Bullet Dodged

August 29, 2020

 

Bullet Dodged

This has been a pretty horrible year all around. The on-going Covid-19 pandemic continues to cause havoc around the world, especially here in the United States. This has impacted just about every facet of our lives and has led to months of a life that is totally different than what we all had expected and caused not only the obvious health crisis but on-going economic devastation. On top of that, this year has seen an unbelievable, sad and awful crisis involving race relations in the country.
 


The strife between the systematic racism that seems to be asserting itself more and more in our everyday lives has created, exposed and exacerbated racial tensions across the country as well. We were reminded of the on-going strife again this week as there was yet another example of police shooting and killing a young black man they were attempting to arrest. This time the man was named Jacob Blake and he was shot in the back seven times as he was resisting and attempting to get into a car. He joins the sad and far too long list of Black citizens who have been shot and killed by over aggressive police actions.

 

 
Another week of protests erupted and this time the one in Kenosha, Wisconsin took a dark and frightening turn as a young 17 year old man who was part of a militia group arrived in Kenosha from Illinois with the expressed purpose of protecting the lives and businesses from the rioters and looters who they were sure were going to ravage the city. Tragedy did indeed strike, though it was the young militia man who ended up shooting and killing two protesters and wounding another. Sadly the local police allowed him to walk away and return to Illinois, where he was thankfully arrested the next day.

 
 

 
 

The entire situation was tragic, horrific and sadly becoming ever more normalized with each additional instance. It is sickening to me and even more stomach churning is the way that the media only seems to focus on the most sensational and awful behave of the two extremes. I believe it is possible to at once support the Black Lives Matter movement and their legitimate protests as well as support the vast majority of law-abiding police officers who perform a thankless task of trying to keep us all safe. Criminals are criminals and they should be arrested, tried and sentenced equally whether they be bad cops or those looting and rioting in the name of a protest.

 
The system is broken and it needs to be fixed and made equitable and fair for all, something I fear may not be possible with the level of hatred, acrimony and division that our country is experiencing. Things have reached a boiling point and it is such a sad and frightening time. There was a bit of good news here locally this week as the virus cases reached a new low since the Keys reopened in June. 







We had our first day with no new cases and the weekly total was the lowest in the past three months.
The numbers continue to be staggering and scary as there are now 5,917,616 confirmed cases in the United States, with a mind-blowing 181,925 deaths. Locally in Monroe County there have been 1,719 cases with 782 of those being here in Key West and sadly 16 deaths here to date. So any reduction in the numbers is a welcome relief. But the biggest news of the week is the fact that we dodged another bullet as a major hurricane that we were once in the center of the cone of death, turned to our south and caused only a day of crazy high waves.





 
The storm, Hurricane Laura slide just to the south of Cuba, before turning north into the Gulf Of Mexico and slamming into Louisiana as a category 4 monster creating serious damage and destruction. Thankfully here it was only one of those crazy wavey days in which the end of the White Street Pier was flooded and turned into a lake where locals swam, let huge waves crash over them and floated around on floaties. I went down to check it out, avoiding the crowds but trying to get a few photos to capture what was happening.




 

 


This was also a bittersweet week as the 104^th running of the Indianapolis 500 was held and for the first time in 50 years, I was not on hand as they banned fans from attending due to the pandemic. Kathy was sweet and decorated the house with race flags and we watched as Takuma Sato captured his second Indy 500 win beating out Scott Dixon thanks to some shrew strategy and a well-timed late caution flag. It was fun and exciting and yet sad and disheartening to watch on TV.







We also had a few more fun, social distancing evening visits this week. Our friends Effie and Caitlin were here one night and on another evening, our friends Eric and Betsy and their daughter Rosie spent a fun night here. Jack and I also had the good fortune to rescue a turtle on one of our morning walks. He crossed busy White Street, narrowly avoiding getting run over and then was trapped by a fence, which I carried him around and placed him near the small pond he seemed to be heading towards. He seemed thrilled and darted off into the pond as soon as I placed him back on the ground
 
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