If I could stop time, I would have stopped it on Friday, Aug. 7, 2020, at 10:30 a.m.
The agitation I'd woken with after another back-to-school panic dream had been washed away with strong coffee. I then headed to Brayton for a breezy run on the trail. I felt strong and happy, not yet hungry for lunch, and grateful for this beautiful land.
I do love to run. Or rather, I like to run, and I love the feeling AFTER running! Since June 9, when Palmer downloaded the Runkeeper app to my phone, I've logged 177 miles.
This morning as I drove home from the trail, I paused to hold the moment in my mind, to consider the sensations that combined for such contentment, and to promise myself to hold the memory close.
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This afternoon I again ZOOMED with my parents. They are halfway through their quarantine, after which they can at least go outside for some fresh air.
I found a poem my mother would enjoy, so I shared my computer screen and enlarged the font to allow her to read along as I read it aloud. My dad misunderstood my intent and told my mom to read it aloud with me.
This would have been fine except that on ZOOM, when two people are talking at once, the program cannot blend the voices. Instead, it jumps in fits and starts from one speaker to another. It made for a very uneven reading of the poem, but I think there's a good chance my parents didn't notice.
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My dad and I then played FunBridge while my mom listened in. We agreed on the bid, but as we played out the hand, I tried to assert my strategy for maximizing our trump cards while my dad (as usual) wanted to bleed all trump from the opponents.
I was surprised at the vehemence with which I wanted to play it MY way. I had to take a breath and remind myself why I was playing FunBridge in the middle of a Friday afternoon in the first place: to give my dad some diversion and pleasure.
If I want to make the decisions about what card to lead, I should do it on my own time. Luckily I came to this realization before ruining our afternoon by insisting on playing it my way.
As it turned out, my dad's approach took the same number of tricks I'd anticipated with my own strategy.
Serve me up another scoop of that Humble Pie.
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In Thursday's paper, I saw that our city council had passed a housing ordinance making it illegal to live on property that does not have "a proper dwelling" with working plumbing.
I don't know if I would have even noticed this article three months ago.
But I've been trying to educate myself this summer about the Black Lives Matter movement's push to address systemic racism. "Systemic" refers to policies throughout systems (government, schools, health care...) that perpetuate the valuing of some people over others.
A policy that is put into place to criminalize poverty because people are "fed up with seeing people occupying property in their neighborhoods and living like it is a third world country" just might perpetuate systemic racism.
So I picked up the phone this afternoon and had a conversation with our city administrator. He was thoughtful and polite. I tried to be as well.
I asked him what our community has in place to assist people living in such extreme poverty. I told him I was concerned that a policy passed to remove people in poverty from our community sends a message that we do not value all people. I asked him how our community might connect with state and federal supports to assist rather than criminalize people in poverty.
We even talked about how asking our police force to "police" poverty diverts them from their charge of protecting and defending the community from actual harm.
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The city administrator and I did not solve homelessness, mental illness, drug abuse, or poverty during our 10-minute conversation. We moved no mountains.
But I made the call. Antiracist activism calls for using our positions of power (mine isn't much: that of a school teacher) to address policies that promulgate the valuation of some groups of people over others.
Baby steps.
Enough.
Be well.
Write.
Allison
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| Wolf contemplating the world at 3 a.m. |
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