Pandemic, Week 12 (BLM)

Things got a lot worse this week. On Sunday, a day of peaceful protest ended that night with a small fire at St. John's Episcopal church across from the White House and some looting. On Monday, peaceful protests in Lafayette Square continued during the day, DC issued a curfew of 7:00 pm, and the President informed governors and mayors that he would invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 and deploy federal troops if they didn't quell the protests. Then around 6:30 pm that evening, the President decided that he wanted to walk over to St. Johns for a photo-op of himself holding a bible (which when asked if it was "his" bible he responded, "It's a bible"), leading to officers in riot gear using tear gas and rubber pellets on the crowd to clear the area.

Armored trucks and reservists were brought in. A fence was built around the Square (which was quickly decorated with Black Lives Matter signs). On Tuesday, DC had its primary with voting lines circling blocks (though voters were excused from the curfew).  The curfews eased to 11 pm by Wednesday. Friday morning, the mayor closed 16th street in order to paint, "Black Lives Matter"on the newly renamed "Black Lives Matter Plaza (protestors painted "Defund the Police" on an adjoining street). On Saturday, thousands more descended on DC to protest police brutality throughout the city (there was even a kids' protest in Lincoln Park) and in satellite protests across the U.S. and around the globe.

Meanwhile, there were 7 million COVID-19 cases in the world and 403,000 deaths. The U.S. hit 1.9 million cases and 110,000 deaths. The jobs report came out suggesting 2.5 million jobs were added in May (though that was partly due to a misclassification of laid off people as on leave). The President was so excited that he exclaimed, Hopefully George [Floyd] is looking down right now and saying, 'There's a great thing that's happening for our country.'"

Nora played "Jeff" in this week's podcast, The Box in the Bedroom. Owen worked on Khan Academy and some Harry Potter essay questions.

Amid it all, we left town on Friday. We had planned to decamp from DC once school was out for a few weeks, to give the kids a break and ourselves a change in scenery. We'd arranged to go with the Telfair-Chas so the kids would have friends to hangout with while the adults continued to work remotely. And we found a house on a mountain-top with a pool and several acres so that we didn't have to worry about other people.

(Mind you, we still had to worry about trees, as a fallen one impeded our access to the house and in our zeal to move it (and in the failure of the chainsaw provided by the owner) we reached out to some helpful neighbors and inadvertently started a home-owners association war (apparently our Airbnb isn't sanctioned), though we did make it to Lost Mountain Manor.)

We all felt a little guilty deserting the city amid the protests, and not joining our voices to the calls to end police brutality and the persecution of people of color. But I suspect there will still be a lot of work left when we return.