Greetings from the new hotspot for Civil Unrest in America. So strange, this sleepy little place my family has been going to for generations is suddenly in the national news. Life is funny.
This is a “vacation”, but it doesn’t feel like it really. We are up here for the last long stretch of the summer, almost 3 weeks straight, and towards the end of things we will need to do a lot of work shutting down for the winter. The first time we came up, I felt this big push to do stuff and have experiences and so on. Now, it’s beginning to get chilly, and I’m sleepy, and I just want to sit around and read my book.
Good news is, that’s all we can do! My foot is still healing a little, so I’m not allowed to go swimming or do anything with boats where stuff might fall on me. So I get up, work 9 to 5, and then sit on a comfy chair reading and watching the lake.
We could still go for drives to interesting places (nature preserves, historic monuments, etc.). Only every night just as we might start thinking about that, our phones go “BLAA BLAA BLAA! EMERGENCY PUBLIC SAFETY ALERT! STAY IN YOUR HOMES DUE TO CIVIL UNREST!!!” So we don’t go anywhere after all.
The county our house is in is sort of a wide rectangle running east and west. It’s split right down the middle by an interstate. Everything east of the interstate is now on fire and going crazy and there is a curfew and all kinds of things. Everything west of the interstate is sleepy and calm and peaceful. We are in the sleepy calm and peaceful zone, but still close enough that we get all those “DON’T GO ANYWHERE” orders. There’s also a wee bit of civil unrest directly south of us, but that seems to have dissipated a bit. I now have to drive very far northwest (the one safe direction) to get my morning coffee when I want it. But small price to pay for being able to have an excuse not to go anywhere without feeling guilty. And for building a fair and just society for all and that good stuff.
So yeah, that’s my vacation! Foot keeps me from doing anything exciting in the yard or lake, civil unrest keeps me from doing anything exciting in the larger world, I am basically FORCED to spend all day sitting around reading.
Are you sure the East zone is actually “unsafe”?I mean,the warnings are given out even for the mildest marches for traffic issues even when there is no violence.Sometimes these violence things are blown out of proportion.Especially the “everything on fire” part,it looks scary on social media but in reality most of the the time there are just crowds of people organizing a bonfire and burning political symbols and the local people stay away as their are million other routes apart from the protest areas.And the places where violence is reported often happens to be a non residential office area.
I am not questioning if the protests are peaceful.But last year,the place where I live was caught up in protests(India,you know why)and I was running from my home to college for days due to a subject registration blunder.There was absolutely no agitation during the day(and even during the night,peaceful protests continued)but the newsfeed made it seem like the city had turned into a warzone.Are you sure everything is that violent,or just a misinterpretation?
Most of the time,there is no violence when people protest in their own localities.Occasionally miscreants from other localities arrive creating confusion.Even my Grandfather lives in Washington DC,and though he has been off-duty(people tested corona positive in his department so the old folks were given leaves)he didn’t see any “violent” riot.Infact most of the clashes publicised as war with police were just small altercations before they were takin in and bailed out within hours.I cannot say the same for your place,but be vigilant and not blindly trust the news,either for or against the protests.News channels right now are nothing but propaganda devices around the world.
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And yes,I went to college amidst a curfew.Don’t ask me how.Police had no guidelines and everything happened in a hassle.I think even the pandemic lockdowns were more strict.
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The curfew here now is just 7pm to 7am. I ignore it to walk the dog, but i don’t think anyone cares about that 🙂
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Oh, i am sure we could do anything we needed to do. But since we don’t need to do anything, why make things harder by getting in the way?
There are fires, and looting, and anti protesters vigilante violence. Seems simplest to just stay in our nice far away village.
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Well, in a decade when we look back at this time you can remember who the protests and riots really did affect your life. Can’t really say anything else without breaking the no politics rule. Enjoy your books, and I hope all your rest will help your foot heal nicely.
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Oh yeah, small children will ask me, “what do you remember?” And I will say “it was terrible, we had to go to our second favorite farm stand instead of our first favorite farm stand”. Kind of funny to think about, for most people that is what “history” is, something that happens to other people. Or rather, the things that most people experienced for history weren’t the big exciting parts of it, but the little tedious parts of it while they read about the big exciting part of it.
On Sun, Aug 30, 2020 at 2:24 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Definitely. I expect the history books to be full of the stuff that affected everyone just a little bit, instead of the truly life-changing events like, say, the birth of a child. I was going to say that the pandemic might end up taking more space than the riots, but then the study of history is also about learning from it. And there just might be more lessons in why rioting happened than why the pandemic happened.
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I love reading autobiographies of unfamous people. I would search them out when travelling through Eastern Europe. Small museums were a good source. They were often self published and filled with spelling errors of the sort I make myself all the time. Unreliable narrators and all, but they were great. I feel like you know much more about history from learning how the regular folks lived through it, rather than the grand leaders and entertainers. And it isn’t really fair to say you aren’t affected by what is going on around you. It affects you posts, your thoughts, your feelings, the conversations you have with people…
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The Thirkell books I am binging have now hit the WWII era, and it feels so similar to today. Everyone is just generally going about their life and occasionally feeling slightly guilty about not thinking of the war all the time, but at the same time realizing that they are thinking about when they think about rationing or how to organize the household with refugees staying with them and all these other little things.
On Tue, Sep 1, 2020 at 12:46 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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