I am...unsurprised. But I was here 5 years ago. Baltimore has basically evolved me into a police abolitionist. I got some lovely glimpses of this city today: young Black woman cellist at the lake, a little mini protest moment on the trail(seriously, I just did a hug sign to a dad wearing a BLM shirt out with his family & he said "no justice" & me, some other rando behind me & all his fam responded "no peace.")

I guess you don't feel worried if you expect TPTB to fuck it up?

I dunno. I voted today.

Some group called This Is The Texas Freedom Force has gotten involved with the protests here in San Antonio, and the police chief is loudly disclaiming any official connection.

On the bright side, COVID cases have remained low, giving us less than 2500 confirmed cases and 75 deaths for the whole pandemic. No sign of an uptick due to loosened restrictions in early May, but we're still waiting for the Memorial Day fallout.

Take care, Buffistas. The images and videos are scary.

Before I delve into the local news sources to see what occurred here overnight, I am going to have another cup of coffee and go mow some of the lawn.

I am making a plan for the day so I do not just sit in front of this screen and get overwhelmed by injustice, destruction, and anger.

- Mow Lawn
- Take Bailey for walk and pick up trash on main commercial street of neighborhood.
- Go to Lowes to look for things to hang platers on deck railing, corrugated plastic to make signs for front yard, more bird feed, maybe bird bath.

I was afraid to go to sleep last night, and afraid to check the news this morning. But it appears Oakland has survived, although some big box stores took a hit. Target has closed all their Bay Area stores for two weeks, so we'll have to get by without cheapass t-shirts for a bit.

Front and side lawn mowed - half of the front lawn of the empty next door. Battery died, so it is recharging and I am cooling off a bit.

Well, I had a very productive morning. Made scones AND went to a little local rally before church!

The rally was good -- about 100 white people stretched out along both sides of a major street, most with signs. Cops drove by quite a bit.

I made bacon.

And am still all caught up reading the news. Just awful. Yes, there were looters and people starting shit, but there were so so many videos of cops escalating violence rather than de-escalating. And even the NYTimes is doing stuff like posting a tweet where "a journalist was hit by pepper spray; a journalist was hit by rubber bullets; protestors injured a journalist". Seriously? They're covertly defending the police even when talking about their own people, and that's from a supposedly left wing source. Jesus.

There were two AR15s stolen from a police car yesterday during the demonstrations—all the news and mayor and whatnot seemed very concerned about that and how one was recovered but one was still missing, and then it too was recovered....and no one seemed to be asking what the fuck the cops thought they needed multiple AR15s for???

and no one seemed to be asking what the fuck the cops thought they needed multiple AR15s for???

It's like toilet paper - you can never have enough.

It's lovely out in these parts, so I biked down to the sea wall. There were more people on the beach than last week, but still way down from usual. The local highway department closed off a bunch of parking spaces along Ocean Road to keep the numbers of people just hanging out down.

Went for a run in my neighborhood and bumped into my niece. Happily her partner's restaurant downtown made it through unscathed: it's a small place owned by a local non-profit where they train former inmates to cook.

I am going to go back to dog class tomorrow, for the first time since late February. This will be unsettling, I suspect, but I have to get over my FOGO.