Coronavirus Diaries - August

August 1st

On Friday morning when I picked Leo up I needed to go to the bank but I wanted to go to a drive through ATM and there aren’t a lot of them for Bank of America in Minny. First I tried one in Eden Prairie but it was out of order. The next closest one was on Hennepin, but I didn’t realize until I got there that it was at the corner of Lake street in Uptown, right in the heart of where the George Floyd protests and the riots were. I didn’t see any burned out buildings but there were lots of boarded up businesses, and memorial murals on some of them. It was shocking, Uptown is a fairly upscale shopping area, a place we’ve gone many a time. Sarah said I should take the time sometime to drive up Lake street, just to get a better perspective on what went down. It really drove it home. It wasn’t some remote place, some “other”. It was real.

After that Leo and I went to the car wash. The first time we went to the car wash he had no idea what it was. This time he knew what was coming and got himself a little worked up. He started crying as we went through so I started narrating. “Here is the soap, and now it’s being cleaned by these big cloths, and now the water is rinsing off the soap, and now it’s being dried.” He calmed down, and at the end I asked, “are you ok now?” And he said, “not crying!” And smiled.

This morning I got a delayed birthday present from Sarah. I went over to her house and we had brunch, just her and I, out on her deck. It was very nice! We had a great time chatting. Erik and Leo were playing together and Kirby took a nap for part of the time. We both enjoyed it and vowed to do it again.

August 7

I got my brakes worked on at the BMW dealer yesterday. Their protocols seemed good, not a lot of customers, everyone wearing a mask, plexiglass partitions, etc. I didn’t have to go to the cashier to pay, but could pay directly to the mechanic I was working with. I felt comfortable until the very end, when I was picking up my car. A mechanic in a mask drove the car to where I picked it up and at that point I got the heebie jeebies. I sprayed the door handle and the wheel with hand sanitizer rolled down all the windows, and left my mask on for a couple of minutes. And of course I used hand sanitizer before I took off my mask. 

I check the Covid stats for Minnesota every day on the Dept of Health website. We seem to be averaging about 700-900 new cases a day. We’re going to have to do much much better before I’ll be ready to let down my guard.

Next I need to get a ding in my windshield repaired. Hopefully that can be done with minimal interaction too.

I am enjoying my recovery running. I’m only running 3 days a week and either riding my bike or strength training on the other days. I feel good, and hopefully my running burnout will be gone before it’s time to increase my mileage again.

I wish I could just be a fly on the wall with a tape recorder around Leo right now. Everything he does includes a verbal commentary. We had meatball sub sandwiches for lunch and Lee sang him the song “on top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese, I lost my poor meatball, when somebody sneezed. It rolled off the table, and onto the floor.....” Leo screwed up his face in thought. “My meatball was lost,” he declared. “It fell on the floor. It got all dirty, but then it came back and I was happy and I cleaned it and I ate it!” Believe me the actual words were not nearly this direct but that was the general message.

August 17

Tom and Nicole and their kids Harrison and August are staying with us for awhile. Nicole is starting nurse anesthetist school in Florida. They sold their house but their apartment in Florida isn't available yet so we’re helping them out. 

They got here Friday, late, after packing all day, and driving in a terrible thunderstorm from Duluth to our house. I had meant to leave the garage door open for them but spaced out and shut it accidentally. Nicole tried to call me but I had do not disturb on so my phone didn’t ring so she had to ring the doorbell. I felt bad!

Harrison just turned 3 on Saturday. We had a little birthday party for him Saturday night. The Herberg’s came over and Leo was SO HAPPY and excited to have someone to play with! They are going to have fun together for awhile.

Harrison and Leo are only 5 months apart. Kirby and August are only 2 months apart! It’s too bad they are leaving Minnesota because once the pandemic is over these boys would have had fun together. But oh well. It’s a great opportunity for Nicole and her family.

Harrison is tired and confused. He’s having a hard time settling down to sleep for a nap and at night. It’s amazing how sound proof our house is though. I can hardly hear him and I’m a very light sleeper. They’ve had to resort to walking him in the stroller or taking him for a drive in the car to get him to sleep. He keeps climbing out of the packnplay, so they bought this cover for the it today on Amazon and tried it out for nap! After a lot of crying and protesting it really worked and he finally fell asleep. Poor thing!

