Pandemic Journal - Day 73

Here at home, things are as they have been. My husband is out in the fields making hay, I have been keeping house. I had a scratchy throat that concerned me after a trip out to Walmart, but I'm sure it was allergies. I am feeling better although I spent the weekend feeling not quite myself.

I don't know if that was because I was ill or because the nation is ill, however. Nationally, we seem to be having pandemics upon pandemics. After the release of a video of a man being held down by a police officer who had his knee on his neck in Minneapolis, things went crazy. The video is terrifying to watch, so I won't link to it.

The arrested man, who died, was black. The police officer was white. Racism? It certainly seems that way, but in any event, a police officer appeared to have killed another human being without cause.

Protests and riots broke out. They are still protesting and rioting even as I write this. I think it has been going on for five days now. They are even protesting in Roanoke in front of the police station there. The city had break-ins in the the Valley View area. Apparently there are groups of "rolling" protestors/rioters who are moving from community to community.

Many of the people arrested in the larger cities do not live there. They are outside agitators. The president, who spent at least one night hiding out in the White House bunker as people protested outside the fences in Washington, D.C., calls this Antifa, which is supposedly a left-wing group that is against fascism.

I thought most civilized folks were against fascism and we fought a war over that and fascism lost, but apparently I missed something somewhere. I'm against fascism but I don't belong to any group.

Many on the left think the agitators are white supremacists. I don't know which they are. The president appears to believe not a single one could be a white supremacist, and that rankles a bit. Because of course there are probably groups of both. But he is singling out the one he believes to be the ones on the left.

I guess the others are "the very fine people" who started the riots in Charlottesville two years ago.

At any rate, as the Covid-45 pandemic rages through our elderly population, people are protesting. Some wore masks, some didn't. Most were not practicing any form of social distancing. They were outside which might help, but with a pandemic of protesting amidst a pandemic of a vicious virus, I think we may be in for a very rough time in a few weeks.

Or maybe not. Who the hell knows any more. I don't.

The country is going up in flames. People are dying. 

I guess the folks who voted in 2016 are getting what they wanted.

Meanwhile, I'm simply trying to figure out where to find chicken because that's the meat we eat a lot and the one we're short on. I have beef and pork in the freezer, but no chicken.

These are very strange times.