Items

• 
  2020-07-20

  ⁣Photos from Justice for Womxn Lost To State Violence protest

  "Most rape and assault is never reported to law enforcement in the first place. Of the cases that are, less than 1 percent are referred to prosecutors, and even fewer result in convictions. There are currently hundreds of ongoing lawsuits against police departments across the country, alleging a culture of institutionalized negligence, antipathy, and outright hostility toward survivors. Beyond the structural violence endemic to policing, police themselves are four times more likely than the average person to be domestic abusers.⁣ ⁣ These things are often framed as proof that policing is “broken,” but that again accepts the premise of the police on their own terms. Gender-based violence enabled by and within the criminal legal system is by design, and it is inseparable from the way that “crime” itself is construed: racialized, atomized, and alienated from broader social problems.⁣ ⁣ Far from being protected, it’s under the guise of “fighting crime” that Black women, trans women, indigenous, undocumented, and poor women have been subjected to a system of violent policing that continually exposes them to gender-based harm at the same time as it hems them into the margins of society. This system is self-protecting—it conspires to conceal the means through which it reproduces and justifies itself, making it difficult to imagine an alternative." - Isabel Cristo, The New Republic⁣ ⁣Photos from Justice for Womxn Lost To State Violence protest, July 18, 2020
• 
  2020-06-28

  P.E.I. sees rise in anti-outsider sentiment as COVID-19 travel restrictions ease

  "...with cottage owners now arriving on the Island, several people with out-of-province licence plates have had their cars vandalized, have been confronted or have had nasty notes left for them in incidents known locally as 'plate shaming.'" Article discussing hostility from locals to those with out of province license plates as they fear they may be carrying coronavirus into Prince Edward Island.
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  2020-04-30

  The Great Grocery Store Run

  Throughout my whole life I have never seen people so scared and/or lost like I did during this pandemic. Hearing on the news that the COVID-19 pandemic was sweeping across the country and that we were encouraged to stock up on essential supplies I decided to head to the nearest Walmart and get the things I would need for daily life to continue. As I walk into the grocery store, I could immediately feel the panic that was upon every individual that was in the building. Shopping carts full to the max as well as almost everybody having on mask and/or gloves. Shelves were almost completely empty with nothing really left for the workers to stock them back up with. People fighting over items that we considered very small and unimportant just a few days ago. I was completely shocked at just how real this invisible virus had become to everybody,and what people were willing to do to make sure that they were able to survive. A day I will always remember as the Great Grocery Store Run. #REL101
• 
  2020-04-18