I’ve been having trouble sleeping too. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m plenty tired but I get in bed and just toss and turn. I tried some melatonin last night and it definitely helped. I’m going to try in again tonight.

August 19

Now that we’ve gotten through a few days things are settling down. The packnplay cover is working for Harrison so he’s getting more rest. Leo and Harrison played together (or around each other) all morning with very little conflict. It’s kind of fascinating watching them try out different behaviors to see what works best for interacting with another kid. Sometimes they are nice to each other, sometimes not so much. Sometimes they share very well, other times nope!

They are big mimics so if one kid does something the other kid is prone to follow. Sometimes this is adorable, but depending on what they are mimicking not always! Just because one kid is throwing sand doesn’t mean that the other kid needs to do it too!

The were both really tired by naptime and are sleeping hard. I’m tired too. 

Still watching the Minnesota Covid stats. The number of new cases has been falling, but we still have a ways to go. But deaths are rising, which makes sense, since deaths lag behind new cases. I just wish people would behave themselves so that we could control this better. 

Yesterday morning while the housekeepers were here Leo and I went to the playground by Sarah’s house. There was a little girl there, around 7 years old, that wanted to play with Leo. He wanted to play with her too but I just couldn’t let them. It really sucks. Then later we went over to Medicine Lake and went for a bike ride. Wow! He went zooming down a hill! I was really impressed! Bu then we turned a corner and there was a big playground with a lot of kids. He really wanted to play and we tried it for a bit, but it was just too much potential interaction for it be safe.

We went to Adele’s for lunch. He had a pbj and chips and part of my pickle, and we shared a small chocolate malt. At first he didn’t want to share, but I was like, “fine then I get the whole thing” and he changed his mind! I had a brat and chips and a pickle. Yummy! I really would rather have plain ice cream than a malt or a shake but I didn’t want to have to get in line twice so the malt was a better solution. It’s good frozen custard!

August 22

Happy birthday Daniel! My little boy is 34. Wow. We FaceTimed. It’s pretty smoky in San Francisco today. There are fires everywhere around them. But Kelsey was making him pancakes and they were going to try to escape the smoke later today.

Leo and Harrison had a great time playing together on Thursday. They played with the little race cars Harrison got for his birthday and then Leo and I went outside and drew a new chalk road in the driveway. Leo rode his bike on it and Harrison had to ride his bike too. Then Tom got out the Mac Ride and let Leo try it. Leo thought it was AMAZING! Harrison rode his bike, and Nicole put August in his stroller and we all went for a walk/ride.

Later we got out the wading pool. The boys played with the hose and splashed around in the water. Tom and Nicole got into the spirit and splashed around too. I kind of backed away from the craziness....

Yesterday we took the Lingle’s out on the boat and they went tubing. They had a great time, especially Harrison. It didn’t look like fun to me at all but they loved it. Harrison got a ride with each parent and then Tom and Nicole took turns by themselves. The boat actually rode a little better with more weight in the back. We didn’t take on water at all.

August 25

The Lingle’s have moved to an extended stay hotel over by Tom’s parents for the next week, so that his parents can see more of the kids before they leave. His parents live in Bloomington which is pretty far away. The first thing Leo said when he came over this morning was “Where’d Harrison go?” We’re going to have a play date for the boys on Thursday. And hopefully Nicole will be able to come over for her birthday on September 2nd. Tom will start driving their car down to Florida on the 31st and she and the boys are going to fly on the 3rd. She started school this week, remotely. They’ve got a challenging couple of years ahead of them but it will all be worth it in the end.

August 27th

Leo and Harrison had a play date this morning. It was nice. They played hard, sometimes together, sometimes parallel. They ate pbj, the grownups talked. 

It’s been very hot. This weekend it should cool off. Maybe this is the last gasp. 

