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I doubt that most of us will remember 2020 as joyful, or even particularly happy. But some like me, cushioned by social security and savings, found contentment in solitary pursuits, and some, again like me, were riveted almost daily by the news.
I know I’m not the only one who feels an exhausted malaise at the interminable days between the presidential election, just over a month ago, and the inauguration on Jan. 20, 2021, each day featuring its own nutty and disheartening drama.
I was taking a walk amidst falling golden leaves with a friend I’ll call Lisa. Since we were outside and there was a nice breeze, we weren’t wearing masks. But we were trying to keep 6 feet between us, which meant each time we neared each other as we talked, one of us cautiously moved away.
Trump emerged from his three-day stay in Walter Reed’s Presidential Suite “feeling great.” Offering no real information on the symptoms that had brought him to the hospital, he also showed no new appreciation of (or compassion for) the suffering, loss and anxiety Americans are feeling nine months into the pandemic.
I’ve been lucky enough to feel the peace of a long COVID-19 summer spent mostly in the safety of my own home and garden. But this peace is increasingly threatened by my agitation about the upcoming election.
The good news is that I successfully voted in our primary using what Connecticut calls an absentee ballot. I sent the town of Sharon a note that I couldn’t come to the polls because of the coronavirus, and they mailed me a ballot, which I filled out, placed in two envelopes, signing the outer envelope.
You may have seen the PBS podcast that featured Frederick Douglass’ great-great-great grandchildren reading from his speech to abolitionists on Independence Day in 1852. He made clear his bitterness about a day for which almost 80 years later he and his enslaved brothers and sisters still had no reason to celebrate.
A long with chokeholds, no-knock entries and other violent police tactics, there is growing consensus among both protesters and groups across the political spectrum that “qualified immunity” must be ended or rethought.
The demand by protesters across America to “defund the police” is bold, and probably intended to sound serious, if not scary.
Watching the largely peaceful and increasingly good-spirited protests and marches by black, brown and white young people since the terrible death of George Floyd, I have been tempted to imagine that the pandemic had given way to the long-standing challenge of police brutality.
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