  Diary in the Time of Corona

  I woke up this morning and decided to write. Why today? What’s different about today than yesterday, or the day before? I have no answers to these questions. It’s Day 25 of the quarantine. The sky is dull gray and it’s raining, my windows streaked with wet wavy lines that make them look like etched glass. Today is not so different from yesterday, except yesterday it wasn’t raining. And yesterday we went to the supermarket. That place fills me with terror. The aisles are not wide enough to keep the required six feet social distance. In the produce section it’s inevitable that two or more people will end up inspecting the bananas or the lettuce at the same time. When that happens we move apart as far as we can but we don’t walk away, as if the lettuce or the bananas or whatever are a territory we refuse to surrender. We do avert our eyes, ashamed to look our adversaries in the face. Upstairs in my bedroom I hear the rain against the roof, a soft, steady patter. The marsh is enveloped in a fine mist with ochre and green grasses and a few trees yielding small mauve flowers. I’m waiting for phone calls from the dead: my father, who passed away nineteen years ago and my mother, who passed away three years ago. Why do we want what we cannot have? Or is this the nature of grief, that after the sharp stabbing pains of loss a knot of slow sadness begins to form and 2 wind itself around our hearts, once in a while tugging so hard we’re reminded sharply once again of those who are gone? Maybe that’s what writing is for: not the documentation of what we have but the recovery of what we’ve lost. I’m reading a book by Lydia Davis called The End of the Story. It’s a novel about a woman writing a novel about a brief but intense love affair that ended thirteen years earlier. She can’t finish the novel because she can’t find the right way to end it, or so she says. But we know she can’t finish the novel because finishing it will end her connection to her lost lover, and she doesn’t want to experience such pain and grief all over again. The rain has stopped and the sky has shifted to a softer gray. The yellow and dark greens of the leaves are startling and bright in the thin light. Lydia Davis is a descriptive writer. She paints vivid pictures of the natural world: sound of ocean waves, piquant scent of eucalyptus, aggressive jade plants. But in her obsessions and delusions and isolation from friends she is not the best companion for me right now. ** Day 26. I am a witness to the pandemic. Everyone is a witness. But I’m not risking my life like the nurses and doctors and other workers on the front lines. I feel like a coward. 3 Today is sunny, with a cloudless sky of soft, washed blue. When you are quarantined weather becomes very important, like a prophecy or a sign of progress, or stagnation. On fine days I could go outside for a walk but usually I don’t want to. On the days I’ve gone for walks there’s an unspoken tug-of-war on the sidewalk when others approach: who will be first to step out of the way. My husband and I are always first to move. We agree we tend to give a wide berth earlier than necessary. Still, each time we veer into the street so walkers can pass I feel we’ve offered a consideration that was not reciprocated. This gives me a feeling of victimization that makes me even more irritable than I already am. On a recent walk I couldn’t help noticing that everything in my neighborhood reminded me of the virus. Small shrubs with crimson buds. A mask in the middle of the asphalt, awaiting asphyxiation. Street signs that say Dead End. I never realized there were so many dead ends where I live. When I’m overcome with anxiousness I prepare a meal. Before the time of corona I was a reluctant cook, and we often ate dinners at the local trattoria. But of course that’s no longer possible. I don’t have the patience or creativity to be a decent home cook. But now I find comfort in assembling a dish or two. I experience a sense of accomplishment in completing what feels like a meaningful activity. Food is no longer readily or easily available. If I’m missing an ingredient I won’t run to the supermarket wearing with my mask and disposable gloves. With every trip to the market comes the risk of 4 additional exposure. Grocery shopping demands enormous amounts of energy. So I try to plan ahead, which isn’t easy when you’re anxious all the time. Today’s side dish is quinoa tabbouleh with scallions, tomatoes, feta, and fresh lemon. Even writing the word “fresh” refreshes my depleted spirits. Before preparing the tabbouleh I looked out the window, my gateway, my connection to the world outside my home. My attention was drawn to a single orange-breasted robin stepping across the grass. I watched for a while, since now I have time for such contemplative activity. The robin began to peck at the ground, circling and wandering, circling and pecking. I had the idea he was searching for food and not finding any. I turned away. Things I never noticed before. The whiskered tips on the scallions, like a man’s white-gray beard. The amount of plastic and paper towels I waste even though I claim to be pro-environment. I think of my mother growing up during the Great Depression with barely enough food and not enough money. I have coats in the closet, sweaters in the drawers, a stocked refrigerator. Was I really so clueless and ungrateful? ** Day 27. Be mindful, stay in the present. I am trying to be present but the news on the morning radio announced 40,000 Americans are dead from the virus. How is this possible? The future has become our dystopian present. 5 Last night we visited with our kids on Zoom. Such interactions are one of the challenges of this particular moment, the physical separation from loved ones. These meetings in cyberspace reinforce the sense of enforced isolation: my adult children isolated in their homes within an hour or so of mine. I miss them. They might as well be living on the moon. I’ve heard stories of doctors and nurses sleeping in their garages so as not expose their families. This is worse than my experience, much worse, because their lives are in imminent danger. Nonetheless, their experience does not erase the pain I feel as a mother and new grandmother who can’t touch or hug my children. In my home state of New Jersey, 40 percent of more than 4,200 coronavirus deaths have been linked to long-term care facilities. My mother was a dementia patient in one such facility for six years. I thank heaven I do not have to worry about the virus killing my mother in a nursing home. The past seeps into the present. The present is the future, for the time-being. I’m reminded of the words of T.S. Eliot: “Time present and time past/ are both perhaps present in time future/ And time future contained in time past.” Perhaps our sense of separation between past, present, and future was always illusory. My brother contracted the virus a few weeks ago and was ill with a fever that spiked as high as 102.8. Mercifully he is recovering well. Past, present, and future, they are merged into the nightmare of the virus. I just read about a 25-year-old woman, a Latino grad student studying marriage and family therapy, who died of complications from the virus which she 6 likely contracted while working at a clinic for Latinos in one of the corona hotspots in Queens. I am overcome. I can’t write anymore.
• 
  2020-04-20

  Blindsided Change

  Everything is different now. Who would have imagined? If I or anyone I know was told in the fall of 2019 that in the start of year 2020 there would be a world pandemic that placed most of the world on lockdown, we most likely would have laughed or scoffed. We would have thought it impossible. And yet it happened. And it happened quickly, dawning a new decade with an event that will most likely damage societies. What a way to start a decade. Here is to 2020. May the middle and the end be more fortuitous than it’s destructive beginning. Everyone is in quarantine within their homes in hopes of preventing the spread of the new corona virus. A subtle virus that nobody would have expected to cause a worldwide emergency. After all, there are many diseases and viruses that appear to be worse than Covid-19 such as SARS. However that’s the danger, it is so subtle and contagious, it spread from China to the United States of America in a number of weeks. There is an estimated 800,000 confirmed cases of the virus with the States. Who knows if that number is accurate. It may be larger. It may be smaller. The world has changed in a matter of weeks. People rarely go out to areas where they are likely to encounter other people. If they do dare to venture outside, it is often with a face mask, disposable gloves, and hand sanitizer. Business has never been better for Amazon as people flock to their website in order to avoid having to go to the grocery store. Netflix is probably being used more now than anytime before. Schools have shut down and transferred online, many using Zoom as their platform of communication. Most people are stocking up on supplies. My father went to the gun store and said he had never seen the place busier. Toilet paper has become a valuable commodity. There have been more people on walks in my neighborhood than ever. All trying to escape the boredom and the feeling of wasting from remaining still. My sister and I have been placed on quarantine about two weeks before everyone else. I don’t believe I have had a physical interaction that was not digital with another person besides my family in 2 or 3 months. The only place that I have been to besides my house is the National Forest in Flagstaff, Arizona where I am allowed to go for hikes for miles. It is beautifully refreshing in comparison to the same color of wall wherever you turn. I’m allowed to take my truck out for a drive as long as the only destination is my house. I like to drive with the windows down on the highway and be reminded of the movement of nature that is absent in my daily circumstance. It is interesting how affected people become by fear and paranoia. I was driving through the neighborhood when I saw a couple walking. I waved as any friendly person would. The couple glared at me as if I was a threat. As if I would somehow give them the virus while contained in my car on the other side of the street. I found this behavior odd. But then this odd behavior occurred on several other occasions during my drives. I fear what this virus will do to our country. It has already changed our daily lives. I would hate for the coronavirus to turn America into a country where friendliness is unwelcome.