covid diary: day 78

a charm of goldfinches

In my work, we see a lot of announcements from companies. The companies, understandably, want to make sure there are no grammatical errors before they make their big announcements, so a lot of times we get to see things before they are made public. Some of these things are more interesting than others. For example, I knew well before it was official that a certain prominent political figure would be entering the presidential primary this year, because my company works with that candidate's marketing company, so we proofed all the materials before they were released. There were strict confidentiality guidelines involved, so I'm not going to say the candidate's name, but suffice it to say that candidate did very well.

Anyway.

So like I said, a lot of these little "advance notice" things I see at work are completely mundane. But today I saw something that caught my eye: an announcement from a marketing company saying that the company was shutting down its physical office and would be working remotely exclusively from here on out. The company, like so many others, was plunged into working from home in March at the start of the pandemic, but the leadership team was surprised to find that it was a huge success in terms of both employee productivity and customer satisfaction, so they decided to make the move permanent.

I've been wondering for a while now if we would see a huge wave of announcements like these, and how the changing nature of how we work will ripple out to impact all industries. Think about it. If even half of the people who previously worked in offices need to switch to permanently working from home, that creates a lot of opportunities and challenges. It changes the construction industry if there is no longer as much of a call for big office buildings. It changes the auto industry if people aren't commuting as much. It changes the real estate industry if people have to factor in home offices when they look for a new place to live. And I can tell you from personal experience that it opens up a whole world of possibilities for people who discover that having a job that can be done from anywhere means that you can live wherever you choose. It's been 13 years since we made that shift, and while I still miss the camaraderie of working in an office, I have no doubt that the benefits well outweigh the downsides. The biggest benefit, of course, is that my boys are growing up with family all around them. I've never lacked for help when I've needed it, for someone to help deal with schedule conflicts and make sure everyone gets where they need to go at the right times. The boys have constant access to a whole cast of aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, which is utterly priceless to me. And of course, being in a place where we could afford a house with a yard was a huge factor too.

I guess we'll see. Maybe this announcement I read was an outlier, or maybe it's just the first little pebble at the start of an avalanche.

Out in the world today, things are very scary. The president doesn't like being fact-checked, so he's going after social media platforms that dare to check him. In Minneapolis, protests over the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, have continued, and late tonight they escalated to the point that one police precinct was on fire, and the local Target was looted after it refused to sell milk to protesters who had been tear-gassed by the police (the milk eases the sting of tear gas in the eyes). Remember back to the armed white dudes protesting in the Michigan legislature, and how I speculated that police would never let black people behave in the same way? Yeah, we're seeing it in real time. They're protesting the fact that the whole world has now literally watched (because bystanders took videos while they pleaded with the police to stop, to let up, to please not do this) as one police officer knelt on the neck of George Floyd for more than 8 minutes, while other police officers held his arms and legs, and Floyd told them that he couldn't breathe, that everything hurt, that they should please not kill him. But they did. They killed that man for the ALLEGED crime of trying to use a counterfeit $20 bill to buy groceries. And here is white privilege at its most basic: If I had tried to use a counterfeit $20 bill to buy groceries, do you think I would have ended up being restrained by four police officers, who then killed me by kneeling on my neck until I suffocated? OF COURSE NOT. I am one year younger than George Floyd, but I'm a white lady instead of a black man, so I get the presumption of innocence and the benefit of the doubt without me having to do a single thing, while George Floyd gets tried, convicted, and executed within the span of 10 minutes. I understand completely why the people of Minneapolis are rebelling right now. There's only so much they can be expected to endure.

credit: Carlos Gonzalez/Star Tribune

More than 100,000 people have died of COVID-19, and the president spent the day attacking Twitter, and the night threatening to send the military to shoot the people of Minneapolis. Yes, he did that, tweeting that he will send in the national guard and warning that "when the looting starts, the shooting starts." This country is a tinderbox, and he uses his words like lit matches. I am afraid for my fellow citizens — my fellow humans — in Minnesota.

At home, it rained all day, and I worked all day. Mike took Henry to a drive-through parade at his school to say goodbye to his teachers and the people at school he has known since kindergarten. All the teachers and school personnel lined up in the school pickup line to wave as cars drove through and kids leaned out to wave back. He'll be at a different school next year (provided that school opens in the fall), and this was a bittersweet way to say goodbye. After the parade, I got a message from his teacher and another from the school librarian telling me how glad they were to see him today, and how much they'll miss him next year.

And finally, in a break from the rain, we watched this European starling mama teach her fledglings how to forage for bugs in the grass, and it was delightful.

Nationwide cases: 1,721,926. Deaths: 101,621.