2020 election results around the country (WP)
* The reelection of Marco Rubio to the Senate — who disparaged Trump as a candidate, then praised him after he won the presidency — could hinge on whether Florida Republicans will love Trump more than Florida Democrats hate him a year and a half from now. Trump impeachment prosecutor Val Demings has jumped into the race against Rubio. [HuffPost]
* A group of U.S. Capitol Police officers signaled their "profound disappointment" that Republican congressional leadership has refused to support a proposed bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 riot in an open letter. "Officers are forced to go to work with the daily reminder of what happened that dreadful day,” the officers wrote in the unsigned letter. [HuffPost]
* As Amazon, McDonald’s Raise Wages, Small Businesses Struggle to Keep Up (WSJ)
* Big gaps in vaccine rates across the U.S. worry health experts (AP)
* If 70 percent of adults get a shot by July 4, U.S. can avoid later surge, Fauci says (WP)
* From Colombia to U.S., Police Violence Pushes Protests Into Mass Movements -- In Colombia, and many other countries, security forces’ attacks on protesters have led to nationwide reckonings with injustice. (NYT)
* The Biden administration reinstalled the scientist responsible for producing the federal government’s top climate change reports after he was removed from his post by Trump last year. “It’s been my privilege to work with the nation’s best scientists and policymakers,” Michael Kuperberg said of his return. [HuffPost]
* The United States must double or quadruple the rate at which it thins and removes dead wood from its forests to reduce the threat of wildfires that have become more frequent and severe due to climate change, the Biden administration said. (Reuters)
* U.S. calls off key sanctions on Russian pipeline as Blinken holds first meeting with Moscow (WP)
* Greg Abbott (R) from Texas has become the latest governor to sign an abortion ban based on "fetal heartbeat" rhetoric. But the cutoff in these bans, which is typically around six weeks into a pregnancy, is arbitrary and based on a false premise, according to doctors. [HuffPost]
* An ‘Army of 16-Year-Olds’ Takes On the Democrats -- Young progressives are an unpredictable new factor in Massachusetts elections. They’re ardent, and organized, and they don’t take orders. (NYT)
* Centenarians who survived the 1921 destruction of a thriving black district in Tulsa, Oklahoma, told members of Congress at a hearing that they are still waiting for justice. “I have lived through the massacre every day. Our country may forget this history but I cannot," said 107-year-old Viola Fletcher. [HuffPost]
* Microsoft is pulling the plug on its once omnipresent browser, Internet Explorer, next year as it prepares to battle market leader Chrome with its slicker Edge browser. Launched in 1995, IE became the dominant browser for over a decade as it was bundled with Microsoft's Windows operating system that came pre-installed in billions of computers. The browser, however, started losing out to Google's Chrome in the late 2000s and has become a subject of countless internet memes for its sluggishness in comparison to its rivals. (Reuters)
* A Sense Of Touch Boosts Speed, Accuracy Of Mind-Controlled Robotic Arm -- A man who is paralyzed can quickly perform tasks like pouring a glass of water, thanks to a mind-controlled robotic arm that conveys a sense of touch. (NPR)
* 1 in 4 California employees admit to having worked from their car during the pandemic, reveals poll. (Cherry Digital Content)
* Blinken confirms the U.S. does not want to buy Greenland after Trump proposal (Reuters)
* Golf thrives on the ocean’s edge. What happens when the oceans rise? (WP)
* Apartment Listing Cagey About Whether Unit Has Floor (The Onion)
***
"The Times They Are A Changing"
By Bob Dylan
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin'
And you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin'
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin'
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'
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