News of a rapid and inexpensive Covid test gives me hope. First hope in a long time. I’ve been avoiding the news in any detail lately because it is so depressing. The RNC convention doesn’t help. The next police shooting, and protests that follow, don’t help either. The lack of races to shoot for and take my mind off Covid doesn’t help. I don’t plan on racing again until the virus is under control and I just don’t think that’s happening any time soon.

Frederick Douglass

I am reading a biography of Fredrick Douglass, "Frederick Douglass, Prophet of Freedom," by David W. Blight.

You see a lot of articles about how we are in one of the worst eras in American history with the worst president, the most corrupt administration, and the biggest potential for a constitutional crisis. But if you look back at the 1850’s, the decade before the Civil War, I would contend that the situation then was just as bad, if not worse.

I didn’t know much at all about Frederick Douglass before I started this biography. He was a fugitive slave that learned to read and taught himself to write and become an orator. His views and opinions grew and changed over the course of the decades leading up to the Civil War. He started out as a radical abolitionist who believed the US Constitution was inherently flawed and nothing but a complete dissolution of the United States could put an end to slavery. He eventually came around to the idea that slavery could be abolished via laws and voting, but thought that one of the more radical political parties , such as the Liberty Party or the Free Soil Party, would be the way to achieve this goal. But after the Dred Scot decision and the election of James Buchanan, a Marylander sympathetic to the southern slaveholders, Douglas decided that the newly formed Republican Party, in spite of its more moderate views, held the only path to ridding the country of slavery.

It’s kind of like someone today that might start out apolitical, start to have interest in the Green Party, from there decide to work for Bernie Sanders, but eventually decide that they had to support Biden to get rid of Trump.

The surprising thing to me is how long it took for the Civil War to actually break out. There were skirmishes in Kansas starting in the mid 1850’s, and John Brown’s revolutionary rhetoric and actions as well. The nation was in complete turmoil, and even people who shrank from violence were dismayed at the path the country was taking.

I’m not even halfway through this book. It’s long, and very dense. It’s not an easy read! But it’s pretty fascinating. Sometimes it’s just difficult to try to understand a time and place where so many people had to be convinced of the inherent evil of slavery and necessity of full equality and citizenship for People of Color. The Fugitive Slave Act and the Dred Scot decision were especially troubling, since those laws made even free blacks feel unsafe, no matter where they lived. It was all too easy to be kidnapped and sold into slavery no matter what one’s papers might say. And Dred Scot made it appear that slavery could potentially be legal anywhere in the US. Even free blacks in the Northern States started emigrating to Canada out of fear.

It was an untenable situation, and something had to give way. Many people, Douglass included, were relieved when the Civil War finally broke out. Another interesting thing is the parts about Lincoln. He was not, initially at least, convinced that full abolition was necessary, or even possible. He held out hope for a negotiated peace with the Confederacy for almost the first two years of the war, only gradually being convinced that only full emancipation and a total destruction of the Confederacy would actually preserve the Union in any significant sense. 

Douglass knew that the end of the Civil War was only the beginning of a new phase in the fight for equal rights for POC. He probably never realized just how long and hard fought this second battle would be. We'll never know what would have happened if Lincoln had lived, but Andrew Johnson was a southerner that sympathized with the confederacy and hated Blacks.  And Douglass knew that the effects of slavery on his people could last for generations without a concerted effort to help ex-slaves learn to live as free people.

Douglass was a brillent orator and writer. He was a rock star of his day, filling hall after hall with rapturous crowds, meeting with the highest government officials, including presidents. Its surprising to me just how important and significant he was back then, and how little I knew about him before I started reading this book. Its shameful that I could have been taught about the Civil War in High School without his name ever coming up. That's a product of racism right there. We could learn about John Brown's aborted attack at Harper's Ferry and the attack at Fort Sumter, but not about the fiery speeches given by Douglass. I can look back now and see how our education was subtly twisted to keep white supremacy on top. 

I know I have a long way to go in my "re-education". Like everyone, I battle my own personal prejudices and assumptions. Reading about someone like Douglass is a start, at least. Now when he gets mentioned in passing I will know the reference and will understand its significance. I'm glad I'm taking the time to plow through this book. Its changing me, page by page.